THE CUSTOM IS to thank spouses at the end, but in case you don’t read all these acknowledgments, I want to say up front that this book could not have happened without Dan Crawford, my husband. He not only vacuumed and shopped and paid bills, he listened, and he understood why I wanted so much to tell this story. Thank you, Dan, for thousands of moments over the years that popped me back onto my path.
My friend Beth Macy brought me soup, introduced me to her agent, educated me on the editing process, and for decades heard my angst over my brother. (Her husband, Tom Landon, encouraged me too, all along the way.) In an initial Beth-urged phone talk with agent Peter McGuigan, he inhaled the heady flavors of my story and quickly shopped around the book proposal he had coached into shape. He and his assistant, Claire Harris, have been guiding the book’s progress ever since.
Harper editor Claire Wachtel responded to my proposal first, with intoxicating words of praise. I owe it to her that I found a home at Harper. Editor Sofia Groopman picked it up from there, gently leading me through a total restructuring, hundreds of sensitive edits, and what I thought then were shocking cuts. (You were right, Sofia.)
I’ve had an extraordinary team at Harper, including publicist Nick Davies, marketing manager Christine Choe, production editor Nikki Baldauf, counsel Victor Hendrickson, interior designer Fritz Metsch, jacket designer Sarah Brody, and copyeditor Elise Morrongiello, each of whom have been a joy to work with.
No single reader deepened my understanding of my family dynamics more than Charlottesville’s Dr. J. Anderson “Andy” Thomson. He knew my parents and the farm I grew up on, and as a bonus, he’s a psychiatrist. He helped me see how without Ronnie’s initial yearlong attachment to Mom and five years to his foster parents, he likely would have suffered much more emotionally. Andy pointed out how Ronnie’s choice to become a barber fed his need for regular, if minimal, closeness. Both Andy and Roanoke psychologist Robert Guthrie helped interpret mental hospital records about the seventeen-year-old Ronnie. Over Ronnie’s final months, Drs. Will Truslow, Steve South, and K. LeGree Hallman treated him with great heart. Endocrinologist and acromegaly expert Dr. Mary Lee Vance talked with me more recently about Ronnie’s illness.
The people of Virginia’s Albemarle County and its environs confirmed memories and offered fresh ones. Thank you, Barclay Rives, brothers Charlie, Harold, and Peter Hallock, Phylissa and Mildred Mitchell, John E. “Jay” Early III, Myrtle White, Lane Goodall, Margia Kidd Kitts, Margaret Brown, Peggy Dudley Byrd, Niya Bates, Joe Collins, Olivia Branch, Jake Carle, Ginny Smith, Bernice Mitchell, Fritz and Claudine Kundrun, Gladys Leake, Blue and Joan Bomar, and Alice Walker Douglas. Lucia “Cinder” Stanton and the Central Virginia History Researchers, especially Edwina St. Rose and Bob Vernon, provided invaluable background. I’m indebted to G. McNeir “Mackey” Tilman, Bill Tilman, and Lynda Daughterty for recollections of Tilman’s Department Store. Lorenzo Dickerson’s documentaries about Albemarle County’s racial history informed my story.
Over the years, many former and current Roanoke Times staffers helped with details surrounding my brother’s life and lent emotional support, especially Beth Obenshain, Rob Freis, Ralph Berrier, Don Petersen, Lee Wenzler, Chuck Hite, Diane Leach, Tonia Moxley (and Maureen Peters), Mike Hudson, and David Poole. No one helped me believe in my journalism more than my former editor there, Rich Martin. Sue Lindsey, another former newspaper editor, read a later draft and continually bucked me up at critical points.
Other fellow writers and readers buoyed my confidence. Thanks to Christina Nifong, Leigh Anne Kelley, Libba Wolfe, Sandra Kelly, and Laura Scott, as well as Daphne Huffman and Lucy Lee. Alice and Joe Duehl were among the many friends who listened to my story with open hearts, as did Herb Beskar and Cecily Wood, Beth Obenshain and Fred Carlisle, Becky Hepler and Rick Teague, Jim and Cathy Crawford, Mindy Fullilove and Uncas McThenia.
