Batts relinquishes her piano at Grace Baptist

Kevin Hall

June 03, 2009 10:37 pm

— DOERUN — Fifty-two white keys. Thirty-six black keys. And about 62 years of playing them for churches across the country.
Margaret Batts stepped down two months ago as pianist at Grace Baptist Church in Doerun, “bequeathing” the role to her daughter, Molly Graham, a teacher at Willie J. Williams Middle School.
Batts, who turned 90 in October, first studied piano in senior high school under Mrs. Creech, the pianist at Moultrie’s First Baptist Church. She went on to graduate from the Wesleyan College Conservatory of Music in 1939 with a degree in piano and organ. While in college she taught piano and played for churches, according to Graham.
Batts remains attached to her alma mater. A print of the conservatory hangs in her living room, and she proudly points it out to visitors. The conservatory itself burned, she said, and was replaced with the Macon Post Office.
The daughter of Garnett and Cliffie Edge of Doerun, she began dating David Batts, also of Doerun, when she was in ninth grade. Her father, though, wouldn’t let her get married until both of them had completed their education.
“We both had to get our degrees,” Batts recalled.
Graham commented that her grandfather was an unusual man for his time because he expected his four children — all girls — to become self-sufficient.
The young Miss Edge and Batts courted 10 years, until she had graduated from Wesleyan and he had his agricultural business degree from the University of Georgia. Batts recalled how her future husband would hitchhike from Athens to Macon to see her and “camp out” at the bus station because he didn’t have a place to stay.
They married in 1942 … just in time for the war.
David Batts served as a weather forecaster in what would become the U.S. Air Force. After World War II he remained in the service, and the family moved around in the military fashion. Graham praised her mother as “a good military wife” who held the family together.
Batts offered a partial list of their assignments — three years in Alaska, five in Illinois, three in Hawaii, one in Washington, D.C. She remembered the cold in Alaska very well.
“You had to plug in your car battery at night so it wouldn’t freeze,” she said.
All along the way, in every town they were assigned to, Batts’ family sought out a Baptist church. In Illinois, the church they first visited was affiliated with the Northern Baptist Convention. Batts said when they left the church she told her husband, “We can’t go back there. We’ve got to find a Southern Baptist church.” They did, too.
At whatever church they chose to attend, someone soon found out Batts had a degree in piano. And they just happened to need a pianist.
“Never once was she paid,” Graham said. “It was all volunteer work.”
Batts did take paying jobs, though, teaching music. Sometimes it was in the schools on base. Sometimes it was in people’s homes.
Graham remembered times her father was on late shift, and he had to take care of the children while her mother went to work in the mornings.
That all came to an end in 1971 when David Batts retired from the Air Force. He was serving at Robins Air Force Base in central Georgia at the time.
Batts said she hadn’t really planned on returning to Doerun — she hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I was just following him.”
Graham didn’t quite remember it that way, though. She said the family made many trips to visit her grandparents, no matter where they were stationed. She said she always had the impression that Doerun would one day be home.
Batts’ father had plans of his own.
Garnett Edge had settled the farm outside Doerun in 1910. He grew cotton, pleanuts and tobacco. Two houses have sat on that site; one of his daughters was born in the first house, and the other three in the house that stands there now.
By 1971, life had caught up with Edge and his wife, so he offered his daughter and son-in-law a proposal: “Y’all don’t have to build a house or buy a house. Y’all can just come here,” Batts recalled.
“He was getting feeble, and Mama was too,” she said. “They needed somebody here.”
So Margaret Batts returned to the house she was born in and helped to take care of her parents.
David Batts became a farmer, and Margaret Batts began to play piano at another church — Grace Baptist — located literally right next door.
The Batts raised three children, David Batts II, a structural engineer in Macon; Steven Batts, a pastor in Newnan; and Graham. There are five grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Both Garnett and Cliffie Edge have passed away. David Batts died in 2000. But the tradition of sharing the house lives on, and has even grown. The house Garnett Edge built is home to four generations now: Not only Margaret Batts and Graham but also Graham’s daughter, son-in-law and grandson.
“People were born in this house,” Graham remarked. “People died in this house. We’ve had weddings in this house. We’ve had funeral receptions in this house. We have a lot of history in this house.”

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