Cord Byrd: “William Manchester, writing in the book, ``The Glory and the Dream,'' would call the year 1932 ``the cruelest year.'' I…”

“William Manchester, writing in the book, ``The Glory and the Dream,'' would call the year 1932 ``the cruelest year.'' I was in the 10th grade at Mark Twain High School at Stotesbury in Raleigh County, southern West Virginia. Living in a coal miner's home, I saw and felt the Great Depression firsthand. Schoolteachers often had to reduce their monthly paychecks by several percentage points in order to get the checks cashed. The newspapers frequently carried stories of men who had jumped out of windows or pressed a cocked pistol to their temples, taking their lives because they had lost their lifetime savings, and their economic world had come crashing down around them. Very few men in and around the coal fields had ever owned an automobile, and those who were fortunate enough to possess an automobile jacked it up off the ground and mounted the axles on railroad crossties to keep the tires from rotting while enough money could be saved to pay for a new license plate. Many children went to bed hungry at night, their families destitute. The country had hit rock bottom, and West Virginia was one of the ``rock bottomest'' of the States. It is hard to imagine that things could have gotten much worse in southern West Virginia. There was little left but hope, and there was not much of that, hardly enough to go around.”