PIECES OF OUR PAST

THE WEDDINGS OF THE CENTURY

2012-02-13T22:58:00.001-05:00

They weren't exactly the weddings of the century, no one or two weddings are except to the couples themselves. But, when Dena Baum married Emanuel Dreyer and her sister, Blanche Alexandria Baum, took the hand of Junius Schiff in marriage, they were the largest weddings ever held in Laurens County. On this Valentine's Day, let's turn back the clock more than a century of ago and took a look at what truly glamorous weddings used to be about.

Dena Baum was the first of the daughters of Napoleon Bonaparte Baum and Louise Kohn Baum to get married in Dublin. Being of the Jewish faith, there were no synagogues in Dublin for the Baum girls to get married in. Misses Baum chose the secular venue of the Laurens County Courthouse. The brides' father was one of the city's leading merchants and public-spirited citizens at the turn of the 20th Century. Their mother was a Washington, D.C. socialite of sorts. Her father, Phillip Kohn, was once the architect of the Capitol. Mrs. Baum was in attendance at Ford's Theater on the night when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

It was a warm night on the 7th of January in 1903. Nearly 800 guests from around the city and around the state were filing into the courthouse hoping to get a good seat in the crowded courtroom. For the first time in the history of the county a couple would be married according to the rites of the Jewish religion. Newspaper writers billed it as "the largest ever witnessed in this section of Georgia."

The courtroom was elegantly decorated with evergreen and flowers as to disguise the normal use of the auditorium. A canopy, draped with sheer white cloth and bamboo vines, was erected in front of the judge's bench.

To get the guests into the mood, Professor Carl Leake led his orchestra featuring musical selections from the opera, "Martha." Mrs. T.H. Smith, Mrs. Carl Leake, S.M. Gibson and C.H. Kittrell sang the wedding march as the bridal party approached Rabbi Isaac C. Marcuson and the groom, Emanuel Dreyer, the junior partner of the successful retail grocery firm of Brandon and Dreyer, and his best man, Morriel Elkins.

Dena's younger sisters, Jeanette and Helen, served as ribbon girls. Adeline Baum, the maid of honor, preceded the bride and their father down the aisle to join the ushers dressed in tuxedos and the attendants, beautifully attired in satin dresses.

The beautiful and impressive, yet longer than usual ceremony, lasted well into the late hours of the evening. After the nuptials, the couple, the wedding party and their guests walked across the courthouse lawn to the Baum house on the northeast corner of the square.

After a wonderful honeymoon in Florida, the Dreyers returned to Dublin, all the more wealthy than when they left. With hundreds of gifts in hand along with a reported thousand dollars in gold, the Dreyers were ready to begin their dream life.

A more traditional June wedding took place at the courthouse on June 12, 1907. It was a perfect late spring day with fair skies and an ideal room temperature at 9:00 in the evening. Once again, there was an overflow crowd of friends and family pressed into the Laurens County courtroom. This time, the groom, Junius Schiff, was not as well known, but was fortuitously brought to Dublin to take a position as the floor manager of the Sam Weischelbaum Company, in which the Baum family held an interest.

Blanche Baum Schiff (above left).

Following the plans of her sister's wedding, an orchestra of family friends were on hand to play as the bridal party came down the aisle. For all of you wedding planners, a reporter described the auditorium, "From the door to the altar was laid with white crash cloth. A profusion of cut flowers, palms, ferns and pot plants was used in the decoration. The stand in back of the altar was draped with white ribbon and ferns, and on each were suspended the letter 'B' and 'S." Between the letters was a large heart made of ferns and cut flowers. Two large arches spanned the entrance. These were draped with white ribbon and ferns. From the altar was suspended a canopy studded with lights and draped with white ribbon and cut flowers. From this canopy over the bride and groom was suspended a large bell made of red and white roses.

Just as she had before, sister Adeline Baum, gowned in a lace robe and who would never marry herself, served as the maid of honor. Leo Weiss was the groom's best man. The groomsmen wore continental evening suits, while the bride's maids wore white lingerie chiffon dresses and carried white flowers.

After Rabbi David Marx of Atlanta presented the newlyweds, they walked out of the auditorium to the traditional Mendelssohn's Wedding March. Following the ceremony, another lavish reception was held in the Baum home across the square.

And just like it was before, wedding gifts filled the Baum residence. There was enough cut glass, dishes, silverware and serving pieces to entertain party guests for a lifetime. The Schiff's left her home at 2:00 in the morning to catch an afternoon train from Tennille to Savannah. The couple traveled to Norfolk, Virginia where they saw the sights around Old Point Comfort, Hampton, and Portsmouth. They left the Old Dominion and traveled to New York City, where after a short visit, traveled up the Hudson River to Niagra Falls, a common honeymoon destination of the day and in Dena's words, "the prettiest sight we saw." On their return home, the Schiffs toured Philadelphia, Washington and visited with the groom's parents in Atlanta before returning home after their twenty-five-day honeymoon tour. They would enjoy a marriage of fifty-five years.

Junius Schiff (above left) died on February 17, 1963. Blanche died on May 12, 1972. Tragically, Emanuel Dreyer took his own life on May 29, 1923. Dena died on March 15, 1947. They are buried in the family plot in Section W of Northview Cemetery in Dublin.

Over the last century, weddings have changed dramatically. In some cases, they haven't changed at all. So, on this Valentine's Day, let me wish a happy life to all of those who love and who are loved by someone. Treasure all the days you have after you say your vows. In the case of the Baum sisters, one marriage lasted a lifetime while the other was tragically cut short.

ALEXANDER STEPHENS, THE LITTLELEST GIANT

2012-02-08T15:45:00.001-05:00

For forty years in the middle of the 19th Century in Georgia, Alexander Hamilton Stephens towered over most of his political colleagues in the Empire State of the South. Weighing between ninety and a hundred pounds, the frequently frail, regularly sickly, five-foot, seven-inch-tall leviathan served more terms than any other Georgian in the Congress during the 1800s. Although a proponent of slavery, Stephens fought hard to keep his native state in the Union. When all of his efforts failed, Alexander Stephens, Laurens County's first Congressman, accepted the nomination as Vice-President of the Confederate States of America.

Alexander Stephens was born on February 11, 1812 near the town of Crawfordville in Taliaferro County, Georgia to his parents Andrew Stephens and Margaret Grier Stephens. After losing his mother as an infant, Alex suffered the loss of both his father and stepmother in 1826. With no family to raise him, Alex was blessed to be taken in by the Rev. Alexander Hamilton Webster. Stephens changed his middle name to honor his counselor and mentor. Alex Stephens graduated with highest honors from the University of Georgia, where he was a roommate of Dr. Crawford W. Long, the discoverer of anesthesia. He taught school for a year and a half before his admission to the bar in 1834. Two years later, Stephens was elected to represent Taliaferro County in the Georgia Legislature, serving through 1841, when he was elected to represent his county in the Georgia Senate. In his relatively brief legal career, Stephens earned a reputation as a highly effective criminal defense lawyer.

A member of the southern branch of the Whig Party, Stephens was elected to fill the unexpired term of Congressman Mark Cooper in 1843. The following year, Georgia adopted a new system of Congressional Districts which replaced the at-large system. Stephens was elected to the 7th Congressional District of Georgia, which covered an area composed of Baldwin, Greene, Hancock, Laurens, Morgan, Oglethorpe, Putnam, Taliaferro, and Washington counties. Stephens served on the Committee of Twenty- One to ensure the election of Whig candidates along with Winfield Wright of Laurens County.

Congressman Stephens, whose Unionists' views made him popular with local voters, continued to represent Laurens County until congressional districts were redistricted in 1852. After rifts developed between northern and southern members of the Whig Party, Toombs, Stephens and Douglas left the party in the early 1850s to form a new party, the Constitutional Union Party. Stephens, then a full-fledged Democrat, was a strong supporter of President James Buchanan and served as a presidential elector for Stephen Douglas, seen as a traitor by many in the South, in the 1860 election.

Stephens, who served in Congress until 1859, was not the strongest advocate of slavery in his early years, although his best friend, Robert Toombs, was. As the winds of war began to howl in 1860, Stephens was elected to attend the Secession Convention held in Milledgeville in January 1861. He desperately implored the delegates to cast their ballots in favor of Georgia's remaining in the Union in an attempt to save her from what he foresaw as her inevitable destruction. Although opposed to Abraham Lincoln's policies, Stephens knew that the Republicans, who had just come onto the national scene, did not possess the requisite number of votes to adopt Lincoln's policies into law.

Despite his desperate struggles to keep Georgia as a part of the United States, Alexander Stephens accepted his nomination to serve in the Confederate Congress. On his forty-ninth birthday, Congressman Stephens was sworn in as the first and only Vice-President of the Confederate States of America.

Alexander Stephens took a more cautious approach to prosecuting a war against the North. Stephens favored delaying offensive actions in order to build up and train Southern forces. During the second year of the war, Stephens first began to reveal his differences with those of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Stephen's criticism of Davis's military strategies increased. So did his disdain for the Confederate president's policy of conscription and suspension of the constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas corpus, policies which were also adopted by Abraham Lincoln in the North. All the while, Stephens sought out ways to end the hostilities after the pivotal battle of Gettysburg.

Thirty-two days after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Union forces arrested Stephens at his home, Liberty Hall, in Crawfordville. After serving five months in the prison at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, Stephens returned to Georgia. Elected to the United States Senate from Georgia in 1866, Stephens was denied his seat as Georgia had not formally returned to the Union.

After the virtual end of Reconstruction, Stephens filled the unexpired term of Ambrose R. Wright in the United States Congress. Stephens won reelection for four more terms bringing his total service in the Congress to twenty-six years, a record only matched in the 20th Century by Carl Vinson, Paul Brown, John Lewis and Edward Cox.

At the age of seventy, Stephens resigned his seat in Congress following his election as the 50th Governor of Georgia. On March 4, 1883, some four months after his election, the ailing scion of Georgia politics passed away in his home.

Alexander Hamilton Stephens made few reported appearances in Dublin and Laurens County. The little man, with a shrill voice and a highly intelligent mind, made at least one stop in the county during his travels across the state. Stephens accepted the invitation of Ira Stanley, who invited the traveler into his home. According to Stanley family tradition, when the men were discussing Stanley's desire to build a new home in the northern tip of Laurens County, Stephens called for a pen and paper and sketched out a design of his own home. Stanley reproduced his elegant home, near Chappell's Mill, in close conformance with Stephen's drawing.

It has been said that Alexander Stephens had a desire to help those less fortunate than himself. His home was frequently open to all travelers, rich or poor. More than one hundred students, of both races and both sexes, were said to have benefitted from his generous private scholarships.

Like Thomas Jefferson, another great American of the same ilk, Alexander Hamilton Stephens died with little or no assets, other than the infinite number of friends and a long legacy of service to our state and our nation. And, it was in this week, two hundred years ago, that the "littlest giant" in our state's political history was born.

DAVID BLACKSHEAR

2012-01-30T22:10:00.001-05:00

The War Years

On this day in 1764 in the British colony of North Carolina was born a general. Although he was widely heralded as an Indian fighter and brigade commander of the War of 1812, General David Blackshear of Laurens County rarely led his men into battle. Blackshear had seen war all too closely, watching his oldest brother James being killed by Tories during the American Revolution. This is the story of General David Blackshear, the soldier, planter, surveyor, and public servant during the years of the War of 1812.

Known to many as "The Second American Revolution," the War of 1812 began with a declaration of war by President James Madison on June 18, 1812 following a ten-year series of skirmishes at frontier outposts, impressment of sailors on the seas, and blockades of shipping. It was on the 4th of July in 1812, some three dozen years after America first declared its independence from the King of England that soldiers of the Georgia militia rendezvoused in Dublin to launch an attack on British fortifications in Florida, which would not become part of the United States until six years later.

During its regular session, the Georgia legislature on December 9, 1812, appointed David Blackshear to command the 2nd Brigade of the 5th Division of the state's militia. Dr. William Lee commanded the first division.

Blackshear's first known call to duty came in early August 1813, when Georgia governor David Mitchell wrote the general to move his brigade to the frontier and adopt measures to afford some security for the fearing inhabitants. Gen. Blackshear ordered Lt. Col. Ezekiel Wimberly to immediately man three forts: Twiggs, Telfair, and Jackson along the line of the frontier, then the Ocmulgee River. Blackshear ordered Col. Allen Tooke of Pulaski County and Major Cawthorn of Telfair to immediately do the same.

The General set out on a patrol to inspect the forts and reported back to the Governor, "I found the inhabitants in a high state of alarm - an immense number of whom had left and fled to the interior." Blackshear immediately began preparations to lay out an additional ten forts along the frontier, each manned by one subaltern, a sergeant, a corporal and fifteen privates and each approximately ten miles equidistant.

My mid-September, Gen. Blackshear reported that all threats of an eminent invasion had subsided, at least for the present. By mid-November, tensions along the Ocmulgee once again began to rise. Major General David Adams ordered Blackshear to send some of his best men to join a force of 157 men and to go out to the frontier to make improvements to existing fortifications and erect new ones and to report his activities to Major James Patton at Fort Hawkins.

On January 4, 1814, the newly elected Georgia governor Peter Early, a former judge of Laurens County Superior Court, replaced the ailing General John Floyd with his old friend, David Blackshear to command the army from Georgia in the lower Flint River region. Blackshear reported that a great number of his men were sick and that he needed substantial reinforcements to aid his 700-man force in guarding his forts and supplies, not to mention the effort to drive away the hostile Indians, all the Negroes, and the British forces at the mouth of Flint River.

Two years after the war began, Gov. Early reappointed Gen. Blackshear to command a brigade of first class militia along with Gen. Floyd. (LEFT) Blackshear responded, "Sir, I am at all times ready promptly to accept that or any other appointment you may think proper to confer on me in which it is in my power to serve my country."

Just as was the case in previous Septembers, tensions along the Georgia frontier began to explode. Blackshear ordered several units to move out from Hartford, opposite present day Hawkinsville. Adjutant General Daniel Newnan informed Blackshear that 2500 men would be needed to support General Andrew Jackson, then in the vicinity of Mobile. Several units from Blackshear's command were detached for that purpose.

Ten days before Christmas, Blackshear and his brigade received orders to move from their encampment at Camp Hope, two miles north of Fort Hawkins on the Milledgeville Road in present day Macon, to Hartford and then to open a road to the Flint River, where he was ordered to erect fortifications. No one in Georgia even realized that the war with Great Britain officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent on Christmas Eve while Blackshear and his men were camping on the banks of the Ocmulgee.

Blackshear's men spent Christmas at Camp Blakely, two miles from present day Hawkinsville before moving west toward his objective on the Flint River. Blackshear reported that he arrived on January 6 "without forage and not many rations on hand." Blackshear continued his march, oblivious to the fact that two days later, General Andrew Jackson's command defeated the British at the war ending Battle of New Orleans.

With no instant communications informing him that hostilities had officially ended, Blackshear marched his men, many of whom were sick, south and west from their Flint River base. On January 14, Blackshear received orders to return to Fort Hawkins. Within a week, Blackshear was back at Fort Hawkins, where he begged Farrish Carter, of Baldwin County, to furnish him with 30,000 badly needed rations. Blackshear implored, "Our country is invaded; and I hope in God you will use every exertion in your power to facilitate the movement of the troops to check the insurrection and depredation that will ensue should we delay for want of provisions."

Once resupplied, at least in part, Blackshear began cutting a road down the northeastern line of the Ocmulgee and Altamaha. His destination was Fort Barrington on the Altamaha in McIntosh County. Along his line of march, Blackshear's men cut the legendary "Blackshear Road."

Reports of British activity around St. Mary's were coming in from many sources. One of those sources was J. Sawyer, possibly Jonathan Sawyer the founding father of Dublin, who reported that the British were landing on Cumberland Island. Sawyer wrote Blackshear concerning British atrocities and their movement toward Darien.

By February 4, 1815, Blackshear reported that he was some 132 miles from Hartford or just a few miles from Fort Barrington. Upon his arrival in Darien, David Blackshear reported, "We have been in a constant state of alarm, and the principal inhabitants, remonstrating against my leaving this station."

Just as he was making plans to move toward the enemy, General Floyd wrote to Blackshear, "The official accounts of a peace having been concluded between our country and Great Britain appear to have filled the hearts of the populace here (Savannah) with joy." And, just like that it was over. After formally winding up their affairs, Blackshear's men were discharged and went back their homes in East Central Georgia.

Thus ended the middle and most widely heralded chapter in the epic life of General David Blackshear - soldier, statesman and citizen. Blackshear returned to his Springfield home in Laurens County, where he spent the last twenty two years of his life serving the people of Laurens County and Georgia.

HAL STANLEY

2012-01-23T21:52:00.000-05:00

A Champion of Journalism, A Leader of Men

Hal Stanley was born with newsprint on his hands, serving people in his heart, and printer's ink flowing through his veins. From a little boy to a fully grown man, Stanley lived and breathed the business of publishing newspapers. After reaching the pinnacle of his success as the leader of the Georgia Press Association, Stanley channeled his efforts into helping his fellow man on a larger scale. It was a mission he pursued all of his adult life. And, he did it with incorruptible dignity, unparalleled compassion, and unselfish conviction.

Harris McCall Stanley was born on June 6, 1866. His father, Captain Rollin A. Stanley, served as a Captain of the local militia company during the Civil War. Stanley descended from Thomas McCall, Georgia's first surveyor general and a highly acclaimed master winemaker of his day. As a young boy, Stanley received the best possible education in a time when even the wealthiest of families in the area could scarcely afford for their children to attend higher educational institutions.

As a young man, Hal Stanley showed a keen interest in the newspaper business. As a printer's devil with the Dublin Gazette, Stanley started out as the lowest of the low, mixing inks and handing type to the printer. As a menial grunt, Hal Stanley was in good company with some of the most famous writers of his day, printer's devils like Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, and Joel Chandler Harris. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were printer's devils too.

In fact, being in the newspaper business ran in the Stanley family. The elder Stanley brother, Ira L. Stanley began his newspaper career with the Dublin Gazette. He was one of the founders of the Dallas Evening Herald and other newspapers in Texas. Vivian Stanley started out in the newspaper business before becoming the postmaster of Dublin and finally serving several terms on the Georgia Prison Commission. Frank R. Stanley, the fourth of the Stanley brothers to work in the newspaper business, was the printer of the Gainesville News.

In the winter of 1890, Hal Stanley assumed the role as editor of the Dublin Gazette, Laurens County's first weekly newspaper. Hal Stanley was then about to marry Ethel Stubbs, daughter of Col. John M. Stubbs, who originally founded the Gazette in 1876. Hal was only twenty-three years old. Seven years later, Hal Stanley and brother Vivian joined to establish the Dublin Courier. In 1899, the Courier merged with the Dublin Dispatch to form the Courier Dispatch. In 1913, the Dublin Courier Dispatch merged with the Laurens County Herald to become the Dublin Courier-Herald, the first daily newspaper in Laurens County.

Stanley involved himself in the workings of the Georgia Press Association. He served as President of the organization from 1907 to 1909, after which he began a thirty-year reign as the association's executive secretary. For the last five years of his life, Stanley was honored with the title of Secretary Emeritus.

But Hal Stanley wasn't just a newspaper man. He was a public servant, philanthropist and military leader. Upon the organization of the Dublin Light Infantry in the early 1890s, Stanley was elected to a leadership role as lieutenant along the side of his brother-in-law, the popular five-term mayor of Dublin, Captain Lucien Q. Stubbs. In 1894, Gov. W.Y. Atkinson appointed Stanley to his personal staff. When Stanley moved from Dublin to Eastman, he joined the Eastman Guards, serving as the unit's captain. Before returning to Dublin, Stanley moved once again, that time to Savannah, where he served in the military departments of the port city.

Stanley, ingrained with the core belief that education was of upmost importance served on the Dublin City School Board for seven years, three of which were as its President. He was an initial member of the Carnegie Library Board and was influential in the effort to secure complete funding from industrial magnate and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie.

As was the usual course of the day for erudite gentlemen, Stanley was active in many fraternal organizations. His fraternity of choice was the Knights of Phythias, in which he served in nearly every capacity including Grand Prelate and Grand Chancellor of Georgia (1914-1915). Stanley also proudly proclaimed membership in the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks and the Improved Order of Red Men.

Perhaps Harris McCall Stanley's most important contribution of a lasting legacy to the State of Georgia was his election as Georgia's first Commissioner of Commerce and Labor. Stanley was elected in a special election on January 10, 1912 by a wide margin. It was the first time that a native of Laurens County was elected to serve in a state wide office. That honor has gone to two other men, Agricultural Commissioner Thomas Linder and Vivian L. Stanley, Hal Stanley's younger brother, who was appointed to fill out an unexpired term on the Prison Commission in 1928 and was reelected by a popular vote in 1934. From 1934 to 1937, when Hal Stanley completed his twenty four-year term in office, the Stanley brothers were the only brothers in the history of Georgia to serve in statewide elected offices at the same time. Mr. Stanley served in several positions in state and federal government, including the positions of fertilizer and oil inspector. In World War I, Stanley aided the war effort by serving as the head of the Georgia Division, United States Employment Service for the ceremonial salary of one dollar per year.

Hal Stanley took his role as the state's first Commissioner of Commerce and Labor seriously, very seriously. Stanley sought to rid the state of unconscionable child labor practices, except on the farms. Commissioner Stanley rationalized, "Labor on the farm, even by children of tender years, cannot be of harm. Work on the farm in general is not objectionable and is conducive to health and strength."

One of the biggest "hot button" issues of the year 1914 was the issue of censorship of movies. Stanley joined the movement to remove sex from the silent movies of his day. "Motion pictures have gone from bad to worse. They are becoming more coarse and more vulgar every year," Stanley proclaimed as he commented on the growing nausea among many movie goers.

Hal Stanley used his position as a platform to promote compulsory education laws and the establishment of vocational schools on the state level after Congressman Dudley Hughes, of Twiggs County, and Georgia's U.S. Senator Hoke Smith pushed a national bill through Congress in 1917.

After his retirement from public office, Hal Stanley served as Chairman as the Industrial Board of Georgia. In his lifetime, Harris McCall Stanley received many honors. In 1931, he joined Henry Grady, Clark Howell, and W.T. Anderson as inaugural members of the Georgia Newspaper Hall of Fame, preceding Ernest Camp, Ernest Rogers, and Madge Hilbun Methvin as Laurens County's members of the elite group of newspaper journalists.

Harris McCall Stanley died on April 25, 1944 in his last hometown of Decatur, Georgia. Stanley's contributions to his native Laurens County and to his native Georgia were beyond outstanding. Stanley seemed to keep politics out of his focus, and focused instead on what was best for the citizens of our state.

RANDOM MISCELLANEA

2012-01-19T13:50:00.003-05:00

MAN'S BEST FRIEND? On the night of June 5, 1900, one of the legendary and more amusing events in the history of Dublin City Government occurred. Just as Alderman J.D. Smith took his seat in the old wooden city council building during the reading of the minutes, the agenda suddenly shifted. A dog, bothered by fleas, entered the room and begin to scratch his itch. Each scratch was accompanied by a pat of the dog's tail on the wooden floor. As the intensity of the pats grew so did the irritation of the council and those present. Suddenly, Alderman Henry M. Kirke noticed that the dog was mad. Mr. Kirke and reporter C.C. Smith made it out the door near where they were standing. The usually erudite Col. James B. Sanders made a dash for the door but was cut off by the dog. Col. Sanders retreated and then climbed on a table and jumped up clinging to the railing. He pulled himself up and then proceeded to jump from a second story window. The power house superintendent then decided his services were needed at the power house and slipped by the dog. Mayor James B. Hicks and Clerk, A.R. Arnau found secure positions which they tentatively held. In an act of near-perfect unison the remaining councilmen climbed on top of tables and chairs. Finally someone yelled "Shoot him!" Before anyone could get a shot off, the fleas decided to rest. The dog's pain ceased and he was easily led from the hall. Undoubtedly a short recess followed.

THE COUNTY FISH POND - Two months had passed since the destruction of the old Laurens County Courthouse. The winter rains had filled a large hole which was left when the old courthouse was torn down. The small pond became somewhat of a joke around town. J.H. Perry Company was hired by the contractor to pump out the rain water. As the last of the water was being sucked up, the workmen found a number of catfish of various sizes flapping in the mud. Judging from the size of the fish, they had to have been put in the hole by a practical joker. The mystery of the identity of the pranksters went unsolved for thirty-four years until I read about the stunt in a 1963 newspaper. I immediately had my suspicions. It seems that Mrs. R.A. Register, wife of Commissioner R.A. Register, and Mrs. A.O. Hadden, wife of Clerk A.O. Hadden, loved to fish for catfish. While the two couples were out of town, two county officials slipped a dozen or so live catfish in the pond. The two jokers were Clerk Brantley New and County Attorney Dale Thompson. 5/2/, 5/3/1963

WHO DOESN'T WANT TO BE TAX COMMISSIONER - In the fall of 1962 following the resignation of Laurens County's tax commissioner, one of the most unusual and interesting county elections in Georgia history happened in Laurens County. The qualifying fee wasn't that much so people began to qualify for the vacancy in the tax office, first one, then another. At the end of qualifying twenty-eight men and one woman put their hats into the ring in the special election. They came from all parts of the county and all walks of life. Those running for office included: Marvin Ashley, Dewey Bedingfield, Ralph Bedingfield, Ralph Bostick, Rev. S.M. Dominy, Jack Fausett, Skeet Fordham, Bob Garrard, Hank Geeslin, John Gilbert, Eugene Harrelson, Bobby G. Hester, Calhoun Hogan, Trammel Keen, Sr., A.B. Lee, Russell T. Lord, Linton Malone, Hubert Martin, R.A. Morgan, Bush Perry, Joe Radney, Grable Ricks, Jr., C. Manly Smith, O.T. Tarpley, L.L. Thigpen, Earl Wilkes, Mary Martin Willis, and Bill Young. The flood of candidates so amused the local politicos that county attorney Dale Thompson and Superior Court Clerk Brantley New, (the same pranksters who put the catfish in the courthouse pond) had paper tags printed with the following message: "Sorry, I'm a candidate for tax commissioner. I qualified too. Work on somebody else." Bob Garrard won the election with O.T. Tarpley coming in second. The last laugh went to the owners of the Courier Herald and the printing companies who printed more ads and cards in the one special election than in many general elections. Dublin Courier Herald, Oct. 4, 1962.

STARVING ACTOR - In the early Fifties, a young actor in his mid twenties toured the United States with his wife. He was a son of one of Ziegfield's Beauties. The couple performed dramatic scenes from Mark Twain, Hamlet, McBeth, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. When the actor's wife became pregnant she was replaced by actress Lee Firestone. The new team was engaged by the Laurens County Concert Association to perform their dramatic scenes at the Central Elementary Auditorium (now City Hall) on January 17, 1952. The new acting team was known as Holbrook and Firestone. The young actor went on to fame in television and the movies. His portrayal of Mark Twain was universally recognized as one of the best in television history. The young actor was, of course, Hal Holbrook. "Dublin Courier Herald, January 14, 1952"

VIETNAM ADVISOR WINS MEDAL - Claud P. Ragan, a former school student in Dublin, left this area when his father, Claud P. Ragan, went to Washington, D.C., as Chief Clerk of the Commission on Insular and Territorial Affairs. The young Ragan attended Georgetown University and obtained his degree from George Washington University. Lt. Ragan served in Vietnam from April 12, 1963 to April 9, 1964 as an advisor to the Vietnamese Navy's 22nd River Assault Group. President Lyndon Johnson awarded the Bronze Star to Ragan for outstanding courage, leadership, and professional skill in the face of hostile fire during 13 combat operations against the Viet Cong. Despite Ragan's absence, he and his mother still maintained their family farm between Dublin and Rentz. Dublin Courier Herald, January 22, 1965.

THESE IRISH LINKSTERS WERE CHAMPIONS, TOO - The Dublin Irish football and basketball teams under Minton Williams dominated their regions and classes for most of the early 60s. Lost in the excitement was the Dublin High golfers during the period from 1962 to 1965. In their first year of competition in 1961, Coach Williams's foursome finished third in its region. During the second year Ritchie Cummings, state AA medalist, led the Irish to the state crown. Playing with Cummings were Spec Hall, Robert Swinson, and Tom Perry. In 1963, with Swinson out of commission, the team finished seventh in the state. Playing on that team was Robbie Hahn, Tom Perry, Spec Hall, and Boyd Anderson. In 1964, the Irish came from behind, making up 11 strokes in the last nine holes to tie Lovett High School. On the first hole of the playoff, the Dublin boys blew the Lovett boys off the course, capturing their second championship. The Irish foursome, under the leadership of Coach Marvin Tarpley and led by Swinson and Hall, saved their best for their last match. In the 1965 final round, Swinson won the medalist honors with a five-under-par 67. Spec Hall, Robert Brown, and Robert Dunn shot good rounds, leading the Irish to a total score of 294, a school record at the time. Swinson and Hall finished their careers with three state championships. Swinson, known to his friends as "Rabbitt," was named the Middle Georgia Prep Golfer of the Year by The Macon News. Swinson set a course record with a 69 and led the first two rounds of the All American Junior Tournament in Fort Myers, Florida in 1965, before losing in the final round. Dublin Courier Herald, May 11, 1965, June 22, 1965, June 28, 1965.

COLLEGE IN EAST CENTRAL GEORGIA

2012-01-12T19:58:00.000-05:00

The Beginning of a Tradition

People began going to college in East Central Georgia one hundred and twenty years ago today. And, they are still going to colleges in places like Dublin, Swainsboro, Eastman, Sandersville, Mt. Vernon/Ailey, and Cochran, where the first college in the area opened its doors on January 10, 1887.

The leading men of the Ebenezer Baptist Association saw the need for a junior college to serve the needs of the growing areas of Laurens, Telfair, Dodge and Pulaski counties. Each county was asked to submit a proposal. Both Eastman and Cochran shared the same railroad, the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad. Laurens County did not have a railroad in place in the beginning of 1886. Railroads were critical to the development of a community. And, at the time, it appeared that Dublin and Laurens County, which did not submit a bid, appeared to be not as progressive. As it turned, things would change. Laurens County became a regional center of economic, business and cultural activity. Dodge prospered during the era of mass production of timber and cotton. Pulaski lost a substantial part of its northeastern territory to a new county, Bleckley in 1912. And, it was in the future county seat of Cochran, where the association decided to establish a college, which would be called New Ebenezer College.

John T. Rogers, of Reedy Springs Baptist Church in Laurens County, joined Jonathan Knowles, Charles Parker and J.G. Wright in forming an exploratory committee to begin preparations for the funding of the project and the acquisition of sufficient lands. Doctors P.A. Jessup and T.D. Walker, Sr. got on board and convinced P.L. Peacock and J.E. O’Berry of Cochran to donate the land for the thirteen-acre, ten thousand-dollar facility.

The association appointed P.L. Peacock, T.D. Walker, Sam Mayer, W.J. Mullis, and J.G. Wright to head the building committee. The committee chose Michael O’Brien, of Hawkinsville, who based the school’s design on one of his favorite colleges in Ireland. E.B. Parker, J.G. Wright, John T. Rogers, M.L. Burch, T.D. Walker, and Jonathan Noles were selected to serve as the school’s first Board of Trustees.

The cornerstone laying ceremony was held on July 22, 1886 under the auspices of the local Masonic Lodge. J. Emmett Blackshear, the lodge’s Worshipful Master, presided over the grand observance.

