I was almost six years old when my mother died. And now it was up to Pop to be both the mother and father to us. My brother William, Jr. was off to school at Lincoln University. Marion was away at a seminary school for Black women in North Carolina called Scotia. Pop sent Ben off to a prep school called Biddle (now Johnson C. Smith University) in North Carolina, not long after mother's death.

To make ends meet, Pop worked as coachmen driving Princeton students around. Sometimes he would deliver a sermon in local churches. He later bought a horse and wagon and hauled ashes for town’s people that he piled up in our backyard.