To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: (Ecl. 3:1)
Frequently, the decisions that have the greatest impact on how we live our lives are made by others. While the event of Edna Paralee Thompson’s birth was being recorded at Chattanooga City Hospital, American socialism was experiencing the convulsive jerks and tremors that usually precede death. As a results of some of those events, historians have recorded that time as a period of one of the greatest crises in American history. The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt resulted in a new deal for the people—a program of economic and social welfare legislation. Under that umbrella, regionalism would dam the rivers, secure the top soil, and uproot families. The people of Oakridge, Tennessee were promised a new era. They accepted and believed the promise, but this decision to retire poor farmland and develop the natural resources of the Tennessee River drainage basin would eventually change Edna’s family’s way of life forever.