One hundred and twenty five years ago today on January 10, 1887, the doors of New Ebenezer College opened its doors to approximately one hundred students in a hall across the street from the First Baptist Church of Cochran. Palemon J. King presided over the new school. Professor King, a large and powerfully built man, was already a well-respected school leader from Shelby, North Carolina and would gain wide recognition in Rome, Georgia. King, a graduate of Mercer and a former soldier in the Confederate army, came highly recommend by school officials in Cave Springs and Shorter College.

Within a few months, the students moved into the first permanent building on campus, a two-story structure.

Initial tuition rates that first semester were $2.00 per month for primary courses, $3.00 per month intermediate classes, $4.00 per month for music classes and $5.00 per month for college classes per month. By the way, it would cost you the mere pittance of $12.00 per month to board in the house with the principal.

The college’s curriculum included mathematics, history, Latin, Greek, elocution and English as well as courses in vocal and instrumental music. Eventually courses in art, business and military science were offered. Captain Isaac E. Neff took charge of the military school and established what was called the “Broom Brigade,” who dressed in bright and colorful Zouave uniforms.

College officials guaranteed that each boy and girl who attended would be thoroughly prepared for the best colleges and universities.

Perhaps the college’s most well known professor was Lucy Mae Stanton, who taught art during the 1893-1894 term. Stanton was one of Georgia’s most widely heralded female artists of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

J.M. King succeeded Palemon J. King in 1888. Other principals of the college during its eleven-year history were: W.B. Seals (90-93,) E.M. Turner (93-96,) A.M. Duggan (96-97,) and finally W.E. Jenkins (97-98).

Former graduate and long time Cochran attorney, Lucian A. Whipple, Sr. once hailed New Ebenezer College as a “beacon light” for that section of thee state. Whipple maintained that the college contributed greatly to the economic development of the region between Macon to Brunswick, where there were few if any high schools.

By the mid 1890s, the association’s support for Ebenezer College began to wane. In an election to provide local funding, Cochran residents voted down the measure to support, “The Pride of Cochran.”

When the New Ebenezer College closed, the facilities were taken over by the Cochran school system, with Dr. Jessup and Dr. Walker, two of the school’s most ardent boosters, joining others in taking over the college’s outstanding debt. After nearly twenty years, Cochran High School moved to a new location and once again, the school buildings were abandoned.

During the years of World War I, both Cochran and Dublin competed for the location of the newly created 12th Congressional District Agricultural and Mechanical School. Despite the greater resources in Dublin, Cochran was awarded the location of school, which opened on the first Monday in October 1919.

After only eight years of operation, the Georgia Legislature adopted a law which changed the name of the school to Middle Georgia Agricultural and Mechanical College. Two years later, the name was shortened to Middle Georgia College.

So, now you know a little history of the tradition of the one time Baptist school which evolved into one of our areas most important resources. And, it all began, one hundred and twenty five years ago today.

BUD BARRON

2012-01-03T21:24:00.001-05:00

The Pilot's Pilot

Bud Barron loved to fly in the skies. He flew toward the heavens for more than fifty years. When he saw his first plane at a Macon fair when he was a child, Bud knew that someday he wanted to fly. The Dublin pilot flew his plane for nearly forty thousand hours over the fields of Central Georgia, across the rivers, plains and mountains of America, and over the oceans of the Earth. It was seventy years ago when Winton Hill Barron, "Bud" to his friends, began his journey toward becoming a military pilot. And, it was thirty four years ago, when the citizens of Laurens County, Georgia named their airport after the man they called, "The Pilot's Pilot."

Bud Barron was born in Johnson County, Georgia on December 21, 1906 to his parents William H. Barron and Eliza Moye Barron. The family moved to Sandersville and after World War I, back to Lovett in northwestern Laurens County. Barron's father operated a grocery store in Lovett and Dublin. In 1930, Bud Barron was listed in the census as a café owner.

Bud Barron began to fly airplanes in 1928, soon after he took his first plane ride. "It cost me $40.00 for me and my date to go up. It was worth every bit of it," he recalled. It was during the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s when many young men and boys in Laurens County were captivated by the thrill and allure of flying airplanes.

Interestingly, living next door to the Barrons in their Washington Street home was Clay F. Bell. Clay Bell began flying at the age of 16. During World War II, he served as a bombardier in the 483rd bombardment group.

Bud bought his first plane, a Curtis Junior, in South Georgia. Of that plane, Barron once said, "My first plane a three-cylinder engine mounted on top of the wing with the propeller above the body behind the wing." Barron described his aircraft as "a piece of junk" which he restored with chicken wire, orange crates, and bed sheets. He flew along the highways back to Dublin to keep from getting lost.

"It finally wound up in the top of a big tree with my partner in it," Barron said. "It cut off both of his heels," he added during an interview as he reflected on his life in the air. Barron considered himself and other like him as daredevils. "You just fix up a piece of junk and fly it," Bud fondly remembered.

In fact, Barron taught himself how to fly, according to Reed Salley, a lifelong friend. To pay his bills, Barron barnstormed all over southern Georgia giving plane rides for a nominal and paltry fee. After eight years of flying, Barron obtained a pilot's license when it became mandatory in 1936.

It was on the last day of 1941, some three weeks after the beginning of World War II, when Bud Barron received a telegram acknowledging his acceptance into the Army Air Force Ferry Command at Nashville, Tennessee.

Barron quickly moved up the line as an officer. After completing a seven-week course in St. Joseph, Missouri, he rose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant. By the end of 1943, Barron was promoted to Captain. The Captain was lauded by a St. Joseph's newspaper when he brought down a cargo plane on a runway without lights and with only minor damage to the aircraft.

Bud Barron was what they used to call a "ferry pilot." It was his mission to transport bombers, cargo planes and fighter planes from the United States to points around the world. Within his first year, Barron flew across the South Atlantic Ocean 8 times, the North Atlantic Ocean 7 times and across the Pacific Ocean twice. When he wasn't flying new or repaired planes, Barron flew troops to their new assignments and back home.
Businessman Ed Herrin said of Barron, "He flew just about every kind of airplane used by the United States during World War II."

Barron continued to serve his country as a commander of the Air Force Reserve squadron at Robins Air Force base, retiring in 1959 as a Lieutenant Colonel.
When Barron returned home after the war, he obtained a lease for a portion of the old Naval airport. Barron, in 1948, established the Georgia Aviation School, the first crop-dusting aviation school in the State of Georgia. Barron saw his business as an integral part of the agricultural community. "I've dusted thousands and thousands of acres. We are as much a part of farming nowadays as tractors," he maintained.

Barron added hangars and other buildings and transformed the remnants of the old naval airport into a first-class facility, so much so that Ed Herrin said, "Dublin became a favorite stopping place for pilots flying from the east coast to Florida."
Any pilot has many stories. He spoke of the time when he crashed his plane while piloting revenue agents, who were looking for liquor stills in the North Georgia mountains or the days when he flew Georgia governor Lester Maddox across the state during campaign events.

Barron died on August 17, 1981. In his fifty years as a pilot, Barron flew in the skies for at least four full years. Of his love of flying, Barron was often quoted as saying, "Once it bites you, it's worse than any disease." Despite his retirement and his long battle with cancer, Barron vowed to keep flying. "You get up there, flying around those big cumulus clouds, going in one side and coming out the other and you're all alone, there's nothing else like it." Barron said in one of his last interviews.

Winton Hill "Bud" Barron was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame on April 29, 2000. His contributions to aviation in Dublin and to the war effort of the United States during World War II will last into the next century. The people of Laurens County honored Bud Barron upon his retirement with the naming of the Laurens County Airport, which officially opened as the "W.H. 'Bud' Barron Airport" on January 3, 1978, thirty-four years ago today.

IT HAPPENED IN ELEVEN

2011-12-27T22:59:00.001-05:00

Not all news stories make the headlines of long-lasting importance. On the other hand, some seemingly inconsequential stories do have an impact on the way will live, a century later. Others had no long term significance, but at the time, they were interesting, curious, or downright fascinating. These are some of those stories which made the news in the year Nineteen and eleven.

The tabulations of the 1910 Census were in. Dublin grew at an unbelievable rate of 94 percent in the first decade of the 20th Century, leading to the horn-tooting moniker, "Dublin - the only city in Georgia that's doublin' all the time." That rate paled in comparison to the 240 percent population increase in the 1890s. Over those two decades, the county seat grew from 863 people to 5,795, for a 572 percent increase. Dublin ended the decade as the 19th largest city in the state. Laurens County, with its 35,501 enumerated residents, was tabulated as the 7th largest county in the state, just a few hundred inhabitants behind Muscogee County.

The year 1911 was one of the most productive, if not the most productive, in the history of Laurens County agriculture. Local farmers produced more than 60,000 bales of cotton, each weighing 500 pounds, for a total of thirty million pounds - a figure which was more than any other county in Georgia that year and more than the yearly crop of Missouri. That record stood for nearly eight decades when machine harvested mega farms in South Georgia topped the mark.

Laurens County corn farmers were also right proud. Messers D.R. Thomas and J.T. Mercer planted twelve acres of prize winning corn. J.E. Smith, Jr. and the Chamber of Commerce pledged to pay a bounty of $1000 to anyone who could match the yield of the men, who produced 1,050 bushels on 9.5 acres in 1910. The reward was never claimed, leading to a local booster's claim that this Laurens County patch was the best in the United States. One indicator of the superlative agricultural productively of the county came when a local hardware company ordered twelve car loads of a popular plow. Eight years before the same firm only purchased on twelve plows. G.W. Kent came to Laurens County in 1896 without a single cent. A decade and a half later, the successful farmer operated a diverse 158-acre, three-mule farm and made a profit of $3,000 without incurring any debt.

Laurens County had the largest corn club in the state with 241 boys and 292 girls enrolled. R.P. Vaughn was right proud of his pig. He even charged folks ten cents a head to come by his house at 302 Jefferson Street to see his highly prized and overly heralded, one-headed pig, which possessed two bodies and eight feet.

The Mingledorffs of Dublin were known locally and across the countryside for their marathon bicycle trips. Frank, George, Claude, and Lambuth Mingledorf took their first ride over to Guyton, Georgia and back. They liked cycling so much that Frank and Claude rode their bicycles to Wilmore, Kentucky where they attended school. In the late spring of 1911, George, Claude and Lambuth set out in a northerly direction and pedaled all the way to Canada and back.

The year was also a prime year in banking circles. The Commercial Bank of Dublin, with a capital stock of $25,000 was chartered by J.M. Page, E.D. White, R.R. Johnson, C.O. Sikes, J.O. Barnes and A.P. Hilton. The Farmers State Bank of Dexter was headed by F.M. Daniel, Jerome Kennedy, John D. Walker, Dr. L.W. Wiggins, H.L. King, W.P. McClelland, Ernest Clarke, C.T. Beacham, Sr., P.A. Ashley, B.F. Wood, and F.L. Hobbs. The Montrose Banking Company, with $25,000 in assets, was founded by C.R. Williams, W.S. Burns, J.H. Rowland, E.J. Garbutt, W.M. Allen, H.E. Butler, Joel A. Smith, Sam Bashinski, W.G. Thompson, H.C. Black, Mrs. O.J. Pierce, E.L. Wade, C.C. Wade and W.R. Cook. A fourth bank, the Bank of Lovett, was incorporated by B.T. Kight, L.J. Manning, Dr. C.H. Manning, C.H. Moorman, A.J. Carter, J.D. Matthews, D.A. Moorman, W.T. Bridges, Mrs. P.M. Johnson, Della Manning, E.J. Smith, R.T. bray, C.W. Mills, J.J. Wyhnn, I.T. Jackson, M.F. Hightower, G.L. Garnto, J.D. Garnto, J.W. Stewart, E.K. Sumner, John B. Haines, A.W. Newson, B.W. Morgan, W.D. Sumner, Wright Sumner, Mrs. E.A. Hall, and C.R. Williams. The fifth and final bank organized in 1911 was the Bank of Rentz, which was founded by T.J. Taylor, H.D. Barron, John D. Walker, J.T. Mercer, J.F. Graham, P.C. Coleman, W.E. Bedingfield, W.A. Bedingfield, and B.O. Rogers.

The first leg of what would become Highway 80 was graded from Turkey Creek to the Wilkinson County line. The eight-mile stretch was part of a 54 mile road said to be one of the finest roads in the state.

Dudley folks had a lot of excitement in the first year of the second decade of the 20th Century. A firebug torched the home of Rev. S.W. Gray and the Dudley Supply Company within two weeks. Dudley lost the dormitory of the Dudley School and the Baptist Church two years before. Excitement of a different kind came on August 10, when gubernatorial candidate Pope Brown spoke to an assembled multitude of three thousand persons who came for car races, music, and barbeque.

Ice cream lovers loved the news the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Work's announced that it was making forty gallons per hour. Aldine Hawkins promised delivery of the company's "Hokey Pokey" ice cream in sanitary churns all over the county in ample time for dinner. Hawkins promised his ice cream would last for days before melting.

Only the second and third brick homes ever built in Dublin were constructed in 1911. J.S. Almond built a two-story brick house between his and J.A. Peacock's on Monroe Street. The house still stands and is a part of the Townsend Brothers Funeral home complex. A.B. Eubanks built Bellevue Avenue's first brick home (1305). The two-story, ten-room house was erected at a cost of $6,000.00 and is the last house on the northern side of Bellevue Avenue as you leave the downtown area.
In what appears to be the first game of basketball ever played, or at least reported to be played, by a Laurens County team, Dublin High's boys traveled to Macon to face the second team of Mercer University. Frank Grier, Currell Daniel, Leon Bush, Edgar Hodges, Sam Daniel and Lee Smith lost 34-3 and returned the following week to see their first win on the outdoor court in Stubbs Park. When players and spectators needed a refreshing drink, all they had to do was to go over to the new artesian well, dug by Thad Bostick. Bostick's pride and joy provided cool, clear water at the rate of 50 gallons per minute. That output didn't count the half-million gallons per day used by city water customers.

For the first decade and a half of electrical service, the City of Dublin acted as the only provider of electrical wiring. That practiced stopped in 1911 when private electricians took over the job of lighting our homes and businesses.

Of the year's most lasting impact was the formation of the Laurens County Baptist Association in November, which is more active in serving the needs of its members and the needy than it ever has been before.

As I complete my fifteenth year of writing "Pieces of Our Past," I want to thank each and every one of you who have enjoyed my writing. My zeal for writing comes from the stories of the outstanding people who call Laurens County and East Central Georgia their home and the hope they will inspire others. And, always remember that our most important history is in our future.

2011-12-20T13:20:00.004-05:00

THEN AN ANGEL APPEARED ......

by: Lorene Flanders

Note: Today's Pieces of Our Past is written by Lorene Flanders, formerly of Laurens County. Lorene, a daughter of Fred and Martha Flanders, is Professor and Dean of Libraries at the University of West Georgia. Also a historian and a former librarian at GCSU, Lorene has served as Bibliographer for the Georgia Historical Society since 1999, co authoring the bibliography of Georgia history published annually in the Georgia Historical Quarterly. (Photo at left by Scott B. Thompson, Sr.)

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In the cemetery at Carters' Chapel in eastern Laurens County, a marble angel standing before a flower-wreathed cross marks the small grave of Edith Flanders, born June 6, 1910. Edith died December 20, 1911, from burns suffered when her clothing caught fire as she knelt to pick up her doll. Edith was the first child of Mamie Carter Flanders, 1880-1946, whose father and uncles built Carters' Chapel, and John Flanders, 1875-1944, a native of Wrightsville.

Mamie Marie Carter and John Wesley Flanders were married June 22, 1904, a few years after Mamie graduated from LaGrange Female College. John trained for two years under his father, Dr. James Washington Flanders, in preparation for attending medical school, before taking up farming and construction for a livelihood. John built a house next door to his parents when he and Mamie married, but the couple sold it and purchased a farm in Dooly County, Georgia, about four miles southwest of Vienna on the Drayton Road. In addition to farming, John built houses, including a new home and tenant houses on the Dooly County farm. He also helped build a gin and cottonseed oil mill for Howell and Eggleston, a project that reflected southwest Georgia's strong pre-boll weevil economy.

By 1910, when they welcomed their first child, the couple was well established, growing cotton, and raising hogs, cows, and chickens. Dapp (Mary) and Charlie Gilbert and their son Gideon lived on the farm, as did a number of tenant families. Dapp did house work for Mamie, while Charlie worked for John on the farm. Mamie's garden, just outside the kitchen, was enclosed in a neat picket fence.

Mamie and John named their daughter Edith for Mamie's paternal grandmother, Edith Calhoun Carter, 1812-1897, who died when Mamie was seventeen. The name appears in Mamie's family as far back as the thirteenth century. A photograph taken when baby Edith was a few months old shows the family in front of their new house with Edith's nurse. A driver holds the reins to a horse hitched to a fine buggy.

John Wesley Flanders

Edith's brother Fred, who was born in 1914 nearly three years after her death, wrote of his parents' recollections of their daughter. "She turned out to be a rather small blonde little girl who was never sick and walked and talked very soon. She soon learned to feed my dad grains of rice on her finger. She would follow dad to the oak tree where he milked his Jersey cow twice a day. She had a blue and white enameled cup she wanted filled fresh from cow to cup. She would drink as much as she wanted and put her cup behind her back on her finger and go humming back to the house. She thrived and must have been my parents' little darling from what they spoke about her." Edith sometimes called her mother "Coot," a nickname Mamie acquired when she fell off a log into a cooter (duck) hole on Pennahatchee Creek, which ran close to the farm.

On a cold Tuesday morning in December, 1911, John was at work on the farm and Mamie was preparing to cook dinner over a big fire in the fireplace. She put on a coat, got a pan, and ran out in the cold wind to the sweet potato banks. As she started back to the house, she heard Edith scream and the child ran to Mamie with her clothes on fire. Mamie grabbed her daughter, rolled in the dirt to extinguish the fire, and took Edith inside. Desperate to summon help, Mamie ran back outside and began ringing the farm bell, becoming aware that her hands were badly burned as she frantically pulled the rope.

John and the farm hands came running. Alerted by the bell, nearby tenant families also came to the house. The women did what they could for Mamie and Edith, while others summoned more neighbors. John harnessed up his mule Stogen, and the white buggy horse, and raced to Vienna to get a doctor. According to an account by Fred Flanders written in 1988, Dr. Fred Williams and his registered nurse sped to the farm in the doctor's car, followed by Dr. Fred Mobley. Eventually, the doctors took John aside and told him how seriously both Edith and Mamie were burned. During the afternoon and evening, the doctors came and went, while their nurses ministered to Mamie and Edith. Despite heroic medical efforts, Edith passed away about 6:00 a.m. the following morning.

John returned to Vienna to make funeral arrangements. He placed calls to his and Mamie's parents and sent telegrams to family members who did not have phones. That afternoon, John and Mamie, accompanied by a nurse, took Edith's remains by train from Vienna to Macon, where they transferred to the Macon, Dublin, & Savannah Railroad for the journey to Dublin. Fred Flanders wrote that Mamie "was very grieved, and in much pain." The Vienna News reported that the couple's grief at the loss of their only child was "beyond human expression."

Mamie Carter Flanders

Mamie's father George Carter and her sister Joanna met the train in Dublin. John's cousin, Laurens County sheriff J.J. Flanders, took charge of the entourage as it made its way to the Carter farm some twelve miles east of Dublin. Joanna Carter, who had served as the family's chauffeur since 1908, when her father purchased his first car, was too upset to drive. Sheriff Flanders stayed to assist with funeral preparations. Edith was buried at Carters' Chapel on Thursday, December 21, with relatives, and many of John and Mamie's friends, including the Davis and Morgan families from Dooly County, in attendance.

Due to the severe burns to her hands, Mamie was unable to feed or dress herself for some time. Her mother Ocala Odom Carter, Joanna, and John's mother Sarah Hightower Flanders took turns staying with the couple when Mamie returned home some months later.

Jordan and Hart Campbell,

Children of Lorene Flanders

at the grave of

Edith Flanders

Carter's Chapel Church

Laurens County, Georgia.

In October, 1914, Mamie gave birth to her second and last child. She and John named the baby George Frederick for his grandfather George Carter, and Dr. Fred Mobley, who delivered him, and who had cared for Mamie and Edith after the tragic fire. Fred Flanders wrote of his mother's lifelong grief, "She never really got over losing her little daughter, as I could 'read' the signs so well."

Lorene Flanders, niece of Edith Flanders

DON'T KILL ME, I'M JUST THE MUSIC TEACHER

2011-12-14T18:03:00.000-05:00

DON'T KILL ME!

I'M JUST THE MUSIC TEACHER!

Charles Vet didn't know at the time why he was being thrashed and pommeled. When he found out, the music maestro hired two of the best out of town lawyers he could find and afford. He took his attackers to Federal court and won.

In the winter of 1906, Dublin's Board of Education hired Charles Vet as the school system's music teacher. The French-speaking teacher taught piano and music lessons on the side to supplement his woefully meager salary.

On the night of May 29, 1906, Professor Vet went to bed in his modest apartment contemplating the next day's musical lessons. Vet maintained that B.A. Hooks entered his room and through a clever ruse induced him to come outside because he was wanted by the Board of Education. All of a sudden, a quintette of malefactors flogged, beat and battered him with wooden clubs and brass knuckles as retribution for his alleged wholly inappropriate and highly offensive remarks directed at a young unmarried female teacher in the school. Hooks maintained that Vet drew a gun on him and his friends as they were leaving the scene. He claimed that they acted solely in self defense. Vet, on the other hand, claimed that he did try to draw his gun, but that his attackers ripped it out of his coat and stabbed him in the throat.

Vet was so drubbed that he could not get out of his bed for a week. Being an helpless outsider, the pummeled professor had no luck in having his attackers arrested on felony criminal charges. With no other place to go, Professor Vet moved to Florida. His only practical remedy was to file a civil suit in a court of jurisdiction outside the limits of Laurens County.

Professor Vet, seeking at least $10,000.00 in damages, hired Du Pont Guerry and Peter W. Meldrim to file a case of trespass and assault in Federal court in Macon. He named as defendants, B. A. Hooks, T. W. Hooks, Blount Freeman, Daniel Driggars, and Andrew A. Cowart. Guerry, a frequent gubernatorial candidate and a long time U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, left his previous position as President of Wesleyan College in 1909 to return to private practice. Meldrim, known to have been both a literal and figurative fighter in the courtroom, would later become Judge of Chatham County Superior Court.

A trial was held on May 20, 1911 in the Federal Court Building in Macon. The illustrious Emory Speer served as the presiding judge. The defendants hired Alexander and Charles Ackerman, both of Dublin to defend them. Alexander Akerman was the Assistant U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District. A year later, Akerman would become the U.S. Attorney. After moving to Florida, Alexander Akerman was named to the Federal bench by President Calvin Coolidge. His brother Charles was a practicing attorney in Dublin.

After a series of procedural maneuvers, the first day's testimony shocked those spectators who were hoping for a sensational scandal. Defendant B.A. Hooks took the stand first and professed that it was Vet, who drew a gun on him and the other defendants.

Professor Vet, speaking in broken English, took the stand and reiterated essentially the same story of the unprovoked attack on him. Courtroom curiosity seekers, the lawyers and even Judge Speer had to lean in toward Vet to understand his barely discernible testimony.

Vet testified that he had some difficulty with Miss Dew, the school's elocution teacher. According to the music teacher, Miss Dew wanted to use the piano in an upcoming school exhibition. He testified that he told the young teacher that she was "unladylike" as he took the piano into his own classroom. The Akermans introduced police reports tending to indicate that Vet had committed prior instances of insulting comments toward women.

To prove their claim that Vet's body had been seriously injured, Guerry and Meldrim introduced his broken, crushed hat along with his tattered, bloody coat, spattered with Vet's own blood. His lawyers pointed to a scar on his throat and claimed that the brutal attack was the proximate cause of their client's deafness.

Professor W.R. Lanier, a most credible and well-respected witness, testified that he heard Hooks say, "If I could get two or three helpers, I will give Vet a thrashing."

Miss Dew, described by a Macon Telegraph reporter as "young and attractive," took the stand next. A hush fell over the room as all present intensely listened. Judge Speer ruled that her testimony was irrelevant and excused the teacher from the courtroom.

One by one the other defendants took the stand. Blount Freeman, T.W. Hooks and Daniel Driggars denied that they had any part in the alleged attack. A.A. Cowart did not make an appearance, a move claimed by some to be calculated to avoid a judgment as he was insolvent. The trio placed the blame on Hooks and Cowart, who had previously plead guilty in the Dublin City Court. J.L. Robinson was sworn in and testified that Freeman, T.W. Hooks, and Driggars had no part in the fracas. Dr. J.M. Page, testifying on behalf of the defendants, stated that Vet's wounds were not as serious as he had declared.

In their closing arguments, Vet's attorneys reviewed the evidence and asserted that they had established a prima facie case against the defendants. Dublin Judge John S. Adams, one of the city's most well respected attorneys, argued that Vet had been lying about his $100.00 a month income as he had earned more than $60.00 a week. Alex Akerman pointed out the fact that Vet's straw hat was not bent on its right side, the side in which Vet stated he could not hear out of. Akerman proceeded with a grand theory that the actions of the defendants were nothing more than Southern chivalry in protecting the virtues of the young and innocent female teacher.

Meldrim, a consummate courtroom performer, rose to his feet, threw down his notes, and yelled, "Southern chivalry, bah!" He questioned whether or not chivalry was luring a simple stranger from a foreign land into the dark and beating him dangerously. Judge Speer agreed and charged the jury that all evidence of chivalry was irrelevant. Speer accented his point by stating generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the epitome of Southern chivalry, would not have shown that kind of behavior.

The jury deliberated for an hour before returning a verdict against B.A. Hooks and A.A. Cowart in the amount of $1,000.00 each and $300.00 from T.W. Hooks, Blount Freeman, and Daniel Driggars, collectively. B.A. Hooks appealed to Judge Speer for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict of the jury. Judge Speer denied the motion and Hooks filed an appeal to the District Court of Appeals. The following November, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict.

It was one of those cases when no one went home happy. Vet, partially deaf and only slightly compensated after paying his two high-priced attorneys, and Hooks and his accomplices, greatly lighter in their wallets, couldn't understand what they did was wrong. Vet, at least could take some consolation in the fact that he was still playing the piano with two good hands and listening with one good ear.

EYEWTINESS TO INFAMY

2011-12-06T20:45:00.004-05:00

Pancakes were all that Marjorie Wilson could think about as she drifted in and out of her Sunday morning dreams. It was just another normal sunny day, or so Marjorie thought. When she could practically smell pancakes, Marjorie rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, got out bed, put on her robe and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Pleasant thoughts turned into nightmares. Did it not seem real? Was it a all a bad dream?

The date was December 7, 1941. The place was Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The clock in the Wilson house was about to strike eight. Marjorie Hobbs Wilson, daughter of Walter A. Hobbs and Mary Arnold Hobbs, awoke from dreaming about pancakes to witness a nightmare, the momentous bombing of Pearl Harbor, which turned the world on its head. It was a cataclysmic day. It was a day which still lives in infamy seven decades later.

Marjorie's husband, Sergeant Major Bob Wilson, was stationed in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor. Relations between the United States and Japan had begun to deteriorate. Many expected a war, but not that soon, and not in this way.

Bob Wilson was the first to awake that morning. The Wilsons heard no alarms, no air raid warnings. Bob, running up the steps of the couple's two story house, said, "Honey, you are missing a good mock war." Sgt. Major Wilson looked out the window again and realized that it was no drill. The roar of planes near the naval base wasn't unusual. In fact, the Wilsons and other servicemen and their families had grown accustomed to planes engaging in maneuvers.

Marjorie looked out the window. "The Jap planes were flying so low over our house that the wheels were almost rolling on the roofs. I knew it was the real thing when I saw a bomb make a direct hit," she recalled.

Bob Wilson, a veteran of the first World War, ran to his closet and began to put on his Marine uniform. Marjorie turned on the radio. Frantic broadcasters were constantly announcing that Japanese planes were attacking the Island of Oahu and for all men to report for duty at once. Bob got to his unit as soon as he could.

Marjorie Wilson first ran to the home of her girlfriend, Margaret De Sadler. Then Marjorie and Margaret went over to Harriett Hemmingway's house. As they ran down the streets, Mrs. Wilson recalled running along a quiet street, but seeing real bombs exploding nearby.

"Several girls had gathered there and we were there when the worst part was going on," Marjorie wrote in a letter to her parents later in the day. Mrs. Wilson recalled, "There were about seven kids there and all scared stiff. Harriett was almost out of her head. She has two little boys, one three and one five." I haven't been scared so far. I don't guess I've got enough sense to be."

More of the wives and their children gathered in the house. While the attack was on, the ladies kept their children calm by lying on the floor with them and drawing pictures. "I never knew anything about drawing before, but after that session, I think I am a pretty fair artist," Wilson chuckled. When one piece of shrapnel came inside the house, the children were herded into an interior room. Marjorie reached down and picked up the metallic souvenir.

Margaret accompanied Marjorie back to the Wilson house, where they put some clothes in a suitcase just in case they needed to evacuate to the hills. Bob Wilson returned to his house to make sure Marjorie had a radio to hear special announcements as all regular radio programming was suspended.

During the carefully premeditated surprise attack, Mrs. Wilson observed, "Some of the youngsters in the service ran out on the field shaking their fists at the Japanese planes even when they saw a bomb falling their way." She observed one Marine cook firing away with his anti-aircraft gun. The man suddenly remembered that he had a chocolate cake in the oven and ran to make sure it wasn't burning. "It was a silly thing to think of at a time like that - but those boys did enjoy the cake when the fireworks were over," she fondly recalled.

On that Sunday night, practically every light in Pearl Harbor was turned off. Marjorie and Margaret pulled down a mattress from the upstairs and tried to get some sleep on the downstairs floor. Marjorie took out a pen and wrote a letter back to her parents promising to let them know how she was doing as often as she could. " As soon as I can, I'll send you a wire, but I don't know now when that will be possible," she also wrote.

"We spent a pretty quiet night. Of course, Margaret and I both slept with one eye and one ear open," Marjorie recalled. The ladies had some comfort in the fact that a sentry was stationed right in front of her house.

At one o'clock in the morning, Alfred Sturgis rang the door bell and invited the ladies to come stay with him. Sturgis, who had worked all day at the Navy yard, couldn't drive his car during the blackout periods. Sturgis took Marjorie's letter and made sure it made it back to Dublin, just in time for Christmas.

After the initial shock, things at Pearl Harbor seemed to return to normal, or at least as normal as it could be under the circumstances. Marjorie remembered the blackouts every night. She recalled seeing Japanese merchants being rounded up and hauled in front of late night tribunals. She regretted that she and the other wives rarely saw their husbands. The ladies had gas, lights and water for the next day, but military officials cut off the water after reports that insurgents had poisoned the water supply.

Marjorie Hobbs returned to Atlanta three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. She didn't want to come home and leave her husband behind. "I got my orders so here I am - and I am going to try to find some kind of war work to do as soon as I can," she told Celestine Sibley of the Atlanta Constitution.

Marjorie eventually returned to Dublin. She was a member of the John Laurens DAR, the Shamrock Garden Club and was the first president of the Dublin Service League. Bob Wilson made it home safely too. After retiring as a Warrant Officer from the Marine Corps, Bob owned and operated the Western Auto Store in town. He died in 1980. Marjorie Hobbs Wilson died on July 20, 2002 and is buried in Northview Cemetery in Dublin.

It was seventy years ago tomorrow when Marjorie Wilson woke up from a dream and witnessed that infamous day, the day the world changed forever.

