“The pages that follow will be our journey of the life we built together here in Concord, North Carolina. These pages will reveal fragments from the past and events that occurred along the way.”

“Humans will never be in charge of this world, as long as dust and weeds do as they please.”

“Like the magnolia tree, She bends with the wind,Trials and tribulation may weather her, Yet, after the storm her beauty blooms, See her standing there, like steel, With her roots forever buried,Deep in her Southern soil.”

“Ain’t nothing too serious. Even death is a joke on the old devil, if we are living for the Lord.”

“Perhaps you have visited my grave and flowers left, but did you hear me cry out to you!”

“Papa was our strength and the very fiber that wove our family together. He was our foundation and our rock, but even rocks, break, given enough stress.”

“Children worked in the mills: "I will always believe that children are designed for green meadows and play, not for factories and cotton dust.”

“Are you a traveling man he asked?”

“I could faintly smell the ocean. I imagined being one of the old oak trees standing there swaying in the wind and braving all sorts of weather. I pondered what they had seen in the past and what they might see in the future”

“‎"He smiled at me and I felt the tenderness only a daughter could feel.”

“It was a warm and natural feeling to be there. We were not black or white people. We were just people bound together by love and understanding. As I walked out of that church, I felt like I had rediscovered my inner peace.”