Past Times 2016: The Sixties

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The sixties ...a decade of change

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SEPTEMBER 2016

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The 1960s were a time of change and unrest in the world, America and Northwest Georgia. The cover art of this year’s Past Times magazine by Lee Field illustrates only a few of the headlines that marked the turbulent decade. President John F. Kennedy was killed. War raged in Vietnam. America sent a man to the moon, and civil rights issues came to the forefront across the nation. This year’s Past Times magazine takes a look at many of those issues and how Northwest Georgians reacted to them and were affected by them.

The sixties ...a decade of change

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Publisher ................................................................Otis Raybon Jr. Vice President of Operations ......................................... Doug Crow Editorial Staff ..................................... Sherry Dee Allen, John Bailey, Adam Cook, Mike Colombo, Terry Dean, Blake Doss, Agnes Hagin, Randy Jones, Spencer Lahr, Karli Land, Kevin Myrick, Josh O’Bryant, Mike O’Neal, Brandi Owczarz, Anne Shumaker, Tyler Serritt, S.D. Sumners, Doug Walker, Diane Wagner, Kristina Wilder, Tamara Wolk Layout and Design .................................................... Heather Koon Cover Design ................................................................... Lee Field Advertising Director .................................................... Cecilia Crow Advertising Sales .............................Renee Blankenship, Todd Britt, Kathy Bruce, Angie Clark, Mary Edwards, Diane Hall, Vickie Robinson, Billy Steele Advertising Design ......................Tona Deaton (manager), Lee Field, Deise Gomez Mailroom Manager .................................................... Suzanne Kelly … … … Past Times is a publication of Times-Journal Inc., 305 E. Sixth Ave., P.O. Box 1633, Rome, GA., 30162-1633. Past Times is a home-delivered supplement to the Rome News-Tribune, the Calhoun Times, The Catoosa County News, the Polk County Standard Journal, the Cherokee County Herald, and the Walker County Messenger. Additional copies, at $5 each plus tax, may be purchased at any of these newspapers.

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7DEOH RI &RQWHQWV ‘Peggy Snead’: Myth and facts ............ 3

Good night to Daddy in Vietnam .....48

Correll, Ringgold police chief .............8

Pilot battles weather, equipment ......50

LaFayette Coca-Cola Bottling ...........14

Not happy about being drafted ........54

Garage bands – Wild fun ..................21

Cuban Missile Crisis .........................58

411 Drive In ....................................30

Moon landing inspires career ............64

Remembering Civil Rights era ..........34

Rossville star search..........................67

Ringgold school integration .............42

The news that shook the world .........70

Vietnam changes everything ............45

2nd-grader’s shattered worldview......72

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SEPTEMBER 2016

¶3HJJ\ 6QHDG· 0\WK DQG IDFWV %\ -2+1 %$,/(< UNRAVELLING THE TRUTH They were powerful men — men in FROM THE LEGEND of Peggy Snead, city government, business and law 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII a woman credited with running an interenforcement, he said. nationally famous brothel for over 40 They had a problem. The government years, begins with a man sitting on his side porch. built Battey General Hospital in 1943 and started Because of the nature of her business, people bringing back wounded troops from WWII. who knew and loved the woman known as Miss The veterans were looking for things to do Peggy still wish to separate themselves from being around town and were being beaten up and robbed associated with the establishment known as Peggy’s. going to the wrong places. There are some who are willing to share their memoIt was a problem they could solve and make some ries of her but are uncomfortable revealing their identities. money in the process. “They asked her if she would We begin the tale with that man sitting on his open up the house,” he said. “And she agreed.” porch, dogs at his feet, considering whether or not She opened the “house” and a taxi service to get to tell the tale of a woman he knew for many years. the vets to and from the house — and the money At one point in her life she was Peggy, the madam of a really started coming in. famous local brothel. And at another, when he knew her, They were selling alcohol, liquor specifically, and she she was Lola Alvis Stone — a happily married retiree. made sure there wasn’t any trouble. And, he said, her She was born on March 11, 1913, and grew up in connections made sure nobody else gave her trouble. Rock Run, Alabama. He said her father was a furSoon she was investing in real estate and, in her nace man who poured steel all throughout Cherokee own way, became a powerful figure in the county. County. As many did at that time, she had a large In its heyday Peggy’s was known internationally, family with three brothers and three sisters. “And with stories abounding of soldiers knowing Rome, she always, always took care of her family,” he said. Georgia, solely by the fame of its brothel. She died in 1991 from complications following a An advertisement for Peggy’s showed up in sevback surgery that was supposed to correct an injury eral college newspapers and notably in a Georgia she’d gotten when she was young and rode horses. Tech yearbook. That same woman, later and more infamously known as Miss Peggy, made her way to Rome Rumors working during World War II. While many people have stories about Rome’s As many women did in that time, she was staying in a girls boarding house on Second Avenue near the bridge most famous brothel, they’ll be quick to insert the when she was approached by some men about opening caveat “I never went to the place.” Tales abound of Miss Peggy coming downtown a business to fill what they saw as a community need. to shop with well-dressed, stylish and often exotic ladies. The stories often include her poodle, sometimes dyed pink, and her pink Cadillac. Others say she didn’t stand out from other wellto-do ladies in town and that they would never have guessed what it was she actually did — they just assumed she was married to a doctor or a lawyer. “She was pretty savvy, she was strategic,” said Margaret Hollingsworth, a local author who has spent the past decade compiling information about the woman behind the brothel. “How she advertised was to take her girls out and make them dress well in stylish clothes and be seen.” The goings-on at the house on East First Street were an open secret, she said. “People would ride through the neighborhood and giggle about Peggy’s,” Hollingsworth said, remembering passing by the place when she was a girl. “I was intimidated and would wonder why she was such a big deal.” As she learned more about Miss Peggy through stories told, Hollingsworth began to see a complex individual who — while a little wild in her younger days — became an astute businesswoman. 3HJJ\¶V LQ WKH *HRUJLD 7HFK \HDUERRN “It’s kind of fascinating that she had the guts and

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/ROD $OYLV 6WRQH DND 3HJJ\ 6QHDG the smarts to pull it off,” Hollingsworth said. “It’s not an endorsement of prostitution, but her other options would never have gotten her where she got.” Another rumor begins with the IRS attempting to audit Peggy’s. To get a handle on the amount of revenue the establishment brought in, our story takes us into a local laundromat. As a clever workaround, the story goes, the auditors went to the places contracted by Peggy’s to do its laundry and kept a tally of the number of sheets washed. If they knew how much was charged for each service and assumed the bed sheets were changed each time a service was rendered, they would know how much the business was taking in and could levy the appropriate tax. Even more nefarious were rumors of secret international connections as well as stories that Miss Peggy was an informant for the FBI and would turn in customers who were on the run.

Hidden in plain sight Documented facts about Peggy’s appear more frequently toward the end of the brothel’s existence with Miss Peggy’s arrest, trial and appeal. Prior to that, public records bearing the name Alvis Stone show up only occasionally. &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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The following is excerpted from the memoirs of Doyle Whittenberg, who was born in 1917 and grew up at 305 Kingston Ave. in Rome: I didn’t know that I grew up in such a notorious or historic neighborhood until I was serving in the Army in World War II. I was in Cannes, France, on a 10day R&R. I met and partied with various ranks of troops from England, France and, of course, the United States. We would close one bar, march to the next and so on. One of my forays I met a captain from Australia. We talked about this and that and when he learned my address he said that he had spent about a week in Rome before the war. He finally got around to asking me if Peggy’s was still there. Peggy’s was a whorehouse that was operated, during almost all of my early life, about three blocks from my home. In fact, it was on a street that ran along one side of Pine Hill. We skied on Pine Hill only two streets over from Peggy’s place. I was surprised to learn from the captain that he had visited Peggy’s place. He told me he learned of it from a friend from Hawaii, who was told of it by a friend from Hong Kong. I didn’t know that Peggy’s was so popular with the international set. I do know that she was a fine lady other than her profession. She purchased all the land and shares around her house. She never evicted anyone who wanted a place to live. She bought groceries and clothing for neighbors. She gave them work when she needed something done. She was a compassionate woman. She had a great heart. I had forgotten this until the captain opened my eyes to the fact that I had associated with an internationally famous person. I only knew she was famous in the surrounding counties. On slow nights she, or whoever was in charge, would allow the young boys in the neighborhood to come in and sit in the living room. She would not be breaking the law. Some of the girls weren’t much older than we were. Most of the time we would not have a dime between us. Other times we might have enough money for a Coke. There was a Coke machine in the hall just off the living room.

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7KLV OLVWLQJ LQ WKH 5RPH &LW\ 'LUHFWRU\ IRU $OYLV 6WRQH ² DND 3HJJ\ 6QHDG ² ZDV SODFHG LQ EROG W\SH DORQJ ZLWK PDQ\ RWKHU SURPLQHQW EXVLQHVVHV We would sit and talk and sometimes they would let us dance with the girls. One night about four of us were there, the girls seemed to enjoy it too, and my brother was standing at the fireplace talking to a girl. He got playful and she calmly reached to the mantle for a Coke bottle and brought it firmly down on top of his head. His knees buckled. He caught the back of the chair, straightened up and said, “Come on boys, let’s go.” I don’t remember ever going back again. After I became an adult, I learned that Peggy’s was a famous place and that she looked out after the people in her neighborhood. When I worked for a store downtown Peggy would call and order lingerie for her girls. Gowns, negligees, panty briefs and bras in different coordinated colors. Never pajamas. She would order the best. We would make about two selections for each girl. We placed them in a suitcase or two and took them out and left them so that they could make a choice in private. I was called on several times to do this. We would, after a phone call, go pick up the suitcases and rejected items and return to the store with payment for what she kept. Most of the time she kept all that we sent. One time Peggy called us and requested sportswear — shorts, bra tops and also T-shirts. About mid-week she called and requested that we bring a showing of lingerie. She said that they could not make any money working in sportswear.

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&RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH For instance, in 1967 Miss Alvis Stone requested a variance and sought permission to build a new single family dwelling on the lot which wouldn’t meet the rear yard setback requirement. Another view of the famous madam in the 1965 Rome City Directory had the listing in bold type for Alvis L Stone, h1501 E 1st, Tel 232-9434. Several years later in 1970, the name Alvis Stone remained attached to the East First Street address — but the listing was not in bold type and the telephone number was no longer listed. Legal listings published in the April 20, 1992, Roman Record concerning her estate after her death showed she kept at least a passing interest in real estate. Eight properties spread through Floyd County were disbursed through her estate. There’s a Southern tradition of only saying good things about the dead, but as people spoke of Miss Peggy there’s a real sense of how much good she did — even while operating a house of prostitution. “She did a helluva lot for the community without anybody ever knowing anything about it,� said former Rome police officer Mike Ragland. Ragland began working in the police department fresh off a stint in a military submarine in 1967 and remembers the place well. He also remembers people telling him how she took care of people who lived near there. She bought a lot of groceries for hungry people, Ragland said, and made sure people had clothes as well as generally helping people out. Even buying a few people their first television sets. The police knew what was going on at Peggy’s and would occasionally raid the place for having liquor, but there wasn’t ever any real trouble there. In other parts of the city, there were bootleggers and pimps including another well-known place called Mabel’s — at one time located on East 14th Street. Much of the criminal element was out raising hell, but for the most part all was quiet in the house on East First Street, Ragland said. It was for this reason that she stayed in business so long. “She kept this thing going for decades and that was no small thing. You’ve got to think for somebody raised in Centre, Alabama, I don’t

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Arrest and backlash It was in 1968 when a batch of newly-elected commissioners began bothering Miss Peggy, pledging to shut down the practice of having a tolerated brothel. Former Floyd County Police Chief Jim Free remembers those days — he was the guy who led the bust. “I was a patrolman at that time,� Free said. “Our sheriff and some of our politicians were talking about that we need to do away with the prostitution houses. “I thought they meant it,� Free said. Floyd County police set up a sting. “I actually went in and transferred the money for sex. Of course, we didn’t go through with the sex — we arrested Peggy,� Free said. &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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SEPTEMBER 2016 &RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH During the arrest he was struck by the madam’s demeanor and composure. “She was just as nice and humble as you could be when we arrested her,� Free said. He’d expected an evil person because of the type of business she was in and, even talking about the incident over 40 years later, one can hear the surprise in his voice. “I really found her to be a nice lady,� Free said. “Even if her business was against the law.� While it didn’t come directly from Peggy, there was a backlash for the raid. “I found out pretty soon some of the politicians weren’t as eager to have it closed as they said,� Free said. “(County Commissioner) Jim Mehaffey and (City Commissioner) Ben Lucas stood behind us.� The chiefs of both police departments took the heat and supported their officers as well, but there was a lot of flak from the community and the very same people who had called for Peggy’s to be closed. “They were talking big like they wanted it closed and I was naive enough to believe it,� Free said. “It was a lesson to me as a police officer that politicians would not always stand by their word.�

Conviction Events had been set in motion and on Sept. 25, 1969, indictment number 17477 was brought against Peggy Snead. She faced four charges: prostitution, two counts of pimping and keeping a place of prostitution. The district attorney at that time, and later judge, Larry Salmon remembers the case and the mistrials involved in the case. In Floyd County there were two mistrials in the case in two days. The second mistrial was ordered after “a juror stated he reached his guilty verdict based upon Mrs. Snead’s reputation,� according to the Oct. 28, 1970, Rome News-Tribune. Her defense attorney had requested the jurors be polled after one mistrial the previous day based on the comments of a state witness. She was eventually convicted on all counts and placed on probation with a $1,000 fine. “One condition of her probation was she couldn’t operate a boarding house,� Salmon said. “Or more specifically couldn’t operate a home with multiple residents.�

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Peggy’s was closed. In September 1972, the case reached the Georgia Court of Appeals, which reversed three of the convictions. “The house was closed and the girls were gone by that time,� Ragland said.

Closure The closed brothel was among several houses and businesses burned during racial riots and unrest in August and September 1971. Molotov cocktails being thrown from passing cars were reported daily, and the Georgia State Patrol had been called in to assist local police. One night the call went out — the brothel hidden in plain sight was burning. “It was kind of a strange thing,� Free said. “We had a racial incident a few years later (after her arrest) when her place was set on fire. They sent state troopers all over. They would pair troopers up with the city police because they didn’t think troopers knew where anything was at.� “But when the call went out that Peggy’s was on fire,� Free laughed. “They all knew where that was.� As the police watched the flames, Ragland said, a lone voice came over the police scanner singing Jim Reeves’ “Precious Memories.� Nobody knew who the singer was, although Ragland freely admits the guy had a nice voice. It was that same fire which sparked an idea. “I believe in divine providence,� Bishop Nealon Guthrie of Greater Christ Temple said. “There was a reason why I bought this property.� He recalled people throwing rocks at firefighters and the police coming in to stop rioters that night and watching the house burn. “While it was burning the Lord said to me ‘I want you to change that place from a house of prostitution to a house of restitution.’� Years later, the Greater Christ Temple Rapture Preparation Cathedral was built on that spot. As almost a postscript, after years of evading mention in the newspaper, the name of the establishment showed up in the Nov. 19, 1972, edition of the Rome News-Tribune. In an article about the formation of a vice squad then-Rome Police Chief Frank Perry denied that the city government had supported any large scale prostitution, “but I’m sure there’s some going on,� he is quoted as saying. “But the house (Peggy’s establishment on East First Street) was burned down, torn up and a project is being built up there now.�

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&RUUHOO UHIOHFWV RQ WLPH DV 5LQJJROG SROLFH FKLHI IT’S BEEN NEARLY 50 years since life-long lawman Charles Correll took the oath as the Ringgold Police Department’s chief in 1968, but the memories are still fresh in his mind. %\ $'$0 &22. “I was born in Gordon County in 1933, and I moved here to Catoosa 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII County when I was 5 years old,â€? Correll recalled. “I left home at 15 to work with a hardware company, went to school and the academy, and then came back to town to be Ringgold’s chief in 1968.â€? Correll, who attended the police school with famed lawman Buford Pusser, says the town was a lot different back in those days and folks wanted to test out the new guy. “When I came to Ringgold in ’68, it was like Dodge City ‌ they were driving on the sidewalks, and teenagers were just running wild because they only had one police officer at the time,â€? Correll said. “When I came, of course they (teens and residents) tried me. ‌ I was young, and I stopped maybe 200 cars the first six months I was here. I didn’t give them a ticket, I just gave them a warning, and I said ‘I realize what you’re doing, you’re trying me out.’ I told them if they did it again I would give them a ticket — so I wrote about 50 tickets, I guess, in the weeks after that.â€? &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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7KHQ 5LQJJROG SROLFH FKLHI &KDUOHV &RUUHOO ULJKW FORZQV DURXQG ZLWK WZR \RXQJ PHQ E\ SUHWHQGLQJ WR WDNH WKHP LQWR FXVWRG\ LQ &RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH Correll says downtown Ringgold was really easy-going back then, with a couple of coffee shops and a drug store. “Everybody used to gather at John’s Coffee Shop; it was one of the main hangouts,â€? he said. “When I was in high school, you could go there and eat lunch and get two hotdogs and a Coke for 26 cents ‌ hot dogs were a dime and a Coke was a nickel with a

penny tax. Dixie Cafe was also a popular place to go early in the morning and get coffee and stuff. I’d go there a little more by the time I was chief of Ringgold.â€? After 50 years in law enforcement and defeating cancer twice, Correll is as tough as they come and still resides in Ringgold to this day. “I really loved my job,â€? he said. “I don’t even miss the job as much as I miss the people ‌ I even go down to the courthouse to visit sometimes.â€?

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3ROLFLQJ LQ WKH V PDUNHG FKDQJH EXW QRW TXLWH WKH VDPH DV WRGD\ %\ %/$.( '266 LAW ENFORCEMENT WAS bootleggers had to give was liquor, he SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT in the 1960s continued. 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII than today. “They appreciated their police officers Former Rome police Maj. Mike and so did these guys,� Ragland said Ragland said the police spent their days walking about regular businesses and bootleggers. “It was actual beats and kicking down the doors of bootlegjust a different world.� gers. The training was a little more lax than today’s Police training weeks long training programs as well. Ragland, Roger Powell and Kenneth Pines were all With the end of the decade came the long-awaited integration of the force, Ragland said, with black hired by the Rome Police Department in October 1967. They were some of the first officers to go officers working with white officers and more black through state-based law enforcement training. officers being hired. “I think I’d rather (go),� Ragland recalls telling one of the officers on command staff when they Kicking down doors asked if he wanted to go to the training. “I have no Liquor and wine were illegal in Rome and Floyd idea what I’m doing.� County in the 1960s, so naturally people sold it illeState-based training wasn’t mandated by the state gally and law enforcement did what they could to for most of the 1960s, Ragland continued. shut them down. It wasn’t like they gave new officers a gun and a “We had beer joints everywhere badge and told them to go work, but in another way then,� Ragland said. “That’s why it was learning by trial, he said. Saturday night was fight night.� “They put me out on Broad Street to walk a Solicitor General Robert G. beat,� Ragland continued. “The two guys that drove Walther, the county’s version of disoff stopped and one of them hollered back and said trict attorney in the 1960s, led the if you have any problems call the station. I didn’t way with warrants in hand, Ragland know the damn number.� said. He said he was let out and didn’t know when the 0LNH Officers George Lemming and next guy was going to come replace him. He was 5DJODQG Paul Polston weren’t far behind. essentially walking down the street in a blue uniform “Them guys could whoop anywith a gun on his belt, with no idea what he was doing. body,� Ragland said. “They weren’t scared of nothThere were several two and three day FBI semiing.� nars, but the force didn’t go through the same trainEvery officer wanted to join in on the raids, ing until Chief Bill Hart took over in 1969. Hart because they gave them a break from working trafbegan mandating that all of his officers, new and fic, walking the beat or filling out reports. old, go through the state-based training. “I loved to go with him,� Ragland said about The state later made it a requirement, Ragland said. Walther. “I got to go several times. We’d go kick There were about 70 officers on the force in the doors down.� ’60s and some of them couldn’t read or write, so the It became so regular that officers began calling newer guys like Ragland would do all of the reports. Saturday night “the raid of the week� night, Ragland said. Walther would gather up his troops, The average officer, proving grounds burst through the door of the restaurant or bar and demand the liquor while waving the warrants. Several of them didn’t give out tickets because “That was fun, man,� Ragland continued. “He they didn’t want to go to court and others were would go and be the first one in.� farmers who would work in the fields during the However, the raids didn’t stop the bootleggers day and sleep in the patrol car on night shift while and the police from liking one another. Ragland said Ragland drove. he knew most of the bootleggers personally and Fighting was another important part of proving they knew him. an officer’s worth on the force. The bootleggers would even give out whiskey as “You had to prove it or they would think the gifts for Christmas to the officers. guy’s scared,� Ragland said. Ragland said they weren’t bribes, because everyOne way of proving an officer’s courage was one gave officers gifts back then. The only gifts going to a bar and arresting a drunk.

They would go into a bar, Ragland said, and one of the veterans would point out a drunk that a bar owner may have called the police about. Sometimes they would get in the car peacefully and sometimes they wouldn’t. The new officers who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight didn’t last long on the force, Ragland said. They were usually ostracized until they quit or they realized they were in a line of work they weren’t cut out for. “I was so big, I bet I didn’t have five fights ‌ the whole time I was with the department,â€? said Ragland, who was 6 foot 4 inches and 250 pounds during his early years on the force. There was one guy, LG, who the officers would take to the drunk tank often. He would typically go straight to the car and walk right into the drunk tank. Other times, he got violent, Ragland said. “Call them all hun, I ain’t going in,â€? Ragland said he remembers LG saying to the officers when he refused to go into the cell. He was a skinny man, but he worked on a railroad, swinging a hammer, he continued. “He’d just knock you goofy, man,â€? Ragland said.