THOMAS JEFFERSON JAMES

2011-11-29T21:53:00.000-05:00

CAPTAIN T.J. JAMES

The Founder of Adrian

In the last twenty-five years of his life, Thomas Jefferson James was known as a builder of railroads. At the turn of the 20th Century, Captain James, as he was dubbed by all those who admired him, built a small metropolis in the wiregrass fields of East-Central Georgia. James died in Atlanta one hundred years ago on November 28, 1911. This is his story.

Thomas Jefferson James was in the northeast Central Georgia county of Jones on June 20, 1846. His mother, the former Miss Druscilla Lyles, died just before Thomas' fourth birthday. His father, Benjamin Jones, while visiting his elder sons in the Confederate Army fell victim to a fatal case of pneumonia and died on September 11, 1861.

Thomas was sixteen, strong, and eager to join his brothers, Abel and William. He traveled to Caroline County, Virginia, where on the 2nd day of June 1863, Private Thomas James subscribed his name before J.N. Beall on the enlistment roll of Company B, 12th Georgia Regiment, known as the Jones Volunteers. A single month later, Thomas James would witness the greatest carnage in the history of North American warfare. Serving in the brigade of George P. Doles, of Milledgeville, James's regiment attacked from the north into the town of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. Luckily, the regiment was not heavily engaged and casualties during the three-day epic battle were relatively light.

Things wouldn't be so easy at Spotsylvania Court House on the 10th of May 1864. The 12th regiment was overrun by Union forces at the Mule Shoe salient. Nearly all of Company B's soldiers still in action were captured, including James and his brothers Abel and William. They were taken prisoners and imprisoned at Point Lookout Prison in Maryland. The James boys were then transferred to the den of death, Elmira, New York, where Confederate prisoners died at a rate equal to or greater than their Union counterparts in Andersonville, Georgia.

By the end of October the number of prisoners crammed into an inefficacious facility designed for three thousand men had swollen to more than ten thousand prisoners. Decades after his imprisonment, T.J. James told of the horrors of his internment at Elmira. T.J. James recovered from a severe bout of measles. William succumbed to Typhoid pneumonia on October 1, 1864. To pass their time, the James brothers learned how to make gutta percha rings made from silver or pearl with thirteen stars representing the Confederate states. They sold them to the Yankees for a few dollars each. Abel and Thomas along with another prisoner used spoons and case knives to dig a tunnel under the house sixteen feet under the outer wall. Their escape was foiled, probably by a camp snitch.

Some five weeks after General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Thomas James told his captors that he would sign an oath of allegiance to the United States, because all he wanted was to go home. Finally, a month later in the middle of June and after eleven months in prison, Abel and James began their long trek home.

When Thomas James returned home, he found his homeland decimated, barren, and burned. He returned to farming, going to school when he could. By the age of twenty-five, Thomas James's future began to be apparent. In 1868, James went to work as a common laborer on the Macon and Augusta Railway. He saved his scant salary until the "Panic of '73" tolled railroad construction in the state. James went to work for the contracting firm of J.T. and W.D. Grant on the Chattachoochee River. The firm purchased the 4,060- acre, $100,000-dollar, Old Town Plantation just below Louisville, Georgia in Jefferson County. James bought out the Grants in 1884 with other partners, including U.S. Senator and Civil War Governor of Georgia, Joseph E. Brown.

After the economy rebounded, Thomas James bought out his partners and began the practice of leasing convicts from the State of Georgia. Within fourteen months, James' gang of convicts, reportedly numbering as many as three thousand men, built more than 225 miles of railroads across the state. Capt. James, as he was known then, joined a large saw milling operation under the name of the Southern Lumber Company. When the company faltered, James purchased the assets and transformed the ailing company into a profitable operation.

Capt. T.J. James built his own railroad, the Wadley and Mt. Vernon, which ran from its terminus in Jefferson County, southwesterly through Kite, Adrian and Rockledge. The railroad never made it to Mt. Vernon, but did run another line into Emanuel County and operated at the Wadley Southern Railroad.

James expanded his operations to include timber and farming. He was one of the largest planters in the state and certainly the largest in East Central Georgia. His operated gristmills, sawmills, and cane syrup plants on his farm and timberlands which encompassed 38,000 acres.

Thomas James moved his headquarters to the western corner of Emanuel County in a small community named Adrian. James personally made improvements to the infrastructure of the fledgling town, furnishing the town with water from his well east of town on the Ohoopee River and his electric light plant. He owned James Mercantile Company and the Farmers Bank of Adrian.

Captain James was always looking for ways to improve his railroads. In the early spring of 1899, he traveled to Atlanta to put in a bid for the trains of an insolvent traveling circus company. There he met George V. Gress, who was solely there to acquire the circus animals. James and Gress discussed their wants, entered a joint bid of $4,485.00, and walked off with their respective prizes. James took his train cars back to Adrian. Gress offered the animals to the city of Atlanta. The city council accepted. Gress, a lumber dealer, built a building and cages, which became the Atlanta Zoo.

On June 30, 1881, Mr. James was united in marriage to Miss Alice Cheatham, of Jefferson county and a direct descendant of Gov. David Emmanuel, America's first Jewish born governor. They had six children, Thomas Jefferson, Jr., Alice N., Arthur Emanuel, Frank C., Albert H. and Annie M. James.

James told biographer A.B. Caldwell, that he found relaxation in horseback riding and musical evenings spent at home. James credited his success to his parents and the "habits of industry and frugality" that they taught him, along with private study and contact with business men. To the young he commended, "truthfulness, honesty, careful calculations and thoughtful execution, regular and temperate habits."

James held few political offices, but he did serve on the town council of Adrian. He was so loved and so admired that during the "new county" movement of the early 20th Century, residents of the area nearly succeeded in garnering a new county, James County, with its seat in Adrian, Georgia.

It was in 1909 at the height of his business career when Capt. James' health began to fail. He moved to Atlanta in hopes of better medical care. He died in an Atlanta hospital just before 2:oo o'clock, p.m. on November 28, 1911.

Capt. Thomas J. James left his footprints across East Central Georgia. Along the 680 miles of railroads his crews built grew the small towns which are the roots of our area's long and rich heritage, all of which ended one hundred ago.

ESTHER GORDY EDWARDS

2011-11-29T21:46:00.000-05:00

ESTHER GORDY EDWARDS

The Mother of Motown

She has been called the "Mother of Motown." You may know of her brother, Barry Gordy, Jr., the founder of the Motown sound - the sounds of the Sixties and Seventies that we all danced to and sung, sometimes like no one else was watching or listening. Esther Gordy Edwards, a native of Washington County, Georgia, was the behind-the-scenes driving force behind one of the most successful record companies in history and a mother and mentor to several iconic American musical legends. She died this past summer at the age of ninety-one. This is her story.

Esther Gordy Edwards was born on the 25th day of April in the year 1920. Her parents Berry Gordy, Sr. and Bertha Fuller Gordy lived in Oconee, Georgia in southwestern Washington County. Esther, the couple's second child and eldest daughter, left home with her family when she about two years old. Their destination, Detroit, Michigan, was a place where good paying jobs could be found as the southern cotton crop was baking in the dry fields or being devoured by the pesky boll weevil.

Esther attended Detroit's prestigious Cass Technical High School, which boasts scores of successful graduates including Diana Ross, Lily Tomlin, and Della Reese. Esther continued her education at Wayne State and Howard University. Along with two of her brothers, Esther Gordy founded the Gordy Printing Company in 1947.

In 1951 at the age of thirty-one, Miss Gordy married George Edwards. Edwards served as a Michigan state representative.

The Gordy siblings designed a way to make things easier for the family when one sibling needed help. They formed a cooperative of sorts. Each sibling would periodically deposit a small sum into a family savings account. All siblings were required to approve loans to the others.

Berry Gordy, Jr. had a dream. He wanted to start a record company. He asked his brothers and sisters for the $800.00 he needed to buy a house and open a studio. Esther initially said no to the request. She finally agreed.

"I knew right then, if I ever made money, she would be the one I'd get to watch it for me," Gordy later wrote. So, the enterprising entrepreneur asked Esther to help him with the company, which he named, Motown.

As the company's comptroller, it was Esther's job to manage the business affairs of the burgeoning company. It wasn't long before her role in the company expanded. Mrs. Edwards developed close personal relationships with many of the singers. Her personal skills and business savvy were critical to the successes of many of Motown's most successful and popular recording artists.

Esther Gordy Edwards did more than watch his money. When the artists went out on the road or had difficulty in dealing with their new found and meteoric fame, Esther was there by their sides to lend an ear and give wise and trusted advice. She mothered and mentored singers and musicians and hired people who helped polish and develop their talents

Edwards took a personal role as a advisor of the Marvellettes, whose first song, Please Mr. Postman, rocketed to the top of the Hot 100 and R&B charts. Perhaps her most famous pupil and ward was a young teenager, Stevland Judkins, who over the last four decades became an American musical legend under his stage name, Stevie Wonder. Wonder, in a statement issued after her death, said, "She believed in me - when I was 14 years old and many other people didn't or could only see what they could at the time, she championed me being in Motown. I shared with her many of my songs first before anyone else."

Esther Edwards' business activities extended beyond the music business. She served on the board of directors of the Detroit Bank of the Commonwealth and was the first woman chosen to serve on the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce.

Esther remained in the forefront of the management of Motown as the company's corporate secretary, director of international operations, vice-president and chief executive officer until 1972, when she was replaced by singing legend, Smokey Robinson. When her brother and the business moved its headquarters to Los Angeles, Esther Edwards remained in Detroit. Eventually she turned the original studio building into Hitsville, USA, a museum to honor the lasting contribution of the studio, its founder, and its artists to American musical history.

Esther Edwards, a persistent conservator of Motown memorabilia, began preserving pieces of the company's rich heritage. "She preserved Motown memorabilia before it was memorabilia, collecting our history long before we knew we were making it," Berry Gordy said. He sung her praises by turning the "trash" they left behind when the company moved west into a lasting reminder of the company's rich musical heritage.

Esther Gordy Edwards passed away on August 24, 2011 in the presence of her family. In speaking of her life, her brother Berry said, "Whatever she did, it was with the highest standards, professionalism, and an attention to detail that was legendary. He praised his sister for not being concerned with being popular, but being dedicated to making everyone in the Gordy family and Motown better.

So now you know a little bit about the story which proves the old adage "that behind every successful man is a wise woman. That old saying has never been more true than the story of Esther Gordy Edwards, the little girl from Washington County, who grew up to be a mentor in the history of American music.

2011-11-18T22:21:00.000-05:00

FOLLOW THE FELLOW WHO FOLLOWS A DREAM
A Eulogy for Karl Slover, 1918-2011

Three days ago, the big heart in this big man gave out. The Wizard of Oz once told the Tin Man, "Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable." Our hearts are breaking now. Karl touched the lives of everyone he ever met. When you met him, you walked away feeling better about your life and the world itself. He touched the lives of you his adopted family, his friends, and all those who met him at the Sheridan, at the malls around Tampa, and from coast to coast.

When the Tin Man insisted on getting a heart from the Wizard of Oz, the great wizard cautioned him by saying "A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.

The Wizard was talking about our friend Karl. Some of us had the honor and the privilege of accompanying Karl to Hollywood four short years ago to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Everywhere Karl and the other six Munchkin actors would go, crowds followed them as if they were the greatest of our celebrities.

Lights gleamed, cameras were shoved in their faces, crowds cheered, children smiled. Adults smiled too, remembering the days when they first saw Karl and the other little people in Munchkinland.

I'll never forget sitting in Grauman's Chinese Theater where the movie first premiered in 1939. We were actually sitting with the Munchkins watching the movie for the last time it was shown in its original film format in the theater where it all began.

I'll never forget watching that little man eat like he had not eaten in days. Once I ate with him and he told me that the dessert I was served wasn't any good. So he told the lady at the Sheridan to bring me some chocolate pie like he had. By the way, he ate my other dessert when he finished his piece of chocolate pie.

I'll never forget him telling the same stories, never missing a word or a fact. And, if I was lucky, getting him to add something new to an old story.

I'll never forget the smiles in the faces of the crowd as I drove him through downtown Dublin when he served as the Grand Marshal of the St. Patrick's Parade.

I'll never forget that smile, that giggle, and that song.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road.

Follow the rainbow over the stream, follow the fella who follows a dream,

You're off to see the Wizard, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

You'll find he is a whiz of a Wiz If ever a Wiz there was.

If ever oh ever a Wiz there was The Wizard of Oz is one because,

Because, because, because, because, because.

Because of the wonderful things he does.

You're off to see the Wizard. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

by E.Y. Harburg

Karl had a long journey down the Yellow Brick Road of life. And, just like Dorothy, the Tin Man, The Scarecrow and The Cowardly Lion, he had a hard start. Like Dorothy, it was the friends along his way who helped and led him to all of us here in the Emerald City.

In the last decade of his life and especially in the last five or six years, Karl was treated as Prince of the Emerald City. The story of his death has been published in nearly a thousand newspapers and web sites around the world.

Not too bad for a once 30 inch tall adult man, who was basically sold away by his father. But, Karl was never bitter about that. He loved his family as he loved all of us.

Three days ago, Karl was introduced to the real Wizard, our Lord God.

Way up high in the blue skies, he heard his mother's lullabies. He saw that his dreams of seeing his real family and his Oz family once again really did come true. Somewhere, over the rainbow, Karl found that blue birds do fly and trees really do talk. His troubles melted into lemon drops as he wiped his sleepy eyes, blew his trumpet, and saw that he was home.

Ed Grisamore, of the Macon Telegraph, described Karl this way, "The lines on his face are bunched together like rings on a dwarf maple. The tiny, squeaky voice is unmistakable. He was delightful, polite and witty, with a face forever locked in a smile."

We will all miss Karl. Even at 93, we expected him to always be there with that smile. But as we send Karl down the last leg of the great Yellow Brick Road, let us remember his own words: "I've got a good life. A wonderful life. I have no complaints." Just try to get along the best you can. Enjoy what you have. Enjoy where you live. Most of all remember what Judy Garland said, 'There's no place like home." And, now Karl is home, home!

Scott B. Thompson, Sr. November 15, 2011

Rentz Cemetery

Rentz, Georgia

KARL SLOVER

2011-11-15T20:58:00.000-05:00

2008 St. Patrick's Parade - L to R - Karl Slover,
Scotty Thompson, Scott B. Thompson, Sr. ,
Photos by Dr. Grady Campbell

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Karl Slover, Dublin St. Patrick's Festival Parade, 2006 @ Scott B. Thompson, Sr.

KARL SLOVER,

MORE THAN A MUNCHKIN

Have you ever met someone that you liked to be around the first time you ever met them? If you are lucky, sit down beside him and just listen. Listen to his stories. Listen to his contagious laugh as the tales flow. He tells and retells the same stories verbatim, but everyonce in a while, he’ll add a new twist or accent his point with an obscure phrase and his infectious giggle. And, once you get up to leave, you’ll find that you have just met one of the warmest, funniest and kindest people you’ve ever met. I felt that way the first time I met Karl Slover and every time I sit down with this little man with a big heart, big ears and an even bigger grin.

Karl was born Karl Kosiczky on September 21, 1918 in Prakendorf in that portion of Hungary which later became a part of the Czech Republic and later Germany. Karl’s six-foot six-inch tall father expected that his only son out of his five children would follow in his footsteps as a local gendarme. No one knows exactly how large Karl was when he was born, but for the first few years of his life, Karl appeared to be a normal child. But then, Karl stopped growing.
Desperate to make his two-foot tall eight-year- old son grow, Karl’s father came with all sorts of "bright ideas and brainstorms" as Karl calls them. "He got a big wooden barrel and filled it with coconut leaves and boiled them, and then put me in it. I was as red as a lobster when they took me out," Karl recalled. His mother had to coat him all over with an ointment to keep his skin from blistering. Eight doctors were called in to help. "They put me on stretchers," Karl said, "but one of the doctors thought they were doing it all wrong," he said when his bones began to pop.

"They would put me in a sand pile. I would wear a pair of long underwear. We had a maid. My mother would tell the maid, who came in around 2:00 p.m. one day, to get me out around 4:00 while she went to the grocery store. The maid went inside and it began to rain. I cried out for the maid, but she didn’t hear me. I called to our dog, a Doberman Pinscher. She came over and picked me up and drug me over to the dog’s house. Our dog loved us. My mother got home and asked where I was. The maid shrieked, ‘I forgot about Karl. He’s still out in the yard.’ My mother looked at the sand pile, and I wasn’t there where I was supposed to be. My mother called to me. I told her, ‘I’m here in the dog’s house.’ My mother and my father bawled out the maid."

One day Karl and his sister were returning from a walk when they stopped by the mailbox. They handed a letter to their mother who read it to Karl. The letter said that an agent was going to be sent over to the Slover house to see if Karl would be interested in joining Singer’s Midget Show, the largest midget show in the world. Karl remembers leaving the railroad station with his father as if it was yesterday.
"Dad and I went to the train station. He told Mr. Singer that he was glad to get rid of me and that I would do him no good in following in his footsteps," Karl recalled. Though his mother reluctantly relented, Karl kept thinking to himself "maybe it is for the best." Karl missed his family, but being around people of his own size made up for it. "I was with little people more my size. It was like a new family," said Karl. The midget show owners tried to find clothes for Karl. They looked all over for underwear. Finally they found a man in a department store who gave me some underwear to try on. "They went back and told me that the underwear had been given to the world’s smallest midget. The man was so excited that he gave me and some of the other midgets all the underwear we could wear for free," Karl chuckled.
John Ringling, one of the world’s most famous circus owners, sought out Karl for his circus. After all, Karl was billed as the "World’s Smallest Midget," and Ringling had to have him in his big top shows. Karl remained with Mr. Singer and played in Billy Rose’s "Jumbo Show" in the Hippodrome Theater in New York. He appeared in "They Gave Him a Gun" with Spencer Tracy, his favorite co-star. His first speaking role came as "Sammy the barber" with an all midget cast in "Terror of Tiny Town." In another single line movie appearance, Karl uttered the classic line "Out, please!" in Blockheads, one of Laurel and Hardy’s most popular films.

Karl as "The Barber" in Terror Of Tiny Town

Karl as a singing bass player in barroom scene in Terror Of Tiny Town.

Karl in "Blockheads"

Karl’s most famous role came as one of Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz. Karl played five roles; the first trumpeter, a sleepy head, a soldier, one of those who escorted Dorothy down the Yellow Brick Road, and even a female villager to balance out the mostly male midget cast. Karl is most often asked why he thinks the Wizard of Oz remains so popular nearly seventy years after its original airing. His standard answer goes something like this, "Children love it. It’s a family movie. There’s no filthy language in it." Ironically, Karl’s parents never saw the movie, nor did any of his sisters.

Karl as the First Trumpeter (far left) in the Wizard of Oz.

Karl as a Sleepy Head (far right) in the Wizard of Oz.

Singer’s Midget Show continued to stage performances until the early days of World War II. Many of the Munchkins left Singer because he had robbed them of most of their pay. They made less than the dog Toto. The troup disbanded, and Karl was left to face the world alone. He went to work for B.A. Slover and Ada Slover in Tampa, Florida in their amusement show. Karl finally received his American citizenship and elected to adopt the new surname of Slover for the family who tried to adopt him but couldn’t under the prevailing state law.
During the war, Karl received a letter from his sister, who was confined to a concentration camp in Germany. He told her to try and contact their father to get her out and then go to the American Zone where she would be safe. Ironically, the abandonment of Karl by his father may have not only saved his sister’s life, but may have saved Karl himself from the maniacal and diabolical Nazis who wanted to experiment on non pure Arians.
It would be thirty seven years before Karl would return to his native home. He found his mother living in the American sector of Berlin. He expected to find that his mother would be gray, but he was surprised to find that she still had blonde hair. Karl discovered that she had little memories of him and his childhood, a result of the horrors she endured during the war.
After the war, Karl continued to work with the Slovers as a barker, ride operator, and ticket taker. He also kept the books. When his days in the carnival were over, Karl’s main occupation was a poodle trainer. "I first started training Daschunds and all small breeds of dogs and even some police dogs as guard dogs. Then, I mostly trained poodles. I didn’t believe in hitting dogs. Once you hit them they won’t obey you. I tried to give them a snack when they did what I told them. I also trained horses for a time. I used to train dogs and perform them at nursing homes, schools, birthday parties and even churches. But you can’t get any more jobs like that, so I gave it up," Karl recalled.
Karl never learned how to drive though he did try driving a go-cart. It scared "the heck" of out him and he gave up driving forever.
For ten years, Karl would pack up his memorabilia once a month and go an antique mall near his home in Hyde Park and set up a table covered with an emerald green cloth. For a small fee of ten to fifteen dollars, he sold autographed pictures of himself from the Wizard of Oz and other films. Slover made his last appearance in July 2004.
For nearly twenty years now, Karl has traveled all over the country for Oz festivals and autograph signing sessions. Donna Stewart Hardway, a regular sized child who portrayed one of the Munchkins, described Karl as "a baby doll." "When people find out that he was in the movie they go nuts. Children especially warm up to him," she continued Karl’s closest friend among the surviving Munchkins is Clarence Swensen, who played a soldier in the movie. "He’s a good and nice guy," Karl quipped.
After his movie career ended, Karl began to grow. He always wanted to grow to a normal height, but after being dependent on others to do the most mundane of daily tasks, his extra height allowed him to do things on his own. He never regrets being a midget. "I got to be in the Wizard of Oz and got to meet some movie stars and a lot of nice people," Karl said.
These days Karl likes to watch television, especially game shows. When the weather is warm, Karl loves to work in his garden. He loves sweets, especially chocolate, and more especially chocolate ice cream. I recently watched Karl eat the "largest hamburger he ever saw" before topping off his meal at an LA eatery with a big bowl of chocolate ice cream.
Karl Slover is more than just a Munchkin. He is one of the kindest, sweetest, gentlest and funniest people you will ever meet. After nearly ninety years of traveling all over the country, Karl firmly believes "there is no place like home," and he is right here, living in the Emerald City to prove it.

"The lines on his face are bunched together like rings on a dwarf maple. The tiny, squeaky voice in unmistakable. He was delightful, polite and witty, with a face forever locked in a smile."
Ed Grisamore, The Macon Telegraph, December 4, 2005

"I’ve got a good life. A wonderful life. I have no complaints."
Karl Slover

Advice to people in their eighties.
"Just try to get along the best you can. Enjoy what you have. Enjoy where you live. Most of all remember what Judy Garland said, ‘There’s no place like home.’"
Karl Slover

______________________________________________________________

RETURN TO OZ

For nearly seventy years, Karl Slover has been following the Yellow Brick Road to the land of Oz. Though he and his fellow midget actors were on screen for less than ten minutes in the epic film "The Wizard of Oz," the Munchkins have become icons of American cinematic history. Finally, and most fittingly, seven of the nine surviving members of the Munchkin cast returned to Hollywood, California, where their legend began in 1939. During the week of Thanksgiving, on a boulevard lined with golden stars, Karl Slover, Mickey Carroll, Ruth Duccini, Margaret Pelligrini, Meinhardt Raabe, Clarence Swensen and Jerry Maren accepted a well deserved and long overdue star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on behalf of the 124 actors, who welcomed Dorothy Gale over the rainbow.

Many people thought that the Munchkins were already honored with their own stars. Chicago restauranteur Ted Bulthaup led the effort to have the Munchkins awarded their own star. His dream was aided by such Hollywood icons as Steven Speilberg, George Lucas, Ted Turner and dozens more. Actually they are the only group of characters to be so honored for their memorable, albeit brief, appearance on the big screen.

Karl Slover, a resident of the Sheridan Place in Dublin, received the news this past summer. The 89-year- old Slover frequently travels throughout the country to Oz festivals and autograph sessions. Upon the receipt of the news, Sheridan director Gina Ensley Drown and her staff began the preparations for the trip to Hollywood during the week of Thanksgiving. A dozen Dubliners traveled to Hollywood to accompany Karl. Ten travelers stayed up all night following a Dublin football game to catch an early morning flight. The celebration began on Sunday night with a delicious meal hosted by Mayor Phil Best and his wife Cile at the L.A. Prime, some three hundred feet above downtown Los Angeles. Mayor Best presented an honorary award to Karl, who was accompanied by his niece Gay Griffit.

Scotty Thompson, Karl Slover and Scott Thompson

at L.A. Prime. (Photo by Cristol Cannon)

Karl Slover and Gina Ensley Drown

Dublin Mayor Phil Best toasts Karl.

Laura Ensley, Karl Slover and Ashley Ensley.

align="justify">The festivities began in earnest on November 19 at Graumann’s Chinese Theater. The Hollywood Preservation Society sponsored a showing of "The Wizard of Oz." It would be the last time that this legendary film, specially enhanced just for this showing, would ever be shown in its technicolor format on the big screen. The entrance to the theater, one of the country’s most historic movie houses, was lined with yellow brick road carpet, a battalion of cameramen, and a few hundred adoring fans and passers by. My son Scotty and I, along with Pam Green of WDIG-TV got our crowded guard rail spots two hours early. The official media stood in relative comfort across the aisle in their reserved places. While the rented spotlights beamed into the unusually foggy L.A. sky, the honored guests began to arrive.

Karl Slover and Jerry Maren mobbed by

photographers in front of Graumann's Theater.

As the Munchkins began to walk down the yellow carpet, a hoard of media, more voracious than the wicked witch’s monkeys, swarmed over Karl and the other midget actors. They don’t mind being called midgets, because that’s what they are. After the honorees had their pictures taken with the sponsors and in clips for the national networks, the ceremony opened with a humorous introduction by Gary Owens, of "Laugh In" and "The Gong Show" fame. Stan Taffel, a comedian and Hollywood historian interviewed the Munchkins. When it came Karl’s turn, he began to sing "We’re off to see the Wizard," a charming tune which drew a loud round of applause and quite a few tears.

Karl relaxes prior to screening of Wizard of Oz.

The feature of the night was the showing of the Wizard of Oz in the same theater it premiered in August 1939. The picture was so clear you really could see the freckles on Dorothy’s face. If you have never seen the movie on a big screen, you missed a wonderful treat. And though most of the audience had seen the movie before - some dozens of times - there was reciting of the lines, applause, laughter, and cheers throughout the showing. Some in the Dublin delegation drew the attention of several photographers and a documentary cinematographer as we were all dressed in emerald city green attire, each of us wearing specially designed "Karl Slover Fan Club" buttons. Also present that night were actresses Tippi Hedren, of Alfred Hitchcock’s "The Birds," Margaret O’Brien of "Meet Me in St. Louis" and a childhood friend of Judy Garland, and Anne Rutherford, who played a sister of Scarlett O’Hara in "Gone With the Wind." The granddaughter of Frank Morgan, who portrayed the Wizard and several other Emerald City residents, was in attendance along with the great grandson of L. Frank Baum, the writer and creator of the story. There were also several actors who portrayed Munchkins present, but because they were children and not midgets, they were inexplicably - to me anyway - not included in the festivities.

Margaret Pelligrini, Mickey Carroll, Ruth Duccini,

Mrs. Jerry Maren, Jerry Maren and Karl Slover.

Back row: Stan Taffel and Gary Owens.

The highlight of the week came on Tuesday morning with the star presentation ceremony. Hosted by Johnny Grant, the "Mayor of Hollywood," and Joe Luft, son of Judy Garland, and a squad of politicos, the ceremony began right on time. Covering the entrance to the theater was a tall arch of balloons simulating a rainbow. The Munchkins arrived from their hotel rooms in a carriage, pulled by a horse of a different color. This particular steed was a pale purple one. The crowd swelled. The Hollywood High School band played.

Munchkins Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

Karl walks toward the unveiling ceremony.

Cameras went high into the air to catch a glimpse of the little people as they approached the podium. We had been at our station near the star site for two hours, long before any of the crowd arrived.

The Munchkins walked down a wider and much longer yellow carpet strip to the site of their star, located at the far eastern end of the theater. In front of a battery of television and still photographers and barely within our view, the star was finally unveiled. After thousands of photographs and hours of film were taken, Karl and his comrades were given another carriage ride back to the Roosevelt Hotel.

Following the presentation ceremony, a luncheon was held in honor of the Munchkins in the Blossom Room of the hotel. In the very room where the first Academy Awards were held in 1929, the tables were decorated with green table cloths and illuminated underneath to give the room a virescent glow, reminiscent of the chamber of the Wizard of Oz. Behind the dais was a striking rendition of the Emerald City. The tables were decorated with baskets filled with red poppies and a stuffed toy version of Toto.

Carriage ride to Roosevelt Hotel

The luncheon passed all too quickly before the actors were once again whisked off to face the media for one final time and much to the chagrin of autograph seekers who had politely waited until they finished eating.

Karl’s final night in Hollywood was spent with his niece and the folks from Dublin in a quiet restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. Following a long day and puny luncheon food, Karl enjoyed the largest hamburger he ever saw. Still hungry, Karl downed a big bowl of chocolate ice cream.

Karl enjoying a big bowl of chocolate ice cream.

Karl enjoyed the visit and appreciated the honor that he and his fellow Munchkins had finally received. Though he was honored to be there, he found nothing very exciting in Hollywood like he did seventy years ago. Feeling smothered by the media sticking microphones in his face and blinding his eyes with spot lights, the little man with the big smile was glad to be back in the "Emerald City" of Dublin. "Heck yeah, I am glad to be home," Karl said, "after all, there’s no place like home."

Karl with Emma, Vicki, Kathy, and Mandi Hutto.

All other photos @ Scott B. Thompson, Sr.

CHANDLER MAURICE BEASLEY, SR.

2011-11-12T23:06:00.000-05:00

Always Faithful

Chandler was eating lunch in a small café when the world was turned upside down. One day after his eighteenth birthday, Beasley had no too much to worry about. He had a job at Snow's Laundry in Milledgeville. The country was at peace or so it appeared. Beasley and most everyone else knew that the world was at war, but at home, the war seemed so far away.

By the fall of 1939, a war with Germany was on the minds of everyone. When the National Guard mobilized a year later, Beasley entertained the very real thought of joining up after his graduation from high school.

As the U.S. Marine Corps was heavily engaged in the Battle of Guadalcanal, Chandler Maurice Beasley decided to join the Marines. He and a buddy were shipped off across the country to San Diego. After seven weeks of grueling training, Beasley was off for even more training. On the first anniversary of the war, Beasley was traveling aboard a train bound for Chicago and guard duty at the Navy Pier. For ten months, he trained in the Aviation Maintenance School before reporting for duty with the 3rd Marine Air Wing.

"We finally boarded a ship and arrived in the Caroline Islands group in the Pacific in mid October 1944," Beasley recalled. His unit's mission was to convert Ulithi Atoll, a jungle about the size of two city blocks, into an airstrip. Once the construction was complete, the installation would become one of the most advanced in the Pacific, primarily to be used to launch F6F Hell Cat fighter to protect the fleet anchorage from night attacks.

"We worked twenty-four hours around the clock and life was not all that exciting," Beasley recalled. "I think the biggest excitement the Japanese came up with were five suicidal mini submarines and they tried to send them into the fleet anchorage there at the end," Beasley concluded.

Beasley vividly remembered that in February of 1945, his unit was split into two groups. One was the assault group. "We boarded ship at that time headed for Okinawa. We did not know we were going to Okinawa. But that's where we wound up. We left the aircraft and the rest of the squadron back in the Carolines and we went down to the Philippines and lay around there for a while before taking off for Okinawa. We had no idea where we were going," he recollected.

"I woke up one morning and went out on the deck and every ship in the world was there! This was just before D-Day in April. We were in a convoy the day before; it was really not that large. During the night everything rendezvoused there at Okinawa. Somebody got the word out! I had never seen so many ships in all my life." the Marine exclaimed.

