Born 14 AUG 27 into a family which were no property owners with insurmountable medical problems facing them. 

My older sister, Muriel, had infantile paralysis when she was two years old. How these medical costs were satisfied is beyond me. There were visits to the Scottish Rite Hospital in Atlanta. This was a major operation in the 20's and 30's considering there were few paved roads in these days. 

My Mother told me, when I was two years old, how it was that one day coming up Sand Mountain at the Sulphur Springs Gap, Dad turned the open top T-Model Ford over and had to dig me out from under it. 

Reckon that might have had something to do with me "volunteering" for so many things. It was some years before someone told me that we were "po folks." S'funny, I didn't realize what it meant to be poor! 

The years blended together as we moved to Trenton, GA, to Tiftonia, TN then back to Sand Mountain, near Ider, AL. 

My Dad, Flavious, was an accomplished barber -- manual clippers and all. He also plied his skills as a stone and brick mason. I helped him in the wee hours of the night pasting wall-paper for his interior decorating. My mother, Pearl, was a housewife and writer of poetry. 

In these years, our church services were held once each month. Usually on the Saturday before and including the fourth Sunday. 

I attended my first school in a two-room school house. It stood about a mile from where I now live my later years. I walked barefooted for the most part of the year until the ground froze and frost came marching over these Sand Mountain hills. My lunch was usually biscuits and fried
eggs.

In the ensuing years I attended grammar school at Trenton, GA, Lookout Jr. High in
Chattanooga, TN, Central High in Chattanooga and grammar school and high school at Ider, AL.

While working at a "Home Store" in Chattanooga and living in rented quarters, I was in the ROTC at Central High and was a member of the TN National Guard. 

16 years old as of August 14, 1943.

Came April, 1944 I joined the Navy (Don't ask me how). I vacationed in Boot-Camp at Camp Peary, Virginia. This was a CB (Construction Battalion) Boot-Camp. The company in which I was the first which was not a CB Company. As a note of interest we had "Marine" DI's. I
remember how I was convinced to keep my arms aligned properly on the firing range a "swagger" stick on the offending member of my anatomy!

Millington, TN was the next juncture in my experiences, near Memphis. Hard to put it all together what came first and which finished it up at the Naval Technical Training Center. Aviation ordinance 50 Cal., 20 mm, 37 mm, synchronization of 50 cal to fire through a rotating propeller, bomb and bomb fuses nose and tail and there was radar. Highly secret in those days. Classes behind double barb wire fences. I guess I graduated as I went on to Corpus Christi, TX for aerial gunnery and aircrew training. 

I trained for aircrew in a PBM (Patrol Bomber by Martin) seaplane. WWII with Europe ended about this time. Kingsville, TX for training in loading belt ammunition (50 cal) and firing from a turret at a moving target. West Coast and California here I come. San Diego, Alameda flying in PBM's and having my career interrupted in August 1945 with the end of the war with Japan and me hospitalized with a pilonidal cyst. After hospitalization, basket leave for 30 days, I worked it into 45. 

Off to Hawaii and NAS Honolulu funning in the sun. Reenlistment to USN -- home on leave. Back to California -- then transshipped by surface to Guam by way of the Philippines. 

To Saipan, M.I. and VMPMS-6, more seaplane duty running "gopher" trips throughout neighboring islands "checking" up on them. Back to the States again. 

Free! Free! Free! A civilian again. 

I piddled around in photography in Alameda for a while, returned to Alabama in mid-1948 across the Rockies -- 32-degrees on the night of the 4th of July. 

Worked with my Dad and Brother building him a house in Tuscaloosa, AL out of surplus barracks. One semester in UA. Back to the mountains of N. Alabama -- raising chickens, drawing my 52/20 ($20 for 52 weeks) as a veteran. Active in my church activities. Fell in love with a daughter, Betty, of a railroad man. 

Since then we have reared five children, three grandchildren and have a total of 19 grand kids and five great-grand kids. 

