Have we built the Model City? (1971-Present)

THE ANNIVERSARY PROJECT: SECTION 3 1971-present, New South and transition

HAVE WE BUILT

MODEL CITY?

THE

◆ Sunday, August 10, 2008

1730 Quintard Ave., Anniston • 256-236-2642 • Hrs.: Mon.-Sat., 9AM-6PM

1119 Highway 78 East, Oxford •256-831-7868 • Hrs: Mon.-Sat., 10AM - 6PM

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THE PROJECT

JULY 27

1870s/1880s-1928, founding to year before Great Depression

AUG. 3

1929-1970, Depression through World War II, Cold War and Civil Rights era

TODAY

1971-present, New South and transition

AUG. 17 The future ◆ AUG. 18 Then and Now — a photo album

INSIDE▶ HISTORY QUIZ PAGE 8 ◆ TIMELINE ACROSS PAGE TOPS CONTRIBUTORS BEN CUNNINGHAM, METRO EDITOR

MODEL SPORTSMANSHIP

Rooting for the home team — from dugout to end zone, in victory and defeat.

PAGE 4 Ben Cunningham enjoys pulling for the Gamecocks of his alma mater, Jacksonville State University.

JOHN FLEMING, EDITORATLARGE

HILL POLITICS

Anniston’s politics differ from other regions in Alabama.

PAGE 20 John Fleming is an Alabama native who considers politics one of his favorite contact sports.

LAURA TUTOR, FEATURES EDITOR

LEGACY OF LEARNING

A cerebral aerial view of Anniston’s educational landscape and how it’s changed.

PAGE 16 Laura Tutor has been with The Star for 14 years, covering everything from health to religion.

MULTIMEDIA: www.annistonstar.com/celebrate125

ANNISTON’S ATTIC Residents share memories about the town we call home.

LANDMARK LORE Phillip Tutor and Andy Johns dodge traffic, trek through vacant lots and hang from buildings, all in the name of showing the history, quirks and warts associated with Anniston’s landmarks and inconspicuous-but-important spots.

Click on the interactive map to watch video history lessons.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS EDITORS Bob Davis, Anthony Cook, Bill Edwards, Phillip Tutor and Laura Tutor DESIGNER Tosha Jupiter COVER PHOTOGRAPHER Bill Wilson

PROFILE WRITER Dan Whisenhunt MULTIMEDIA Justin Thurman, Gary Lewis, Brandon Wynn, Andy Johns and Hannah Dame MANY THANKS TO ...

Teresa Kiser and the Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County

A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

A place of honor for a legendary coach In a 1984 Sports Illustrated profile of a successful football coach from a small Mississippi town, Frank DeFord noted, “A football coach could be a gigantic personage in that sort of place.”

In his time and place, E.D. “Chink” Lott fit that bill. He was an oversized force in the lives of Anniston and its football players in the 1930s and Bob 1940s. His success is recDavis ognized by athletic halls Editor of fame representing the Alabama high schools, Birmingham-Southern College and Calhoun County. His exploits are compiled in a locally produced book available at the public library.

Lott is famous for the thing that stirs up many Southern towns. It drives passions. It concentrates populations on Friday nights to one small patch of grass. It brands small children and old people around a set of colors, a fight song, a cheer, a varsity sweater passed down over generations. It fosters community. It enforces the Southern oral tradition as stories of glory are passed down.

And, as DeFord correctly noted, it makes legends out of men who can distill success out of a recipe of hard work, force of personality, talent and inspiration.

E.D. Lott did that for Anniston.

In 1930, he accepted the head coaching job at Anniston, a program accustomed to success. His first season was marked by three losses, including a seven-touchdown rout at the hands of rival Gadsden High. The 1931 AHS yearbook, The Hourglass, generously sums up the year, “Coach Lott had many unfortunate breaks with his team, but he met them with a smile.”

According to local legend, Lott did anything but smile when contemplating the Gadsden defeat.

He swore revenge.

He put to use the same mettle that a mere three years earlier at Birmingham-Southern College led him to stardom in football, basketball, baseball and track. For the rest of his time in Anniston, Lott never again lost to Gadsden. Nor did he lose to AHS’s other rivals, Talladega and Oxford.

With each successful defense of civic pride, Lott’s stature grew.

The 1938 Hourglass boasted that Lott “has come to be recognized as one of the smartest and most competent coaches in the state.”

Lott’s 14 seasons of Anniston High foot-

ball produced a 91-22-11 record.

And then came a split with school administrators, apparently over money.

Lott left Anniston in the middle of World War II, preferring to head to the other side of the state and go into business.

But the coach didn’t stay away from football. Lott coached 11 seasons in Demopolis, compiling an equally impressive record at the west Alabama city’s high school.

He died in 1970. A few years later, some of his former AHS players successfully campaigned to add Lott’s name to Anniston’s stadium, making it Chink Lott Memorial Stadium.

In today’s edition of The Anniversary Project, Ben Cunningham looks closely at Anniston’s relationship with sports.

“Against their municipal rivals for residents, industry, investment and visitors, they sought to prove their worth not only in business deals and censuses, but on fields of play,” Cunningham writes of Anniston’s city fathers in a story beginning on Page 4.

Anniston’s investment in Lott paid multiple dividends. The coach gave the city what so many pine for, success on the field of competition. In exchange, his name sits on a place of high honor for a Southern town, the high school football stadium.

Bob Davis is editor of The Anniston Star.

Contact him at 256-235-3540 or bdavis@ annistonstar.com.

Oct. 31-Nov. 1, 1971

July 11, 1972

Dec. 16, 1975

Shootings, firebombings and a law-enforcement cordon around 39 blocks in south Anniston mark the public climax of discontent stemming from the previous week of racial unrest at Wellborn High School.

On a Tuesday evening the first production of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, A Comedy of Errors, is staged in the auditorium of the old Anniston High School.

McWhorter and Co. win bid to build a new home on McClellan Boulevard for the Anniston Museum of Natural History — its name since November, replacing the old Regar Museum.

1971

1975 CROWD WATCHING A GAME AT JOHNSTON FIELD Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County

THE BOYS OF SUMMER, AND A FALL

In its early days, the Model City’s eye was drawn to diamonds, the sort with dirt and bases, and nine men who would stitch ‘Anniston’ on their jersey, to play baseball on a patch of earth.

BY BEN CUNNINGHAM Anniston’s founders were proud of the town they’d planned, from the locations of its industries, down to the very neighborhoods that would be home to the workers who labored in those factories. Churches, shops and transportation all were accounted for.

That planning, as well as the pride of the new city’s founders, is evident in the drawings produced in the late 1800s and early 1900s – in fact, angled-perspective maps – depicting its layout.

Detailed renderings of Victorian-era buildings lining tree-shaded streets, all for the inspection of readers.

In the drawings, smoke wafts from stacks above the many mills and foundries that were the reason for the town’s existence, surely meant to imply industriousness to future investors. Likewise, tidy rows of houses dot the side streets, sensible homes in which the factories’ workers would rest. The commercial corridor centered on Noble Street looks sturdy and ready for the bustle of workers spending their wages for life’s necessities and niceties.

The city’s name is displayed, in large, stylized letters below each map, always in all capitals.

“ANNISTON, ALA.,” the drawings seem to say, is

someplace. And in this someplace, there’s a lot of money to be made, whether you’re investing for it or working for it.

