You’re the keeper of the castle, So be a good man to your babies, The creator of the sunshine in their day, In the garden that you’ve seeded, Be a friend when a friend is needed. You won’t have to look the other way.
You’re the keeper of the castle, Be the father to your children, The provider of all their daily needs. Like a sovereign Lord protector, Be their best of needs director. They’ll do well to follow where you lead.
—From the song “Keeper of the Castle” by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter
I was reminded of my responsibility as my children’s “best needs director” by The Four Tops in this song in 1971. Weekend mornings were noisy at our Rye Ridge apartment complex. Our corner apartment, around which the lawn wrapped, was staked out by every kid in the complex as the best place to play. Starting around 6:30 AM I’m not sure which commuting parents got up that early on a Saturday morning, but I’m pretty sure they put the kids out like cats and then went back to bed.
Aside from living with the noise, there were too many kids on not enough lawn, and my daughter was growing up.
By 1970, our second child, a son born on a Friday the thirteenth in 1967 in the United Hospital in Port Chester, had reached the “terrible threes.” Fortunately, he was not terrible at all, but after commuting back and forth to New York City for some six years, and with our growing family, the living conditions were wearing on all of us. My wife began thinking it was time to give our family some space and a better environment…as well as a father who had some time for them to grow up with. As Tetlow had reminded me, she only saw me from 8:00 to 11:00 PM before collapsing from exhaustion from raising our children alone and sometimes only one full day out of my working week.
As I said, the final decision was made for us. Tetlow’s mother, Jeannie Williams Newell, known as “Billy,” had developed an incurable brain tumor, and we needed to be near to her for the short time she had left to live.
I researched agencies located as close as possible to Franklinton, including my place of birth, Raleigh, and interviewed with two or three agencies there without immediate success. I expanded my search to other North Carolina cities in the geographic area, and the research pinpointed a small in-house agency in Charlotte, NC, owned by First Union National Bancorp.