Then there was the never to be forgotten day when Chandler was sorting through his much over due shipment of mail, hoping to find out something about his father's poor condition. "When I came out, all hell broke loose. We were hit by a surprise kamikaze attack. I'm telling you that was quite an experience! The ship on the left side of us took a bomb. The ship on the immediate right side of us had a kamikaze plane crash into it. So we were right in the middle of it and it was no fun," Beasley remembered.

On Holy Easter Sunday, the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps launched the largest naval invasion in the Pacific theater of the war. In the beginning, Japanese resistance was not as strong as was feared. Soon, those fears were realized. "We were hit pretty heavy most every night. We suffered the most casualties at night," Beasley said.

Things began to settle down by the end of May although suicide bomber attacks continued to rattle the troops on the ground and the ships off the shore. Then there was the night when thirteen stripped down "Betty Bombers" approached the airstrip at Yontan. "One plane made it and I'm telling you, they created more hell around that strip. We had people from the unit that were down there that night right in the middle of it," he recalled.

"They were evidently well informed and they knew where the ammo dumps and fuel dumps were and started blowing them up. You just didn't dare stick your head above the ground. It was that rough," the former Tech Sergeant Beasley said.

As things began to settle down into a normal routine, the war was suddenly over. "Thank God for the Atom bomb. I say that because we were packing up getting ready to invade Japan. Only God knows what that would have been," Beasley stated.

Beasley bided his time racking up enough to points to go home. After a few weeks of delay, he was headed home, home for Christmas aboard the USS Altamaha. Chandler Beasley didn't quite make it home for Christmas. But he did get the gift he wished for. On Boxing Day, Beasley was discharged from the Marine Corps.

Beasley's service to his country was not over, not at all. After a three-year respite, he rejoined the Marine Reserves for a two-year hitch. "I wanted to keep my hand in it. The only reason I had chosen the Marine Reserves, I couldn't get into any active Reserve unit."

In 1954, a National Guard unit in Dublin was reestablished. Beasley joined the unit and served for thirty-three years before retiring as a Command Sergeant Major. "All in all, it was a great ride. It was a riot, but it was something you wouldn't want to go through twice," Beasley fondly remembered.

As was the case with many of the members of the "Greatest Generation," Chandler Beasley returned home to serve his community with distinction and pride, nearly forty years of military service and thirty-two years as a rural mail carrier in Dexter, Georgia. Beasley is still active in his new home, living with other veterans at the VA Hospital. In fact, he now supplies many of his new buddies with greens from his garden on the grounds.

Beasley and his wife, Bettye Scott Beasley, were the proud parents of four sons, Scott, Chandler, Jr., Danny and Willie.

And today, nearly seventy years after World War II began, CSM Chandler M. Beasley is still ready to serve his country if called upon. That is because Chandler Beasley loves America and because Chandler Beasley is still a Marine. Semper Fi!

JOHNNY PAYNE, WALKING POINT IN VIETNAM

2011-11-10T22:50:00.000-05:00

Many of you know John L. "Johnny" Payne. He has been a fixture in the religious,

military, civic, scouting, business, and athletic activities of Laurens County for most of his life. Those years he wasn't living here and contributing to our community, he was nearly half way around the world, serving our country in the jungles of Vietnam. What you may not have known is that his job was one of the most dangerous an infantry soldier could be assigned. He was the one walking in front of a jungle patrol, the one likely to make contact with the enemy first, he was walking point."

When Sergeant Johnny Payne was walking the point, he saw green, and more green. His eyes scanned the thick jungle paths of central Vietnam for venomous vipers, slithering serpents, essentially invisible booby traps, and the elusive Viet Cong, all the while enduring horrendous heat and monotonous monsoons, not to mention the loathsome leaches.

A once famous psychic, Jeanne Dixon, predicted that Payne's unit would be wiped out in Vietnam. That very same unit had been wiped out, some ninety four years earlier. That outfit, Bravo Co., 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, fifth platoon was previously commanded by General George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876. "We did have some contact that day, but there were no deaths, not even any injuries," Payne remembered.

"I was very fortunate to have been born in Dexter and Laurens County, hunting and fishing," Payne asserted. " I could have had all the college degrees in the world and I could have been very skilled at reading maps, but that skill set of knowing your senses and the senses in your body came in good, " in commenting on how he was able to cope with the stress being the lead man in a jungle patrol.

As a platoon of less than thirty men moved out along trails or simply through dense trail-less jungles, one man was responsible for walking point. In Johnny Payne's platoon, the average life expectancy was from seven to ten days. The point man was usually the first person to make contact with an enemy sniper, a deadly mine or a booby trap.

Payne considering himself blessed, professed, "I wouldn't follow a trail, but we as a platoon would work off the old French trails which had a lot of movement on them." He always tried to walk through the dense jungles, stopping every once in a while to untangle himself from a "wait a minute" vine, which entangled in his uniform, his gear or his exposed skin.

"I really wanted to walk point because I felt comfortable doing it," Payne, two to three years out of high school, recalled. Walking point didn't make him proud, but he was more comfortable in the fact that some of his comrades came from New Jersey, the Bronx, Colorado and other places. Some had never fired a weapon. "I had an advantage. I walked point on my own for about five months. I pretty much volunteered," Payne added.

Crossing streams was especially difficult. At the point where the patrol was crossing, they were the most vulnerable to enemy fire. "When we got to a stream, we would never have more than one or two men in the stream when we were crossing it and then we would fan out right and left," Sgt. Payne believed as the reason his unit's casualties were kept to a minimum.

Payne soon realized that the hardest thing his unit could do would be called in to aid another unit in an existing firefight. He learned to instantly recognize and differentiate the reports of an AK-47 and an M-16. "As you got closer to the firefight, with the helicopters overhead, with the artillery support from an artillery base in the jungle or off the coast, you had to put all that into your perspective. Your senses and your ability to listen is just amazing," Payne asserted.

"Life in the jungle was a struggle, you didn't know if you would live to see the next day," Payne said. His unit would go out on patrols lasting from fifteen to twenty days, sometimes twenty-five days without a break. The unit was re-supplied every four or five days with food and if they were lucky, with treasured letters from home.

Every soldier had to adapt to the lack of sleep and the lack of food. Walking guard duty at night was expected of almost every member of the patrol. "We worked as a team, never in the same place every night," Payne said. "Once we hit the ground, your rank didn't matter. When the unit got to a camp site, everyone took part in setting up trip flares and Claymore mines along the perimeter, as well as guarding the forward and rear areas," he added.

Being in the jungle itself presented natural problems. "It rained every day at 4:00 p.m. During the monsoon season, it rained twenty-four hours a day, all week long," Payne recalled. He saw all sorts of animals that he never saw in the swamps of Rocky Creek back home in Dexter. There were cobras and bamboo vipers, too. He saw one of those little green bamboo vipers lying on his stomach one morning after waking up from a night's sleep.

Decent food was a treat. Payne remembered the Chinook helicopters dropping "Gaines Burgers," military lingo for some type of mystery meat molded into a burger. "I weighed 160 pounds, but while I was in Vietnam my stomach shrunk. When I got home, I am afraid that I disappointed my mama. She cooked a big bowl of chili. I was only able to eat half of it. I think she died believing that she had burned it or something," Payne recalled.

Payne got an unexpected break during one patrol. Carrying the rank of private first class early in his career, Payne began his first tour of duty in Vietnam on September 1, 1970. One day, he was ordered out of the jungle to appear before a review board. Appearing in his jungle fatigues and with no bath in at least ten days, Corporal Payne (far right) was examined and sent back to the jungle that afternoon. "The next thing I knew, I was a sergeant," he recalled.

Losing friends is always hard. Johnny lost his assistant gunner while he was carrying a machine gun. Still today, some four decades later, Johnny gets a lump in his throat as he serves as a master of ceremonies to honor veterans who gave their lives to their country. Payne said, "I get emotional. I know that somewhere out there is a gold star mother who has lost her son."

Johnny Payne returned to the United States a year after he first arrived in Vietnam. He was proud to serve in the infantry. His return to the United States was all too typical of the way veterans from Vietnam were treated. Payne and his fellow soldiers didn't come up to the tarmac after their plane landed.

"There were people standing there. I really had no understanding of what they were going to be saying or doing. They were yelling at us, throwing rocks, spitting at us. It was awful to see that happening," he recollected. Payne was puzzled. "These people didn't know. They were yelling baby killers, which is what they had seen on TV," he added.

Payne and his hero, his wife, Sue Ann

Some people were supportive, but it took a while for Johnny Payne to once again be proud of serving his country. Today when he sees a Vietnam veteran with a cap on, he tells them that he was proud to serve with them. "Time has a way of healing thoughts. A lot of people thanked me, although some went to their graves with no thanks, except from their families," he added.

Payne says that our citizens should communicate with returning veterans. He says that all veterans are the same regardless of which war or actions they served in. "They don't want to be treated as heroes, but they do want to be treated as normal people. Don't look the other way, he requested. "The hardest of hearts needs love. It will either come in or come out," he asserted.

Payne and the Moving Wall, Kathleen, Georgia

Payne says the cost of freedom is high. "It has been paid by so many people and it is an expensive one," he continued. "We had great needs for prayers, letters, care packages, and most of all, love and acceptance when we came home," he added. The mental anguish resulting from a war that was never won was compounded by the way in which Payne and his fellow veterans were received. "We quietly slipped back into society as quickly as possible. Only members of our immediate families seemed to share in the secrets of our own personal wars that would now begin. Our hearts had been broken and many of our dreams had been shattered," Payne proclaimed as he gave credit to the churches and God himself.

When Johnny Payne looks back on his service in Vietnam, he is honored to have been a part of it. In fact, our country recognized his heroism with the awarding of a Bronze Star for valor, although he does not consider himself by any means a hero.

Johnny Payne was one of the lucky ones. He beat the odds. And, all of us in Laurens County who have benefitted from his deeds of public charity and acts of volunteer service are lucky that he survived.

When walking the point, Sgt. John L. Payne knew that God was there and that he could turn to Him for guidance. "There is no doubt in my mind, that God helped me not to get shot with as many firefights as I was in," he believes. In one of those firefights, Payne's helmet fell off and rolled away from him. Two hours later, he was able to retrieve it. Payne picked up his steel pot with its 19 holes, each put there by a pecking sniper believing there was a living skull underneath it. "It was divine intervention. God was looking after me for some reason," he said.

Welcome home Johnny Payne! Thank you for your service to our country.

Walking Point (abridged)

Jim Northrup

His rifle was in perfect order,

he wasn't - fear, fear of not feeling fear,

the heat, mud, and mosquitoes

all addled his brain housing group

as he walked and thought along.

Thou shalt not kill,

that stuff didn't work here,

God must have stayed back

in the real world.

Is any of this real?

Is this a green nightmare

I'm going to wake up from?

He sang to himself as

his senses gathered evidence

of continued existence

His eyes saw, his ears heard,

his heart felt a numb nothing,

his mind analyzed it all

as he studied the trail

He amused himself as he walked along

the old story about bullets, Ha.

Don't sweat the one that's got your

name on it, worry about the one addressed:

To Whom It May Concern.

Movement!, something is moving up there!

Drop to the mud, rifle pointing at the unknown,

Looks like two of them, hunting him.

They have rifles but he saw them first.

Breathe, Relax, Aim, Slack, Squeeze.

The shooting is over in five seconds,

the shakes are over in a half hour,

the memories are over, never.

KENNETH HODGES: A VETERAN'S VETERAN

2011-11-10T22:11:00.001-05:00

There was a time when many people in the United States of America turned their backs on Kenneth Hodges. But, there has never been a moment in the last forty eight years when Kenneth Hodges ever dreamed of turning his back on the United States of America. Called a “baby-killer” and a “murderer,” Kenneth Hodges had good reasons to feel anger, to furiously lash out at those who assaulted him with hate and looked away in pathetic apathy. Instead, Kenneth Hodges sought out a higher power, one who gave him a special mission to serve his country. And, thirty seven years later, he is still carrying out that personal mission with eternal pride and with gracious honor, giving back to those veterans who have also served our country.

AN HONORABLE WAY

As Kenneth Hodges walked off the stage with his diploma from B.D. Perry High School in his hand, he knew that serving in the military would be an honorable way. He had an uncle, Hubert Mathis, who had been in the Army. He thought to himself that he wanted to make the military a career. So, he enlisted in the Army, just three weeks after graduation in 1963.

His values of country, honor, and doing right had been ingrained into Kenneth since he was a young boy by his mother, Mrs. Pauline Mathis Hodges, and his father, J. Richard Hodges. Mrs. Hodges began her teaching career in one-room school houses. In her thirty-five years of teaching school, Mrs. Hodges taught in churches which were specially outfitted for classes and the old Buckeye Junior High School, before teaching at B.D. Perry School on Highway 319. Mrs. Hodges ended her career as a teacher at East Laurens Primary School in the early 1970s.

Kenneth entered the infantry and was assigned to Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment of the 11th Brigade of the 23rd (Americal) Division. As one of the division’s crack units after training at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, the 20th regiment was sent to the Province of Quang Ngai, one of the most pro-Viet Cong provinces of South Vietnam.

The Americal Division had taken many casualties since its arrival in November 1967. As many as one third of the losses came from booby traps and mines, many of which were set by civilians sympathetic to the Viet Cong cause.

Charlie Company suffered its worst casualties on February 25, 1968. Captain Ernest Medina was awarded the Silver Star for his actions in rescuing his men. Medina and many field grade officers demanded that their men keep up an all out attack on the Viet Cong and their sympathizers. Regimental planners formulated a plan to clear the villages of My Lai of all Viet Cong.

March 16, 1968: Hodges recalled, “The morning of the 16th started early. The mood was sort of somber, but there was an edge of excitement.” Hodges said in a 1989 Frontline documentary, “We knew we were going into something big and we were gonna deal with them.” Normally a rifleman carried 180 rounds of ammo. Hodges remembered, “We were instructed to pack a triple basic load of ammunition. So we were expecting great resistance in that village.”

Hodges and the other squad leaders were guiding their men into position to move out. “It was quite clear that no one was to be spared in that village, Hodges said, “The orders meant killing small kids, killing women, because they were soldiers,” he added. The men of Charlie Company knew that refusing to carry out an order could result in punishment. Twenty-one years after the incident, Hodges recalled, “If one of my men had refused to shoot, I shudder to think what have been the repercussions. It's hard to say now what I would have done, looking back. At the time that it actually happened, he would have been in serious trouble.”

In justifying his actions at My Lai, Hodges, in the Frontline documentary, said, “As a professional soldier, I had been taught to carry out the orders and at no time did it ever cross my mind to disobey or to refuse to carry out an order that was issued by my superiors.” His soldiers were trained that way. “It's either you or the enemy, and the people who were in that village, the women, the little kids, the old men, were all considered the enemy,” he said. Sgt. Hodges taught his soldiers how to deal with the enemy when they came face to face with him. “They are trained to be killers,” he added.”

In a 2010 American Experience documentary, Hodges, some forty-two years after My Lai, maintained that he and the others were following orders. “You train a man to soldier, you take him out of civilian life, you teach him to be a soldier, you train him to follow orders, you express to him the importance of following orders, and you train him to kill,” the former sergeant maintained.

“After the My Lai operation and we returned to base camp, Captain Medina told us do not answer any questions from anyone, news reporters or anybody else, about this last mission,” Hodges remembered. “Other units had experienced similar things, they had carried out similar operations. For some reason or another, it started off with a soldier sharing something with someone else who wasn’t there. And, that person sharing it with someone else, who happened to be a friend of that guy. It sort of mushroomed from there and then someone decided that his conscience won’t let him rest until justice was done,” he added.

Charges of murder and rape were lodged and dismissed against Sgt. Hodges. Lt. William Calley, the platoon commander, was the only person found guilty in the action at My Lai. None of the field grade officers who planned the operation were ever charged. Despite the fact that he was cleared, the United States Army discharged Sgt. Kenneth Hodges from the service.

Kenneth Hodges desperately wanted to remain in the Army and serve his country. After he got out of the service, Kenneth lived in Columbus, Georgia for a couple of years. Those years were spent hoping against hope that the Army was going reinstate him and take him back in. With the help of a lawyer, Frank Martin over in Columbus, Hodges took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. “But, I lost out,” the ten-year veteran looked back.

Hodges believes there is still a segment of society that Vietnam still rests on their minds. Not just the veterans, but people who are just ordinary citizens. “The full story, the incidents which led up to My Lai - a lot of people don’t talk about them, because a lot of people don’t know about them. As I relate the story to people, they say, “I didn’t know all of that took place. I never heard that.” Because, what happened before would shed a lot of light on why things went down like they did at My Lai.”

THEY CALLED THEM THE DREGS OF SOCIETY

“With the things that I went through and after and during the trial, I was recommended for a general court martial. It did not go that far. During that period, it was pretty dark. “Public sentiment turned, it was already out there, Vietnam vets were baby killers and more or less dregs of society,” Hodges expounded.

Hodges’ unit was considered the best of the brigade in their training operations in Hawaii, so much so that they were the advance party to go over first. Hodges said, “Once the news came out a year and half later, even the army said we were undertrained and undereducated. Which was hardly the case. We had been undereducated. Some of them did have low IQs. But that was not our fault, they were drafted. If you have ever seen the movie Forrest Gump, I saw first hand “Forrest Gump.”

Hodges was referring to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s 100,000 project, in which the military openly ignored intelligence test results in drafting and enlisting soldiers. “These soldiers were good soldiers because of the repetition in their training. Tthey could pick it up. And, because they were of a simple mind, following orders was something they understood,” Hodges maintains. “So after their experiences in Vietnam, they had a hard time dealing with what they saw and what they experienced,” the former sergeant added.

In general, Hodges felt that many in the country turned their backs on the Vietnam veteran. He recalled the story, “When the news broke about the things, the trial, my mother, who grew up teaching school in Laurens County and on the east side of the river, was shunned. None of her friends, or so called friends, even called and offered words of encouragement or words of consolation. But a woman whom she had never met, a white lady, called and said, ‘I cooked a cake. I want you to put on a pot of coffee. I know you must be going through something now.’” It was those things that were “heartwarming, touching and uplifting” to Kenneth Hodges. Those were the exceptions, and not the rule.

One touching exception to that rule came during the holidays at the end of Hodges’ first of his two tours of duty in Vietnam. Hodges was returning home when he was at the Atlanta Airport awaiting a layover flight to Macon before taking a taxi to Dublin to surprise his family, who didn’t know he was coming home for the holidays. “While I was waiting for the plane to fly to Macon, I was browsing in one of the shops there and I came upon this one white couple and the lady greeted me. I was in uniform and we started talking. She said, ‘Are you in the army?’ Yes, I said. She said, ‘Well, where have you just come from, where are you going?’ I said, I am going home for the holidays. She said, ‘Where are you coming from?’ I said, from Vietnam,” he recalled.

“A look of surprise came over her and she excitedly said, ‘You are home from Vietnam?’ I said, yes. She called her husband over and she said, ‘Honey, this soldier returned from Vietnam and he is going to be home for Thanksgiving and for Christmas.’ He looked me in the eye and with tears in his eyes said, ‘Thank you for doing my part. I couldn’t go. I have health problems. I was listed and categorized as F4 - unfit for military service. Thank you for doing my part.’ He hugged me and his wife hugged me. That stands out as one of the high points of returning from Vietnam,” he concluded. Hodges recalled that other than a welcome from his family, there were hardly any welcome homes or any thank yous.

A NEW BEGINNING, A NEW MISSION

“One morning I woke up with a thought that I needed to find a new direction. I needed to make a new beginning,” Kenneth said as felt that his new beginning should be back in Dublin and that he could turn his life around at home. He was drifting, going no where in a hurry, dealing with alcoholism and his problems with the military. Hodges saw his problems were not being corrected and were not going to be corrected in Columbus. In early 1975, Hodges made a fateful decision, packed his bags and came home to find his new beginning. All he had was his family, himself, and his faith in God.

Hodges never gave any thought to working at the VA until he met Grady Phillips. Phillips asked Hodges had he ever thought about working at the VA hospital. “That’s when the light went on. I said, wow!. That’s a great idea,” Hodges fondly recalled.

He gives credit to those who stepped up for him and embraced him. One of them was E.B. Smith, the union president and a veteran. “He had no requirement to help me as I was a temporary employee. He was a caring individual,” Hodges added. Bob Willis was another who came to assist Hodges in his quest to become a permanent employee. Willis went to the director, Harold Duncan, and pleaded with him to give Hodges a chance.

Willis declared, “I wish we had hundreds of employees like Kenneth.” I was so impressed with him, I went to the Harold Duncan, the director, and plead his case for permanent employment. I told him that he wouldn’t regret it. In my years at the VA, Kenneth did an outstanding job and we never had any complaints about the way he did his job. He is a fine man.”

Hodges’ application was bogging down in the bowels of the bureaucracy. In the first round of testing he received a very low score. He had completed high school, a year of college and trade school. Hodges, naturally frustrated at the endless delays asked a VA official, “What am I supposed to do to make a living, rob a bank? I can’t get on at the VA. This is crazy!” Hodges grabbed some sheets of paper and wrote out his case. The official took them to the board and plead his case. With his veteran’s preference, Hodges scored a 99 and got a permanent job in housekeeping.

Working early on in the kitchen, the laundry, Hodges kept looking for a more fulfilling position. In late 1977, a job was announced on the board for a motor vehicle operator. “The more I dug into it, the more I learned what motor vehicle operators do. They transport patients, veterans to other VA facilities, clinics and nursing homes. And these veterans come from our service area, which includes 59 counties surrounding Dublin. The idea came to my mind that this was a way to reach other veterans who may be experiencing similar problems.” Hodges remarked. Not long after he got the job a Seventh Day Adventist minister, who worked in the laundry, kept telling Hodges, “That’s your job. God has work for you to do in that job.”

Hodges does the things he does for veterans because it gives him a sense of accomplishment. “It gives me a good feeling - a giving back to those who gave to me when I was coming along struggling. When I started at the VA, it was hard getting on permanently. I managed to get on to a temporary assignment, but getting a permanent assignment proved to be a challenge,” he maintained.

Over the last thirty-three years, Hodges estimates that he has driven more than one million miles in transporting veterans. “I had veterans usually going to Augusta or Decatur, two to three hours. I had them and I had their attention. They couldn’t get away. So they were trapped with me. I could talk to them. There were veterans who had similar problems to what I had, especially Vietnam veterans. Some of them were younger. Some of them were older. I saw that they were going through the same problems that I was going through with PTSD dealing with every day problems after you got back, still making adjustments from being in the war. It gave me a great opportunity. It still gives me a great opportunity, because now I am seeing younger veterans coming from Iraq and from Afghanistan. They are suffering from similar problems and I am able to share my experiences with them and what I learned about PTSD, and ways to deal with it and cope with it.” he said.

Hodges counts the number of veterans which he has helped to be in the tens of thousands. “I am interacting with them in someway, talking with them about different things, different aspects of their lives - the things that they are going through. The assistance that I give some of them is just talk and advice - some of them, just a listening ear,” he says.

During the period between 1982 to the early 1990s Hodges was on the road to Augusta everyday, sometimes twice a day and even three times in one day. “ One Saturday, I had a scheduled transfer. When I got back from that one, I had an emergency. When I got back from that one, I had another emergency. The other two drivers were out sick, so I drove 600 miles within a twenty-four period in three trips to Augusta.” he remarked.

Hodges also takes veterans to get their driver’s licenses and IDs. Although his primary mission is to make sure the patients get transportation for medical treatment he finds a lot of guys coming in with their pockets empty. With no public transportation available, he makes sure that veterans can take care of their of the business during their stay at the VA Hospital. He took one man out to get a driver’s license for his van. He got it even though he lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam. “That really blew my mind. He is a Vietnam veteran. He lost both legs and an arm. I saw him in Atlanta and he was driving,” he fondly recalled.

An old friend, whom Kenneth met at Fort Benning back in the early 70s, called him. He was crying. The friend had been receiving bad treatment from his co-workers. “He was on the verge of doing something foolish. He called me and said there was going to be homicide or a suicide. I don’t know which,” said Kenneth, who told his friend, “It sounds like PTSD has set in on you.” This was in the early 90s, the mid 90s. Today he is on the road to receiving the help that he needs and getting the counseling he needs for the PTSD as well as other physical problems.

GIVE AND YE SHALL RECEIVE

Time and time again in his life, Kenneth Hodges has seen that giving back to others brings blessings back to the giver ten fold. He does good deeds not for any hope of reward nor recognition. Not one to blow his own horn, Hodges related the story of a veteran who had been sleeping under a bridge for two months and drinking whenever he could. After deciding that the vet wanted to come in and get cleaned up, Hodges transported him from Augusta to Dublin to be admitted to the detox ward. “The clothes that he had a stench in them - you could hardly stand it riding in the van. When I got back to Dublin, I took all of his clothes, everything that he had, which was in two large plastic bags. I took it home and washed them, dried them, and returned them to him fresh,” he recalled.

Hodges realizes that there are many people around town who don’t seek or want recognition for the acts of charity and kindness. He tells the story of a young lady who worked at the VA. Her estranged boyfriend slashed all of her tires. Her fellow employees raised $270.00 to help her buy new tires. Kenneth picked up the phone and phoned a friend, who was a local tire dealer. He told the man of the lady’s predicament. The dealer said, “Kenneth, as I have always told you if you need anything call me.” Hodges told the dealer what had happened. He said, “You’ve got $270?” Hodges said, “yes.” The dealer said, “Let me call you back in five minutes.” “He called me in three,” Hodges said. The tire shop owner asked, “You’ve got $270 and you want these tires mounted and balanced?” Hodges told the man, “I know it is a tall request,” to which the dealer responded, “The cheapest tire I have got is $325 for the set and that doesn’t include mounting and balancing, but bring me that $270.”

That tire dealer, as you may have guessed by now, was Hodges’ fellow good deed doer, Scott Beasley of Duncan Tire Company. When asked about Kenneth Hodges, Beasley smiled excitedly and said, “ You mean Kenneth Hodges, he is Dublin’s hero! Beasley declared, “Kenneth Hodges has a heart as big as the helmet that the soldier’s wear.” Beasley remembered watching the American Experience documentary on My Lai when all of sudden he recognized his old friend. He exclaimed, “That’s Kenneth!,” as his heart swelled with pride and admiration.

Hodges remembered meeting a couple in Augusta while waiting to return a patient home. He had known them in the years in which they ran a variety store on I-16 in Dublin. The man was suffering from an aneurism. The lady was recovering from cancer. While the couple were in Augusta, they had a flat tire. The lady was trying to call for a mechanic to come and change or repair their tire. That’s when Kenneth Hodges stepped in.

The man told his wife to hang up the phone and that help was on the way. Puzzled, the lady responded, “They are here already here? I didn’t get a chance to talk.” The man said, “No, Kenneth is here to change the tire.” Kenneth refused the lady’s financial reward. When Hodges got back to Dublin, the couple had already called his supervisor, Freddie Smith. Smith told the chief, who within a matter of days, presented a “Caring Award” to Hodges. He had a choice between a meal for four at a Macon restaurant or a fifty-dollar savings bond. Hodges laughed, “I said, “I know how to cook, give me the savings bond!”.

The list of good deeds goes on and on. There too many to list and too many which have never been told nor were expected to be known or publicly appreciated outside of those who received his generous aid.

THE SWEET TASTE IS STILL THERE

Kenneth Hodges has been serving our country for more than two thirds of his sixty six years. And, he has no plans to stop any time soon. He has no goal of fifty or fifty-five years. “I tell folks when they question me about my retirement. It’s like a piece of gum that you stick in your mouth, the sweet taste is still there,” Hodges said.

On almost every morning, Kenneth Hodges stills looks forward to getting up and going to work, facing new challenges and meeting new people, talking to them and sharing his experiences, and trying to shed some light on how they can better themselves. He unequivocally stated, “There are lot more opportunities now for the Afghanistan and Iraqi veterans than there were for the Vietnam veterans.”

Kenneth Hodges relishes in doing what he can to carry out the programs that the VA has as well as his own program of assisting the veterans and encouraging them by giving them the courage to continue on with what they are doing. Hodges insists that the veterans whom he meets continue to get an education. He challenges them not to give up on their dreams. “If they have something they want to do, pursue it,” Hodges declared.

”They are more warmly received. And, that does not bother me. Some people have problems dealing with that, but that was another time and another place,” Hodges commented on how he and other Vietnam vets were treated four decades ago.

From time to time, Kenneth Hodges interacts with female veterans. Some of them have dependence problems, and sadly some of the women are homeless. To the young veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq, Hodges encourages them to seek a higher power. “If you don’t want to call it God, seek a higher power, like an AA commitment,” he tells young veterans. He shares with them his own guidance from God in overcoming his problems. “I looked to God for my guidance and to get to me through it,” Hodges asserted.

WELCOME HOME

There were no parades, no ceremonies, not hardly a single celebration when Kenneth Hodges and other Vietnam veterans came home to the United States. But, it is not too late to welcome those who served. Hodges, himself now finds himself instinctively thanking the Vietnam veterans he meets for their service to our country.

Just five years ago, Hodges, wearing a cap indicating the he was a veteran of the Vietnam War, was at a convenience store gassing up his vehicle. He noticed a young veteran in his late twenties. The young man walked directly toward him and looked him straight in the eye. He stuck out his hand and said, “Thank you for your service to our country and welcome home.” Hodges said, “I was shocked at his actions, and I said what did you say? I had to hear it again.” The young man repeated, “Thank you for your service to our country. Welcome home, Vietnam veterans didn’t get a lot of that” Hodges was so touched that he began to cry.

When he meets a Vietnam veteran because of his insignia on his cap or what he is wearing which sets him apart, Hodges will greet him, “I don’t have to know him. I will just walk up to him and extend my hand, shake his hand, and welcome him home and thank him for his service to his country,” he maintains as most of them have the same reaction that he did.

Hodges says that the citizens of our community can help veterans who are now returning by embracing them and welcoming them home. “Give them some support and listen to them. Some of them are reluctant to share their stories,” he says. As for himself, sharing his story is therapy. He feels that so many people are in the dark as far as the Vietnam veteran, what he is and who he is. “We are a cross section of society of that period. We are no more and we are no less than the others are. It’s just that we served in an unpopular war. And, when it was over, there was not a win involved. We sort of tucked our tails between our legs and walked off,” he concluded.

A BAD MOVIE

Kenneth Hodges has fought many fights in his life. And, like his second-cousin, six-time world champion boxer “Sugar Ray” Robinson, he has won most of them. In commenting on his struggles and the triumph of his faith, Hodges says, “Sometimes life is like a bad movie. You keep on watching it and hope it will turn out good.”

Kenneth Hodges never really liked bad endings. His sister, Frenchy Hodges, remembered the days of their youth when they and their siblings, Marva, Larue, and Joe Richard, Jr., were working in the fields along side their farmer father, Joe Richard Hodges, Sr. Frenchy, a nationally recognized poetess and story teller, often made up stories, some of which had sad endings. “Kenneth has always been a sensitive and caring man,” said Ms. Hodges. “When he began to cry after hearing my stories, I would say, ‘No, the story really doesn’t end that way,” and I would change the story to add a happy ending to cheer him up,” Hodges happily recalled.

Many years ago Hodges learned that words can hurt and words can heal. “A lot of times you don’t know the impact of what you do or what you say will have on some people. Sometimes you’ll never know,” he says. He was reminded about a story of a professor who assigned his psychology students the task of telling someone what they meant to them. As he rushed through his own busy schedule, the professor forgot that he himself was supposed to complete the assignment. He went to his son’s room and told him just how much he appreciated what his son had done to help around the house and how proud of him he was for his good grades and how much he loved him. The boy began to sob uncontrollably. When asked what was wrong, the son said, “Dad, I didn’t think you had even noticed me period, or even noticed what I did around the house. I didn’t think you even noticed my grades or anything I did in school. That was why tomorrow morning, I planned to kill myself.”

