Mr. Pascal Nevin Sledge was born February 6, 1921, in the Alva Community east of Duck Hill, Mississippi. He was the sixth of seven children born to Pascal Earl Sledge and Annie Ingram Sledge. He attended Cleveland High School, Culver Military Academy, Delta State University, and General Motors' Chevrolet Dealer Institute.

During World War II, he was a pilot in the Marine Corps for three and a half years, serving in such places as Okinawa, Guam, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Iniwetok Atoll, and Tenian. Upon his return to his home in Mississippi, he operated and came to own a Chevrolet dealership from 1954 to 1988, an Oldsmobile dealership from 1958 to 1988, and a Chrysler dealership from 1979 to 1988. He was one of the organizers of the First National Bank of Bolivar County and served on the Board of Directors for eighteen years. From 1954 to 1977 he served on the Cleveland City Board of Aldermen, and he was the vice mayor for eight years. He was elected to the Mississippi State Senate in 1983, and he served from 1984 to 1993.

Mr. Sledge's community service includes being past president of the Cleveland Exchange Club, past president of the Cleveland-Bolivar County Chamber of Commerce, past chair of the Cleveland-Bolivar County Industrial Development Foundation, past president of the Mississippi Automobile Dealers Association, past chair of the Southern Half of the U.S. Chevrolet Dealers Council, serving on the Oldsmobile National Dealer Council, and serving on the Chevrolet National Dealer Council. His awards include Kossman Bolivar County Man of the Year Award in 1972, Time Magazine Quality Dealer Award in 1981, Delta State University Outstanding Alumnus of the Year in 1987, Omicron Delta Kappa Outstanding Achievement Award at Delta State University in 1987, and king of the Junior Auxiliary Ball in 1993.

Mr. Sledge was married to his high school sweetheart, Brenda Wilson Sledge for fifty-eight years until she passed away on August 24, 2001. He has four children and eight grandchildren, and he is an elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, Mississippi.

This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program at The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Mr. Pascal Nevin Sledge and is being conducted on July 31, 1999. The interviewer is Joe Biagioli.

Biagioli: So, you've been hobnobbing around here in Cleveland, here, for quite some time, hadn't you?

Sledge: Well, I've been fortunate; had a good life. Do you want me to start in kindly in the beginning?

Biagioli: Yeah. That would be fine.

Sledge: I was born out in the country from a little community called Alva, A-L-V-A. It's about fourteen miles east of Duck Hill, Mississippi. My parents had a little farm out there, and I was born there in 1921. They moved to the Delta; my father could do better farming in the Delta in about 1923. So, I don't remember anything about where we came from other than go back out there when I was small to visit some kin people. So, I grew up here. We had a farm out here northwest of Cleveland. That's where I grew up and went to Cleveland schools.

Biagioli: Hm. What year were you born in?

Sledge: Twenty-one, 1921.

Biagioli: That made you six years old back in '27 when the flood hit.

Sledge: Yes. I barely remember the flood. The main thing I remember about the flood was my folks took my brother and myself to the King's daughters Hospital in Greenville just shortly after the waters receded down there, and had our tonsils and adenoids taken out. And you could see where the water marks. The flood did not-the water did not reach Cleveland. It came up to about Skene, out here, about three or four miles southwest of here. But we weren't in the water, here. I do remember my parents driving over to the levee and seeing the Mississippi River prior to the break. And at Rosedale, I think the channel still came pretty close to the town there. It was all the way, almost, to the top of the levee then. It was something to see. It was awesome. And I imagine when that levee gave way down there, that was really something there. Especially, of course, Greenville really was devastated by it. Yeah. And we weren't hurt here.

So, I went through the Cleveland school system, and just normal. Nothing particular good or nothing particular bad; just an ordinary guy.

Biagioli: What school was it that you went to?

Sledge: What what?

Biagioli: What school did you go to?

Sledge: Cleveland.

Biagioli: Cleveland.

Sledge: [Yes.]

Biagioli: Oh, see, I've read somewhere about the Hill Demonstration School?

Sledge: No. I didn't go to that. My wife attended Hill Demonstration School. I went from first grade through twelfth grade here at the Cleveland Consolidated High School. And the one thing that made a big change in the high school, back when I was in about the seventh or eighth grade, I got interested in the band. And I played the bass horn in the band and really enjoyed it and that opened the doors for me for a number of things. My mama wouldn't let me go out for football because when I was young, I had fallen off the top of a steel swing thing, and had a concussion. And the doctor had advised her that I'd probably be better off not to be playing football. So, I took up band, and I mentioned it opened doors for me, which it did. For instance, my senior year in high school, I got a full scholarship to Culver[?] Military Academy, full band scholarship. And at that time, that was probably the most prestigious military school in the nation. And prior to World War II, military academies were the in-thing; they were great. But since World War II, most of them have gone by the wayside. But I went up there summer school, and they offered me the winter school. But it was way up in northern Indiana, and I didn't believe I wanted to stay up there for the wintertime. But I enjoyed it. It was a good thing. In fact, I went to college at Delta State down here, mostly on a band scholarship. And then after I left there, when the war started, I left in spring of 1942, and I hadn't played and been in a band since then. I still enjoy music and all that, but I haven't tried to play a band instrument since then.

Biagioli: Now, at the Cleveland school, were the schools-you know, I don't know much about Cleveland back in that time. Were the schools segregated?

Sledge: Oh, yes.

Biagioli: Did the blacks have their own school? Was it still kept like that?

Sledge: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Cleveland is probably the only town right around here that had a good colored school. We were totally segregated. But Cleveland did vote and impose taxes to keep-have good schools for the blacks. In fact, the buildings and things were as good if not better than the white school, but most towns in the Delta, that wasn't so. Most towns in the Delta, if they had anything, it was really second-class. But Cleveland's always had a reputation, at least, of being out front, and being, you know, at least being fairly reasonable and everything. And that's probably one of the reasons Cleveland is probably recognized today as one of the better towns, especially in the Mississippi Delta. We are the only town I know of that's still got a good public school. I mean, where the kids still do well on ACT and such as that. Most of the white kids in Cleveland still go to the Cleveland Public Schools, where in all the other towns in the Mississippi Delta, they don't. They go to private schools.

Biagioli: Hm. Now, did you attend that military school, Culver Military School?

Sledge: Yeah, I went up there for the summer school. Yeah.

Biagioli: And then you came back down to Cleveland, back to Delta State?

Sledge: Yeah.

Biagioli: What did you get your degree in?

Sledge: I never did get my degree. The War came, and I never did get my degree. Yeah. I should have gone back; however, I had enough points, had enough credits because I took night courses out here when I came back from the War. When I went into the War, I went into aviation cadet training, Naval aviation cadet training in the spring of 1942. I went through there, took my commission in the Marine Corps. All Marine pilots are Naval aviators. And I really hadn't thought much about joining the Marines except they had gotten some B-25s, and I wanted to fly a B-25. And I was graduated in advanced squadron and multi-engine. And instead of going to a B-25 squadron, they sent me back to Corpus Christi as a flight instructor in multi-engine. So, probably a good thing. You spent a year and a half there trying to teach somebody else how to fly; you kindly halfway learned how to fly yourself. You don't ever get as good-and I've talked this over with other pilots. When you first graduate and first get your wings, you think you're the hottest thing that's come along. Well, if you survive the next thousand hours, the chances are you will become a reasonable competent pilot. (Laughter.) But it takes a year or two and a lot of time. But anyway, I spent about a year and a half down there as a flight instructor, went to the West Coast, got assigned to a new squadron, got checked out in new airplanes, and got assigned an airplane and a crew. And I went on out to the Pacific to finish up the War. And thinking back over it, I think me and about 1.5 million more, a lot of us wouldn't have come back, but dropping those atomic bombs stopped the war. Or it never would have stopped. It would have gone on for years. We'd have lost, I would say at least 1.5 more million men before we finally conquered Japan, but the atomic bomb stopped the War, and then we got to come home at the end of 1945.

Biagioli: Now, I talked to another individual who served in the Navy, although he was a yeoman who served on ships. He also made the comment about the atomic bombs and how it finally brought them back, and he made several comments about FDR. How did you feel about FDR when he died?

Sledge: Well, let me tell you this. FDR was our leader. When he was elected, I was about twelve years old. I was aware that we were in a Depression, but we lived in the country and my folks always had, we always had lots of food because they grew most of it. I'd say 98 percent of it. And thinking back at it, we were fortunate. We may have not had hardly any money, but we had plenty to eat. I know we didn't have much money, but didn't anybody else have, either. Roosevelt gave the country hope where the country was in despair when he was elected. It was down, and he was a real leader. And he was the leader, as president, he was commanding chief. The military people looked up to Roosevelt. He was admired. I was on Guam, I believe in April, 1945, when Roosevelt died, and a lot of these people that we'd-for instance, we had been hauling wounded out of Iwo Jima for the Battle of Iwo Jima, and then the Battle of Okinawa, too. And I know we were used to seeing bad things. And you never think about somebody crying, but when they announced that Roosevelt had died, I saw Marines that were normally just tough, tough, tough, actually tears in their eyes because we had lost our leader. And it was a sad day, but the country was real fortunate.

Truman came in and took his place, and I think did a real good job steering the country on. It was in traumatic times. World War II was so severe, everything was fight to death. It wasn't-the only-you cannot describe what the whole country, the state of mind and everything. Everybody was involved. The people back here, the farmers, they were working just as hard as the-they had to produce the food. The women were doing something; they were making bandages. The country was just totally involved in the War. And you pretty well had to live there, experiencing that time. It's hard to tell somebody what it was like, then. And it went on, you know, for four years; it just seemed like forever, almost.