Integrating the force Before 1969, only three black men were on the police force, Ragland said, and they weren’t allowed to answer 911 calls made by white people. The most they could do was work traffic during a car wreck until a white officer showed up, he continued. The three officers were Milton McConnell, James Solomon and Archie Lawrence. McConnell, who was 6 feet, 7 inches tall, was one of the officers who taught Ragland how to deal with people. “He was extremely intelligent. He was really, really thrilled when they integrated the department,� Ragland said. Ragland recalled one night that an officer called in sick and his supervisor called Ragland over on his Broad Street beat and asked if he wouldn’t mind having Solomon ride with him. The supervisor wouldn’t even call Solomon by his first name, Ragland said. Solomon and Ragland were two of the first white and black officers to ride together, Ragland said. After 6 p.m., the two men would go eat and Solomon was made uncomfortable by many of the restaurants on Broad Street, except for The Partridge. Following Hart’s ascension to the position of chief, the three black officers were allowed to work white calls and ride with white officers. After that, black officers began to be hired in higher numbers, Ragland concluded.

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PXUGHU RQ 'LYLVLRQ 6WUHHW UHPDLQV XQVROYHG %\ -2+1 %$,/(< damaged by fire less than a TO PUT IT LIGHTLY, Kelly Ledbetter had a week before his death. 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII checkered past. Investigators scoured the He’d been convicted at county questioning Ledbetter’s least twice for possession of untaxed known acquaintances but no arrests whiskey and was the suspect in the arson were made, nor was a weapon found. at a property he at least partially owned. Leads started to dry up. On the night of Feb. 25, 1968, the 45There was speculation that the muryear-old bootlegger was found shot once der was a planned hit, and Ledbetter’s in the right side of his head, slumped death may have been connected with a over the steering wheel of a truck that charge of possessing illegal liquor. had been confiscated two months At that point, the GBI was called in before during his most recent arrest. to assist local law enforcement in the Years after the murder, a self-coninvestigation and the Aug. 28, 1970, fessed “illegal whiskey procurer� told edition of the Rome News-Tribune a Rome News-Tribune reporter over reported it appeared investigators had the phone that Ledbetter was killed a definite suspect. “for pressuring the wrong man.� A person the article identified as The case began at 9 p.m. that one of Ledbetter’s brothers said two February night when Rome police GBI agents told him, “you’re going to found Ledbetter’s body outside of be awfully surprised when you find Rome Moose Lodge 1860, a lodge he out who did it.� founded, then located at 7 Division St. However, no arrests were ever His foot was on the truck’s brake made in the crime. Almost 10 years pedal and a key was in the ignition, after the murder, new evidence was although the motor had not been started. presented to a Floyd County grand Police found the spent shell of a jury. According to the 1976 September high-caliber rifle at the back of a term grand jury presentments, they house near the considered the side of the Moose new evidence but Lodge’s parking found nothing to lot. Although the “warrant further lodge was closed, consideration by it had been open this grand jury.� earlier that afterNow, 48 years noon. later, the unsolved Ledbetter had murder will been a partner in always remain the Coosa Valley that way — or Furniture Co. at unprosecuted at 623 Shorter Ave. least, said former and had once Rome Police operated a tavern Department Maj. known as the Mike Ragland. “Chicken Club� on Old Lindale Road. The main suspect that much of the Police said they were investigating his investigation hinged on has also possible role in a suspected arson at passed away, along with the knowlthe furniture store, which was heavily edge of who did the deed.

The main suspect that much of the investigation hinged on has also passed away, along with the knowledge of who did the deed.

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5HPHPEHULQJ D FODVVLF /D)D\HWWH &RFD &ROD %RWWOLQJ &R IN 1967, WHEN ROBERT %\ -26+ 2¶%5<$17 Coca-Cola Co. — to have the product WARDLAW IV was 6 years old, he within an arm’s reach of desire at work, 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII began working at his family’s business, play and home,” Wardlaw said. “We LaFayette Coca-Cola Bottling Co. worked under that premise that wherev“My personal memories are walking from North er people were going to be, there needed to be a LaFayette Elementary School and walking to the Coke machine there.” plant, to my job there, which was to sweep and keep During this time, the plan for delivering drinks the pigeons out of the rafters underneath the overwas pretty inefficient, Wardlaw recalled. hangs,” said Wardlaw, now CEO at Wardlaw “It didn’t matter if they sold one case a week. Management Group in LaFayette. There is nothing efficient about driving a vehicle At the time, more than 100 employees worked at out to Catlett to deliver a single case, but that is the LaFayette plant, which was located at 208 N. exactly what we did,” he said. “In the ’60s and ’70s, Main St., now home to LaFayette Public Safety. The it was just all-out, full-aggressive to make the prodLaFayette plant was sold in 1997 to Chattanooga uct pervasive in communities.” Coca-Cola. A case of 24 Cokes in the ’60s cost about $1.80 Wardlaw ended up working for Coca-Cola for and a single bottle cost 10 cents. more than 30 years, living in various areas throughThe Coca-Cola Co. introduced the 12-ounce allout the U.S. He eventually moved back to his home- aluminum Coca-Cola can in 1967. town of LaFayette. “Coca-Cola brings people together and it doesn’t In the ’60s a state-of-the-art bottle-washing recognize status, race, political affiliation, gender. machine was brought to the plant. “It doesn’t recognize any demographic signifi“That’s when things got really automated,” he cance,” Wardlaw said. “That was true in the ’60s, said. and there that product is today as available for one The company was going “green” before the term person as it is for the other.” was invented. Wardlaw said, “The brand loves everyone. CocaBottles were picked up from various stores and Cola is everything that’s good about our country and recycled for reuse. this extends to other countries, (to) the most remote “The mantra was, ‘within an arm’s reach of countries, villages, and dwellings on the face of this desire.’ That was the overarching theme of the globe. Coca-Cola is there. Everywhere.”

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-). %HDWOHV KLSSLHV WURXEOH DW VFKRRO %\ 7$0$5$ :2/. IT WAS 1963 AND LORI Carter says she has more acute ATKINS CARTER was not quite memories of the 1960s than of 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII 3 years old, but she recalls the many other portions of her life, day John F. Kennedy was assassiespecially the way cultural norms nated. changed so quickly. “I was too young to understand about the “When I was little, people got dressed up president, but I remember my dad came home like it was Sunday to go to the grocery store. from work early. He brought me a little presBut that all changed overnight, and people ent, like he often did. My mom had made veg- were wearing jeans. I remember the first time etable soup for lunch, but no one ate anything my mother wore jeans.� — the atmosphere was just very quiet and Carter also remembers the time she wore to sad. I knew something very bad had hapschool a dress and shoes depicting elements pened.� of the American flag. She was sent to the Three months later, in early 1964, Carter principal’s office. was stretched out on her living room floor in “They called my parents in,� she says. LaFayette with her cousin, watching The “You didn’t call parents away from work back Beatles in black and white on “The Ed then unless it was really serious. They said I Sullivan Show.� Her mom and aunt watched was disrespecting the flag.� from the couch. But Carter’s mother stood her ground. “I remember my mom saying, ‘this just tickles you down to your toes,’� says Carter. &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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to the Woodstock festival 1,000 miles away in New York. “I kept telling my dad to stop and pick some of them up, but he wouldn’t,� says Carter. “So I just waved at them and they made peace signs back at me. “What was best about the ’60s is the same as what was worst about those times,� says Carter. “Before the ’60s, we were steeped in conservative tradition. We didn’t have to think about things, everyone knew what was expected of them. “The ’60s turned that on its head. All of a sudden, everything was questioned, tradition was rejected, and we were thrown into turmoil trying to figure out what our roles in life should be. We need tradition to help civilize and stabilize our lives, but we also need to feel free to examine our traditions and reject them or change them,� she said. “The respect we gave others in the ’60s was a fearful respect,� Carter continued. “Our views changed from that to believing respect should be earned. Now we struggle to show any respect at all. I think we’re still confused, but we are freer to examine our lives and make better choices.�

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“My mom wasn’t one to speak out about things, but she told the principal that she was a proud American who worked hard for the money she’d spent on that outfit and that my clothes were a sign of pride in America, not disrespect.� Carter was permitted to stay at school in her patriotic dress. By 1969, a still very young Carter became immersed in hippie culture through her 14-year-old babysitter, who adored The Beatles and all things 1960s. “We listened to Beatles music all the time. She wanted to go to Woodstock so bad, and I was excited about it, too.� Of course, the girls couldn’t go, but they spent the rest of the year dreaming about the release of the Woodstock album. In August 1969, Carter and her family were on their way home from vacation in Florida. Carter says the highway was lined with long-haired, bell-bottomed, bead-wearing hippies with their thumbs stuck out, trying to hitch rides

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Âś0D\RU RI :RRGVWDWLRQ¡ UHIOHFWV RQ OLIH LQ WKH ¡ V SUE GRACY, PLAYFULLY %\ 6+(55< '(( $//(1 “If we were poor, we didn’t REFERRED to as the “Mayor really know we were poor,â€? she 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII of Woodstation,â€? seems to have said. “Nobody had anything. a knack for keeping tabs on the Nobody was rich, so you didn’t small-town ebb and flow of the area. The know the difference. Out here we had everynickname stuck as the result of a friendly thing we needed. We raised pigs, cows and prank, but she has fun with it and pretends to chickens so we were never hungry.â€? “keep and eye on thingsâ€? in her tiny little She recalled a devastating time early in her Georgia community nestled between Ringgold marriage to the late Paul Gracy, when racial and Rock Spring. tensions hit close to home. In 1968, rioting “It’s a wonderful place to live,â€? she said. broke out in the streets of downtown “I’ve been here all my life.â€? Chattanooga in retaliation against the disturbReflecting on life during the ’60s, the ing news of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassispunky 70-something grandmother who nation. Their business, Wallace Tile on enjoys spending lots of time with her grandAmnicola Highway, was caught in the crosskids, said it was quite different when she was fire. a girl. “The blacks were rioting ‌ because some“When we came in from school, you one had killed Martin Luther King,â€? she said. changed clothes and picked cotton ’til dark,â€? “It was happening everywhere, not just here. she said. “You chopped the cotton, then picked They marched all the way down the street setit, then you got your money in the fall so you ting things on fire.â€? could buy your school clothes. We didn’t think While the building didn’t burn to the anything about it. Everybody did it. That was ground, and insurance allowed them to a way of life. You had to do it to survive.â€? rebuild, it was still very upsetting to see all Although now the situation may be viewed the damage, she said. as a bit harsh, Gracy said it was a normal and &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH happy life.

Cave Spring School: Cave Spring established the first public school in Floyd County. The Cave Spring High School was well known for its successful Basketball Teams. They won many Regional Titles and the Girl’s team captured the State Championship in 1967. They were runner up in 1969 and again in 1971. The High School was later closed and the new elementary school was dedicated in 1988. Today it is a school of excellence at the Pre-K and Elementary levels . It is also working on becoming a STEM certified school.

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Pool: Area residents and visitors have enjoyed the crisp spring fed pool since it was built in the 1930s in the shape of the state of Georgia. This photo from the 1960s shows that not much has changed over the years, and as seen in the current photo, it is still a hit when the temperature rises.

The Peddler: The building on the West end was built in 1884 and the one to the East was built by the Masons in 1908 and was their Lodge. In the 1960s these buildings were home to a Photography studio, Myers Restaurant and the Masonic Lodge upstairs. Today it is the home of the Peddler, Gifts and Home DĂŠcor and the owners have a loft home upstairs.

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Coastal Convenience and Creekside Restaurant: Still providing visitors and residents the convenience of a Downtown convenience store, not much has changed here since the 1960s. Visit the newly remodeled Creekside Restaurant next door and enjoy a beautiful view of the creek and park while having a home style meal.

Town Square Merchants: These 1960s businesses provided many needed items to local residents. Today, you can stroll past these colorful businesses to shop for the most unique items at Christa’s, get a new style at Mirror Mirror Salon or grab a real southern meal at Southern Flavor. Cross the street to visit the General Store for some nostalgic finds.

Linde Marie’s Steakhouse: This building was built in the late 1870s. In this photo it was home to Peggy’s Beauty Salon. A popular place in the 1960s for the ladies to gather and get the latest hair style while catching up on the latest news around town. Home now to Award Winning Linde Marie’s Steakhouse.

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0XVLF EXVLQHVV KDV FKDQJHG RYHU WKH \HDUV %\ 7(55< '($1 “Meet The Beatles� album. ALTHOUGH HE HAS BEEN EXPOSED to the “This was after we had all 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII music world for most of been sitting around trashing his life, Mychael J. The Beatles because they Thomas said he started out to be an looked like girls and the girls liked artist. He was the one chosen to do them and we were jealous,� said posters at school to promote events Thomas. “She said, ‘I’ve got you when the need arose. And even though something,’ and she handed me the he had a guitar, his parents sent him to “Meet The Beatles� album. I was like, art school. ‘Not The Beatles, ewwwwww!’ And it “But I was so unruly in my thinkhurt her feelings so bad. She started to ing,� noted Thomas. “I didn’t want to cry nearly. I said, ‘No mom, thank you. do technique. I was more of an abstract It is OK. I am sorry. I will listen.� art fan — Van Gogh, Picasso and anyThomas put the record on and the first thing that was abstract. I liked it. song was “I Want to Hold Your Hand.� “I got some technique, had some “I thought, ‘Wow, that is not Elvis, talent, but then I started to get into but it is pretty good,� said Thomas. “I music when Elvis came on the scene, listened to the whole record because and I got more into it later, with the the whole thing wasn’t but about 30 movies and stuff.� minutes, about 15 minutes per side. I Thomas reflected on his music leg- said, ‘Hey, that is pretty good,’ so I acy in December 2013 as he rememlistened to it again and listened to that bered his father, the late Tommy thing four or five times, came out and Jackson, who played with George said, ‘I like The Beatles!’ Jones, Ray Price and others. “And from then on, from that night By 1959 and 1960, Thomas said, of actually hearing that music, that is Elvis ceased touring and he found what I wanted to do,� said Thomas. “I himself drawn to his classic tunes, still draw. I still dabble in the art including “Hound Dog� and thing, but that — I think in that one “Jailhouse Rock.� listen — became my passion. The “Yeah, they made you move,� said Beatles changed everything in music Thomas. “I wanted to sing and I want- anyway, and of course my dad hated ed to play guitar, but of course Daddy them for it, but they were very comwouldn’t buy me a guitar, until later. plimentary of country music and realWhen I was 11, he actually bought me ly liked country music. a guitar. That was in 1964, the year “But then in Nashville people The Beatles came out.� always had kind of an arrogance about them,� said Thomas. “For anybody from the outside, they were very Meet The Beatles unfriendly, much like a small town.� Thomas was a fifth-grade student Some of the songs The Beatles perwhen he heard about the appearance of formed, Thomas pointed out, would The Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.� be considered country music today. “When we got to school, all the girls were standing around talking Starting a band about The Beatles,� he said. “Mostly Paul. As for all the guys, we still had At the age of 13, Thomas said his our hair slicked back and used the parents divorced and he moved with his Brylcreem and combed it up really mom to Alabama. By the time he was high. We are all sitting around watchin the eighth grade, he started a band. ing the girls coo over The Beatles. We “I dissolved my own band to go to were like, ‘Man, these guys look like work with another band,� said girls. That is stupid.’� Thomas. “In high school, at 14, I was At that time, his mother worked for making $50 or $75 a week every RCA Records and certain employees, weekend from then on. I think from including her boss, often received free that point I decided, ‘School is just a promotional records. And when he waste of time for me.’ I was terrible in returned home from school that afterschool, plus I was the new kid, this noon, she had a gift for him — the hippie kid. I started to grow my hair

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0\FKDHO - 7KRPDV IRUPHU RZQHU RI 7KH 0XVLF (PSRULXP RI &HQWUH SHUIRUPV D IHZ FKRUGV LQ KLV ORFDO VWXGLR out, liked heavy music like (Jimi) Hendrix. If it was heavy, I liked it. “But I worked every weekend, and by the time I was 17, I left that band. One of the drummers that had worked with that band, we had a band called Everyday Lyfe. We spelled life with a Y, which is one of the reasons I changed the spelling of my name,� said Thomas. He and others later formed a band called Felt and were able to write their own songs and land a record deal with a Nashville label. Forty years later, in 2013, Felt got back together for another album, that included a tribute to their keyboard player, who died in a car wreck in 1973. In his early 20s, Thomas moved back to Nashville and began doing session work at Opryland. He also did an album for RCA in 1979. “That was really the last big thing I did,� he said. “I came close to a couple of more deals. I had two or three opportunities and it just never did happen like it did for that RCA label. I got saved in 1987 and wanted to get out of it, and that is when I started teaching. I always had my private studio.�

‘A certain chemistry’ Thomas said reuniting with his former Felt members was a gratifying experience. “Getting back with those guys reminded me why I love to play

music,� he said. “There was just a magic that happened when the four of us got in a room. That is what happened with The Beatles. There is a certain chemistry, which happens with those people. That is what happened to us after 40 years. We all kept playing and everybody was better.� And while technology, The Beatles and the groups that followed changed the whole approach to recording music, they didn’t affect the creativity, Thomas said — which reminded him of his father’s days as a country and western entertainer. “There was no, and still is no, substitute for creativity. I think those are things those A-Team guys had. They all had heart. You could tell it, and I was fortunate to be in the middle of all that, watching these guys play music. You could see it in their faces. There was a camaraderie and a magic that happened when all of those musicians were playing in the same room together,� said Thomas. That feeling is still the key to good music, he said. “It has to move some kind of emotion in a person when they hear it or see it on video, whatever. It still had to have the emotional center and I think that is what my dad had. I think that is what those guys had. “There’s no more George Joneses and Ray Prices, Tex Ritters,� said Thomas. “It’s gone.�

SEPTEMBER 2016

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*DUDJH EDQGV ² :LOG IXQ LQ WKH V AS THE POP MUSIC SCENE EVOLVED in the 1960s local teenagers saw the chance to pick up some money on the side, not by working as bag boys at the grocery store, but by playing music for their fellow teens. Garage bands began %\ '28* :$/.(5 to pop up 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII across the community and quickly became favorites at local high school dances and other clubs. “Embedded throughout Rome are guys that, at one time or another, played in these garage bands,â€? said Steve Kemp, who played with the Knight Riders, a group that morphed into a band called the Peppermint Confederacy. Popular groups of the mid and late 1960s included Jay Walker and the Pedestrians, the Penetrations, Bear Rabbit, Speed Limit 40, and the Gee Tee’s. “They were very innovative on some of these names,â€? said Marshall Plants, who played for the Gee Tee’s, one of the first groups that featured a black lead singer, Curtis Reed. Another group that featured both black and white players was called the Checkerboard Squares. “One time we played in downtown Cedar Bluff on the back of a flatbed truck and there we were half black and half white,â€? Paul DiPrima said. “Half the crowd hated us because we had black guys in the band with us because of all the racial tension at the time.â€? Plants remembers several Gee Tee’s gigs at the Fraternal Lounge on Moran Lake Road. “There would be 300 people out there, maybe five white people and they were all in the band,â€? Plants said. “They accepted us and we had a great time.â€? Mike Kizziah, who now lives in Arkansas, was the lead singer for Jay Walker and the Pedestrians. He said the group wanted a little different sound from some of the other bands so they added a horn section, complete with trombone, sax and trumpet to the band. “We basically were a rhythm and blues and Motown band,â€? Kizziah said. The group gained considerable notoriety and traveled all over the

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7KH *HH 7HHÂśV ZHUH RQH RI 5RPHÂśV KRW EDQGV LQ WKH V )URP OHIW DUH 0DUVKDOO 3ODQWV &XUWLV 5HHG 7RP $EOHV 6WHYH 'XQFDQ DQG =DQH 1LFKROVRQ Southeast. He said the group had been contacted about becoming the house band at Kitten’s Korner, a nightclub in Atlanta. Right before the first show opening for comedian Red Foxx, the manager came to the group and asked if everyone was at least 18 years old. “Our drummer spoke up and said no,â€? Kizziah said. That was the end of the gig. Reed has similar memories during his years with the Gee Tee’s. “I was too young to be in the clubs then,â€? Reed said. “They would keep me in the dressing room until it was time for me to come out.â€? Glenn Adams, now a manager at Sam’s Club in Rome, was a drummer with Jay Walker and the Pedestrians. He said the local group played all the local sock hops after football games along with the long trips. “I remember we were playing at some hotel in Daytona Beach and played until about 11 or 12 one night then went down the road and played at another nightclub until 2 or 3 a.m.,â€? Adams said. Long road trips were the source of memories for several local musicians. Greg Fricks, at R.J. Fricks Voila furniture on Broad Street, was the manager and backup singer for The Penetrations (their music penetrated the sound barrier according to Fricks). “We were coming back from Cuthbert, Georgia, and the station

