WILLIAM ANDREW LEEPER
                        Charlotte, North Carolina
                                 1982
         
         
          My father, Charles Matthew Leeper, son of Andrew A. Leeper
     and Elizabeth Parks McKnight left his home at the south point in
     Belmont, N.C. and came to Charlotte to attend business school.
     He worked for the Southern Railway for seventeen years before he
     decided to start a grocery business. After coming to Charlotte
     he met and married Beulah Lee Severs, daughter of William W.
     Severs and Martha Adelaide Hinshaw. They had three sons and two
     daughters. For years we were the only Leeper family in the city.

     I grew up in the city attending school at Wesley Heights graded
     school and Alexander Graham Junior High School. When I was about
     sixteen years old, my father contracted pneumonia and died at an
     early age of forty four. I got a job as wrapper at Belks Dept.
     store and later was shoe salesman of childrens shoes there. I
     attended night classes at Hollingsworth Comptometer School and
     the Geyers Business College. Before moving to Washington D.C. I
     also worked in the office of the old Southern Bakeries getting
     my first office experince.

     During WW 2, I served in Florida, California and Hawaii with the
     Air Transport Command which later became part of the US Air Force
     when it was established.  I was also a member of the United States
     Navy Reserve in Washington, D.C.

     After the war I returned to my Civil Service job in Washington. D.C.
     I attended night classes at the Southeastern University studying
     accounting, economics and business practices. I worked at Interstate
     Commerce Commission and the Civil Aeronautics Administration which
     became Federal Aviation Administration and is now under the Dept of
     Transportation. I retired at age fifty nine with thirty years of
     service. I continued to live in Washington until two years ago when
     I returned to Charlotte.

     My hobbies are collecting picture snapshots and phonograph records.
     I have about eighteen hundred records of various kinds of music. I
     am a great lover of music and dancing and I never missed an opport-
     unity to go partying. I would go to as many as three dances in some
     weeks. Another hobby of sports was tennis which I played many week
     ends in my earlier years.