But anyway, we got out, and the War was over. And shut down, and I never did ask them for a nickel. I came home, got a job, was married, and started raising a family, and to this day, I've never asked the government for a nickel. Of course, I'm glad that we've got the Veteran's Administration and all those for those people that need it and everything. And a lot of those people really needed help, and everything, but I came home. I still had my pistol. All the time we were overseas, we wore a thirty-eight pistol right here, with a Sam Brown belt, right in the middle of our chest, just like this, a thirty-eight caliber revolver, pistol. That was part of the uniform. You just put it on when you put your clothes on in the morning. That Sam Brown Navy pistol was right there. And I had a Navy watch and Navy glasses and two or three other things. And I rode a ship back from Guam because I was flying transports out there, and I could have ridden one of our own airplanes back to Honolulu, but it was a bottleneck there of people trying to get from there on over to the States. Well, I didn't figure I'd probably ever be on a ship, again, and I had a chance to. So, I rode a ship back to the States, and we were supposed to dock in San Francisco, but they were having a machinist's strike, when we got close there. So, they diverted us on down to San Pedro, and they didn't have the normal procedures, and the stuff that we had, like me, my stuff, I brought it on home. Well, I made a special trip to the Naval station at Memphis a week or two later and checked in all that stuff I got because I didn't want somebody years from now coming in here, "Oh, Sledge, where is that watch and the glasses and the pistol?" I don't know; all those things that I had, I checked them in. And I should have kept them.

Most people, like some fellow said, "You were a fool. You had them; they never would"-but anyway, I didn't; I turned them in.

Biagioli: Were there any memorable stories about World War II, any funny stories that you experienced? Any severe tragedies you would like to share? Most folks don't like-

Sledge: Well.

Biagioli: I can understand that.

Sledge: Most people, most people that are friends of mine that went through it, they're kind of like me. You pretty well put it out of your mind. But after, it's fifty-something years ago, now, you relive some of these things, and you think about it a lot. And it's been a lot of books; just in the last year or two, I've read at least three books about World War II. And maybe four. But I was lucky. I was real lucky. There were several times that we were just lucky, the only reason that maybe we weren't killed or something. But I lost four first cousins in World War II. And that's a good many, but I didn't lose my only brother that was in. He got hurt, but, you know, he wasn't severely hurt. But anyway, we were real lucky. I was going through cadet training; I worked real hard at it. I really wanted to learn to fly. Back then, all young people, practically nine out of ten, ambitions were they wanted to learn to become a pilot. And I understand maybe twenty-five years before that, they wanted to be railroad engineers, such as that. But prior to World War II, everybody wanted to be a pilot. And I knew I would-it's what I wanted to do. So, I worked hard when I went into cadet training. I had never been a very good student; I had just been average, you know, as a student in high school and college. But I excelled going through cadet training. And you were with a bunch of, you know, bright kids, sharp kids. You had to score pretty good to be in there in the first place, you know, on IQ and such as that. But one thing that I was so lucky, I never got a down all the time I was in flight school. The Navy, every eight hours, you take a check ride. And most of the boys would get nervous, and a lot of times they'd fly down, and then they'd have to fly two ups in order to keep going, if they got a down. I never got a down, and the funny thing, I would not only fly a good up, for some reason or another, I could fly better under the pressure. With a check pilot, I'd always-I've had instructors jump on me afterwards, "Why in the hell couldn't you fly like that?" You know, they'd read the report check pilot; I would fly a better flight on check rides. So, I always got good write-ups on check rides.

And I did all right in school. So, I was really honored. Before I left Corpus Christi, I was the highest-ranking cadet on the base, and they had over 3000 cadets there at the main base, alone. They had thousands more out at these seven outlying fields, but I was promoted to regimental commander. I was the highest-ranking cadet there when President Roosevelt met the president from Mexico there in the early part of the year of 1943, right before I graduated. And in a class of 319, I graduated number one. And I know my teachers, (laughter) if they had've-they didn't send it back up here to the papers back then. It was wartime; they didn't do that. They wouldn't have believed it, hardly; what I had done. I had real good flight records and pretty good military and pretty good ground school and pretty good athletics. They had the whole thing, and it all just fell in place, there. So, it worked out real well for me. And that was the reason when I applied for the Marine Corps, which was past the deadline, the colonel called me over there to chew me out. And he had already called me over there once, and this full colonel, his name was Mangrum[?]. He was like God. And I'm telling you. You can't imagine what it was like. When we hit Corpus Christi, we had already gone through what we called the E-base; that's primary training. And when you hit Corpus Christi, you don't have a day off; you don't have a half a day off, or nothing. It was seven days a week, around the clock, almost, and you really had a hard time just cramming in a few hours to sleep some. It was-they wanted pilots, and they were, you know, they were just-it was around-the-clock deal. It was no such thing as-anyway, I had been a cadet officer at E-base. And I had been a cadet officer in pre-flight school. When they got to Corpus, they told us that all previous cadet officers fall out and report over here. So, I didn't do it; I didn't want to take the time. It takes extra time.

Well, I had been down there about three months. And over the loudspeaker system one day, "Cadet Sledge, report to Colonel Mangrum, on the double."

I said, "Oh, Lord! Here I am within two months of graduating, and here I don't know what's going to happen to me. Going to wash out or something." Because Colonel Mangram, he had life-or-death power over cadets.

I reported to him, and he said, "When you first got here, you were told to report." And he said, "Why didn't you do it?"

And I told him I had been a cadet officer all the time, and I just didn't want to take the-I wanted to try to do better in some of the other things.

He not only chewed me out, but he said, "As of right now, you're battalion commander." (Laughter.) That's how I got to be officer there. And then about two weeks later, I was promoted to regimental commander, the highest cadet on the base. And then I was two weeks late in applying for the Marine Corps. He called me back over there. You had to be in the top 10 percent of your class; Marines only took the top 10 percent. And you had to be in that. So, anyway, that's that part of it. And I enjoyed it. I made a lot of lifelong friends. I still have contact with one man in Ames, Iowa. Most of the rest of them are dead. And take me, I'm seventy-eight years old; still busy as I can be. Of course, most of my friends my age, if you sit down, don't do anything, you're going to die in a year or two. So, I'm still real busy. I'm just about as busy as I've ever been. (Laughter.)

Anyway, I got in the car business, and started there. And that's a big tale. I was very, very fortunate in the car business. And back then I started out in Chevrolet. And I realized after a year or two that I wanted to become a dealer. And back then, a Chevrolet dealership was worth more than a Coca-Cola franchise is today. It was just the top. Anyway, I tell you what. If we could take about a twenty-, and not more than a thirty-minute break?

(There is an interruption in the interview.)

Biagioli: Now, that we've had our little, old break; you got your business taken care of, and I ran my errands-you were talking about the Chevrolet business and how you were first getting into it.

Sledge: Yeah. Do you want me to-at some point do you want me to-you said something about me-some of my experiences during the War, you want to come back to that, or do you want to do that before I get into-

Biagioli: Yeah. We can go back to the War real quick, kind of keep it in order, here.

Sledge: Do you want to do that, now?

Biagioli: Yeah. That's fine.

Sledge: Well, anyway, I ended up, when I left Corpus Christi, I went to the West Coast where most of my time was in multi-engine. And I flew transports which wasn't exciting like a fighter plane or something like that, but it was very, very necessary. And we operated entirely different from the way they do now. Most of the navigation equipment that you use now-I kept an airplane out here at the Cleveland Airport for about thirty-five years, and the first Bonanza[?] I got out there, way some forty years ago, it had better radio gears on it than the president's airplane had during World War II because the stuff hadn't, you know, the Omni[?] and all that stuff had not been invented. And anyway, our planes required having a navigator, and we had a five-man crew, pilot, co-pilot, and radioman, and a crew chief, and a navigator. And I think back now how lucky we were. At times, you know, you would take off, and you would fly to these islands, some of them 1000, like Okinawa was 1600 miles across there. And you didn't have anything to go by except your navigation. And everything was radio silent; you couldn't turn your radio on and ask them to-toward the last part of the war they had developed this radar where they could pick you up and maybe guide you in. But you were just on your own, all day and night. Like when we invaded Okinawa, for the first six or eight weeks there, you couldn't-you'd fly off there; like, we'd get up at three o'clock in the morning or maybe four o'clock in the morning and have an early morning takeoff. It usually took right at eight hours to get up there. And then the big job was to get unloaded and then loaded and getting fuel. It always seemed to be short of fuel up there sometimes. But anyway, and you'd take off, usually late in the afternoon, and you'd get back to Guam two or three o'clock in the morning. Well, you wouldn't fly that day; you'd have a day off. And you'd fly through all kind of weather. I remember twice we flew through hurricanes; didn't even know they were out there till you ran into them. You didn't have the forecasting that you have today. It was so many things so different. Take this airplane that my son flew down here. He could take off; anywhere in the world he wanted to go, he could punch it in on what he called the black box, more or less, there, and that thing would pretty well take him there. It's just all this stuff has been developed lately.

Anyway, I had several experiences; two or three might be worth mentioning. On the first night that I was allowed or rather they told me to spend the night on Okinawa. Actually I'd landed at Yontan[?], the main field on Okinawa. And they told me to fly after loading to go over to the little island right next to it, right on the northwest corner of Okinawa, a little island called Ie Shima. And Ie Shima is most famous for-that's where by far the most famous writer of World War II, a fellow by the name of Ernie Pyle[?]. And if you ever want to read real outstanding books about World War II and really get the feel of the guy that was down on the ground really doing the fighting, you go to the library, and you check out one of Ernie Pyle's books. But anyway, he was killed on Okinawa; I'm trying to think. It was probably in May of 1945. And I think he was killed the same night that we got bombed all night long. I'm not real sure about just when he was killed. I was told, but I don't know exactly. So, I'd rather not say. Anyway, I got over there. They sent me over to pick up some wounded over there, forty wounded, what we called "litter" patients. And I landed and went over to the little hospital tent there about, oh, seventy-five yards off the strip, and told them we were ready to take these men.