Conspicuously absent from all the drawings however, is any depiction of the places where many Annistonians came to express pride in their city, spots where they gathered to prove that the Model City was the equal, if not the better, of any other town within a few days’ ride.

In any modern map of a major American city, fields of play figure large on the landscape. They are surrounded by swells of seats, often covered by Please see PAGE 5

Feb. 19, 1978

April 13, 1978

The showcase exhibit of the Anniston Museum of Natural History, the Werner-Regar collection of mounted birds — which had marked the museum's genesis in Anniston — reopens to the public.

Anniston is named an All-America City by the National Municipal League in New York. The Model City passes muster with the jury through its unique characteristics and the presentation delivered by enthusiastic Annistonians. Impressing the evaluators were the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the racially progressive Committee Of Unified Leadership and the relations between Anniston and the military community.

1978 Continued from page 4

cathedral-like domes. Banners hang from rafters or wave from poles, and on game days thousands of people will fill their stands, clad in shirts, caps and the occasional coat of face paint emblazoned with sigils of their cities — not unlike the all-capitals logo beneath the drawings of Anniston’s industrial streets.

The Anniston maps were drawn in a time before the civic arms race to construct these arenas had begun, and so it is perhaps not surprising that neither Zinn Park nor Johnston Field are represented there, no pennants billowing in the breeze that carries the factories’ smoke. The Anniston Nobles, the Model City’s first professional baseball club, were organized Feb. 28, 1904, a year after the production of the last of those maps, becoming members of the new Tennessee-Alabama League, pitting the finest players the city could marshal against squads from Chattanooga, Huntsville, Sheffield, Bessemer, Selma and Gadsden.

Cities and towns in that era, even smaller ones it would seem, were no different than the metropolises of the 21st century. Against their municipal rivals for residents, industry, investment and visitors, they sought to prove their worth not only in business deals and censuses, but on fields of play. If a collection of pros could be gathered to sport “Anniston” on their jerseys, if the city’s name could appear in the league standings in places older, bigger, better known, then folks in those cities would know Anniston was here, could not deny the Model City was a force to be reckoned with. Through the years, Anniston has tried to make its mark on the diamond and on the gridiron, as underdog contenders, reigning champions and gracious hosts, even as the world of sport changed around it.

IN TROUBLE EARLY If the entry of the Nobles into the TennesseeAlabama league doesn’t serve as enough evidence to history that Anniston had arrived, perhaps the appearance of baseball royalty on the team’s first roster does the trick. Ty Cobb began his professional career playing on the squad, which batted, fielded and pitched at Zinn Park.

Unfortunately, they didn’t do it long. The team folded in its first season.

Zinn, it should be noted, was just steps away from Anniston’s main rail depot, the impressive Anniston Inn, and the Anniston Land Co. building. These structures, collectively known as the “Gateway to Anniston,” were designed to impress arriving visitors. By 1911, baseball and the crowds it drew to Zinn were among the sights to behold. Anniston’s population had topped 12,000 in the previous year’s census, the beginning of a steady climb that would last for decades. Its mills were turning out iron and cotton products, providing jobs that were drawing those residents. And the fortunes of the Models,

THE ANNISTON RAMS, 1939 Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County

formed to play in the new Southeastern League, drew many of those residents to the park.

But the Models’ success was short-lived; the team folded the next year. They were replaced by the Moulders in 1913, who lasted five years, and a new incarnation of the Nobles in 1928, who now played at Johnston Field on the other side of town from old Zinn Park.

By 1930, the new Nobles were battling teams from Huntsville, and the nearby Georgia towns of Cedartown and Lindale. Anniston was the largest of these cities (Huntsville would not surpass it until the 1950s, booming when the space program landed in town), and residents of the Model City might have been looking elsewhere to find its peers. As the beginning of the Great Depression helped to make the economics of baseball nearly impossible here, 1930 was the last Annistonians would see of professional ball for seven years.

A TEAM OF THEIR OWN But Anniston was too proud to stay off the field for long. In 1937, local businessmen helped to organize the Rams, members of a new Southeastern League, an association that found Anniston in much more prestigious company, as cities are concerned.

Anniston could count itself, on the diamond at least, the rival of Alabama’s capital, Mont-

gomery, as well as Mobile and Jackson, Miss., cities with more than 60,000 residents. Meridian, Miss., and Pensacola, Fla., occupied a second tier, both with around 35,000 souls. Rounding out the league were Gadsden and Selma, which, like Anniston, were upstarts with populations around 20,000.

With the Rams’ first game just over a month away, the city got a chance to prove how much it valued the opportunity to field a team. A fire burned Johnston Field’s wooden grandstands, and the city government provided labor from the jail to build replacement seats.

As the Rams prepared to take the field for their first game in April 1938, against Gadsden, their growing city’s sense of itself was apparent in The Anniston Star’s coverage of the time. The weight happenings there carried throughout Calhoun County and beyond could be seen by the decisions of merchants in other towns to shut down for opening day so everyone could attend the game.

The day before the game, the papers lead editorial declared: “Never before has such ready cooperation been given by other Calhoun County communities in a local project.

“Oxford, Jacksonville, Piedmont, and Fort McClellan are observing a half holiday for the Please see PAGE 6

May 28, 1978

April 22, 1979

Jan. 26, 1984

A special section of The Star commemorates the selection of Anniston as an All-America city; a parade Sept.

27 marks it in small-town style.

The Ritz Theater, an entertainment center in the heart of Anniston for 61 years, rolls its last film.

William Shakespeare was named The Anniston Star’s “Citizen of the Year” for work that, around 375 years after he first created it, had brought joy and economic benefit to a small city of the New World. By this point, however, the festival’s future lay in Montgomery.

1978 Continued from page 5

occasion. Each of these places can send hundreds of fans into Anniston for the inaugural.

Hundreds of others will come from other communities in this trade territory—Heflin, Friendship, White Plains, Choccolocco, Lineville, Ashland and other communities.

A Page 1 story printed the morning of the game provides other clues to its importance.

“Mayor Coleman is expected to toss the opening ball. There will be no great formality attached to the opening. Where other cities, including Gadsden have arranged parades and other furbelows, local officials have been of the opinion that the baseball fan wants to hear the crack of the bat and see the game.”

Anniston was conscious of its moment in the spotlight and sensitive to any criticism it wasn’t putting on a big enough show.

The Anniston High School band provided music for the afternoon crowd, marching along the third-base line.

Unfortunately, rain ruined the scheduled show after just a half-inning, scattering a crowd estimated at 3,000. Two days later the Rams finally got a chance to impress the home crowd, beating Gadsden 5-3 in front of 1,178 fans.

OUTTA HERE Over the next 12 years, the Rams’ on-field fortunes fell and rose, then fell again. They’d been middle-of-the-pack at best before the league was suspended for World War II in 1943. When play resumed in 1946 Anniston’s team took the only league title it would ever win, beating Montgomery four games to two.

Sadly, it was then back to the basement for most of the rest of the team’s time. By 1949, with expenses for travel and equipment rising and tickets not selling fast enough to cover them, the Rams had reached a crisis. Sensing the city’s reputation was on the line, fans — who’d stepped in once before when things got rough in 1941 — organized a plan to sell shares in the enterprise, raising both money and the public’s sense of commitment to its team.

It worked, at first.

