Page 14 - Wayne County

bring industry here. I never dreamed that I’d have the chance to make a home here and then to go on to work with others to provide the same opportunity for those who came after me.” Jim quickly became involved in his hometown, enjoying both his time at the mill and his work as a Jaycee. In 1956, he and his good friend, John Hill Harris, traveled with Jim’s pet spider monkey to the State Jaycee Convention in Waycross. After a weekend of fun squiring around in Jim’s red 1955 Thunderbird, the friends headed home. Driving through Patterson, however, John Hill suddenly thought of a friend’s daughter he wanted Jim to meet. A quick detour took them to the friend’s drive where the spider monkey jumped from the car, sprinted to the porch, and latched onto the pretty girl sitting in the swing. Jim stepped from his convertible to free her from his overzealous monkey, and a lifelong romance was born.

In those days, when a telephone operator connected a call, she stated where the call originated. In the next four months Margie, the pretty girl in the swing, heard the operator say many times, “Jesup calling.” The frst time “Jesup called,” Jim invited Margie to ride to Waycross to get a boat motor part. She laughingly tells the story today, always remarking, “We still, to this day, haven’t gotten that boat motor part.”

Margie grew up in Patterson, graduated from high school there, earned a degree in education at Armstrong College, taught ffth and seventh grades in Patterson, and later worked as a legal secretary. A strikingly beautiful brunette with an engaging personality and fashing smile, she was both Miss Gum Turpentine and Miss Pierce County. Jim was easily smitten. He courted Margie for four months, and on June 1, 1956 married her at the First Methodist Church in Jesup. He even sold his boat trailer for $50 to take