Author Jeanne Cahill recently held a book signing event at the Okefenokee Regional Library in Waycross.
Cahill, a finalist in the Georgia Independent Authors’ Association, discussed her recent memoir, Call Me Jeanne with the attendees.
In Call Me Jeanne, readers are welcomed into the extraordinary life of a woman who has seen nearly a century of changenavigating the shifting landscapes of the South, the political sphere as well as her own deeply personal triumphs and challenges.
Born in Crawley near Dixie Union during the height of the Great Depression, Cahill's life began on a small South Georgia farm, where she learned resilience, hard work, and the deep value of family.
The daughter Clifford and Wannie Taylor. Cahill’s father ran a service station in Dixie Union, but moved his family to Norfolk, Virginia to make a living.
Cahill recounted her child hood and attending Berry College. “The tuition was only $5 per student back then. The students participated in a workstudy program that helped them pay for their tuition; since Berry College was an agricultural-based college, the boys would work in the fields while the girls would cook and do laundry,” said Cahill.
“Students would get a set of dress clothes and a set of work clothes along with a black pair of shoes for fall and winter and a white pair of shoes for spring.”
After attending Berry College, she moved to Atlanta and worked in the accounting office of the John Deere Plow and Implement Company. Later, she moved to Jacksonville and worked as an executive secretary in the sheriff’s office under the newly elected sheriff, Al Cahill. A Navy medic stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, her future husband owned an insurance agency and was president of the Florida Jaycees.
She and Cahill married and moved to Atlanta where they helped with Jimmy Carter’s campaign for governor and, according to Mrs. Cahill, “… I was appointed to the Georgia Commission on the Status of Women, C.S.W..”
Years later, when she was 74, she completed her degree in English at Berry College. The main theme from her book Cahill wants readers to understand, “We did not have money but we had something better: kind, loving parents and grandparents.”