And they said, "Well, it's late in the afternoon, and these men are resting now. And we got them in this hospital tent." And said, "We'd rather they'd stay here tonight, and you wait, and early in the morning, we'll load them on your airplane, and you can take them back to the hospital in Guam."

And there was nothing for me to do but just sit tight till the next morning. Well, about dark, the Japanese started dive-bombing us. And that particular night we had more Japanese over the island than at any other night all during the war. They had several hundred, six or seven hundred airplanes came down. They dive-bombed us all night long. They didn't hit my airplane. It was right out front, and there was bombs all around there, but it didn't hit my airplane. Anyway, the next morning-by the way, it was a 40 mm Ack-Ack[?] gun right in back of us, and that thing, he just shot, boom, boom. He could shoot four times real fast, and then he'd pop in another clip, and he'd shoot four more times. He literally burned the barrel up. The first thing the next morning, they were changing the barrel on that thing. Well, at about sunup, I sent one of my crew chiefs to get those people so that we'd get out of there as soon as possible because they found out these bombs that were laying around were duds. They were set to go off later sometime, see? And they were time bombs, is what they were. Anyway, this fellow came back in a minute, and this tent where these forty men were that I was supposed to pick up, it couldn't have been not much, maybe sixty yards behind us or seventy-five at the most. But during the night sometime, they had taken a direct hit with a bomb, and it wiped the whole, everybody out there. If we could have just-

(End of tape one, side one. The interview continues on tape one, side two.)

Sledge: Sometime later, on that same island, later on, a few weeks later, I had an experience there that was-I was coming back without passengers. And it was a no-wind condition, and I was on the north end fixing to take off, and they flashed me the light to hold. And they had what they called pea-shooters taking off, going north. Pea-shooters were P-47 fighter planes. And they had these, they may have been 1000-pound, but I think they were 500-pound rockets under each wing. And they were going up to the Empire of Japan-it wasn't but about 400 miles up there-to shoot them. Well, I'm sitting there already ready to take off, sitting ninety degrees to the runway. All I had to do is just pull out in there and give it the power and get going, and they were taking off this way. And we were watching them coming, two of them at a time. Well, lo and behold, these two, they lifted off, oh about 150 feet to my right because I was sitting, the runway was to my right as it came by. And just as it lifted off, one of those big rockets came loose out from under his left wing. And it was coming right straight for us, and the fins on it hit directly under the pilot's compartment of my airplane. Now, the pilot's compartment was way off the ground. It was from the seat of the airplane straight to the ground, was twenty-one feet. But the fins cut just like a knife into that coral rock. And that coral rock was almost as hard as concrete, but not as hard, but almost as hard. And it went on out there about forty feet, and my wing stuck out there another sixty-something feet on each side. And it blew up in front of the wing. Well, that left wing had three gas tanks in it; each wing had 800 gallons of 100-octane fuel in it. It was a space of about, not over three inches between those tanks. Well, shrapnel went into those spaces, but it didn't penetrate a single tank. But it blew a hole up in the wing about thirty inches in diameter, just a solid hole right up through the wing, but it didn't hurt the spar. The spar is the main, carries the load. You know. That's where the strength of the-well, of course, it-we jumped. It was such a concussion, we bailed out through the emergency hatch as fast as we could. The engines were sitting there, running; it knocked the airplane back two or three feet. I don't know just how far. But after we got on the ground, we realized it wasn't on fire, which was really a surprise. And I had to-it was about eight feet up to that emergency hatch; I had to climb up on two of my men's shoulders to go through the emergency hatch to get back up, climb up and go back up there and shut the engines down. Well, we caught another plane back to Guam, and they sent metalsmiths up there, and they patched that wing with metal, kind of like my mama used to patch my overalls when I was a little boy, enough that another pilot flew it back to Guam. And then I took it from Guam and flew it down to Peleliu down on the equator down there because the Army was coming into Peleliu with some C-46s. And unfortunately, the pilots hadn't been properly checked out in them, and they were cracking them up.

Well, when we needed parts, we'd just go down there and get them off of those cracked-up C-46s down there at Peleliu. Well, they sent us down there to Peleliu to get a wing. You know, during a war, you do what you have to do. And this place was right on the equator. And Peleliu is where the Marines lost more than 5000 men dead taking that, what they called Bloody Nose Ridge. And the airstrip was right by the side of Bloody Nose Ridge. Well, I had flown in there several times before that, and all the palm trees, the coconut trees, and everything, most of them were shot down. Anyway, we were down at Peleliu; we flew that airplane down there. And we found a Army plane that had been crashed, but the left wing was sticking up in the air, and it was good. Only thing was wrong with it, our planes were all silver with no paint on them. Beautiful airplanes. This was that old Army drab color, but the color didn't bother us.

None of us were mechanics. My crew chief knew a little about mechanics. You know. He had to know something. Well, all we had was some hand tools, and not many of those. And the only thing that I can remember, the engineering officer told me what those bolts required, had to be exactly, I believe, it was sixty-five foot / pounds of pressure. No more, no less, and he gave me a wrench to put that-my first experience to-I'd studied; I knew what foot / pounds were from physics, you know. But anyway, believe it or not, we got up there, and we unbolted that wing, and we stacked up coconut logs, front and back out there, put it under it to keep it from crashing to the ground. And then we would take out, jack it up, take out one log at a time, till we got it down. We got an Army truck there. I forgot exactly how we drug it over there without-anyway, we drug it over to our airplane, and then we reversed the procedure. We just hand jacks; jack it up a few inches and put a coconut log under it. And this is a huge wing. You'd just have to-it's bigger than this whole room, you know, width and length and everything. It's a big son of a gun. We worked from sunup to sundown every day for six days, and the only food we had, they had a little, old transient kitchen over there. And we couldn't eat it. It just wasn't food. And we had some Spam and some bread aboard the airplane. But they had a little, old canteen-like thing over there where they had some grapefruit juice and crackers and Vienna sausage is the only thing they had. Well, that's what we ate every day. (Laughter.) And that was our food mostly for the full six days. Well, we connected; we got that thing back up there, got all the bolts, got all those ailerons and flaps and everything connected. All the fuel lines connected, and we got all, I believe, it's 132 bolts on the top, and I believe it was the same amount under the bottom. And then I had to take it up and fly it. And I only took one person with me to take it up and fly it and stall it and make sure it was all right. That was late that afternoon, and the wing stayed on there. But if we'd have had equipment, you know, like a big crane to lift it up, you could've done the whole job probably in a day and a half. But with no equipment, just, you do what you can.

I'll mention this. One thing about out there in the war, and I don't think these people got enough credit for it. I took my hat off to them. Practically everybody did better than we did. I always admired what the Navy did; I always admired what the Marines did. They just, the way they'd go in there. But the CBs beat anything I'd ever seen. The CBs were Navy outfits, mostly men a few years older than the rest of us. Believe it or not, in 1945 I was twenty-four years old. I became twenty-four in 1945. I was one of the senior pilots in my squadron, one of the oldest ones there, a senior captain at twenty-four years old. Now, you think twenty-four, today; he's real, real young. But the CBs were the people that had been doing construction work and such as that before the war. They were real skilled, operating machinery and stuff, and I've never seen before or since anybody work like those people did. I saw them build an airfield on Guam one time in ten days flat. I mean a complete airfield. They had to fill in gullies, tear down hills, and pave the runway, and on the eleventh day, they landed a B-29 on it, in ten days time, of course, around the clock. That couldn't-today, I bet you couldn't get it done in-all the construction crews in the country, they couldn't do it. But those people, they just worked like fighting fire all the time. And they had good, you know, bulldozers then and all that. But anyway, I'm getting away from the subject.

One other time, I had experiences-oh, we had a lot of experiences, but they had me to come from Okinawa over to Iwo Jima one night. And I got into Iwo Jima about, seem to me like it was about nine thirty, nearly ten o'clock. And I was the last airplane to land, and there was several B-29s lined up on the side of the runway. And then there was three or four transports, altogether about thirty planes from one end of the field to the other, lined up wingtip to wingtip. I was the last one on, and right at the end, north end of the strip; the first one in line on the left side of the strip. Well, we had hardly got on the ground and we were going to sleep on the-usually, when the weather permitting, you'd just go out there and sleep on the ground under the wing of your airplane. That's generally the way you did when you were out like that. We were just getting ready to-we had little, old pad-like things you lay down on the rock. That Iwo Jima was a terrible place with all the volcanic ash, and such as that. Worst place I've ever been to in my life. But anyway, just as we'd probably been there ten minutes, and the air raid sirens went on. They never did turn any lights on, but the guns started shooting. And the first thing you know, you saw one on fire. It turned out they were Japanese Betties[?], twin-engine bombers. And one of them was on fire, coming down. You could see him coming down, and he started turning, and the two of them went on and crashed into the sea. But this third one, he kept coming, turning on around, and finally I realized he was lining up for our runways because he could see all those big airplanes, shiny airplanes lined up, and he was going to crash into them. And he would have probably knocked out ten or twelve of them. See? Just destroyed them because his was a suicide mission, anyway. Even though he was on fire; fire was going out 100 feet behind him, but he still had control of the airplane, and he was coming right on around there just perfect lined up. And I hollered at my crew, and we tore out running behind our airplane to get away from it. You know. We had probably gotten, maybe 100 feet back, and that afternoon the CBs had been working there. They were going to extend the runway some or either make a turnaround on it. And for some reason-they said the next morning they didn't know why-they'd left a mound of dirt there. A mound of dirt, it wasn't over about twelve or fourteen feet in diameter, and it was about ten or twelve feet high. It was just a knob of dirt left there.

