Melange

Thelma Thompson, at age 92, is the well loved and respected matriarch of a very large family. Born in 1919 in Monticello, Illinois to Luther Gordon Thompson and Ida May Harvill Thompson, she was brought back to Georgia when the marriage didnt last. Later, May met a handsome man in South Floridas orange groves who became Thelmas stepfather. Robert Lee Bembry (Bob) was reared on a farm in Lee, Florida so eventually the family returned there and Bob became a happy sharecropper. He and May were the perfect couple, working together as a team. Thelma was a real bookworm and loved school, Lee Junior High was a wonderful school from which she graduated in 34. In 36 she graduated from Madison High. Shortly thereafter her plan to be an old maid school teacher changed completely when she married Walter Miclar (Dice) Driggers, a handsome blond Greek God type, famous for both his brawn and brain and was known as Tarzan of the Withlacoochee. Results of the marriage were eight lovely children. Unfortunately though, the marriage ended after 20 years as did a second one after nine. So, at age 51, with children now on their own, Thelma went back to school. She entered North Florida Junior College and earned her AA degree in a year and a half with honors, Magna Cum Laude and a member of Phi Theta Kappa, also was a contributor to both the yearbook and the campus newspaper, thus proving to herself that she had not lost her thirst for knowledge. At graduation, at which Dr. Thomas Carpenter, President of the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, had been invited to speak, she was presented with a scholarship by him. During the next three years, though her grades were good, Thelma was no longer just a bookworm. She jumped into college life, with both feet, enjoying it fully. She worked in the office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences (he pronounced her indispensable!) until the Dean of Student Activities wanted her to be the editor of all publications