HOMETOWN LIVING AT I TS BEST 115
Shelly with her father
George Saba in 1952.
added, “My father did not want to
get a divorce because he did not
want to be excommunicated from
the Greek Orthodox church.”
Concerned for the children’s
welfare, George removed them
from Emily’s care at the boarding
house and found help among his
estranged wife’s family in Screven
County. Ironically, one of the
homes in which George found
help was the Mallards. Little did
he know that many years later,
one of the Mallard girls, a distant
cousin to his children’s mother,
would become his wife.
George hired someone to
teach him to read English,
and in 1931 he began the
naturalization process. “By the
end of his life, my father was able
to speak and read English, but
the only thing he could write was
his name, which he signed on
his naturalization papers,” said
Shelly.
After eleven years of
separation, George finally went
through with a divorce. In 1935,
he married Frances Mallard.
George was forty-six and Frances
was twenty-six, but twenty
years age difference was hardly
uncommon at the time. “He was
excommunicated from the church
just as he feared, and it really
broke his heart. He never went to
church again. Although he never
attended, my dad would take us
to church every Sunday morning
and pick us up again because my
mother couldn’t drive.”
The church was not the only opposition George faced.
Even though “Middle-Easterners” were not officially a
part of the anti-miscegenation laws that made interracial
marriage illegal in most states at that time, his olivecolored
skin and thick Middle-Eastern accent set him
apart. “My mother and father had a lot of prejudice to
overcome in the deep South,” said Shelly. In fact, George
and Frances had eloped because of her family’s disapproval.
George and Frances had two daughters: Miriam
Frances and Martha Ann. Eleven years later, their third
daughter was born. Shelly smiled “I was a big surprise.”
Her father was sixty-two and her mother forty-two at the
time. There’s a bit of a story behind Shelly’s given name,
Michele George. The obvious part is that she was named
George after her father. The ironic part is that she shares
her birthdate with George Washington. And the doctor
who delivered her? Dr. George, of course.