And I said, "How in the world did they happen to leave it?" And I never did know. Except it was sitting there, and that pilot couldn't see it. He was that low. In another half a second, he'd have hit my airplane, or not over a second. His right wing hit that. He was that low; his right wing hit that thing, and when it did, it cartwheeled him around; his airplane came apart, and the crew were all over the ground right out there in front of him and on fire, the people themselves. And they had on their dress uniforms; they had their swords. They'd had their ceremonies, you know, of their death before they left, you know, so they could-because it was a suicide mission. Most of all of them then, the Japs going against us were suicide missions. And my crew chief ran out there and grabbed a sword in that fire. I hollered and told them, anybody else tried that, I might shoot them because it was so dangerous, you know. You didn't know what. And I got them back away from there. And they still didn't do any damage to our airplane or anything at all.

For the invasion of Okinawa, I was flying one of the five transport planes that went from Guam back down to Iniwetok. Iniwetok Atoll is a nice, big atoll, and over on the north side of it is a little island named Enjibe[?]. Enjibe is no longer there; it was blown up in 1952 with the H-bomb. It just, I understand, disappeared. It wasn't a big island. But Enjibe had the Four-twenty-second Marine Fighter Group. One of the flight leaders was a friend of mine, Captain J.J. LeBlanc[?] from down in Louisiana. And LeBlanc already had five or either seven airplanes to his credit. And we went in there late in the afternoon, and we were supposed to leave the next morning. And those Corsair fighters, there was forty-two of them, they'd fly a wing on us for navigational purposes. And of course, we were taking their crew chiefs and their personal gear and all that were loaded on our airplanes.

Anyway, after I got there, they told me, said, "Well, Charles Lindbergh is here. He's here." He was working for Volks Zoskin[?], and LeBlanc told me, said, "He goes with us on raids just about every day." He wasn't supposed to because he was a civilian at the time.

And I said, "Well, I'd just like to meet him." You know. Everybody had heard all about Charles Lindbergh.

Anyway, he said, "Well, we'll run into him." It was a small compound. But I never did see him, and I kept thinking we would run into him somewhere there, but I never did lay eyes on him. And when we took them on up for the invasion of Okinawa, D-day plus three, we got them up there. And we had quite an experience. Between Iwo-we took them to Tenian; Tenian to Iwo Jima, and Iwo Jima to Okinawa. Between Iwo Jima and Okinawa was a bad cold front. And those fighter boys didn't like to fly instruments too much, but we had to get them up there. And I was flying the lead plane. And we took off, and my eight chicks, we called them, took off right behind me. Well, it was a Navy torpedo bomber came in and crash landed right on the end of the runway right after me and my crew took off, and it took them about forty-five minutes to fill up the hole before anybody-so we were circling there for nearly an hour before we headed out on course. And the rest of them took off, and we found a saddleback at about 14,000 feet to take them through that front. But right after that, we had to go on instruments. And one of those Corsairs' engine cut out on him. Well, that transport went down through the clouds with him, all the way down, so he could mark where he crashed and maybe a submarine could pick the pilot up. Well, at about 300 feet, he got his engine to running again. So, they climbed up. Well, six of those Corsairs came up and joined up with me, so I had fourteen Corsairs. And from then all the way to Okinawa, we were in the soup, rain mostly; not too much terribly, but I got where I didn't want to look out the window because these guys were scared to death. They didn't know where they were. If they'd have gotten lost or something, they [were] gone. They didn't have anything; those big old props on those Corsairs, they would look like a foot away from my wing tip out there. But anyway, we got them in up there. And everyone of them jumped out, when we finally got them in and landed. Going in we had turned our EFF, that's enemy, friend, or foe identification thing to emergency so we wouldn't-our own ships because our ships was getting already these kamikazes were hitting them terrible. And when I broke out of the cloud, the first thing I looked at there was this big cruiser there, and every one of his guns were aimed, as we went over, they just came up over us, just like this. We were looking down the barrels of those, I guess about ten-inch guns, about twelve of them, every one of them. They knew we were supposed to be friendly, but they wasn't taking any chances on it. Anyway, that was quite an experience. Oh, we had a lot of things that happened. But when the war was over, everybody just went to work.

I got started in the car business. I was-

Biagioli: Can I stop you right here and ask you one question?

Sledge: OK.

Biagioli: You know, here lately, there's been a lot of controversy, you know, about the dropping of the bomb.

Sledge: Yeah.

Biagioli: How do you feel about that?

Sledge: The dropping of the atomic bomb?

Biagioli: Right. Back then. Not in retrospect, but how did you feel?

Sledge: Even today, I feel stronger than ever, what was so amazing about the atomic bomb, Admiral Nimetz, the man who was in charge of the whole Pacific Ocean except the Philippine Islands-MacArthur had the Philippine Islands. But Admiral Nimetz, now had the-he was in charge of the Army, Navy, Marines, everything in the whole Pacific Ocean. He didn't know anything about the atomic bomb until they dropped it. That had been the best-I can't conceive how they kept it like that. Harry Truman didn't know anything about the [atomic bomb]. He had been president. Roosevelt died, and he had been president, according to a book I just read on Harry Truman, this year; he had been president about a month before the secretary of war came in and told him, "Mr. President, there's something I need to tell you about. We're building this bomb."

Well, the bomb stopped the war. The Japanese would not give up. They could live off of bark and grass. All those islands that we bypassed; they couldn't get supplies. How they survived, I don't know. We couldn't have done it. We Americans, no way we Americans could have survived like they did. How they did it, I don't know, but they did. Down at, I mentioned Pellilew, where we changed [the wing], right on the north end of Pellilew is what they call Babelthrop. It's a whole bunch of little, bitty islands there, kind of close together. And they did have coconut trees on them. It was better than 20,000 Japs survived on that thing. They were completely cut off, but they were there. They supplied without Japan furnishing them anything. What they ate, I don't know. They ate coconuts, and they ate what they could get from the sea, such as that. And the Navy kept two ships out there shooting, all the time, shooting down those coconut trees to starve them. (Laughter.)

We were fixing to go into-I think it was either in September or October-and invade Southern Japan. A Third Marine Division officer showed me some preliminary plans, and he told me that they were going to hit the shore the first day with five overstaffed Marine divisions abreast, five of them. That meant 22,000 men, where normally about 18,000 is a regular division. Five divisions of 22,000; 110,000 men the first day and push inland for a mile or two, and let the Army start pouring in behind them because everybody knew the Marines were the best getting ashore. That's what they were really expert at. He said the preliminary estimates at the end of the first day, they were to have lost three whole divisions. They expected to lose three whole divisions, 66,000 men the first twelve hours. But after the war was over, then they found out Japan had all these old puddle-jumper, cotton-duster things loaded with just enough gas and bombs and things, just enough, and the pilot just enough training to get it off and crash it in there; had thousands of them. He said that their losses would have been two or three times greater in the beginning than what they had anticipated if we had had to go in there.

As horrible as the atomic bomb was-and it killed what? Two or three hundred thousand people each time. Well, it probably saved two or three million by them dropping it. They probably saved two or three million Japanese or maybe lots more because, look, our B-29s, you can't imagine how they were bombing and tearing up and burning up the cities. They were killing them by the hundreds of thousands. I mean it was just total destruction the way the B-29s were tearing them up. They would have killed another, in my opinion, at least, three, four million Japanese. And I think we'd have lost at least-because they had all these people that had been in Europe coming out there to help us take Japan-I think we'd have lost a minimum of one and a half million conquering Japan. So, I feel like that maybe a half million people got killed, but it stopped the war. But I think if the war had've gone on, it'd have been ten times that many. So, I've always 100 percent approved the decision to drop that bomb and stop the war. They dropped two of them. That's the only thing because their mind-set was that they would not give up. On Iwo Jima there was over 22,000 of them; none of them surrendered. They accidentally got about three prisoners off of there. They were somehow knocked out, and we got possession of their bodies before they came to, and they sent them back to Guam. They would not give up. They'd commit, they called it, hari-kari, you know, commit suicide before they'd let you take them prisoner. They wouldn't give up. No way. So, it was a terrible thing. I just hope we don't ever have to, you know, go through something like that again.

Biagioli: Kind of bring us back to a lighter subject, when you attended Delta State, can you tell us a little bit about that? What it was like? What campus life was like?

Sledge: Yeah. Delta State was a small school. It was Delta State Teachers College. And the reason I went to Delta State, it was here at home, and I really didn't have the money to go to-I might have could have, probably. The family might, but I knew that even just [$300] or $400 was, you know, extremely important, then. You could buy a brand new car for $700, but anyway, Delta State was a nice, small, friendly school. You could get a good education there, if you wanted it. Had good faculty. Their primary purpose was to train teachers. Well, from the very beginning, I never wanted to be a teacher. All I wanted to do was to get enough college so I could get in the Air Force or somewhere and become a pilot. I'd originally thought I would become a professional pilot, probably after-but I had this chance when the War was over to get started in the car business. And that's the way I went. I was offered a job with American Airlines. Our Colonel Day[?] was chief pilot at American Airlines, and he was our colonel out there. He offered about five or six of us jobs, and but at the time, I guess I'd had enough, right then. I don't know.

But anyway, I'd already had this opportunity to come back and if I could-my wife's father was the Chevrolet dealer here. And he had written me when I was on Guam not to make any decisions about anything till he had a chance to talk to me. And he told me, he said, "If you can make it"-and I knew what he meant. If I could make it, he'd make it where I could ultimately buy him out. You know. And then that worked out real well for me. Real well for me; it couldn't have been any better, hardly.

Biagioli: Well, tell me about your experiences in the car dealership.

Sledge: Well, I've never minded working, and I worked real hard at it and was successful at it. And I started out in the parts department. I worked from parts department to sales. I went from sales to sales manager, and then I went from sales manager to general manager. And then I got appointed to that school in Detroit. If you can get to that school, then Chevrolet is pretty well telling you, "We'll accept you." If you're successful in that school, and I was. I was-when we first got there, we had this fellow named McLaughlin[?], dean of the school. And he rated us after twenty-four hours, how he thought we would come out. And I guess because of my Southern accent or something, he rated me next to the bottom out of forty-five students or forty-six students. I was next to last the way he figured me to come out.

