Newspaper Page Text
Ex-sec’y: Dykes
will owe me
a public apology
Page 1
31,E Augusta NeiUß-ttetrimi
Volume 13, Number 27
Rev. Boyd, 96, retires
The Rev. Robert L. Boyd,
pastor of Elim Baptist Church for
the past 54 years, officially retired
Sept. 21. He is 96 years old and has
been a minister for 76 years.
Not eager to retire, he told the
News-Review “I don’t mind
retiring. I’ve been there long
enough.” But he makes it clear
that he feels he could go on. “My
health is good. I don’t even take
medicine,” he said.
“I had a doctor three or four
times in my life. I had malaria
fever and a cough once. I feel as
good as I ever did.”
He has no simple explanation
for his good health. “My people
were long-living people,” he said,
adding that his diet could have
played a part. “I ate a lot of
gooseberries, sugar berries, and
peppergrass.”
Nevertheless, age has taken its
toll. He concedes that his “eyes
are giving out.” He lost his sight
in his left eye 20 or more years
ago. His teeth are almost gone,
and he has none at the top. But
he says proudly, “I don’t have no
pain.”
Upon his 21st birthday, he
recalls that his father told him:
“You are a man now. You can do
anything you want. You can
marry. You can hire yourself out.
Or you can work here and I’ll
give you a third of what you
make.”
Rev. Boyd said he replied,
“Dad, I’d like to go to school.”
Dykes ’ ex-secretary says
he will owe her an apology
Gail Graczyk, former secretary
to sheriff J.B. Dykes, told The
News-Review Wednesday that
when the FBI investigation of the
sheriff is completed, “He will owe
me a public apology, which I will
never get.
“I am a person who has never
caused anybody any intentional
harm. If a person is wrong, he’s
wrong whether he’s a personal
friend, a brother or a person I
don’t know. I have to live with
myself.”
Dykes went into seclusion in
Tennessee after learning on Aug.
29 that he was being investigated
by the FBI for allegedly accepting
bribes from 32 persons charged
with driving under the influence of
alcohol.
Dykes said in a telephone inter
view from Tennessee that Mrs.
Graczyk was the only person who
could have leaked the information
to the FBI and that he would fire
her five minutes after he returned
to work.
Instead of being terminated,
Mrs. Graczyk said that she was
contacted by a member of the
sheriffs department and was told
Frank Yerby
Woman
wounded
in robbery
Page 3
|Hr"
Rev. Robert L. Boyd
He went on to earn a bachelor’s
degree from Morehouse College.
Along the way he had met a
young girl named Marie Shumate
from Millen. “Somebody told me
‘That girl really likes you.’ And I
said, ‘Well, she ain’t got a bit o’
sense.”*
After laughing for a moment,
he continued. “She wrote me a
card in February. I wrote back in
March, and we got married in
November.”
When he became pastor of
Elim in 1929, Rev. Boyd said his
youngest child, Anna Mozelle,
was a baby. She now has grown
children.
“I went to Elim when there
to report to another department
the following Monday. She said
she worked in the new-department
for a month before she was ter
minated Oct. 7. She said that she
has no idea why she was tran
sferred to that department instead
of being fired when Dykes retur
ned to Augusta.
Dykes said Mrs. Graczyk was
incompetent and that he hired her
as a favor to her husband, who
Mrs. Graczyk said is one of Dyke’s
golfing buddies.
Noting that she has worked as
Dyke’s secretary since January of
1981, she said, “I wonder why it
took a man of his so-called caliber
three years to learn that I couldn’t
do the job.”
Dykes signed evaluations for
Mrs. Graczyk twice a year. She
showed The News-Review copies
of the evaluations dated December
1982 and July 1983 and her overall
rating on each was “outstanding.”
The evaluation indicated that
she ‘‘required a minimum of
supervision, is almost always ac
curate; exceptionally keen and
alert, continually seeks new and
better ways of doing things, is ex-
MADRID The way Paine
College graduate Frank Yerby tells
it, he would rather have written
“Moby Dick” than “The Foxes of
Harrow” and some 30 other novels
that have been devoured by three
generations of avid readers. 1
But Herman Melville’s classic
only sold a handful of books
during his lifetime, while Yerby’s
tales of love, lust and historical in
trigue account for nearly 60
million copies in 23 languages.
His books have given the
Augusta native several homes and
a mellow green Mercedes 350 spor-
Rev. Charles E. Smith
was no building. I don’t think
anybody living was there when I
came.”
He said that because of his age
he hardly ever preaches now. But
he goes to Sunday School every
Sunday.
Elim will install its new pastor,
the Rev. Charles E. Smith on
Oct. 30. And a special retirement
program will be held for Rev.
Boyd Nov. 13.
Rev. Smith, 36, has no
illusions about duplicating Rev.
Boyd’s feat. “Rev. Boyd was 60
years old when I made my first
cry in this world,” said the Rev.
Smith, who is a graduate of
tremely imaginative, and under
stands all phases of her work.
In a “separation” statement
sent to the county Personnel
Department, at the time of her
dismissal, Dykes said Mrs. Graczyk
was terminated because she was
Gail Graczyk
“not qualified for the job;
inherent inability to perform duties
to which assigned.”
She said her dismissal has caused
her family and friends “a lot of
Frank Yerby balks at being called Black
ts car. His 31st novel,
“Devilseed,” will be published in
March by Doubleday.
Yerby says he makes more
money from sales of his early
books in Germany than from
combined sales in all languages of
his later, more thoughtful works.