“That’s where we could get in trouble, where we were around adults.� Steve Kemp

wagon kept running hot so we pulled over just about every time we crossed a bridge over a creek. All we had was a couple of boots and we had to haul

water from the creek. I think it took us about 20 hours to get back that night,� Fricks said. Kemp recalled the late ’60s as a really wild time. “If I could find a purpose to write some of this stuff I would,� Kemp said. “It was bittersweet, fun and sad. It only lasted a couple of years. Everybody got out of high school and went their own way.� DiPrima played guitar and bass for a number of groups back in those days. “Things just changed. Somebody would all of a sudden start flunking a class in school, and their parents would say you’re going to play drums or you’re going to graduate from high school,� DiPrima said. “Either that, or a girl would get involved, the next thing you’d know guys were fighting over girlfriends.� He said bands would be together six or eight months and sometimes they would last a couple of years. &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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7KH *HH 7HHÂśV ZHUH RQH RI 5RPHÂśV IDYRULWH EDQGV LQ WKH ODWH V .QHHOLQJ IURP OHIW DUH 5RQQLH $PPRQV DQG %REE\ -RQHV %DFN URZ IURP OHIW DUH &XUWLV 5HHG 7RPP\ $EOHV :LOOLDP 5HHG DQG %UXFH %U\DQW &RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH Kemp remembers the Rome Teen Club, which was based out of the Civic Center on Jackson Hill, launched a lot of the local bands. The club was managed by Irma Plemmons “It was clean. She ran it right, no drinking and no fighting,â€? Kemp said. On the flip side, Kemp remembers playing at places like one of the VFW halls. “That’s where we could get in trouble, where we were around adults.â€? Kizziah recalls playing at the King’s Inn in West Rome. “The owner, he was an older kind of guy, and it wouldn’t be anything for him to come up and interrupt a song and make some announcement that somebody had messed the bathroom up,â€? Kizziah said. Curtis Reed recalls getting into a little hot water one night when the Gee Tee’s were playing a club at Fort McClellan, Alabama. Reed said after the show was over, the band went into a restaurant to get some breakfast. “Everybody ordered and she (the waitress) brought everybody’s food. She told me, sir I can’t bring you any food.â€? Reed said band member Tom Ables asked her why, and she said she couldn’t serve negroes. “That made Tom so mad he jumped up and took his eggs and threw them against the

wall and we ran out of the place,� Reed said. Reed said one of his fondest memories of his days with the Gee Tee’s was winning the Southeastern Battle of the Bands at Tanners Beach near Carrollton. It was a summer-long, week-byweek elimination battle. Adams said that Jay Walker and the Pedestrians also won that competition one year while he was their drummer. Esther Vaughn, a retired educator, said most of the African-American music scene in the 1960s was based at clubs like the Fraternal Lounge, Idle Hour and the Bucket of Blood. Vaughn recalls that most of the artists who entertained at those clubs came in from out of town. Edward “Butch� Haynes, a former Negro League baseball player from Rome, said that when prominent black acts would play Atlanta that Emma Dozier could get them to come to her Fraternal Lounge off Moran Lake Road. “All the big stars were there,� Haynes said. Another important figure of the era was Cartersville’s Jackey Beavers. Back in the 1960s, long before he became a prominent church leader, Beavers was a recording artist and co-wrote “Someday We’ll be Together,� the last hit for The Supremes before Diana Ross left the group. Beavers recorded the song in 1962, but it was The Supremes

“All the big stars were there (at the Fraternal Lounge off Moran Lake Road).� Edward “Butch� Haynes who made it a huge hit in 1969. The song has become an anthem for Motown reunion events through the years. Reed recalls that a lot of prominent black acts of the day — James Brown, Otis Redding, Little Richard — made their way through Rome. Reed said Rome was one of the cities on what he referred to as the “Chitlin’ Circuit.� Plants said those were the days when Rome really was the cultural capital of Northwest Georgia. A reunion of the Teen Club has been scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 22, at The Forum from 7 to 11 p.m. Tickets will be available at the door for $10. Organizer Sally Wimbish is encouraging folks to bring their own food and beverages.

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Boomer generation, created a period in music history that has outlasted time. Even young people today are singing along to songs of the Four Tops and Motown expanded from The Temptations,� Payne said. Miracles — picking up The Stuart Shaklee, another child of the Temptations, The Four Tops, The ’60s who plays Beatles hits from noon Supremes, Little Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, who churned out hit after to 1 p.m. each Tuesday on The Ridge 95.7 FM, said he believes that hit after hit. both the British and Motown The Rolling Stones, The artists ultimately influenced Animals, The Dave Clark each other toward the end of Five, Herman’s Hermits and the decade. others joined the Beatle-led “There was an awful lot of British Invasion. Motown influence on The Radio stations in Rome Beatles and the early rhythm were taking note as well. Ken and blues you can hear in the Payne, West Rome Class of Stones,� Shaklee said. “Then 1965, whose father Mather you heard The Temptations Payne owned WRGA radio at and some of the others going the time, said The Beatles more psychedelic. The were more than just a pheTemptations had ‘Psychedelic nomenon. “It was like someShack’ and you could hear the thing from outer space,� overlap there.� Payne said. “They (teens of Ken Payne Of course the ’60s weren’t the ’60s) really latched on to without great domestic groups it because of the sound and of the decade. Among those at because they had long hair.� the top of the list were the Beach Boys, Payne said the great thing about the Sonny and Cher, The Mamas and the Motown sound was that it was easy to Papas, The Byrds, Crosby, Stills and dance to. He said the music of that era, Nash and others. coupled with the growth of the Baby &RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH

“It was like something from outer space.�

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/D)D\HWWH FRXSOH FDQ VWLOO IHHO FKLOO RI LFH VWRUP %\ -26+ 2Âś%5<$17 May (1960), I was cutting GEORGE AND MARIE CORBIN of some of the pines and it 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII LaFayette vividly rememstill had ice in under (the ber the ice storm that brush),â€? George said. “It struck on March 2, 1960. was the worst ice storm that’s ever George, now 83 years old, and been through here.â€? Marie, now 85, were living at their Today, the Corbins live in the same family farm off Ga. 136 when the house, which was built in 60 days in storm hit 56 years ago across the 1959 on the family land for about $2,100. Southeast. It was four years prior to Installing the plumbing in the baththe birth of their only child, David. room cost the couple a mere $21. The “It sounded like a war the whole entire bathroom suite cost only $100. night — just ‘boom, boom, boom’,â€? They didn’t purchase an air condiGeorge said about the falling trees and tioner until the early 1990s. power poles. “It broke all of the poles Marie worked in various hosiery mills, down. ‌ Every power pole from here including one in Rossville, while George to Naomi (community in central worked in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at Walker County) was broken off.â€? the Chris-Craft Boats Factory. The Corbins said they were lucky George said the road they live on — electricity returned to their properwas just a dirt track at the time and it ty after only a few days. But many ran right beside his yard. That was residents remained without power for before he got out there and rerouted longer. the road. “You couldn’t get out,â€? he said. “They told me they had never seen “It broke down timber here and or heard of anyone moving the road they said it would take 30 years before and I said, ‘Well, it is easier to move the signs of it would be gone. All of the road than my house.’ I didn’t want my land was in pine, see? I know, in to live that close to the road,â€? he said.

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5R\·V 'ULYH ,Q DQG KHDGLQJ WR 7KH *(0 %\ 7</(5 6(55,77 WITNESSING AND “All the drugstores had ENDURING EVENTS soda fountains and people 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII such as Vietnam War, the would just talk while they brutal battle for Civil got refills of sodas or Rights and integration, and the tension of malts,” Smith said. “I even worked as the Cold War arms race, there was plenty a soda jerk for a little while myself.” of reasons in the 1960s to cut loose and “I remember there were places like find ways to spend time with others. Owens Drug Store and Calhoun Drug Free from a world of social media Store in town and they each had the soda and lit screens, the members of the fountains and either stools or booths to Gordon County community managed sit at,” Brock said. “They also had the to find many simple ways to interact best sandwiches, malts and milkshakes.” with their friends and pass the time. If you weren’t hungry or thirsty, ERA Prime Real Estate associate catching a flick at the Bel-Air Drivebroker Brenda Brock attended Calhoun In Movie Theatre was also an exciting High School in the 1960s, and has way to spend the weekend. fond memories of driving to a restauThe Bel-Air Drive-In was open from rant and ordering food being one of the 1950-1977 and remained an entertainfavorite social events of the area. ment staple throughout the 1960s. “We would always go to a places like Roy’s Drive-In and Chow Line, where you would just drive in a large parking lot around to see which of your friends were there in their cars,” Brock said. “You would just go park after school or work and get your order taken while you were just hanging out in a big group. “When the A&W opened up near where Thatcher’s Barbecue & Grill is now, that was also one of our favorBrenda Brock ites. The point wasn’t to go inside and get your food fast, but to get out and get to meet people.” Former Calhoun High School head “I thought the Bel-Air was the football coach Jerry Smith, who has been a greatest thing ever back then,” Smith Gordon County resident for 82 years, also said. “That place was a novelty.” likes to reflect on a decade in which going The Bel-Air featured only one out to eat meant more than just how quick- screen and listed its capacity at 300 ly you could move through a drive-thru. cars. The teenagers of Gordon Country tried to get the most out of the space. “Everybody wanted to go to the BelAir,” Brock said. “So we would put people under seats or squeeze them into the trunk just so we could see how many of our friends could get in for free.” Opening in 1927, The GEM Theatre 6WRQH¶V .LWFKHQ also served as a fantastic place to take a “Wisteria and Stone’s Kitchen were date and watch a film or live perforthe first two prominent drive-ins I mance in the 1960s, much like you can remember eating at around here in the still do today after it re-opened in 2011. ’60s,” Smith said. “They were considered “You could tell how popular the GEM fast-food, but they weren’t very fast.” Theatre was back then because the line With the abundance and access to car- stretched all the way down the sidewalk bonated beverages these days it is easy downtown,” Brock said. “I remember to forget that soda used to be a thought even big musicians like Jerry Lee of as a luxury. According to Smith, the Lewis playing there back then.” soda fountains located around Gordon Going to the GEM Theatre was County also functioned as an ideal part of the routine. place to spend some time after school. “Every Sunday, the GEM would open

“I remember even big musicians like Jerry Lee Lewis playing there.”

back up around 2 p.m. and everybody would want to go after church was over,” Smith said. “It is just what people did.” If someone preferred not to leave the house for entertainment, listening to records was a superb alternative to going out. American music in the 1960s was largely infused with the raucous ballads of The Rolling Stones, mellow tunes of The Beatles and raspy guitar riffs of Led Zeppelin. However, Gordon County’s musical tastes remained a little more traditional, with Merle Haggard’s, Patsy Cline’s, Eddie Arnold’s and even Elvis Presley’s hit songs filling the ears of the majority. “We might have heard the rock ’n’ roll and everything, but I think the people in this area mostly stuck with the country music,” Smith said. “Country music really tugs at the heartstrings, and I think people still identified more with that.” “In the ’60s, a lot of my friends and I still considered Elvis to be ‘The King,’” Brock said. “I did whatever I could to listen to Elvis and watch Elvis, even

G AMMON A NDERSON & M C F ALL ATTORNEYS AT LAW

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though my grandfather really didn’t like me watching him on television.” Not everybody was fortunate enough to own a television in the 1960s, but televised events such as the John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon debate, Apollo 11 moon landing and the Kennedy assassination made a television feel like a vital piece of technology. “Everybody gathered around the televisions for all the big stories,” Smith said. “Eventually I found favorite shows like ‘Perry Mason’ and ‘Cheyenne,’ and I started watching those every day.” At first glance, the entertainment and activities of 1960s don’t seem that different from 2016. Both decades have sports, television shows, movies and music. However, according to Smith, there is one key difference: actual connection between people. “During that time no one had their face buried in a phone or computer screen,” Smith said. “In the ’60s, people actually took the time and made an effort to get to know people and have genuine conversation. It is something that is very, very rare now.”

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3KRWRMRXUQDOLVW UHFDOOV JURZLQJ XS LQ V DENNIS NORWOOD, A ROSSVILLE High School graduate, has been a photojournalist for years. But before he spent his days shooting pictures of local sports, he was just a regular kid growing up in the 1960s. During the that era, %\ $'$0 &22. Norwood said, 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII his family lived in the East Lake area of Chattanooga, Tennessee. “When I was getting ready to start high school, that was the first year they started bussing in Chattanooga,” he said. “My parents were like, ‘there’s no way you’re going to Riverside … We’re going to move, and you’re going to go to Rossville.’” Norwood said he remembers a lot of significant events of the decade — some of which shaped the country, and others that were just fun memories of that time period.

The Kennedy assassination (1963) “I was in the second grade,” Norwood recalled. “It happened, and it got deathly quiet in the school. They came in and said, ‘We’re dismissing early today.’ They just let us go home. … I got home and my grandmother had her head in her hands and she was crying. She said the president had been shot. “Even as a second-grader, that was important news. We sat in front of the television for hours watching the news. The newspaper came out that evening with the big headline that Kennedy had been killed. “It affected everybody. As things would happen on the news, our teacher would explain it to us, little by little. My parents even kept me home the day of his funeral to watch it on television.”

Moon landing (1969) “When the moon landing happened, I had recently been at Boy Scout camp,” Norwood said. “I got home in time that day, and I had one of those little Philco portable television sets that I’d gotten for Christmas several years before, and I remember staying up late, lying in my bed watching the moon landing happen. It

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'HQQLV 1RUZRRG WRRN KLV ILUVW WULS WR WKH GHQWLVW LQ was all fuzzy and black and white, of course … I remember thinking, ‘Man, he’s really on the moon … I’m lying in bed with a TV, he’s on the moon, and I’m getting to watch it.’”

Civil Rights Norwood said when he was really young, in the early 1960s, there wasn’t much to worry about, but things evolved as he got older. “We’d always grown up in a cocoon there in East Lake,” Norwood explained. “I can remember living at 38th Street and 15th Avenue … We were out in the yard playing one day when I was a little older, and this truck came flying up to a four-way stop sign there. We looked up from playing and there were three or four guys there in the back of the truck with their rifles, shotguns, and hoods on. It scared the crap out of us. We all went running into our homes and stuff, and then later that day, it was the first time I ever remember there being a citywide curfew put in place. Back then, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (in Chattanooga) was called Ninth Street and it was on fire … it had been lit up, torched. Firemen were everywhere … there were reports of firefighters getting shot at and stuff. It was a scary time.”

Sports Norwood still remembers his favorite football player from those days, and recalls when the Atlanta Braves became the baseball team of the South. “Jerry Kramer of the Green Bay Packers was my favorite athlete and

still is to this day,” Norwood said. “I remember the first Super Bowl with the Packers and Chiefs in 1967.” Baseball was also a big part of his childhood. “The Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966 and everybody loved Hank Aaron,” Norwood said. “When I played baseball for East Lake, the uniform we wore that year … we all had Atlanta Braves jerseys, and we all wore number 44. “The whole team … that was cool for us, because up until then you could pick up the St. Louis Cardinals games on the radio, but that team moving to Atlanta was huge for fans around here. “It was probably the biggest thing in sports for the South around that time.”

Movies and TV Norwood said he remembers going to see a number of movies and recalls some of his favorite 1960s TV shows. “I remember going with my dad to see Elvis Presley in ‘Viva Las Vegas’ in

1964 at the Rogers Theater on Market Street in Chattanooga,” Norwood said. “I also remember going to see ‘Grand Prix,’ with James Garner, in 1966 at the old Brainerd Theater at the corner of Germantown and Brainerd roads. It was so cool seeing those Formula One cars going across the biggest screen in Chattanooga. As far as TV goes, I always looked forward to ‘Batman’ with Adam West, ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ and some of the local shows like ‘Miss Marcia’s Fun Time’ and ‘The Bob Brandy Show.’ ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ was on back then, too, and that was one the whole family would sit down and watch together … A lot of families don’t do stuff like that anymore.” Nowadays, after years of service in the U.S. Air Force and his many accomplishments as a photojournalist, Norwood said he is astonished at times at how the world has evolved since the 1960s. “It was a cool time back then,” Norwood said. “Things have changed so much. It’s neat to look back and think about it all.”

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'ULYH ,Q ZDV D IDYRULWH KDQJRXW IN THE 1950S AND 1960S, MILLIONS OF AMERICANS flocked to drive-in movies to see their favorite flicks under the stars. And the 411 Drive In, located at 300 County Road 265 in Centre, was no different. Emory Johnson first %\ 7(55< '($1 opened the 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII Drive In in 1953 and it stayed open until the early 1980s. They opened the drive-in once again in 2000, and it continues to thrive today. Sara Johnson, wife of the late Emory Johnson, recalls that the drivein was one of the favorite hangouts in the area — not just for watching movies but also for socializing and catching up. While they were thrilled with the success of the drive-in, it was a huge juggling act for them in the 1960s when the Johnsons started their family. But they made it work. “We would meet each other coming back and forth with the children,� Sara recalled. “He was farming 3,000 acres of land, working the drive-in and everything else.� And like many across the country, the 411 Drive In thrived during the 1960s. “It was real busy,� she said. “Mr. Glover Johnson, Emory’s dad, booked the movies. He would go to Atlanta, book the movies.� At that time, she said, the 411 Drive In was one of the only places to go, except for football games on Friday nights. Those were the days when movie watchers had to put the speakers in their car. And, yes, there were a number of patrons who drove off with them. “They would cut them off!� said Sara. “We had a terrible time. We would find them in ditches. They would cut them off just for the fun of it.� When they reopened in 2000, Sara recalls, “People would come in and say ‘well, do we have this thing that hangs on the car?’ I said, ‘Honey, that went out in 1983, I think.’� And, as many would expect, they had their share of people who got in for free by hiding in the trunk of their cars. Although many considered it a funny joke, Sara didn’t then and still doesn’t tolerate dishonesty, particularly in the

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7KH 'ULYH ,Q LQ &HQWUH $OD ILUVW RSHQHG LQ UHRSHQHG LQ DQG LV VWLOO WKULYLQJ WRGD\ 'XULQJ WKH V DQG Âś V WKH GULYH LQ ZDV D SRSXODU KDQJRXW IRU IDPLOLHV WHHQDJHUV DQG DOO PRYLH JRHUV family-oriented environment they have strived to maintain over the years. “Somebody (years later) was laughing and said, ‘We hid in the trunk,’â€? said Sara. “I said ‘Well, you are the reason we went down in 1984.’ If we caught them, of course, they had to pay. But sometimes they got in. We were busy and didn’t see it.â€? But, overall, Sara feels they were extremely fortunate they didn’t have to put up with much rowdiness. “We have had good people come,â€? she said. “We have just been real lucky.â€? Emory was one who kept a strict, fatherly eye on things, she said. “We didn’t have many back then,â€? said Sara. “We just had one screen, and just held 250 cars. Emory watched like a hawk. You didn’t get by him. We didn’t have to worry about it. He was real strict with them out there. They got the message that we have an orderly place and people respected us.â€? While they did serve fast food items, Sara said, families often brought food from home for a picnic before the movie began. “They came in with lounge chairs,â€? she said. “The children would come early to eat and would play ball out there. But the minute that movie started, it was quiet as it could be. Emory kept real good

order. He was real stern. They stopped when he said stop.� There also was a gym set and playground for the children to play on in the 1960s. Sara said their menu included hamburgers and hot dogs. Although they didn’t serve pizza or milk shakes at the time, customers seemed to be satisfied. “We sold a lot of food back then,� said Sara. “I never will forget the lady we had who did all the cooking, Mrs. McDaniel. Emory would always call out, ‘We need so many hamburgers!’ She would say, ‘Just as soon as I can, Mr. Emory.’ I can hear her calling now.� The 1960s heralded a shift in the type of movies being produced, and that occasionally posed problems for the Johnsons. “We started getting some movies that were not presentable,� said Sara. “We would just give them their money back. We have given their money back and shut that thing down. Nowadays, all of them have something (inappropriate) in them.� She recalled that the Disney movies, including “Mary Poppins� and others were always popular. “We got a lot of Elvis movies because they were always clean,� said Sara. “My daughter grew up with Betty Grable and

the Hawaiian movies. She would watch her in Hawaii doing the hula. She loved Elvis. She still likes Elvis’ songs.� Some of the more suspenseful films on the big screen were wellreceived as well, including Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds� and the thrillers starring such legends as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. “They loved scary movies,� said Sara. “Teenagers like scary movies. I tell them it lets the girl sit closer to them.� The drive-in, she said, was opened seven nights a week during the summer and on the weekends when school started. “We still have some people come in and say, ‘We haven’t been here since way back when we courted here,’� said Sara. “And they will come in with these old cars (and say), ‘Oh, we drove this car in here way back in the 1960s.’� She said their three children loved the drive-in just as much as her husband did. “He loved to see the children enjoying the movies,� said Sara. Today her son, Rex, operates the drive-in with the same tenacity as his parents. “I think Rex does a good job with it,� said Sara. “We are fortunate he liked it and liked to keep it going. It is hard work, real hard work. We are just thrilled that God has always watched out for us.�

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%\ $*1(6 +$*,1 FEW PEOPLE IN who use historical documents TODAY’S FAST-PACED 3DVW 7LPHV FRUUHVSRQGHQW to prove the need for a shelter. SOCIETY notice faded signs Jeremy Holland dusted off that once marked a safe place files stored at the Rockmart to take shelter from nuclear fallout during Post Office, which includes the original the Cold War. blueprint used by the Federal Works Agency. A fallout shelter is an enclosed space It is dated Feb. 24, 1940. specially designed to protect occupants from This document shows the building has radioactive debris or fallout resulting from a concrete walls that are two feet think, nuclear explosion. Many such shelters were including the basement partially located constructed as civil defense measures. underground. This area was designated as a During the Cold War era, fallout shelters fallout shelter and could provide a safe place were part of the landscape since they were for 50 people. made available at government buildings, Curtis Lewis, former mayor and a native schools, hospitals and a number of other of Rockmart, was involved in civil defense spaces that could provide temporary protecas a young man. tion. He remembers conversations of Robert Additionally, these shelters were filled Selman, who trained local groups. He folwith a supply of food (staples) and drinking lowed guidelines used for training by state water that could sustain a group of people and national agencies. for several days or longer. Today, if you call the local Emergency In Polk County, fallout shelters are still Management Agency and ask about the visible at the local post offices in Cedartown nearest public nuclear bomb shelter, they and Rockmart. The one in Rockmart still has would tell you no public underground shela sign placed near the front entrance. ters are available. All the shelters have been However, facts of its existence are real to closed and dismantled, and supplies have those who lived during the 1960s and people been removed.

