FRANK RAPER didn’t feel too good. He’d survived a massive heart attack about a year earlier in 1910 and hadn’t been much use since. His older boys helped out as much as they could: preparing beds for the Bright Leaf tobacco seeds to sprout their way to seedlings, plowing the fields in readiness for planting, tilling, topping, suckering as each plant put out unwanted shoots. Then followed harvesting and stringing the good leaves on poles over in the curing barn where Frank and the boys took turns stoking the fires night and day till each blade reached that perfect yellow gold.
The crop had gone to market. Frank rocked on the porch, savoring the lingering sweet smell of well-cured tobacco. He gathered strength as wife Julie lay in bed with early signs of labor bringing forth their eighth child. The older two, Cletus and Luther, had gone back to high school away in Churchland.
Frank called the rest together. “Arthur, Ralph, Howard, Blanche, Kenneth, you’re all going to Uncle Dave’s for the night. Arthur, you see to it your brothers and sister get there with pajamas and clean clothes for the morning.”
Oh, I know what’s coming, thought Arthur. They’re going to call Doctor Bob with his little black bag, and when we get back home there’ll be another squalling baby in that worn-out cradle.
Sure enough, the very next day, October 3, 1911, those five Raper children came home after breakfast to find a tiny baby boy sleeping peacefully beside their loving mother. This one had red hair like the last three, Kenneth, Blanche, and Howard. They called him John. In a few more years, he’d be another welcome farmhand in this rural North Carolina community called Welcome.
I married grown-up baby John in 1949. A distinguished scientist by the time I knew him, John’s childhood haunted him still. The youngest of eight, he grew up tasting the red dust of that farm of his youth and its main cash crop: tobacco. Resentful memories of never-ending chores: hauling water, slopping pigs, milking cows, plowing fields, setting crops, suckering tobacco—row upon row in the blistering sun of summer—all took hold and stuck. It wasn’t so bad when the brothers shared, but ultimately they left to seek more profitable livelihoods elsewhere. It was a time John could not forget. Yet John’s ties to his brothers and sister stayed strong. All urban professionals, they nonetheless gathered in family reunion every five years and exchanged Round Robin letters in between.
In 1965, it was our turn to plan the reunion. After sixteen years of marriage and thirteen years of parenthood, I’d heard about this family from John’s point of view. I wanted to learn more. Why did each and every one leave that hard-working God-fearing way of life, where discontented peers found mischievous and shocking diversions: stealing watermelons, bullying, mutilating, even murdering the vulnerable? Not one of John’s siblings grew up to continue farming, like so many of their neighboring friends and relatives. From a one-room schoolhouse, they all sought higher education and professional accomplishments elsewhere— though their parents never went beyond seventh grade. How did that happen?
John and I booked an inn in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, because of its ocean breezes, its lobsters, clams, and pleasant dining spot facing an expansive lawn that sloped to a shimmering pond with a swimming dock and paddleboats.
Forty-eight members of the Raper family, all related in some fashion to long-dead William Franklin and Julia Crouse Raper, assembled the first week of August. All but one of John’s siblings attended. Cletus, the oldest, had died since the last reunion.
I asked them to come prepared to talk about their time together as youngsters on the farm. John and I had just purchased a tape recorder to preserve their words.
After three days of romping about, chatting, swimming, boating, and feasting on fruits of the ocean, we settled down in one large room to hear what these brethren had to say.
This is the scene: It is evening. Children and spouses crowd on and about two king-sized beds facing a large rectangular table at one end of the room where the Raper siblings position themselves in the following order.
Arthur, third son, presides at head of table, and, by common assent, assumes the moderator’s role. With shaggy grey hair, he sits erect looking every bit the part of a man in charge. As an official of the US State Department, Arthur had traveled the world—Japan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan—advising heads of government on matters of sociological and agricultural importance during the aftermath of World War II. Extensively published—author of seven scholarly books—he comes equipped with many writings and documents.
Ralph, fourth son, perhaps the handsomest, sits properly straight and tall. With neatly trimmed hair, light rimmed glasses, and half smile, he is the only brother wearing jacket and tie. A cotton economist with the US Department of Agriculture, Ralph comes bearing poems that set the scenes with vignettes of nostalgic childhood memories.
Luther, former director of membership relations for the Southern States Farmers’ Cooperative, and eldest of the living lot, sets his younger siblings straight on some of their recollections. Of jovial temperament, he is mindful of differing feelings and tends to smile a lot.
Howard, middle child and first of the redheads, manifests an overseeing manner befitting his profession as president of a savings and loan company. Although the wealthiest family member, he displays a tendency of self-deprecation for not having done so well in school, especially when it came to spelling. Howard, like Luther, sits relaxed and smiles often.
Blanche, the second redhead and only female, appears determined yet demure. She teaches history and English in high school and has a penchant for writing poetry of philosophical and romantic bent, setting some to music. Blanche holds her own vis-à-vis all those brothers, refusing to suffer their guff.
Redheads Kenneth and John sit side-by-side and vie for attention as youngest of the lot. Both are distinguished university professors specializing in the science of fungi, and both are recipients of numerous accolades for their contributions to science.
Ken, the older, balding with red hair, claims fame as discoverer of the first strain of Penicillium capable of producing industrial amounts of the antibiotic penicillin during World War II. Tenured at the University of Wisconsin, he is author of four scholarly books.
John, fully redheaded, is professor of botany at Harvard University and a world-renowned expert on sexual reproduction in fungi.
Despite similar interests, Kenneth conveys an air of acceptance, smiling benignly most of the time, while John, not so benign, expresses resentment for having been put upon by all those older brothers.
Cletus, the oldest sibling, now gone, became the office manager of a large construction company and co-invented a balloon tire (for which he never won a patent). He had died of a heart attack since the previous family reunion and is fondly remembered here by all his brethren.
These siblings speak of life growing up on a dirt-poor farm with no modern conveniences but a plentitude of religious teachings and manual labor. They recount their hard-fought struggle to get an education and leave the farm for a more rewarding livelihood elsewhere. Their family reminiscences personalize a widespread movement from farm to urban ventures in early twentieth-century America.
Organized more or less by subject, the Rapers’ readings are in italics; their discussions are in Roman and here is what this family has to say along with occasional musings of my own set off by italics and an ornament.
Raper siblings at 1965 reunion: Howard, Ralph, Luther, Blanche, Kenneth, Arthur, and John.