And I thought, "You old so-and-so. I'll just show you." Well, that was another one of those things. They worked us all day, every day, and we'd go back at night. We lived downtown at the Statler[?] Hotel, right in the middle. And I worked, applied myself, and that was quite a great experience. It ended up, again, we ended up, a boy named Newton[?] from Nebraska, he and I tied for number one when we graduated up there. So, I did it as much for spite for that fellow McLaughlin. He'd rated me down so low, (laughter) and only thing, I don't know why he rated so. But anyway, I just wanted to show him. Well, anyway, I got the dealership, and probably in about 1957, I was the dealer. Nineteen fifty-eight, the best move I probably ever made in the car business, a Mr. Darby[?] here, Mr. Ferris[?] Darby was the Oldsmobile dealer. And I had been trying to buy him out and dual it with Chevrolet. And I remember it just as well; it was on August 8, 1958, I walked by his dealership. Mr. Darby didn't talk much.

I said, "Mr. Darby, are you ready to sell me this place?"

He said, "Yes, I am." Just like that; that's all he said.

I said, "All right, but what figure did you have?"

He told me.

I said, "I'll be back in a few minutes with a check." I walked real fast down to our dealership; it wasn't over 200 yards away. I had a partner there, then; a fellow that my father-in-law had taken in back in '33 as a bookkeeper. But he had worked up and owned some of the interest, and he was real sharp on the books, and a real good business manager. His name was J.O. Bradford[?]. And we got along just fine. And I said, "Brad, write me a check." I said, "I just bought Mr. Darby."

Before I bought Mr. Darby-before I bought Mr. Darby-as soon as he told me what, I said, "All right. Let me set out an agreement." I took his old about 1930 typewriter, and I forgot to tell you. Back then in early about '51, I realized I never had had accounting or business law, and I knew if I was ever going to be successful in business, I had to learn how to read a financial statement and a few things like that. Well, they started night school out here, and I took accounting and then I took business law and something else that advanced one of the courses there. And I sat down, and I typed up that agreement, you know, just like a lawyer would have. It didn't take me a minute to do it. I've still got that somewhere because there's a (inaudible). I got him to sign it, and I signed it. It didn't take me two minutes to do it. And in a few minutes, I was back up there with his check. And then I went back and called Oldsmobile because they wanted me to buy it anyway because he wasn't-he was a good man, but he wasn't very aggressive. And Oldsmobile, back then, it was, oh it was-you can't imagine how people-it had the rocket eighty-eight, and it was a powerful V-8. It had the eighty-eight, super eighty-eight, and the ninety-eight. And, boy, people liked those Oldsmobiles, and we sold them like hot cakes. The amazing thing about Oldsmobile, people would come in there, like these big farmers would come in there, and they'd trade your ears off on a pickup. Wouldn't let you make [$100], $150, but they'd come in and buy an Oldsmobile, maybe a ninety-eight for their wife or something, you'd make [$400] or $500. That doesn't sound like much, now, because these dealers, now, if they don't make [$2000] or $3000, they think they hadn't done anything. But back then, when you could make [$300] or $400, boy, you were going to town on it.

But anyway, we sold a lot of cars. And over the years, I won just about every Chevrolet contest. My wife and I have been all over-

(End of tape one, side two. The interview continues on tape two, side one.)

Sledge: -win these Chevrolet sales contests, and we've been to, oh, you just name it, just about it. The first one we went, in the early '60s, when they first started, we went to Niagra Falls. And then we went on one to Hawaii. And then we had Tahiti. And then I don't know how many trips to Europe, England and France and Germany and Czechoslovakia, and in '76 to Africa, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan. These are separate trips. I was in the first group that went into China after, in the fall of 1980. And Hong Kong, and, oh, several trips to Hawaii. All the best trips we've ever-we made some on our own. South America, all down through South America and out in the islands down here everywhere. Well, virtually 90 percent of all our traveling has been Chevrolet trips that we won over the years, which was a great thing.

In 1970, I got elected to Oldsmobile's National Dealer Council. You're elected by all the dealers. And that was an honor. You serve two years. And then the funny thing, exactly ten years later, I got elected to Chevrolet's National Dealer Council. Only ten dealers in the whole nation sit on these councils, and you serve for two years, there. At the time, I was only one of five dealers in the whole nation that had ever served on both Oldsmobile and Chevrolet National Dealer Councils. In 1981, I was Time magazine dealer of the year award, for Mississippi. And let's see, some other honors that I've (inaudible). Well, back in about-they organized the chamber of commerce here in 1958. My father-in-law and Mr. Bradford[?], they-

Biagioli: Who was your father-in-law?

Sledge: A.T. Wilson[?] was my father-in-law. He died in-well, he got sick in about '57; he died in '59. Mr. Bradford died very suddenly in '64, and I bought the rest of his interest. I became the sole owner, then. And downtown, do you know where Delta Hardware is? That's where we had the dealership, then. I owned all that property, and all that property behind there where the city is, now. I owned all of that, and we got a new zone manager in 1964. And he came in there, and I showed him-that parking lot there next to Delta Hardware, that was mine, too. It was a building on it. And I showed him all my property, and what I was going to do.

And he went back in my office, and he sat down, and he said, "Well, Nevin, that's fine, but," said, "you can't stay here. You're in the middle of downtown, and you can't stay." And he said, "In the next year"-you signed five-year contracts. He said, "In '65, we'll renew your contract for five years, but by 1970, if you want to continue to be a Chevrolet dealer, you got to get out of downtown." It was just like hitting me with a ton of bricks because it, you know-but I could have killed him. You know, and everything was right there in my mind. But it turned out, over the long, he could see what I couldn't see. And he did me the biggest favor I've ever had done. He forced me to do what I needed to do. I ended up selling all of that property; I bought out there and built a real nice dealership out there on [Highway] 61; had two blocks. I had a real fine dealership out there where Malette[?] Furniture is, now. I built that in, started in '66; we moved in in March of '67. But I was very successful in the car business. And the-probably, more than any other thing-our policy was you treated everybody alike, treated everybody fair. We treated the blacks the same way we did the whites. If I ever caught anybody cheating on anybody, he was fired automatically. That's just a rule, a good business rule, and we stuck with it. Like one day, we fired this mechanic that had drawn some parts to do a warranty job, and he didn't put all the parts in the warranty. And he was holding them out for some job he was doing on the side. And our service manager caught up with him and brought him in there. So, he came to see me, and he was fussing at me about firing him for that.

He said, "Here you are just a little, old one-horse dealer, and you're protecting General Motors, and they'll be worth billions and billions, that's fifteen or twenty"-

I said, "You don't understand. I don't have anybody that I know that will steal because if you steal from them, you'll steal from me next time. That's just the way it is, and I don't want you here anymore. That's just our-that's the way we work."

Well, anyway, that paid off in the long-run, especially the first time that I ran for the Senate. Got elected in a 66 percent black district, and I had a well-known black named Flippen[?] at Shaw, mayor of Shaw, highly educated. He was a kind of a militant which made it lucky for me. And, well, he was a militant, but a lot of the good blacks that had done business with me, got out, and I didn't even know they were doing it. I carried, got more black votes than he did, and then, most of the white votes, too. I got seventy-something percent of the total votes in a district that was 66 percent black, which was quite a, you know, feather in my cap.

Back in 1948, they organized the chamber here. And Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bradford said, "You go down"-they didn't want a-they were half-retiring then, and let me do most of the work. Well, I have been a member of the chamber ever since it was organized more than fifty years ago. Well, in '51, no, in '52, after President Eisenhower announced that we needed to put in these super-highways, like the autobahns in Germany. And he said, "Generally, they'll parallel the airways." Well, the one that was supposed to come down through Memphis-I-55 was supposed to come straight from Memphis to Jackson, right down the airways there. And it would have been over here about twenty-two miles, right this side of Minter City. They had a big meeting, right here in Cleveland. All the big plantation owners from the Delta came in here, and three of us upstarts. I say we was upstarts; there I wasn't but about thirty years old. And a fellow named Frank Woods[?]-he's dead, now-Alfred Livingston. Or was it Hugh Smith? One of-there was three of us, and we were the young upstarts, but we had gotten interested in the chamber. We were the only ones arguing that that would be a great thing if we let that interstate come through.

It wouldn't be too far for us here in the Delta, but all those landowners, they were 100 percent, "Don't let that damn thing come in. It'll ruin our farms. It'll devalue. It's the worst thing in the world that could happen to us. Call Jim"-that was Senator Jim Eastlane-"and tell him to move that damn thing out of the Delta. We don't ever want it."

Well, you see what happened. They moved it, curved it, and went around. Granada was virtually a dead town at the time. Batesville[?], Granada, Wynona[?], all those towns were, they were in terrible shape. And the interstate, see, they're all good-going because of the interstate. And we've got a chance to get the interstate, now, to come by Cleveland if our people would get off their duffs and really go to work for it. This I-69 going from Mexico to Michigan up there; they could bring it by here if they really would work on it. But they don't seem to realize; our leadership, now, they don't seem to realize the importance of having an interstate fairly close to you. And it's going down yonder where it ought to go; I agree with where it ought. It can swing back and come by over here. And I'm afraid if we don't do it, we're missing a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

But anyway, I was president of the chamber in '58; I was the man of the year-they called it the chamber, then; now, they call it the Council[?] Award-in '72. I've had a lot of nice honors. I served on the city board of aldermen here for, from somewhere in the early '50s to 1977; I wouldn't run anymore. And the last two or three terms, I was vice mayor; I didn't want to be mayor because I was my own general manager out at the dealership, and I just had more to do than I wanted. As president of the council, I wouldn't run anymore. Back then, we had a real good board. We didn't get paid. They did give us our water, but every time salaries would come up, I'd vote against it. We'd kill it because you get things like that, you get better people, if you don't pay them anything or pay them very little. I don't know what kind of salaries they pay themselves, now. I think pretty good, and it takes a lot of time, but it was interesting. And that's how I got started, more or less, in politics. But as I was getting ready to turn my dealership over to my son, this Bill Alexander[?] announced he wasn't going to run for the Senate anymore. So, I said, "Well, here's a good chance." I ran for the Senate, got elected three times, and wouldn't run anymore.

