Pat and Dave McCord

As is the custom for Around Davidson at this time of year, your correspondent is taking time off during the holidays to be with family. Each year, we ask someone who has lived in our community for many years to share Christmas memories. Today we introduce you to Pat and Dave McCord, of The Pines at Davidson, and their memories of 1930s Christmases on the farm, through a DavidsonNews.net audio interview.

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Christmas memories with Pat and Dave McCord

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(MP3 format, 6 min 45 sec.)
Our thanks to Davidson musicians Clara Gerdes, 13, on piano, and Martha Gerdes, 11, on flute, for their musical accompaniment. They’re the daughters of Mary Womble and Philipp Gerdes. They perform the traditional Appalachian carol “I Wonder as I Wander,” Ralph Vaughan Williams’ arrangement of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Silent Night.”

MORE ABOUT THE McCORDS

This charming couple, both in their early 80s, met in the early 1940s at a Halloween party held in the Odell community, just east of Davidson in Cabarrus County.  They celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary Oct. 11, remembering fondly how they eloped to South Carolina in 1944.  Dave then returned to Key West for Navy duty while Pat was left to go home and explain to her parents “what she had done!”

Pat (her given name is Margaret) grew up in the Odell community, the daughter of Frank and Jonnie Allison.  She and her twin brother were the youngest of 10 children.

Family photo shows Dave McCord on the running boad of the family car in the 1930s.

Dave is the son of David Brice McCord and Bessie Steele Harris. He spent his childhood in the family homeplace on McCord Road, which was named after his granddaddy, David Pinkney McCord.  (Old timers may remember that this connection between Ramah Church and Huntersville was first named Ramah Church Road until changing to McCord Road after World War II.)

Returning to the Ramah Church community after military duty, Dave and Pat settled on the McCord property.  Dave farmed with his daddy but needing a better wage, worked for Blythe and Isenhour in Charlotte earning $1.20/hr laying brick.  Pat kept the “home fires burning” raising their son, David, and daughter, Debbie, while tending poultry sheds full of a thousand broilers at a time.  Once the children were grown, Pat “retired” from the poultry business and worked for Maintenance Supply in Huntersville for 28 years. Always thinking farming, Dave kept beef and milk cows, milking by hand with his mother and selling the milk to Carnation in Charlotte.

Dave and Pat have called The Pines in Davidson home for the past nine years and continue their longtime membership in Ramah Presbyterian Church.  Although Dave misses tromping through the woods to find just the right cedar Christmas tree, they are happy in their memory filled apartment – complete with a beautiful Christmas tree but one, Dave admits, that came in a box!  Just stop in for a visit and hear wonderful McCord tales from farming to ballroom dancing.

Merry Christmas to Pat and Dave!

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Have news for Brenda? Write to her at hbarger@bellsouth.net.

ABOUT OUR 2ND ANNUAL CHRISTMAS AUDIO POSTCARD

The interview with the McCords was produced by DavidsonNews.net editor David Boraks. It’s the second year we’ve offered an audio postcard for Christmas. You can listen to last year’s Christmas story by Russell Mase, Link below.

Dec. 22, 2008, “Russell Mase: A Story for Christmas Eve.”