A Woman Named Charles

June Pair Kilpatrick

When we experience some degree of success, large or small, our minds frequently turn back to a person, perhaps a teacher, who helped steer us in the right direction. The grads of old John Marshall High School in Richmond can hardly get together without Miss Charles Anthony's name coming up. Among us, particularly the writers, she is still a legend although she's been gone for fifty years.

In my senior year there, I was assigned to the journalism class, presided over by this legend, a no-nonsense teacher who held a master's degree in English from Columbia and, with her class, put out a newspaper called The Monocle. The Monoclewas so good that it is the one high school paper included in the Library of Virginia's Newspaper Project.

Letting the Stew Simmer

June Pair Kilpatrick

Writing a memoir is like making Brunswick stew. You throw in a little of everything, but you must let it simmer until the flavors blend. Perhaps that's why it took me nearly a decade to finish my book about growing up in and around Richmond during the Depression and World War II--I was just letting the stew simmer. Sometimes words flew to the page as fast as peeling and dicing potatoes; sometimes they came slowly, like skinning and cleaning the squirrel before throwing it in the pot. (No, I never did that, but my grandfather used to.) Then you turn the fire down low and step aside for a while.