Nola Willeford
Adairville, KY
nolaree@logantele.com
I am the sixth child and the first daughter born to Tuck and Nola Wilkey Tinsley. Two more children were born to them and seven of us survived into adulthood. My main interests in my formative years were reading and studying piano. I began reading when I was three years old so when I started school I was placed in the second grade. My father raised horses and I loved riding the two horses that were considered mine. The first was a little Morgan called Melody. She was five gaited and wonderfully comfortable to ride.. I graduated from her to a full size Tennessee Walking Horse. She was born in May and Daddy named her Mayflower. He gave her to me when she was two years old and kept her until I left home. I had a girl friend who liked to ride and I have great memories of short rides, daylong rides, moonlight rides, and rides with my brother, R. K., and his friends. My last two years of high school, I was the school pianist and I played the saxophone in the school band. R. K. played the trumpet and we had some trumpet/piano arrangements for entertaining. After graduating from high school in 1942 I enrolled for college at Western Kentucky State Teachers College, now Western Kentucky University. By the end of the first year our enrollment was about half what it had been as so many students had entered military service. During my second year of college we had to vacate the dormitories and move into homes that would take students. so that the dorms could be used to house the air cadets who were training for military service. These were boys who had finished or were enrolled in colleges when the war started and were very welcome to take the place of our males who had gone to war. Shortly before I graduated in 1946 many of the war veterans were back in school on the G.I. Bill. During the ensuing years we had mourned for those who were reported killed and it was wonderful to see so many that we had known returning to finish their education. My mother’s youngest brother worked for the Department of Agriculture in Washington and he invited me to come to Washington and work in his division. I rode the George Washington, a super train on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, to Washington and stayed with my Uncle’s family until I moved into McLean Gardens in northwest D.C. Mrs. Evelyn McLean, had let apartment buildings be built in the gardens of her large estate as a patriotic gesture. Her home was there and I used to see her sitting in her yard. We all heard stories of how she went to Walter Reed and Bethesda Hospitals and entertained the wounded by taking the Hope Diamond and letting the servicemen toss it from one bed to the next. This area was a mecca for sightseeing and I took advantage of my opportunities. Often I would have a picnic lunch on the grounds of the Washington Monument and spend any left over time looking at the exhibits in the part of the Smithsonian that was called “The Castle”. I was lucky to have a girlfriend who worked in the Executive Wing of the White House. She gave me a private tour of the residence and the executive offices one weekend when the Truman’s were visitng in Missouri. The security guards let us wander at will and take all the time that we wanted downstairs. We did not ask and I’m sure would have not been permitted to go upstairs. I loved visiting the capitol, the National Art Gallery, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Unknown Soldiers Tomb, Arlington House, Mount Vernon, Ford’s Theater, and all the Smithsonian Exhibits.