UPBEAT POEMS BY A BEAT DOWN POET

"UPBEAT POEMS BY A BEATDOWN POET" BY SHIRLEY STANLEY MCCOY

Years ago in a little one-room country schoolhouse-grades 1-8 inclusive, our teacher, Miss Evelyn Vaughn introduced us to poetry by the pros: Rudyard Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Henry Wadsworth Long fellow, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost and Robert Burns.

For assignments we were required to memorize their poems, stand up in front of the class and recite them aloud. I was eight years old when I discovered I could actually hear music in words! With delight I began to write simple verses to amuse myself.

From then on writing poetry not only became an escape form of relaxation but a tangible way to express my deepest feelings-a gift from God!

Dear Reader, as you run the gauntlet of my emotions, enjoy the journey! And in your life-1 encourage you to hang in there, be uplifted with hope and to be the better for having read my mood poetry!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR [Shirley Stanley McCoy]

I was raised on a 265 acre farm a mile west of Alpine and graduated from Connersville Senior High during the Great Depression at age 16. After a year at home, Grandmother, alarmed that I'd never meet anyone to marry stuck in the hills, sent me to Indiana Business College in Muncie where my older brother attended Ball State University, also in Muncie. She paid my college tuition, my room at the YWCA and I worked for my meals in their tearoom. To earn pocket money I talked my way into a Saturday job at Millers Dress Shop, where I'd made friends with a girl who worked there.

Meanwhile my high school chum had married and moved to Indianapolis and was anxious for me to visit her. When I explained I couldn't afford to come, she mailed me a roundtrip bus ticket and promised a date with a young man who worked at Allison Engineering with her husband whom they agreed would be perfect for me. Would you believe I fell in love at first sight with John McCoy and told him so? He protested that was totally impossible as I didn't even know him! Three months later we were married at E. 10^th St. Methodist Church in Indianapolis. Grandma was so delighted she paid for the wedding, a dinner at the Claypool Hotel with a harpist providing the dinner music...her mission accomplished!

With Pearl Harbor came the Draft. John was classified 1-A for immediate military service. Reluctant to leave me alone in a strange town when he left, we moved in with my folks until he had to go. Upon becoming a new father and working on a farm his 1-A status was changed to 4-F. That winter we both got jobs at American Central in a defense plant and he was further deferred. Living on my salary and banking his, we soon had a down payment on our little bungalow in Connersville, Indiana where we raised our four children...Joan, Jill, Jane and John II. I was a stay at home Mom, and I defy anyone to say I didn't work!

Since John and I were both raised Methodists, we joined Connersville First Methodist Church and attended every Sunday with our family. Hence it was only natural that family related incidences appeared in the devotions and the poetry I write. John and I were sweethearts until the day he died of lung cancer. In my first book "So You've Been Asked to Give Devotions?" published in 2002, an original poem precedes each devotional...others appear in numerous anthologies and occasionally in the local newspaper.

Currently I'm press reporter and secretary for 3 organization, teach a young adult S.S. class, sing in the Chancel Choir and learning computer savvy.