St. Mary's Academy

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"My mother said, 'I know this wonderful, wonderful school, and the girls all have all these toys to play with and each other, and nobody’s ever lonesome, and there's a big bedroom, and there’ll be thirty beds up there, and there’ll be somebody in every one of them.' And she said, 'Oh, that would be t—so nice for you to go there.' And I said, 'I just wanna stay home.' [Laughs]. But she kept at me, and it was gentle, and I finally said, 'Boy, I wish I could go there...'

It was only one year old when I attended it, and I was in the third grade. I cried like a baby when they brought me and left me there, because I couldn’t—didn’t wanna say goodbye to my mama. And I think I cried myself to sleep, too, but when I woke up the next day, why, things started to get warm. People kept coming and coming and they were dropping off their children, and I got to play with all the toys and the books that were there, and we had to line up to go eat the meals, and we ate in a place called a refectory."