Page 77 - Stand Down Vietnam

DORIS JEAN GILLIAM

I’m Doris Jean Gilliam. I was born in Hiram, Kentucky,
at home in 1938. I am the oldest of six children. My
mother was from a family with nineteen children: yours,
mine and ours. So, we had relatives everywhere. We
always had a big crowd of relatives; we were always
involved with church.

When I was fourteen, the coal miners were on strike for
a long time. Daddy sold our house and we moved into a
house near my Aunt. She was married to Kenneth’s great
uncle, my daddy’s oldest sister. Kenneth lived in a
house at the top of the hill. We were planting
potatoes when these two young boys came up the dirt
road by our house. Unbeknownst to me, Kenneth told the
other young boy he was going to marry me.

Kenneth had a great grandmother; Susie Bailey Gilliam
who was eighty-eight when we moved there. She would
not leave her house. She was the matriarch of a big
family. Great granny wouldn’t leave, so, they wanted
someone to be there with her at night in case she had a
problem. They chose me.

The Gilliam’s owned a large part of the county. They
were the third family to settle there.

Kenneth had been coming for a long time to get wood and
coal for his great grandmother. She finally decided
that we belonged together; she told Kenneth she was
going to start paying him three dollars a week. He
didn’t want to accept that; he told her his daddy would
whip his butt. She insisted and told him to take me to
the movies.