Anniston was able to get a team together to start the 1950 season. The Southeastern League had changed a bit — Mobile, its biggest town in 1940, had since departed for the nearly bigtime Southern League to play against the likes of Birmingham and Atlanta. The Port City, which had grown to a population of nearly 130,000, was replaced by Vicksburg, Miss., a town slightly smaller than Anniston. And the Rams were struggling to keep up — on the field and in the ledger books — against teams from Gadsden and Selma.

As the summer heated up, it became clear that Anniston couldn’t continue without major changes.

A June 27 story in The Star provided advance notice of a June 30 meeting of the Rams’ stock-

holders at the city auditorium.

“The situation has become critical,” the paper quoted team president Joe King III as saying, “and the directors feel that the right to a decision on the future of the Southeastern League franchise belongs to the stockholders.”

The stock was in a group known officially as Anniston Baseball Fans Inc. A large ad on Page 13 of the paper that Friday, the day of the meeting, aimed to ensure no one missed the gathering.

Those who couldn’t attend were urged to obtain proxy voting forms in advance.

An editorial the same day urged action by the city government to help save the team.

It noted that “… this year’s Ram aggregation was fielded as a civic project, and to give up at this point would be a reflection on this entire community.”

The editorial proposed spending city money to support the team, or at least providing in-kind services in the form of no-cost police protection at games, or even perhaps a break on the city’s amusement tax.

That The Star’s editorial board urged city leaders to consider spending public money to prop up a minor league baseball team is a fact not to be taken lightly, given that it appears on the same page with another editorial assailing the “reckless spending” by the administration of Gov. Jim Folsom.

The editorial said city leaders “… would be justified in coming to the Rams’ aid on this score, as well as for the less tangible benefits to be derived through the showing that Anniston can field a ball club in competition with others representing cities the size of Montgomery and Pensacola.”

In the federal census taken that summer, Montgomery had grown to 99,860 residents, and Pensacola claimed 43,509. Anniston weighed in at 31,066.

There, spelled out, was Anniston’s desire to promote its legitimacy as a noteworthy city through athletic exploits.

The meeting was held, and “several hundred” stockholders were enthusiastic in their commitment to keeping the team alive for at least another two weeks through the sale of $10,000 worth of special “booster tickets.” But only $370 of that goal materialized in the first night, according to Star sports columnist Harry Sherman. Writing in the Sunday’s paper following the meeting, he noted that a Saturday game with Gadsden wasn’t nearly as well attended at the stockholders’ meeting.

“Although the series opener with Gadsden produced one of the best played games of the year, the small crowd consisted mostly of Gadsden patriots. The group of stockholders who were so enthusiastic at Friday’s baseball rally here failed to turn out in a body,” Sherman wrote.

Two weeks later, the Rams’ reprieve was up, and the team’s franchise reverted to the league, which operated them as an “orphan” squad, playing just two more games at Johnston Field a

1984 few days later before playing only on the road the remainder of the season.

They dropped both final home contests to Selma’s Cloverleafs, 4-1 and 8-0.

TURKEY TOWN In 1948, as the Rams were nearing their eventual end, Johnston Field’s neighbor across 18th Street to the north, Memorial Stadium (not yet “Chink” Lott Stadium) became home to Anniston’s next big sporting enterprise. Anniston might not claim a team of its own stars for much longer, but it would at least play host to someone else’s.

The Anniston Quarterback Club was promoting a grid iron contest between the freshman football teams of the University of Alabama and the University of Kentucky. It was hoped the game between future varsity stars for the Crimson Tide and the Wildcats would draw a big crowd of locals, and perhaps some visitors. The contest was planned for 2 o’clock on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day, the week after the local high school football teams had concluded their seasons and presumably after local families had stuffed themselves at the holiday feast.

Again, The Star heralded the approach of a big game. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, a sports story noted, “Freshmen in the Southeastern Conference are allowed to play only three games each season (a special ruling allows Alabama to play four this year); therefore the highly interesting frosh tilts are especially hard to obtain.” All proceeds from the game would benefit construction of a new YMCA headquarters for the city.

Again the Anniston High band was called on to enhance the occasion, representing Alabama’s squad. The Oxford High School band was asked to play for the Wildcats. Both bands, the Tuesday story said, would present programs with “appropriate Thanksgiving themes” at halftime.

As it would with the Rams, The Star’s editorial board weighed in on the “Turkey Day” game.

After commending the Quarterback Club embers on their efforts, the editorial board held out hope that the impending game would be the first in an annual tradition.

“Other cities comparable in size to our own, by playing host annually to college football classics, and near-classics, reap rich dividends through the promotion locally of sportsmanship and interest in football, through the valuable publicity resulting from an outstanding sports program, and, finally, through the attraction of football crowds to their stores, restaurants, etc., each Fall.”

A story in Thursday’s paper, hyping the contest further, noted that “Some of the best prospects in the nation last season were brought into the Wildcat den through the well-known recruiting ability of Head Coach ‘Bear’ Bryant.” He wouldn’t coach the Crimson Tide for another 10 Please see PAGE 7

Aug. 29, 1986

Feb. 9, 1987

The connection between western Anniston and Quintard became easier with the opening of a mile-and-a-half stretch of highway, a four-laned 202. It was the most expensive highway ever in Calhoun County, but worth it for employees of Monsanto and Bynum, who saw the toughest part of their commute cut from 10 minutes to two.

An afternoon fire swiftly destroys the Kaplan Block of historic buildings on the east side of Noble Street between Eighth and Ninth streets.

1986

1987 Continued from page 6

years, but his name was already worth mentioning in The Star’s story.

The game would be carried live on local radio, according to listings, and businesses across town bought ads in a two-page spread Wednesday to promote the game. “Let’s fill Memorial Stadium tomorrow,” George H. Butler & Co. Insurance urged.

And indeed, what was described as a “near-capacity crowd” is shown filling the stands in the paper printed the Saturday after the game. The closest thing to Anniston had to a home team prevailed, with Alabama besting Kentucky’s freshmen 16-6.

But, perhaps because the freshman games were indeed hard to come by, Anniston’s first was also its last.

After a two-year hiatus, the Turkey Bowl, as it became known, became a county high school championship bowl game of sorts.

For the first few years, Anniston was the permanent host team, squaring off against

the Calhoun County with the best record other than its own. Of six Turkey Bowl games it played in, Anniston’s Bulldogs were unbeaten. The Model City had finally found a workable formula to draw a big crowd to a marquee game on a downtown field — if only for one afternoon a year.

Eventually, Anniston gave up its guaranteed slot in the game, but Memorial Stadium played host to the county’s two best teams annually until the introduction of a statewide classification and playoff system took some of the polish off the ball.

Now, the Bulldogs are still the only team to wear “Anniston” on their chests, and “Chink” Lott Stadium still fills with their supporters a few Fridays each year, with the roar of Turkey Bowl crowds fading into the past, and the Rams, Moulders and Nobles distant, dim memories.

Anniston’s population peaked at 33,320 in 1960, a decade after the Rams left Johnston Field for good and while the Turkey Bowl was rumbling toward its demise. The

factories in those Victorian drawings are mostly gone now, with no more smoke wafting from stacks scattered over the western side of town. Anniston may maintain some of the old pride that led early leaders to print they city’s name in bold capitals wherever they could. But today’s leaders are wondering how to deal with population totals that drift lower each decade instead of marching steadily up.