Ordained to the full functions of the gospel ministry in 26 November 1950. Pastored a small group at Head Springs Primitive Baptist Church initially. 

Attended University of Chattanooga shortly. Worked at American Lava Corporation in Chattanooga. Bought our first house in Valley Head, Alabama. Our first child was born here. 

Next in the series of moves was to Pittsburgh, PA. Worked shortly with Continental Can Company. Back to Alabama as I was in the Naval Reserve and thought I had a job at NAS Birmingham, AL. 

Back to Pennsylvania. Working at Neville Chemical Company on "Neville's Island" adjacent to McKees Rocks, PA. Then to the farm near Allison Park, PA. Mr. John Paul was an attorney in Pittsburgh and had a farm in the rolling hills of western PA. A season there where our second son was born along the Allegheny River. It was here that our second child -- Selba, Jr. -- was born. 

Then to Kentucky. Dry Ridge was the name. A group of Primitive Baptists called for our services and we went to them. It was during this time which I had to make a decision, which I felt depended on my family's survival. Our third child was born here. Lehman Briley is his name, although it has been changed. He has since retired from active duty in the US ARMY. 

1955 -- Christmas and a couple of days thereafter, I departed for Norfolk, VA to a receiving station on my re-admit to active service in the Navy. We made the trip to Alameda California before the day of super-highways in an elderly 1946 Plymouth. A front spindle broke enroute. Stopped at a junk-yard, purchased another one, installed it and on our merry way. 

A cruise aboard the USS Oriskany (CVA-34) in 1956. Transferred to VP-19 NAS Alameda, CA, toured Alaska at Kodiak for more fun in the sun -- frozen as it may be. Then back to Guam again. 

To a squadron of AJ's flying photo-missions throughout the Pacific. Upon return from the Pacific, Milton Florida was our home. This was the first attempt to get into Army Aviation. I was involved in creating a "Flying Club" there. Two of our five children were born at Milton, FL -- Beth and Janiece. The next transfer was to the north again -- NAS Quonset Point, Rhode Island and VS-22, an anti-submarine squadron flying off the USS Lake Champlain (don't remember her number). 

Again I made application to get into Army Aviation -- success this time. Those who have been there, done that, know the path -- Ft. Walters, Ft. Rucker, Viet Nam 170th AHC Pleiku. Back to Hunter Army Airfield at Savannah, GA for tour of check pilot with the system. 

Then to Ft. Eustis for a siege of instruction to become a "Maintenance Officer," and gained something of a degree of which I am thankful -- one of the first WO's checked out as a AH1 Cobra Test Pilot. 

Back to Viet Nam -- again with the 170th at Pleiku and Kontum. Upon return to "the World" my family and I moved to Ft. Rucker. I attended the Warrant Officers Career Course and was assigned a billet in Aviation Safety. It was during this time that I received a call to the pastorate of Delray Beach Primitive Baptist Church, Delray Beach, Florida. Upon being refused a release from the Army before my assigned time was up, I traveled some 547mi each weekend to serve the congregation at Delray Beach. 

I retired in 1972, accepted a pastorate at the Mountain View Primitive Baptist Church, Fort Payne, Alabama and finally moved back to the "Beaty Hills" (named by one of my nephews) and this has been my base of operation since 1974.

There is a lot of meat that can be added to this fragmentation of a skeleton. You can get a glimpse of it at http://www.oocities.org/Heartland/Hills/1668; this is the "Out of Bondage" page. 

A section of this page has been added to honor those men who fought and died in Viet Nam most especially the 170th Assault Helicopter Company of the 52nd Combat Aviation Battalion at Pleiku RVN. Our mission was multifold in support of the "grunts." These are they whom lived and died in the swampy mis-mash of jungle and rice paddy.

http://www.oocities.org/Heartland/Hills/1668/170th_AHC_Bikinis/170th.html - please take a look in passing. 

Chief Beaty
Bikini Red 21/22 66-67 Drydock(?) 69-70
VHPA Member M09667