And he will be remembered, if
not financially rewarded, he says,
for “The Dahomean,” “Speak
Now,” “A Rose for Ana Maria”
and “An Odor of Sanctity.” There
were 500 reviews in the English
language for “The Dahomean”
and only one was bad, he said.
Frank Yerhv |
irked at be
called BU
Page 1 *
October 22,1983
South Carolina State College and
the University of Georgia. He is
also an educator in the Richmond
County school system.
While he admires Rev. Boyd’s
record at Elim he does not aspire
to being there 50 years. “I don’t
think that should happen again,
and it definitely won’t with me,”
he said.
“Everybody reaches a peak
and once you reach your peak,
you can’t go anywhere but down.
No matter who we are, that’s
what happens,” said Rev. Smith,
who has served for two and a half
years as assistant pastor at
Elim.”
Rev. Boyd, who said that he’s
glad to see Smith get the job,
says, however, that he still isn’t
through preaching. “Some Sun
days when I’m (at Elim), I’ll just
tell the other fellow, I want to
talk to them today.”
Rev. Boyd lives alone. One of
his church members cooks for
him and cleans the house. His
wife died about two years ago, he
said.
And his son, Dr. George Felix
Boyd, a professor at South
Carolina State College, comes to
see him each weekend.
Weakened by the ravages of
old age, Rev. Boyd’s spirit is
strong and he is grateful. He said,.
“The Lord has been good to me.
Sometimes 1 wakeup at night and
say to myself, ‘The Lord has
been better to me than to
anybody else.’”
personal embarassment. And I
hope it will be cleared up in the
near future as to clear me of any
wrongdoing as far as an employee
relationship is concerned.”
She said that prior to the public
disclosure of the FBI investigation,
she went to Dykes and asked for a
transfer for “personal reasons.”
She said that she no* longer felt
comfortable being his secretary.
According to Mrs. Graczyk,
Dykes said he didn’t see any
problem if that was what she really
wanted. “I understand that a tran
sfer was in the works when all of
this-other came about with the FBI
investigation,” she said.
“Since I’ve been terminated, I
have received several letters from
department heads telling me what
a good job I’ve done and that they
appreciated it.”
Mrs. Graczyk said that she is
now unemployed and that there
has been no replacement in her
former position except for Barbara
Campbell who she described as
“temporary.”
She said that Ms. Campbell,
who is Black, is “very sweet, neat,
and efficient.”
Forty years ago, Yerby decided
that the United States was no place
for a young man whose list of an
cestors read like the roll call of a
small United Nations. So he went
to France to raise his children in “a
civilized country.”
The 67-year-old author, a
resident of Spain since 1954 when
“fate” introduced him to Blanca
Calle Perez, who became his
second wife, seems to delight in a
sort of bemused mysanthropy.
“You can call me a racist if you
like—l dislike the human race,” he
says over a glass of bitters in the
I S.C. State
' struggles past
''•'vidson
Less than 75 percent Advertising
■£■ 1
REESE MEDIA CENTER Marion Barnes (right) prin
cipal of T.W. Josey High School presents plaque to L.K.
Reese, the school’s first principal, at a dedication ceremony
Sunday when the Josey’s media center was named for Mr.
Reese. In background is L.K. Reese Jr.
Election myth
Editorial
We strongly disagree
with the notion that the
last week’s city council
results were a repudiation
of the leadership of Mayor
Ed Mclntyre. That notion
is largely wishful thinking
on the part of The
Augusta Chronicle and
Herald.
It is our belief that
voters went to the polls
and voted for the can
didates on the ballot.
There was no referendum
on Ed Mclntyre.
The Augusta Chronicle
and Herald loath the idea
of a Black mayor, if not
Mclntyre personally. And
they have continually tried
to brow-beat city council
Harris, Daniel
appointed
Wanda Harris and Jean P.
Daniel on Monday became the
first women to be appointed to
the Augusta Port Authority.
Mrs. Harris is a graduate of
Savannah State College. She ear
ned the master’s degree at In
diana University. She is em
ployed as assistant director of
Special Services at Paine College,
where her husband, Dr. William
H. Harris, is president.
Ms Daniel is an assistant vice
president at Citizens and
Southern National Bank.
subdued bar of the Hotel
Velasquez.
“But do not call me Black,”
Yerby says. “That word bugs me.
Besides, 1 have more Seminole
than Negro blood in me anyway.
But when have I ever been referred
to as ‘that American Indian
author*?”
When he visited the United
States in 1977 for two weeks,
it had followed a 26-year absence.
He felt like a stranger in his native
land.
During that visit, he attended a
class reunion at Paine College and
members Black and
white—who do not find it
necessary to disagree with
the mayor’s proposals just
because he proposed them.
It is important for
readers to keep in mind
that it is the voters, not
The Chronicle and
Herald’s editorial
writers —who control the
political destinies of elec
ted officials. And we
believe that most
Augustans recognize that
Augusta is moving like
never before, and will not
allow the hate of the
Augusta Chronicle and
Herald stand in the way of
this city’s progress.
Wanda Harris
later met some of the Southern
white women and their offspring
who had helped to make his early
books best sellers.
“They’d come up to me, giggle
and say, ‘Oh that book, now that
was a dirty one.*”
Yerby is impatient with many
things. He did not like those who
kept trying to introduce him to
fellow American writer James
Baldwin when both men lived in
France. “If we had not been, uh,
Black, would anyone have thought
see Yerby, page 3
30c