Memories of Yesteryear: Life of Rural America During the 1920's and 1930's

Delk, Alexander W.

The author of Memories of Yesteryear is Alexander W. Delk, who currently lives in Cleveland, Tennessee. Alexander W. Delk was born July 19, 1922 in the Union Hill community near the then small town of Goodlettsville, Tennessee. The area was then very rural, though is now somewhat less so. His father died two months earlier from injuries suffered in World War I. His mother remarried six years later and reared a second family. The author was reared in the home of his maternal grandparents from the time of his birth until adulthood. He attended rural Union Hill elementary school and graduated from Goodlettsville High School in 1940. He holds a B.A. degree from (then) Scarritt College in Nashville (1943), a master's degree in religion from Vanderbilt University (1946), and a master's degree in educational administration from the University of Tennessee (1959). He also has graduate work at the University of Illinois and elsewhere. He pastored rural Methodist churches for nine years, during which time he married his late wife, Faye Treadwell Delk on September 14, 1947 at Waynesboro Tennessee. In 1954 he came to Cleveland, Tennessee, as a member of the faculty of Lee College. In 1960 he and family moved to Urbana, Illinois, for further graduate work at the University of Illinois. The family spent the next thirty years in Illinois. He is retired from the Illinois public school system, having spent most of those years in either teaching or school administration. He and wife returned to Cleveland, Tennessee, in 1990. For the twenty-one years from 1991 t0 2012 he taught public speaking at Cleveland State Community College, retiring in May 2012 with a total of 57 years in education as a teacher/administrator. Mrs. Delk passed away December 19, 2005. They have four children, six grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren. He is currently active in the community and in two of its churches. He is a frequent speaker when the oc