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:KHQ 5RVVYLOOH GLHG %\ 0,.( 2¶1($/ employees, fielded indusUNLIKE A PHOENIX THAT RISES ANEW from trial league teams in soft3DVW 7LPHV VWDII its funeral pyre ashes, ball, baseball and basketRossville never recovered ball — once even bringing from a 1967 fire that burned for days the Harlem Globetrotters to town for and consumed roughly a third of a an exhibition game. There was also a 1.5-million-square-foot complex that company-owned recreation area on was formerly a textile mill. Lake Chickamauga, north of “Up to the point of Chattanooga, for Peerless workers. the big fire everything “The mill drove the town,” White was running smoothly,” said. “Working there, it was like an Doris White said extended family.” recently. “But after that, That “mill” that employed as many there was nowhere to as 3,000 during its heyday was sold to turn.” Burlington Industries in 1952, but White and her huschanges throughout the Eisenhower band, Hoyt, had moved years were few. from Fyffe, Alabama, in 'RULV The city had fashion boutiques, :KLWH 1951 to work at jewelry stores, groceries, variety Peerless Woolen Mills. stores, service stations and even a Peerless was founded and Rossville branch of the Chattanooga-based was chartered as a city in the same Loveman’s, a department store chain. year: 1905. And for three score and “We had everything we needed in more years, the fate of both were Rossville,” White recalled, adding that intertwined. the city’s prosperity spread across the As Peerless Woolen Mill grew to state line as far as Chattanooga’s East become the world’s premier producer Lake community. of woolen fabric, Rossville’s populaBut Rossville’s decline and fall was tion and prosperity grew. foreshadowed when Burlington shut “Money was to be made in the down its production lines in 1961. plant,” White recalled. The United States textile industry During World War II nearly every changed radically throughout the military blanket, and mile upon mile 1960s with many jobs in “thread of woolen uniform material, was mills” throughout the South going to shipped from the Rossville plant. In lower cost producers in Asia, Central addition to covers and clothes, its fab- or South America. ric was used to upholster automobile Reports from the time vary, but the interiors both before and after two prospects of unionization at the forWorld Wars. mer Peerless facility were factors in But the mill owned by John L. Burlington’s decision to close. Hutcheson did more than put bread on “The reason they gave for closing the tables and shoes on the feet of its was that we were operating in the red employees. Hutcheson’s largesse (losing money), but everyone knew added greatly to the quality of life for that wasn’t the reason,” White said. the mill workers and the town. She said that even after the mill closed, the merchants worked closely keep Rossville a vibrant place. ‘The mill drove the town’ to Civic organizations, elected officials and an active development group Today’s Cornerstone Hospital in helped during a transitional period for Fort Oglethorpe, previously known as the city — “it was different, but still Hutcheson Medical Center to honor vibrant” — but then came the fire. Peerless’ owner, began life as TriLifelong Rossville resident and hisCounty Hospital and was funded in torian Larry Rose Sr. said he rememlarge part by payroll deductions taken bers the relocation of the original John from Peerless and other area textile Ross House — where the Cherokee plants. chief had lived until the Trail of Tears Peerless built a community center, exodus of 1838 and later used by both complete with a bowling alley, for its

SEPTEMBER 2016

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“The mill drove the town. Working there, it was like an extended family.” Doris White Confederate and Union forces during the Civil War — as the most important, historically, event of the ’60s. But the fire was a game-changer for both Rossville and nearby Chattanooga and East Ridge, Tennessee. Rose agrees that Rossville and its mill were synonymous. The city wasn’t just a bedroom community for Chattanooga, he said, “it was a miniature big city,” but one destroyed by fire. “It seemed like everything went away at the same time,” Rose said. “Moving the mill operations to Cleveland, Tennessee, was hard, but it was just gone after that (the fire).”

This time was different After Burlington liquidated it assets and laid off as many as 1,700 workers, a group of local business leaders formed the Rossville Development Co. and brought 15 smaller businesses to the 27-acre site. The fire White and Rose refer to occurred in the wee hours of June 10, 1967, when a shorted-out electrical transformer sparked a blaze — still considered one of the largest industrial conflagrations in U.S. history — on the second floor of the Heritage Quilts factory. Sprinklers failed and low water pressure made it nearly impossible to contain an inferno that roared through a building whose floors were saturated from decades of wool lanolin and machine oil. Firefighters from 10 of the surrounding area’s volunteer and municipal departments — from as far away as Hixson, Tennessee, to the north and Rome to the south — rushed to join in

fighting a fire that raged out of control for more than eight hours. Walls collapsed and waves of intense heat forced firefighters to keep their distance from the four square blocks that were involved. Shortly after sunrise on a Sunday morning the worst was over, but throughout that day and into the next crews stood ready to beat back any hot spots that reignited. Rose said records show 10 of the businesses — Rossville Yarn and Processing, Southern Universal Processing, Heritage Quilts, BeautyTuft, Rossville Carpet Dyeing, Quilted Textiles, Borg Fabrics, Rossville Spinning, Moccasin Bend Carpet and O.W. Jorges and Son — were either destroyed or heavily damaged. Yet for all the destruction, there were no fatalities and only one minor injury reported. On the Monday following the fire, Gov. Lester Maddox led a group of state officials to survey the scene. Those officials came to offer help to those whose workplaces were reduced to smoking ruins, saying that they would receive unemployment compensation and find new jobs. Similar assurances had followed the Peerless closure and most, if not all, had continued with the jobs and crafts they were accustomed to. But this time was different. The damage was done. Rossville had been beaten down again, and this time it stayed down for the count. White went on to have a successful career in the banking industry, headed the Rossville Professional Women’s Club, served as president of the local Chamber of Commerce, was the 1984 Walker County Citizen of the Year and remains, a fixture on the boards of nonprofit and philanthropic organizations throughout the area. Like many who recall the glory days of Rossville High School athletics, when its Bulldogs were a regional powerhouse, or retirees who remember when Rossville had a zero unemployment rate, White never strayed far afield. “My heart was always in Rossville,” she said.

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$ ORRN EDFN DW VLW LQV LQ GRZQWRZQ 5RPH %\ .5,67,1$ :,/'(5 drug stores and asked for ON MARCH 28, 1963, 62 AFRICANservice. At one of the 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII AMERICAN teenagers stores, the stools were — ranging in age from removed from the lunch 15 to 18 — were jailed after a sit-in at counter and the counter was closed. At lunch counters on Broad Street. the three other stores, attendants According to the March 29, 1963, closed the counters and began washing edition of the Rome News-Tribune, four the counters down with ammonia. Broad Street businesses — The KeithThe demonstrators moved on to the Walgreen Drug Store, G.C. Murphy next store and held a sit-in for more Co., Redford Variety Store and Enloe than an hour as a crowd of about 100 Drug Store — were the site of the dem- people gathered to watch. onstrations, all beginning at 4 p.m. The field secretary from Atlanta’s Arrests were only made at two loca- chapter of the National Association tions, Redford’s and Keith-Walgreen. for the Advancement of Colored The other two businesses closed the People visited the jailed teens and lunch counter service to all customers talked with the Rome police chief. when the first demonstrators appeared, Twenty jailed demonstrators were but did not request police to make any released on bond on March 29. The of the protestors leave. rest of the teens were scheduled to be The newspaper reported no violence tried April 1. during the demonstration, only that a According to the paper, two few of the teens lay down in the stores African-American police officers and had to be carried to patrol cars. joined white officers in dealing with During the demonstration, the teen- the demonstrations. In 1963, Rome agers would work in shifts, with a had been an integrated police force for group of four or five entering the busi- six years and the buses and public ness, being ordered to leave and then library also were desegregated. being arrested and taken away in patrol On April 3, the Rome Newscars. As soon as the demonstrators Tribune ran a story about the trial of were removed, another group came in. the teen demonstrators ending. At the height of the protest, three Fifty-seven of the group of 62 were police cars were making a regular run convicted of disorderly conduct. from the businesses on Broad Street to Charges against five defendants were police headquarters. dismissed because they were under While the demonstrators were held the age of 14 and, according to the in jail, they could not see each other but city recorder Henry Fullbright, “they they could hear each other. The group probably didn’t realize the seriousness began singing and chanting “We want out.” of their actions.” The teens were held on bonds of Three of the demonstrators who lay $102 each and were charged with vio- down on the floor of one of the businesslating city ordinances such as disores were given a fine of $100 or 10 days derly conduct, loitering by minors and in jail. The rest of the teens received senfailure to disperse assemblies followtences of five days in jail or a $50 fine. ing a police order. The students who decided to serve City Manager Bruce Hamler had jail time were allowed to serve on weeksaid that the “youths and their parents ends, starting at 8 a.m. Saturday and endwere warned that arrests would be made ing at 7 a.m. Monday so the time would if the demonstrations happened and the not interfere with their school attendance. store owners requested police action.” A committee composed of white and On the next day, March 29, a group African-American community leaders of 25 teenagers sat at lunch counters was formed and had been meeting duron Broad Street again. No arrests were ing the time of the demonstrations. The made during this demonstration. Store members of the committee stated that management closed the stores until the they felt it was “in the best interest of demonstrators left. the community that there should be no The teens entered two of the same more demonstrations by any group.”

PAGE 33

New And Making Progress

Town of Sand Rock Incorporated August 23, 1988 FIRST COMMITTEE

Jack Hood, John Helms, Jr., Dean Buttrum, Sr., Nelson St. Clair, Bill Lumsden, Irvin Oliver, Paul Johnson

ELECTED FIRST COUNCIL

Mayor 1988-90 Paul Johnson, Clerk Ann St. Clair Council Franklin Breast, Jack Hood, Jimmy Butler, Harold Pearson. Nelson St. Clair

History of Sand Rock The Early settlers of Sand Rock moved here to farm and make a living for their family. The Becks, Mitchells, Pearsons, Stimpsons, Helms, Parkers, Farmers, Clanton, Stowes, Appletons were some of the families. Later, the Brindley Brothers were passing through and stopped at a spring to get some water. One of them picked up a small stone and crushed it with his hands and made it sand. He said “This is sand rock,” and since then the area has been known as Sand Rock. These early settlers developed the area by building churches, roads, a school and the necessary things to have a good community. In the late 1920’s, Dewey Brown started a movement to improve the school. It was first a junior high school. Later it became a high school with the first graduating class in 1932. The new high school brought many new events to the community. The school, along with the churches, became the back bones of the area. Some people thought the area was falling behind in progress and began a series of meetings in April 1988. They decided to try to incorporate to improve some of the conditions. This group began working to improve roads, along with projects to improve the quality of life and the community in general, The town bought the property across the road from the high school gym in 1990. This property was for building a town hall and recreation park. The town hall and community center was built in 1991. It is a multipurpose building not only is it used to carry out functions of the town government, but it is also used as a meeting place for many clubs, groups and private citizens.

Left to right: Julia Smith, Greg Oliver, Gene Farmer, Mayor James Ricky Mackey, Melonie Garrett, Town Clerk, Bud Mackey, Steve McMeekin

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5HPHPEHULQJ WKH &LYLO 5LJKWV HUD WHILE GROWING UP IN ROME %\ .5,67,1$ :,/'(5 Vaughn grew up in a DURING the 1960s, retired educator time where the African3DVW 7LPHV VWDII Esther Vaughn saw her friends arrestAmerican communities ed during the sit-ins, and while she were self-sufficient to a wasn’t involved, the event had a great effect on her. point, for instance a barber shop, con“When you have been sheltered, you listen to venience store, cafe or boutique what your parents say,� she said. “However, I knew would be right in the neighborhood. everyone who was arrested that day.� However, for many things such as The sit-in happened in March of 1963 at four groceries, African-Americans would (VWKHU drug stores on Broad Street. African-American teen- shop at the same stores as white peo- 9DXJKQ agers — 62 of them — were arrested for going into ple. If a family wanted to shop downthe stores and sitting at the counters. town, the drug store counters were for whites only. “Back then, I would go in those places and stand in Restrooms were segregated, water fountains were the corner waiting to pick up my food,� Vaughn said. labeled black and white. Schools were segregated as “I think people just got tired of being treated that way.� well.

Downtown, it was hard to find a black restroom, as the only one at the time was at the bus station. Vaughn remembers taking trips with her school football team as part of the marching band. “Our team would play out of town and we’d travel back on the bus late,� she said. “Now, they would serve us supper at the school, most times, but when you are going back home, you get hungry.� Wherever they stopped along the route to get food, Vaughn said she remembers that she and her fellow band members couldn’t go inside restaurants and eat. “We had to buy it and then sit on the bus to eat,� she said. &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

(OHPHQWV RI &LYLO 5LJKWV VWUXJJOH VWLOO YLVLEOH WKURXJK IHDWXUHV RI EXLOGLQJ GHVLJQ ONE OF THE WAYS THAT PEOPLE STUDY the cultural history of a place is through its architecture. Much can be said about the values of a people based on how they design and construct buildings, how those choices are made based on decisions not based off of engineering, but of law. These days, %\ .(9,1 0<5,&. there aren’t 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII many signs of one of the South’s darker chapters on the landscape. Yet at one Cedartown landmark, the architecture of separate but equal can still be found hidden in the shadows of a forgotten age. So up a set of steps covered in old carpet and lined by walls with the original blue paint one finds the physical representation of segregation in architecture, where black moviegoers of Polk County were forced to sit if they wanted to watch the movies. This was one of the many areas that West Cinema owners Ken and Teresa Browning showed off in a tour during the theater’s 75th anniversary celebration. Ken Browning without fanfare flipped on the lights and revealed the balcony where black patrons were told to sit if they wanted to watch. He said that this system remained in place until the early 1970s, when the theater integrated. But before then, the two sets of patrons had their own ticket booths, their own concessions and even their own bathroom.

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7KH OREE\ DW :HVW &LQHPD ZDV RQFH D SODFH ZKHUH RQO\ ZKLWH SDWURQV ZHUH DOORZHG GXULQJ VHJUHJDWLRQ \HDUV EXW IROORZLQJ WKH &LYLO 5LJKWV PRYHPHQW LW EHFDPH D SODFH IRU DOO WR PHHW EHIRUH WKH VKRZ However, it wasn’t much compared to facilities provided to everyone today. “Here’s the only toilet that we had for people to use,� Browning said as he showed off the old projector room. The toilet sat in a corner next to a sink, with no walls or curtains of any kind to provide any privacy. Controversies over the theater’s seating never came about, Browning said, though there was grumbling during the Civil Rights era when he was

younger, he said. When the theater integrated in the early 1970s, all could sit wherever they wanted, balcony or not. That changed more than a decade later, when the family decided that two screens were needed instead of one and remodeling was done to separate the main seating area downstairs. Now West Cinema’s balcony is mainly used for storage, with a room built in front of where viewers once had full view of the silver screen that

now houses the projectors. The original theater seats remain in place unchanged, the only toilet and sink for black patrons to use shut off to the general public. What remains though are memories for those patrons who once went to the movies, whether black or white. Though the side entrance is long covered up, and the balcony no longer in use, these architectural features remain as reminders of past experiences.

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SEPTEMBER 2016

people at the airport as they were flying in to Atlanta,” she said. “As kids, I don’t think we thought about how influential that time was, how it Vaughn attended Main High changed things. We were just in the School. When she first heard of the middle of it.” sit-in, she was curious, but did not After student teaching in segregatparticipate. ed school in Atlanta, Vaughn returned “No one looked down on you if to Rome to teach in Rome City Schools. you didn’t want to participate,” she “My first school was segregated,” said. “I heard stories from the demonstrators saying that the water hose was she said. “My second year, Rome City Schools integrated. North Rome and turned on them in the jail, they were Northside became North Heights. treated like they were breaking laws. Black teachers began teaching in white The things that transpired after they schools and black students began were arrested were very frightening.” After the sit-in, Vaughn remembers going to school with white students.” She admits that though things were things slowly changing. Community changing, she still knew there were groups worked together to try to problems. change things. “As a black woman, a “They would hold meetblack person, you had to ings at churches,” she said. prove yourself, you had to “Everyone worked together. be on your game all the You started seeing things time because of the percepchange.” tion people had of you,” she Vaughn graduated high said. school in 1965 and went to When her husband college in Atlanta at Clark served in the military, he Atlanta University. told her stories of coming “Colleges here were intehome on furlough and being grated then,” she said. “I told to ride at the back of just wanted to spread my the bus. wings. I didn’t want to go to “They just returned from college here in town.” serving their country,” she While at college in said. “Things have changed Atlanta, Vaughn heard about so much now. I drive around Martin Luther King Jr. town with my husband’s being shot in April of 1968. military service license “I remember so clearly plate and I have people when Dr. King was murcoming up to me in parking dered,” she said. “How lots, thanking me for my everyone reacted, it was service. I always explain it’s very scary.” my husband, but to see how Vaughn said there were things have changed, it’s meetings in the dorms. good.” Students from across the She knows that many do country gathered together. not have a real idea of what Vaughn said they were told life was like for Africanwhat to do. Americans then. “They told us we were “I don’t think there were not babies anymore,” she many who had even an said. “I remember wishing I inkling,” she said. “There could come home to Rome, Esther Vaughn was not a lot recorded about to feel safe, but I was afraid what happened.” to call a taxi. I was afraid She said that fear was that if the driver of the taxi not the dominant feeling, though. was white, he would be harmed. I “You didn’t leave your house stayed.” thinking, oh, I’m going to find a burnDespite the sadness they went through, Vaughn said in the end it was ing cross or have someone be violent,” a positive experience as students from she said. “There were instances, for example, if there was an interracial African-American colleges banded relationship, something like that, that together. “We signed up to volunteer to meet would cause things to happen.” &RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH

“As kids, I don’t think we thought about how influential that time was, how it changed things. We were just in the middle of it.”

PAGE 35

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%ODFN VWXGHQWV UHPHPEHU 6WHSKHQV 6FKRRO THE CALHOUN CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM has seen a lot of changes since opening in 1901, but none as far-reaching as the changes that segregated the school system only to see them come together again in the fall of 1966. The Calhoun and Gordon County school boards met and decided to combine their %\ %5$1', 2:&=$5= resources and a 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII 20-year contract was signed. A new facility was built behind Calhoun High School in 1956 and students from the county schools of Belwood, Liberty, Oostanaula, Plainville, Resaca, Sonoraville and Sugar Valley were transported by the county system to Calhoun for high school. This contract included a plan of education for black students of both school systems with a new school being built on West Line Street in Calhoun. The county school system furnished transportation for this school, and the new school, which housed grades kindergarten through 12, was called the Stephens School in honor of Professor W.P. Stephens, a local principal during the 1930s. Many still live in Gordon County that attended the all-black school until 1966, when local schools integrated. Mary Ruth Garigan attended the Stephens School from the time she was old enough to attend school as a young girl until the time she graduated high school from Stephens in 1963. “I wouldn’t trade my experience at Stephens for anything in the world,” said Garigan. “We had wonderful teachers. It was awesome.” According to Garigan, there were no white teachers at the school. “But it was a great school. We had great teachers. Dr. Bettie Smith was awesome.” Smith served as principal of Stephens School from 1951 until its closing in 1966. Even with all the accolades, there was a difference in the treatment of Stephens School in the community. “We got old desks and chairs from the white schools,” said Garigan. “Everything was hand-me-down. But we made good use of it. We overcame the situation.” Garigan said that the school was in a type of protective bubble in Gordon County. “We didn’t have any relationship with the white schools,” said Garigan. “During that time, we thought that was how it was supposed to be. It didn’t bother us. It wasn’t until we grew up that we realized it was wrong.” According to Garigan, many different classes and extracurricular activities were offered at Stephens. “My husband, Pete, was on the basketball team,” said Garigan. “I participated in track, I was a major-

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0DU\ 5XWK *DULJDQ ZDV FKRVHQ DV 0LVV 6WHSKHQV +LJK 6FKRRO LQ ette and wore a satin suit with high boots. I was a cheerleader and then I was also Little Miss Primary in 1952.” “We had a small band,” said Garigan. “We had chorus, a debate team and a academic team. We had a fully functional high school. We got the hand-medowns, but we made it work. We had very, very smart students. Garigan’s husband, Pete, was on the Stephens High state champion basketball teams; they won three state championships in the sport from 1959-1961. “The saddest part about the experience is we had all kinds of trophies and awards and when we integrated schools, everything disappeared; they were thrown away,” said Garigan. “Evidently everything was trashed. We’ve needed to find relics and awards from Stephens but nothing is left.” Garigan said that in some areas of Gordon County during the early to mid-’60s, you would find segregation, but there were also areas that were

more open and integrated. “Our parents worked and had white friends in the community,” said Garigan. “Even the board of education was integrated, but it didn’t help the school situation.” Even though things could have been better for the school, Garigan has no regrets. “I wouldn’t trade my time at Stephens High School for anything in the world.” Estelle Dixon was one of those students who went off into the world. She graduated from Stephens in 1965, but her experience there was vastly different from Garigan’s. “The school was very small,” said Dixon. “I didn’t realize that until I got to college. That is when I realized how ill prepared we were for college. I judge that on getting to a larger school and seeing what the other kids had been exposed to versus what we had been exposed to. I found myself being behind and had to really struggle to catch up. Separate was not always equal, and we did not always have teachers that were trained in the correct areas. Not all of the teachers, but some of them were not trained to teach certain classes that they would teach. “I wanted to be a dietitian,” said Dixon. “I needed to have chemistry and wanted to learn something to help me be a dietitian. I took chemistry. My chemistry teacher (at Stephens) did not teach the class; we had class by film. If you chose to try to stay awake and ask questions, she couldn’t answer them.” Dixon ended up leaving Calhoun to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C., obtaining a bachelor’s degree in social studies with a minor in education in 1969. She also completed her master’s degree in criminal justice at American University in Washington, D.C. She currently works for Gordon County Department of Family and Children’s Services. While Dixon feels Stephens School did not prepare her enough for her future education, she doesn’t feel that the segregation aspect played as much of a role. “I don’t know if I lost anything by not being integrated, but I would say I lost from not having an administration who fought to make sure we had a good and proper education.” Dixon lived in the rural area of Gordon County growing up, mostly in the Pine Chapel community. “Sometimes we were the only black family in the neighborhood,” said Dixon. “My dad preferred being out in the country. We lived on the Willard Henry farm.” A federal court order required the integration of both black and white students beginning in the 1965-1966 school year and students were given the choice of where they would go to high school that served their area. In 1967, the Stephens School was reorganized for fifth and sixth grades for Calhoun City Schools.

