Interview with Ronald Owens (continued) JM: Who did he marry?
RO: Let me find it here. Her name was Lily May Dantzler. She was born September 9, 1895, in Orangeburg
County.
JM: Was that the only
time he married?
RO: Yeah. I think
they got separated in years to come, and he never got married again.
JM: And how many children did he have?
RO: It was my father and his brother and two daughters.
JM: Are any of those children still living?
RO: There's one daughter living. Her name is Lillian Malphrus. She was born August 7, 1924.
I think she lives on James Island. You might get to talk to her (Lillian has since passed away). One of my uncles just
passed away not long ago. That was the one who was Furman, Jr. He probably could have told you a lot of stuff. He fought in
World War II in France and Germany.
JM:
So after he had the four children, then he and his wife separated?
RO: Yeah. But I don't think they ever got divorced.
JM: Did they live a good distance apart, or did they still live near each other?
RO: They lived probably within a mile of each other.
JM: Was he fairly well off, or was he financially struggling
all the time?
RO: He didn't
have a lot of money, but he had enough money to survive on and did what he wanted to do for his retirement.
JM: After he separated from your grandmother, did he have
any other relationships?
RO: I
think there was a woman named Annie Thornhill. She was his girlfriend. I don't know what kind of relationship they had,
but I found some papers where he had wrote stuff about her and all. In fact, I even found that he had her death certificate.
JM: Did you know your grandmother,
his wife?
RO: Oh yeah.
JM: Were you also close to her?
RO: I wasn't as close to her as I was to him. I'd
see her like once a month or something like that.
JM:
When did your father die?
RO:
1993.
JM: What did he do for a
living?
RO: He retired from Charleston
Naval Shipyard.
JM: Was he working
at the same time your grandfather was?
RO:
Yep. I think my grandfather was there for about 37 years, and my father was there for 35 years.
JM: Was he doing the same kind of work?
RO: My father was a pipe fitter, and then he was a planner
and estimator for the pipe shop.
JM:
Did they work alongside one another?
RO:
I think when they first started off, they did, from what my father told me.
JM: Did your father go to college?
RO: No. I think he told me that he went as high as ninth grade or something like that.
JM: And what about you?
RO: Yeah, I finished school.
JM:
And what have you done for a living?
RO:
I've been a little bit of everything. I went in the Air Force. I was a staff sergeant for six years. I was an Aircraft
Maintenance Specialist. I was a crew chief on C-141s and C-5s. I also went to railroad school in Atlanta, but never worked
for the railroad. Other than that, I worked different type jobs at different places, and now I'm employed by a company
called Roseburg Forest Products. It's in Holly Hill. I'm a millwright.
JM: It doesn't sound like there's a heck of a lot of difference between what you do and
what your grandfather did.
RO:
Probably not much. And I have a small shop that I run. I do car maintenance. So I guess I inherited that from him, too.
JM: Did your grandfather show you how to do any of these
things?
RO: He used to tell me
all kinds of stuff. And my father did, too, because my father actually worked in his automotive shop, too.
JM: What are some of the things that you miss the most about
not having your grandfather around anymore?
RO:
Well, talking to him. We used to talk for hours.
JM:
What did he like to talk about?
RO:
He'd tell me all kinds of different stories about things that he did.
JM: Did you believe all of them?
RO: Well, some of them, yes; and some of them, probably not. But, you never know. I remember him
telling me one little thing about when he worked in the shipyard. They recovered a piece of equipment from the Germans. And
none of them could get it to work. So they put him on it since he worked in the pipe shop and was a machinist, and he got
it working. This particular machine would take a piece of pipe and roll a lip on it all in one piece. They could just drill
the holes in it and it had the flange made instantly, without having to do all the machine work. And he got that thing going
for them. So that was some German technology that they picked up.
JM: Did he do any traveling at all, or did he stay pretty much in South Carolina all his life?
RO: He was pretty much in South Carolina, except for when
he was in the service.
JM: When
did he die?
RO: I got it right
here - somewhere. I think it was 1980. Time goes by so fast. Yeah, it was August 10, 1980.
JM: It's interesting that in most cases, the children in the Lewis Hine photos look like they
might not have a whole lot of chances in life to get ahead.
RO: It's right lucky he survived I guess.
JM: Some of the situations are worse than others. There are kids in coal mines that just break your
heart. Some were working in the mills, and some of them were selling newspapers on the street late at night. Many of these
kids were probably helping to support their families.
RO:
I think that's what he was doing. His father worked for the railroad, and they didn't make a lot of money. There's
something I was just looking at right here, that I didn't know. This paper says Trades, Skills, and Occupations for the
Service, and it says he was a leadman and a quarterman. That was at the age of 44.
JM: What does that mean?
RO: In other words, he was like a supervisor. He also belonged to the Masons. I've got his ring
somewhere. I like to collect all the stuff that my father had and my grandfather had. I've got an old trunk that was his,
and I keep stuff in it. I've even got checks they wrote back in the forties, and I've got his income tax papers, and
I've got all his achievement awards, like when he was accident-free in the shipyard.
JM: It sounds like he was a busy guy. Was he still pretty active up until he died?
RO: Oh yeah. And he was still sharp. He used to plant a
little garden. He'd plant a garden about 15 foot by 15 foot. I'd tell him, ‘You're not gonna get much out
of that thing.' But he'd get more out of that 15 feet than you'd ever believe.