For research on eugenics, which helped put my mother’s story in perspective, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities gave me a fellowship for study, the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science provided funding, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts offered a lovely place in which to write. At Hollins University, longtime cheerers-on included Marilyn Moriarty, Ethel Morgan Smith, Jeanne Larsen, Cathy Hankla, and Richard Dillard.
Librarians furnished hundreds of details for this book, especially Edwina Parks, Dyron Knick, and Nathan Flinchum in Roanoke, Carol Glosh in Salem, and, at the Roanoke Times, the unstumpable Belinda Harris. Historical societies also: Margaret O’Bryant at Albemarle-Charlottesville, John Long at Salem, Virginia, and Brenda Baratto at Aiken County, South Carolina. Sherry Lawton-Fasic at Christ Church Christiana Hundred in Delaware confirmed dates for me. Columbus, Ohio, police detective Mike Thomas provided details on my uncle’s death there.
For Roanoke history, my go-to resources were (and are) Dr. Reginald Shareef, Brenda Hamilton, Susan Lower, and Paul Garst; for Vinton, it was Nita Echols, Jim Echols, and Dan Smith. Over the phone, David Stewart Wiley’s keen ear identified the tune my dad and granddad whistled to their dogs. Over at the house where Mom rented a room in 1936, new owner Danessa Wimmer graciously invited in a stranger to see where her mother stayed most of a century before. Years ago, Francis Willis recalled my sweet young mother when she joined the staff at Hobby Horse Farm, and Alice Trout Hagan drew vivid mental pictures for me of the elder McIntyres. Dorothy Linkous Robinson and Cora Linkous Dickerson filled in particulars about Ronnie’s foster family. For information on the Booths, I’m grateful to Susan Scott Anderson and Barrie Booth. Leon C. Johenning II recalled Ronnie’s arrival in Lexington, Virginia, as a young barber.
At institutions that harbored young Ronnie, Donnie Wheatley and Carrie McAllister at Boys’ Home shared Ronnie’s records, and alums Bob Ramsey and Roy Waller remembered details about him; at Miller School, Ronnie’s classmates Bill Simms and David Wilson Collier entertained me for hours with their memories.
An informal team kept me healthy as I finished the book: Dr. Clifford Nottingham, nurse practitioner Nancy Harvey, PT Rick Sidor, Dr. Carl Musser, Dr. Vishal Bhagat, Dr. Brian Gross, and psychotherapists Ron Salzbach, Barbara Horton, and my brethren in our Thursday afternoon group.
Family and near-family were soul mates to me throughout, most of all Buddy and Carolyn McIntyre. Daniel Alan Bishop, Ruth Allison Bane, Shirley Collins, Jean Williamson, Irene and Linda Carter, Bessie Rush Fox, and Kitty Murray Davis shared their stories, as did Dorothy Hicks Palmer, Laura Manning Hicks Morgan, Louise Hicks, Janet Hicks Carter, Glen Hicks, Eleanor Hicks Whorley, Meda Hicks, Watkins Blane, and Kathryn Blane Farmer. Sister-in-law Betty Burke calmed my anxieties with homemade soup and heartfelt listening. Brother-in-law Bob Crawford followed my progress and took my picture. Neighbor Nancy Robison spoiled our cat and dog when I was too busy to.
For those who gave me glimpses of Ronnie’s prime years, I’m most grateful to Richard Britt, Ellen Jane Campbell, and the Rev. Clyde Carter, who described for me Ronnie’s eccentric friend Will Sloan. Al Hopper spent an afternoon recollecting his travels with Ronnie to golf resorts and other favorite places. For discretion’s sake, I’m unable to thank her by her real name, but the woman I refer to as Joyce endured scores of way-too-personal questions to give me a view of Ronnie in his courting days. I’m especially beholden to her.