J.C. miraculously escaped another near
tragedy. J.C. was in his workshop when
he heard two-and-a-half-year-old Larry
screaming for his daddy. Somehow, he
managed to understand from his son
that his eighteen-month-old brother
had fallen into the pond. J.C. ran from
the shop to the pond straight into the
water and pulled his son out. With
the use of only one arm, he somehow
managed to get him breathing again.
In the years that followed, Merle
and J.C. had three more children:
76 TOOMBS COUNTY MAGAZINE
Cynthia, Deidre, and Lydia. In 1955,
the same year Lydia was born, J.C.
received the Georgia Young Farmer
of the Year award. As the family grew,
the small wooden house they lived
in became even smaller. In 1963, the
family moved a half-mile from their old
house on John Wilkes Road (named for
J.C.’s father) into the new brick house
their mother “designed and had built.”
“Some years later, I had the 10-
acre yard enclosed with a thick hedge
of shrubbery as a barrier from the
LEFT Mrs. Wilkes has fond
memories of her family and her
years teaching in the Toombs
County School System.
road,” said Mrs. Wilkes, the name by
which so many of us know her. “The
grandchildren had a go-cart, and they
were never to go outside that hedge.
They would just ride around and around
and around,” she laughed.
“As a kid, I remember all five of
us piling into the family car to go to
school,” said Greg. “I never thought
about Mother going to work and
getting us to school every morning. But
the rules were that if we weren’t ready,
she was going to leave us,” he laughed.
When the school needed a
counselor, the principal asked Mrs.
Wilkes if she would be interested in the
job. Of course, that would mean going
back to school while raising a family
and teaching fulltime, which is exactly
what she did. When she completed her
sixth-year certification in counseling,
she spent her last years in the Toombs
County School System helping students
find their way just as Mr. and Mrs.
Williams and others had done for her
all those many years ago.
Mrs. Wilkes lost her husband to
congestive heart failure in December
1998 after fifty-three years of marriage.
In 2000, she decided to retire. In the
fifty years she served in the role of
teacher and/or counselor, Mrs. Wilkes
was chosen Teacher of the Year more
times than she could count. At the
end of her career, she was still as
remarkable and gifted as ever.
“Mrs. Wilkes’ last year at Toombs
County High School was my firstyear
there and only my second-year
teaching,” recalled Meredith Brodnax,
the art teacher at Toombs County High
School. “You could give her a scheduling
problem for a student, and she would
pick up a piece of paper and a pen and
scribble a few things down and hand it
back to you with the problem resolved.
It was all in her head. She was truly
amazing.”
Following her retirement in May
2000, Mrs. Wilkes’ heart stopped
during a routine colonoscopy. She was