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%ODFN DQG LQYLVLEOH EXW GHWHUPLQHG %LOOLH +DUULVRQ RYHUFRPHV SUHMXGLFH RI ¡ V %\ 7$0$5$ :2/. Ellison’s book,â€? says BILLIE JOYCE JORDAN HARRISON Harrison. 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII LASTED ONLY a few Harrison begged her weeks at Gordon Lee High mother to take her out of School in 1967 after the all-black Hill the school and she started at the mostHigh School she attended in LaFayette ly white Rossville High School. transferred all its students to other “It was more tolerable there,â€? says schools in order to advance integration. the lifelong Chickamauga resident, “It was horrible,â€? says Harrison of “but still not good. I don’t have fond her short time at the almost all-white memories of the school.â€? Gordon Lee. “The students made fun The school bus that picked up of us, called us names like spook and Harrison to go to Rossville High was nigger, mocked our hairstyles. It was a driven by a white man who, if he was nightmare.â€? running early on his route and saw When the black students who had black students approaching the bus transferred to the school weren’t being stop, would speed up and leave them ridiculed, they were being ignored — behind. Only after parents went to the by students and teachers alike. school to complain did the practice “I would raise my hand and the cease. teachers refused to call on me. I felt like the invisible man in Ralph &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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&RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH But Harrison’s struggle for an equal chance at an education and for positive racial identity started much earlier than high school. “I started at Wallaceville Elementary in 1957,� Harrison says. The school was forced to make do with hand-me-down textbooks. The only black history that was taught came from lessons added verbally to the curriculum by the school’s allblack staff. “I remember the teachers talking to us about Martin Luther King Jr., teaching us to respect him,� says Harrison. Harrison’s roots in Chickamauga go back several generations. “My great-grandmother Fannie Porter birthed 21 children,� Harrison says of the woman she calls the matriarch of her family. Harrison was born, with the help of a midwife, in a back room of her grandparents’ home in 1951. From the age of 10, that’s the home she grew up in. Most black families in the area were very poor, says Harrison. Her

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when we saw my grandfather coming down the road with some of that fabric. My grandmother would make dresses and skirts from it and I was very proud to wear them to school and church.�

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PAGE 40 &RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH “The black children of my generation were the ones on the forefront of integration,� she says. “We had no choice and it was very emotional, very difficult and stressful. “I always wanted to be a leader. I wanted to work my way to the top, but there was no chance of that for black students. We were put on a back burner and not considered a part of the school like the other students were.� Harrison recalls attending pep rallies at Rossville High but feeling there was nothing to cheer about as the white students rooted for the school’s teams. “The PE teacher told us if we couldn’t cheer at the rallies, we’d get a zero, but we felt no school spirit.� Harrison says she despised history class, where no black history was taught except when the teacher discussed slavery and referred to blacks as “nigras.� When musician James Brown’s song, “Say it Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud,� came out in 1968, during Harrison’s junior year of high school, it became a life-saving mantra for her and her friends.

ROME NEWS MEDIA LLC “We would listen to it over and over and sing and dance to it. It gave me motivation to keep trying, keep working toward my dreams.� Harrison graduated from Rossville High School in 1969, and thanks to the determination she learned from her mother and grandparents, the inspiration she absorbed from Brown’s song and her own strong will, she followed her dreams. She went off to college in San Francisco and returned two years later to attend the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in secondary education. She spent 30 years teaching and working as a librarian in Hamilton County schools. “I persevered and with the help of God I achieved my goal of a college education and a fulfilling career,� she says. Every year, Harrison attends the black-empowerment Essence Music Festival in New Orleans, where she sees a booth promoting “My Black is Beautiful� products. “I’ve come to understand,� she says, “that my black is beautiful, that I should be proud of being black. I am proud to be black.�

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Âś:H FDPH RXW RI VHJUHJDWHG VFKRROV¡ Black students in Centre, Alabama, attended classes in a building built by their parents. IN JULY 2015, ON get our parents’ car and go 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII THE FOURTH OF JULY pick cotton, pull corn, to weekend, the Robert Pace get our football in. That is residence off Cherokee County Road how tough it was.â€? 71 was the setting for the Hatcher “By the grace of God, He saw fit for High School Class of 1965 Reunion. us to come to this 50th reunion,â€? said Built in 1956 on Bay Springs Road Hutcheson. “It is through him and not for the county’s black students, the our doings. He gave us grace to be here.â€? high school closed in 1968 and was Pace said he was honored to host reincarnated the Cherokee County this milestone event. “I just turned 69 Area Vocational School, and then the years old and I am glad to be here,â€? he Cherokee County Career and said. “I am enjoying being here with Technology Center. all my classmates and friends.â€? Classmates shared how they Pointing to their high school logo, endured some tough times, but also he indicated they may be up for how they overcame those tough times another 50 years. “You see that bullto accomplish major things. While we dog?â€? said Pace. “We ain’t going to live in an age when school funding is let go!â€? often a challenge, it was even more While the high-schoolers were challenging then. But they still made it. attending the “newâ€? Hatcher High, the “We came out of segregated black junior high students from all schools,â€? said Cynthia Watson. “We over the county took their classes at excelled. We went through all the the original Hatcher School on Vietnam War and all of that. We were Hatcher Drive — now the JFK Center. just working for $2.50 an hour and Ruth Wright recalled how the black went to college and excelled. We did community banded together to build what we had to do because of our that school. Volunteers started construcmothers and our fathers.â€? tion in 1947 with war surplus materials They were also fortunate to have from Camp Sibert and funds from fish outstanding teachers and mentors, fries, raffles, ball games and family Watson said, including Ethel gifts. The first classes were in 1949. Simmons, Ronnie Lipscomb and “Before that, we had to go to Wendell and Ruth Cunningham. school in a broken down hall of a Wendell Cunningham, Watson said, Methodist church and a Baptist was instrumental in helping her to church,â€? Wright told the Centre City attend Tuskegee Institute. Council this spring, while they were “There was no way to go to weighing the fate of the JFK Center. Tuskegee Institute,â€? said Watson. “But “When we went to Cedar Bluff, the he said, ‘you are going to go!’ He bus broke down every day. My father, called some people in Atlanta and got Mark Wright, my brother R.C. and a scholarship for me to get to many community center people, peoTuskegee Institute. Mr. Cunningham ple from Howell Crossroads (and made sure that I went.â€? other areas), all came together and we One special guest at the reunion had fish fries — any kind of social was Florence Weatherly who taught at that would bring in some money. Our Hatcher with her husband, Eugene parents built this school ‌ by hand.â€? Weatherly. Coach Weatherly is now listed The school was named for the Rev. in the Cherokee County Sports Hall of J.H. Hatcher, a well-known Methodist Fame and also the Alabama Hall of Fame. minister who later worked there as a Class Member Calvin Hutcheson janitor. commented on the reunion. While In June, the Alabama Historical they enjoyed their carefree high Commission notified Centre that the school days like most students, he school had been listed in the Alabama recalled, “At the same time, we had to Register of Landmarks and Heritage.

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5LQJJROG MXPSV LQWR VFKRRO LQWHJUDWLRQ %\ 6+(55< '(( $//(1 Murray County and some IN 1965, WITH RACIAL TENSION at of the opposite team 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII an all-time high over went out on the court to the integration of black attack him, and the students in public schools, Ringgold Ringgold fans grabbed him and pulled High School Assistant Principal John him into the stands for protection.� Emberson made an interesting move. He Crowe said she attributes her openpersonally visited the homes of several minded approach in part to her grandblack youth, inviting them to volunteer to mother Hazel Shell Harris who owned attend Ringgold. Integration would not The Dixie Cafe, a well-established resbe mandatory until the following year. taurant in town during that time. With Local historian Nancy Harris the majority of “the help� being black, Crowe, a sophomore at the time, said she grew up playing with their children the students chose to come, but no one and was taught at a very early age to was really surprised. always treat them with respect. “We (students) were “They were like family,� she said. already friends with all “My grandmother respected them and of them,� she said, “so, helped them and treated them fairly. really, it wasn’t a big She even allowed her main cook to deal around here. I rent a room in the basement, which remember (Emberson) didn’t sit well with all the neighbors, got on the intercom the but she didn’t care. She was a widow. day before they came, She needed him to survive and he was -RKQ to announce the decia good man. It was business.� (PEHUVRQ sion, and you could Aside from integration, Crowe said hear a pin drop. He told there were several significant events in us how he expected us to behave, that the ’60s that stand out in her memory: there better not be any problems or any trouble. He expected everyone to I-75 is built get along and treat them with respect, One of the biggest things that and that was the way it was gonna be. changed life in the ’60s was the arrivAnd that’s exactly what happened.� Crowe said she remembered leaders al of Interstate 75 in 1960, Crowe of both communities, white and black, said. It opened up the area to trade and travel and brought Ringgold out gathering informally and agreeing to of an economic depression that had keep any “extremists� in check, in existed since the end of the Civil War. order to keep the peace in Ringgold. “We had no industry. We were “There weren’t really any extremists in the black community,� she said. “And farmers,� she said. “I-75 brought the if there was any in the other, they most- advent of Sweetwater Carpet, then Shaw and Candlewick, which ly kept it to themselves. There were employed hundreds of people. It was a borderline issues with the KKK and huge catalyst that helped kickstart this things like that, but it got taken care sleepy little mountain town awake.� of. It wasn’t tolerated around here.� After graduating, she said, many of While the students took the integraher friends found good jobs in the cartion in stride, Crowe said some adults pet mills, and the interstate provided a discreetly showed some opposition. path to higher education for others. “Suddenly we couldn’t have any “I was in the first class at Dalton more dances,� she said, “so we had to Junior College the first year it opened get together and hold events that in 1967,� she said. “Everybody would weren’t on school property. We didn’t ride together, we’d commute. There get to have a prom at the school.� weren’t any dormitories at that time, She said students from other schools were also a little unfriendly when it came so I-75 brought about education to to sporting events, but Ringgold protect- people that wouldn’t ordinarily have access to it. That was a huge deal.� ed their own. “James Milton ‘Milt’ Moss was a star basketball player,� she said. “I remember we went to play &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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The Centennial Crowe has fond memories of seeing the famed Civil War locomotive “The General” in 1962 at the Centennial Celebration. “I was 12 in 1962 and I rode my horse to town,” she said. “The General came through here and there was a big celebration. We all wore Civil War dress and my grandmother Thelma Yates Mitchell won first prize for most authentic dress.”

JFK assassination Ringgold seemed to go from preserving the past and celebrating to sudden tragedy, Crowe said, with the news of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination a few years later. “I saw it on the TV, but I just couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I went over to the gym and asked Coach McGraw if it was true. I’ll never forget how angry he was. He said, ‘Yes! It’s true. He’s dead. D.E.A.D. Dead!’ spelling it out while he stomped up the steps in his big boots.”

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In comparing the past with today, Crowe said it’s discouraging and disappointing. “It was a kinder, gentler time back then,” she said. “I think we’re angrier now. We’re hateful. It shows and it’s crazy. I was over it then and I’m sure over it now. I think it tears at our social fabric, having no civility. If we’re not civil as a nation, that’s pretty scary.”

706-638-2520

Walker County Lookout Mountain

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The Dougherty House. Built around 1850 witnessed the advancement of both Union and Confederate troops during Walker County’s involvement in the war between the states.

McLemore Cove. Walker County has always been blessed with historical significance and natural beauty

Bebe Heiskell, Walker County Commissioner Post Office Box 445 • LaFayette, GA 30728 • 706-638-1437

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SEPTEMBER 2016

6HJUHJDWHG VFKRROV VKDUHFURSSLQJ DQG RQH PDQ¡V VHOI GHWHUPLQDWLRQ “MY GRANDFATHER,â€? SAYS 59-YEAR-OLD CALVIN FOSTER of Chickamauga, “had the last mule and wagon team in this area.â€? Every day, Foster’s grandfather would drive his wagon, pulled by his mules Jim and Kate, to a store in town and collect produce the shop couldn’t sell. From there, he stopped at homes where people saved their leftovers for him and added those to the 55-gallon drum in his wagon. All of this “slopâ€? was to feed the hogs he raised. “I went along with him %\ 7$0$5$ :2/. every chance I got,â€? says 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII Foster. The 1960s were tough years for black families in the area, not only because life was a constant battle to make ends meet, but because the means to provide for themselves and get ahead in life were limited due to the many areas of employment where the black community was barred. “My mother worked in the laundry at Tri-County Hospital (in Fort Oglethorpe),â€? says Foster, “and my grandmother took care of the home and cooking and things like that.â€? Still, Foster recalls a happy childhood. “I think a lot of that had to do with my grandfather. He was a hard worker, a deacon at our church and a man who didn’t believe in violence.â€? As the second-oldest child and oldest son in the family of seven children, Foster says it was his job to bring in wood and kindling every morning and to start the fire on winter mornings. After that, he and his siblings would head off to Wallaceville Elementary School four blocks away — an all-black school. Walker County schools were still largely segregated in spite of a U.S. Supreme Court decision, made before Foster was even born, that required the desegregation of all schools. “Hill High in LaFayette was the black high school,â€? says Foster. In the meantime, Foster’s grandfather was busy with his other job as a sharecropper. “He would contract with different people who had land,â€? says Foster. “They’d provide the seed and he would take his mules and work the fields. At harvest, the crop was split between the landowners and Granddad.â€? Come November, after the first frost, Foster says it was hog-slaughtering time, a community event. Neighbors who came to help his grandfather with the work were paid with cuts of meat. “The black community was close,â€? says Foster. “People helped each other out and did things together.â€? Foster credits the example of his grandfather for the work ethic and self-determination he came to embrace. “Seeing him run his own business gave me the

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“People helped each other out and did things together.� Calvin Foster courage to start my lawn care business when I was 21,� says Foster, who joined the Army Reserve at the same age and would go on to serve in Desert Storm and also to own a garbage collection business. Foster believes his community has made some progress on the issue of race since his days attending

a segregated school but feels it has a long way to go before it can say there’s equal opportunity for all. “People don’t see it when it doesn’t affect them,� he says, “the company or department that has no black employees, or only a few, things like that.� “I never saw blacks working for the county or city when I was a child, and I still don’t see too much of that,� says Foster. Foster says he would like to see the day when skin color has nothing to do with whether or not a man can get a job or run any kind of business he wishes. Nevertheless, for himself, Foster says, “I’m in control of my will. I won’t let anyone control my attitude and actions with their own. I’m firm in my faith and that’s where my strength comes from — not from how other people treat me.�

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Life in the small-town South was traded for the jungle of Vietnam. %\ '28* :$/.(5 RETIRED FLOYD “We did very little COUNTY POLICE police work,” Shiflett said. 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII INVESTIGATOR Tommy He recalls one occaShiflett loves to recall his sion where he escorted days as a youth, growing up with doz- soldiers making a delivery to an ens of other kids in the Blossom Hill orphanage. community of North Rome. He refers “They were coming back and a 12to his childhood as the “Mayberry year-old, they think he was about 12, days,” referring to the fictional televipopped a mine in front of them,” sion town made famous by Andy Shiflett said. Griffith. He explained that part of what Then came Vietnam. makes memories of his time in “Everybody in the neighborhood Vietnam difficult is that he rarely had to go at one time or learned the fate of those who were another,” Shiflett said. injured in combat. “It was a perfect world “We loaded four or five wounded to us. We were in and (onto helicopters), there were three or out of everybody’s four others that were hurt really badly house, together all the — and once you get them gone you time, and then all of a don’t know what became of them,” sudden we were scatShiflett said. tered all over the It’s a memory that Shiflett, who 7RPP\ world.” made a career in police work, still has At first, Shiflett fin- 6KLIOHWW a difficult time talking about. ished school and Shiflett also vividly remembers the enrolled at Shorter College. He spent conditions in Vietnam. “It was either a year there before he realized it really hot or it was raining,” he said. wasn’t for him at the time. He was 19 days away from coming “I said I wasn’t doing any good home, early in January of 1968, when here, so I might as well go see what the enemy launched its Tet Offensive. it’s all about,” he said. At the time, Shiflett was stationed He enlisted in the Army with a near Bien Hoa, across from a settlefriend and was ultimately assigned to ment called Widow’s Village. the 552nd Military Police Company, “That’s where Tet started for us, which moved around. out of that village,” he said. “I had “We were assigned different things just come out of the field with the 1st to do — some running convoys, some Infantry and was told I wouldn’t have being on the river occasionally — to go out anymore — and then it was then we spent some time with the 1st like here they came. A lot of them had Infantry Division in the field,” Shiflett been living underground in that village.” said. “We were scattered all over the Shiflett finally got to come home in place.” 1969. Mayberry was waiting, but it As an MP in Vietnam, one might was never the same. imagine Shiflett would have spent a “I don’t think they have neighborlot of time handling conflicts between hoods like that anymore,” he said. “I’d the U.S. troops, but he said that was give anything if my son would have hardly ever the case. had that.”

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*RUGRQ &RXQW\ VXSSRUWV LWV WURRSV %\ %5$1', 2:&=$5= to help, whether it THE VIETNAM WAR HAS ALWAYS BEEN a was to drop off sup3DVW 7LPHV VWDII point of contention in the plies or pick up the United States. Beginning wounded.� in November 1955, it was a war Gordon County native Michael Eli between North Vietnam and the govKing was also a door gunner serving ernment of South Vietnam. with Greeson in Vietnam. King’s heliIn 1961, South Vietnam signed a copter was shot down in a gunfight treaty to receive military and econom- near Laos. He was listed as missing in ic aid from the United States, which action for more than 20 years before led to the United States providing sup- his remains were recovered in January port troops in 1961 and forming the of 1990. U.S. Military Assistance Command in Greeson traveled with King’s 1962. Americans were divided on mother, Elsie, to Arlington National whether the United States should be Cemetery in 1990, where Kings’ involved in a war so far from home, remains were buried. He kept in touch that many felt had nothing to do with with Elsie King over the years after them. Eli’s death. The U.S. began air raids on North “He was a friend,� said Greeson. Vietnam and some areas of South “It was a great relief to myself and his Vietnam controlled by communists in family when his remains were recovearly 1965; by 1966, there were ered and he was given a proper buri190,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam. al.� Despite massive support from the U.S. According to the 1976 Bicentennial military with heavy attacks and History of Gordon County Georgia, troops, which numbered 550,000 in 19 men from Gordon County lost their 1969, the South Vietnamese were lives serving in Vietnam. unable to defeat the Viet Cong and After his time in Vietnam, Greeson North Vietnamese forces. served the remaining year of his serSome returning soldiers faced scru- vice in Fort Hood, Texas. tiny and protests — but in Gordon “Coming home to the United County, there was much support for States, the reception was not like it is the veterans from the community. now,� said Greeson. “It was definitely negative. We did not get the welcome home that soldiers do now, but I’m Joe Van Greeson glad today’s soldiers are getting posiJoe Van Greeson was born and tive recognition.� raised in Calhoun, and at age 18, Things in Gordon County were immediately following high school, better, said Greeson. joined the U.S. Army to avoid being “People were nicer here. The drafted. He spent a year in Vietnam at majority of the people in Gordon Cu Chi. County treated me well once I came “My mom was worried, as could home to Georgia.� be expected,� said Greeson of his Greeson said that although the war mom, Mildred. “There were many let- changed him and he had some issues ters received and sent during the year returning, he overcame them and has I was in Vietnam.� functioned normally throughout the Greeson had the dangerous job of years. door gunner — a crewman tasked “I was responsible coming home,� with firing and maintaining manually said Greeson. “I’ve worked my whole directed armament aboard a helicopter life since getting out of the Army and — in the 1st Aviation Brigade, 269th am now retired.� Combat Aviation Battalion, 187th Assault Helicopter Company. Hometown heroes “We were responsible for helping soldiers when they were in trouble,� “I was teaching during the Vietnam he said. “What we did meant someWar,� said Jim Lay, president of the thing to the soldiers we were coming Gordon County Historical Society. “I

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Marvin Garner Resaca resident Marvin Garner served in the U.S. Army in the 1st Cavalry Division from 1965 to 1966. “Our main objective was to help the government of South Vietnam to fight off the invading communists from North Vietnam,� said Garner. “I was heavyweapons infantry, using weapons like the 81mm mortar, the 3.5-inch rocket launcher, and regular M-16 rifles.� He was based in Camp Radcliff, also known as An Khe Army Airfield, Khe Base or “the Golf Course,� in central Vietnam. The camp was established in 1965 by the 70th Engineer Battalion. During his year of service in the war, Garner was medically evacuated out of Vietnam twice. The first time, he contracted malaria and was sent to Japan to recuperate. He returned to Vietnam, and in February 1966, was wounded during a major battle. He was sent to Japan again to recover. “The injuries were so that they wouldn’t let me go back to Vietnam,� said Garner. “I got a medical reclassification and had a choice: I could go into supply or engineers, so I went into the Army Corps of Engineers.� &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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&RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH Garner went on to serve more than 24 years in the Army before retiring. He received the Purple Heart and other recognitions for his service in Vietnam and is now active in helping to honor those who served by serving as commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart Rome Chapter 525. Garner was married when he went to Vietnam at the age of 24 and had two children. “It’s always tough to leave your family,� said Garner. “It’s always tough to go off to war not knowing what to expect. “My wife did fairly well,� said Garner of his initial deployment. “We had a house at the time in Columbus (where Garner had been stationed before Vietnam), and she stayed there until I returned.� His parents, who were living in Gordon County at the time, were a different story. “It was tough on them,� said Garner. “I had two older brothers who had also served in war; my oldest brother was a Korean War veteran and my brother just older than me was also in Vietnam. But they felt if that were what we needed to do, to do it and they would be here for us when we got back. But that didn’t make it easier on them.�

Why they served According to Garner, Gordon County was very supportive of returning veterans, and still is. “We have a lot of patriotic people in Gordon County,� he said. “You know that Gordon County is now a Purple Heart County, and Calhoun is a Purple Heart City, to honor all of our brothers and sisters who were killed or injured while serving to keep our country free.� Across the country, the acceptance of soldiers was different than in Gordon County. “We had some people who tried to cause trouble,� said Garner of his travels in the military in other parts of the country. “But what people don’t understand is, it’s not the soldier who makes war. It’s Congress who makes war. The soldier is the first one who doesn’t want war; he’s seen death and destruction and doesn’t want to see more. But sometimes it’s necessary.� When asked if Vietnam was necessary, Garner said President Harry S. Truman could have steered the conflict in a different direction.

