This story actually started back in the early 1950’s.  
Michael O’Rourke, Senior, was in the Army at Fort
Bragg.  He had completed ROTC at Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York.  He had entered the Army right at
the end of the Korean War as a second lieutenant.  
About the time he graduated from college, he and his
father, a widower, had a serious disagreement.  Several

years later, after Michael had married a young southern

protestant lady, his father, a devout Catholic,

disinherited him.  Michael was proud, but otherwise

a fine person.  Michael, an only child, was never

to see his father alive again, as his father died shortly

after Michael’s marriage.  He had only been in the

Army for one year, when he made his first trip to

Rockingham.  

There are various types of men that make the Army
their career.  Some are misfits, some are looking for
adventure, and some are truly patriotic.  When they
have time off from their Army duties, many of the first
two types of men head for the local “watering hole,”
otherwise known as a bar and most often associated
with a brothel.  But the patriotic type usually doesn’t
enjoy this sort of stuff.  He wants to meet some really
nice people.  The best place to meet nice people is in
church.  The next best way is to get away from the
Army town and closely surrounding areas still under
Army mentality.  More than just a few of these third
type of Army men lived in Rockingham while they
where assigned to Fort Bragg.  They would house their
wives and families in Rockingham and commute back
and forth to the base usually spending their weekends
with their families.  If they went on an isolated tour
overseas (usually for about a year), they would just
leave their families in Rockingham while they were
gone.  The Army likes to station its people where they
want to be stationed as much as possible.  Many
soldiers want to be stationed in Europe, but few
actually get this since they all ask for it.  However,
most men don’t want to be stationed at Fort Bragg, so
if you asked for it, it is almost a certainty you will get
it.  It was quite common for a career Army man to
spend his entire Army life at Fort Bragg with three or
four isolated foreign tours within the 20 to 30 years of
his career.    

It was early summer in 1953, when some of Lieutenant
O’Rourke’s friends talked him into going to
Rockingham with them.  There are a lot of nice people
there, and it’s too far away to be an Army town.  They
had gone to a restaurant on West Washington Street,
just across the street from the old Planter’s National
Bank.  This restaurant was located where the BBT
parking lot is today.  Two of his friends lived in
Rockingham, and he and another friend were just
visiting.  They went in and had a seat.  Lieutenant O’
Rourke noticed a nice, attractive waitress in the back
of the establishment.  He turned to his friends and
said: “See that young lady there, she’s the woman I am
going to marry some day.”  One of his friends, Sergeant
Nelson who lived with his family in Rockingham
replied: “Sir, you don’t even know her.  Her name is
Mildred, and she is single.  She doesn’t work here that
much.  I think she goes to business school in Charlotte
and works here on the weekends.  I don’t really know
her that well, but I’ll try to introduce her to you.”

Well folks, this love story would be worth writing
about just on its own merits.  But I’ll keep it short; so
as to get back to our main characters.  Mildred had
graduated from Rohanen High School just several
years prior.  She was attending King’s Business College
in Charlotte, and was scheduled to complete her
studies at the end of the summer.  She had a job offer
in Charlotte, but she regretted there were so few
business jobs in Rockingham since she really had
rather live here than in the Queen City even if the pay
was not nearly as good.  Her mother, her father, and
her sister were working at the Hannah-Pickett Mill in
East Rockingham, but had worked for some of the
other mills in years past.  Mildred was determined that
she was just not going to work in a mill, and she knew
she needed some education to avoid that.  Mildred, her
mother, and her sister, Grace, all went to the Pee Dee
Church.  She was dreading leaving the church people
when she had to move to Charlotte.  She had had
several boyfriends in the past, but she didn’t want
romance to get in the way of her career, at least not
until she could finish school.  But she was only two
months away from finishing school, and here was this
handsome young soldier showing an interest in her.  
She knew her mother and father wouldn’t like her
dating a soldier, especially one from New York.  She
figured she would test him very quickly, and insisted
that he accompany her to church on their first outing.  
But to her surprise, he went with her to church.  Some
of the veterans in the church knew what those gold
bars on his shoulders meant, but Mildred had yet to
learn about that.  All the church people liked Michael.  
They did get married at the Pee Dee Church about a
year later. Although Michael didn’t officially convert
his religion, he went with his wife to church when he
was in town.  Also, he agreed to allow the children to
attend and to be raised in the protestant church.     

The family decided to stay in Rockingham with
Michael commuting back and forth to Fort Bragg like
several of his friends did.  This seemed to be a
marriage made in heaven.  Both Michael and Mildred
were very happy.  The children were born in 1956,
1958, and 1960.  The one bad thing was Michael’s
father being so upset with him for marrying a
protestant.  That’s just not the sort of thing Irishmen
were supposed to do.  In fact the Catholic Church
excommunicated Michael for this.  That is, he was not
allowed to take communion at a Catholic church.  The
grandchildren never saw their paternal grandfather,
who died less than a year after Michael and Mildred
were married.

Eventually Michael got disenchanted with the
military.  He had been in the Army for ten years and
was only a captain.  There were many officers who
achieved higher ranks during the Korean War.  It’s
difficult to make rank during peacetime.  Also it
seemed like all the good promotions went to the West
Point graduates.  Michael was offered a civilian job at
the Kodak Corporation in Rochester, New York.  He
and Mildred talked about this, and decided it would be
a good career move for Michael.  The children, who
had lived in Rockingham and attended the Pee Dee
church all this time, were excited about going to New
York.  Rochester was close to Niagara Falls and also
close to Canada.  Also they may have some cousins up
there somewhere.  To the children, this was going to be
the adventure of a lifetime.  The couple left their
children with her sister, who already had four children
of her own, when Michael and Mildred went to
Charlotte for a flight to Rochester to look at the Kodak
Company and to look for a house.  They took one of
those planes called the “Electra.”  It was a big four-
engine propeller plane.  Commercial passenger jets
were just starting to come on the scene, but mainly
between the big cities such as Atlanta and New York
City.  The Kodak Company allowed them to use a
company car to look for a house.  Everything was going
well until at a busy intersection, an eighteen-wheeler
(tractor trailer truck) ran a stoplight and slammed into
the side of their car.  They said the truck’s brakes
failed.  Michael and Mildred did not survive the
accident.



To be continued....