Meanwhile, the city’s name may no longer appear in datelines and league standings tables on the sports pages of newspapers in the South’s modest metropolises. But Anniston seems content to have traded in its upward mobility in the world of sports for heated tilts against teams from the towns next door.

And if it is no longer importing paid professionals or scholarshipped collegians to play for the fans’ amusement, the athletes it cheers on are mostly its own children. That, perhaps, may be the sort of pride Anniston can maintain for generations to come. ◆

MEMORIAL STADIUM, ANNISTON VS. BESSEMER Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County

Feb. 26, 1987

Aug. 31, 1987

Audrey Marie Frazier Hilley, 50, con artist and convicted murderer (1983) who had been declared a fugitive Feb. 22 while on a weekend furlough here from Tutwiler Prison, is found barely a mile from the Blue Mountain mill house in which she was born. Weakened by hypothermia — she had apparently been crawling around in the woods — she dies of a heart attack in the back of an ambulance.

Anniston Middle School, a controversial undertaking as Anniston City Schools grappled with the effects of integration and a desire for educational equity, finally opens. Enrollment was expected to be 1,050.

1987 QUIZ

Test your knowledge of Anniston’s history.

1. Year base-closing commissioned voted to close Fort McClellan: (a.) 1989 (b.) 1990 (c.) 1995

(b.) Right to have name on school building (c.) Suit of clothes 5. Anniston City Schools unveiled this new concept in 1970: (a.) Co-ed PE classes (b.) Wall-less classroom spaces (c.) Computer-assisted teaching

2. In March 1993 this unusual weather event came to town: (a.) A hail storm that lasted more than 30 minutes. (b.) A blizzard that left more than a foot of snow (c.) A rainbow that seemingly stretched from Coldwater Mountain to Mount Cheaha.

3. Which of these was not an Anniston private school in the late 1800s/early 1900s: (a.) The Noble Institute (b.) Alabama Military Institute (c.) McClellan Academy

4. In 1911, school board member Alfred L. Tyler offered this as reward for the best student essay: (a.) $10 in gold

6. Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s first production in Anniston: (a.) A Comedy of Errors (b.) As You Like It (c.) Henry V 7. In 1989, Anniston High won the state championship in this sport: (a.) Softball (b.) Wrestling (c.) Football

9. The mascot of Anniston’s first professional baseball team: (a.) The Rams (b.) The Hot Blasters (c.) The Nobles 10. In the late 1940s Anniston established this annual football contest, first between college teams and eventually among top high school squads: (a.) The Gravy Bowl (b ) The Model Bowl (c.) The Turkey Bowl

ANSWERS ON PAGE 10

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THE NOBLES 1. (c.) 1995 6. (a.) A Comedy of Errors 2. (b.) A blizzard that left more than a foot of snow

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Dec. 1, 1989

Jan. 26, 1990

July 30, 1991

Anniston High School’s Bulldogs take their best record ever to the Class 6A football championship and defeat Murphy of Mobile 12-6 at Legion Field. Oxford wins the class 5A championship that same night.

As the Cold War faded to black, Fort McClellan is listed as a base that could be closed as a cost-saving measure.

A vote of the U.S. House of Representatives affirms an independent commission's recommendation to take Fort McClellan off of a list of military bases proposed for closure.

1989

1991 YOU OUGHT’VE KNOWN ...

Wallace speech writer lived double life

BY DAN WHISENHUNT Asa “Ace” Carter was a Calhoun County native, a segregationist and speech writer for Gov. George Wallace.

But the man associated with Wallace’s infamous “segregation forever” speech was reborn as a bestselling author. Carter wrote The Education of Little Tree under the pen name Forrest CARTER Carter.

The book, which tells the touching story of an orphaned boy who goes to live with Cherokee grandparents in Tennessee, shot to No. 1 on the New York Times non-fiction paperback bestseller list in the 1990s.

The unmasking of its author led fans of the book to wonder how they could be duped by a man with such a dubious past.

In 1979, Carter was reportedly working on a sequel when he died in Abilene, Texas, at age 53.

Though the author’s confidants denied he was Wallace’s former speechwriter, his body was buried in a DeArmanville Cemetery under the name Asa Carter.

Carter was born in 1925 and became a radio announcer and political activist who founded Birmingham’s Eastern Section Citizens Council in the 1950s, a pro-segregationist group.

By 1970, Wallace and Carter had a falling out, reportedly because he found Wallace too conciliatory toward

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blacks. Carter ran for governor and promoted a “free enterprise” school system that would accept students of any race, except blacks.

He lost.

After the loss, Carter disappeared.

Rumors circulated that he authored the novel Gone to Texas, which was turned into the Clint Eastwood movie The Outlaw Josie Wales.

The author denied he was Asa, even though the copyright application listed the same Oxford address Asa Carter used in the early 1970s.

“How can a person (like Asa Carter) write Little Tree?” Carter’s editor once told Newsweek. “Come on. That kind of honesty and truth? Could that come from a bigot?”

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March 12-13, 1993

April 7, 1993

A blizzard buries Anniston with 12-18 inches of snow — probably the worst snow storm since Feb. 15, 1898. Noble Street looks like an Arctic tundra and thousands were without electricity. Oxford radio station WVOK remained on the air the entire period, its young DJ Chris Wright helping hold the community together.

Polychlorinated biphenyls — PCBs — are discovered by Alabama Power workers on a routine inspection of air, water and soil at a substation near Alabama 202 on land the company acquired from Monsanto in 1961.

1993

▼

File/Bill Wilson/The Anniston Star

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Paid political adv. by Gene Robinson 1000 Noble Street • Anniston, Alabama 36201

June 23, 1995 The Base Realignment and Closure Commission, endorsing a Defense Department recommendation, votes unanimously to close Fort McClellan, except for the land and facilities necessary to support a small Army Reserve component. The Chemical School and the Military Police School were moved to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. "TAPS FOR FORT" was the huge block-letter headline on Page 1 of The Star. (Ironically, the original Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood thought Camp McClellan was a fine facility, having authorized it in May 1917 to be a mobilization point for the World War.)

1995

▼

FINAL FLAG FOLDING AT FORT McCLELLAN, SEPT. 30, 1999

File/Bill Wilson/The Anniston Star

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The Anniston Star

16 August 10, 2008

The Anniston Star

MEMBERS OF COBB HIGH GRADUATING CLASS

GRADUATING CLASS, NOBLE INSTITUTE FOR GIRLS, 1890s

Celebrating Anniston's 125th year

17 August 10, 2008

Celebrating Anniston's 125th year

LEGACY OF LEARNING Anniston’s city fathers placed a premium on ‘education’ for all, teaching the offspring of the well-heeled as well as the working man.

The result was a bountiful garden of top-notch schooling choices.

Sadly, in recent decades many of the blooms have fallen from the roses.

BY LAURA TUTOR

A PLAY AT NOBLE INSTITUTE FOR GIRLS All photos courtesy/Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County

By 9:30, the lights were ready to go up on the evening production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The cast had been working for weeks on the show’s premier that Friday night in April of 1910.

The house was packed. As the program notes emphasized, an appreciation of the arts and culture was a grand part of education and not to be taken lightly in the early 1900s or glossed over in favor of harder, grittier subjects in the curriculum.

The costumes had come all the way from Philadelphia, but they were far from being the only imported players that night at the Noble Institute for Girls. Indeed, the school on Anniston’s eastern side had been drawing students from all over the region for decades.

