Earnest Franklin Jack Pierce, or “Jack”, has accomplished so much in his life, this is just one of the stories he had to tell me in my interview.  Jack is a member of the Oxford Presbyterian Church, he was the 1989 Citizen of the Year, he received a Preliminary Diploma from the center of biblical studies, completed discipleship training, received many volunteer awards including volunteer of the year, along with several certificates of achievement, and appreciation.  Jack was also nominated as an outstanding older adult.  Jack Pierce is responsible for converting electrical accounting machines to computers, and for getting all the boards wired to make it possible to do so.  He is a continuous inspiration to all he comes in connect with.  The type of person that makes you want to smile all the time, and never stop.

 

 

          “My name is Earnest Franklin Jack Pierce.”

          “I should call you Jack?”

          “Yup.” …………..

 

 

            Maggie-  “Will you describe some of the experiences during the great depression that had affects on your family?”

 

            Jack-  “Well my mothers and father were always very poor, and I hear a lot of people talking about there patents being poor, and they haven’t got a clue, and I can see myself going down to the WPA getting a voucher, and taking my little wagon down to the coal yard and get what little bit of coal they gave us that looked like little moldy powdered eggs and a little bit of wheat and the wheat looked like it had more worms in it than wheat, and my father was always looking for a good job to support his family and it was not easy back in those days because racial discrimination as running rampant, and the depression was no different than any other time, and if you were not the right color you did not get the better of things, and of course my mother and father being godly people, god takes care, and even if it may seem like we don’t we always seamed to make it.  Consequently we never had a class of living that would have placed us even in the middle class of those living in the United States, be that as it maybe still live like kings compared to some of the people living in 3^rd world countries.  So the depression was very very demanding and stressful for my parents with at that time 4 boys, and 2 would be sent to one location and 2 to the other location, when we got out of school they would go out to my great aunts who had farms down there and they weren’t hurting for squat.  Plus all the fun of being down there on the farm, and me and my brother were stuck in Chicago living with my godparents and we loved them, but whip, we would’ve rather been down there on the farm with those other turkeys, and of course we had a sister that came aboard and that made it worse, but when we moved to Chicago the depression affects started to wear off a bit, and Im really glad of that cause when daddy got there he got a better job, my father told me that he had to get as many jobs as he could get, and he got a job working in a very well known theater, and it was called the Granada theater and he had to walk home, he never had a car, I had a car before my father did.  He told me he walked by the very garage where the St. Valentines Massacre took place, and he said it couldn’t have been more than 5 or 10 minutes before all those men had been machine gunned to death in there.  My father taught me a lot of things about how to take care of myself and Im glad he taught me, things like how to protect your house And so forth and so on.”

 

            On the 10^th of August Jack turned 73 years old, not looking a day under 50.  Throughout 73 years Jack has been through poverty, discrimination, devastation, and through it all, continues to have a smile on his face at all times.