Editor, Gazette-Journal:
I was born one of four children in a family who did not have many material blessings but were abundantly blessed with love for each other. My parents were both the children of sharecroppers. One step away from slavery. 
We got three presents each year at Christmas.
We got one pair of shoes each year when school started.
All our clothes were home made out of fabric gleaned from feed sacks and sewn by hand because a sewing machine was a luxury my mother could not allow herself.
Almost all of our food was home grown. My father borrowed a tractor and plowed and tilled three acres and my mother cleaned out the grass and weeds and planted seeds and seedlings. 
She froze, canned, and dried the vegetables and froze all the chickens we raised. This is how we ate.
Because of all her hard work and the work that we kids put in with her, we survived. My father was a brilliant carpenter who built homes for a contractor with no power tools at all and the crew had to...