Dot's Career

Dorothy Moore Barnette Grace (left) with a friend (or her sister-in-law)

Likely in Montgomery, Alabama

Dot's maternal grandfather had lived in Montgomery (actually Ramer, just outside the capital).   And Dot, when she was in Shorterville growing up, every year would jump on a train and take trips to visit him.  It was something she always looked forward to.  Then, in the years 1939 and 1940, Dot took a job in Montgomery with Sears Roebuck.   She was twenty-six, and not yet married.

In an interview I did with Dot for a high school history project in the 1980s, she talked about this time in her life:

I finished Campbell Business College and got my diploma.  I went to Montgomery and went to work as a payroll clerk for Sears Roebuck.  I had to complete and work out the payroll for every employee at Sears.  We had about fifty regular employees.  They punched the time clock, and I paid them off every week.  - Dorothy Grace

In that same interview I did with Dot, I asked what she might have changed about her educational opportunities and career choice:

I would have like to have gone on to college (4 year) and learned more.  I would have liked to have had a better job, been better qualified and maybe been in civil service work - had a civil service job and worked in Washington.  Civil service work is so much better, pays more and you have a good retirement.  - Dorothy Grace

Either prior to going to Montgomery or sometime right after marrying Victor, Dot worked in other capacities:

I was a bookkeeper and secretary.  That was about the only training you could get back then.  Most of my jobs were working around peanut companies - Goldkist and Session Oil Company - paying off the farmers when they'd bring in their peanuts in the Fall.  Every figure you put down had to be right. - Dorothy Grace

After giving birth to Mother (Dinah), Dot stayed home and took on a different set of responsibilities.  However, she still used her bookkeeping smarts to help Victor manage their farm.  And I think she said - and I remember Mother saying it too - Granddad Victor owed a lot of his success to her business acumen.