And I bought this little farm up here, and I've been busier than ever up here, now, putting in these fruit trees and everything and developing a subdivision. I just bought some more property the other day. So, I've got for the next three or four-I can't afford to sit down and die. You know. I got the next few years planned; I'm going to be too busy. I can't afford to not do anything, so, anyway, I'm having a good time, now, working like I want to. Forty years I wore a coat and tie; now, I go in mostly in khakis. And I got a whole bunch of old equipment, mostly old tractors and things. I got a bulldozer up there; I got a backhoe. I got a ditch-witch. You know, we put in our own irrigation system up there. We just got a lot of equipment; I enjoy having that old equipment. Most of it, the farmers here quit using it thirty years ago because they have to have these large, big stuff. Well, I've only got 140 acres up there, and the one big field, eighty-nine acres, I hire a big farmer to come in and plant that either in soybeans or wheat for me because he's got the know-how, and the real fine equipment. And all we do is look after the rest of it, mostly the fruit orchards and things. Me, and I got two full-time helpers up there, but I'm just enjoying life. And each September, my wife and I make a trip. We just got back about, well, a month ago, now; a month ago yesterday, I believe. We went out west, and went up through Denver and Salt Lake City. She got where she didn't want to fly, anymore. And we drove on up through Idaho, Montana, went on, all the way up, way up into Canada, Calgary, Canada, and then went west out there to Banff and Lake Louise, and came back, came all the way across Montana and angled on back. And we just had a real good time. We just enjoy, you know, striking out like that.

Now, every January, we drive and go to California, but anyway, we're fortunate to still have good health, and everything. I had a bout with cancer three years ago; had prostate cancer. And I went to three doctors before we decided exactly, and all of them recommended this external radiation. And it worked for me. I'll tell you this; I'll give you some advice. If you don't remember anything else, remember this. When you get forty and above, you be sure every year, you go get checked. They've, since I became a prostate patient about twenty-five years ago, Dr. Ochsner in New Orleans told me that men are just as vulnerable with their prostate as women are with their female glands, but men don't get checked like women do. Said that's the reason so many men are dying with prostate cancer.

Well, about ten years ago some doctor developed this, what they call PSA, where they take out blood, and it can tell you. The doctors tell me it gives them at least a six-month advance notice if it's a sign of cancer there. So, when you get about forty, you remember that.

Anyway, I was successful. My PSA was up to nine when we started that radiation. They hit you with ten million volts of that stuff, and it kindly messes you up pretty good there. But I was able to go all the way through with it, every day for seven weeks without having to stop and rest up. And I was real lucky there. And that PSA count's been going down ever since, and now it's down to virtually nothing. It's 0.010. And as the doctor told me six months ago, said, "You ain't got prostate cancer, anymore." So.

Had cataracts removed from my eyes out at Oxford, I guess two years ago. And now my eyes check twenty / twenty. I could go back to flying if I wanted to. My eyes check out real good, except I got this hearing problem. And even with hearing aids-I kept an airplane out here for about thirty-five, forty years, but I don't need the airplane like I used to. I used to really use my airplanes out here, but I don't need them. So, surprisingly, even with 10,000 pilot hours, I would have thought I would have really missed the flying, but I don't. Of course, I got other interests, now. That farm and those fruit trees and the bees and the canals.

Biagioli: Yeah. I've heard some stories about your preserves and stuff like that.

Sledge: Yeah.

Biagioli: Let me take you back a little bit, back to when you served on the state Senate. You got any good stories or interesting things about that?

Sledge: Yes. That was real interesting. In a way it was a big surprise to me. There are a lot of good people; at least, there was, then. We had some good leaders in there, and I hope they still got some good leaders there. And you don't have to be down, especially somebody at my age. See, I was already sixty-two years old when I went to the Senate and had been a car dealer, dealing with people. And I could read character, I guess, pretty good. I'd had more experience than most people. You can tell real quick the guys that are honest, and the people you can trust. And I made friendships with people that I could trust because you have, everything goes through committees. And from day one, I served as only two freshmen senators appointed to the finance committee, me and John Keating[?] from Granada. He was a lawyer, and a banker. He owned more stock in Granada Bank than any other individual. And he was about my age; he was a World War II man. We were the only two freshmen appointed to the finance, but I had been in the banking business here. Five other fellows, four in the beginning, and then we took another one, we organized and started the First National Bank here. We started it in 1957; it took us six years to get the charter. And that was a lot of fun. We finally got the thing started.

Biagioli: It just recently sold out, didn't it?

Sledge: Yeah, Yeah, we sold it out. I had, in the fall of 1980, I was the largest-we had all started out with the same amount of stock, but as different people would want to sell their stock, I would always buy it. And it turned out I had accumulated the most stock of anybody. And the Tims[?] boys out there had inherited quite a bit of money. And their daddy had invested originally some time before that in an insurance company out in Texas. And that thing sold, and they got [$2 million] or $3 million out of it, and they wanted to buy a bank. And they came to me about buying our bank.

I said, "Well, the only way I'll even take it to the board is if you make me an offer two times the book value."

They said, "You take it to the board."

Well, I did. This was in the fall 1980, and when we did, Stanley Livingston[?], our president, he said, "Now, I've been with y'all from the beginning. If you're going to sell it, I want to buy it."

Well, Billy Thomas[?] was the chairman of the board; he was a local engineer and a real good businessman. He said, "Stanley, it's not the thing to do. Unless you've got the cash money to pay us off, don't." Already, interest-that was when interest rates had first started-they [were] already up to about 13 percent and later went on up to about 22 percent, the first of Reagan's years, the first two or three years there. And nobody can do business when interest-as long as interest stays at 8 percent or below, you can operate; business can operate. But when you start paying 13, 17, and 20 percent, you can't. It won't work. It's too much.

Anyway, he insisted that since he had been in on it from the very beginning, that he said that he had the resources, that he would borrow the money. So, we let him have it. I told him, "You're making a terrible mistake." But we ended up letting him have it, and it was a bad deal for him. The Tims boys-he got killed about three years after that, and the Tims boys ended up buying the bank, anyway, and they're the ones that sold it to the Merchants. But as far as making money, I made a lot of money out of it, you know, just when we sold our stock, but I was-you know, it was fortunate[?]. We had a good time with it. When I-my son Tommy took my place on the board when we sold it out, and he stayed on the board. I had been on the board from the beginning, eighteen years. And then he served about nineteen years, I guess, up until this summer when they sold it or whenever they sold it; he went off the board, then. But what was it you asked me there a minute ago?

Biagioli: About, you know, the Senate?

Sledge: Oh, the Senate. Yeah. We had some good people. And as I said, these committees, where they study and people come in and testify before the committee. I never served on the Judiciary Committee; I never served on the Education Committee, and all these things you have to vote on. And there's so doggone many bills, and I worked hard. I never missed a roll call all the years I was there. I just about, I think, set a record. The only time I ever missed one roll call, my wife had surgery in Greenville; had a pacemaker put in going to her heart, either ['88] or ['89]. And I was there for that that morning. Well, I missed the roll call that morning, but I was back in there that afternoon. That night we were in session, but I was tending to my business. Well, on those educational bills and things like that, I always had somebody that I could go ask him, "Well, what about this bill?" Somebody who would tell you the truth, and that's what I depended on. And like I established a-and we, to this day, are real good friends, a fellow by the name of Irb Benjamin[?]. He was, oh, at least, I guess, twenty-five years younger than me, but he was real knowledgeable, real sharp, and highly educated. He had been a teacher, but he was also a businessman and a farmer. And he knew more about education than most anybody down there even though he wasn't chairman of the committee, and he could explain things to me. A fellow named Smith[?], the same thing. We had some good people. And then, of course, we had a few people that really didn't have any business being down there, but they got elected. If the people were honest, my criteria were if they were honest, that's all I cared about. I didn't care if they owned the world or didn't have a dime. If they were honest and would tell you the truth. The ones that more or less had their hands out to the big-time lobbyists and everything and had their hands out, you know, and you knew they were taking money and would vote, I didn't have any respect for those people. It just wasn't many of them, but it was a few of them, but it was some good people down there. We had some good leadership.

My last year there was in '92, and I wouldn't run anymore in that special election of '92. And I had a little dealing with Fordice, and dealing with him one-on-one, he was all right. I was real disappointed that he got so crossed up, and he could have been a much better governor than he was. He's been terrible. In the first place, the legislature in Mississippi has the power, and if you want to be an effective governor, you've got to get along with the legislature. The legislature is crying for the governor to kindly work with them. They like to give him credit things, but they've still got the power. But Fordice, more or less, he said, "To hell with you." You know. And he was trying to run over them all the time, trying to get them defeated and all this. Everything you could think of wrong, and they tell me this year at the State of the State message, that he didn't get one single applause, and that's almost unheard of. That's unprecedented in the history of the state. Even if you didn't like the governor, everything, they'd nearly always make him feel good applauding, but they didn't. It's terrible bad feelings. Of course, I [haven't] been there since '92, but Fordice brought most of his problems on himself.

Biagioli: Did you ever have any dealings with Musgrove?

