Randy Jennings (1963)

Email From Corky’s Daughter

Randy, the support and encouragement you and the CMA alumni community have extended to Daddy and our family has meant so much  Could you please post the obituary link on the alumni website? There is no need for flowers or such, Daddy sincerely wanted things kept very simple.

Thank you for this, and all your  thoughtfulness to our family.

Catherine

Thomas Ward (1963)

I'm saddened to see that Captain Maynor is gone to be with our Lord in His Heavenly Kingdom .

May he rest in peace after his valiant battle with his illness . I will always remember him as a

dedicated educator and coach . I pray that our Lord will always be with, guide and comfort

his Family .

Respectfully,

Tom Ward

CMA 1962-63

Michael L. Stevenson (1967)

Captain Maynor was my geometry teacher, probably the best teacher I ever had. It was the only course I ever made straight A's in. I am sorry to hear of his passing.

William Johnson (Johnson) (1968)

9 May 2019

Sorry to learn today of your passing.  My letter below I am afraid did not reach you in time.  Charlotte and I send our sincerest condolences to your family.

Until we meet again,

Bill Johnson

6 May 2019

Dear Corky & Family,

A much belated update from out-of-the-past to say “thank you” for the influence you have had on my life, which I am sure you have had no way of knowing.  I think as we age, time seems to go by faster, and despite advances in technology, we are less connected as a society and don’t keep up with one another as we did in years gone by.

Randy Jennings, an alumnus of Carolina Military Academy has done a great job with the CMA website.  I was really impressed with Scott Blankenship sharing the history that he shared about his Dad.  I was in junior high when his wife, Carol, was crowned homecoming queen.  The movie “Gold Finger” had come out about that time.  I remember there was a lot of people in the library that day and Carol telling Helen Moser, the librarian that she would have to get back with her about the movie.  Nothing bad or ugly was said, but I gathered in that for our time period, the movie must have been quite risqué.  Unbeknown to many of us until a few years later, some of the really good books were kept behind the library counter, such as Catcher in the Ryne, anything by D. H. Lawrence, the Grapes of Wrath which was indicative of how conservative the times were for our community.  My sophomore year in high school, Florence Hellekson took Rusty and Sally along with my sister Landrea and myself to the Carolina Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Dr. Zhivago was playing.  And, it was almost comical how Florence questioned we Johnson children about some of the bedroom scenes not wanting us to have a bad impression.  If she was alive today, I could probably ask her that since the next day was a Sunday and she was our Sunday School teacher, was she trying to make sure that we wouldn’t embarrass her with any off-the-wall comments. 

Carol Dodd taught us in freshman English when we got to Maxton High.  She just taught that one year before teaching at Richmond Tech.   Our senior year in Maxton, “The Graduate” was playing at the Gibson theater in Laurinburg and we ran into Mrs. Dodd purchasing a ticket for the next show as we were leaving the previous one.  It seems a bit funny now our chorus of telling her how good the show was and she needed to see it.   Times certainly have changed in so many ways.

There were a few times I got to cut your grass.  A few weeks ago, I had to go to Maxton to take care of some business.  My wife, Charlotte, usually does most of our driving these days.  But we were both shocked at the toll Hurricane Florence had taken on the community from Maxton to Lumberton.  Had I not recognized the druggist Lonnie Gilbert’s brick house as a landmark which had always been to the left, if you were facing the O’Kelley house, I would not have recognized the home that we had visited in for so many years.  And, there is no house on the property where I used to cut your grass.  It seemed a bit foreign and surreal at the same time, that I guess things do change, even in Maxton.

