Carolyn Kennedy Conway bio draft

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]

Carolyn Kennedy Conway was born 08 Nov 1947 in Ville Platte, Evangeline Parrish, Louisiana, USA of parents Dalton Willard Conway and Martha Abbie Kennedy.

She was named after her paternal grandmother Nancy Caroline Matilda Willard with the changing of the spelling of Caroline to Carolyn.

Her earliest memory of Louisiana was sitting on the front porch of an older white house where there was peeling paint. She picked off paint chips and ate them. She was about two and a half years old. The other event she remembers from Louisiana was having numerous large pigs. Also an owl on the front porch frightened her one evening.

She moved with her family from Louisiana to Big Spring, Howard, Texas, USA when she was three years old. She remembers lying in the back "window" of the car in which they traveled and holding a round goldfish bowl for a large portion of the trip. The fish did not survive the temperature change.

When the family moved into the first house in Texas, they learned that it was far too small for all members of the family. There were her parents, her two sisters, Nancy Ione Conway and Martha Anne Conway as well as her brother, Dalton (LeRoy) LeRoi Conway and her maternal grandmother, Mamie Ione Burgess Kennedy who was widowed.

The family moved to 500 Young Street into a very large house that had been converted from a church building. There had been a mammoth skeleton discovered under the foundation of the building and the bones were placed into a local museum. She has attempted to discover what happened to them after the museum closed, but has been unsuccessful in her search thus far.

She started kindergarten with Mrs. Williams private school and there met a girl who turned out to be a life-long friend: Nancy Brady West, who was instrumental in helping get Carolyn interested in genealogy.

She already knew how to read before going to kindergarten. She did learn how to write more and became socialized with new children.

When she reached the age of five, she started East Ward Elementary School which was located a few blocks away from her home on Young Street. She walked to school except on mornings when she was late. Then her mother drove her while on her way going to work for an attorney's office.

During the summer she went to the YMCA summer camp with her next door neighbor Linda Fields and there she learned various crafts and became skilled enough with archery to win blue ribbons at the end of summer camp.

The school's name was changed from East Ward Elementary School to Boydstun Elementary. That was the beginning of Carolyn's resistance to change. She didn't like having to write the new name of the school.

The summer before junior high the family moved again to a house on Runnels street in Big Spring, Texas. That meant leaving all her classmates and going into a new school district at Goliad Junior High. It was a fairly easy transition, as she had become friends with her next-door neighbor Hilary Sherred who was from that district.

Nancy West also transferred into that district the second year of junior high, right before Carolyn's parents moved to Sand Springs, Texas which meant she moved into the Coahoma Public School District. It was a cliquish school where everyone had started kindergarten together and remained together. The first year, she felt like the odd man out. That summer she went to visit Nancy West in San Saba, Texas. They roller-skated at a rink for hours and ate only one meal a day. She grew four inches in height and lost 60 pounds. It made a major difference in her appearance and confidence.

She moved to Coahoma High School as a freshman and there found her own niche. She studied hard, had perfect attendance and made good grades. She became an officer of the Library Club, the Future Homemakers of America, and the National Honor Society as well as writing articles for the school newspaper. She was involved in drama club and was in several plays. She graduated third in her class.

She was married before she finished high school but still had hopes of attending college to become a teacher. Those plans were side-lined after the birth of her son and divorce. She attended community college and became a Licensed Vocational Nurse.