Sledge: Oh, yeah. Musgrove came my second term. He was, I think, the youngest senator there. He was bright, real nice boy. And I rated him as a real comer, and a good conservative Democrat. I rated him real high. After I left there, he became chairman of the Education Committee, and as far as I know, he did a good job with it, but the militant union, I understand, the teachers union-you got two unions. One of them, they get along with people, and know how to-but there's one of them, a militant group. And I understand they pretty well got control of him and then back a year ago, about this time, Musgrove has visited here in our home several times, but about a year ago, he told me he had to raise some money for the governor's race prior to the first of the year. And I sent him $700 about a year ago, but during the session when John Horn[?] the chairman of that committee that wouldn't let his committee even vote on a nominee for small businesses out there, I called up Musgrove. I

said, "Musgrove, you fixing to let this fellow knock you out of being governor."

He said, "Aw, no."

I said, "Musgrove, you're going to make a terrible mistake. You're the lieutenant governor; you got the power. You tell him to at least let his committee vote on it." I said, "And then you'll be clear, and John Horn will be clear. If his committee votes him up, fine. He'll go to the full Senate. They'd probably vote him down, but it doesn't matter. You tell John Horn to vote."

And he wouldn't do it. And it's costing him a lot of votes. Later on Hobb Bryan[?] did the same thing, and then he got too close to Bennie Thompson[?], I understand. And unless I change my mind, even though he's a good friend of mine, I'm not even going to vote for him because he's letting people tell him what to do that are not for the best interests of the state of Mississippi, in my opinion.

I even served with Amy. I don't know the other fellow; they tell me he's a nice fellow. Amy came there; she was young. She took Bill Harpole's place. Bill Harpole was about the oldest senator there, and he died with a heart attack the summer of, I've forgotten what year it was, about '89, somewhere like that, maybe '90. And in a special election, Amy got elected, and she did a good job. She came in there and got along with people and was very effective, and was all right. But I hadn't seen Amy, you know, in a year or two. She's probably going to be elected; I don't know. But they tell me the other fellow is all right, too, but I've met him, but I don't really know him.

Biagioli: What about Parker? Have you ever met him? Mike Parker?

Sledge: I've met him, and I've talked with him, but I really never had any dealings with him. But he impresses me as being a straight shooter. Yeah.

Biagioli: Just curious on your take on him.

Sledge: The main thing, oh, the thing that's hurting Musgrove-and I tried to get it over to him-don't do any negative. People are tired of negative advertising. And in the last few days, as late as last night, we were at a dinner party over here, and a fellow made a statement said, "Well, I was going to vote for Ronnie Musgrove, but," said, "I'm so sick of negative advertising, I'm not going to vote for him, now." That's just the way it is. Now, he may have picked up some votes there. So, I don't know what it's going to turn out. If I had to bet, I'd probably bet that Parker will be your governor.

Biagioli: I kind of have to agree with you there. Let me take you back just a little bit here, kind of wrap this up here. Now, you grew up around in Cleveland.

Sledge: Yeah.

Biagioli: What was Cleveland like when you grew up as a boy? What were some of the things that y'all did? Was Cleveland a strong community? Or a loose community? What kind of things did y'all do as a community together? Or what kind of activities were there for young people?

Sledge: Well, it wasn't a whole lot to do. Everybody worked. And they had the picture shows. We had three picture shows in town. For recreation at night, if you had a date, you went to the picture show. That was it, period. And I think it cost, on Saturdays, when you was younger, you'd get in the shows for a dime. But then it got it up to about twenty-five cents a head, I believe. You went to the picture shows and Denton[?] Manufacturing Company down there, Denton Dairy Products now, they had a swimming pool. You could go there in the summer time for a dime, I think, and go swimming. And they had dances. They had-all through the year, they'd have dances on a lot of Fridays and Saturday nights. And the bands were all brass bands, you know, swing bands. They were brass instruments. There wasn't any guitars or violins or anything that you see, now. That was just unheard of, then. Oh, people were busy; young people were busy. And it was a good community. Our town was growing. Cleveland's always-the thing that's probably made Cleveland grow, back yonder, if you go back sixty to seventy or eighty years, Cleveland wasn't any bigger than Merigold or Boyle. The thing that made Cleveland start growing: number one, we got Delta State Teachers College in '25. That helped a lot, but the number one thing that helped Cleveland more than anything else, if you go back and look at the land rolls back yonder in the '20s, teens and '20s, Merigold was made up of about five real large plantations. They owned all the land around there. Cleveland didn't have any; within three or four miles of Cleveland, didn't have any large plantations. They had a lots of small farmers, and these small farmers came in with their families and raised, you know, from a small farm, and those kids ride the school buses into school, and our town started to growing from that. Lots of small farmers, and we had two banks to start with, the Cleveland State and the Bank of Cleveland. It's always just been a pretty progressive town. We had four gins inside, cotton gins, inside of Cleveland. Always exciting time of the year, about the first of September when all the gins kicked off. They were, you know, ran by diesel engines. You could hear, bang, bang, bang, bang for miles around. And trains were going through. You-

(End of tape two, side one. The interview continues on tape two, side two.)

Sledge: -New Orleans that came through here at eight o'clock at night. And it wouldn't be a minute-I mean, it would be exactly, it was always on time. You could catch it, and the name of that train was the Planter. And if you were going to New Orleans, you could catch it here. The next morning at six o'clock, you could wake up and you were in New Orleans. You could have-we had much, much better railroads, then, than we have now. We had wonderful railroads. I don't know what we'd have done in World War II if we hadn't have had all these wonderful railroads. Of course, we've got much better highways, now, but our railroads are not even-there's no way to even compare with them, now, to what they were back there fifty, sixty years ago. But kids growing up then were lots different. You look at pictures of kids growing up, then, you didn't see any long hair. I mean none; it just wasn't there. I don't know whether they were any cleaner or not, but they were cleaner looking. I'll put it that way. And one thing, in school, the teachers had total authority. You never heard of a student threatening a teacher. That was just unheard of; you didn't act bad. If you act bad in your class, you got thrown out. You might get sent to the principal's office, and they'd pull out a paddle and wear you out in a minute. But kids respected the teachers, and I imagine it was just totally different from probably the way it is, now. We had no drugs, then. I never heard of drugs until I was grown; I guess, before I ever even heard of marijuana. It just wasn't here. We originally didn't have beer, but back in the midthirties sometimes, they legalized beer for this area, and our county voted it in. But I don't know; kids were happy. They were busy, and just like kids are kids, I guess.

Biagioli: I've heard you talk about your wife a couple of times. What's her name?

Sledge: She was Brenda Wilson. I ought to get her out here. She's back there; she and I have been married fifty-six years, now. We've got four children. The oldest one's named Melissa; she lives in St. Louis.

Biagioli: Is that her on the wall right behind you?

Sledge: That's some of the children. Yeah. Let's see. Those pictures there have been there twenty years. That's her two daughters, but both of them are grown and married, now. Our daughter Melissa finished high school here in 1962. That fall she went to Stephens[?] College at Columbia, Missouri; that's a girls school. They're real fine, swanky, expensive. (Laughter.) Anyway, she went up there two years, and that's where she met her husband. He was finishing up over at the University of Missouri. The University of Missouri is in that same town, Columbia, Missouri. So, Melissa-we always called her Lissa-she transferred to Washington University in St. Louis for her junior and senior year because her boyfriend was over there already working in St. Louis. And she said it was 3200 eggheads and Melissa. (Laughter.) But she did all right; she graduated with honors, so, she did all right from Washington University.

Our next son, four years, Tommy[?] went to Ole Miss and graduated there in 1970 and went immediately into the Air Force Pilot Training. And our son Wilson graduated in 1970; he went to Ole Miss, and in his second year, he met a pretty, little girl out here at Delta State. He was home for the weekend and met a girl named Peggy Breland, and Wilson decided for his interests, he'd better-his second semester, he transferred to Delta State. And he finished; he graduated from Delta State and he and Peggy were married in '75. Tommy married Alinda[?] Capps, that's Charlie Capps' oldest daughter, Alinda. They married in '71 while he was in pilot training. Then we skip about ten years, and we came up with a late one, a little girl, her name is LuAnne, was born about thirty days before our oldest daughter finished high school.

Biagioli: Oh, my!

Sledge: Yeah. So, that was almost like raising our own grandchildren, and she lives down at McComb, now. She graduated from Delta State. So, two of them graduated from Delta State, one from Ole Miss, and one from Washington University. My wife was a-

Biagioli: Where'd y'all meet at?

Sledge: She was a local girl. She was a real good piano player, and I mean, she and Lacy Langford here used to travel around giving concerts, two pianists. She was, you know, really good, and about 1961, I believe it was, one of the best investments I ever made. I bought her a Steinway grand; it's there in the living room. And the funny thing is, they tell me now-it's not for sale, but it's supposed to be worth about five times as much now as it was when I paid for it back in '61 because they quit making that type of Steinway grand, now. Just like my Bonanza airplane; I had two of them. When I got rid of them, sold them, they went up in value. You know. I was always used to cars going down; these airplanes, the Bonanzas, the first one, I sold it for about $6000 more than I paid for it. The second one, I kept it for, oh Lord, I kept it nearly twenty years, and sold it for $7000 more than I paid for it. And then I bought a Twin Beech[?] because my son had come out of the Air Force, didn't want to fly a single-engine airplane, so, I bought a Twin Beech, a little what they called a Travel Air, a baby baron[?]. And I kept that till after they sold the dealership; I didn't really need the airplane anymore, and they're too expensive to operate out of your back pocket unless you've got a business, you know, charge it expense. The airplanes are expensive, especially a twin-engine. But I sold it. But, yeah, the only thing-oh, I bought her a real fine diamond back yonder in the early '60s. My brother was a jeweler out in California; he called me up one day.

He said, "Look, I got ahold of this beautiful diamond, and it's specially made. It's got all slots[?] all in the diamond." He said, "I don't want it to ever get out of the family." Said, "I want you to have it." And he said, "I really got it at a good price." And he told me what he'd take.

