Clyde Cagle

Cone Mills Employee, Carding Room

Information provided by Carolyn Cagle McMath, daughter of Clyde Wayne Cagle.

Dad worked after school during his high school years and immediately after he graduated from Rankin High School prior to his decision to join the US Air Force. We think he was in the carding room. He was able to help his parents purchase property to build their home with his wages from working at the mill. He always felt that had he not gone into the Air Force, he would have spent his life at the mill.

Dad had a deep attachment to Revolution Mill and its history. He used bricks from Revolution Mill in the home he built for our family in 1979. My brother remembers spending one summer scrapping/knocking off mortar from the bricks that had been picked up from some demolition at Revolution. Those bricks had been handmade.

My paternal grandparents, Demice and Margaret Groce Cagle, both worked at Revolution. Our grandmother's sisters also worked at the mills. The attached picture is of my dad (only boy on second row, handsome in his jacket and tie!) and his siblings and cousins. Margaret was my grandmother, Claudia her oldest sister. The (5) Groce sisters had come to Greensboro from Lee County to work in the mills and live in the mill village. Dad's oldest brother, Tom, also worked at the mill, quitting school early to work full-time. He would leave and move to Durham to live with an uncle before he was 17 when he entered the Marines and fought in WWII.

My paternal grandfather, Demcie Cagle, played baseball on the Revolution Mill team. Our grandfather was a left handed pitcher. He had a mean curve ball! One player who went on to the major leagues said he didn't meet a pitcher in the big leagues that could beat our grandfather! I believe that the big league player's last name was Adams.

This was in the early 1920s. He met my grandmother (who said, with a wink, she fell in love with "a man in a uniform") and married in April 1925.

Dad was born on January 2, 1933. At that time, if a child was born on New Year's Day, the family got a load of coal. My grandmother tried very hard to have dad on New Year's day to no avail. That load of coal would have been welcomed by this young family having their fourth child.