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“We served to protect the freedoms that we knew growing up.� Marvin Garner “In my opinion, I think Truman should have sent a message to North Vietnam when they invaded South Vietnam,� Garner said. “He could’ve used a nuclear weapon as a threat, since we had used them in World War II, and North Vietnam would have gotten out and we wouldn’t have had a war in Vietnam.� But Garner said the most important part of his service wasn’t what he did in Vietnam or how he felt about it; the most important part of any soldier’s service is why they served, “We served to protect the freedoms that we knew growing up, so that our children and grandchildren will have the freedoms that we knew, and maybe not have to go to war.�

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*RRG QLJKW WR 'DGG\ LQ 9LHWQDP %\ 7$0$5$ :2/. into combat. “EXCEPTIONALLY KNOWLEDGEABLE “I was a young buck 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII concerning enemy tactics sergeant, responsible for … remarkably accurate 14 men,” said Silcox. “So, and timely intelligence reports … dis- yes, I was nervous. My superior, a regarded his own safety as he moved combat veteran of Korea, told me to wounded Marines from exposed areas watch him and we’d get onto the … unlimited resourcefulness …” beach OK. And we did.” Fort Oglethorpe resident and Silcox saw his first American fall retired U.S. Marine Harold Silcox to enemy fire just hours after arriving earned these commendations from his in Vietnam. superiors during his two tours in The picture grew grimmer, says the Vietnam, for which he was awarded a career Marine, when what they called Bronze Star for valor and a Purple “782 gear” started piling up on the Heart as a result of combat wounds. ship. As men were killed or wounded, “I was at Camp Pendleton in each fallen soldier’s set of gear was California in 1964 when we got notice salvaged, returned by helicopter to the we were shipping out to Vietnam,” ship and tossed onto a heap for reuse. said Silcox. He and his fellow Marines’ 782 gear consisted of key Marines were aboard the USS Iwo items to help them navigate and surJima at 4 a.m. the next morning. vive the jungles of Vietnam — two A month later, they disembarked canteens, a first aid kit, extra ammo, a on the shores of the tiny country that flashlight, a compass, and a K-bar would be the cause of so much turcombat knife. moil in the world and cost so many lives. They were thrown immediately &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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&RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH “Vietnam could mess up your brain-housing if you let it,� said Silcox. “You had to keep focused on the work at hand.� Silcox was just 17 years old when he joined the Marines. His father signed for him. “I come from a military family,� said Silcox, whose father served in World War II and Korea and whose grandfather served in World War I and several years at the Post in Fort Oglethorpe. “Military service in my family goes all the way back to the American Revolution. I had ancestors who fought on both sides in the Civil War.� Silcox’s first foreign experience was in Morocco, where he was cleared as a courier to transport top secret intelligence, but he would be in the Marines for seven years before Vietnam and actual combat. As chief scout in 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines during his first tour, Silcox and his 14 men surveyed territory in advance of other troops, identified threats, eliminated them where they could and reported their findings to the troops that would move in on the enemy. “The first time I had to shoot a man, I didn’t think about it,� said Silcox. “They were shooting at us and we were shooting at them. Later that night it came home to me — I had killed a man. But you have to close yourself to it, just do your job and keep your men alive.� During one operation, Silcox and his men were transported into a jungle hanging onto rope ladders attached to helicopters. The trees prevented any other option for getting in. The men found their target, took it out, and — using their compasses and keeping in touch with the helicopters by radio — took off through the jungle. They jumped back onto the hanging ladders under fire, barely making it out alive. Silcox volunteered for his second tour in Vietnam, from 1969 to 1970. “I guess I felt I lived a charmed life after getting out the first time unharmed,� he said. “I felt a little invincible.� Between tours, Silcox had attended Army Intelligence School in Baltimore, Maryland. He returned to Vietnam as a counter-intelligence officer, charged with unearthing Viet Cong infrastructure in Vietnamese villages.

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+DUROG 6LOFR[ ULJKW ZRUNV RQ KLV UDGLR HTXLSPHQW GXULQJ D SHDFHIXO PRPHQW LQ 9LHWQDP “The VC would get into positions of influence in villages, then convince or pay citizens to fight for them at night.â€? Silcox’s job was to find out who the infiltrators were and put a stop to their activities. “We got who we were after most of the time.â€? It was during this time that Silcox won a Bronze Star for rescuing two fellow Marines who had been hit. He dragged them to safety under sniper fire. “There are two things a Marine will take a bullet for,â€? said Silcox, “his own men and a corpsman.â€? Vietnam was not all fighting, Silcox pointed out. “We had the USO shows, letters, packages from home.â€? Back in the states, Silcox’s wife, Pat, put together special boxes for him, often including red kerchiefs, and anxiously awaited whatever communication he could manage. “A lot of times, out in the field, we didn’t have any paper to write on,â€? he said. He solved the problem by tearing flaps off ration boxes and making postcards out of them. “Sometimes I’d ask Pat to send me another red kerchief that I could dip in streams or rice paddies and wear around my neck to keep me cool.â€? While race issues were wreaking havoc throughout the U.S., Silcox said it was not a problem among his men. “We had white men, black, Chinese and Mexican in my unit. It didn’t matter. We got along and worked great together. When my Vietnamese interpreter got married, we took up a collection for him.â€? Silcox’s Bronze Star citation from President Richard Nixon reads, in part, “ ‌ Gunnery Sergeant Silcox distinguished himself by his composure and concern for his companions in the face of the enemy ‌ (his) initiative, superb professionalism, and unwavering devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps ‌â€? “There are some memories from that time I wish I didn’t have,â€? he said. “But there are good memories, too — spending nearly three years in military service to my country in Vietnam, the close relationships you develop with fellow Marines when your lives are on the line. And my daughter, who was 3 when I returned from my second tour — that’s my best memory. She ran up to me at the airport calling ‘Daddy deetnam.’ She thought that was my name because every night my wife would say prayers with her and they’d say ‘good night to Daddy in Vietnam.’â€?

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3LORW EDWWOHV ZHDWKHU HTXLSPHQW LQ 9LHWQDP %\ '28* :$/.(5 You just did your job.� AN UNTOLD NUMBER OF YOUNG Floyd County men battled the Williamson said Vietnam was the only 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong place he ever worked where he could put in the jungles of Vietnam, but for his whole self into his job. Armuchee’s Terry Williamson, the chief combatants “That’s all you had, seven days a week, 24 hours a were the weather and issues related to his equipment. day. It never ceased, you know,� he said. Williamson, a former member of the Floyd County He was shot at on a number of occasions, but he Board of Education and certified public accountant, said his most harrowing circumstances were generally served as an Army helicopter pilot aboard an OH-23, related to the weather or the chopper. attached to the 25th Infantry Division during 1967-68. “I flew the artillery commanders around,� he said. Close calls in Cu Chi His chopper was referred to as a command and He was based out of Cu Chi, a town 25 to 30 miles control aircraft. One of his frequent passengers was northwest of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). On Gen. John R. Thurman, commanding officer of the 1st one occasion he was sent to Saigon, and the trip down Battalion, 8th Artillery of the 25th Infantry Division. was completely uneventful in perfect weather. But as Williamson, who was in his early 20s at the time, he was returning to base, heavy clouds rolled in. said as long as he stayed above 1,500 feet, he wasn’t “I had already gone above it and I couldn’t find too worried about small arms fire from the ground. my way back down,� Williamson said. “Sometimes coming in on approaches you would be a little concerned about it,� he said. “I was 21 and had nine lives, so you didn’t really worry about it. &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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&RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH There was a landmark near his base, Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain, and Williamson could see it sticking up above the clouds so he was able to head in the general direction. The real problem was that his Automatic Direction Finder and magnetic compass, two primary navigational aids, had both malfunctioned. He was flying for what seemed an eternity, looking for a break in the clouds. When he finally found one, he started to take the chopper down. “It was nothing but trees so I had to get back up real quick,� Williamson said. “That was close because I was about to run out of fuel.� Sometimes crazy things almost led to disaster. One time a soldier got on board with a German shepherd and the dog’s movement around the chopper caused its center of gravity to go out of kilter and put him in a bind. Another time a chaplain tossed his helmet to the floor and hit Williamson’s control pedals, causing them to lock down. He had to make a dangerous running landing instead of being able to hover down routinely. On another flight, Williamson blew a cylinder and was losing oil rapidly so he had to quickly find a safe place to put the chopper down. Williamson said his closest call with enemy fire might have occurred just after the Tet Offensive started in January of 1968. He was flying “dawn

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“The sergeant over the maintenance area got hit with shrapnel and a real young maintenance guy pretty much had his leg blown off. They were (airlifted to a medical base) before I ever got back and I never saw them again.�

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9LHWQDP DOZD\V LQ EDFN RI KLV PLQG %\ '28* :$/.(5 IT WASN’T TOO “It was all about the LONG AGO that George unknown, what might hap3DVW 7LPHV VWDII Bevels’ wife asked if there pen,� Bevels said. “I don’t is ever a day he doesn’t think it was fear. I think at think about his service in the U.S. 18 years old you’re running on adrenaMarine Corps in Vietnam. line most of the time anyway. If you “I said no. Every day I smell some- got into a firefight — I don’t think I thing or I hear something or I see had time at that moment to get scared.� something that makes me think about Firefights were not unusual for a it,� Bevels said. Marine recon unit, and he gets choked The longtime Floyd County school up recalling some of the action. board official served in the 1st Marine In November of 1967, the patrol Corps, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion walked into an ambush where Bevels from January 1967 through February said he lost his best friend. 1968. “Nobody knew if we were going to He spent the majority of his time come out or not,� he said. “It was out in the field with a group of 10 really intense.� Marines doing reconnaissance. Bevels Bevels said he still thinks about said the unit returned to the home base, those firefights, when he knew he was Camp Reasoner near Da Nang, for a in a position of kill or be killed. couple of days at a time, mostly to get “You do what you’ve got to do. supplies and try to catch up on sleep. You do what you were trained to do,� “You didn’t want to resupply (in he said. the field) because you didn’t want He learned to easily tell if the everybody knowing when that helienemy was from the North copter came over that there was some- Vietnamese Army or the Viet Cong, body there,� Bevels said. who were trained in the south. Anxiety or uncertainty are the “The NVA was as good a fighting emotions he remembers the most durunit as anybody,� Bevels said. “You ing his service. could always tell if you were up against the NVA because they always had AK-47s and it makes a distinct sound.� He said the Viet Cong — who had been fighting the French for years before the United States got involved in an effort to stop the spread of Communism — had special skills in building booby traps. “They could take about anything and hurt you,� Bevels said. And when his unit returned home, he said, they encountered anti-war protestors. The transport bringing Bevels home landed at Travis Air Force Base in California, and it was while he was en route to the civilian airport in San Francisco that he was accosted. &RQWULEXWHG SKRWR “They called us baby-killers and all that kind of stuff, but (the military) *HRUJH %HYHOV VHUYHG LQ kept us separated from that as much 9LHWQDP IURP -DQXDU\ as they could,� Bevels said. “It never leaves you,� he added. WKURXJK )HEUXDU\

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6WHYH 5RRG ZDV QRW KDSS\ DERXW EHLQJ GUDIWHG LQ %\ '28* :$/.(5 ROMAN STEVE Division — known as ROOD DOESN’T the Screaming Eagles 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII STRETCH the truth — the 82nd Airborne much when he rememDivision, and 11th bers being drafted in the fall of 1966. Armored Cavalry Division. “We went “They took me kicking and out with them out in the field and set screaming down Broad Street where up their communications,” Rood said. they put me on a Greyhound bus, sent The communications network conme to Atlanta, examined me and then nected the troops in the field to a base sent me to Fort Benning,” Rood said. near Long Binh, where a base camp “I was not excited about it.” was situated. Getting drafted then was tanta“We got to see everything,” Rood mount to a ticket to Vietnam. Rood said. “There were a couple of incisaid his only other option was to join dents where we were called up and the Army Reserve and he didn’t really then had to get down on the floor want to do that, either. while we were getting shot at.” “I was in six months, and then they Asked if there was ever a time that sent me over there,” Rood said. He he thought it was all over, Rood said, arrived in Vietnam in March of 1967 “All the time.” and served until spring of 1968, after The one positive factor, according the North Vietnamese Army and Viet to Rood, was that since he was proCong launched the Tet Offensive. viding communications equipment Rood served in the Signal Corps. that was critical to support, whenever “They taught me how to fix the little there was a firefight, troops were disradios that you wore on your back,” patched quickly to guard his truck. Rood said. When he got to Vietnam, He never fired at anyone during his he was shifted to a unit that operated year in Vietnam and remembers that telephone communications centers. “I his unit typically didn’t even get bulgot a pretty good break there,” he lets until they were in a situation said. where they were being shot at. “That Or at least that’s what he thought at happened several times,” Rood said. the time. Rood remembers the day he and a Being a part of the 53rd Signal buddy were moving some ammunition Corps meant that he provided support during the Tet Offensive when a snipfor the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne er attacked them.

“They took me kicking and screaming down Broad Street where they put me on a Greyhound bus, sent me to Atlanta, examined me and then sent me to Fort Benning. I was not excited about it.” Steve Rood

“The sniper shot (my buddy) and almost blew his foot off,” Rood said. “We dropped the rounds and I told him, ‘Don’t move. I’m going to pick you up and we’re getting out of here.’ I carried him through the woods and across this open area back over to our base area and got a medic to take care of him.” Rood said he still talks to that man — who lives over near Jefferson, Georgia — at least once a month. He said he doesn’t remember any problems with anti-war protestors when he got home. “I wouldn’t have stood for it — back then I was lean and mean,” Rood said. We can provide many services such as Paving, Grading, Surface Treatment, Coat Sealing and Hauling.

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1R VLWWLQJ ZLWK KLV EDFN WR D GRRU Vietnam leaves a lasting impact on homebuilder Larry Maxey. %\ '28* :$/.(5 Cam Ranh Bay, about 180 miles northROME HOMEBUILDER LARRY MAXEY can’t sit with his back to the east of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII door to this day. Two weeks and two days after get“If I go out to a restaurant, my ting to Vietnam, Maxey found himself friends know that I’ve got to sit where I can see a at Camp Bastogne, not far from Hue, pulling securiway out,� said Maxey. ty at a firebase near the demilitarized zone between His experience in Vietnam hardwired him to con- North and South Vietnam. stantly look for a way out of any situation in any “It was about noon that day when rounds started location. It’s the sort of thing that happens when coming in,� Maxey said. “Me and another boy went you get wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade. down in a bunker and, just as we were walking in Maxey graduated from Armuchee High School in the door of the bunker, a round fell short and fell 1965 and felt there was no way the war would last right at the door. I remember thinking we were another four years, so he decided to get a student going to be in the safest place we could be in firedeferment from the draft and went to Berry College. base, going into a bunker.� He graduated from Berry in 1969 and before the Maxey was hospitalized for 29 days with shrapsummer was over, Maxey got his draft notice. nel wounds to his right cheek and left arm. Once the Following basic training tour at Fort Benning, injuries healed, he was sent back into action. Maxey was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for He said he recalls feeling like it was going to be advanced infantry training to be a tank driver. a long tour of duty. Maxey got a break for Christmas and then it was off For the next six months, Maxey said, his unit to Vietnam. would stay out in the field for four weeks at a time, He was assigned to Bravo Company, 1st then come back to base to get a little rest and reBattalion of the 327 Infantry Regiment, attached to supply. the 101st Airborne Division. He went initially to Learning how much food to carry in his pack was one of the biggest challenges he faced. He apparently became pretty good at it because he ended up serving as an operations sergeant, ordering all of the food and supplies for his platoon. Staying dry was another day-to-day battle Maxey said he had to fight. It was always raining. Keeping his spirits up and not getting too depressed was another daily objective. “The main thing you learn is to take care of your friends, watch out for booby traps and always being watchful of what’s happening around you,� Maxey said. “I would do it again today,� he added. “I didn’t want to go to Canada.� The impact of serving in Vietnam is evidenced beyond Maxey’s refusal to sit with his back to a door.

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“It was about noon that day when rounds started coming in. Me and another boy went down in a bunker and, just as we were walking in the door of the bunker, a round fell short and fell right at the door.� Larry Maxey

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:LGRZ VKDUHV PHPRULHV RI 9LHWQDP YHW Editor’s Note: Wayne Tipton was an SP4 during his service in Vietnam. He was a sharpshooter and a lineman. The following was written by his widow, Christine Tipton, of Leesburg, Alabama. She is the author of several short stories and is currently working on a book. I sit here thinking about all the lives that have been changed forever because of the brave men and women who have put their lives on the line, so we as Americans can live the American dream and feel safe. They can never go back to who they were. Not only are their lives forever changed, so are their families. I am so proud to say I was married to one of the Vietnam soldiers, Wayne Tipton. This is his story as told to me: “I was just a young boy, age 18, when I got my letter from Uncle Sam. I was just a kid, I had to become a man very quickly. We had to put months of training into a few short weeks. “I was scared to death but I was raised by a Christian mother. I knew the Lord even though I had gotten away from him. I knew my mother’s prayers were always there with me. There were so many nights laying in my bunk I felt so alone. I started praying again. I wasn’t alone anymore.� Tears were rolling down my cheeks as he told me his story. “I got really close to the guys I trained with. We knew we were training to go to war. That day came and we were on the plane headed to Vietnam, not knowing if we would ever see our love ones again. “Trying to be the man I had become, I was holding back tears. Everyone was so quiet. I knew they were as scared as I was. When my feet hit Vietnam I was running and I have never stopped. I had a choice to come home after so many months but I chose to stay for rest of my tour. I had lost so many friends and so many went home without limbs or other injuries. “I didn’t think I deserved to go home. I drank a lot and was introduced to drugs. I was about to lose my mind. The things I saw and had to do were too much. The day came for me to go

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'XULQJ KLV GRZQWLPH LQ 9LHWQDP &KULVWLQH DQG :D\QH :D\QH 7LSWRQ XQZLQGV E\ VWUXPPLQJ D 7LSWRQ ZKHQ WKH\ IHZ FKRUGV RQ KLV JXLWDU ZHUH ILUVW PDUULHG home. I keep saying ‘I made it, I am going home.’ Then the guilt set in. “Why me when so many other didn’t make it or went home with devastating injuries? Then I was on the helicopter. It took off and then reality set in. We are really going home, tears rolling down everyone cheeks. No one cared. We are going home. Then we were hit. Smoke was everywhere. Their hearts stopped; no one said a word. The pilot turned and looked at them and said, ‘No one is going to die today.’ We wanted to believe him. I was praying and I bet they were too. We landed safe by the grace of God a great pilot. “The Lord had his hand on the pilot that day. Everyone was patting the pilot on the back, thanking him. All he said was ‘It wasn’t me, thank the man up stairs.’ For sure He was with us. We were so thankful to have our foot on safe ground. I thank our heavenly Father that day and I bet everyone else did too.� He was so happy to be home with his family, but there was so much alcohol trying to numb the memories of one of his best friends coming home without his legs. He knew he needed to keep in touch and he tried, but not as much as he should. He kept

going back to the guilt, asking why he came back with all his limbs. He went on to marry and have two children, still not letting himself be happy. The alcohol wasn’t as bad. Then it happened. He was getting a divorce. He was devastated. He started drinking more and then came the drugs. He was a truck driver so he was away from home a lot and he didn’t get to see his children much. The alcohol and drugs help him cope with the pain. He knew he was in trouble. He began to pray, asking the Lord to help him find his way back. He was coming through Alabama on his way home and stopped at a truck stop. The people were friendly and some were talking about the Lord. This sure was different from where he was from. He asked for prayers. Right then and there a older man and his wife took his hand and had prayer. They never asked him any questions. They promised to keep him in their prayers. He knew without any doubt this was where he wanted and needed to be to get stronger. This was hard because he would be moving away from his family and children, but he had to do this for

himself or he was going to die from drugs. He made the move and got a job and was doing great when I met him 20 years later. When we met he was in a good place. He had a a great job that he was proud of, a home where his children and grandchildren came to visit. We talked on the phone almost every night for about three months. He said he felt he could tell me anything without being judged. I had just gone through a divorce. After 20 years of marriage it was nice to have someone to just talk to. He seemed to need that too. We both made it clear we were not going to ever marry again. He became my best friend. I could tell him things I had never told anyone. I don’t think either of us realize we loved each other. Until I started dating, it didn’t take him long to tell me he didn’t want me seeing anyone else because he was in love with me. I knew I felt the same way. We were so scared of getting hurt after praying and talking. After about 18 months we were married. He was the love of my life. He was a good man but most important he loved the Lord. During our seven years together my three children and grandchildren had grown to love him. On 9/11, our life changed forever as well everyone in America. He didn’t think we were safe. He started having severe depression. During this time he had a heart attack. He went to sleep one night only to awake in heaven. I am so blessed to have been loved by this man who gave so much not only to his country but to his family, even in death. He was still giving. His cornea was implanted in a woman with congenital eye disease who had not been able to see for years. She is doing great. I have to smile. He is now seeing through the eyes of a woman. He would get a chuckle out of that. So as we celebrate our freedom let us remember all those who have sacrificed so much. I would like to take this time to say thank you to each of our vets. Thank you for your service, past and present. To my beloved Wayne, thank you for loving me unconditionally.

