MARVIN BUNDY'S REMINISCENCES RECORDED FOR FUTURE
A picture in the News Messenger Monday brought back memories to Marvin W. Bundy, a retired self-styled jack-of-all-trades
who lives about six miles North of Hamlet. The photo, taken from a postcard, showed the flooded Pee Dee River covering tracks on a
railroad bridge between Hamlet and Cheraw. The post card had a 1908 postmark.
Bundy, who will be 66 in March, says that, while he was only three-and-a-half years old at the time of the flood, he remembers it
well. "My mother had a sister who lived in Cheraw, while we lived close to Lumber Bridge in Robeson County," Bundy remembers. "It had
been a rainy Fall," he notes, "and the water had been high in the river. My mother went to visit in Cheraw, and when my father came to
get her, the Pee Dee had flooded.
"A covered bridge over the river had halfway washed away," the elderly man continued, "when my father got there in the horse and
buggy. So he had to leave his transportation on this side of the river while he went across, wading over on the water-covered railroad
bridge." Things had not changed by the time the family returned to the Cheraw side of the Pee Dee.
"Since I was only a little more than three years old, my father carried me across while he held my mother's hand," Bundy says. He
explains that in that manner the family made it back across the swollen Pee Dee. "It is a trip that I do not think I could forget," Bundy
concluded with a smile.
Many people are interested in this and other remembrances, so the elderly man is making tapes for Richmond County Library, in which
he relates many of his earlier experiences. Bundy has many of them. He first moved to this area in 1923, and has held numerous jobs, such
as working in a paper mill in Rockingham, farming, 10 years at Hamlet Ice Co., and two years at the old T. C. Lawrence Grocery Store on
Hamlet Ave.
He has been married for 42 years to the former Ruby Mae Terry, and has four children (all of whom are married) also eight grand
children, and one great-grandson. (1971)
Whats New in Richmond County
Return to Miscellaneous Newspapter Articles
Return to Richmond County Home Page