Adolphus Mitchell

Adolphus Mitchell Residence, 2003

Adolphus Mitchell, son of a rural minister, answered his country's call to service in World War II even though his country did not treat people of his race with much respect in those days. When he returned home from the war in the Pacific, the first thing did was use the construction skills he learned in the service to add two towers to the front of his parents' home.

Mitchell died in 2002, not long before I took this picture. One of his sisters still lived in a tidy home nearby. "Having grown up in that old jalopy of a place, I told my husband it was going to be brick for us, all the way." She told me Adolphus built the towers not just to make more room for the family, but to "reach up to the Lord."

(From the Southern Stories series.)