That story got Kenneth to thinking that sometimes you say things that are ugly or hurting to people that you want to strike out. And, they can really hurt people. It made him think the angry and bitter words should stop coming out of his mouth.

There was a period there when he could pass it out freely, especially if you crossed his path. “I tell the guys sometimes that I used to be a revolving SOB and I loved it,” Hodges admits. One guy said, “What is a revolving SOB?” Hodges said, “Any way that I turned, I was one. It was nothing that I was proud of.” After Vietnam, Hodges didn’t realize what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was. “It manifests itself in people’s minds. One of the effects is anger and not necessarily at anyone or anybody. Just anger. But since I have been at the VA, I have met a half dozen people who have shared their stories about anger,” he said.

After listening to veterans, Hodges realized that he too had some of that anger. “I realized that the angrier you get, the more excited and the more you like it. And, that is dangerous. That’s a part of that transformation. I turned it around. I said, no, no, you don’t want to go back there,” he recollected.

Kenneth Hodges gives all the credit for turning his life around to God. “The Master, the man upstairs. He showed it to me and let me see it vividly, vividly. I said, no, no, I don’t want to go back there.” He urges all veterans to get help from the VA. He shares his story of overcoming turmoil in his life through his faith in God and his God-given love he has for his fellow veterans.

And today, you’ll still find Kenneth Hodges after almost a half century of serving his country, still serving the country and the veterans whom he never turned his back on. While not working at the VA on or the road, you may find him at home, doing what he loves to do, cooking a delicious meal and enjoying life with this wife Margaret. Sometimes he closes his eyes and watches himself starring in a bad biographical movie which is now showing the good parts. And, it looks like there will be a wonderful and oh so happy ending.

Welcome home, Sergeant Kenneth Hodges! Thank you for your service to our country.

SOME SPECIAL ELECTIONS

2011-11-09T20:52:00.000-05:00

The Voters Speak

Elections come and go. Some things never change. But, every once in awhile, things do change. Special elections are generally held to fill a vacant seat or to decide an urgent issue. Over the years, some elections were truly special. They are the ones that change the way we live.

The presidential election of 1884 changed things in Washington. Not since 1856 had the nation elected a democratic president. The South, still reeling from the effects of Reconstruction, became more solid and with the unlikely support of states like New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, helped to elect New York governor, Grover Cleveland, during a Republican stronghold on the presidency which lasted for fifty-two years.

Cleveland's election led some to fear that blacks in the South would become so enraged over the loss of gains they had made after the Civil War that they would take to the streets and riot. Such was the case on November 16, just 12 days after the election. Somehow reports of a riot in Dublin spread like flames across a dry Kansas wheatfield in headlines of newspapers across the country. Stories of a race war with several persons being killed came out of Atlanta. With Dublin being some forty miles from the nearest telegraphic station, urgent inquiries were made into the extent of the turmoil. At the same time, reports of an incendiary riot in Brunswick were published.

One curious Cochranite rode over to investigate and found "that matters in are entirely peaceful in Dublin." The railroad agent in Toomsboro reported that he had heard nothing of the revolt. Meanwhile in Dublin, the center of the alleged insurrection, the editor of the Dublin Post wrote, "If there has been a riot in our town, our citizens are ignorant of it. Our officers have but little trouble in arresting criminals. We guess the report grew out of the fact that three Negroes gave bond and were released from jail one day last week." In Brunswick, the reports of a devastating conflagration were true. The source of the devastating fire was not the refusal of black citizens and fireman to work to suppress the fire as was reported. In fact, the "colored firemen" were hailed for doing their usual good work.

Women were allowed to vote across the nation with the adoption of the 19th Amendment on August 18, 1920. Within a month, Maggie New, a Dublin city hall employee, was the first to subscribe her name on the register of voters. Tax Collector M.C. Dominey arranged to have registration books for women at a popular drug store for ten straight days. It would be another half century or so before a woman, Lena Opie, was elected to a city office.

The women of Brewton, Georgia didn't take quite that long. Mrs. H.H. Beall was elected in November 1921. The first female mayor of a Laurens County town promised to work with the council to clean up the town. Mrs. Beall, who succeeded her husband, said, "There a few things that need attention here, and we are going to see that they get it."

Mayor Beall had a lot of support in her crusade to clean up the railroad town. Seven men and five women entered the race for the five seats on the town council. Reportedly only nine votes out of the 250-resident town and all the voters were male. With only nine voters and nine male candidates in the race for mayor and council, only the candidates themselves voted. Mrs. Beall received a majority of the votes in her race while the slate of women candidates received five votes each. Mrs. M.E. Beall even defeated her husband, who only garnered one vote, presumably, but not necessarily, his own. Elected to the council were Mrs. M.E. Brantley, Mrs. F.A. Brantley, Mrs. H.B. Sutton, Mrs. M.F. Beall, and Mrs. C.G. Moye, whose husband was defeated in his bid for mayor. The all female mayor and council proceeded to make plans to hire a female police chief and town clerk.

The 1936 Laurens County election did little to change the way we live, but it did provide some curious and somewhat surprising comments from the unopposed candidate for county surveyor. J. Lester Jackson pledged, "I will do just a little work as I can." Jackson revealed in deciding to run for the office, that he was "persuaded by myself and none one else."

The general election in 1964 had a proposed constitutional amendment which provided for the merger of the Dublin and Laurens County school systems, beginning in the 1965-1966 school year. Voters ratified the local law. But, when the newly created Dublin-Laurens Board of Education failed in the minds of many county residents to rightly show respect to the former Laurens County Superintendent, lawyers found a loophole in the law and succeeded in revoking the merger after one year and keeping the two systems separate, as they remain today.

In an effort to help our community grow and prevent apathy among even the most progressive minded voters, members of the Dublin Civitan Club offered prizes ranging from a piano to a camera to encourage more than a fifty percent turnout in a special election to construct an additional gas line to supply the new industries being established in Dublin in 1966.

The Rev. Bridges Edwards, Sr. was a well beloved former pastor of Washington Street Presbyterian Church in Dublin. His son, Bridges Edwards, Jr., was the first African-American student to attend Dublin Junior High when the school board allowed each student the choice of their own school.

Rev. Edwards, known as a builder of bridges between the races, stated, "Dublin has come a long way in the relationships between the races in the last year," after winning a seat on the Dublin City Council in December 1966. Rev. Bridges garnered some support from the white community, while the black population was close to thirty percent. Lonnie Fuller, a losing candidate, filed a challenge to the election on the grounds that his name was left off the ballot. Despite the fact that Fuller's name was hand written on every ballot, Superior Court Judge Harold E. Ward voided the results and ordered a new election, in which Rev. Edwards was defeated. Several years later, Emory Thomas would become the first African-American council member to sit on the Dublin City Council.

Today, like every other election day, is a critical day in the history and the future of our community. Go out and vote for the candidate of your choice. Whatever you do, vote. When you vote, think of the person whose only agenda is not his own, but one for the greater good of all of the people all of the time.

UP THE CREEK WITH A NAME

2011-11-04T18:30:00.000-04:00

Do you wonder what the name of that creek down the road from you is called? And where did it get its name from? Do you know why the Indians who lived in this area centuries ago are called Creeks?

For more than a hundred centuries, Native Americans roamed and lived in the lands we now occupy. With no written language, as we conceive written languages, the Indians who lived here lived and died with no written record of their existence. What we know about their culture are the stories and customs which have passed down from generation to generation and from the study of the archaeology of the Native American cultures of the Southeast. One of the most basic facts about these cultures are that these people were first hunters and gatherers but only in the last thirteen or so centuries did they become more sedentary and agricultural. We do know that those people who lived in our area before we did chose dwelling places which were well drained and were located in proximity to the rivers and creeks where wildlife teemed and clean water was abundant. We don't know what they called themselves because their names have been lost to eternity. So, today we call those Native Americans who lived in this area, the "Creek Indians."

So why is this important? Well since these people were the first to live in this area, naturally they were the first to name the rivers and creeks which flowed through the area. Many of Laurens County's streams retain their Indian names. The Oconee River is named after a tribe of Creek Indians that lived in the area along the river. It has been said that Oconee is the Creek word for "the place of springs" or "the water eyes of the hills." A recent discovery of a study of the a 19th century Hitchitee language study reveals that Oconee is the Hitchitee word for "place of the skunk". The middle portion of the river was known to the Indians as "Ithlobee."

The Creek or Muscogee word for creek is "hatchee." Turkey Creek which rises in Twiggs County and flows through Wilkinson and Laurens Counties is the anglicized name of the Indian word "Pennohachee". A branch of Turkey Creek which is known today as Palmetto Creek was formerly called "Taulohatchee" by the Creek Indians. The name of Ockwalkee Creek, which flows from southern Laurens County through Wheeler County to the Oconee River, is derived from the Creek words meaning "dirty water." The name of Stitchihatchee Creek, which is located in the Dexter area, is derived from the Creek words meaning "red man's creek" or possibly "crossing or fording creek." Another of the major creeks in western Laurens County is Rocky Creek. The Muskogee Indian name for Rocky Creek would have been Chattohachi - "chatto" for stone or rock and "hachi" for stream. One of the branches of Pughes Creek in eastern Laurens County is named Indian Branch. Indian Pots Branch crosses Georgia Highway 117 just inside the county line on the highway between Cadwell and Eastman.

Without a doubt, one of the most intriguing creek names of all Laurens County's creek is Hunger and Hardship. Beginning in northern Laurens County and running south and then southeasterly to empty into the Oconee River just above Dublin, Hunger and Hardship Creek was reportedly home to a tribe of Indians, who, you guessed it, Hunger and Hardship. The name first appears on the 1805 survey of the First Land District of Laurens County. Two of the creek's main branches are Sandy Ford which runs from west of the airport, crossing behind the Dublin Mall to join the main run of the creek behind the Shamrock Bowl and Strawberry Branch which runs through Holly Hills and Kingswood subdivisions until it joins Hunger and Hardship just above the bridge on North Jefferson Street.

Who out there knows the name of the only creek in Dublin which flows north? Most of you don't even think of it as a creek, but most of you travel over it at least once a week. It is the creek which starts in Moore Station Development, flows northward and becomes the pond at Fairview Park, then Lake Leisure at the Carl Vinson VA Center, passes down Hillcrest Parkway beside the VA, crosses under Hwy 80 by Capital City Bank and Hillcrest Parkway in front of the new Dublin High School before emptying into Hunger and Hardship Creek near White Oak Subdivsion. This creek, actually a branch, has unpretentious name of "Bud's Branch."

Out in the Buckeye District just above the Claude Graham place flows San Soucci Creek. Sans Souci is a French term meaning "without care." It is also the name of the summer home of Frederick the Great near Potsdam, near Berlin, Germany.

Laurens County is so large that some creek names are repeated. Most of these carry descriptive names. There are four Big Branches as well as one Big Creek. Flat,Crooked, Rocky and Whitewater Creeks appear twice on maps, as well as two Long and Bay branches. But, there is only one Bluewater and one Dry. There is a Gin and Gin House Branch, named for the cotton processor and not the drink. But there is a Rum Creek. It flows just below the Country Club and was originally named Wommack's Mill Creek, for the man who first dammed it up into a mill pond.

Batson, Bell, Brewton, Collins, Hightower, Hogan, Kellam, Joiner, Pitts, Mercer, Pughes, Renfroe, and Whitley are some of the eponymous early names given to creeks by early settlers. Acutally, Mercer's Creek, which is the line dividing Laurens and Treutlen counties is a derivation of the word, "Messer's," named by an early Montgomery County settler and large landowner, Peter Messer.

Pendleton Creek, a major tributary of the Ohoopee River, begins in southeastern Laurens County. The creek was named for Daniel Pendleton, a Captain of a Connecticut company of Col. Baldwins Regiment of Artificers in the American Revolution. According to D.N. Wilkes, of Reidsville, Pendleton Creek, was named for the captain who commanded a company in a fight with the Indians in the area.

Nearby is Pughes (Pugh's) Creek which is named for Francis Pugh, an early resident and militia leader of Montgomery County.

Long Branch runs along the southern side of Dublin and empties into the Oconee River below Riverview Golf Course. Town Branch runs through Stubbs Park and empties into the Oconee River just above Roche's Farm and Garden store. How many of you know that Roberts Branch or Harrison's Branch begins near the tennis courts on Woodrow Ave. and runs by the Chamber of Commerce, Saxon Heights School, and the Dublin Police Department before emptying into the Oconee? How many of you know that a mostly piped and underground feeder creek of Roberts Branch emanates from beneath a spring underneath the Dublin-Laurens Museum?

And, there's Keen's Mill Branch in East Dublin, South Sandy, Little Gut, Walnut, and Scooter Rue Creeks. So who was Scooter Rue? Up in the northwest part of Laurens County above Montrose is the Devil's Branch. It seems there is an old story about a monster who lived along that small creek. Does anybody know that tale? Please let me know if you can name that creek. You know the creek which has no name or least a name that few people know.

OUR FIRST FALL FAIR

2011-10-27T20:05:00.000-04:00

When you think of fall, you think of cool nights, turning leaves and fairs. Our first fair in the fall (I still can't believe our English teachers taught us not to capitalize the seasons) came in the last week of October 1911. That first fair was a prelude to the 12th Congressional District Fair which came a year later. But for a premier autumn event, the fair was a tremendous success, much of which was due to its sponsor, Daniel W. Gilbert.

Technically it wasn't the first fair held in Dublin, but it was the first county wide fair. The first known fair was staged in early October 1905 when the Colored Agricultural Fair was held at the City Pavilion on lower East Madison Street. There were prizes for agricultural products with ball playing and riding every day. The Acme State Brass Band of Macon provided the musicial entertainment.

The people of Laurens County had good reason to take a few days after the end of the harvest to celebrate in 1911. In the early years of county fairs, agriculture and home economics dominated the exhibition halls. The cotton farmers of the county had produced more than thirty million pounds of cotton, more than any other county in the history of the State of Georgia. And, the local cotton crop that year, not counting farmers who took their cotton to gins in other counties, was larger than that of the entire state of Missouri.

Daniel W. Gilbert, proprietor of Gilbert Hardware Company, wanted to promote agriculture in the county through a fair, even if he had to do it all by himself or with a lot of help from the youngsters of the Boys' and Girls' Farm Life Club. With no large lot to stage his fair on, Gilbert cleared out his massive hardware store at 123 W. Jackson Street, a building which would become the center of Farmers and Merchants Bank.

Gilbert invited every farmer in the county to bring an exhibit to show his best crops and livestock. To ensure the crowds would be big, Gilbert enlisted the aid of the young ladies of the Poplar Springs Industrial School and Bethsaida Baptist Church to serve free lunches every day during the six-day fair, which began on Monday, October 23 and ended on Saturday, October 28.

Free food wasn't good enough, the people of that day were addicted to speeches. Any time there was someone who would stand up and speak about politics, better agricultural methods and good roads, a crowd would gather.

Food and speeches still weren't what fair exhibitors were after. They wanted prizes. So Gilbert picked out some of the better items from his store and put them up for prizes. Top prize categories ranged from plows to a cotton stalk with the most open bolls to a corn stalk with the most ears of corn. Swiss razors went to those bringing in the best pecks of wheat or oats. The largest pumpkin or the best half peck of peanuts would bring the winner a choice of any one-dollar item in the store. If you made the best jar of preserved peaches, pears or watermelon rinds, you walked off with a set of teaspoons to eat your prize winning entry.

Animals were on the prize list as well. The best of everything from chickens, to cows, horses, turkeys, ducks and geese all won an award. These prizes were given by the boys and girls themselves.

Wednesday was "Ladies Day." All women were invited to come and see the domestic exhibits. The day turned out to be a far better day than Gilbert had ever hoped for. The Dublin Courier-Dispatch reported, "The exhibits in the main building comprise almost everything ever shown at a county fair. The agricultural exhibit is especially fine and deserves recognition." The reporter especially cited the fine display of canned fruits, vegetables, preserves, and pickles as well as a splendid display of needlework, handmade especially for the fair.

Friday, the next to the last day of the fair, was billed as Education Day. Just as promised by Gilbert, there were speeches. County School Superintendent Zollicoffer Whitehurst, known to those who couldn't spell his first name as "Z. Whitehurst," joined Robert E. Martin, the manager of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, City School Superintendent R.E. Brooks, and Congressman Dudley M. Hughes of Danville on the dias.

Hughes, more than any other local congressman, was the best expert on agricultural and agri-business issues. Dr. Flanders of the Georgia Prison Commission addressed the crowds on the issue of good roads, a hot topic of the day.

Wanting to get in on the action, other businesses offered their facilities to fair goers. The Dublin Buggy Company on the courthouse square and Ogburn Buggy Company on South Lawrence Street displayed several of their finest buggies on the sidewalks of their stores as well as pens of prime hogs in pens near the rear of their warehouses.

Although Daniel Gilbert received quite a bit of recognition for conducting the fair, the real success of the fair came because of the efforts of his young assistant and secretary, Peter S. Twitty, Jr. Twitty, with the help of an efficient staff, made a name for himself that week. Within six years, the young merchant would be elected Mayor of Dublin. He later became the head of the Georgia Department of Game and Fish.

Sadly, few written accounts of that first fair have survived. Coverage by the Macon Telegraph was nonexistent. Its editors opted instead to cover the more widely popular Georgia State Fair in Macon.

Even more sad is the fact that the days of county fairs disappeared way too long ago. Gone are those good old days when thousands of people left the farms and the homes of the county and gathered in town for a day of fun, food and prizes.

The success of that first fair wasn't at all lost on the movers and shakers of Laurens County and the Emerald City of Dublin. Almost immediately, plans for a fair the next year were being set. Every businessman around the town tried to get in on the planning. The 12th District Fairs in 1912 and 1913 were two of the biggest and most successful fairs ever held in this area of the state. But, it was a century ago when we had our first fair and the days of autumn were all clear, cool and fun.

JIM "FLASH" FORDHAM

2011-10-19T23:24:00.000-04:00

The Fastest Man on the Field

The folks of the twin cities of Graymont and Summit didn't call their star running back "Flash" for nothing. Jim Fordham could fly up and down the gridiron with ease. And, he was big and strong too. He may have been one the greatest University of Georgia running backs that you never heard of. And, I will bet you that you didn't know he was only the second Georgia Bulldog running back to be drafted into the National Football League.

Fans of the Emanuel County Institute's football team back in the mid 1930s knew Jimmy Fordham could run, block and tackle. His opponents couldn't stop him as he galloped up and down the gridiron on both sides of the line of scrimmage. Fordham's senior season at E.C.I. came in 1935. That year, the boys from Twin City easily defeated their opponents, including their intra county rivals from Swainsboro, whom they beat twice.

In the first game with Swainsboro, half back Fordham came into the game, broken arm and all, and was responsible for the winning score. In one of Fordham's most outstanding games, he scored seven touchdowns to lead his team to a 50-0 shutout of rival Millen High. Standing on the sidelines, salivating at the sight of future college running back, was University of Georgia coach, the legendary Vernon "Catfish" Smith.

A rematch with Swainsboro was played on Thanksgiving afternoon. A large crowd was hoping for another upset like the city boys put on the highly touted eleven under the tutelage of Coach George Hagans. Once again, the E.C.I. team left the field as the champions of Emanuel County.

In the days before Georgia high school teams competed for true state championships, the pinnacle of success was the winning of the District Championship. Teams within each congressional district competed each against other regardless of the size of their student bodies.

The First District championship was settled on the afternoon of December 6, 1935. The team from Vidalia, which had not lost a conference game in three years, squared off against Fordham and E.C.I. After a twenty-yard run, "Flash" Fordham snagged a "bullet pass" from Tommy Vandiver. Fordham caught the ball and did what he did best, run. Fordham's 40-yard touchdown reception led to the only score of the game. Fordham, in his last game in high school, once again was the deciding factor in the game. Oh, by the way, Fordham played the entire game with a sprained ligament in one of his legs.

Cate, Salisbury, Fordham, and Mimms

Jim Fordham chose the University of Georgia to continue his love for the game of football. After playing for the freshman team in 1936, Fordham lettered in the 1937 season as an understudy to Bill Hartman, Georgia's first NFL player and an All-American. Fordham's Bulldogs finished a respectable 6-3-2 under Coach Harry Mehre in the last of his ten-year tenure at the helm of the Bulldogs. Mehre was proud of his three sophomore backs, Jimmy Fordham, Vassa Cate and Oliver Hunnicutt, all of whom were known far and wide for their tremendous speed.

Jim Fordham started at fullback and the spinner back position in the single wing formation during the 1938 season. Georgia coach Joel Hunt, in his first and only season as a head college football coach, had Georgia headed in the right direction. After wins against smaller schools, Georgia was 5-1 after a victory over Florida. They never won another game that season, losing to Tulane, Auburn and Miami and enduring a 0-0, sister-kissing tie with Georgia Tech to finish 5-4-1.

Fordham comes up to make the tackle.

Fordham's third head coach in three years was Wally Butts, the legendary Georgia coach, who coached the team to its first national championship three years later in 1942. Despite the swift running of Fordham and Vassa Cate, the Bulldogs fell to a losing record of 5-6. The season ended on a high note with a victory over Miami, a game in which Fordham scored a touchdown. Fordham ended his collegiate career as a member of the Gray (South) team in the annual Blue-Gray game.

Jim Fordham was drafted 67th by the Chicago Bears in the 7th pick in the 8th round of the 1940 NFL draft. Fordham, the second Georgia Bulldog back ever to be drafted into the NFL, followed by his former mentor, Bill Hartman, who was drafted in 1938. Despite being drafted, Fordham left football during the early years of World War II.

Fordham finally joined the Bears in 1944. With their legendary coach, George Halas serving in the armed forces, the "Monsters of the Midway" fell from the top of the NFL ranks. In his first season, Fordham running out the fullback position, played behind future Hall of Famers, quarterback Sid Luckman and center Clyde "Bulldog" Turner. Fordham, playing in eight of ten games, scored four touchdowns on the ground. Fordham pounded out a respectable average of 4.5 yards per carry. The former Bulldog returned two kickoffs for an average of 21 yards per return.

Under temporary coach, Hunk Anderson, Fordham and the Bears finished a respectable 6-3-1. Among the memorable highlights of the year was the Bears 21-0 shut out of their bitter rivals, the Green Bay Packers. In a match against the team's other bitter rival, the Bears lost to the Detroit Lions. Playing for the Lions that day was none other than Frank Sinkwich, the University of Georgia's first Heisman Trophy winner. Fordham did right by his Bulldogs with one of his best games of the season by carrying the ball 13 times for 82 yards, not bad for a man who was primarily used as a blocker and runner on short yardage situations.

Fordham's last season in football came at the end of World War II. With many of the league's veteran players coming back to the game after the end of the war, players like Fordham found themselves out of a job. In his last season, Jim carried the ball 45 times for 153 yards. He managed to score one touchdown that year.

In one of the more odd records, Fordham tied a record held by a few, but not by many. In a game where few people ever win their last games, Fordham's teams won his last game in high school, college, and the pros.

Sadly, I could not find much at all about the life of Jim Fordham after football. Maybe someone out there will come forward and I will tell the rest of the story of the man they called "Flash," the fastest man on the field.

MARSHALL A. CHAPMAN

2011-10-12T21:21:00.000-04:00

STAY JUST A LITTLE BIT LONGER

Marshall A. Chapman

During the mid 1930s, most of the voters of Dublin wanted Marshall A. Chapman to be their mayor. He was a good man and an outstanding servant of the people. One man disagreed. He didn't like something the mayor did. He employed an attorney and found that the mayor was illegally elected for his second two-year term. So he sued. And, he won. That's when a lot of Marshall Chapman's friends stepped forward and found a way to let him stay, just a little bit longer.

In the early months of 1936, John A. Walden filed a petition of quo warranto in the Superior Court of Laurens County requiring Dublin mayor, Marshall A. Chapman, to show the authority he had to act as mayor. A.L. Hatcher and Henry Taylor, the attorneys representing Walden, claimed that city of Dublin's charter, enacted in 1911, prohibited any person from serving as mayor for more than one term unless additional terms came after an interval out of office.

Dublin Judicial District Judge J.L. Kent recused himself because of his relationship to the petitioner. Judge Kent asked Judge Eschol Graham of the Oconee Judicial Circuit to hear the case against the highly popular mayor. Upon the presentation of all the evidence by Hatcher and Taylor, Chapman's attorney, C.C. Crockett attempted to show that his client was qualified and certified by the city clerk as qualified to be mayor and that in fact, the people of Dublin elected him in 1933 for a two-year term and again in 1935 for a second two-year term.

Judge Graham issued a finding that the law of the state was clear in that the city's charter clearly prohibited any person from serving more than one term as mayor, unless the left office for at least one term, before being eligible to qualify for a second term.

Mayor Chapman refused to comment to the media on the judge's ruling, but directed his attorney to announce that he would immediately appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia.

After hearing the case, the Supreme Court issued its ruling on October 14, 1936, seventy five years ago this week. In holding for the petitioner, Chief Justice Richard B. Russell, Sr., father of long time U.S. Senator from Georgia, issued the opinion for the court. The Chief Justice discounted Crockett's argument that his client was his own successor since no one else qualified for the 1935 city election.

Crockett reiterated his argument in the trial court that in the previous quarter of a century, that the restriction buried in the city charter had been previously ignored. Herbert Moffett was elected in 1923 and served two consecutive terms. Even Chapman's predecessor, T.C. Keen, held office for two terms from 1930 to 1933. The justices held that argument without merit, holding that the law was the law and variances from it do not constitute a repeal of the city's charter and state law in a unanimous decision.

Chapman's one saving grace was that Judge Graham did not require him to leave office immediately. In fact, Judge Graham's order allowed Chapman to stay in office until a special election could be held.

Crockett immediately filed a motion for a rehearing which the Supreme Court denied in mid-December. Because of the holiday season, no city council meetings were scheduled to be held until early January.

At the first city council meeting of 1937, city attorney, W.W. Larsen, Jr. recommended that the council schedule a special election to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling.

No council member seemed to be ready to call for a special election. If a majority of the council voted to do so, then it would take at least forty-five days before a new election could be held. Still presiding over the council session, Mayor Chapman issued a brief comment. "It is mob psychology to kick a man when he is down," said the mayor.

By then, Chapman was already half way through his second term. No action could be taken any earlier than January 18. Meanwhile, Mayor Chapman went about his duties by appointing council members to committees.

And, it was about that time when Mayor Chapman's friends decided to make an end run around the court's decision. State Representatives W.A. Dampier and W.W. Larsen, Jr. introduced a bill to repeal the clause of the 1911 charter to allow Dublin's mayor to serve two consecutive terms.

Smelling a rat, Walden filed a mandamus to require the city council to call a special election. The council reluctantly decided to discuss the matter on February 1, five days before Judge Graham was to hear Walden's petition. The judge issued a summons to councilmen M.Z. Claxton, Dee Sessions, E.B. Mackey, C.A. Hodges, R.L. Tindol, E.F. Moxley, and F.C. Hutchinson to show cause why they shouldn't be ordered to schedule a new election to replace Mayor Chapman.

Rep. Dampier introduced a bill to allow Mayor Chapman to remain in office until the expiration of his term for which he was elected. The bill expressly prohibited Chapman from qualifying for the special election as well as any candidate from seeking an additional term beyond New Year's Eve. Rep. Larsen initially announced his opposition to Dampier's bill.

Meanwhile, the council was still debating if and how to legally schedule a special election. The issue became moot. For on the 4th of February, two days before Judge Graham was scheduled to hear the petition for a mandamus, the Georgia legislature unanimously passed local legislation to allow Dublin's mayors to succeed themselves for unlimited terms.

Mayor Chapman returned to the mayor's office in 1944 and served a single two-year term, making him the second longest serving mayor until that time, only behind Lucien Quincy Stubbs, who served five two-year terms around the turn of the 20th Century. The tradition of four years as mayor continued until Bobby Cochran, Albert Franks and Bob Walker each served as mayor for eight years. Phil Best, the current mayor, is now the longest serving mayor completing his twelfth year as the Mayor of the Emerald City.

HE CAME, HE KILLED, HE GOT BLOWN UP

2011-10-03T20:20:00.000-04:00

James Jackson Runs Amuck

COCHRAN, GA. - July 14, 1915 - No one alive knows why James Jackson ran amuck and killed a deputy, an overseer, and a young farmer. Those who did know what happened, could not or would not tell the whole story of James Jackson and why he killed three men and then was shot at and later blown up by a staggering posse.

The sun was scorching the fields of W.O. Peacock in Bleckley County, some three statute miles from the county seat of Cochran. James Jackson got on the very bad side of his field boss, Mr. Lem W. Sanders. Boss Sanders reprimanded Jackson and sent him back to his quarters in not too good of a mood. Hearsay repeaters swore that Sanders told Jackson that he would have to start working or quit his job on the farm. The rumor mongers consistently maintained that Sanders slapped Jackson, who stomped off in a huff. Some say he went back to get a gun, but the pervasive account is somewhat different.

It was nearly pitch dark when Sanders went to the Negro quarters to deliver some medicine to one of his sick workers. Sanders just happened to pass by Jackson's shack. After a long hard day in the hot fields, Sanders took a seat on the side of Jackson's front porch. Sitting with his back toward Jackson, Sanders' pistol was visible in his back hip pocket in the dim porch light.

Suddenly, and with no warning, Jackson sprang from his seat, grabbed his boss's gun, and pointed it point blank at his antagonist. Sanders, according to Hollis Blackshear, an occupant of the house, begged Jackson not to shoot him. Jackson grabbed Sanders by the arm and held him with one hand. And, with two shots into his heart, killed Lem Sanders dead with the other. Noticing that Blackshear had witnessed the murder, Jackson turned toward the trembling Blackshear and pulled his pistol trigger three times, all misfires. Jackson then fled to the home of one Peter Fambrough.

Fambrough took Jackson to the home of Jackson's brother, who lived near about three crow fly miles from Hawkinsville. When word got out that overseer Sanders had been shot, a small, but highly incensed, posse was organized by night marshal, W. Sumpter "Sump" Hogg. Oscar Lawson, a young farmer, went along with Sump Hogg up to the house to convince Jackson to give himself up.

Marshal Hogg approached a window of the shack and demanded the fleeing felon give himself up. Oscar Lawson went around to the back of the house. Jackson fired an instantly mortal rifle shot straight into the marshal's chest. Jackson walked across the interior of the house and fired a second mortal shot into an eye of Oscar Lawson, who never knew what killed him. Another member of the posse returned fire and temporarily disabled Jackson.

It was about that time when Bleckley County Sheriffs J.A. Floyd and Pulaski County Sheriff J. R. Rogers arrived with a very large posse of law enforcement officers and ordinary citizens. One of the officers grabbed Peter Fambrough and through the most persuasive acts of coercion, forced the terrified accomplice to go to the house and remove the corpses of Jackson's victims. All the while, Jackson kept up his fire from the inside of the embattled abode.

After dragging the dead men out of the line of fire, Fambrough was compelled to crawl under the house with a bundle of dynamite, which had been rushed in from a Hawkinsville store. When it appeared that Jackson was never going to give himself up voluntarily, the dynamite was ignited and Jackson's fortress was blown into various sized smithereens. The posse swarmed the shattered shanty, firing as thy approached. The point men found Jackson dead. Despite reports to the contrary, the Cochran Journal reported that James Jackson's death came at the hands of legally authorized law enforcement authors and not a lynch mob. Some reports suggested that Jackson was dragged from the splintered ruins of the flattened fortress and strung up in a tree by a vengeful mob of as many as six hundred men.

