Thomas Shytle

Carolina Roots: from Whence I Came Thomas Shytle

The textile industry in Piedmont North Carolina was among the first to feel the ripple effect of the stock market crash in October 1929. The author was barely a year old in 1933 when his family was forced by events, over which they had no control, to leave the cotton mill where they worked and relocate to the mountains of Western NC. Economic conditions there were even worse. By 1939 war was already raging in Europe and the mills were flooded with orders to produce fabrics for the military. When the author was seven his family moved back to the mill village; to much better conditions. His story is about his experiences while growing up on a cotton mill village followed by a career in the USAF. From the Great Depression to the 21st century his story includes the sociological, political, and economic dynamics of that period; and his personal reaction to the evolution that shaped our world during the last seventy-five years.