Very few families are more thankful, or have more to be thankful for, than the Chandler family of Mississippi. The late Charles Kuralt profiled the family a few Thanksgivings ago, when they all gathered from the corners of the U.S. to celebrate their parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. Kuralt begins the story with the parents, Alex and Mary Chandler, an African-American couple, that raised their nine children in a one-room sharecropper's cabin in Mississippi. The family was poor, and faced many hardships and uncertain times that would have destroyed many families. And yet all nine children went on to earn advanced degrees in higher education. Among the careers they represent, there is a dietitian, two teachers, a Baptist minister, the chairman of the economics department at Howard Unive…