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3RON &RXQW\ YHWHUDQV UHPHPEHU VHUYLFH %\ .(9,1 0<5,&. be launched into the air. VIETNAM. It’s more than just the “It was an interesting 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII name of a country for job, and was a lot better many of Polk County’s than being on the ground veterans, who fought amid the rice getting shot at,� Caldwell said. patties, on the seas and in the skies as Once his service was over and he both draftees and volunteers alike. returned to Polk County, Caldwell The war was different for each service joined the ranks of Southern Bell, in the U.S. Armed Forces. Some got the where he remained for 30 years before call to go and serve, while others were left retiring in 1997. back in the states guarding the homefront. “A lot of guys were saying it was For the soldiers, sailors and airmen hard to get work, but I didn’t have who made it back home to Polk trouble getting a job. It wasn’t too County, or settled here later on, their bad,� he said. “I got out in 1967, and I whole world was changed by their think most of the animosity and the experiences in the rice patties along the people ramped up against the war Mekong Delta, or on the waves of the effort was well after that.� Gulf of Tonkin, or in deep holes in the He stayed away from the protesters countryside around Omaha, Nebraska. following the end of his war, and to These veterans each had their own this day feels that his service in the individual experiences of the country Navy were some of his best years. of Vietnam, and without parades and “I wouldn’t take nothing for the celebrations came home to move on experiences I had while I was in the milwith their lives in Northwest Georgia. itary, and I think that every young man Well before the turmoil of protests and possibly women too, should spend a back home and burning draft cards on tour of service in our military. I think it college campuses far from the borders builds a lot of character that a lot of kids of Polk County, Rockmart’s Brad nowadays don’t have,� he said. Caldwell saw the writing on the wall. Feeding into the South China Sea in The war was ramping up, and the south of the country was the Mekong young men all around the nation were Delta, formed by the Mekong River in having to make a choice: volunteer the country’s southernmost region. now or wait until Uncle Sam comes This is where Bob Hitchcock served calling. Caldwell, seeking instead to during his tour of duty with the 19th use his experience in the service to Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, see the world instead of sleeping in a being choppered in and out on helicopfoxhole, went to the Navy. ters amid rice patties and the Viet Cong. When he joined up in 1964, he folHitchcock remembers the smell of lowed the tradition of his family of those fields — “They always smelled serving within the nation’s fleets. with the tide coming in mostly, chang“I joined before I got drafted, ing a couple of times a day and night� because they were drafting people left — and the firefights with the enemy and right back then,� he said. “But realall times of the day. ly the main reason was to be on a ship. I He didn’t go into great detail about wanted to be on a ship and travel.� those fights, but he was wounded twice Caldwell’s travel during three years during his service, first in October of service was extensive. After train1968, and then after returning to sering and getting assigned to the aircraft vice he was wounded bad enough in carrier USS Ticonderoga, Caldwell combat to be sent home in July 1969. got to make port of call entries to He received medals, and then came Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan home like others and found work at and many more in Southeast Asia. Lockheed Martin, then the Goodyear plant “We sure did spend a lot of time in and finally the Rockmart post office. the Gulf of Tonkin,� Caldwell said. Then there are those who weren’t He was plenty busy aboard ship able to serve at all, but who wanted to with his job as a “yellow shirt,� the and were left to guard the homefront. colloquial term for a sailor whose job Ken Suffridge is one of those men, it is to direct planes to the launch catwho as an U.S. Air Force missile techapults in front of the aircraft carrier to nician during the Vietnam War was

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back in the states ensuring that Atlas missiles tipped with nuclear warheads would go off if they were ever needed. Having entered the Air Force in 1953 and first served as a jet engine maintenance technician, then later moved up and became a missile technician first serving on the Thor missiles stationed in the United Kingdom, then later on the Atlas missile in Omaha, Nebraska. Suffridge, who isn’t a Polk County native but came to settle in Aragon years later, said he was ready to go to serve on an air base in Vietnam, if his command would have let him go. “They would not allow me, or other missile crew members to serve in south-

east Asia,� he said. “Being a member of a USAF Combat Ready Intercontinental Ballistic Crew was the reason, it would have been too dangerous to let us go.� He was all ready to go back to his secondary job of being a jet engine technician and take the chance, Suffridge said. Seven times his application to go to Vietnam was put in, and each time commanders told him no. “I tried on more than one occasion to try to go, but the request would get up to division and end there,� he said. Suffridge got out of the Air Force for some years in 1964, and after the Vietnam war was over ended up back in the service with the Air National Guard.

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86 FDPH FORVH WR ZDU LQ &XEDQ 0LVVLOH &ULVLV 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII IN OCTOBER 1962, Suffridge and his felTHE UNITED STATES low Air Force missile AND THE SOVIET UNION command members rushed back to came close to nuclear war. their posts with the 549th Strategic Down in the missile silos of Missile Squadron at Offutt Air Omaha, Nebraska, waiting and Force Base, and where they stood watching to see if the nuclearby for the call to launch. tipped rockets would be launched “Upon reporting for duty we was Aragon’s Ken Suffridge, who were told Crew 1, which was at the time was a missile technimade up of 13 people, would cian on duty through the crisis. report for duty immediately and He remembers the moment he be relieved by Crew 15, which sprang into action with clarity to was my crew at midday of Oct. this day. 3,� he said. “Next day, once on “It was my ninth anniversary of site, we remained at our consoles joining the Air Force, I was bowlfor 20 hours. We were relieved a ing in a league in Omaha,� he crucial moment in the unfolding said. “Then President Kennedy crisis arrived on Oct. 24, when came on television and notified Soviet ships bound for Cuba the American public about the neared the line of U.S. vessels presence of missiles in Cuba,� enforcing the blockade. An Suffridge said. “He explained his attempt by the Soviets to breach decision to enact the blockade and the blockade would likely have made it clear that the U.S. was sparked a military confrontation prepared to use military force if that could have quickly escalated necessary to neutralize this perto a nuclear exchange.� ceived threat to national security.� That didn’t happen, as the

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er water. ItStates by Confederate was ofanAmerica important Iron Works part ofandthi

Soviets stopped. All that time, Suffridge said his crew had a missile standing ready to shoot off toward Russian soil. “During that standoff crisis on Oct. 24, our crew had an Atlas D missile standing tall, completely fueled and 30 seconds away from launch at the direction of the President,� he said. He said that it was one of the closest calls of his career in the Air Force. “In retrospect, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, people don’t really comprehend how close the U.S. was in going to war,� he said. Later, Suffridge tried to go to Vietnam and was turned down. He ended his career in 1964, but later returned to serve in the Georgia Air National Guard, and after retiring went on to become a Gwinnett County District Commissioner and, just a few years ago, the mayor of the city of Aragon.

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The lake spans 33,000 acres and is known as the “Crappie Capitol of the World!�

You Y ou sshould hould ccome ome tto op play, lay, tthen hen sstay! ta

Randy Jones, District 1, Kimball Parker, District 2, Marcie Foster, District 3, Carlton “Bubba� Teague, District 4, J. Kirk Day, Probate Judge, County Commission Chairman

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CHEROKEE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY

CHEROKEE ROCK VILLAGE

Enjoy the 30-mile view from atop Lookout Mountain. You will love the breathtaking sight of Weiss Lake and distant cities. Cherokee Rock Village served as one of the locations for the filming of “Failure to Launch,� a 2006 romantic comedy starring Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker.

• Fishing • Swimming • Camping • Boating • Tennis • Golf • Hunting • Rock Climbing • Shopping • Native American History • Civil War History CORNWALL FURNACE Erected in 1862, it is the first to be powered ed by water. It was an important part of thee Confederate States of America Iron Works and iss said to be the best preserved in the Southeast.

PRATT PRAT PR ATTT MEMORIAL AT MEMO ME MORI MO RIAL RI AL PARK PPAR ARK AR K Pratt Memorial Park is named after John Pratt. He practiced law in Centre and became Registrar of Chancery. As registrar, he kept the public archives and records of legal proceedings. Pratt invented an early typewriter, the pterotype. Pratt and his family are buried in Pratt Park.

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PAGE 60

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V $ ¶SHDFHIXO WLPH· LQ /D)D\HWWH HENRY GILBERT, %\ -26+ 2¶%5<$17 LaFayette. Everybody PRESIDENT OF THE would come to town, he 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII BANK of LaFayette, said. recalls the 1960s as “a When the schools calmer time” than today. finally became integrated, Hill High “You didn’t worry about your kids School in LaFayette, where only black getting kidnapped and things like students attended prior to integration, that,” Gilbert said. “It was just a was transformed into LaFayette Junior peaceful time in a small town.” High School. Gilbert, who was born in 1954, Half of Gilbert’s eighth-grade year fondly recalls riding his bicycle was spent attending the former Hill around town with his friends. High School in 1967. “We would go over to West “After integration, it closed as Hill LaFayette or down to the square from High School and it was just a good our house, and our parents would just building over there, so the school let us go,” Gilbert said. “You were not board took it over and made a junior afraid of losing your kids or anything high school out of it,” he said. like that.” The new junior high school This was a time when the downremained there until the 1970s. town area of LaFayette was thriving, “We were 95-percent white in our Gilbert said. There was much more to community. In my grade, we had one do, not only for youngsters but for girl come in during integration and adults. There were more shops in the that was it,” he said. days before big-box stores. Saturday Gilbert said it was a normal day of was a busy day for the town of school.

“She was just another student and we accepted her and went right on,” he said. Gilbert remembered attending North LaFayette Elementary when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. “All the teachers started gathering out in the halls. We didn’t know what was going on. Finally, right before they let us out, they told us the president had been killed,” he said. “That was a big deal.” Gilbert said he spent the night with his cousin and woke up the next Saturday morning to watch cartoons, but coverage of the assassination blanketed the television screens. The school, he recalled, would often hold nuclear bomb drills during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “They would take us out in the hall and tell us how to hold our heads down,” he said. Back at home, the Gilbert family would stock up on canned goods.

“We would even put canned goods in the basement to save them in case the bomb got dropped on us,” he said of the concern during the Cold War. Gilbert remembers when his family got its first color television, which the family would gather around and watch “Bonanza.” “We would have a rotating antenna on top. There was no cable and we could turn the antenna around and pick up some Atlanta channels, then turn it back around and pick up Chattanooga channels,” he said. Gilbert recalled watching The Beatles perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9, 1964, at the request of a family friend’s daughter. When the Apollo moon landing took place on July 20, 1969, the Gilbert family was on vacation in Florida and watched the event on a little black-and-white television set. &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

SEPTEMBER 2016

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&RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH When the family returned home, someone had saved a stack of newspapers while they were out of town that were all about the historic moon landing.

“We saved those,” he said. “It was excitement. Everyone was excited about it, because you built up to the Apollo — the Mercury and then the Apollo programs and it got to the moon landing,” he said. Gilbert and his friends would get on their bikes and hit all of the local stores and hangouts, including Mitchell’s, Thurman’s, The Quik Chek and The Dixie Dime. The Dixie Dime was located on Mize Street where the Goodwill store now stands. Gilbert remembered shopping the toy aisles at least once a week for the latest model cars and airplanes to assemble. “They had some records back there (as well),” Gilbert said of finding classic 45rpm vinyls at The Dixie Dime.

86 XVHG DV UDFHWUDFN LQ HDUO\ V %\ %/$.( '266 THE ROAD, WHICH speeds of about 90 mph, WOULD EVENTUALLY Ragland continued. 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII connect Rome and “I had a ’50 model Ford Cartersville, only stretched that belonged to a bootlegout about five miles in the early ger,” he said. “It ran pretty good.” 1960s. However, that Ford couldn’t beat That stretch of road, U.S. 411, saw Stanley Walker’s Packard. tire burn marks and sparks fly on the “I never could beat that Packard,” weekends from 1961 to at least 1963. Ragland said. “I tried a hundred times to Rome and Floyd County high beat that Packard. That thing would fly.” school students would meet at the end When Walker shifted gears, the bumof the unfinished road and race for per would hit the ground, sparks would bragging rights, according to Cave fly and Ragland would be left in the dust. Spring City Councilman Mike Ragland graduated in 1963 and Ragland, who served for years as a joined the Navy. When he came back Rome police officer. in the late 1960s, U.S. 411 was drawThey would all gather together at a ing closer to Cartersville and the kids hangout downtown and then drive had to find a new place to race. down the road to make sure there That place was Technology were no police around. Parkway, Ragland said. Then, they would gather at the end However, he was a Rome police of the road and get ready to race. officer and was responsible for handing “It was all marked off and meaout speeding tickets to those racing. sured,” Ragland said. “It was marked Sometimes they were caught, off a quarter mile.” sometimes they weren’t, but Ragland The girls would get out in front and pointed out that the places and the start the race and the boys would do times may have changed but the kids their best to outrun each other, hitting kept doing the same types of things.

As he got into high school, Gilbert remembers “cruising” in town from the former Dairy King on North Main Street to the LaFayette Recreation Center. And he fondly recalls the former John’s Drive-In on Chattanooga Street, which was a big hangout spot for local youths. Unlike today, when a lot of the youth stay indoors and play video games and surf the Internet, youth in the ’60s in small-town LaFayette would go outside to find something to do, Gilbert said. Gilbert graduated from LaFayette High School in 1972 and attended Samford University in Birmingham. After graduating, he began his career as a banker and eventually returned to his native LaFayette.

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4XLN &KHN )DPLO\ EXVLQHVV LQ KLVWRULF GHFDGH IN THE 1960S, THE QUIK CHEK grocery in LaFayette was a popular hangout for high school kids. Albert Garrison “A.G.” O’Bryant opened the small store in January 1961 at 111 Cherokee St., not far from LaFayette High School. At first the store was called Cherokee Grocery, but in late 1962 its named 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII changed to The Quik Chek. A.G.’s eldest son, Gary, graduated from LaFayette High in 1961 and started college in January 1962. But on weekends he would return home to work at the store. A lot of the customers were high school kids, he said. “The kids would come in. Some would be dropped off there and they would walk up the block to the school,” Gary said. “They would buy candy, soft drinks and so on. The band would have their break in the afternoon, and they would run down here and grab a snack. Football players would come by after practice and their parents would pick them up.” When Gary graduated in 1961, the schools weren’t yet integrated. He said black students attended Hill High School, the only black high school in Walker County.

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7KH 4XLN &KHN LQ /D)D\HWWH ZDV D SRSXODU KDQJRXW LQ WKH ¶ V 7KH VWRUH VWD\HG RSHQ ODWH LQWR WKH QLJKW DIWHU RWKHU JURFHULHV LQ WRZQ FORVHG “Sometimes the Hill High School football team would use LaFayette High School’s field and I could hear them, while working in the store Saturday nights, on the loudspeaker describing somebody running,” he said. The Hill High School students also would stop at The Quik Chek after the games.

“We treated everybody the same. We had a lot of black customers. … We treated everybody the same,” he said. Gary said he was between colleges when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. He was painting his parents’ house when his mother, Margaret, told him the news. “She said, ‘Gary, come in here. Something has happened.’ And he had been shot there in Dallas and we watched it on TV. I actually saw it on live TV when Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby,” he said. “Not when it was repeated, but when it was live on TV.” Gary said it was difficult to believe the president was dead. “It was such a controversy on that Warren Commission for years. So many people just didn’t just believe it was just one shooter, that he could be that accurate,” Gary said. “It was a shock,’ he said. “Everybody was talking about it. You could feel in the communities — people were still confident — but you could feel that their nerves were shattered and they thought, ‘What was going to happen’ and ‘Who was behind this?’” &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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SEPTEMBER 2016 &RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH Gary left college in 1965 and went on to serve in the Air Force. In April 1965, the Walker County draft board visited Gary at the store to draft him. He voluntarily joined the Air Force in May 1965, leaving the store for the first time since its inception. After 13 months, Gary volunteered for Vietnam, but was sent to Japan for two years. After four years of service, Gary returned to The Quik Chek. Among the events that most stand out in Gary’s memory was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. “The long-term results of Martin Luther King’s speech and that movement probably has had more effect on our society than the moon landing and probably the assassination (of JFK), because the country kept going (after the assassination),” he said. “There is always someone that is going to step up and lead the country. Voters are still going to vote for what they want. But I would say Martin Luther King’s

speech and that movement, probably, over time, has really changed people’s thoughts and hearts — as it should have.” Gary was in Japan at the time, but he heard from family how chaotic it was back home in the U.S. “I stayed four years in the Air Force, in personnel, and enjoyed it. But I knew how bad my dad wanted me to come back and run the store,” he said. On July 20, 1969, Gary and his fiancee, who is now Janice O’Bryant, watched the Apollo moon landing together at her house in LaFayette. “We saw it on TV as it happened,” he said. “You wondered if it really happened. They show you it happened and there are still skeptics today that think that was done in the desert somewhere. You know, how in the world did it happen?” he said of the historic moment. “We were glued to it,” he said. “After (astronaut Neil Armstrong) said, ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,’ that just locked in your head, you know? Yeah, it is. It’s a great wonderful thing. We have gone into space.”

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6SDFH HQWKXVLDVW UHFDOOV 86 6RYLHW URFNHW UDFH %\ $11( 6+80$.(5 that day and just about to THE 1960S SAW THE SPACE RACE 3DVW 7LPHV FRUUHVSRQGHQW sit down at the piano for a between the U.S, and the long session of practice. I Soviet Union hit high heard a special announcespeed as the old adage about competi- ment on the radio that noted the launch tion encouraging accomplishment cer- of the satellite. The radio announcer tainly became reality. was excited — as were all Americans. I In the mid-1950s, elementary dashed to check TV “breaking news.� school students received a Weekly TV news programs were short then — Reader that had a story about U.S. no satellite feeds from around the plans for a satellite. world and all TV was black and white. As the satellite information became The daily newspaper soon arrived more frequent in the national media, with a front-page story about Explorer Americans became excited about the I. I finally returned to the piano more prospect of launching satellites into than two hours after my planned pracspace — and certainly hoped the U.S. tice time. So began my lifelong interwould be first to do so. est in space programs. Americans were somewhat disapThe first U.S. human space flight pointed that the Soviets accomplished program was Project Mercury — the “first launch� feat with Sputnik I on which began in 1958 and continued Oct. 4, 1957, but Americans still support- through 1963. The project’s goal was ed the “space scientists� and the entire to put a man into space and safely space program. Americans were excited return him to earth. when, on Jan. 31, 1958, the Explorer I The project was directed by the newlysatellite was launched into orbit. formed National Aeronautics and Space When I heard the news of Explorer Administration — which had taken over I’s successful launch, I was at home the project from the U.S. Air Force.

Seven Mercury astronauts were announced on April 9, 1959. President Dwight Eisenhower had insisted that all of the astronauts were to be test pilots. That group included Scott Carpenter (U.S. Navy), Gordon Cooper Jr. (U.S. Air Force), John Glenn (U.S. Marine Corps), Virgil “Gus� Grissom (USAF), Walter “Wally� Schirra (USN), Alan Shepard (USN), and Donald “Deke� Slayton (USAF). Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union wanted to be first to put a man into orbit. The Soviets launched Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961, for one orbit of the earth. When I visited Russia’s cosmonaut training center in the early 1990s, I noticed a statue of Gagarin showed him as if he were merely walking to work one day. I was told by Russian space program and Moscow Aviation Institute leaders that even Gagarin’s family members were not told that he would be launched that day. &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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,Q WKH ¡ V 5RVVYLOOH WHDFKHUV DQG VWXGHQWV EHJDQ WKHLU RZQ VWDU VHDUFK WKDW FRQWLQXHV WRGD\ FEW WILL DENY THE 21ST CENTURY is a time when new technologies — or advances in existing ones — are critical to everyday existence. But many are unaware that the exponential growth in mod- %\ 0,.( 2Âś1($/ ern tech can be traced back to 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII the days following World War II when one element of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War was the Space Race. That race began Oct. 4, 1957, when a Soviet intercontinental missile lifted the first Sputnik satellite into orbit above the Earth. The fear that a nuclear attack could come from above is what led not only to the United States developing its own ICBMs but also to NASA’s creation. “The early funding was for a nuclear delivery system,â€? said John Hart, director of the Walker County Science and Technology Center and formerly employed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Born in 1976 — “after the moon landingsâ€?— Hart said there are a lot more distractions for today’s students than in his days attending Ridgeland High School. “We look back on the ’60s with awe — utterly amazed at what this country could accomplish,â€? he said. Two who both observed and participated in those accomplishments are Jim and Shirley Smith of Chickamauga. Career educators, they spent years teaching at Fairview Elementary, Rossville High and the central office. Jim also taught classes at Cleveland State Community College and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. But it was teaching astronomy to high-schoolers, and opening the county’s first planetarium, that has perhaps had the longest and strongest influence. Jim recalled presenting programs at the Clarence T. Jones Observatory in Brainerd, Tennessee, leading all-night high school field trips to observe meteor showers and helping students study the night sky through telescopes. “Times have changed,â€? he said. “I don’t know if society has gotten crazier, but those were the ‘good old days.’â€? Shirley remembered how the country’s fledgling space program sparked an interest in students at Rossville. “Jim’s (astronomy) class filled up and even had a waiting list,â€? she said. “When anything would happen — a probe or a launch — the whole school would hear it over the intercom.â€? “There was pride in what we were doing. Chants of ‘USA, USA’ were nothing new.â€? Perhaps the biggest boost to local interest in whatever exists beyond earth’s atmosphere was spurred by President John F. Kennedy’s speech in May 1961 on

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-RKQ +DUW IURP OHIW GLUHFWRU RI WKH :DONHU &RXQW\ 6FLHQFH DQG 7HFKQRORJ\ &HQWHU UHWLUHG HGXFDWRU 6KLUOH\ 6PLWK DQG -LP 6PLWK UHWLUHG :DONHU &RXQW\ WHDFKHU SRVH DW 0U 6PLWKÂśV QDPHVDNH 6PLWK 3ODQHWDULXP ZLWK D *272 3ODQHWDULXP PRGHO Âł0HUFXU\ ´ “Urgent National Needs,â€? which heralded the U.S. commitment to sending a manned mission to the moon. “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth,â€? Kennedy said. “No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.â€?