It, along with a host of other private academies, colleges and schools, laid the foundation of Anniston’s early educational system. By the middle of the 20th century, Samuel Noble and Daniel Tyler’s project of urban incubation had staked its claim as a city that educated not only its residents, but those from other locales, as well.

Private boarding and day schools served the range of children who grew up playing and exploring Anniston’s hills. Academies such as Barber Memorial Seminary served black children, the heirs to a rising black middle class in the postReconstruction South. Study the yearbooks at the other girls’ schools — such as The Noble Institute — and you’ll see a list of names that have seasoned Alabama politics for as long as there’s been an Alabama.

Others, such as Alabama Military Institute, catered to young men whose families expected a military touch and a focus on science, and it was this command to improve science and technology instruction that marked the mission to teach Anniston’s boys.

The city’s educational heritage wasn’t confined

only to those who could afford to pay upward of $6 a month in tuition that some private schools charged in the late 1800s. Given Tyler and Noble’s respect for education, the city leaders had decided by September 1883 to establish three public schools. The plan was to have a school for white boys, one for white girls and a separate school for black children.

The governing board would follow that plan up two years later with a tax to fund the schools — practically unheard of in the South at the time.

Eventually the schools became so successful, parents in areas just outside the city limits would try to finagle a way to gain entrance for their children.

The board members’ names can still be seen throughout the city: Wikle, Johnston, Goodwin, Randolph and Foster. Their determination, according to meeting minutes, was that children shouldn’t be deterred from learning simply because their families were not as wealthy as others. The city needed them, and it needed them educated, if it was going to succeed.

They, who sent their children to the academies and private schools but built the framework for public ones, decided that education was too important an investment for a fledgling city to ignore. A century and a quarter later, the legacy of learning isn’t so crystallized.

DREAMS AND EXPECTATIONS An illustration of the girls of the 1920s comes to life in a Noble Institute yearbook. One classmate closed the year out by recounting her dream of what her classmates would be. Florence Wilson pretended to see them years down the road, long after 1920 and their senior graduation. Time had taken them far from Anniston and the school that had molded them for much of their young lives.

Her dream, written in the school yearbook, cap-

tured the lives they’d hoped for so many years ago.

One was a missionary in China, while another spread a different kind of message — as a suffrage worker trying to gain women the right to vote. Their faces were as clear in Wilson’s dream as were their personalities, from the farmer’s wife to the settlement worker to the world traveler.

Time slips past, but the legacy of their shared history cannot be left behind.

Florence Wilson graduated from The Noble Institute in the midsummer of 1920. The school started

by Anniston founder Sam Noble and completed in 1889 as a boarding and day school for girls was one of a handful of educational options that set Anniston apart from other cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The teachers were from around the world — London for music, Paris for French. Students came from as far away as Florida to take their place in Anniston’s academies.

The schools’ rolls read a bit like a society list from the post-Reconstruction South. Scan the letters of appreciation from parents, and the names of judges, governors and businessmen pop from the faded pages. However, as the girls point out in their own words, there are simpler ambitions for the young women who received their formal education in the shadows of Anniston’s iron mountains: They wanted to learn and, in turn, contribute to their community.

It wasn’t just Anniston’s private academies that were known in the South for their programs. The city’s public system was once regarded as among the best in the state. A Jacksonville State University graduate student, Catherine Whitehead, wrote a history of the first 50 years of the Anniston City Board of Education. Among the observations from the early years is the fact that Anniston once had a history of supplying the state Department of Educa-

tion with its administrators, officers and innovators.

“It was a tremendous system to be a part of,” recalls Estelle Robertson, who retired from Anniston’s Tenth Street Elementary as principal in 1987 and then spent five more years supervising student teachers from JSU. “And at one time, anybody from Anniston High School could go anywhere. We sent students to West Point, to Annapolis, to Georgia Tech — wherever they wanted.”

Margarette Longstreth tells a similar story of her students’ ambitions. They were across town, on the west side, at Cobb High School and Junior High, which was closed when the city built the current Anniston Middle School. Longstreth taught eighthgrade social studies and still sees her students around town.

“I’ve always had that love of children and a love of learning,” says Longstreth, who retired in 1992 and remembers Cobb fondly. “There was no foolishness, and there were very high expectations of what the children could learn and do.”

Former teachers, those whose careers stretch back as far as Robertson’s and Longstreth’s, remember when the city’s requirements for teachers rivaled those of private academies. The curriculum — and incentives for students to succeed — were equally matched.

Whitehead’s study from JSU emphasized the city’s drive for teacher recruitment, including a note in 1911 that said no teacher would be hired unless he or she had a minimum of one year’s experience.

A year earlier, board member Alfred L. Tyler had announced he’d pay $10 in gold for the best student essay. That would be about $220 in gold today. Further incentive came in 1915 when the board members set up a scholarship for the best speller, and four years after that, it was mandatory for students

Please see PAGE 19

Sept. 10, 1998

Sept. 30, 1999

Oct. 5, 1999

The Department of Defense declares that the Fort McClellan Development Joint Powers Authority would be in charge of the former post's development for civilian use.

Fort McClellan, whose roots had entwined through Anniston's for literally a century, is an active post for the last time today.

President Clinton signs legislation that, in essence, gave Fort McClellan back to civilians — the JPA — at no charge. "Fort McClellan is finally signed, sealed and delivered," says Congressman Bob Riley.

1998

1999

XXXXXXXX

STUDENTS OF THE NOBLE INSTITUTE FOR GIRLS Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County

Jan. 7, 2002 In a Gadsden courtroom presided over by Calhoun County Circuit Judge Joel Laird, jury selection finally begins in the 1996 case of state plaintiffs seeking damages from Monsanto and associated companies for illnesses and environmental damages related to the long-halted manufacture of PCBs. Anniston attorney Donald Stewart represented more than 3,000 plaintiffs in Abernathy v. Monsanto.

2002 ANNISTON HIGH SCHOOL, 16th AND LEIGHTON All photos courtesy/Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County

Continued from page 17

to take classes in public speaking.

During the summers in the early 1900s, city school buildings were turned over to the factories, which would hire teachers to educate their workers on their off days.

By 1934, the city became one of the first public systems to have a program to keep delinquent children in school. When the city established a class for the mentally handicapped in the 1955-56 school year, it was just as revolutionary in public education.

A study of the board’s history shows that money and teacher recruitment have long been issues that warred with those expectations for excellence. For instance, in 1912, the board decided the city could set up an electricity contract with Alabama Power, providing the bill didn’t exceed $250 a year. To keep the cost down, no light bulb could be higher than 40 watts.

Another entry points to a move then-Mayor W.S. Coleman made in 1934 to keep the schools open when systems all over the country were collapsing in the Depression.

The minutes, and accompanying newspaper clippings, reveal the image of town that had married itself to its school system and was determined to see that union thrive.

As the school system flourished, more and more of the city’s elite bought into the idea that the schools they were funding were ideal for their own children. The academy and private school culture started to wither in Anniston, and would fade almost completely by World War II. It would stay dormant until the 1990s, when home schooling and private enrollment began increasing at a

rate eclipsed only by the sheer numbers of families who left the city for other school districts.

THE LAST 50 YEARS The teachers who remember Anniston’s heyday, and whose children graduated from the public system or who had grandparents attend the academies, say they aren’t sure when the foundation shifted. Part of the attrition from the system may be to the rise in home-schooling and religious schools. Enrollment flight — and the reason the system has foundered — is harder to pin down.

