Carolyn Faye McGhee Carter

Native Daughter~Born on November 28, 1953 to Mr. & Mrs. John Davis McGhee. She was in the prime of life when she contracted a rare virus and died unexpectedly a couple of days later on September 12, 1995.

1971 1972

From Bob Esau:

Carolyn McGhee as I remember her.

To my eyes, she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen at the time. Carolyn was 14 and I was 12. I first met her on a youth hay ride and couldn't believe she was actually paying me any attention, being younger and all. I ended going steady with her and we stayed together for six years, she was my first real love. My parents ended up getting divorced when I was around 14 or 15 and I moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in the summer of 1971. We managed to stay together long distance, anyway, because Carolyn had a driver's license and a car and she would drive all the way from Chapel Hill to Ft. Lauderdale just to spend a few days with me. Oh yeah; she always let me drive, even when I was 14. I ended up enlisting in the Air Force when I was 17 and we stayed together for the first year I was in. She would drive back down whenever I had time off.

After the first year we started to drift apart; and we started to live lives without each other. We almost got married, but we both ended up marrying someone else.

We stayed in touch throughout our lives but never reconnected until I moved back to NC after many years. And it was the best to see her again. She had gotten more beautiful and was just as kind and caring a woman as the one I had met when I was 12. She never put herself first and was one of the most thoughtful people I have ever met to this day.

My brother had to prompt me to write this about Carolyn. It makes me sad that she left us so early in her life, but I know she touched a lot of people's lives when she was on this side of the grass and I have nothing but fond memories.

Carolyn McGhee, my first love.

Bob Esau

From Mike Esau:

Like Bob said, he and Carolyn were inseparable from the seventh grade on. It was a little embarrassing for me since Carolyn was older than me and hot to boot. It wasn't like I was dating at all to begin with. Once, they had pity on me and talked Carolyn's younger sister, Bonnie, into going out with me a couple of times.

When Carolyn got her license, you could have tossed out her passenger seat and they would never have noticed the difference. Bob drove with one hand on the wheel and the other around Carolyn. Through the rear window it looked like a two-headed monster. Both of them drove like race car drivers.

However, Carolyn was not much on roadway navigation. We rode down together on her first trip to Ft. Lauderdale. Even when she was driving, she wanted me to stay awake to make sure she did not get lost. After about ten hours into the trip it was getting near midnight. We were just south of Jacksonville. I asked her to take a turn and that I needed a nap. I assured Carolyn she would be fine. We were on I-95, a four lane interstate highway, headed south and it ran all the way to Ft. Lauderdale. I told her to wake me up if there was any trouble. When I woke up a couple of hours later, I asked how we were doing. Carolyn said great. Like I said, she and Bobby both drove like bats out of hell. She probably averaged 95 mph. I glanced at one of the I-95 signs as it whizzed by and thought something was amiss. The next sign we passed indicated we were not only headed north but were a good sixty miles north of where I had sacked out and we were entering Georgia. I never really got a good explanation from Carolyn how that happened.

She was one of the hell raisin'est, nicest people I ever had the pleasure of knowing. She was always in great health. She contracted some weird virus, went into the hospital and died like two or three days later. It was a horribly bad shock all the way around.