 In the 1930s, the family moved to Montgomery, Alabama where he helped support his parents and their large family by doing odd jobs.In the early 1940s he married his childhood friend, Willie Mae Thomas, and had 13 children, 11 of whom survived to adulthood.During the late 1960s, after a severe injury (his legs were crushed when a load of marble shifted and fell from a forklift as he was sweeping in the furniture factory), he turned to painting to combat boredom, pain and long hours of idle time.