The living room features a selection of books written and illustrated by local authors who reached a national audience.

The first author was Le Grand, who wrote and illustrated books for all ages. LeGrand was the pen name for LeGrand Henderson, 1901-1964 . He is known for his book series for children from 4 to 8 years including Cap’n Dow and the Hole in the Donut. He also wrote the Augustus series of 12 books for children 8 to 12 years. These books contain material on the military in WWII from a boys point of view. Henderson was originally from NW Connecticut and married Kathryn Dallas from Thomaston, one of the 3 sisters who created and toured the Rag Bag Alley Puppets. His portrait of Kathryn is above the living room fireplace and below here, as is a photograph of LeGrand.

Thelma Thompson was the author of: Give Us This Night, Doctor Red, Bright Ramparts about living as an army wife, Make Haste My Beloved– about the treatment of Leprosy. This book won several national and international awards and started her work to champion treatment for veterans who had been afflicted by leprosy during their service. Miracle in Alaska (her fifth novel) won the national League of American Pen Women Penney Award and the AWC Aurelia Austin Writer of the Year Award. Because three of her novels dealt with the Public Health Service, she was invited to the White House Rose Garden in the mid-1960s by President Lyndon B. Johnson to witness his signing of public health legislation. President Johnson presented her with a pen “to encourage you to write another book.”  

Evelyn Hannah was the author of Blackberry Winter (1938), Sugar in the Gourd (1942), and co-author of The Early History of Upson County Georgia (1930) sponsored by the John Houston chapter of the DAR. According to Evelyn “the work was no mere matter of doing research in libraries and looking up records in the Ordinary’s office. We did field work – we visited country graveyards deader than their occupants, and in such fashion, I became familiar with a lot of the early history of my immediate section of Georgia. The dry bones of long-dead pioneers began, in my mind, to assume living flesh.” Evelyn nearly won a Pulitzer Prize in the Novel Category (later renamed Fiction) in 1939 but lost to Marjorie Rawling’s, The Yearling by one vote.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt came into peoples homes during World War II with his fireside radio chats. On December 9th, 1941 he explained declaring war and the ramifications on the military and the the families. The exhibition showcases our large floor radio.