My Life - The Early Years

I was born October 14, 1948 at Grace Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. My parents were Arthur, Jr. and Mildred.

My dad was Arthur T. Rouse, Jr., known as Junior to his family and Mickey to his friends. The son of Arthur, Sr. and Glennie Pringle, he grew up in Richmond and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School. After graduation, most of his friends went off to fight in WWII, but my dad's poor eyesight (nearsighted) kept him out of the Army. He went to work for Federal Mogul Corp., a producer of auto parts used for tanks and other military vehicles. After the war, he went to work for NAPA Auto Parts in Richmond.

My mother, Mildred Travis, was born in Lunenburg County, Virginia, the daughter of James Travis and Pearl White. The family farm was near Green Bay, Virginia. My mom graduated from Lunenburg High School in a graduating class of nine students. When she met my dad, she was living in Richmond and sharing an apartment with two other women. She was a receptionist at P. Lorillard Tobacco Company. (Picture a switchboard with a lot of wires and plugs, a headset and a rotary dialer.)

Until I was four, we lived in the Tuscan Villa Apartments in Richmond's Fan District. They are Mediterranean style apartments with stucco walls and tile roofs. About 20 years ago, they were completely remodeled and sold as condos. They are located on Park Avenue at The Boulevard. I don't have a lot of memories of the apartment, but I remember playing on the fire escape in the back and I remember a maroon sofa with fuzzy upholstery that I liked to bury my face into. My grandmother only lived about six blocks away on Mulberry Street so she was a big part of my early life.

It was a good thing we could walk most places; our family car was a 1938 Plymouth built before WWII. I remember faded blue paint and grey primer. I remember being able to see the street through the hole in the floorboard.

Our apartment was directly across from the First Baptist Church in Richmond where my parents were married. It was an "interfaith" marriage; my dad was Methodist. He never joined the Baptist church because he did not believe he had to be re-baptized (dunked) and the Baptists would not accept the Methodist baptism (sprinkling). It was a big old church; the campus took up the equivalent of two city blocks. The pastor, Dr. Theodore F. Adams, was also president of the Southern Baptist Convention and had his own half hour weekly TV show, The Pastor's Study. My dad called him the Pope of the Baptist Church. The large church bell was in a gazebo like structure out front. I always liked to watch the man come out and ring the bell for the call to worship before church.

I remember Capri's, the Italian restaurant where I learned to twirl my spaghetti on a fork, no cutting it up for me. I also remember a corner bar on Robinson Street that I was not supposed to tell my mother about.