“Little Mary, you understand, was the youngest of five and because she was the last child, she was doted on by all, even her grandfather, W. J.
“Grandmother Fannie would describe to me how she would comb little Mary’s hair and put it up in pigtails, dress her up in her finest clothes to go to church. A small child is always beautiful to its parents, but little Mary was really beautiful—and she was going to be a real beauty when she grew up. As she approached her teenage years, there was no doubt that she was going to be a beautiful young woman.”
My father looked at me intently. “As I’ve said—and others have said—lots of times before: just like you.”
A strange feeling began to rise inside me: a mixture of gratification—I’m as lovely as she was—pride—this is my inheritance—and apprehension. Not that I thought I’d meet the same fate as my namesake, of course, but I did wonder what reverberations there would be from our bond. The vow of silence notwithstanding, my name—and appearance—were already causing these reverberations.
I smiled at my father. “Whatever it is, I believe I can deal with it.” He patted my shoulder and continued his memories.
“School was not mandatory back then, and all members of a family that were old enough to work in factories would do so. Money was not easy to come by. Little Mary did attend school and was a good student, according to my grandmother. She had a lively imagination and wanted all the things that any young girl wanted in those days: ribbons or a special comb for her hair. And while all monies went to help the family, her being the youngest allowed special favors.
“By the time I was eleven, I began to ask questions about my aunt. My best source of information was my father, William Joshua Phagan, Jr., who was known to the family as ‘Little Josh.’” My father broke into a grin. “No one ever accused the Phagans of being too tall. Anyway, I questioned him—as you’re questioning me—about everything that had happened in those days. Tears would come to his eyes, too, and he would talk about his sister very slowly. They were only one year apart: he was born in January 1898, and little Mary was born in June 1899. He felt a lot of pride about being the older brother to his sister to whom he was a shining white knight. There were slow pauses. He took time to hold back his tears. I could feel the pain that he was experiencing—even though I didn’t understand it then.
“Dad told me how Grandmother Fannie had everyone put on his or her best clothes for church on Sundays and how everyone had a hand in helping little Mary to dress up. How pretty she was and the pleasure it brought to see her dressed in her best clothes.
“I don’t remember Ollie too well; we didn’t visit too much in those days that Dad worked for the cotton mills. However, when we visited it was usually for the whole weekend. What times those were! When the Phagan family got together it was like a picnic, with all the food and stuff that was on hand to eat.”
I tried to picture the family gathering in my mind. I concentrated very hard. I wanted to visualize the Phagans in a happy, relaxed atmosphere—playing, joking around, eating to their heart’s content, and telling stories.
My father broke into my thoughts: “Before the first day was over, everyone would turn to the subject of little Mary. I would sit quietly and listen to the stories. Fascinated as I was, I could still feel the tension in the air as each would tell some small detail about little Mary. I came to know her not as an aunt but as a special person who had lost her life in a brutal attack by Leo Frank, who was convicted of that crime by a jury of his peers in a court of law in Fulton County, Georgia.
“Grandmother Fannie often told us about the death of her husband, William Joshua Phagan, who had fathered her five children. He had died in February, 1899. Life in those days was real rough on a widow with children. Then she would talk about J.W. Coleman, whom she married in 1912. This was the man I was to know as my grandfather. Then the stories would turn back to little Mary. And the tension would start to build up again.
“Grandmother would usually start her story about that Saturday, Confederate Memorial Day, when little Mary had left home to go to town for her wages and to see the parade. She would tell about her new lavender dress and silver mesh bag that she carried, the ribbons in her hair and her parasol. The area they lived in then—the Bellwood subdivision of the Exposition cotton mill area—is only a memory today: it’s where Ashby Street crosses Bankhead Avenue and Ashby goes on into Marietta Street.
“By the time Grandmother got to where little Mary took the English Avenue streetcar that was to take her downtown to the National Pencil Company, her tears were usually too much for her, and her story would come to a close, since she could no longer continue. Members of the family would quietly take grandmother into the house so that she could compose herself. This always left me in a state of confusion.
“Later, the war came. Greatuncle Ben was in the Navy.” My father sighed. “The Phagan family, like the rest of the country, began to drift apart. The war began to push everything else to the rear of our minds. People were starting to work as many as six days a week. Family gathering was to become a thing of the past. But my family still spoke about little Mary, about how pretty she had been, and all. I felt for the first time in my life that I too had lost someone that was very real to me. For the first time I also came to feel what grief felt like.
“But gradually, there was less time for story-telling. My only source of information about little Mary then was my Dad. He would still talk about his sister to me, but these talks got fewer and farther between—although his grief never diminished and it was still hard for him to talk about little Mary.
“At the same time, my curiosity increased, since people would still ask me questions about little Mary. And there was still Fannie, too. Now more than ever, Grandmother would tell me stories about little Mary, how pretty she was and the hopes she had for her. Even today when I look at little Mary’s picture, I can see that my grandmother was right about how pretty she was. I do believe that she would have grown into the beautiful woman that my grandmother expected her to be. The years had not stopped the pain and grief she felt, but perhaps they made them a little more bearable.
“In 1943, when I started junior high school, the old question was asked again: ‘Are you, by any chance, kin to little Mary Phagan?’ As I recall, the teacher was the first to ask, and then, as the week went on, children of my age would start to ask me questions that their families had asked them to ask me. Some even brought articles to school to show me. One kid brought a record, a 78 RPM, that had ‘The Ballad of Mary Phagan’ on it. Fiddling John Carson had written and recorded it. I had heard people sing this song all my life but this was the first time I had heard it on a record. Later in life, I was to come by this record for my family. My mother had bought an RCA radio and record player in the later thirties. I had a collection of records. We held onto the record for years but somehow it was finally lost. We still have that RCA radio and record player, you know. It’s in the basement. It doesn’t work anymore, but one day I’ll probably restore it—just in case I should find that record again of little Mary Phagan.
“During the war years women had to work in the plants and shipyards and they became a vital part of the work force. My older sister, Annabelle, went to work in the shipyards in Portland, Oregon. Even my mother went to work at the Bell Bomb Plant in Marietta, Georgia. Her name, Mary Phagan, really started questions about little Mary all over again. The stories she told us kids generated a closer feeling again with little Mary.
“In 1944, Europe was invaded and that was the beginning of the end of the war there. I joined the Navy in July of 1945, and in August I was sent to boot camp in San Diego, California. My name preceded me in the Navy, because by then books had been written and even movies had been made of little Mary’s murder. ‘Death in the Deep South,’ a fictional book about the murder and its after- math was made into a movie. The movie was called They Don’t Forget,’