Donna Faulkner Barron
Georgia History Non-Fiction
A country boy born in a small town named Porterdale just southeast of Atlanta became a man with a purpose. How does someone rise up from barely completing high school take on such a monumental task such as etching out three historical figures from the Civil War. I tell you how...a man that went above and beyond the vision that God gave him to work day and night and sometimes seven days a week until the job was finished.. My dad is a man who has been dedicated to everything he has come in contact with ...from helping his mother around the house as well enlisting into the Marine Corp to help provide financial support and then soon marrying my mom to start his own family.
A young man with many jobs starting out as a newspaper boy and moving onto a position as a welder never dreamed that one day he would be hired as the man to erect an outside 400-foot elevator that would ascend up the side of Stone Mountain. This man who fell in love with the mountain and became the Chief Carver of the Confederate Memorial is the same simple man that never took an art lesson in his life and believed that he had a purpose which soon became a historical monument.
Donna Faulkner Barron is the oldest daughter of Roy Faulkner, Chief Carver of the Confederate Memorial Carving at Stone Mountain Park. Donna was born to Roy and Juanita in Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta and was raised in Covington, Georgia with her three other siblings, Richard, the oldest and the only son along with sisters Judy and Patti.
Donna began to assist her dad and compile records using her secretarial skills, after leaving her career with the State's Labor Department. Her father was the Curator of the Stone Mountain Carving Museum which was opened for a couple years on Memorial Drive. After the museum closed she and her dad parted their ways.
Later on ..30 years later.. using those same secretarial skills she would have never envisioned herself as the co-author of the book, "The Man Who Carved Stone Mountain", that she and her dad along with Kay Stowe Jones wrote. What an honor and privilege to work side by side with her dad to tell his story and share his legacy forever. I am sure Roy is up in heaven looking down and thinking "I am so glad I invested the money in Donna's education so that one day I could be proud of her accomplishments"...Job Well Done..