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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