I said, "Well, send it to me." And she's got it now, and it's been appraised at-it may not be worth that; I don't know-it's been appraised about ten times what I paid for it. Of course, diamonds have gone up, but it's not for sale. It's an unusual ring. But we have a good life; we can do anything we want to do. I've reached the age now, we're not-I don't mean to be bragging, but unless something terrible happens, we've got more money than we'll ever spend. You know. And we're not worried about leaving our children a lot of money. If it's a bunch left there, that's fine. We've got our will set up where our two youngest grandchildren, we know even though they're just getting one-twenty-fourth of it, it'll be plenty for them to go to college. They're just young; they're my youngest daughter's children. And she's separated from her husband. So, we've got that taken care of. So, we don't owe any money.

Biagioli: So, you did pretty good for yourself.

Sledge: Like this house here, there's quite a story behind this house. We were living in our house over on Lamar[?], and we had added onto it about three times. And it was a very comfortable home. And I intended to live there the rest of my life, but I'd already acquired all this property out here because my wife said someday she wanted a big house, for when all her children and grandchildren come home.

And I told her one time, "Well, go on"-about 1970, I guess-"go on and get an architect and draw up some plans." And she did spend about a year, and I gave them to Roy Collins[?]. And he gave me an estimate. I said, "Man, I ain't even thinking about spending that kind of money." But I put the plans up in my office up on a shelf there in a closet in my office and kindly forgot about it. This was about '72, I guess. Well, in 1973, she had a pretty serious operation; then, later on-I never came home for lunch. One day she drove down there, and we went to lunch together.

And she dropped me back by the dealership, and right before she got out, she said, "Well, I'm just"-I done forgot how it came up. She just offhanded said, "Well, I know I'll never get my house." And I'm telling you the truth; it hit me like a bolt of lightning. And she didn't mean it that way, but it did. Anyway, I walked in here, walked in my office, and I called this builder named Mack Mamouche Shelby[?], and I knew he was a good builder.

I said, "Mack, do you want to build a house for me?"

He said, "Nevin, I'd love to, but I can't give you a price." Said, "Prices are going up so fast every day."

I said, "Well, you'd do it on cost plus, wouldn't you?"

And he said, "I'd love to."

I said, "All right. Come down here. I've got the plans; I've got the land. I want you to build my house." He came down. I said, "Now, all I want you to do. Don't you bother me; I'm not coming out there. If it's any problem, you solve it." Because I got to thinking, well, I was out of debt. I had the money to pay for a house, and that was the only thing she had ever wanted in all the years. She had never bothered me; she had gone along with me on everything, and I just felt like I owed it to her. And Mack built the house. I had a deal with him; it was 10 percent. I said, "I'll give you 10 percent over." At that time, I said, "How much is your time?" He helped work, too. And in '73, it doesn't sound like too much, now, but it was pretty good pay.

He said pay him $75 a day for his time plus 10 percent override for every expense including permits, everything and all the materials, everything. Well, he ended up doing real well. My office manager could write checks on me, on me personally. And he'd come in down there twice a month with a thing, and I never came out here but one time, one Sunday afternoon, all the time they were building this house. And that's the guest house there that we had; we built it for her mother. She came out here and lived with us five years till she died. And we've got five bedrooms, five baths, and two of us here. But all our children can come in; we've got room for them, you know, if she wants it that way. Got a swimming pool; just got everything here. And when we got through with it, I paid for it. I didn't owe any money. I didn't owe a dime on it. So, she's always been happy.

I said something not too long ago; I said, "You know, this house is too big for us."

She said, "Well, it may be, but it's home. I'm going to stay here." (Laughter.)

Biagioli: Well, Mr. Sledge, if there's anything you'd like to care to tell me?

Sledge: Well, I was speaking to the sixth-grade graduating class out here at the P.D.S. Presbyterian Day School, several years ago. And I'll tell you when it was. My oldest grandson Will Sledge is a junior at Delta State, now. So, that tells you that had to be about eight years ago, wasn't it?

Biagioli: Yeah.

Sledge: And I was telling them. I said, in my speech, and I was trying to get it around, I said, "If you'll just start setting aside $1 a week or a dime a week, or something, to get in the habit of putting, and how it will add up. Just a little bit. And that you've got to start putting a little bit more." I had their attention. And, man, I could tell because I had a girl down there in the senate that helped me with it. She was real sharp, some of the things; she was young, and she knew how to, the few words that would get their attention, trying to tell them how important it was early in life to manage and start saving a little bit. I said, "It's fine to go out, you know, and spend all your money, and everything, but you better pay yourself a little bit in savings because it pays off."

You just won't believe the little money that we put aside, back yonder, forty-five years ago, put it in, say, I got two mutual funds that we bought forty-five and forty-four years ago; one of them's worth about-well, I put $10,000 in one in '54. It's worth at least half a million dollars today, over half a million dollars, and we're drawing down money on them, too. Got another one that's right at that, see. You don't have to put a whole lot of money into something. If it's anything that I could preach to the young folks, I don't care how much money they're making or not making, whatever they make, they ought to take one little small part and put it aside in something. I don't care if they start out with nothing, and it looks like they'll never get ahead in anything. If they save, put it in government bonds. We started in the war; it was the patriotic thing to do. The first money Brenda and I saved was some-we started saving $25 war bonds. And then we went to $50 war bonds, and I forgot about them. I forgot that they didn't, after forty years, they quit paying interest. They were in my lockbox down there, and I finally had to go down there and get them out. And then, of course, I had to pay income tax on the gain. They'd gained, and they was worth several times what they were. But if it's anything that I could convince young people, and this is, if I have a message for anybody, I think anybody can be successful, now. You may have to-Brenda, come here, honey.

And-talking about you.

Brenda Sledge: Talking about me?

Sledge: Yeah. Come on. Sit down.

Brenda Sledge: I thought this is supposed to be about you. (Laughter.)

Sledge: Yeah.

Biagioli: How are you doing? I'm Joseph Biagioli. It's nice to meet you.

Sledge: Sit down here, honey.

Brenda Sledge: What's your last name?

Biagioli: Biagioli.

Brenda Sledge: Biagioli?

Biagioli: Yes.

Sledge: Biagioli.

Brenda Sledge: Spell it.

Biagioli: B-I-A-G-I-O-L-I.

Sledge: His parents or grandparents used to buy cars from me. So, I go way back. Yeah. Sit down here a minute. I was telling him personal things. I told him you were a piano player.

Brenda Sledge: Used to be.

Sledge: She has glaucoma. That's where you see in a tunnel. And she had a terrible time getting it stopped before she went completely-you go completely blind. Finally about the fourth time they operated, it got it where she can see. She's virtually blind in this eye, so, she can't drive any more. And she can see some to read, but she has to get it up like this. So, that cut down on her activity. Other than that, she's still in pretty good health. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to keep her a while. (Laughter.)

Brenda Sledge: I hope so. We've just been married fifty-six years. (Laughter.) Did he tell you that?

Biagioli: That's quite an achievement right there, in itself.

Sledge: Yeah. I was just kindly preaching here, I guess, on things, and we can nearly about write a book on a lot people fighting; we've never even had a fight or a major fuss in all the years. She kind of looks after her business, and I look after mine. A long time ago, I realized that she needed her own bank account. And for her to run her own thing without-and keeping up with it. Well, that was one of the best moves I ever made; I did that a long time ago. And she can do what she wants to with her money. She, you know, gives mostly to the grandchildren and such as that, but that's all right. That's all right. But anyway.

Biagioli: I have one last question for y'all. And I'm looking here on your bio sheet here about religious affiliation. What church do y'all go to? And what kind of impact did that play on your life?

Sledge: I was raised a Methodist. She was raised a Presbyterian. We were married by Dr. Bolling, a Presbyterian minister, during World War II. When we came back, well, I didn't know. It was just a natural thing for me to go on to the Presbyterian Church with her. Now, we go to church regular; we support the church, always have, pretty good, financially. And most every Sunday, if we're in town, we seldom ever miss going to church, but we're not one of these that-and I don't mean this derogatory in any way-we're not there hollering and carrying on, you have to-in other words the church doesn't dominate our life. We enjoy the church. We enjoy the membership. We enjoy the association. We're glad we're part of it, but we are not trying to run the church; don't want to run the church. I've been a deacon and an elder, and she used to play for the Sunday school classes and all of this. We just like it kindly the way we do it instead of being too-I respect all the other religions, all the other churches. It doesn't matter to me where you go to church. It's-I don't know, hardly, how to describe our-

Brenda Sledge: Well, I think the main point is that we believe in God, and we believe that Jesus Christ was his son. And we believe that, and we think we're going to go to heaven when we die.

Sledge: Yeah. I believe also that we're not the only ones in this universe. From just conversation-

Brenda Sledge: Well, I think if that's true, I think God takes care of that, too.

Sledge: Yeah. I don't think we can comprehend; the universe is so great. My mind, when I start reading something; I find something. Boy, this will be interesting. Well, it just blows my mind when I read. Like the other day, 400 billion stars just in the Milky Way Galaxy. Well, that right there, that just blew my mind. I couldn't read much further. Four-hundred billion. And we know it's about a half a billion galaxies out there. See? So, somewhere out there I think that there are other, probably, civilizations, much more advanced than we are. It's possible. It's possible that we were planted here thousands of years ago from some other civilization. I don't know. You know. I just really don't know.

Brenda Sledge: Has he absolutely blown your mind? (Laughter.) Everything that he's interested in and everything that he's done? (Laughter.) Because he's had a very active life.

Biagioli: Oh, he has. He's most definitely had a very interesting life. Well, Mr. Sledge, the Mississippi Humanities Council would like to thank you, and I would, too. We appreciate it. That's all, folks.

(End of the interview.)