"Forgetting the Smilings" by Joel R. Stegall

what they always wanted
This North Carolina writer remembers his 1950s childhood in eastern North Carolina and the four separate school systems in his home county needed to accommodate the different groups who did not want to go to school with the others.

In Joel Stegall’s childhood home, words were valued. His father was a preacher; his mother a storyteller and frustrated writer. At Wake Forest University, Joel wandered into a forgettable assignment as managing editor of the school paper. In his career as a professor and academic administrator, he wrote too many tedious memos and inconsequential academic papers. Since retiring, he spends an inordinate amount of time searching for his writer’s voice, hoping occasionally to do something others want to read.