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^[[words of Alma]]
^[[2]]

I was born in Columbus, Georgia some seventy years ago. [[yellow highlight]] I have lovely memories of a Victorian type of house, which my father had built, situated in a section of the city called Rose Hill. It was rightly named because roses bloomed there almost the year round. Still fresh in my memory are the beautiful flower gardens that we had. There were two unusual circular flower beds, so deeply preserved in my subconscious, which find expression in my paintings. [[/yellow highlight]]

My childhood in Columbus, where I attended the grade schools, was very pleasant. My mother and aunts were teachers and were graduates of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. I can remember their participation in Cultural clubs, their their studying Latin, History, and the Classics. A white professor from Atlanta came to our home or twice a month to instruct them. A friend of theirs went to Washington and took lessons in painting on velvet. Upon her return to Columbus, she opened a class in that type of painting. I enjoyed the club's meeting at my house, for their tubes of oil paints and their beautiful colors fascinated me I was given music lessons and my mother played the violin.

[[yellow highlight]] My three sisters and I spent the summers on our grandfather's plantation, about 10 miles across the Chattahoochee River in Alabama. [[/yellow highlight]] He was an excellent veterinarian and all his grandchildren loved him. My cousin the late]] Clyde McDuffie was a Washingtonian who was head of the foreign language department in the public school