Pointing only to integration is too simplistic, according to folks like Longstreth and many Cobb graduates, who’ve expressed their support for the neighborhood school through the years. After all, when students attended all-black schools within the city, those students were held to high standards. Therefore, simply saying that having a “black” school equals a poor-performing school isn’t acceptable — or accurate.

Mac Gillam remembers when the majority of Anniston’s children used public schools, and most went to Anniston High. As integration came, the city allowed students to choose to attend Anniston High.

“We had some black students, and they were there because they wanted them to be there or their parents wanted them to be there,” says Gillam, who taught at Anniston High in 1968-69 and at Johnston Junior High in 1970. There was a minimum amount of racial issues, and teachers, black and white, were really instrumental in making the transition as smooth as possible, he added.

“It was still the primary educational institution

for the citizens of Anniston.”

After leaving Johnston, Gillam got his doctorate from Florida State University and then taught at JSU for 30 years. Looking back, he feels some remorse for how the system has fared. It’s a feeling echoed by many others who spent their time teaching Anniston’s children and now worry about their future.

“Teachers were free to do what they thought best,” says Anne Phillips, who started teaching in 1960 and retired in 1997. She attended as a student every school she’d later teach at: Noble Street and Quintard elementary schools, Johnston and Anniston High. “Today they spend so much time proving that they’ve taught something, they don’t have time to actually teach something.”

She, like Longstreth, remembers the power of the neighborhood school and wonders if there’s something that can be done to return that sense of ownership. “There’s not that sense of community,” she says.

Robertson says she remains optimistic that the city’s system can emerge and become a destination district. The former science teacher has been involved in the Next Start program and the Anniston City Schools Foundation and says that only a good system, with equal cooperation between the council, the board and the parents, will produce a system that other, new parents will buy in to.

“Somehow — and I don’t have the answer to that — we’ve got to have a better image. And only a good school system will bring them back,” says Robertson, who had three children graduate from Anniston High and go on to careers in education.

“I’ve always been hopeful.” ◆

July 26, 2003

Aug. 9, 2003

A late-night fire breaks out on the 10th floor of the AmSouth building at 10th and Noble. The water needed to extinguish the fierce blaze forces about 15 businesses out of the 76-year-old structure, which eventually became vacant.

It awaits redevelopment with a new name — Watermark Tower.

The first of the thousands of M55 rockets filled with GB nerve agent built at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in the 1950s is destroyed at Anniston’s incinerator on a Saturday morning in a process the Army project manager called flawless.

2003

HILL POLITICS The politics of Anniston and its surroundings is different from other regions of Alabama.

One observer cites people and the power of ideas as the prime motivator for public policy.

BY JOHN FLEMING In northeast Alabama’s hard-scrabble fields of the late 1800s, the small landowner, the yeoman, tilled mostly for himself, quite different from the landed of the Black Belt and the owners of the rolling farmlands of the Wiregrass.

Alabama’s expert on the times and Anniston native, former Auburn history professor Wayne Flynt, points out in his book Poor But Proud, that Calhoun County didn’t pin its livelihood on cotton, but was instead a classic mixed economy.

The small holders grew corn and wheat and raised livestock. And while plantations flourished down in some of the valleys, the hills were full of what he calls “Jacksonian farmers,” a populist allusion to the one-mule homesteader.

In that way, at least, Anniston and northeastern part of the state is not like the rest of Alabama and certainly not like the stereotypical image of the Deep South.

The yeoman farmer didn’t own slaves.

Spanish moss doesn’t sway from live oaks in front of grand plantations. That’s not northeast Alabama’s culture. Motivation for war — the one Between the States — for most of the people of this region, was therefore different from the cotton farmers of lower Alabama.

A lack of enthusiasm for war, brought on by the burdens by an economic reality and work ethic that dictated you pick your own corn, did not, however, keep Calhoun County from voting to secede — the northernmost county in the state to do so.

Those kinds of conflicts, with ourselves and with each other, are part of our definition.

But the region is defined by something more prosaic, more abstract. It does not stand at any major crossroads, geographically or historically.

It does not naturally and easily project influence because of what we have been through or where we sit on the map.

Instead, as former U.S. Rep. Glen Browder argues, the region asserted itself through individuals and institutions contributing to the flow of ideas. Those ideas shaped public policy and challenged the state, the nation and the establishment to think about the future in a way that has brought about mostly good, but sometimes bad, wholesale change.

JOHN B. KNOX Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County

SHAPING A CITY Even in the beginning, there was the power of the individual.

Samuel Noble helped shed the darkness of Reconstruction.

Outside the Model City, the small land-holders were scattered across the countryside like chicken feed. In town, the city of the coming century chiseled out of nothing in an unremarkable place, was ground zero of a brave experiment in industrialization birthed with Yankee money and Southern ingenuity.

Anniston’s foundries and the muscle of upand-coming Birmingham worked like coke and iron ore to bring about a steely power in north Alabama that, in time, fell into league with the traditional Big Mules across the center and the south.

The new money begat influence that made

it so, but the raw power in the late 19th century also began to coalesce around a magical notion that people mattered.

Travel to the basement of the Calhoun County Courthouse and see testament to this awakening. Here are rivals to The Daily Hot Blast, the unapologetically partisan sheets dedicated to the cause of what can generally be called the Populist and Progressive movements.

In the pages of The Alabama Leader, The People’s Journal, The Argus and others can be found the fumes and rants aimed at the establishment.

The bankers, the Big Mules, the industrialists were in alliance to keep the little man down, and perhaps the only way out, proclaimed these broadsheets and some electrifying orators of the day, was for blacks and poor whites to work together to climb out of that miserable ditch together.

It was to be a short-lived period. Nationally the movement began to fade near the turn of the 20th century.

In Alabama, it came to a screeching halt in 1901, upon the adoption of the new state constitution.

Sadly, Calhoun County has some solid ownership to this travesty through the actions of the constitutional convention’s president, Anniston railroad attorney John B. Knox. With a crafty and determined way, Knox engineered the approval of a document that disenfranchised blacks and poor whites and continues to cripple the state to this day.

PARTY IN POWER The new century brought with it a continuation of the dominance of the Democratic Party in the South, especially after the demise of the Populists. Virtually every officeholder from county sheriff to U.S. senator was a Democrat, and it was to stay that way for decades.

One of them was the only governor to come from Anniston, Thomas Kilby, who served from Please see PAGE 21

Aug. 20, 2003 Joint settlement is reached in the federal and state court cases — Tolbert v. Monsanto and Abernathy v. Monsanto, respectively — that were seeking damages due to PCBs contamination. Attorneys agreed that $700 million would resolve the complaints of more than 20,000 individuals, clean up contaminated land, establish health programs and pay the lawyers. For several years afterward, controversy, confusion and anger simmered among some plaintiffs over how cash and other benefits were distributed.

2003

Continued from page 20

1919-1923. (B.B. Comer, who served as governor from 1907-1911, lived in Anniston in the 1880s when he was in the grocery business, but moved to Birmingham soon afterward.)

On the surface, Gov. Kilby’s wrong priorities appeared askew. He entered office a staunch proponent of prohibition and helped secure its ratification, but he was a fence-sitter when it came to suffrage.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you begin to see something else. Indeed, Wayne Flynt puts him squarely in the Progressive tradition.

