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“Don’t say ‘we’ were deprived!”

Raymond E. Ledford, Ricky Thompson and David Headley are products of the Alabama Baptist Children’s Home in Troy. They lived “charmed lives.”

The former Children’s Home “kids” got together to make plans to attend the Alabama Baptist Children’s Home at Pete Peterson Lodge and Park in Montgomery on Saturday.

Each brought memorabilia from their days at the “Children’s Home” to share, not to jog memories. Their memories of their years at the Children’s Home are crystal clear.

‘”I may forget somethings but not my time there,” Ledford said.  “It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. If I had not grown up at the Children’s Home, I don’t know where I would be today.

Ledford, Thompson and Headley all came to the Children’s Home in different ways.

“When Ledford was eight-years-old, a welfare took him and his brother, Fuzz, to the Children’s Home. Their two older brothers were already there.

Thompson’s mother was killed and he, his brothers and sisters lived in the first brothers’ and sisters’ cottage on the campus.

Headley wasn’t a resident of the Children’s Home. His dad worked as a maintenance assistant but that didn’t keep him from “digging ditches and swing a blade.”

The “brothers” remember their days at the Children’s Home fondly—the kind and caring house parents, the friendships they made, the skills they learned, the work ethic that was engraved in them, how they were readily accepted into the Troy community and the care they received from its citizens.

Thompson said the fact that the boys from “the Home” made up most of the football team at the Troy high school helped them integrate into the community.

“The boys at ‘the Home’ worked hard and they were strong,” Thompson said.

“And, didn’t give out,” Ledford said, laughing.

“The Childrens’ Home produced some outstanding football player, Bobby Marlow