Melange

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