In the passion of the moment, Peter Fambrough and Jackson's brother were also killed when they resisted arrest. One published report maintained that the men had a shot gun, a pistol, and plenty of ammunition.

Lem Sanders, W.O. Peacock's 42-year-old trusted overseer, was buried with honors by the Woodmen of the World the next afternoon. Young Lawson was laid to rest in the cemetery at Antioch Church the next morning. Sump Hogg was known as one of the best officers of Bleckley County, whose sole fault was that he was too careless with his own safety. Mrs. Ludie Hogg and her three children sobbed as her husband was buried in the Weeping Pine Cemetery that afternoon.

Reports of the tragic events were often contradictory. Names of the principals were often misspelled or interchanged. One thing was for certain. Six men were dead. And, many Bleckley Countians were grieving as they closed their business houses for the three funerals.

Although there appeared to be no connection to the killings, the Bleckley County Sheriff announced his resignation within days after Marshal Hogg was killed. Sheriff Floyd stated that he could no longer perform his duties because he was unable to stand the financial strain. "During my first term, I wore out a good horse and buggy and a good automobile in the service of the county, and so far as I could determine, without any adequate financial return," the sheriff wrote.

Floyd maintained that his fees were based on sixty year old costs of operating the jail. He enjoyed his term as sheriff but urged the county to develop a more equitable form of salaries for sheriffs.

The exploding of a desperado by Bleckley County lawmen wasn't confined to James Jackson. Just four days before Christmas, some two and one half years later, Frank Hall was killed by Pomp Wiley. Hall reportedly attempted to break up a fight between Wiley and another man. Enraged at Hall's interference with his business, Wiley fired three true pistol shots into Hall's heart, killing him instantly.

Sheriff Jones and a band of fifty citizens located the accused felon, who had barricaded himself in the home of his brother-in-law. As soon as the posse came into the range of his weapon, Wiley opened fire, striking and wounding Vicar Meadows and Dewitt Morris.

While the main force kept a steady fire in Wiley's direction, a small group of men snuck around to the rear of the house. Sheriff Jones directed the men to place a charge of dynamite under the house just as his predecessor had done to keep James Jackson from killing any more people. And, not surprisingly, the plan worked with similar results - Pomp Wiley was blown up and would never, ever kill again.

RICHLAND BAPTIST CHURCH

2011-09-30T21:19:00.000-04:00

THE RICHLAND TRADITION

Two Hundred Years and Counting

For most of the last two hundred years, folks in the southwestern part of Twiggs County have gathered together at Richland Baptist Church to ask the Lord's blessing. And on the first Sunday in October, the members of the Richland Restoration League will once again return to the church which they have lovingly kept from the neglect of the winds of time and total destruction.

Two hundred years ago on October 5, 1811, Richland Meeting House was constituted by the reverends Edmond Talbot, of Jones County and Eden Taylor of Baldwin County. The Rev. Micajah Fulghum was assigned to the pulpit of the church which was first located on the banks of Richland Creek in a log structure. About a decade later, a new structure was constructed near Duke Hart's springs.

The charter members of Richland Church were John Denson, Jacob Ricks, Edward Nix, William Coates, Sarah Denson, Susannah Ricks, Elizabeth Lipham, Elizabeth Truluck, Sally Parrott, Anna Hammock, Sara Glenn, Nancy Powell, and Chloe Hodges, a Negro woman. Jacob Ricks, a founding father of Twiggs County, was named as a commissioner of public buildings at the town of Marion, the county's original county seat, which was located a few miles to the northwest. Ricks also served as one of the first justices of the Inferior Court of Twiggs County. John Denson lived to the ripe old age of 90 and long enough to see the current church built. Edward Nix died just five years after the church. Few records, if any, could be found about the remaining charter members.

Membership continued to rise and by 1840, Richland Church became the largest church in the Ebenezer Baptist Association. During the first five decades of the existence of the church, both white and black members worshipped in the church together. Although the slaves were considered members, they were required to sit in the galleries of the church during church services. In the year 1860, black membership reached a peak of 165 members, representing nearly seventy percent of the total membership. After the Civil War, black members left white churches and formed their own congregations.

One of the most poignant moments in the history of the church came a century and a half ago at the beginning of the Civil War. The ladies of the Richland and Marion communities would meet at the church to sew articles of clothing and make supplies for their boys in gray. Mrs. Isolene Minter Wimberly gave a heart-stirring address from the front steps of the church to the men and boys who were members of Company I of the 6th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, "The Twiggs County Guards." Mrs. Wimberly presented her husband, Frederick Davis Wimberly, the company lieutenant and later captain, a hand made battle flag, which was turned to the flag bearer, Sergeant Warren. The Guards, like many other Southern units, suffered horrific losses while attached to the Army of Northern Virginia.

The current structure, built in about 1845 on the site of New Hope Baptist Church, was located near an old stage road running from Savannah to North Georgia. The Greek Revival style, rectangular church has four simple columns supporting the roof of the portico. The simple front has four doors with the center two leading to the aisles. Traditionally, the ladies of the church entered the right door and took their seats, while the men came through the left door. Both men and women sat in the center section, but were segregated by a wooden partition running down the center. Along the sides of the pulpit, smaller rows of pews were arranged to face the pulpit at right angles to the main pews. Commonly called "Amen corners," these areas were reserved for the hard of hearing and the elderly.

The roll of ministers of Richland Church reads like a "who's who" among prominent Baptist preachers during the antebellum period. Among the most well known ministers who served Richland were George M. McCall, J.H. Campbell, James Kilpatrick, James Cary Solomon, Henry Bunn, Edward J. Coates, C.D. Mallory, James McConnell, James Williamson, Vincent A. Tharpe, Theophilus Pearce, John Ross, Adam Jones, C.A. Tharpe, and Lott Warren, who would also serve as an attorney, judge, and Congressman. During its first 78 years as a member of the Ebenezer Baptist Association, Richland Baptist Church had its minister serve in the highly honored position of Moderator of the Association.

Membership slowly declined after the war after the county seat was moved from Marion to Jeffersonville. With black members leaving to form their own churches and the white population in the area declining, attendance all but ended. After G.W. Faulk, Jr., a leading member and deacon of the church, died in August 1911, the last days of the then century old church were at hand. The church's last, minister, Francs Bartow Asbell resigned almost a century to the date after the church was founded.

For the next 37 years, the grand and once glorious house of worship stood vacant on most Sundays. Then, after the country had come out of the darkness of the Great Depression and two world wars, the descendants of former members and supporters of one of the true treasures of Twiggs County stepped forward with their time, their money and their devoted hearts to stop the deterioration of the century old structure. The league has also been able to preserve the interior of the building and several original items used in worship services more than a century ago.

In 1948, the Richland Restoration League was formed. Mary Faulk Harrison was elected president of the league. Other officers included Irene Wimberly Gleeson, Clara W. Pope, Sara Faulk, and Mrs. H.D. Faulk. These women worked tirelessly to restore the church to its original grandeur. The efforts have continued until the recent past when a $90,000 renovation program was initiated in 2004 to shore up the church's foundation. Through the generosity of contributors, the loan was paid off in seven years.

On Sunday, Oct. 2, the members of the Richland Restoration League will hold a celebration in honor of the church's bicentennial. The featured speaker for the day's festivities will be the Rev. Francis Wilson. Rev Wilson, a former resident of Cochran and a graduate of Mercer University, will address the gathering. Rev. Wilson is a grandson of Rev. F. Barrow Asbell, the last official minister of Richland Baptist Church when it closed one hundred years ago.

The league's trustees invite the members of all Twiggs County and Middle Georgia churches to be a part of this once in a lifetime celebration of their devotion to Richland Church and its service to the Lord. The festivities will begin at noon and will include an old fashioned dinner on the grounds and a performance by Wesleyannes, a choral group from Wesleyan College in Macon.

To get to the church, take the I-16 exit (No. 24) at Ga. Hwy. 96 and turn west next to the Huddle House and onto Richland Church Road and follow the signs for about two miles. For further information, go to www.historicrichlandchurch.org.

BROTHERS IN CHRIST

2011-09-20T22:08:00.000-04:00

The Reverend McGehees

It was a week when there were more Methodist preachers who appeared in Dublin than in a Key and Flanders family reunion. John B. McGehee (Left) and Edward McGehee, two of the longest serving Methodist ministers in the history of the South Georgia conference, were in town for a homecoming at the First Methodist Church.

It was during the last week of September 1911, one hundred years ago, when the members of the First Methodist Church invited all of their living former ministers to return to Dublin to celebrate the renovation of the church's new facility. Amazingly, all but one of the ministers accepted the invitation. Rev. W.N. Ainsworth, was busy with his duties as Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. The only other former Dublin Methodist minister missing was the Rev. Peter S. Twitty, who died a decade before.

The featured speaker and the hardest to get to come to the event was the Rev. John Boykin McGehee, who at the age of seventy-nine, was the oldest member of the South Georgia Conference of ministers. Rev. McGehee was also the first official minister of the First Methodist Church way back in 1854. During his sixty-five years in the ministry, Rev. McGehee served dozens of churches as well as many terms as a district superintendent.

John Boykin McGehee was born in the Henderson community, near Perry in Houston County, Georgia, on September 6, 1833. The son of Rev. Edward T. McGehee and Clara Apperson Owens, McGehee grew up in Houston County, where his father practiced medicine and dabbled at farming before entering the ministry.

It was only after his attendance at Emory College and his graduation from Franklin College that John McGehee found his place as a minister of the Gospel. McGehee was attending a revival at Wiley Chapel Methodist Church. He later wrote that he paid no attention to the services and in fact he resented what was happening around him. It was only when McGehee started across the street when he experienced an epiphany. From that moment on, the young man knew that he was called to preach.

It was on the morning of November 7, 1852, when the Rev. McGehee was admitted as a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His first assignment came in the Vienna circuit, although some written records indicate that he may have come to Dublin to preach on an irregular basis. In his second year in the ministry, McGehee was assigned to the Sandersville District and in particular the Methodist Church in Jeffersonville.

In his autobiography, published in 1915, the Rev. John B. McGehee wrote, "My home was in Dublin, at that time a small village. Then it didn't own a church building. Our Baptist brethren kindly gave us the use of their house of worship. Mine was no small circuit. Parts of four counties, Laurens, Washington, Montgomery and Pulaski claimed my oversight. Indeed churches were so numerous, riding so long, territory so large, that it was difficult to suppress the idea that I needed a traveling companion - an idea which was not suppressed."

First Methodist Church, 1894-1910

Rev. McGehee remembered the main families of his congregations, the Guytons, Blackshears, Sanders, Flanders, Hicks, Holmes, and Arlines. While he lived in Dublin, the twenty-one-year-old minister boarded with Tom and Elvira Guyton. Rev. McGehee, still lacking confidence in his abilities, remembered the Dashers, the Rowes and Cochrans in the Dublin church who helped "the young shepherd ofa small Methodist flock."

In his years spent in Dublin, McGehee met many people who had a profound influence on his life in the ministry. He cited George Smith, who attended Snell's Bridge Church, as "one of the best men I ever knew." He remembered several members of the Flanders family, long hailed as leaders of the Methodist movement in our area, including Frank Flanders, Fred Flanders and W.J. Flanders.

In describing the loneliness of his circuit riding days, McGehee told the story of a trip to Lowery Church, "Finding a bridge down, I plunged into a creek deeper than Jordan and reached the bank in safety. For two hours, I pursued the trail without seeing a man, animal or bird, and began to decide how I would imitate the heroism of the fathers. At sunset, I found a driver and an ox cart," McGehee recalled. He told the driver he didn't know where he was going and confessed he was lost. He finally reached a home where the occupants were gone. Their new son-in-law turned the stranger away. McGehee spoke as eloquently as he could to convince the young man to allow him to stay for the night. Finally, he told the man, "I am sent to preach to you and will go no farther." Moved by the moment, the preacher was invited inside where he enjoyed a "sweet sleep."

First Methodist Church, 1911-1966

It was in that "dark country" of southern Laurens County which McGehee described as having "an atmosphere from that section drawn largely from ponds and well charged with malaria, mosquitos and chills" as the place where he began to suffer from malaria for four years.

Just after his tenure in Dublin, John McGehee met the love of his life. The lonely days on the road made him think about what kind of woman he would like to marry. After months of deliberation, McGehee narrowed down his bride's qualifications to a few. More than sixty years after his marriage, the parson wrote that she must be a Methodist, and that she be strong, tall, smart, attractive, well read, and well reared. He found a match in Lucretia Lane. The couple married on the day after Christmas in 1854. He was twenty-one years old and his bride was only three months beyond her fifteenth birthday.

After leaving Dublin, McGehee served in several churches before becoming the president of Andrew College, a Methodist post secondary school in Cuthbert. At the age of forty, McGehee became a highly sought after Presiding Elder, serving in Columbus, Fort Valley, Thomasville, Savannah, Macon, and McRae. After more than 57 years in the ministry, McGehee finally returned to the pulpit in 1909 in Talbotton, where he died on July 22, 1917.

The younger McGehee, Edward Augustus McGehee (1839-1920), entered the Methodist ministry in 1859. Edward served as the minister of Dublin's First Methodist Church from 1904-1905 during the decades when the local church was one of the most important churches in the state.

The McGehee brothers' record of slightly more than one hundred twenty-five years of combined service to the Church has been surpassed by current and former Dublin residents, Jack and Billy Key, to whom I dedicate this column. The Brothers Key, who began their ministerial careers before World War II, have been brothers in Christ for well more than one hundred and thirty years. Their profession of their faith and their devotion to the Gospel of the Lord have been a blessing to all those who have been touched by the comfort of their words of "faith, hope and love."

TOM MIX

2011-09-14T22:19:00.002-04:00

King of the Cowboys

In the days when movies were silent and the Twenties roared, Tom Mix was a movie star. Not just any movie star in the days when John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry were little boys, Thomas Edwin Mix was the most popular cowboy movie star in the world. It was on a September Saturday some seventy-five years ago when Tom Mix came to Dublin and the people of Dublin saw their cowboy hero up close and in person.

Tom Mix began his movie career in 1910 at the age of thirty. Over the next quarter of a century, Mix was reported to have appeared in more than 330 movies. All but a handful of those movies were talking pictures. At the height of his silent movie career, Mix was appearing in more than fifteen movies every year. As his career in motion pictures began to wane, Mix launched a transcontinental tour in what was billed as the largest motorized circus in the world.

The four-million-dollar circus began its tour in Compton, California and featured the new and improved 150-foot round top. The equipment and animals were transported by night convoys of no less than sixty new semi trucks with beautifully painted red, white, and blue trailers. The walls, marquee, and curtains were striped in red and white.

After performances in Athens and Macon, the three-ring circus arrived just before daylight in Dublin on the morning of September 26, 1936. The event was held on the old 12th District Fairgrounds at the corner of Telfair Street and Troup Street. Crowds gathered around the fairgrounds in the early morning to witness the erection of the circus city, a show in of itself. A matinee performance took place at 2:00 followed the grand finale during the evening show at 8:00.

The Tom Mix Circus followed right on the heels of its main motorized circus competitor, the Downie Brothers - Sparks Circus, which came to the old fairgrounds the week before. The Downie Brothers hired Jack Hoxie, a silent movie cowboy movie veteran, to compete with the vastly more popular, Tom Mix. The Downie circus was much smaller, but drew good crowds wherever it went, even during the dark days of the Great Depression.

Nearly one hundred and fifty horses and ponies were used in the show. To make it a well-rounded circus, Mix gathered monkeys, baboons, lions, deer, and dogs along with three elephants and a zebra for his circus, which employed more than 500 performers, including sixty aerialists, sixty riders, and two hundred stars on the floor of the arena.

In addition to Mix, the star of the show, the audience was thrilled by acrobatic performers, the Flying Arbaughs and Erma Ward, "The Queen of the Air." The fabulous Riding Hobsons and Max Gruber's Jungle Oddities rounded out the show. The Arbaughs teamed with Ward Codona Troup to form the largest flying acrobatic show ever performed.

Mix personally led the Parade of the Royal Mounted consisting of more than eighty mounted riders. A Courier Herald writer reported, "Mix was very gracious about signing autographs for juvenile fans crowded about shyly extending autograph books." Always by his side was Mix's horse and a crowd favorite, Tony, Jr. - the first Tony having died years before.

Homer Hobson, Helen Ford and Joe Bowers opened the show with an amusing performance of trained dogs and monkeys. Along with a requisite corps of circus clowns, the show featured twenty girls performing on swinging ladders. Next came more female performers, Del Herberto, Mlle Lorenzo, and Ella Davenport and a company of Lady polo riders led by Helen Ford and Company. Charles Arley, who performed a head balancing act on a revolving trapeze, and Les Cotelettis Troupe of comedic acrobats had the crowed laughing out loud.

The main center ring event followed with Tom Mix's company of cowboys and horses. Mix demonstrated his riding and marksmanship skills by riding and firing at moving targets. He climaxed the performance by lying flat on his back and shooting light bulbs in a dome over his head.

Erma Ward

Other billed acts included Rhoda Royal's Liberty Horses, trapeze artists, Karise Turner and her flying ballet, Johnny Jordan, Albert Powell, and George Arely and the Bell-Jordan-Marks Troupe.

Among the more well known sideshow acts was Schlitzie, "The Pinhead." Schlitzie was born with a neurodevelopmental disorder which caused him to have an unusually small brain and a height of four feet. Schliztie Surtees starred in the 1932 cult film Freaks and was a long time circus side show freak with Barnum and Bailey.

Schliztie, The Pinhead

After the last performer left the ring and the workers began sweeping the pop corn and peanuts from the abandoned grandstands, several local miscreants got themselves into an affray with a circus employee. Three men got into an argument with side show workers over money. Dublin police pulled out their bud nippers and broke up the ruckus, but one of the men went back and retrieved his gun. Enlisting the aid of two conspirators, the unnamed man confronted the circus employees, cutting one of them in the throat while others fired their guns, none of which struck their targets. The three young men were arrested, but when circus employees failed to show for a 9:00 a.m. court appearance, the charges were dropped.

Within four years, Tom Mix's iconic career would come to a tragic end. After visiting with the Pima County, Arizona sheriff, Nix stopped in at the Oracle Junction Inn. Mix went on his way after talking by phone with his agent. Mix, reportedly driving at nearly 80 mph through the desert, swerved to avoid hitting a construction barrier which blocked a washed out gully. A large aluminum suitcase, which contained money, travelers' checks, and jewels, was catapulted forward from the rear of Mix's car and struck him in the back of his head, smashing his skull. In an instant, the man who was shot at by the bad guys and always survived was killed by his own suitcase.

It wasn't exactly Barnum and Bailey and The Greatest Show on Earth. But, it was on that thrilling early autumn day when a troupe of circus performers gave us a show of a lifetime and the King of The Cowboys came to town.

JAMES M. FINN

2011-09-05T22:35:00.000-04:00

JAMES M. FINN

Dublin's Number One Citizen

J.M. Finn was rightly named "Dublin's Number One Citizen." Although that honor could be shared by several others during the Golden Age of the Emerald City, Finn's list of contributions to the growth of Dublin from a sleepy railroad village to one of Georgia's most important commercial cities was unparalleled. And, who else would be a booster of Dublin like Finn, who was one of the cities truest Irishmen that our city ever knew.

James Moore Finn was born in Franklin, Kentucky on October 6, 1866. His father, John A. Finn, was a prominent lawyer and a state representative. His brother, Gerald, also practiced law and was honored with a term as Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Bluegrass State. Finn's paternal grandfather, John Finn, emigrated from Galway, Ireland in 1816 directly into Franklin, where he became a successful merchant and politician.

After attending local schools, Finn began his business career as a clerk in a store in Franklin. James Finn attended the prestigious Vanderbilt University, where he was an outstanding student and member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity. After his graduation in 1889, Finn worked in various positions until he migrated to the awakening town of Dublin, Georgia, where he took a position as the cashier of the Bank of Dublin, the city's first bank. Before coming to Dublin on the 4th of July 1892, Finn married Hyrell McGoodwin, affectionately known as "Birdie."

Mrs. "Birdie" Finn

Before Finn's arrival in Dublin, the city was on the verge of an explosive growth. With the bridging of the Oconee River by the Wrightsville and Tennille Railroad, the construction of a passenger bridge over the river, and the coming of the Macon, Dublin, and Savannah Railroad from the west, the once, sleepy, drunken, lawless town of Dublin was about to grow exponentially under an unprecedented boom which would last for a quarter of a century until thwarted by the devilish boll weevil, which all but destroyed the cotton crop. And, it was James M. Finn who climbed aboard the crest of the tidal wave and rode it all the way to the end of the city's first golden age.

Right from the beginning, the people of Dublin and Laurens County endeared "Mr. Jim" Finn, and right from the beginning, "Mr. Jim" endeared the people of Dublin and Laurens County. Once a complete stranger, the voters of Laurens County elected Finn to the Board of County commissioners during his first few years in the county. It was Finn who lent his financial knowledge to build a new courthouse in 1895 without funding by a bond issue and without any debt.

The bank's early success led to Finn's success as well. He built a handsome residence on the southeast corner of Bellevue Avenue and South Calhoun Street. The house, which is now owned by Arnold Adams, still stands today.

Home of J.M. Finn, Bellevue Avenue

(Courtesy of Vicki Adams Blizzard)

First and foremost, James M. Finn was a banker. After the death of the bank's founder, Capt. R.C. Henry, in 1900, Finn remained in the position of cashier until the bank merged with its across the street neighbor to form the Dublin-Laurens Banking Company. Finn became the Active Vice President of the Dublin-Laurens Banking Company. In 1918, Finn was elected as the Second Vice President of the Southern Exchange Bank, when it acquired the Commercial Bank of Dublin.

J.M. Finn was highly regarded by his banking colleagues across the state. In 1910, Finn was elected chairman of the prestigious "Group Five" of the Georgia Banker's Association, which had previously met in Dublin and were wined and dined by Dublin's best cooks and hospitable citizens.

It was, at least in part, Finn's banking skills which helped Dublin and Laurens County to place near the top of the state in the number of banking institutions. In 1917 at the pinnacle of Dublin and Laurens County's growth before the coming of the boll weevil, Dublin had six banks, tying Macon for sixth place in the number of banks among cities in Georgia. Laurens County, with its 14 banks, was third behind only Fulton and Chatham Counties.

The number of local banks began to plummet during World War I. With the collapse of the cotton crop, all of the county's banks, including the powerful First National Bank, closed. Only the Bank of Dudley and Farmers and Merchants Bank, remained open. When the last Dublin bank closed, a new bank, "The Dublin Bank and Trust Company," was organized by the owners of Citizens and Southern Bank on October 31, 1928. J.M. Finn, George T. Morris, and H.R. Moffett were named to the bank's local board of directors.

J.M. Finn was also closely associated with the cotton industry. Finn served as an officer and director of the Georgia Cotton and Compress Company, which once boasted that it could process a farmer's cotton on Monday morning and place it aboard a European bound ocean going vessel on Tuesday afternoon. It was a century ago when Finn's company, along with other cotton gins in the county, processed more than 30 million pounds of cotton, the largest single county cotton crop in the history of the state, until broken in the late 1900s.

Finn, also a cotton farmer, was closely allied with the Dublin Cotton Mills, a somewhat successful cotton mill on the west side of Dublin. Finn realized that transportation of his cotton was essential and involved himself for more than two decades as a director of the Wrightsville and Tennille Railroad, the county's most successful railroad.

Although laundry lists of a person's activities are often boring, Finn's short resume of his activities as an officer and director is quite impressive: Dublin Board of Censorship, Dublin Board of Tax Assessors, Dublin Board of Trade, Dublin Chamber of Commerce, Dublin Chamber of Commerce Warehouse Company, Dublin City Board of Education, Dublin City Executive Committee, Dublin Cotton Mills, Dublin Fair Association, Dublin Lumber Company, Dublin Peanut Company, Dublin Red Cross, Dublin Stockyard Company, Finn, Garrett & Holcomb Real Estate Company, Georgia Cotton and Compress Company, Georgia Mutual Fire Insurance Company, Georgia State Chamber of Commerce, Laurens County Centennial Commission Chairman, Southern Compress Association, Southern Cotton Association, Southland Veneer and Lumber Company, 12th District Fair Association, War Savings Stamp Board, and Wrightsville & Tennille Railroad. Finn also served as vice-president of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and as a member of the Georgia Highway Commission in its early years.

All of Dublin was saddened on July 4, 1936, when J.M. Finn passed away after a long illness. He is buried in Northview Cemetery beside his wife. Sadly they had no children, to pass along the legacy of being a descendant of the number one citizen of Dublin.

LEAVING THEIR MARK

2011-09-05T22:15:00.000-04:00

LEAVING THEIR MARK

When They Were Trojans

They came down the street and across the miles. They had been there before and left their marks. On this past Saturday morning, they came to mark "the sacred ground, the holy ground," the place where they attended Oconee High School and learned the life lessons of love, faith, and service to others. They came to remember the time when they were Trojans.

Former students, faculty members, and friends of Oconee High School gathered together for the dedication of a historical marker on the site of the former school which stood at the intersection of Vine and Oconee Streets from 1952 to 1970. When Dublin city councilman Jerry Davis, a graduate of Oconee High School, returned home to Dublin, he set out on a mission to mark the location of the school, the largest part of which had been torn down decades before.

After an application to the state of Georgia was rejected on the grounds that the school was not significant as a historical place on a statewide basis, an undeterred Davis turned to his friends and fellow alumni to erect a marker which would forever signify the location of the place which fellow student, the Rev. Richard Sheffield, declared as "holy."

After a welcome by Barbara Watkins James, '62, the Rev. Sheffield, Chairman of the Dublin City Board of Education, prayed, "Let love touch our hearts with love and charity." The 1966 graduate saw himself and others as they gathered in front of the old school as children trying to understand and learn. He asked that every time a child and its mother passed by, the child would ask, "What is Oconee High School"? - to which the mother would respond that it was a place of the heritage of education. Chairman Sheffield sees Dublin High School as an extension of Oconee High and as a place where even more focus should be made by the community, and especially parents, on education, so that the schools can be a place where every child can learn.

Davis, the alumni association's 2nd vice president, thanked those present and all who contributed to the effort, the alumni, the city, and the Laurens County Historical Society. The councilman fondly remembered the days when the school was the hub of the community and community activities and saluted the school's alumni association for continuing to be a beacon of light when the community has fallen into a state of disrepair and for continuing to represent a spirit of excellence. Davis, Class of '69, spoke of the students and faculty with pride and hopes that the marker will inspire others to emulate the achievements of Oconee alumni and continue to make a difference on the local, state and national stages.

Dublin Mayor Pro Tem, Julie Drigger, saluted those present as trailblazers and encouraged the graduates to remember and pass down their heritage by saying, "No one can take that away from you. Never forget where you come from and you will always know where you are going."

School board member, Laura Travick, challenged the gathering, "If we don't leave a mark, no one who passes this way will know these holy grounds and where many got their start in education." Mrs. Travick concluded, "They will know what this ground meant to the people to the people of Dublin."

Assistant Superintendent Elgin Dixon sees the marker as telling the story about those who have come before them and paved the way.

Charles Manning, principal of Oconee High School from 1959 to 1970, praised the strong alumni association and his former students, "Statewide, we were small, but we always gave our best in everything we did. Mr. Manning urged his students to continue their loyalty to Oconee. He counseled his former students to hold to the truth of being a Trojan. As he looked into the sun beyond the gymnasium, which still stands, Manning can still see the football games, with players like Richard Sheffield. "Oconee has always been the best," principal Manning concluded.

Oconee High School Alumni National Alumni Chairman Darlene Blocker, '70, invited representatives of each class to come forward to cut the cover of the marker in the style of cutting the net after a championship basketball game. One by one they came forward, from those who attended in the early days until those who left Oconee to attend Dublin High, and began to cut away and unveil the marker.

Dr. Jerome V. Pearson, a successful Rome, Georgia physician, Class of '71, finished the operation to unveil the southern side of the marker which features the words of Seaman Lonnie Woodum, Class of 1954. Woodum, the author of the school's alma mater, tragically lost his life in a naval accident just months after his graduation. The northern side of the marker outlines a brief history of the origin and life at Oconee High School and the days when the Trojans represented a spirit of excellence in education, sports and community service, a spirit which still lives today.

Jerry Davis

Barbara Watkins James

Rev. Richard Sheffield

Principal Charles Manning

Darlene Christian Blocker

Merita Walters Evans

Dr. Jerome V. Pearson

Clinton and Bobbie Lowther

MARKER CONTRIBUTORS

Oconee Alumni

Sanford Howard, '54
Loise McLendon Stroman, '55
Julian E. Thomas, '55
Bonese Thomas, '56
Betty Brown Williamson, '60
Ecleamus Ricks, '61
Charles Robinson, Jr. '61
Barbara Watkins James, '62
Merita Walters Evans, '64
Thomas "Ted" Pooler, '64
Donnie Christian Perryman, '65
Russell Bruce Simmons, '65
Johnny Vaughn, '65
Robert L. Mason, Jr. '67
Jerry Davis, '69
Darlene Christian Blocker, '70

Faculty

Lucille Wade

Others

Clinton Lowther

Scott B. Thompson, Sr.

Organizations

Civic Social Ten of Dublin-Laurens County
Southside Community Association, Inc.

Oconee High School National Alumni Association

THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF 1886

2011-08-30T19:16:00.000-04:00

The ground beneath us in East Central Georgia doesn't shake very often. When it does, it is a time to start praying for God's grace. That's exactly what happened on the evening of August 31, 1886, one hundred and twenty five years ago tomorrow night. It was on that night when the most powerful earthquake to ever strike the southeastern United States struck South Carolina, between Charleston and Summerville. The quake, which measured an estimated intensity of seven or higher on the Richter scale, nearly destroyed the ancient port city and its suburban resort neighbor to the west. The quake was so powerful that it was felt as far away as Boston, Chicago and Cuba. And, it shook the ground, buildings and people's souls right here in Dublin.

The massive earthquake didn't come without warning. Just before dawn on Saturday, August 28, an earthquake slightly jarred the city of Augusta, Georgia. Though the rattling was barely perceptible, it was reported that sleeping citizens were suddenly awakened and ran into the streets in fear. The shocks were also felt in Charleston. Around the globe along the Mediterranean Sea, the ancient cities of Rome, Naples, Alexandria, and Athens were jolted by earthquakes.

The Dublin Post reported on Tuesday night at nine o'clock,"houses swayed perceptibly, doors opened, trees trembled and even the Earth was so disturbed that pedestrians found it difficult to travel." The shock was sufficient to evoke a clatter which awoke many who were asleep. Church services were in progress when the quake began. Fearing the "wrath of God" was thrust upon them, the worshipers hastily vacated the sanctuaries. The event was the topic on everyone's mind the following day. Rumors and true accounts of some of the more hilarious details of the commotion, although plentiful, were unfortunately not published in the newspaper. Recent scientific studies have determined that the intensity in Dublin was capable of causing slight damage in ordinary structures, considerable damage in poorly built buildings and moderate damage to chimneys. With the epicenter measuring a 10, the strength felt in Dublin was on a scale of 7.3, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Accounts of the earthquake were reported from all over the region. Though the times vary from as early as 8:52 in Macon to 9:00 in Cochran, where reports of the effects of the phenomenon were similar. Most witnesses stated that the sound which preceded the shaking moved from east to west or northeast to southwest. A second shock occurred less than sixty seconds after the first jolt. In Savannah, which was fairly close to the epicenter of the quake, building damage was moderate. Some loss of life and injuries were reported. It was noted that Lucy Foster was "scared to death." Residents of Tybee Island suffered more damage, including moderate damage to the historic lighthouse on the barrier island. People in Augusta remembered four distinct shocks, followed by more after shocks the following morning.

