When I graduated from Pelion School 50 years ago, I had no intention to write.

I was born the 3rd of 4 children to Robert Gantt and Sallie Hartley Gantt in Batesburg. Our house was unpainted pine and clapboard with a tin roof. It was built around 1912 by my granddaddy, Kelly Gantt, and his brothers on large pine pillars Granddaddy leveled to perfection.

It still stands today, my brother Steve’s home.

We lived on Swamp Rabbit Road about a mile from the North Edisto River.

My great grandparents, ‘Kel’ and Peninnah Woodward Gantt, lived in Rayflin.

Our house stands on Kel Gantt’s once over 500 acres.

A lot has changed since Granddaddy Kelly built his house 106 years ago.

The railroad track was dismantled in 1933.

Fire destroyed my great grandparents’ house at Rayflin in 1983. All that remains is a partial bedroom, mound of river rocks where the old chimney stood, a smokehouse surrounded by a jungle of briars, brambles, small trees and Great Granddaddy’s corn crib.

Time destroys buildings, fences, farm implements and memories.

A month after graduating from Pelion, I married my high school sweetheart and became a stay at home mom to our 3 children.

I developed a fanatical interest in genealogical research. I visited cemeteries, courthouses, archives, and libraries and interviewed older people in the family about our family lines.

I have notebooks full of tidbits of family lore gleaned from them, much of it from correspondence with people across the United States.

My biggest inspiration, Uncle Leon, was a phenomenal storyteller who loved to talk about his life. His memory was amazing.

Telling a story to him was an art. Characters’ names, dates and usually the weather were included.

My siblings and I loved to hear him talk about his childhood, the Steadman tornado of 1924, the Great Depression, making moonshine and his service in World War II.

Being drafted at the ripe old age of 32, it was not easy, training with 18- and 19-year-olds. But Leon was a country boy, had worked in fields all day under the blazing sun, was tough and a good shot. That was important during the Depression. The family depended on wild game for food.

Leon left the farm a year after Pearl Harbor, sailing from New York on the Queen Mary for Europe.

Being older, young soldiers valued his opinion. He was the soldier they wanted in a foxhole under fire.

He told us about serving in North Africa and Italy, even about war’s horrors.

We taped his stories or wrote them down. After Uncle Leon passed away in 2002 at the age of 91, I wrote a historical novel based on his life.

I wanted to write a narrative, not just a family history but a story that could be enjoyed and envisioned.

I have included pictures of the real main characters in the back of both my books.

“Where Memories Live” was published in early December 2017 covering the years 1910 to 1923.

“The Return Home” was published in 2018 covering 1923 to 1950.

“Southern Child: A Memoir” is about the years my siblings and I lived basically the same life as Granddaddy Kelly and Uncle Leon. As a child, I lived in the same old clapboard house, without indoor plumbing or heat except burning wood.

Mark Twain once said: “The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”

Writing these stories could be my “why.”

My books are available on Amazon and Kindle.

Autographed copies are available at Gantt’s Stone Mill, 513 Swamp Rabbit Rd. Leesville, SC 29070.