Bessie Lillian Gordy Carter was a registered nurse, physicians' assistant, pecan grower, university housemother, nursing home manager, Peace Corps Volunteer, and renowned public speaker and raconteur. She ignored the restrictive mores and prejudices of the racially segregated South of the Great Depression years, and was an avid lifelong supporter of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers because she happened to attend the first major league baseball game in which Jackie Robinson, from Cairo, Georgia, ever played. "Miz Lillie" was a favored guest on television talk shows, including those of Johnny Carson and Walter Cronkite, usually able to "steal the microphone" from her hosts. Carter writes: "My mother was often gone from home when I was a boy, serving as a nurse on private duty in her patients' homes.
