Cord Byrd: “Monday next is Memorial Day. Monday next, being May 29, my memory goes back to May 29, 1937. It was a Saturday. I was…”

“Monday next is Memorial Day. Monday next, being May 29, my memory goes back to May 29, 1937. It was a Saturday. I was working in the meat shop as a meat cutter at the Koppers Store in Stotesbury, Raleigh County, WV. It was a coal mining community. I started working there in the gas station for Koppers Store for $50 a month. I walked 4 miles to work and 4 miles back home, unless I might catch a bread truck or a milk truck. But on that Saturday, May 29, 1937, at 5 o'clock p.m., my two senior meat cutters at the Koppers Store in Stotesbury, WV, and I closed up the meat department and went home. I put on my best suit--actually, my only suit--and where did I go? I headed off to Sophia, 4 miles away, to the house of the local hard-shell Baptist preacher U.G. Nichols. And there I met with my high school sweetheart, Erma Ora James. May God bless her sweet memory. She was the beautiful daughter of a coal miner. This was a coal miner who helped to teach me to play the old fiddle tunes long ago: ``Sally Goodin,'' ``Mississippi Sawyer,'' ``Arkansas Traveler,'' and ``She'll Be Comin Round the Mountain,'' and so on. At 6 o'clock that evening, Preacher Nichols pronounced Erma--God bless her sweet name--and me ``husband and wife.'' That union, I am very proud to say, endured for 68 years, 9 months, and 24 days. So on May 29, 3 days from now, Erma and I would have celebrated our 69th wedding anniversary. That is something to brag about.…”