I looked at the Grady website but was unable to log in. I thought the memoriam section was a good idea. Since there was nothing entered for my friend Larry Wilson, I thought I would write something.
Larry Wilson earned his B.A. from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis with enough distinction to carry over into a fellowship at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., for graduate school in International Relations and a minor in Chinese language, long before anyone knew Nixon would visit the Great Wall. A decade earlier, every summer of the late 1950’s, Larry and I played baseball on Piedmont Park teams, including one that took the championship of the HAVALANTA league and represented Atlanta against all-star kids from Havana, Cuba. If the Piedmont Park teams required registration fees, Larry and I qualified for waivers. There were no expensive Little League uniforms, just neighborhood kids who walked to the park, because they wanted to play baseball. I lived on Fourteenth Street at one end of the park, Larry on the other side, at Tenth Street and Parkway, across the street from Grady High School. Whenever baseball practices or games were postponed because of rain, Larry and I would wait out the weather sitting under the roof that covered the picnic tables in the park. We cast imaginary votes for major league home run hitters into a Cooperstown Hall of Fame someday in the future, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Hank Aaron. Larry argued the case for Aaron, even though Larry, born in Cincinnati, was a Reds fan, and the Braves were still in Milwaukee.
Larry and I worked together in the first years of the 1960’s at the Kroger on Peachtree and Eighth for 52 cents an hour plus tips. In the spring of our senior year at Grady High School, Larry talked me into signing up to take the SAT test. I told him I had no money for college. He said apply to Georgia State, $5 per credit hour. Larry took over two minimum wage jobs I vacated in the city room of THE ATLANTA JOURNAL. Lunch hour at the Krystal consisted of a Krystal and fries, for variety, two Krystals, no fries. After work, three nights a week, we walked down to Georgia State. We signed up for a history course taught by Mattie Sue Walker, icon and treasure from the faculty of Grady High School. I think we were the only students in Mrs. Walker’s Georgia State class who ever understood anything she said, as it were. Matttie Sue Walker, don’t you see, actually had been to China, while Richard Nixon was still a freshman Congressman. When Larry transferred to the University of Minnesota, he offered me a deal on his car, my first, a 1955 Ford, blue and white, for $150, 10 payments, $15 a month.
Of course, this is not the whole story of Larry Wilson, but I am glad to have these experiences to remember him by.
Ralph McConigly
Copied by me for Bill Cotter
I looked at the Grady website but was unable to log in. I thought the memoriam section was a good idea. Since there was nothing entered for my friend Larry Wilson, I thought I would write something.
Larry Wilson earned his B.A. from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis with enough distinction to carry over into a fellowship at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., for graduate school in International Relations and a minor in Chinese language, long before anyone knew Nixon would visit the Great Wall. A decade earlier, every summer of the late 1950’s, Larry and I played baseball on Piedmont Park teams, including one that took the championship of the HAVALANTA league and represented Atlanta against all-star kids from Havana, Cuba. If the Piedmont Park teams required registration fees, Larry and I qualified for waivers. There were no expensive Little League uniforms, just neighborhood kids who walked to the park, because they wanted to play baseball. I lived on Fourteenth Street at one end of the park, Larry on the other side, at Tenth Street and Parkway, across the street from Grady High School. Whenever baseball practices or games were postponed because of rain, Larry and I would wait out the weather sitting under the roof that covered the picnic tables in the park. We cast imaginary votes for major league home run hitters into a Cooperstown Hall of Fame someday in the future, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Hank Aaron. Larry argued the case for Aaron, even though Larry, born in Cincinnati, was a Reds fan, and the Braves were still in Milwaukee.
Larry and I worked together in the first years of the 1960’s at the Kroger on Peachtree and Eighth for 52 cents an hour plus tips. In the spring of our senior year at Grady High School, Larry talked me into signing up to take the SAT test. I told him I had no money for college. He said apply to Georgia State, $5 per credit hour. Larry took over two minimum wage jobs I vacated in the city room of THE ATLANTA JOURNAL. Lunch hour at the Krystal consisted of a Krystal and fries, for variety, two Krystals, no fries. After work, three nights a week, we walked down to Georgia State. We signed up for a history course taught by Mattie Sue Walker, icon and treasure from the faculty of Grady High School. I think we were the only students in Mrs. Walker’s Georgia State class who ever understood anything she said, as it were. Matttie Sue Walker, don’t you see, actually had been to China, while Richard Nixon was still a freshman Congressman. When Larry transferred to the University of Minnesota, he offered me a deal on his car, my first, a 1955 Ford, blue and white, for $150, 10 payments, $15 a month.
Of course, this is not the whole story of Larry Wilson, but I am glad to have these experiences to remember him by.
--Bill Cotter