Editor’s note: Amanda Walker Hall, who passed away on July 25, 2020, was beloved by many Thomasville residents. Two of her dearest friends — Barbara Clark Copeland and Delia Dykes Owens — wanted to write a different type of obituary in honor of Amanda. Their story follows.

Amanda was first, and five minutes later her twin, Margaret, was born on January 19, 1949. But that doesn’t really say it. 

A bunch of us were born into a group, a troop that formed in kindergarten and never let go. We were girls and guys — too many to name — and now seventy years later, still we hold on, and keep up, support and love each other. Dance to Wooly-Bully any chance we get.

In the ’50s, we played outside until the softly-lit streetlights came on, then continued “kicking-the-can” in a mist of lightning bugs. Or lay on quilts, wishing on a shooting star — because those wishes always came true. Some of us meet for the first time when we joined Brownies or Cub Scouts at the old Youth Center and memorized a pledge that’s good for life.

Sometimes, Margaret and Amanda, Barbara Clark Copeland, and Delia Dykes Owens rode the train to Boston, Georgia, to visit the twins’ grandma, Danny, for a few nights. Danny taught us an old toast, “Here’s to’d ya, if I never see’d ya, I never knowed ya.” The four of us sat around her kitchen table, and using shot glasses filled with Coca-Cola, we’d toast each other over and over again. It stuck. To this day, every time we get together, we toast each with those precious words. Not with Coca-Cola.

All of us rode our bikes to the Rose “picture show” to watch whatever was playing for a quarter. Popcorn, fifteen cents. We knew who was at the “Y” by whose bikes were parked outside. Mr. Everett inside. He guided us through the tricky tunnel to becoming teenagers, but what we remember most is that he introduced us to the Beatles — straight out of the Times-Enterprise.

Of course, there was canoeing and counting jigger bites at Camp Piney Woods, and later the mad dash to ring the huge bell at midnight, just to outrun the camp director through the woods. He never caught us once.

Kids walked or rode their bikes to school; rode our bikes everywhere. No matter where your friend lived, no distance was too far.

On Saturdays, we’d meet outside the Pool Hall and, standing on the sidewalk, buy chili hot dogs through the window, cut right out of the wall. On school days, we’d ride our bikes to Inman Drugs for cherry cokes or vanilla cokes after the last class. Sometimes during the last class. Especially if it was algebra.

A time when everybody’s mother was everybody’s mother.

As teenagers, our capers were never actually illegal (or not by much). We’d sneak out at night and drive one of our parents’ cars to the train station for homemade blackberry pie or climb the water tower or wrap someone’s yard. Harmless adventures that set us up for life in that outside world.

Eventually, some of us left for different colleges, some returning to T’ville, some living in different states, or far away continents or tropical islands. But we never forgot, and always came home to reminisce, to retell our capers. To order another chili-dog through that same cut-out window. To make new memories around camp fires under a sky now full of satellites as well as stars.

Amanda had great adventures — hiking ten days through the Swiss Alps, back-country skiing in the remote mountains of Idaho, canoeing wild rivers; driving through Eastern Europe. She lived in many areas of the country with her husband Mike Hall, and taught Early Childhood Education. They settled in Atlanta and raised their daughter Megan, and loved their grandchildren Sutton and Maggie. Still, Amanda’s travels continued. She and Margaret worked at the Olympics in London, canoed glacial lakes in Canada. But Amanda always came back home to visit Thomasville, and eventually improved an old abandoned shack in the Georgia woods as a girlfriend retreat, where we shared Margaret’s homemade cheese straws and a Greek salad from Louie’s; no anchovies. As the sun set, we had drinks on the screened veranda, and toasted each other with Danny’s words.

Now, well into a new century, our troop endures, and through our entire lives, the two shining stars were Margaret and Amanda. All you had to say was “the twins,” and everyone in town knew who you meant: the Walker twins. They are always smiling and laughing. They are crazy-fun, the best friends ever, adventuresome, wise, and loved by all. They are kind.

Amanda came first and may have gone first, but they are still “The Twins.” They will always be: “The Walker Twins.” And we still have Margaret.

So again, but not for the last time: “Here’s to’d ya, Amanda. If I never see’d ya, I never knowed ya.” We — your troop and an entire town — will love you forever.

Editor’s Note: Amanda Walker Hall, who passed away on July 25, 2020, was beloved by many Thomasville residents. Two of her dearest friends — Barbara Clark Copeland and Delia Dykes Owens — wanted to write a different type of obituary in honor of Amanda. Their story follows.

 

 

 

Delia Dykes Owens and her twin brother, Bobby Dykes, were born in Americus, Georgia, in 1949. Soon afterwards, they moved to Thomasville, where they lived until 1965. 

Owens earned a B.S. degree in Zoology at the University of Georgia and a Ph.D. in Animal Behavior at the University of California, Davis.

She spent 23 years in Africa conducting scientific research on Kalahari lions, brown hyenas and elephants. She co-authored three best-selling nonfiction books about her adventures and studies in Africa, and co-authored numerous technical papers in scientific journals.

In 2018, Owens published her first novel, “Where the Crawdads Sing,” which has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for 99 weeks, and has been Number 1 for nearly 50 percent of the weeks. The book, which has been translated into 40 languages and sold more than 7 million copies worldwide, is being produced into a feature film by Reese Witherspoon and Sony Studios.

Owens is writing her second novel.