A WORKING-CLASS

SOUTHERN BOY OF

THE 1950s & 1960s 

     “I, uh, started out as a child,” is how Bill Cosby began his wildly popular second comedy album in the ‘60s.

      Modern psychology tells us that we all “start out” as children, that those several early years for the great majority of us are, indeed, “formative.” It’s “who” we are, like it or not.

      I was an active, happy child, growing up in working class southwest Hickory, NC. My birth certificate says “Cleveland County,” but I was actually born in a country medical clinic about a quarter mile inside Lincoln County on NC Hwy 18 about 25 miles south of Hickory.

      “Toluca” has the “Entering” and “Leaving” sign on the same post. I don’t remember anything else there, besides Dr. Edwards’ gray stone clinic. The highway doesn’t even widen there.

      My mom and dad, mostly uneducated, were intent that I receive a college education—probably because my left arm was paralyzed by a birth injury called “Erb’s Paralysis.” I’ve met only a few other people in my lifetime who even know what this is.

      My folks were “common people” who made their share of mistakes, including parenting, but they didn’t want their only child to have to work in a hosiery mill, a furniture factory, a roofing company, or driving a truck—like they did.

      Even though they spanked me with a belt or a switch more than I thought they should have, I am eternally grateful that they drove me to get an education--and, in general, to excel at whatever I tried.

      Even though I was an only child, I had lots of “brothers” and “sisters” in the neighborhood. We played every rough, physical game you can imagine. I especially remember the all-day baseball games on a vacant lot—with final scores like 230-228—and football games in a briary creek bottom, from which we often went home with our clothes torn to shreds.

      One game we played that would have horrified our parents today was “war.” We would watch World War II movies on TV channel 13 on Saturday afternoons, then go out to another vacant lot, choose up sides and dig our fox-holes.

      We didn’t throw rocks at each other, but dirt clods were, indeed, the weapons of choice. We also lobbed Pepsi bottles and water balloons into “enemy camps.”

      We learned what would be a novel idea today, all of us, about “competition”—especially in light of today’s politically correct recreation departments which don’t want kids to experience “losing.” As kids went home hurt or crying, or both, we found that the “winners” of our game “war” were the last ones in possession of the field!

     By learning about “losing” at such an early age, I also learned that I didn’t like it. “Winning” was just a lot more fun, so that’s what I focused on.

      When I hit sixth grade, I joined the Boy Scouts, and I began to be influenced by people other than my parents and my teachers in school.

      I fondly remember Claude S. Abernethy Sr., my 70-plus Scoutmaster, and of course, Frank Barger, my football coach at Hickory High. They taught me “things” my parents couldn’t, because my parents had never had the same experiences.

      “Mr. Ab” was a member of the first Scout troop in America, Troop One, Hickory—which most people don’t know—and “Coach Frank” taught me about real discipline, not just getting my fanny tanned for misbehaving. His widow, Mrs. Becky Barger, a truly classy lady, sang in the same church choir as I for a number of years.

      Dick Sain of Hudson and Joe Caldwell of Hickory were junior high football coaches who taught me a lot about winning and losing. My first honors English teacher at Hickory High, Barbara Rost—whom I really disliked at the time—taught me to love literature and “good writing.” She was followed by Genella Allison and Jean Ball, two more great teachers, and Mary Ellen Snodgrass was more like "my best buddy" than a teacher.

      I had the pleasure of being the manager and scorekeeper for an undefeated basketball team in high school and playing on two undefeated football teams in junior high and high school. Those guys were like “war buddies,” and we always remember our time together.

      The first money I remember making was mowing grass around the neighborhood, about 9 or 10, then catching spring lizards in our creek to sell at a local bait shop, and helping a buddy of mine with his newspaper route on “fat” Wednesdays and Thursdays. I also learned how valuable a water pistol full of ammonia could be with a big, unfriendly dog chasing you.

      I learned about civil rights by reading the newspapers, almost religiously, and by watching the TV evening news. I remember very well Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.

      When he said he wanted his “children to be judged by the content of their character, and not by the color of their skin,” it made incredibly good sense to me—even though some around here were telling me I should care about Dr. King’s skin color.

      That movie, “Remember the Titans,” could have been made about the 1966 football season at Hickory High. The coaches and players went through many of the same tribulations—and, in the end, we went undefeated and were declared state champions.

      My best friend at the time, our fullback, Mike Mallan, died in a plane crash 10 years later as we were preparing for a reunion. The school set up a “Team Before Self Award” named in his honor, and my younger son, Scott, won it in 1994. No one at the school ever knew of my close friendship with the namesake of that award, and thus, the sweetness of having my son win it.

      I am a 1971 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill school of journalism, and I went on to a 23-year career in corporate and institutional public relations.

      I spent 15 years as North Carolina public relations manager for Centel (Sprint/Embarq) in Hickory and, before that, I was director of community relations at Catawba Valley Technical Institute (now Catawba Valley Community College) for 6½ years. I also spent more than a year in the news bureau at Lenoir-Rhyne College. Aside from my public relations career, I also have worked part-time for several political candidates, have written sports and features for newspapers and magazines and have broadcast sports on two local radio stations.

      I “semi-retired” in September 2000 because of bad knees and arthritis in my back, and I have chosen to work only part-time since then. For that reason, I have the time to serve as a Caldwell Soil & Water Conservation District supervisor, a position I was elected to in 2006.

      My wife and I live on a 10-acre piece of ground we call “The Plantation” on “Big Gunpowder Ridge.” It’s on a hill in “Bumtown” (if you’re not sure where that is, you need to refresh your Caldwell County geography).

      In 1976, I earned a master’s degree, summa cum laude, in political science at Appalachian State University in Boone, concentrating in public administration and minoring in junior college education.

      For more than 10 years, I have been a part-time community college instructor, mostly teaching the basic College Student Success course at CVCC. I have also taught writing and public relations classes at Lenoir-Rhyne, Appalachian State and Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute. For the last two years, I taught political science at Cleveland Community College in Shelby.

      I have been a Nationwide Insurance associate agent based in Hickory since 2001, and before that, I spent three years in the automobile business.

      My lovely wife is Leslie H. Benfield, a broker's assistant for Wachovia Securities in Hickory. I have two sons from a previous marriage—Navy Lt. Dennis Allen Benfield Jr., a nurse anesthetist in Portsmouth, VA, and Capt. C. Scott Benfield, a Marine Cobra helicopter pilot who served three tours in Iraq. Our daughters are Lindsay P. Drunasky of Woodbridge, VA, a statistical analyst for the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, and Keriann H. Paul, a graduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. We have four grandchildren--Lauren Elizabeth, Audrey Belle, Meredith Faith and Nathan Bruce (all Benfields)--with a fifth grandchild "in the oven."

      Two of our favorite companions these days are our Black-Labs-mixed-with-whatever dogs, Rowdy and Bambi.

      Our family, except for the dogs, has attended church at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hickory since 1989.