Athens High School and Concord College friends of more than 40 years ago provided the incentive for this little book about my personal journey into the past and to my home town. Talking with them also motivated me to develop a web site, Athens We Knew, which in some way may capture more than the facts about a town and its families, schools, churches, businesses and organizations. In reconnecting, many of my friends noted that it is difficult to describe what it was like growing up in a place where parents knew each other and every home was an extension of our own. We remembered that our parents quietly sacrificed to make our lives better than their own. They held us accountable, teaching my example moral and ethical principles that governed their lives and seem to be less common today. As children who grew up in Athens we learned more about life in Norman Rockwell's America than we knew at the time, and only now more fully appreciate.