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in the plays that they did.” And Kay knew of the vaudeville act Don, Richie, and Jarvie played around town.
    The university campus was flooded with returning GIs. Kay had many suitors, and Don immediately found himself vying with another boyfriend named Kent. But Don was relentless, and Kay kept saying yes. Don would keep Richie up past midnight moaning and groaning “about how much he loved her.”
    Don had many fans at the university. Random people kept approaching Kay, unbidden, and urging her to pair off with him. “He was very charismatic,” she recalled. “I recognized that almost immediately. He was funny and outgoing, and we could talk. He had a lot of depth of character, and that was interesting to me.”
    Given Don’s stature on campus, Kay was surprised when, about a year after their first date, he took her home to the threadbare rooming house on University Avenue. They would go there for lunch. Elsie would prepare a full meal, with two desserts, a cake and a pie. Then, the three would sit and watch Elsie’s favorite soap operas, and Don would poke fun at the characters and the lines until Kay and Elsie couldn’t stop laughing. Kay had a warm, encouraging laugh, just like Don’s mother.
    Kay and Don dated for two years. One summer in that span, Don drove Kay to a seasonal job at a hotel in Beach Haven, New Jersey. He intended to drop her there and go off in search of stand-up work. But when they arrived and Don sized up the romantic competition at the inn, he abandoned his own plans and took a job as a dishwasher. He wanted to keep Kay close.
    Don married Kay in December 1947 in a ceremony at her father’s church. He graduated from West Virginia University the following spring.
    Having finally won the girl, Don struggled mightily to support her. He sold shirts for a time. Then, frustrated by the lack of jobs, he enrolled in a graduate theater program at the University of Arizona. Don’s successful older brother, Bill, owned property there. But Don and Kay stayed only a few months because Don’s GI Bill records were lost and he wasn’t receiving his student aid. They returned to Morgantown in winter. Don took a holiday job selling toys at a department store. In quiet moments there, Don would chat up the man playing Santa Claus in the Christmas display. A theater buff, Santa urged Don to return to New York. “Go for it,” Santa would say. “You don’t need any more college.” In later years, Don would tell nightclub audiences that the man’s advice had launched his career: “Don’t tell me there’s no Santa Claus!”
    Santa’s urgings surely put New York in Don’s mind. But the final straw came one day in the university drama department. Don was sitting with some fellow thespians when a young man walked in and cried, “Guess what? Next week, I’m leaving for New York!” At those words, “something snapped inside of me,” Don recalled. “ ‘Dammit!’ I said to myself. ‘I’m going to New York!’ And just like that, I made the decision.” He rushed home and told Kay. She was ready.
    Don had twenty dollars to his name, so once more he hit up brother Bill, who loaned him one hundred dollars for the trip. It was the last time Don would have to borrow car fare.

2.
    Laugh, Lest Ye Cry
    C ARL AND Geneva Griffith lived on the wrong side of Mount Airy, North Carolina—the south side, below the Mount Airy and Eastern Railroad tracks. The neighborhood was home to the hosiery mills that employed the town’s working-class women and the furniture mills that employed many of the men, including Carl. The north side of Mount Airy housed the men who owned those mills, and the children who would inherit them. In north Mount Airy, many of the streets were named for trees. In south Mount Airy, they were named for industries: Factory Street, Depot Street, Granite Street.
    The