Kilby reformed the state budgetary process, endorsed and fought for a graduated income tax and a tax on coal mining, instituted public education reforms and changes in the state prison system, got the Legislature to pass a workers’ compensation act, secured pensions for Confederate soldiers, increased funding for child welfare and tried, but did not succeed, to abolish the convict lease system in the state.

He also failed to win a U.S. senate seat in 1926, when he lost in the Democratic primary (the only election that mattered then) to Hugo Black.

His gubernatorial campaign manager was the owner of The Anniston Star at the time, Col. Harry M. Ayers, an influential man heading an influential institution. He made his presence

known in many ways. As for public office, he served on the state School Board for nearly 25 years.

The only U.S. senator in modern times to come from Calhoun County was Anniston attorney Donald Stewart, who served from 1978 to 1981.

Stewart, like many other successful politicians in the state, first emerged on the political scene at the University of Alabama. During his presidency of the Student Government Association, Stewart worked to keep the peace during integration of black students to campus in 1963.

Thirteen years later, in 1976, Cleo Thomas would become the University of Alabama’s first black SGA president. The Anniston High School graduate went on to become a lawyer. He narrowly lost a state Senate contest to Del Marsh in 1998.

A number of institutional leaders who arguably had national impact during the civil rights movement were the Revs. N.Q. Reynolds, William McClain and Phil Noble Sr. They were supported by a city administration led by Anniston Mayor Claude Dear and helped to fend off violence at a crucial moment during the movement. John Nettles, who later helped organize an area chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was also instrumental in the movement.

Earlier in the 20th century Charles R. Bell, the

pastor at Parker Memorial, was arguably one of the most liberal church leaders of his time and a champion of the social gospel. He voted for Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate for president every term from the 1920s to the ’40s. He was also ardently opposed to war, speaking out against the nation’s involvement in World War II. Of course the county has had many other influential politicians, including Jim Campbell, a former state legislator, and Doug Ghee, former state senator. J.J. Willett was the long time influential chair of Democratic Party in Calhoun County.

In other parts of the state, the politics tend to be more predictable than they are here. In Anniston and the surrounding area things are slightly more complex. It isn’t just any community, after all, that can produce both a committed socialist and committed right-wing conservatives.

Seeming contradictions, of course, but they make sense when you understand that the inner and outer social, cultural and political struggles marking the area’s history and geography.

Not everyone, remember, wanted to secede from the Union on the eve of the Civil War. But, then again, just barely enough voted yes for the measure to pass.

It seems, in some ways, the region has been conflicted ever since. ◆

ABOVE: GOV. T.E. KILBY TOP RIGHT AND FAMILY AT HOME, 1921 Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County

HILL POLITICS

Who’s who in Calhoun County’s political history The men from Calhoun County who served in the U.S. House early in the 1900s were all Democrats. For most of that time the current 3rd congressional district was known as the 4th.

They included: Sydney Johnston Bowie, an Anniston attorney first elected in 1901. He served four terms before retiring from the House for private legal practice in 1907.

The former clerk of the circuit court of Calhoun County, Lamar Jeffers, was appointed to fill the term of Blackmon after he died.

Kenneth Roberts of Piedmont, who served from 1951 to 1965. During his career, he was a proponent of federal highway safety and air pollution regulations. In 1954 he was wounded in the leg when a group of Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire on House members from an observation deck inside the Capitol building.

Fred L. Blackmon, also of Anniston, was elected to Congress in 1911 and served until he died in office in 1921.

Bill Nichols unseated Andrews two years later.

Nichols became one of Alabama’s most influential leaders.

He died in 1988.

Anniston’s Arthur Glenn Andrews finally broke the Democrats’ long hold on power in the district. In 1964, Andrews rode to office on a wave of support during Barry Goldwater’s failed bid for president.

Come Worship With Us! W. Mack Amis, Jr., D.Min. Pastor

Sundays Morning Worship 8:30 AM Sunday School 9:30 AM Morning Worship 10:45 AM Discipleship Groups 5:00 PM Evening Worship 6:00 PM

Glen Browder, currently a professor at Jacksonville State and the naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, Calif., replaced Nichols. Browder, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, became an expert on military affairs.

He vacated his seat in 1996 in an unsuccessful bid for the Senate.

Donoho The

D I F F E R E N C E

Calhoun County attorney Mike Rogers succeeded Riley. Rogers, too, has been very active in military issues, serving on both the Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Homeland Security.

He also sits on the House Agricultural Committee.

Academics The class of 2008 received more than $2.6 million in college scholarship offers and were offered acceptance to more than thirty-five colleges and universities.

Arts The fine arts play an important role in the life of The Donoho School. Self expression and experiences in both the visual and performing arts are placed among the top priorities at the school.

Wednesdays Children’s Awana Adult Bible Study Youth “Buzz”

Clay County’s Bob Riley replaced Browder, serving until he ran for governor in 2002.

5:30 PM 6:00 PM 6:00 PM

Athletics Students enjoy participating in a variety of sports offered at The Donoho School: football, basketball, volleyball, golf, soccer, tennis, track, cross-country, baseball, and cheerleading. The Donoho School was selected by The Birmingham News to receive the 2007 AHSAA IA All Sports Championship Award.

Seeking to provide a place where... the Love of God is shared. the Word of God is taught. the Power of God is revealed. the Plan of God is fulfilled.

Touching Our Community with the

Love of Jesus and a

Message of Hope

The Donoho School is located in Anniston, AL at 2501 Henry Road.

Intercessory Prayer Ministry 24-hour Prayer Line 256-236-1515

For more information, please contact Director of Admissions Sue Canter at (256) 236-4459, or visit our website at www.donohoschool.com.

Sunday Telecasts Cable 2: Sunday School Cable 2: Live Broadcast Cable 9: Week Delay

10:15 AM 10:50 AM 11:00 AM

the difference is...

The Donoho School is dually accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) and the Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS). It is an active member of the National Association of Independent Schools and the Alabama Association of Independent Schools.

HILL POLITICS

Who’s who in political history: Just outside Calhoun County Just outside Calhoun County one can find a number of Alabamians of towering political influence.

The most obvious, of course, is Hugo Black, of Ashland, who was appointed by President Roosevelt to the Supreme Court in 1937. During his time on the court, he came to be one of the most influential legal thinkers in American history. He resigned in 1971, just days before he died.

There was also Congressman Bill Nichols of Sylacauga. Nichols was in many ways a bread and butter politician who made it his business to deliver the goods to the district.

He excelled, especially at defense matters serving on the House Armed Services Committee and heading up the Investigations subcommittee.

Nichols, who lost a leg in a land mine explosion in World War II in Europe, was a fervent proponent of the expansion of the Pentagon and increased military spending especially during the Reagan years. He later used

his powerful position on the Armed Services Committee to bring about reform in the military and to ferret out wasteful spending.

Perhaps his greatest legacy was in 1986 when he co-sponsored, with Berry Goldwater, a bill that essentially restructured the American military.

“Bill Nichols,” says former U.S. Rep. Glen Browder, “was the driving force behind the Goldwater-Nichols Act. Goldwater lent his power and influence to it, but Nichols was the one who got it passed.”

Of course, the state’s current governor, Bob Riley, is also a native of Clay County. He was swept into power during the Gingrich revolution’s heyday in 1996. In Congress, he was allied with the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Since he left Congress in 2002 to run for governor, he has adapted a much more pragmatic approach to politics and has been known as an effective, progressive executive.

