My forthcoming book, GONE FROM THESE WOODS, is a fictional story set in a North Georgia rural community very much like Winterville, Georgia, the small town where I live. My characters are all made up from bits and pieces of people I've known or still know.
But my fictional tale of a young boy, Daniel Sartain, was inspired by a real story I heard growing up. What happens in my book is similar but not the same as what happened in the family of my second grade teacher, Dycie H. Schneider. She was one of my inspirations.
I took this picture of Mrs. Schneider on a May 2008 visit to Morningside, a retirement home where she lived next door to my childhood next door neighbors, Joe and Farrah Wages. Hilda Hancock, Dycie's niece, and Luna Chandler, a neighbor of my grandparents', live there, too. She retold the sad story of her first husband's death that day, of how happy she had been in her second marriage many years later (she had been a widow for about a year when I visited her), and she talked about attending Tuckston School on Lexington Road in Athens as well as Gaines School the first year it opened.
Unfortunately, a couple of weeks after that visit, Dycie had an automobile accident and died several days later from her injuries. She was 90 years old. She knew before she died that I had included her name on my forthcoming book's dedication page and she was looking forward to reading my book. I am thankful I got to visit with her for about an hour on that day in May. It was a special time for me and she seemed to enjoy the visit, too.
Look to your right and you'll see pictures of the actual report card Mrs. Campbell gave me in second grade!