The quake struck Eastman at 8:55 with "heavy shocks." A couple of a dozen miles to the northwest, bottles were said to have been shaken off the shelves in Hawkinsville during the quake, which lasted 20 to 25 seconds. Cochran residents recounted that the shaking lasted 30 seconds, but consisted of two separate shocks, the second being greater than the first one. In McRae, houses trembled and windows rattled, with little if any damage. Folks ran from their homes in Chauncey during the "violent shake."

Up Highway 441 in Wilkinson County, the members of Red Level Methodist Church, were gathering for an evening to listen to the word of the Lord in what once was billed as one of the county's largest churches. Wilkinson County historian Victor Davidson described the scene best, "The Charleston earthquake of 1886, which frightened nearly everybody to death throughout this county, happened while a protracted meeting was being carried on at this place. The preacher whose name was Green, then living in Irwinton, was a powerful exhorter and as the meeting progressed each day waxed more and more eloquent and this being in the days of shouting Methodists when folks got real religion, the revival was on in earnest. On the night of the earthquake the church was packed to its utmost."

"The preacher had just delivered himself of a fearful sermon dealing with the destruction of the world and judgment day, but somehow or other when he invited sinners to come to the altar few came. Then in the fervor of his emotions the preacher called on the congregation to bow their heads in a word of prayer. He prayed to "God that if it was necessary to bring the sinners to repentance to send an earthquake and convince them of the wrath of an offended God. It is affirmed that he had scarcely uttered these words than a shudder ran through the earth as the first shock of the quake came, the house beginning to crack in every corner and the walls swaying from side to side. The prayer ceased in the middle of a sentence and every one raised his bowed head to see if the wind was blowing."

" Just at that moment came the second shock of the quake and pandemonium broke loose. Amidst the cracking of the walls the neighing of the frightened horses, the shrieks of the women and children, with the freshly reminded visions of the destruction of the earth by fire, and the eternal tortures of the lost before their minds, they made a dash for the doors. It is said that the preacher went out the window and only a blind man remained on the inside. Once on the outside and no more shocks coming, one old man, after looking up and seeing that the stars were in their accustomed places, assured them that it was nothing but an earthquake and that there was no danger. It is said that the crowd then with one accord returned into the church and there was one of the biggest revivals that night any church ever did have."

R.L. Hunter, editor of Milledgeville's Union Recorder, was sitting in his home when he heard a dull roar resembling the sound of a coal locomotive in the distance. Hunter wrote, "The idea at once occurred to us that it was an earthquake and we went to the door in a short time to hear a more distinct roaring sound." After going out into the street, Hunter heard a loud screaming in one direction along with shouts and cries coming from various directions.

After comforting a couple of terrified ladies who lived next door, Hunter returned to his home, where he began to chronicle the five ensuing aftershocks, which came about eight to fifteen minutes apart for an hour. A sixth one trembled after midnight, while still more perceptible rumblings continued throughout the next day until the following Sunday night, five days after the initial shock. Hunter also reported minor damages to older Milledgeville structures, including the old statehouse building.

The Great Earthquake of 1886 stands alone as the strongest in the recorded history of the southeastern United States. It can happen again. Earthquakes, of more minute scales, occur almost daily in the United States. And, they do occur in our area. Just four months ago on May 3, 2011, a magnitude 2.6 earthquake struck near Gibson, Georgia, only some fifty crow-fly miles away from Dublin. And, if that doesn't make you wonder, think about the folks of tiny Mineral, Virginia, who were violently shaken by a 5.9 earthquake last Tuesday and the people in our nation's capital, many miles away, as our capitol building shook right before our very eyes.

A WING, A PRAYER, AND OTHER THINGS

2011-08-23T21:37:00.000-04:00

HEY YOU, UP IN THE CLOUDS, PULL OVER! - Sheriff Carlus Gay had arrested many drunk drivers during his twenty plus year career in law enforcement. But, he never dreamed one might come out of the sky. J.B. Daniel, a 40-year-old resident of Swainsboro, landed his private plane on Georgia Highway 29. Daniel then taxied his plane down for two miles down the highway to the Cile Cook Home at the junction of the highway with the Old Savannah Road. Gay could smell the scent of liquor on the breath of the pilot, whom he promptly arrested for flying under the influence. Augusta Chronicle, April 14, 1958.

THE POWER OF PRAYER - Brammer Cecil, of Mt. Airy, North Carolina, was driving his truck through Laurens County carrying a heavy load of glass. When the glass shifted, Cecil's truck overturned. Cecil was buried under many slabs of heavy glass. Pinned, cut, and bleeding, Cecil had no hope of being extracted from the cab of his truck. The Rev. J.S. Wetzel, of Century Methodist Church, was the first motorist to arrive on the scene. Rev. Wetzel tried and tried to remove the glass. Then he prayed to God for the strength to get the man out. Cecil was praying too. Then, that's when another motorist, a resident of Toccoa, showed up. With the young man's help, Wetzel managed to free Cecil from the crushed truck. You see, the young man was no ordinary man. He had garnered world wide fame for his ability to lift heavy weights. That young man, you may have guessed, was none other than Paul Anderson, the reigning Olympic champion weightlifter - who was forever billed as the "Strongest Man in the World." Augusta Chronicle, March 14, 1960.

Paul Anderson, The World's Strongest Man

SHINE ON - Charlie Williams enjoyed a good shoe shine business in Dublin. Lots of men lined up to get their shoes looking like they were new. Trouble was that Charlie's real shine was not the shoe shine, but moonshine, which he kept in a five-gallon bucket next to his stand. Those customers who knew what was up ordered a "double shine" until law enforcement officers busted the money making operation. Augusta Chronicle, October 24, 1954.

"COURIER HERALD" GOES WORLD WIDE - Bernard Geeslin was walking along the seawall in Manilla in May of 1945 when he saw a Filipino sitting on his heels in the curve of the wall reading a newspaper. He took a closer look, and to his utter amazement, it was a December 14, 1944 issue of "The Courier Herald." The headline read "Nazis Smash American Lines." Geeslin was unable to ascertain the subscriber of the paper or what the reader thought of it. Dublin Courier Herald, May 25, 1945, p. 3.

THE OTHER LIBRARY - Did you know that the first Laurens County Library was established in 1938. The Carnegie Library in Dublin gave free service to only city residents at the time. The ladies of the Parnassus Club sponsored a library for county residents. The library was located in the county office building on East Madison Street, which served formerly as the post office from 1912 until 1936. Virginia Graves served as the first and only librarian. After a few months the Laurens County Library merged with the Carnegie Library. Countywide service began with the help of the W.P.A. which funded a traveling librarian. Dublin Courier Herald, 8/6/1938, Laurens Co. History, 1807-1941, p. 239, 248.

PSYCHIC FUND RAISER - One of the first fund raising events for the new Carnegie Library was held at the high school auditorium. Professor William Irving Fayssoux displayed his talents as a clairvoyant and psychic. The proceeds from the event went to the book fund of the new library. At three o'clock, Fayssoux blindfolded himself. He then drove madly and daringly over the main streets of Dublin. He promised the crowd that he could find a letter which had been hidden by a prominent Dublinite. Dublin Times, October 15, 1904, p. 1.

THE COTTON KING - Roswell King, a Connecticut native, left his home for Darien, Georgia, in 1788. King served in a variety of public offices including surveyor, justice of the peace, justice of the Inferior Court, and state representative. In 1802, King was hired as Major Pierce Butler's overseer on his plantations on Butler Island and at Woodville on the Altamaha River and Hampton plantation on St. Simons Island. During the next 36 years, King developed efficient methods in the cultivation of rice and sea island cotton. In 1816 Roswell King purchased a building on the northwest corner of the courthouse square in Dublin. In 1829, King sold the building which may have burned. In the 1830s, King was sent to Dahlonega to establish a branch of the Bank of Darien. King was much impressed with the beauty of the woodlands. He returned to North Georgia and purchased a large tract of woodlands. He dammed Vickery Creek and operated a large cotton mill. King named the new community after himself, and the community of Roswell was born. King appreciated the value of industry in the South, the lack of which led to the loss of the Civil War. Dictionary of Georgia Biography, Kenneth Coleman, Vol. 2, page 579; Deed Book G, page 192, Deed Book I, page 201, Laurens County Records.

SPICING UP OUR INDUSTRIES - The Dublin-Laurens Chamber of Commerce from its inception has sought out new industries and businesses for the county. In the spring of 1941 the Chamber worked with state officials and private industries in an experimental new crop in the Laurens County agricultural community. The new crop came from central Europe with the plants being donated from spice making firms. The new crop was a mild European pepper which when ground up would become a popular spice known as paprika. Dublin Courier Herald, May 3, May 14, 1941, p. 1.

THE LAST OF THE ONE ROOM SCHOOL HOUSES - A 130-year-old educational practice came to an end on September 9, 1937. The Laurens County Board of Education voted to close Burch's Academy, the last of the one room - one teacher schools. The school was located at the southern end of the county on the south side of Alligator Creek. The students of the grammar school were transferred to Cedar Grove School. Cedar Grove was the second largest county school with 11 grades. Dublin Courier Herald, September 10, 1937, p. 1.

THE THREE-SEATER BABY CARRIAGE - D.S. Brandon was one of Dublin's leading wholesale grocers. His wife was of the northern persuasion, a Yankee. She often ridiculed the women of the South for having so many children. Mrs. Brandon compared the high number of children to litters of puppies. The women of Dublin had the last laugh when Mrs. Brandon gave birth to triplets in 1909. The Brandon triplets were heralded in this area as much as the Dionne Quintuplets of the 1930s. Mr. Brandon was reading a newspaper when he saw an article about Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Robinson of Griffin, Georgia. The new parents of triplets were in need of help to pay the cost of caring for the babies. Brandon made arrangements to ship the custom made three-seater baby carriage to the Robinsons, for which the new parents were eternally grateful. Dublin Courier Herald, June 4, 1914, p. 1.

OTHO AND HAROLD

2011-08-15T19:05:00.001-04:00

Two Bright Spots In the Nighttime

There was a time long ago in the days of Jim Crow when evil men pulled robes over their heads and skulked through the darkness with meanness on their minds. Such was the case on a frosty Thursday evening in the Mount Airy Community of Dodge County on March 2, 1950. Out of the brilliance of a near full moon lit night appeared two shining stars of good and right, who liberated an innocent man from the wrongful vengeance of a miscreant mob.

Flogging of both black and white people had been on the rise in the early months of 1950. Johnny Graham, white, and Riley Dykes, black, were beaten by persons unknown. Little or no efforts were made by local law enforcement to apprehend the perpetrators.

Sixteen-year-old Harold Barrentine, (Above left) who later would become a Dublin accountant and businessman, was on his way to a party near his home. He had heard the rumors about floggings, but paid no mind to them as he had more important thoughts like any sixteen- year-old boy would. While he was attending the party, Harold fortunately noticed a caravan of vehicles carrying some twenty-five or more hooded men who were headed toward the farm house of Jesse Lee Goodman, a farm hand who worked for Otho Wiggins. Harold ran as fast as he could to warn Mr. Wiggins of his fears about Jesse Lee.

Meanwhile, a hooded squad of scoundrels forced open the lock on the front door of the Goodman home and burst into the first bedroom, where they found Clydie Mae Goodman and her two children shivering in fear for their lives. Then the horde descended upon another bedroom where they found Goodman and another child asleep. Allowing Goodman to put on only a few clothes, the fiendish throng drug him into the wintry woods.

Goodman remembered the leader, whom he called "the King." "He had a large red shoulder patch and a big cross or star on his sleeve," Goodman testified. "He was the boss. He gave the orders," Jesse Lee told law enforcement officers. Jesse went on to tell how the leader asked about some oil he had. Goodman told his captors that he had gotten the oil from his boss, Mr. Otho Wiggins. Without any regard for the truthfulness of Goodman's statements, the assaulters began to mercilessly beat and flog ol' Jesse. After a momentary pause, the whipping was about to resume.

That's when Otho Wiggins showed up.

Otho loaded his .22 caliber rifle, dismounted his truck, and focused his spotlight on the source of the commotion. Seeing cars and some people he thought he recognized and with full comprehension of what was unfolding before his eyes, Wiggins opened fire and kept on discharging his rifle until its chamber was empty. He reloaded and began firing again, some sixteen shots in all. Cowering behind Fords and Chevrolets, a few poltroons fired back without hitting their marks.

"When Mr. Otho started shootin' the man next to me shoved me in a car and jumped in on top of me," Goodman recalled. "Then he made me get in the seat and stay down low," Jesse stated before his antagonists dumped him out of the car and fled the scene. Goodman told authorities that his captors promised that they would seek revenge against Wiggins.

Wiggins would later say, "When I began firing, both men and cars took off in every direction."

N.A. Barrentine, Harold's father, accompanied Wiggins to report the incident to Dodge County Sheriff, O.B. Peacock. Apparently afraid of the Klan's retribution against himself, Sheriff Peacock stated the matter was none of his business and that they should report the case to the F.B.I. Peacock later jokingly told the editor of the Eastman Times-Journal, "I don't want the Klan getting after me. Otho didn't ask me to go. He just told me about it."

Editor Edwin T. Methvin, a long time opponent of the Ku Klux Klan, blasted Sheriff Peacock for his apathetic handling of the matter. Methvin, in cooperation with the F.B.I., launched a personal crusade to rid the county of the barbarian organization. Methvin did praise Wiggins in an editorial by stating, "We regret the marksmanship of Otho Wiggins was not better and that he succeeded in only dispersing the mob of hooded and robed men that attacked his Negro farm hand in Dodge County the other night. Mr. Wiggins made a gallant try, though, he deserves congratulations."

Also incensed with the violent acts was Superior Court Judge Eschol Graham, who called the Grand Jury into a special session to deal with the Klan, bootlegging and some problems with the local school board, the former two not being related to the latter. Wiggins, Goodman, and Barrentine all testified about what they saw and heard that night.

Harold Barrentine in identifying a 1939 Chevrolet belonging to Alfred Crumbley testified, "I see those cars almost every day and I would know them anywhere." Jesse Lee identified a 1949 pickup owned by Theo Lewis. Otho Wiggins confirmed the testimony of Barrentine and Goodman that the culprits were Klansmen by saying, "We saw the white robes and they had hoods over their heads." Their testimony led to the arrest of Crumbley, Lewis and a third suspect, one F.M. Smith.

Overnight, Otho Wiggins and Harold Barrentine became heroes to many. Sadly, they became scoundrels to others. Their fear of reprisals was real and warranted.

Otho Wiggins, who never had a single moment of remorse for his actions, wrote a letter to editor Methvin, which he promptly published to bolster his crusade. In thanking the members of the hooded order Wiggins wrote, "Since you have become the ones who have taken the law into your own hands, I don't suppose your wives and children will suffer nervousness or loss of sleep from such an occurrence." Otho sarcastically complimented the bravery of a mob of white men who would go into a person's house, regardless of race or creed, and drag him from his bed and beat him. Wiggins concluded his mocking missive by apologizing, "I extend to you loyal members of the hooded brotherhood my humble apology for being such a poor shot with my rifle. Hope to see you soon. Signed Your neighbor, Otho Wiggins."

It was on that cold, cold night more than sixty years ago when Jim Crow flew away into the starry skies where Otho Wiggins and Harold Barrentine shined as the brightest spots of mercy and kindness in the Dodge County nighttime.

FUN,! FUN! FUN!

2011-08-09T19:06:00.002-04:00

The Jaycees' Swimming Pool

For about fifteen years, it was one of the best places to be when the weather was hot and you needed cooling down. Sixty years ago this summer, the Dublin Junior Chamber of Commerce, known as the Jaycees, opened a pool at the western end of Stubbs Park. Beginning on July 7, 1951 and ending about the year 1966, when social conditions in Dublin and around the South precipitated its closing, the Jaycees' Pool was a place where fond memories were made.

One of the first operators of the pool was Dublin High football coach, Tom Stewart, and his wife Peggy, who ran the concession stands. "In the summer when my daddy ran the pool, he hired life guards, taught swimming lessons, and drained, cleaned, and refilled it once a week," recalled Karen Stewart Haggard. "It took all night to refill it and I loved to go with him to check on it as he would let me get in the half full pool," Haggard remembered. Barbara Smith recalled the times she helped Mrs. Stewart in the concession stand where you could buy a drink and a snack for less than a quarter.

Among the first lifeguards who Coach Stewart hired were Billy Eberhardt and Donnie Hooks in the summers of 1956, 1957 and 1958. Of one of Hooks' most distinct memories was the 60 feet by 120 feet pool itself. (Now covered by a thinning layer of a black asphalted, abandoned tennis court) "It did not have a filtration system," Hooks said in commenting on why the water had to be replaced every week. "We would open the valves on Wednesday night. On Thursday night when it was refilling, we would throw 10 to 20 chlorine tablets in the pool and then had to check the chlorine levels during the week," Hooks mentioned. "It usually took four or five of us to clean and the helpers got to swim for the next week free. I would call the city water department to let them know that we were going to fill the pool. They would have to turn on additional pumps to refill the big water tank that was behind the gym. We would swim sometime when the pool was refilling. The pipe that came into the pool would shoot water almost across the width of the pool," the former lifeguard fondly reminisced.

Dr. Nelson Carswell was one of the lifeguards on the first day of the pool's operation. Glenn Carswell always thought the lifeguards were cute. In fact, she married one, Dr. Carswell's brother "Tunk." Several years later, Tunk gave Glenn her wedding ring at the pool.

Stephanie Miller remembered the good times at the summer camp held in and around the pool and the Shanty across the creek. "Dublin teens taught us to swim in the old pool and we did crafts and all kinds of fun stuff," Miller recollected. Mary Lewis and Barbara Lewis Barroso looked back to the Frank Lewis method of swimming lessons when their father threw them into the deep end and watched them swim back, reaching out to the protection of the side of the pool. There's even a surviving home movie to prove it.

There were some unpleasant memories too. Barbara Bussell Kawulich, as a younger child, was scared of the big pool. She preferred the "kiddie pool" located a few hundred yards to the east in the heart of Stubbs Park. She was not too happy when she was told that she was too big for the little pool. Barbara also remembered when her infant sister Bonny Bedingfield fell into the deep end. Her mother, Hazel Bussell, couldn't swim. But, when she saw her daughter about to drown, she jumped right in. Coming to the rescue was June Adams and other ladies to help Mrs. Bussell and Bonny out of danger.

Without a doubt, Tricia Fleming had the darkest tan of all the regular pool goers. Lavern Wright remembered lifeguard Gary King, whose father managed the pool, having the darkest tan she ever saw. "He told us he put crisco on his skin," Lavern recalled.

Donna Hall Wilder remembered the large bags of crushed ice for the ice house that her mom, Fonnie Hall, and her dad, Andrew Hall, would pick up before opening the pool during their tenure as managers. "I remember loving the smell of the chlorine they used every night after they closed. At night when the pool was open, bats would be chasing bugs from the lights and diving for water from the pool, A couple of times the bats would get caught in the guys shirts when they were diving," Donna remembered.

Andy Hall went swimming every day. He remembered Tricia Fleming's tan too. So did Lawrence Hall, who spent most of his swimming days in the colder water at Rock Springs near his home. Andy cherished the times that he spent with his fellow teens hanging out at the pool. "There was a concession stand to pay as you entered. You could buy drinks in a cup, candy, cookies and chips. There was a juke box. Some would do the "Peppermint Twist" to the music," Andy said.

Gene Hall Pope, who worked as a life guard during her parents tenure along with Cooter Ballard and Louie Blue, most distinct memories were the cute boys who came to the pool.

As for the best diver, the consensus number one choice was the late George Walker. Andy Hall recalled, "George Walker could do a triple flip off the diving board. The most I could do was a cannon ball, jack knife, or a belly flop." Randy Hester fondly recalled the time that he, George Walker, and a bus load of kids went from the pool to Warner Robins Air Force Base to participate in a swim meet. "I must have been 10 or 11 and didn't even tell my mom I was going. I lived behind Central Elementary School and had walked down to the pool and they asked me to go so I went! She thought I was at the pool all day, but back then you didn't worry about the kids until after dark because everybody looked after everybody."

Roy Hall, no close relation to the Hall family who operated the pool in the 1960s, counts as his most vivid recollection of the pool was going with his grandmother, who frequently took a mess of peas or butterbeans to shell as Roy swam and played in the cool, blue-tinted water. Roy loved the slides and the diving boards, but was terrified of being sucked into any one of the two square drains at the bottom of the deep end. "It was the sound of kids laughing and playing and sight of water splashing all around that made those days we spent in the warm sunshine so wonderful and carefree," Hall recalled.

Then. about 45 years ago, like most good things, it all came to end. Suddenly it was gone, leaving us to find another pool to swim in. Things were never quite the same as they were those fifteen or so summers and they never will be. It was a time of love and hate, a time of war and peace, and a time when we were all true to our pool. It was a time when our music and most people were good. It was a time when both Elvis and the Beatles were still kids, and a time when we walked everywhere or rode our bicycles. Yes, we cruised through the hamburger stands, raced down long, dark roads, and danced until midnight. Even some us went to the library without telling our daddies.

Lately, some of my Facebook friends and I have been thinking that all our fun was all through now. But, we still have our fond memories of the days when the skies were all sunshine, the water was so, so cool and clear, and friends were all around us. It was our party and we had fun, fun, fun, until they took our swimming pool away.

D.C. BLACK

2011-08-02T21:56:00.000-04:00

The Great Escapee

D.C. Black couldn’t stay in one place for very long, especially behind the iron bars of a cramped, dank and dark jail cell. So from the very first moment he was captured by Laurens County authorities, D.C. Black began to plot his escape from the Laurens County jail. Sure enough, just as he had done many times before, this fleeing felon escaped his captors in short order. This time, his freedom was ephemeral when he was recaptured by two state patrolmen and a Georgia National Guard colonel.

D.C. Black, already known as an “elusive escapee,” participated in a mass unauthorized exodus of at least twenty-eight others from the state prison near Reidsville on April 16, 1943. Black joined his compatriot and fellow escape artist, Leland Harvey, on a crime rampage. Within ten days, all but four of the escaped prisoners had been recaptured. Black and Harvey, two of the most illustrious felons anywhere in Georgia, were captured in Arkwright, near Macon, on April 25. Both men were asleep in their car and did not resist their arrest.

Just two days later, Black, who was serving one to twenty years on robbery charges, was on the lamb again. Harvey and Black, dressed in civilian clothes, easily overwhelmed a Bibb County deputy, calmly took the elevator down from the fifth story jail in the courthouse, quietly stole a car, and westwardly raced at speeds of more than 85 mph toward Vineville. Black and Harvey’s easy escape was blamed on woefully ineffective and possibly corrupt Bibb County deputies.

On May 12, the skipping scoundrel was encountered by a pair of Atlanta detectives who sprayed his path with warning rounds toward the back of the barn where he was hiding just outside of Morrow, Georgia. Not chancing another escape from a less than secure county jail, Black was returned to the state penitentiary in Reidsville for a long tenure on the chain gang.

Black was serving a 41 to 45-year sentence in a Ware prison, when he staged yet another in a long string of escapes. Black attempted to rob a hotel in Macon on Thursday, May 10, 1956. Within a few hours, he was spotted by six alert Dublinites, who recognized the tag number while they were returning from work at Warner Robins Air Force Base. One of the men called the State Patrol. Meanwhile the others tailed the suspect until patrolmen arrested him, but not before Black attempted to wreck their cars. A shootout took place behind the Shamrock Court Motel, which was situated across Highway 80 from the Dublin VA Center.

After an intense interrogation, Black finally admitted that his name was not A.J. Allen and that he was wanted on outstanding robbery charges. Almost proud of his crimes, the running rascal admitted that he stole a few items on his flight from Macon.

Just about eight o’clock on Saturday morning, county jailer Art Sapp went into the cell area and opened the door. Suddenly, the strongly built Black grabbed Sapp and wrested his gun away and forced the jailer into the cell. Black ran behind the Speed Oil Company and then across East Jackson Street. After stealing Carl Allen’s 1954 Chevrolet with a quarter of tank of gas in it, Black headed west along Highway 80 before turning southeast through a maze of dirt roads. The car took the skipping scoundrel as far as a wooded area northeast of Rentz, where it was reported found by Highway Patrol Sergeant, B.A. Snipes. Then the departing dastard set out on foot.

Sheriff Carlus Gay issued an order for a countywide man hunt by sheriff’s deputies, Dublin and East Dublin police, State Patrol officers, and GBI agents, which totaled more than one hundred men. Governor Marvin Griffin called in the National Guard for help.

While running through the woods, the vanishing villain got a whiff of Mrs. Millard Coleman’s cooking. After identifying himself as a wanted man, Black demanded that Mrs. Coleman cook him a meal and fix himself some sandwiches in exchange for not hurting her. After Black skedaddled, Mrs. Coleman called family friend and attorney Bill White, who alerted Sheriff Gay.

By the late hours of Monday evening, a pack of bloodhounds and their handlers arrived from Milledgeville to join in the chase. The hunt continued until Tuesday morning when Black was spotted by National Guardsmen Donald Maddox, Pete Wicker, H.T. Lindsey, and Bobby Ennis.

Just before dawn on Tuesday the exhausted escapee, bruised and scraped, fell to the ground. He begged his captors, Corporal W.B. Garr, Trooper J.T. Cauthen, and Col. W.B. Crowley, not to shoot him, indicating that Jailer Sapp’s gun was in his hip pocket of the overalls he had stolen earlier in the day some two and one half miles from the Coleman home. Although his skin was scratched and his clothes torn by briars and brambles, Black was closely shaven, his stolen razor still in his pocket.

Black, always the deserting degenerate, was shackled and brought back to the county jail on the southeast corner of the courthouse square. To make sure Black’s stay was a longer and uneventful one, Sheriff Gay placed the frequent fugitive in the “death cell.”

Black commented on his failed escape by stating that the next time he escaped, he would get a taxi and get a hotel room. He told reporters that the officers were so close to him several times that he could hear transmissions over their walkie-talkies. When asked by a Courier Herald reporter how it felt to be hunted for three days, Black responded, “It is about like a rabbit being hunted.”

To make things worse for the Sheriff’s deputies while the search for Black was intensifying, nine prisoners escaped from the Public Works Camp on Sunday night and set out on a mass string of robberies and thefts. With little sleep after an all night manhunt, deputies answered a call about a cracker salesman who was robbed in Orianna by persons fitting the description of the escaped prisoners.

Warden Coleman said the nine men simply vanished without a trace. The escapees scattered in all directions and stole cars, one belonging to Dr. Nelson Carswell and another to O.L. Colter. Within four days, more than half of the men were recaptured at various points around the state.

Additional charges of attempted robbery, automobile theft, escape, and breaking and entering were issued against Black. It wouldn’t be the last time Black, alias Allen John Billingsley, would escape. He ran his total escapes to seventeen, including possibly his last one in 1975 , when and his old escaping ally, Leland Harvey, both near the age of seventy, walked out of a correctional facility up the road in Hardwick, Georgia, one designed for aged and infirmed criminals. The duo was caught in Mississippi when Black’s stolen Cadillac sideswiped a bridge railing and crashed. But it was here, a mile east of Rentz, Georgia that D.C. Black, the disappearing desperado, saw the end to one of his last great escapes.

P.S. I wasn't able to find a picture of D.C. Black. Apparently, he never stood still long enough to have one made.

TRAVELS IN TIME

2011-07-29T22:38:00.000-04:00

A River Cruise

I often think if I had a time machine, the dial would be set first to the mid 1890s, location Dublin, Georgia, at the wharves along the banks of the Oconee River. The intention of my adventure would be a ride down the Oconee and Altamaha Rivers to Darien on the Atlantic coast. A warm winter's day, or perhaps a crisp autumn one when the crimson and gold leaves of the sweet gum and the oak would adorn my prolonged trek to the sea, would be my first choices.

I stepped inside the strange contraption and set the dial for November 13, 1893. All of a sudden, the cylindrical sphere began to wildly rotate. The centrifugal force flung me against the wall. When the spinning subsided, the time dial indicated May 15, 1894. It was a typical mid spring day, kind of warm, but at least it wasn't raining. Though the number of houses and buildings were scant, I did manage to recognize the lay of the land. Toward the east, I spotted what appeared to be the heart of the town, glowing in the rays of the setting sun. A place to sleep and a good meal were the first order of my itinerary.

Upon the crest of a small hill I saw what I believed to be "Liberty Hall," the residence of Col. John M. Stubbs. Stubbs was a well known and highly skilled attorney, but was also known as one of the men who brought river boating and the railroads to Dublin some dozen or fifteen years prior. Col. Stubbs, as I surmised he would be, was in his study going over plans for his gardens and orchards, another of the things he was most famous for. I introduced myself as a fellow Maconite, who was looking to chronicle a ride on a river boat down to Darien. He smiled and said, "son, you are in luck. There's a boat leaving before sunup in the morning. I am supposed to be aboard, but I have a trial in Eastman in two days and the judge refuses to grant me a continuance. Go up to the hotel across from the courthouse and Mr. Hooks will take care of you."

All around me were new residences going up. When I reached the bottom of the hill, I could see the main business district. Off to my left was a new brick church for the Methodists coming up from the sandy ground. As the sun sank behind the trees, Jackson Street fell into near complete darkness. I forgot, the electric light bulb hadn't come to Dublin yet. Everyone I met was friendly, overly friendly. It seemed as if they were having a contest to see who could be the friendliest to the new stranger in town.

As I approached the center of town, I could make out the outline of a two-story wooden structure on what I knew to have been on the courthouse square. Though I had seen photographs of it after it had been removed to another location, it seemed smaller than I thought it was. Across the street was a handsome hotel building, not the typical home modified to accommodate itinerant travelers, but a substantial two-story brick structure with towers on each side of its front edifice. I walked in and found Mr. Gabriel S. Hooks, the innkeeper, behind the desk, just where the Colonel told me he would be. I told the affable young gentleman that Col. Stubbs had sent me to his establishment. Mr. Hooks replied, "yes, I know, Mr. Stubbs sent his servant the back way and your accommodations are ready for you."

At Mr. Hooks insistence, I sat down at a large table in a much brighter adjoining room. Before I knew it, Mrs. Hooks was bringing out a large blue plate. More like a platter, there were several meats and a half-dozen servings of vegetables heaped on it. The charming lady brought out a tray with a large piping hot loaf of bread wrapped inside a red and white checkered cloth. I ate what I could and just a bite or two more.

Not wanting to miss a chance on getting in on a little history research, I began to interrogate Mr. Hooks on the doings in Dublin. He told me that there were plans to build a new courthouse, a large brick one, sometime next year. Hooks and all of Dublin were extremely proud of the new artesian well on the courthouse square.

We discussed river boats. He said, "young man, Dublin's got three boats in service now and we're going to have two fine new ones very soon." "We've got three railroads in town and more on the way," the innkeeper added. Hooks told me that I would be riding with members of the Forest and Stream Club. This group of forty-five men formed a club to hunt and fish along the shores and swamps of the Oconee, Ocmulgee and Altamaha Rivers.

The group hired Capt. J.W. Miller of Dublin to supervise the construction of the Gypsy, a river boat with forty state rooms and pilot the boat down the river from the club's headquarters in Dublin to Darien on the Georgia coast. Each of the Gypsy's state rooms were outfitted with all of the necessary appurtenances and accouterments for the hunter and the fisherman. Among the club's charter members from Dublin were Col. John M. Stubbs, Blanton Nance, J.T. Wright and E.M. Whitehead. Judge Emory Speer of Macon, Dudley Hughes of Danville and E.L. Dennard of Houston County were among the most erudite members of the club. The group's membership extended to members as far away as Birmingham, Chicago, Kansas City and Topeka.