ANNISTON FIREPLACE & PATIO 3815 Leatherwood Plaza, Hwy. 431 (256) 236-1114 Mon. - Fri. 8-5; Sat. 9-12 Kurtnelson@cableone.net • abbybass@cableone.net

AERIAL VIEW OF BARBER MEMORIAL SEMINARY Public Library of Anniston and Calhoun County

CONGRATULATIONS

to the City of Anniston for 125 years of growth from Stringfellow Memorial Hospital Where Everyone Comes 1st or the past 70 years, Stringfellow Memorial Hospital has Fof Anniston. been a vital part of the progress and growth of the city Beginning as a small tuberculosis hospital in 1938, we have grown into a fully accredited general acute care facility, compassionately serving the healthcare needs of our community.

We are still building and growing to better serve you.

We are proud of the part Stringfellow Memorial Hospital plays in serving the residents of our community and join with the citizens of Anniston in the celebration of 125 years.

301 East 18th Street • Anniston, AL (256) 235-8900 • www.SMHhealth.com

CELEBRATING 125 YEARS: THE ANNIVERSARY PROJECT JULY 27 1870s/1880s-1928, founding to year before Great Depression

AUG. 3

AUG. 10

1929-1970, Depression through World War II, Cold War and Civil Rights era

1971-present, New South and transition

AUG. 17 The future ◆ AUG. 18 Then and Now — a photo album

Give yourself, or someone you love, an anniversary present.

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Don’t miss the opportunity to receive all ďŹ ve sections packaged together in one commemorative bundle.

Available Aug. 18 for $7. Mailed copies are $10.

To request copies of any of the anniversary sections, please contact The Star’s Circulation Department.

235-9253 or 1-866-814-9253 0

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SUNNY KING HONDA’S USED CARS 06 ODYSSEY EXL leather, Power doors, Full Power .............. SALE ............... $23,875 07 ACCORD SE 4dr, full power, alloy wheels ........................ SALE ............... $18,375 07 ACCORD LX 4dr, auto, AC, 4cyl, loaded ......................... SALE.............$17,875 05 ACCORD SE Coupe, 4cyl, auto, full power ....................... SALE........... $15,775 05 PILOT EXL moonroof, leather, loaded .............................. SALE.............$19,175 03 PILOT EXL V6, leather, full power ................................... SALE.............$13,750 07 AZERA LIMITED moonroof, leather, 15k miles .............. SALE ............. $18,475 07 ALTIMA 2.5S, 4cyl, fully equipped ................................... SALE.............$16,275 04 MALIBU MAXX LS sunroof, loaded .............................. SALE...............$9,895 99 DEVILLE 4dr, full power, leather, extra clean ................................................... $5,575

98 MONTE CARLO Z34, Black, full power ...................................................... $5,475 02 GRAND AM coupe, moonroof, 4cyl, sharp ................................................... $7,895 03 SIERRA SLT Ext cab, sportside, white, nice ................................................ $14,975 03 TRIBUTE ES moonroof, leather, extra clean ................................................ $12,325 05 GRAND CARAVAN SXT moonroof, leather, clean ...... SALE ...........$12,650 05 ELANTRA GT 4dr, 4cyl, moonroof, leather ................................................... $9,975 05 CAMRY LE 4cyl, auto, loaded, rear spoiler .................................................. $15,975 02 CAMRY LE 4dr, 4cyl, fully equipped, local trade .......................................... $11,475 06 ELEMENT EXP 4cyl, auto, loaded, silver ......................... SALE.............$15,750

* Based on 2008 EPA mileage estimates, reflecting new EPA fuel economy methods beginning with 2008 models. Use for comparison purposes only. Do not compare to models before 2008. Your actual mileage will vary depending on how you drive and maintain your vehicle.

Sunny King Honda 2580 US Hwy 78 East • Anniston, AL (256) 835-1000 • 1-800-423-4074 • www.sunnykinghonda.com

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Dawson Anniston Council Ward 4 A Native Annistonian...

David was born and raised in Anniston. He graduated from Wellborn High School and went on to pursue degrees from JSU and UAB. David and his wife, Carol, have two daughters; Taylor and Sarah. David is a member of Anniston Pathology.

Extensive Community Involvement...

- Planning Commission, Chairman 24 years - Calhoun County Coronerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Office - Founding Member of the Berman Trust Foundation - South Trust/Wachovia Bank Board of Directors - Member of Parker Memorial Church

- Gamecock Athletic Club Board Member - Cerebral Palsy Chairman; VIP Fund Raising - Calhoun County Chamber of Commerce - JSU Alumni Association - UAB Alumni Association - Alpha Tau Omega - Fraternity

Positive Ideas...

- Respect for and use of proper political decorum among council persons, mayor and staff - Capitalize on the positives; work to minimize the negatives - Encourage trust among racial lines - Quarterly Citizen Ward meetings and listening sessions - Strengthen downtown business core while developing McClellan, the Eastern Parkway and South Quintard - Be aggressive with business tax abatements, and in-kind assistance from the City; Provide incentives when possible - Offer the same incentive packages to existing businesses with expansion ideas Include perks for job retention and development of city workforce and staff - Conduct open meeting with respect and proper decorum adhering to Roberts Rules of Order - Explore options for our current school system to ensure the students are receiving the best possible education and citizenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tax dollars are being used in the best possible manner - Explore recycling option with garbage contract - Remember and learn from our past successes and failures - Explore new ways to do things to better our city - Revitalize the Model City mantra as we move forward

Please vote David Dawson Anniston City Council Ward 4 on August 26th. www.mdaviddawson.com Paid for by Committee to Elect Dawson PO Box 1163 Anniston, AL 36202

FARLEY BERMAN IN AFRICA Image Courtesy Anniston Museum of Natural History

YOU OUGHT’VE KNOWN ...

ANNISTON’S JAMES BOND Berman museum founder a globe-trotting collector of worldly artifacts

When Farley Berman died at age 88 in 1999, he left a legacy that continues to draw people to Anniston.

Berman, whose avid weapon and artifact-collecting led to the establishment of the Berman Museum of World History, was described as a globe-trotting James Bond-figure.

A member of the U.S. Army

Counter Intelligence Corps during World War II, Berman was cagey about the source of some of his finds.

Among his collection were belt buckles that fired bullets, exploding cigarette lighters, Jefferson Davis’s traveling pistols, a jeweled dagger that belonged to the Egyptian King Faurok, Adolf Hitler’s tea set and a

scimitar of Abbas the Great of Persia.

When people asked about these artifacts Berman would respond, “I don’t know. It just showed up in my bedroom this morning.”

After Berman left the Army he returned to Anniston to run the family business, Berman’s Department Store. He was

also known for his ties to the military community when Fort McClellan was still active and was longtime co-chairman of the Calhoun County Chamber of Commerce’s military affairs council.

Berman’s collection was so large when the museum opened in 1996, it could only display a small fraction of it.

BY DAN WHISENHUNT

Helping Anniston Build Relationships

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“Proudly serving Calhoun County and its Cities and Towns.”

P.O. Box 1087 • 1330 Quintard Ave. • Anniston, AL 36201 www.calhounchamber.com 256.237.3536 • 1.800.489.1087

SUPER SUMMER SAVINGS AT

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