Mr. Stanford Adams was born in Clinton, South Carolina, to Samuel and Evelyn Adams.  Stanford’s father was in the military and they moved north to Philadelphia when he was sent to Korea during the war.  After Mr. Adams returned, Stanford’s parents had four more children before  Stanford’s mother passed when he was seven, and his father remarried.  Stanford says that he and his siblings never referred to his stepmother, Marietta, as anything but “Mom” because that’s what she was to them.  The family lived at 51st and Ogden, but in the summer “went home” to his grandparents’ farm in South Carolina.  

Stanford says that back then the people down South were friendlier and more open than up North. “The ones that didn’t like you, you knew it. The ones that did like you, you knew that, too.”  He met his wife Lisa, the sister of his friend, and told the friend, “I’m in love.”  Stanford says that he chased her until she let him catch her, and that they had 48 great years together.  Stanford first worked in construction, then for SEPTA, doing everything from laying track to driving trolleys.  He was working in construction again, turning warehouses into apartments, when he retired following a back injury. Stanford’s words of advice to young people: 

“Stay in school!  I don’t want you to have to work outside in the winter cold and the summer heat like I did!”