The Gypsy was constructed in Savannah under the careful scrutinizing eye of Capt. Miller. The captain hired his old friend W.T. Walton to serve as the boat's engineer. J.W. Grantham, the Gypsy's master machinist, was the best of his kind in the state. Norman McCall, an experienced river pilot and an African Baptist minister, took the helm. McCall, a man of enormous proportions, once saved his cargo by swimming with fifty-pound sacks of fertilizer under his arms and carrying them to the river banks.

The hour was late and I was desperately trying to memorize every utterance I could remember. "You better go on to bed. You'll need to be down at the river by four o'clock in the morning," Mr. Hooks warned me. Despite the comfortable bed, solemn slumber was not in order that night. Just in case I did fall asleep, I asked for a early morning "wake up knock" on my door.

And though my room was more like a Pullman railroad compartment, I didn't mind it all. The brilliance of a waxing gibbous moon illuminated my room through a small, yet well placed, window overlooking the quiescent courthouse square. I thought I saw an army of apparitions drifting across the lawn. “Old Bill, a kind black man who came in earlier to clean up my room, told me the place was haunted. “Yas, sir!. This place is got ghosts. There’s folks buried under the north tower of this here hotel,” he said as he shook and studdered to get out his words. I questioned Bill if he seen any ghosts. “I’s afraid of ghosts sir. I once saw two of them in front of Mr. Maddox’s hardware store over yonder. It must be old man Sam Coleman’s grand daddy. He’s buried right under the store,” the old servant added. I scanned the landscape and saw no ghosts that night, but I did see nine gaping holes in the ground where “Old Bill” said some important rich folks was buried.

Beside my somewhat comfortable bed, I found the most recent issue of the "Dublin Post," edited by Lucien Quincy Stubbs, a brilliant man of many talents and a credit to his father, and my new friend, Col. J.M. Stubbs. I tried to read the news of the town with the additional aid of an oil burning lamp, but decided to pack it away to analyze every word during the quiet moments of the ride down the river.

Right on schedule at four o'clock on the dot, "Big Norman" tugged the whistle of the "Gypsy" and interrupted a most tranquil morning. Fireman Hardy Perry stoked the boiler. I purchased my ticket for a three quarters of a dollar and walked timidly along a wobbling plank to the safety of the floor of the river steamer. Despite the early hour, the boat was filled with passengers, all seeking a pleasureful cruise down the river.

Around daylight we reached Berryhill's Bluff in what we know now as Treutlen County. That's when it happened again. Dutiful black servants began to bring out the bounty of the land, the best that farms, forests and streams could render. I met Capt. Isaac Hardeman and Joseph Miller, who was headed toward his home in Montgomery County. Sam Yopp, E.J. Willingham and E.J. Dupree boarded the boat after a more than successful hunting trip. The morning air was delightfully cool and made the breakfast one of the most satisfactory I have ever experienced. Some of the passengers expressed a desire to have delayed their feast until the fresh game could be added to the serving table.

The day passed pleasantly, but all too quickly. The few women on the boat congregated in the stern area as far away from the bow, where the men were comparing their marksmanship skills. Any bird, whether perched or airborne, was marked for instant death. All eyes scanned the banks for a the glimpse of the prize victim of the day, the villainous alligator.

The crew dropped the Gypsy's anchor at the Devil's Elbow, a bend in the river which was hailed as the best resort for hunting and fishing anywhere on the Oconee River and situated just three miles above the confluence of the Oconee and the Ocmulgee and a mere ten crow-fly miles from Lumber City. The lakes there were the most beautiful I had ever seen. My yells echoed throughout the lush forest. The bream and trout jumped so freely and often, I thought they were going to jump into my hands.

After a fulfilling feast of the hunter's bounty, we enjoyed an convivial evening of vocal entertainment and several games of whist and euchre. Around 11:00 o'clock, the sound of a small gong reverberated throughout the boat. It was time to retire to our staterooms.

The enticing aroma of coffee and biscuits holding real cow butter inside them brought me springing out of my bed. While the men alighted from the boat for more hunting thrills, I remained behind and partook of another half dozen or so of the best biscuits I ever ate. Remember, I am still unborn and calories don't count yet. The hunters returned around nine for the real breakfast of the morning replete with fish and game. They had to eat their meats alone, because the biscuits were gone. I did manage to part with a few of them, dividing them among seven starving servants. I also shared a couple of them and a day- long delightful conversation with Mrs. Mary and Miss Hennilu Hughes, the wife and daughter of Dudley M Hughes. He doesn't know it yet, but in twenty years, Col. Hughes will become one of Georgia's leading congressmen and co-author a bill to establish vocational education in public schools of the United States.

Some time later, Capt. Miller hoisted a forty-four star flag and ordered the anchor raised. As pilot McCall began to guide the boat downstream, some of the hunters appeared to be missing. But, the Gypsy kept on gliding through the smooth as silk waters. Coming to a stop in a grove of willows, the Captain patiently waited for the exasperated malingerers to catch up in their rowboats. Everyone laughed at the men, tired and exhausted from their trip, everyone except me. If there hadn't been any biscuits left, I would have gone along on the hunt, just to see what the fuss was all about.

On the 18th of May at high noon, the Gypsy reached it first milestone destination, the confluence of the Oconee and Ocmulgee Rivers, which is the beginning of the Altamaha River. Though we had heard the boasts before, "The Forks" had boundless numbers of turkey and deer, just waiting for the hunters to come and place them on their dinner tables. The boat headed to Bell's Ferry, one of the first ferries ever established in that part of Georgia. William Chambers, who was about to enter his twenty fourth year as the ferryman, kindled a fire and began to fry a fine mess of fish. I took a small bream and a bowl full of hushpuppies over by a cool spring shaded by a virescent canopy of virgin pines. I sat there and soaked in the aura of the ancient landmark. By seven o'clock in the evening, we had arrived at White Bluff near the confluence of the Altamaha and the Great Ohoopee River, some one hundred miles distant from our departure point in Dublin.

After a brief pause, the Gypsy moved down river to the Seven Sisters, a series of bluffs crowned by large magnolia trees in full bloom. With nothing alive to shoot, the itchy trigger fingered riflemen began firing at the fragrant blossoms, which exploded upon contact with their bullets. The evening cruise continued until we reached Gypsy Lake. Named by the club members in honor of their club boat, the six-mile-long lake was teeming with wild game. Some of the men managed to capture two broods of young turkeys, but decided to release them hoping that soon they would be hefty toms and hens. Here we spent three days of feasting and more feasting, interspersed with hunting and merrymaking. The camp ground was enveloped by a rim of oak, ash and elm carpeted with a blanket of snowy white sand.

We traveled a half day until we reached London Bluff, where Col. Dudley M. Hughes, his wife and his daughter, along with Messers Dupree, Oliphant, Budd, Yopp and Shannon left our company for a rail trip back to their homes. A trip of five more miles down the rapidly rising river found us at Doctor Town. For the first time I observed the magnificent 800 yard long iron bridge, one of a few of its kind over the Altamaha. Fifteen miles from Darien, we found another one where the Florida Central trains crossed the mighty river on their route from Florida to the land where the Yankees used to live nearly year round. Once again the Winchesters were pulled from their cases, much to the dismay of the gators along the banks.

Captain Miller slowed the pace as the water was wide, but way too shallow to allow rapid passage. On the 29th of May, some thirteen days after we left the docks in Dublin, the Gypsy pulled into Darien. One of Georgia's most ancient towns, Darien was populated by some four thousand people; three-fourths of them were black, descendants of an honorable people who farmed the coastal granges for more than a quarter of a millennium. I saw one large live oak which, I was told, shaded an entire acre of the sandy ground.

After all the passengers debarked, Capt. Miller and his crew turned the boat around for the return trip to Dublin. Many of the party lingered along the coast for a few more weeks of relaxation and revelry. Captain Miller invited me to return the following October for another trip. Hospitably acknowledging my thanks for a wonderful trip, but owing to the fact that I had other places to visit, I politely declined his offer. T.C. Keenan, Isaac Hardeman, E.J. Willingham and I were driven through the countryside to Barington, where we boarded a Florida Central northbound train. On the last day of the month in the mid afternoon I returned to Macon, ready for another adventure. While there I decided I might as well hang around for a year or so to see my great grandparents meet, fall in love and get married.

Note: This is the first column written in a new style. The story which you have just read is nearly all true. Of course, I didn't really get in a time machine, but I certainly would if I could. In future columns I hope to inform and entertain you with first person eyewitness accounts of more pieces of our past.

JOHN M. GRAHAM

2011-07-27T19:20:00.000-04:00

The Noah of the Oconee River

"No one in the State of Georgia," the old timers said, "built a better light draught river boat steamer than John Graham." In his twenty-five plus years as a builder of river boats, John M. Graham built more than forty boats and rebuilt at least half that number. John Graham never built an ark. But, if had he received such a mission, one could be comfortable that it would have been as good an ark as had ever been built, with all apologies to Noah himself.

John M. Graham was born in northeastern Laurens County, Georgia on January 31, 1844. His father, John Graham, married Nancy Daniell, daughter of George W. Daniell. His great, great-grandfather was General Robert Howe, the commanding general of the Colonial Army in the South during the American Revolution.

Just after his eighteenth birthday in the mid-spring of 1862, John joined Company C of the 57th Georgia Infantry. Before going off to war, the company trained on muster grounds across the road from Boiling Springs Methodist Church, which was built when John was eight years old. The 57th was assigned to the Army of the Tennessee, which was stationed in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

On May 16, 1863, the 57th Georgia became heavily engaged in battle with Union forces east of Vicksburg in the Battle of Champion's Hill, called Baker's Creek by the victorious Union army. A substantial part of the company was killed and wounded during the fighting before the survivors withdrew back to the last line of defense along the Mississippi River at Vicksburg. After a seven-week long siege, the Confederate Army surrendered to Gen. U.S. Grant on July 4, 1863. The capture of Vicksburg gave the Union Army control of the Mighty Mississippi and signaled the beginning of the end of the war in the lower southern states.

John Graham, along with every other prisoner, was forced to sign an oath of allegiance not to take up arms against the United States. And like most of the other prisoners, John broke his oath and rejoined the 57th, which returned to the Savannah area for coastal duty. When too many of its soldiers felt the urge to return to their homes too frequently, the regiment was assigned to guard duty at Andersonville Prison. Just as it was about to leave for duty in Virginia, the regiment was sent to rejoin the Army of the Tennessee in North Georgia. John fought in one battle after another in the defense of Atlanta.

John's fellow soldiers considered him to be "the bravest of the brave." They remembered a man who "was afraid of nothing except not doing his duty." Graham was acknowledged as being "the life of the camp" by those who fought with and survived him. His comrades recalled that he was a soldier who "was ready at all times to endure any hardship, storm any breastwork, and was as uncomplaining as any soldier in the army."

Two and one half weeks after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, Gen. Joseph Johnston surrendered his Army of the Tennessee in North Carolina.

John Graham walked back to Laurens County, returning to a decimated county, where money, and even food, was a luxury. He married Mary Linder Moorman on January 16, 1868. Although it was said that he accepted the outcome of the war, Graham was an active participant in veterans' organizations and was deemed an "unreconstructed rebel."

When he was a child, John rarely saw river boats on the Oconee River. River traffic had all but died away before his birth. It rejuvenation was temporarily tolled during the war. It was in the late 1870s when Col. John M. Stubbs and Capt. R.C. Henry rejuvenated the use of river boats to transport agricultural products up to the Central of Georgia railroad's depot in Oconee and down to the ocean port of Darien. It was about that time when Graham built a home on the northeast corner of West Gaines Street and North Church Street.

Oconee River riverboat

John Graham's involvement in river boats first occurred in June 1887 while serving as the engineer of the steamer Laurens. The Laurens, owned by Capt. Henry, sunk in the Oconee river. Although the boat was a total loss, its pilot, the Rev. Norman McCall - a future minister of First African Baptist Church and a man of great size and strength - was able to save 150 of the 185 barrels of rosin on board.

Just six weeks later, while Graham was sitting on the edge of the Laurens, he inexplicably fell into the water. Capt. Henry desperately tried, but failed, to stop the paddle wheel from swallowing Graham. Graham was pulled from the river in an unconscious state. He survived mostly due to intense efforts on the parts of doctors Melton and Currie.

Katie C.

Among the boats Graham constructed were the Laurens, Gypsy, Annie Garbutt, R.C. Henry, City of Dublin, R.C. Henry No. 2, New Dublin, Katie C., City of Macon, City of Hawkinsville, City of Columbus, Ocmulgee, C.D. Owens, L. McNeil, G.T. Melton, Graham, Two States, Dixie, and R.C. Wilcox. The first nine boats were built in Dublin and the rest were built in other southern states. Capt. Graham also rebuilt, the Annie G., Southland, Oceola, City of Augusta, Nan Elizabeth, and Louisa. Graham also built a new flat boat for Blackshear's Ferry in the summer of 1905.

John Graham formed a partnership with his son-in-law, Capt. W.W. Ward, who was a river boat captain of equal footing in the eastern part of Georgia.

River transportation lived and died on the depths of the water levels of the ever-changing rivers. Rocks and snags presented frequent dangers requiring better buoyancy and maneuverability in the designs by Graham and others.

Louisa

Most experts of the day considered John M. Graham, a natural mechanic and machinist, as the most talented boat builder in Georgia. It was said that Graham "possessed a bright, analytical mind and rarely made a mistake." All of his talents were self taught and many speculated that he would have gone down in the annals of American boat building history had he received the benefits of a technical education.

John Graham's later life was inextricably tied to the rivers and river boats. He escaped many an accident during his career. It is indeed ironic that his life ended as a result of his work. While working on his last boat in Savannah, John Graham was severely injured. At the age of sixty-five, John Graham never seemed to have recovered from his injuries. Graham died at his home on December 14, 1909. His body is buried in the old City Cemetery at the rear of First United Methodist Church. With his old rebel comrades standing by, the "Noah of the Oconee," was finally laid to rest.

FIRST MANASSAS

2011-07-19T15:29:00.000-04:00

The Run From Bull Run

They were going to whip the Yankees in a month. Then the war was going to be over before by Christmas. One hundred fifty years ago this week, the South and the North went head to head in the first battle of the War Between the States. The southern army named its battles for the nearest town or land mass - the northern army for the nearest creek or river. The armies clashed near the railroad junction at Manassas, Virginia, near the creek named Bull Run. The Yankees were equally confident. High ranking government officials, their wives, and curious spectators traveled by wagons and buggies the short distance from Washington, D.C. to see the Grand Army of the Republic destroy the upstart rebels. When it was over, both sides were suffering. The Confederates had stood their ground, losing many lives and valuable field leaders along the way. The Federals, stunned and unexpectedly overwhelmed, ran most of the way back to the safety of the fortified capital city.

The 8th Georgia Infantry was there that day. Company G of the 8th Georgia was known as the Pulaski Volunteers. The Volunteers officially organized on May 16, 1861, a little more than a month after the war began at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The company, under the command of Capt. T.D. Lawrence Ryan, was composed primarily of men from Pulaski, Telfair, and Laurens Counties. One of the most intriguing members of the Volunteers was James Argo. Argo was born in 1796 and fought for his country in the War of 1812. He joined the Volunteers at the age of sixty five and served until the close of the war. Laurens County's sole company, the Blackshear Guards, had not yet been fully enaged into Confederate service in Virginia.

A week before the company was officially organized on May 16th, sixty or seventy of the Volunteers traveled to Dublin to train with the Blackshear Guards. After an exhaustive drill, the Guards entertained the Volunteers with a feast. With their stomachs full, the men were in no mood for any intensive activity, and by mid-afternoon headed back for Hawkinsville, stopping on the way at the home of Samuel Yopp, four miles outside of Dublin.

Daniel H. Mason, of Laurens County, was elected as the company's Second Sergeant. Sgt. Mason, the thirty one year old son of William Mason and his wife, the former Margaret Pullen of northeastern Laurens County, was one of the first Laurens Countians to enlist in the Confederate Army.

Around the 10th to the 15th of July, the 8th Georgia was ordered to Martinsburg, Virginia, where Stonewall Jackson's forces were converging with the Federal army. The conflict never materialized, and on the 19th, the Confederate Army marched toward Manassas Junction. The report of cannon fire was heard during the mid morning hours of the 20th. The regiment marched double quick to the sound of the guns. They arrived just before noon and found themselves in an open field and in easy view of Union artillery and riflemen. The volunteers quickly moved to the cover of a pine thicket near the Stone Bridge over Bull Run, where the Federals had crossed earlier in the day.

The 8th Georgia opened fire. The Federals fired back. The slaughter began. The six hundred men of the 8th Georgia held on for forty five minutes, just long enough to delay the enemy until Beauregard and the remainder of Johnston's armies could come up to the lines. In despair and confusion, the Volunteers fell back into a ravine in the rear of the thicket. The Volunteers attempted to rally. The Federals rushed in, nearly surrounding the devastated Pulaski Countians after they managed to get off only one volley of musketry fire. Colonel Francis S. Bartow, a former Georgia Congressman, rode toward the 8th's position. Bartow, who had his horse shot out from underneath him, was escorted by the surviving Volunteers to a more secure position. Col. Bartow sat down to rest. In contemplation of the ongoing tumult, Bartow lamented, "My men are nearly all killed and I can not longer to live. I pray God that a bullet may pierce my heart."

Captain Ryan asked permission for his remaining men to join a South Carolina unit in one last gallant charge. The request was denied and the survivors of the 8th were sent to the rear of the lines out of range of enemy fire. The Confederate lines were collapsing. Col. Bartow, commanding the 7th and 8th Georgia regiments, and Gen. Barnard Bee of South Carolina rushed to the aid of Col. Nathan Evans's men.

Despite the reinforced line, the Confederates began to fall back toward Henry Hill. After a lull in the battle, Gen. Bee attempted to rally his men by yelling the immortal words, " There stands Jackson like a stone wall." Col. Bartow led the 7th Georgia in a charge. His prayer was answered. Bartow received a mortal wound. The dying colonel stated, "They have killed me, boys, but never give up the field." Gen. Bee, too, received a mortal wound. Lt. Col. William Gardner, commanding officer of the 8th Georgia, was severely wounded and removed from the field. The 8th suffered horrific losses.

New and fresh Confederate units smashed the Federal flank. After the firing had slowed to a smattering, the Pulaski Volunteers made their way to an elevated position overlooking the village of Centerville. David G. Fleming of the Volunteers recalled, " Men, carts, wagons, carriages, artillery, horses, and everything rushing frantically and 'topsy-turvy' over each other, and all running for dear life." Soldiers and spectators fled in mass confusion all the way home to Washington. Victory overcame the sting of death, if only briefly. The Volunteers greeted Gen. Beauregard as he came up to salute their efforts. The Confederates whipped the Yankees just like they said they would, but at a cost which was more dear than they ever imagined. Both sides learned that day that the war would not be a quick one. More than a half million more men would die before peace would come.

There was one more task to do before the end of the day. It was not a pleasant one, but it had to be done. The men knew that they had to return to the thicket. Their comrades were there, some wounded, some dying, and some already dead. Alvey Goodson, John Lowery, J.W. Carruthers, and Jesse Scarborough were dead. Thomas Boatright was dying. W.N. Bowen, A.R. Coley, J.E. Floyd, A. McClelland, and Isaac Rains were severely wounded. Sgt. Daniel Mason was there too, blood gushing from a wound in his arm. Bowen, McLelland, and Rains soon died. Fleming pondered, "On viewing the small pines, and remembering how thick the bullets came, our wonder was how any of us escaped, except by protection of an unseen hand."

Sgt. Mason was taken to a primitive field hospital and later transported to Charlottesville, Virginia, where a Confederate surgeon amputated his arm. David Fleming, Mason's dear friend and messmate, described the sergeant as "a most excellent soldier." Mason, like many amputees of the day, didn't make it. After a few weeks of lingering in constant agony, Mason died. He is buried in the Confederate Cemetery in Charlottesville. Sgt. Daniel Mason was Laurens County's first victim of that long and eternally tragic war, the War Between the States, which began in earnest with all of its death and horror, one hundred and fifty years ago this week.

REMEMBERING THE GOAT MAN

2011-07-12T21:48:00.000-04:00

Chess McCartney, without a doubt, is the most famous 20th Century folk icon of Middle Georgia and perhaps even the Southeast. For decades the wandering evangelist traveled with his tribe of goats all over the country, spreading the word of God and earning a meager living in the process. For all of us who lived along Highway 80, McCartney, known simply as "The Goat Man," we were privileged to see him on a regular basis. The really lucky ones got to talk to him and pet his goats.

Many people have read about "The Goat Man" in books and magazines. So, when I set out to tell his story, I enlisted the aid of my Facebook friends. These are their memories of the heavily bearded man who lived in a kudzu-covered ravine near the village of Fitzpatrick in northwestern Twiggs County and who walked along the highways and towns of America, including right here in Dublin.

When Barbara Lewis Barroso was five, she remembered hearing that the "Goat Man" was coming down Highway 80 near the VA. "All the kids on my block would run across the alley between our houses and through the yards of the houses behind us, cross the street and go to the edge of the highway," Barbara recalled. "I remember all the pots and pans hanging down from his wagon. I remember him talking to us, but don't remember anything he said." she added. He was a man ruff in appearance with his scruffy beard and clothes, but he had this magical charisma that charmed and delighted us. Those of us that had that experience were lucky that we lived in such a place and time that we were worry free. I think kids today would be afraid of him and run the other way. Tommy Martin remembered the pots and pan too, "He came down Mincey St. on a fairly regular basis with his old wagon, pots and pans hanging thereon, and of course, a herd of goats. We actually bought things from him from time to time."

Barbara's sister, Mary, recalled the time the "Goat Man" stopped at a gas station near their Highland Ave. home. "He and Mr. Brown were arguing because he wanted his goats to use the bathroom. It was memorable because two grownups were arguing and there were all these goats, and they were pooping all over his station," an amused Mary remembered.

The Whipple sisters, Suzanne Hagan and Jennifer Whiddon, had fond closeup memories of McCartney. Their father, Lucian, would take his family to see "Goat Man" whenever he was in town. Lucian, a prolific photographer, took many pictures. His son, Miles, took some and made them into a scrapbook. Whipple, also an adept conversationalist, talked to the folk icon as if he were just an ordinary person. Jennifer has never forgotten the banging noises of his clanging pots, which to her was as exciting as the ice cream man coming down the street. Suzanne had a more up close experience. "When I was in my first year of nursing school, about 35 years ago, I was assigned to him as a student nurse," she remembered. Weak and frail, Chess required delicate personal care. "When we were learning basic nursing cares such as giving a patient a bed-bath, I remember drawing up his bedside basin and I set it next to him on the table beside his bed. I explained to him that I was going to give him a bath. Well, he very distinctly told me that he didn't need a bath that day and refused it stating that he never bathed on any kind of regular schedule. My nursing instructor wanted me to be a little more assertive in this matter. Well, I tried again but he refused and that was that. However, he was very kind and friendly but simply was not interested in being bathed. Now, he could have used a clean bath as he had a long white beard and looked very rugged and smelled like his goats but in the end he won and did not have to take a bath that day."

Kim McCoy Wyatt also encountered McCartney in a Macon hospital. While visiting her aunt, Kim went down the hall to look for something. "I bounced right back into her room I thought!. There I was face to face with the Goat Man... I knew it was him the minute I saw him. Long white beard & hair.... I will never forget it. We were eye to eye... I said, 'I'm sorry. I'm in the wrong room.'He was very nice and sweetly said, 'that's all right child & smiled."

Dwight Stewart used to go by his house to hear him preach. " I went in the house and stood. I didn't want to sit down. His goats came in and out of the house as they wanted too," Dwight reminisced. Leaving the house and its pretty strong odor behind, Preacher McCartney got his Bible and from his podium preached a sermon to Stewart and his friend. To pay his bills, McCartney sold postcards to his admirers. "I bought two of them. I still have them." Stewart fondly remembered.

Kim Kirz and her family traveled from Dublin to Macon every Sunday for Sunday school. Whenever possible, the Kirz family would stop and visit. "The goat nursery under his wagon was our favorite thing to check out," Kim said. Lynn Alligood begged her daddy to stop by the "Goat Man's" school bus house every time they came back from Macon. Lynn also remembered seeing him across from the old drive-in theater. "People were lined up to get their pictures made with him," Alligood remarked. Jan Stanley Edwards also remembered the clanging pots and thought to herself that when she grew up, she wanted to be like the "Goat Man." Marilyn Freeman Dailey also visited the "Goat Man" at his home, but also remembered seeing him during a vacation on U.S. Highway 1 near Daytona.

Cindy S. Brown's daddy was in a bank in Dublin one day when the "Goat Man" came in to cash a check back in the early to mid 50's. "The 'Goat Man's check was for $500, a good bit of money back then. The banker called Macon to verify that the check was good and was told that his check is good up to fifty thousand dollars," Cindy recollected.

Connie Dominy wrote, "He used to camp out on 80 in the area right across from where Bank of America is. There is a car dealership there now. We use to go up and hang out with him. His wagon had car tags from different states all over it. He also had other things, like pots and pans hanging off the side. I remember he would straddle a goat, milk it and then turn the mason jar up and drink it. He would offer us kids some. Underneath the wagon was his nursery area for a better word. That is where the babies and sometimes the mama's would ride. He and the goats would sleep in the wagon. He would make a campfire and cook beans and stuff. He was a preacher and would always preach some. He was a gentle man and would take time with us kids. He would let us hold the little baby goats and of course pet the others. He would sit on an old bucket while talking to us. He had about eight goats that pulled his wagon and would tie others up to walk behind the wagon. I remember the look and smell. Once his son was with him. I remember the son went into the woods and came out smelling like baby powder. Every time he came through and stopped up there, we would all go up and hang out with him. As a kid, I was not afraid of him at all. He was so gentle. He used to tell us about places he had traveled. I also remember going up 80 and stopping at his house outside Jeffersonville. And his house had a school bus and little church on the grounds."

As for me, I wish I had the writing bug thirty five years ago, for I could kick myself all the times I drove by him as I was coming home from college. Let that be a lesson to us all.

If you have memories of the man we called, "The Goat Man," please email them to me at scottbthompsonsr@yahoo.com.

PICKIN THE PIG

2011-07-04T14:15:00.000-04:00

Barbecue and the Fourth of July

A Fourth of July without a barbecue is like Thanksgiving without a turkey. For more than two centuries, the advertisement of a barbecue, especially a free one, has been used to attract customers, visitors, voters and most especially friends, who come to taste the scrumptious swine, savory chicken, and grilled hamburgers, not to mention the potato salad, pork-n-beans, potato chips, slaw, and the decadent desserts which we cram into our mouths on America's birthday, all in the celebration of the Declaration of Independence.

In the spring of 1794, Augustus Elholm, Georgia's Adjutant General, called for a remonstrance to the House and Senate of Georgia to establish a jubilee throughout the state, annually on the 4th of July, consisting of a barbecue and home distilled spirits, furnished by the government to each battalion and every citizen within its limits, with an arrangement for shooting matches. Let's hope the men shot before they imbibed the spirits.

One of the state's first political barbecues was held in Macon on August 15, 1827, when the Republicans of Macon, Georgia held a free barbecue to honor their candidate for governor of Georgia, Matthew Talbot.

Someone played a mean trick on Mr. John Snellgrove at an 1881 Laurens County barbecue. It seems that Snellgrove prided himself on his ability to eat enormous amounts of food. To prevent eating too much, the big eater placed eight belt holes, each an inch a part. He kept on eating everything in sight until his belt grew too tight. One day he began to eat tripe and other things until the last notch on his belt was reached. He had swelled to the last notch hundreds of times before. But on this occasion a devilish trickster cut another hole. His intestines ruptured and the poor glutton died.

The Boys in Gray gathered for a reunion in July 1887 in a grove of trees near the Burney residence in Dublin. Some say there was 3000 to 4000 people consuming the best food Dublin cooks could prepare. During their three years in the Confederate army, these aging veterans scarcely saw so much fine food for an entire army. Beside food, there were orations, baseball, and dancing. All went home happy, but stuffed, tired and hot.

Perhaps the largest barbecue ever held in Dublin took place in July 1891. The occasion was the arrival of the first train from Macon along the Macon, Dublin and Savannah Railroad. Thousands of persons rambled through ten acres of oak groves eating chicken, pig, mutton, pies, cakes, and peaches and cream.

Turns out that one of the biggest ballyhooed barbecues came exactly one century ago on the nation's birthday in 1911. It was billed as a day of feasting, good music, and rallying for good roads. It was just that and more.

The big celebration was held in the newest amusement park in Dublin. It's owners, the Tindol Brothers, F.C. and W.P., opened the park they called East Lake along the cool waters of Hunger and Hardship Creek. The Tindols established the entrance to East Lake at the point near where North Franklin Street crossed the creek at the new steel bridge, a place therefore only crossed by fording. It was also the place where the Baptists and Methodists gathered to dunk or sprinkle their true believers in the spirit of the Lord.

The whole hullabaloo was sponsored by the newly formed Dublin Chamber of Commerce. It was the chamber's first big function. And, it was a big success. The greatest measure of any barbecue was obviously, the meat on the grill. And, as usual, Major T.D. Smith, a celebrated Confederate veteran and barbeque master, did an outstanding job. In the haste to put on the event, planners forgot to plan for enough help to serve the pork and chicken. By one o'clock when the dinner bells rang, enough volunteers stepped forward and the feast went off without too many hitches.

The Dublin Band didn't disappoint either. The band, fresh off their rave performance at the National United Confederate Veterans Reunion in Little Rock, Arkansas, filled the air with streams of patriotic tunes and toe-tapping melodies.

And, there was a lot of talk about good roads. Why else would Dublin's businessmen donate the food and all the trappings and close their business for several hours in the middle of the day? Good roads were essential to the growth of Dublin and Laurens County. Better road surfaces and more direct routes to other commerce centers were a necessity if the local community was to continue its meteoric growth.

Captain L.Q. Stubbs, a four-time and popular mayor of Dublin, served as the master of ceremonies. Stubbs introduced one of his predecessors, the eloquent orator Thomas B. Felder, Jr. . Felder, then an Atlanta attorney, commented on the growth of Dublin since he had left nearly two decades before. He told the crowd that if had been unconsciously placed in Dublin, he would have not known where he was. In his homecoming address, Col. Felder complimented his fellow Dubliners by saying, "By your energy, industry and enterprise, you have built this city from a village into a metropolis, rivaling its beauty, its population, its culture, refinement, and commercial importance as other older cities of the state."

Felder, a consummate politician and prohibitionist, could not resist launching into a tirade against Gov. Cole Blease of South Carolina.

Perhaps the most famous barbecue to involve Laurens Countians took place not in the county but on the lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C. in 1980. Three hundred Laurens Countians, headed by Cecil Passmore and Bennie Mullis, gathered to support President Jimmy Carter in his reelection campaign against Ronald Reagan. But, that's another story for another column in the future.

So, on this 5th day of July when your bellies are filled with barbecue, let us take time to rejoice in the freedoms we were given two hundred and thirty five years ago by a group of fifty-six men, who thankfully didn't gather together to pick the meat off a barbecued pig, but boldly subscribed their names to a declaration of which many of us know the beginning words. I ask you when you think of barbecue and the 4th of July, take a look at their concluding words, "And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

In memory of H. Dale Thompson, (April 14, 1923-July 5, 2001).