I don’t think you have any idea how meaningful it was to me your teaching me how to run the clock for that summer of CMA basketball games or doing the stats.  I continued to do that my junior and senior years at Maxton High.  The Carolina basketball players resided on the third floor of Granville Towers West my sophomore year at UNC.  The year before I lived on the sixth floor of Eringhaus on South Campus which was home to the football players.  When the elevators worked at Eringhaus, students who did not play football could get banged around by the ones who did.  My brother-in-law Tom Barrett who attended Carolina a year earlier recalls having similar experiences at Eringhaus.  That wasn’t the case at Granville and we got to learn many of the players by first name.  My roommate my sophomore year was a guy named Charles Henry Hoover, III.  Chuck was also my roommate along with his brother, Bill, who was a transfer student our senior year.  Chuck went on to become an MD and was in our wedding.  Chuck had a practice in Monroe and almost the entire time there, he has been my brother, Allen’s doctor.  There may be something to “six degrees of separation.”

When I graduated from Chapel Hill in 1973 I was concerned that I might have to go to summer school to finish up, so in April 1973, so I went into the Air Force’s delayed enlistment program in September of that year.  My draft number was 19, the only lottery I have ever won.  At the time, the Air Force was only commissioning officers as pilots or navigators, but would send college grads to OTS for be an officer in security police or work in missile silos.  My vision was too bad to be a pilot.  And, I didn’t want anything to do with the OTS offer.  So essentially I went in as a medic and was in the first group of “all volunteer soldiers.”  I had to be careful about my speech for the longest time.  Any spoken word with more than two syllables and people thought you were trying to be “too smart with them.”  Seriously, some of those folks needed to be weeded out and eventually were.

My first duty assignment was at Ching Chuan Kang AFB, Taiwan.  I met Charlotte over a Christmas break when I was stationed at Keesler AFB, MS.  We decided in July about eight months later to get married in August.  Just as we had made wedding plans, I received short-notice orders to go to Incirlik near Adana Turkey and the Syrian border.  We both have some interesting stories to tell about our Turkey experience.  Charlotte got a job right away with DoDea as a teacher in Turkey.  Her salary was about three times my enlisted salary at the time. 

I separated in Dover, DE and was accepted at UNC-Charlotte in their nursing program.  We bought our first house in Charlotte.  I graduated from UNC-Charlotte in two years with a BS in Nursing and about six months after passing my state boards, the Air Force offered me more than $9,000/year to come back in as a Second Lieutenant.  We were stationed at Homestead AFB when our chosen child, Kelley was born.  I was medically retired with a service-connected disability in March of 1983.  We have lived in Fayetteville ever since and are the proud grandparents of Lorelai and Emmaline who now live in Mebane, NC.  Chris their Dad has a good job in Durham and Kelley also works in Durham for the justice department.

My first job as a medic at Keesler was working on 5B, the oncology floor before I was transferred to ICU.  So, I read with interest Randy’s note about your recent medical diagnosis and would like for you to know that you are certainly in our thoughts and prayers as well as your family.  Part of my philosophy is that there are no accidental meetings in life.  I was raised a Presbyterian and that sort of goes along with their doctrine of predestination and double-predestination.  There are some things that are too personal to discuss.  But, I would like to thank you for the person you are.  You never know when you are in the right spot at the right time.  And, I can say, there were things that have happened that I am most appreciative that our paths have crossed.  Thank you.

With every good wish, I am

Bill Johnson

William S. Johnson, 1LT USAF Nurse Corps, Retired

Patrick Biet Nolan (1970)

I send my prayers and thoughts of Corky to you his family my deepest sympathy. My name is Patrick Nolan and I graduated from CMA May 1970. It was good to see him at this last reunion what a fine gentleman he was.I send you  my sincere condolences and best wishes with love to all the family. From what I understand he was a great teacher. I only attended two years 1968-1970

Sincerely,

Patrick Nolan  CMA Class of 1970 

Winston-Salem, NC

Randy Jennings (1963)

Hello Everyone 

Just received this message from Corky’s Son Clay.  I thought you would enjoy reading.

Hi Randy, Thank you all so much for being at funeral and all you have done for my Dad. Your friendship, CMA reunions and correspondence were a bright spot in my Dads life over these difficult few years. He (and my Mom as well as Catherine) were always excited to tell us about your get togethers. Thank you again for all you do. God Bless, 

Clay Maynor, MPRD Head Tennis Professional