A new generation of scientists That dedication meant that money to teach a new generation of scientists was made available, and some of those funds found their way to Northwest Georgia. “It was unusual to have an astronomy course at the high school level,� Shirley said. “That gave Rossville High School a chance to go for funding.� Jim wrote a grant application that resulted in Walker County Schools installing a planetarium in Rock Spring, one that served surrounding counties and the entire tri-state region. That tradition continues with today’s Smith Planetarium, complete with a 40-foot-diameter dome and Konica-Minolta MediaGlobe II digital projector. It’s part of the Walker County Science and Technology Center on Pond Springs Road, south of Chickamauga. In addition to teaching, the Smiths were often invited to launches from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral — and both have vivid memories of the sights, sounds and power when mighty Saturn V rocket engines ignited for lift off.

“Your skin would blow back,� she recalled. Jim said the VIP observers sat on bleachers “as close as you could get� to the launch site and he “could feel hair on my forehead� when the first stage rocket with its 7.5 million pounds of thrust ignited in flames, smoke and a roar. “You could feel it all the way through your body,� Shirley said. Not only did Jim witness how the space race advanced technology throughout everyday life, he saw how it changed the lives of students. Many moved on from Rossville to become doctors, educators and scientists; but at least two were hooked by the lure of outer space. Rob Suggs and Bill Cooke, after graduating as Rossville Bulldogs, have spent their professional careers as NASA scientists at the Marshall Space Center in Huntsville. Both say their love for space and astronomy was nurtured in the classrooms and under the night sky of Northwest Georgia. And Jim, when asked what sparked his interest, said it was as much by accident as design that he turned to teaching. From a childhood spent on a farm where there was no electricity and no telephone, he completed pre-med studies — at what was then the University of Chattanooga — and was waiting to attend Loma Linda Medical School in California when he answered an advertisement to work in Walker County’s public schools. The rest, as they say, is, like the 1960s — history. And as Jim says, “The greatest time yet to live is in the future.�

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5RE 6XJJV· DQG %LOO &RRNH·V SDWKV WR 0DUVKDOO 6SDFH )OLJKW &HQWHU EHJDQ LQ 5RVVYLOOH %\ 0,.( 2¶1($/ “MY INTEREST IN “Since then, I earned a ASTRONOMY STARTED doctorate in astronomy, 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII in the late ’60s due to sevworked on the GPS sateleral influences: ‘Star Trek,’ lite system, helped develop ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and the the International Space Station, and Apollo program. am now working on the Space Launch “The first two spoke of a future for System and Orion spacecraft which mankind where we would be explorwill take humans beyond earth orbit ing the space frontier. And Apollo for the first time since I was a student showed that this wasn’t just a dream at Rossville High, nearly 45 years ago. but could be a reality.” “I hope that what we are doing at That is how Robert Suggs, space NASA now will inspire students and environments team leader for NASA, that they will be blessed with great recalls coming of age in Rossville. teachers as I was so they can help us “Through several Walker County land humans on Mars.” school system teachers — James A. Smith, Robert Westcott and Dwight ‘Rocket City’ Smith — I had mentors who were willing to help me learn about astronBill Cooke, a self-described “nerd” omy by answering questions and, during his junior and high school more importantly, by helping me find years, has similar recollections of answers myself.” teachers willing to mentor and inspire Suggs said he holds fond memories students like himself and who fueled a of many discussions with Dwight passion for science that spans decades. Smith in middle school, using Bob “Walker County, unlike Huntsville Westcott’s telescope in his backyard (home of NASA’s Marshall Space during high school and many nights Flight Center and Redstone Arsenal) spent with Jim Smith and the teleis not known as a high science area,” scopes on the roof of the Walker Cooke said. “But it has produced a County Science Center in Rock Spring. high percentage of scientists, science “Those were times when I could educators and astronomers.” experience the universe with my mind The scientist said having motivated and my eyes with the guidance of teachers resulted in motivated students. these gifted and enthusiastic educa“We had a place to belong,” he said. tors. It seems natural that Cooke lives

“Both Dwight and James Smith encouraged me to start building model rockets and become involved in rocketry in 1968 — before the moon landing. I remember Rob (Suggs) and I going to see the last Saturn V launch that was part of the Skylab program.” Bill Cooke

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back to Walker County, if only remotely. The local school system’s science center has a fixed camera that is used to monitor “fire balls” on a daily basis. The Pond Springs site also houses a telescope, currently being refurbished, that helps determine if meteors strike the moon’s surface.

‘A unique time’ Suggs and Cooke both earned doctorates and have dedicated themselves to science —and both attribute those accomplishments to the particular set of circumstances in their youth. “What people should remember is that the ’60s and ’70s were a unique time as far as the space program,” Cooke said. He noted the willingness of the U.S. government to devote resources — to the study of science, to beating the Russians to the moon and to exploring beyond earthly bounds. “Now we are jaded,” he said. “Then, attitudes were different and the Apollo program was a source of national pride.”

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)DOORXW VKHOWHUV ZHUH QRW XQKHDUG RI LQ *RUGRQ &RXQW\ %\ 7</(5 6(55,77 WITH THE INCREASING Brenda Brock, an associate broker at EFFICIENCY OF BREAKING NEWS ERA Prime Real Estate who graduated 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII coverage and ever-evolving television from Calhoun High School in 1962, and radio technology, a large portion of remembers the precautions that some the 1960s can be largely defined by two competiaround the county took during this tumultuous time. tions between the United States and the Soviet “At the time, there was a lot of talk about storing Union; the Cold War and the Space Race. up enough food and supplies and preparing storm The two events could not be any different. The pits to get into just in case they actually attacked,� Cold War injected the nation with gripping fear and Brock said. “I have even heard of one of those fallparanoia that seeped into every part of the country and out shelters near downtown Calhoun that ended up the Space Race, and eventual moon landing, provided only being used when bad storms happened.� awe-struck amazement and other-worldly wonder. The war of words and threats reached its climax in However, they are similar in the way that they 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. President John F. altered life and morphed the perception of the entire Kennedy alleviated the situation through negotiations. decade, even in small communities like Gordon County. �I remember those couple of days were really scary According Jerry Smith, a former head football just because I know Cuba was so close to us,� Brock coach at Calhoun High School and Gordon County said. “We weren’t too concerned about the Soviet resident for 82 years, just the potential of launched Union because it just seemed so far away, but I knew atomic projectiles were enough to send Calhoun an attack from Cuba could do a lot of damage to us.� into a panic during the early 1960s. The scare As the tension of the Cold War began to fade in prompted some to build fallout shelters or bunkers the later half of the 1960s, the race to the moon to shield themselves from the radiation. picked up, providing a much-needed breath of fresh “The Cold War seemed to really bother every air from the suffocating current events of the decade. young person around here because it was all over the “Most families around here had a television by then, news,� Smith said. “We just felt like we were always so we never wanted to miss any of them taking off or living under the threat of a bomb. And honestly, we coming back,� Brock said. “I have always been interestwere just confused as to why there would already be ed in seeing history being made as it happens, and you another war after World War II just ended.� could tell this was an important time of our history.� &RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH On May 5, 1961, American astronaut Alan Shepard made a suborbital flight. Americans were nervous, but happy, as they awaited information about the flight. Though the flight was only about 15 minutes in duration, it greatly boosted the spirits of all Americans. Citizens and visitors watched TV sets at home and in department stores and heard radio accounts. Students in schools that had television sets were able to take a break from their lessons to learn of Shepard’s adventure. There was applause — and shouts of delight from many a classroom! In August of that year, Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov had a daylong flight in space. American astronaut John Glenn orbited earth three times on his Feb. 20, 1962, flight. By the end of the Mercury program in 1963, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union had sent six men into space — though the Soviet cosmonauts had spent more time aloft.

The launch of the Apollo 11 had millions of Americans glued to the closest television. “It was like nothing we had ever seen around here before,� Smith said. “I think if there was any way people around here could get to a television, they did. It was a big deal everywhere here.� Although the event took place over 200,000 miles from Gordon County, the landing signified how an event can invigorate a small town. “To me, Gordon County has always been a place that took great pride in America and has always had a lot of patriotism,� Brock said. “We knew when we landed on the moon that the United States had finished No. 1, and that was very exciting.� Other members of the community also enjoyed the event for more personal reasons. “If it wasn’t for the moon landing, I wouldn’t have graduated college,� Smith said. “I remember everybody had an extra day off from school and work, so I at least had the opportunity to study for a really difficult final exam. I think everybody in the county enjoyed the extra time off.� However, some residents didn’t exactly buy-in to the televised event. “Of course you had some people around here that believed the whole landing was a big hoax,� Brock said. “Some of them probably still think all of it was fake.�

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Resaca Confederate Cemetery is the final resting place for approximately 400 confederate soldiers who fell in the bloody two-day Battle of Resaca on May 14 and 15, 1864, between the forces of Generals Johnston and Sherman. The daughters of Col. John Green, the superintendent of the Georgia Railroad, collected and reinterred the bodies from shallow graves to this plot known as the Confederate Cemetery, the first of its kind in Georgia.

Apollo 8 orbited the moon on Christmas Eve, 1968. It was during the Apollo 11 flight when American astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969.

TOWN OF RESACA ELECTED OFFICIALS Mayor Samuel Allen • Councilman Nathan Wyatt, Councilman Todd Rutledge, Councilman Justin Barton and Councilwoman Sandy Adams

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7KH QHZV WKDW VKRRN *RUGRQ &RXQW\ DQG WKH ZRUOG %\ .$5/, /$1' NO NEWS IN THE EARLY 1960s Deems remembers silence through affected the nation more than the assas- 3DVW 7LPHV FRUUHVSRQGHQW the halls and dormitory areas. “As I sination of President John F. Kennedy. walked back to my dorm, word must Gordon County resident Janet have gotten out as lots of students were Deems remembers Nov. 22, 1963, well. leaving their classes,� said Deems. “I had just gotten “I was in college at the time at Kent State back to my room when my roommates came in after University in Ohio,� said Deems. Taking a sociology leaving their classes. We really didn’t say much of class at the time, Deems had made an appointment anything but the three of us left our room and walked with her professor to discuss a difference in views to one of the three churches that were very close to being presented in the class. “We were sitting in his the campus. In fact, while there were hundreds of office talking — I still remember exactly what it students going into the various churches, the campus looked like,� said Deems. “We had only been talkhad become extremely quiet — no one was talking.� ing about 15 minutes when his secretary burst in the Another Gordon County resident, Mignon door and yelled ‘President Kennedy has been assasBallard, also remembers that day. sinated.’ We were both shocked to say the least.� She was a young mother to a toddler and small

baby at the time. “I think it happened on a Friday because I had a maid that day, and I was worried about how she would react to it,� said Ballard. “She held her emotions in check but I spent a good bit of time on the phone.� Ballard had a hard time processing the idea that someone would assassinate the president. “Several presidents had been assassinated before him, but he was young and had small children as we did,� said Ballard. The weeks and months that followed were a sad time as our nation found ways to deal with the injustice done on that dark Friday. Memorials were erected and government buildings were renamed. And as hearts healed, minds did not forget as the nation pauses often to remember the man that led our country with dignity.

5HPHPEHULQJ WKH GD\ 3UHVLGHQW .HQQHG\ ZDV VKRW I WAS 14 AND IN heard all the churches in %\ 6 ' 6801(56 NINTH GRADE typing 3DVW 7LPHV FRUUHVSRQGHQW the county were going to class at Cherokee County be opened that week in High School. I wasn’t October so people could particularly interested in learning to go anytime during the day and pray type but that’s where they assigned me for peace. I wondered why they didn’t and when you’re new to high school open the churches so people could and at the bottom of the pecking order pray for peace all the time. I’m glad I you go where they say to go. didn’t know just how close to nuclear Mrs. Upton left the room briefly as holocaust we really were at the time. we practiced “typing sets� to learn the I wish I could remember what hapkeys of a standard manual typewriter. pened next in school that day. The We had no choice; the keys weren’t next clear memory I have is walking labeled with the letters or the numbers. out the front doors of the school and When she returned, without calling us seeing for the first time the American to attention, she said matter-of-factly flag flying at half staff on the right and without any emotion, “The presiside of the sidewalk. dent has been shot at in Dallas, Texas.� Few times in a person’s life that litIt was after our lunch break and tle voice inside your head tells you before the fifth period class that Friday, something important and you listen. Nov. 22, 1963. She left the room again “History is being made today and you a few moments later and I don’t recall should take it all in and not miss a how long she was gone this time but moment or a detail� is what the little when she returned she again said matvoice said to me as I reached bus No. ter-of-factly, like it was nothing unusu- 12 that would take me home. al, “the president has been killed.� I can remember turning on the She didn’t mention Dallas, Texas, or black-and-white TV and then leaning a motorcade, or the grassy knoll or even out the window and turning the antenthe Texas School Book Depository. na until I could hear clear sound comI don’t remember my reaction at ing from the set. the time. When you’re 14 and just 3 For the next four days I stayed in months into your ninth grade year of front of the TV set as the coverage conhigh school and afraid of being tinued from Washington and Dallas. thrown into the holly bush outside the The one image I have the clearest memend hallway by a senior, you don’t ory of is when they unloaded the casket really take in national news until it from Air Force One at Andrews AFB affects you personally. that Friday evening in Washington. I vaguely remembered the Cuban Mrs. Kennedy had to be helped down Missile Crisis of a year earlier only from the lift truck and as she walked to because my mother announced at the the 1963 gray Pontiac Navy ambulance. supper table one night that she had I remember waiting anxiously to

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-DFTXHOLQH .HQQHG\ NLVVHV WKH FDVNHW RI KHU KXVEDQG LQ WKH URWXQGD RI WKH 8 6 &DSLWRO RQ 1RY hear what the new president would say. I guess I wanted to hear that everything was going to be alright and the Russians were not going to attack our country. I was not reassured when President Johnson asked for my help and God’s. What could I do? I thought. I even talked my parents into letting me stay home from church to see Oswald transferred from the Dallas City Jail to the county jail on Sunday morning when a man in a suit shot him live on national television. I remember the funeral on Monday, the horses, the lone riderless horse with boots turned backward in the stirrups, John Kennedy’s son saluting, the playing of Taps and the missed note, and the lighting of the eternal flame. I took it all in and remember it

as if it happened only yesterday. The last two hours of school the day Kennedy was shot are a blur in my memory with only faded images and garbled sound. I guess that the reason I don’t remember what happened during those last two periods of class on that Friday is that it was bad almost to the point of shocking. I remember keeping up with the events that happened after the assassination through graduation in 1967 and beyond with the encouragement of Mrs. Helen Price, the librarian. She called my attention to every newspaper story and magazine article that came through the library even remotely related to the events in Dallas that day in 1963.

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-). DVVDVVLQDWLRQ VKDWWHUV QG JUDGHU¡V ZRUOGYLHZ %\ %/$.( '266 A VOICE CAME OVER THE In fact, she and her family went into SCHOOL’S INTERCOM announcing that the bomb shelter in their basement imme3DVW 7LPHV VWDII President John F. Kennedy had been shot. diately after the assassination, where Christa Jackson was 7 years old, sitflashlights, batteries and small amounts of ting in her second-grade class at Cave Spring food and water were stored for a short emergency. Elementary School, when the Even as a small child, Jackson said, she understood announcement rang out on Nov. 22, the dangers that may have accompanied Kennedy’s 1963. death. “It was scary that we went home from school,â€? Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed she said. “We thought it was part of a bigger thing.â€? JFK in Dallas, Texas. It was such a different time that Nation mourning Jackson, now St. Mary Catholic School’s director of admissions and On Nov. 24, 1963, Oswald was shot and killed development, said children didn’t by Jack Ruby. &KULVWD hear about people being shot. Jackson and her family were glued to the television The speaker, presumably the prin- -DFNVRQ that day because Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin moved cipal, came on a little while later and to the Capitol from the White House. She remembers announced that Kennedy had died and classes were being struck by the one black horse without a rider. being released early. “He was an American hero,â€? Jackson rememOutside, the American flag was being lowered to bered. “He had died serving our country.â€? half-staff. “That is such a strong memory,â€? Jackson said. Kennedy’s body lay in state in the Capitol “I had never heard about the flag being at half-staff.â€? Rotunda for 21 hours, with about 250,000 people Her veteran father explained to her that the flag paying their respects, according to the John F. at half-staff is a symbol of respect and mourning. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum website. Jackson went home, saying the fear permeated the Jackson said she remembers feeling a type of air because everyone was so afraid that this was just kinship with Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s daughter, the first step of a larger-scale attack on the country. who was almost 6 at the time. She said she couldn’t

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believe that Caroline would have to live without her daddy and move out of her own home. Even John Kennedy Jr.’s salute to his father’s coffin touched her at such a young age. “It broke our hearts,� Jackson recalls. “It was always so sad to me that they would never know their daddy and what he could’ve done.� The next day, Nov. 25, Kennedy was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, where an eternal flame still burns over his grave.

Learning how the country, people work It was soon after Kennedy’s death that people began talking about a potential conspiracy involving countless numbers of organizations and governments such as Cuba, the Mafia or the CIA. Jackson recalls that it was her aunt who first introduced her, a few years later, to the idea that a conspiracy may have ended Kennedy’s life. She collected books on Kennedy’s administration, life and assassination, which her niece looked through as a child. “Those pictures are very much burned in my mind,� Jackson said. &RQWLQXHG RQ SDJH

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SEPTEMBER 2016 &RQWLQXHG IURP SDJH Her parents didn’t try to protect her from the potentially nightmarish events, either. They watched all of the coverage, including that of Lyndon B. Johnson’s inauguration. Jackson was struck by the bloodstained clothes Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, was still wearing. Even as a child, she found it curious that Johnson was inaugurated so quickly that they didn’t take the time for Jacqueline Kennedy to get cleaned

ROME NEWS MEDIA LLC up. Her parents explained to her that they needed to have someone in command in case a larger attack occurred. It was probably at that moment that Jackson realized the vice presidency even existed, she said. Kennedy’s death made a big impact on her, with Jackson learning how the country runs and how evil people can be. Jacqueline Kennedy looked so perfect and he was so handsome, she continued, so his assassination helped shatter her childhood outlook on life. “It was sad,� Jackson concluded. “It was tragic.�

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0UV 0DUJDUHW UHPHPEHUV -DFNLH .HQQHG\¡V GUHVV VWUHQJWK %\ 5$1'< -21(6 NOV. 22, 1963, Mrs. Margaret said STARTED OUT like any when she got home they 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII other day for Margaret turned on the black-andSmith of Centre, Alabama, white television for all the except she was going to meet with coverage and commentary about the Doris Formby at the Boy Scout house incident. For several days they and do some painting. watched — from the footage of the Margaret and Doris motorcade, to the arrest and shooting were den mothers at the of the perpetrator, Lee Harvey Boy Scout/Cub Scout Oswald, to the funeral and commentahouse that was located tors’ remarks. next to what is now the Mrs. Margaret said the one thing Extended Family for that stood out to her was Jacqueline Kids office below the Kennedy having blood on her pink Waffle King in Centre. dress, hands, and down her legs in the 0DUJDUHW pictures, and she talked about how When they heard 6PLWK that President John F. strong Jacqueline was during all that Kennedy had been shot, happened. Mrs. Margaret said that the they turned the radio on and listened assassination affected her in several to news broadcasts as they continued ways with different emotions. painting. Mrs. Margaret remembered Mrs. Margaret Smith is a member how sad people were, because he was of First Baptist Church in Centre so young, and the questions about where she has taught Sunday School what the communists might try to do for over 50 years, teaching adults and were the talk of the town. young adults.

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5RPDQV VHQW WHOHJUDPV WR .HQQHG\ IDPLO\ DIWHU DVVDVVLQDWLRQ %\ %/$.( '266 SEVERAL of John F. Kennedy, ‘Ask DIFFERENT ROME AND not what your country can 3DVW 7LPHV VWDII FLOYD COUNTY organido for you, but ask what zations sent telegrams to you can do for your counJacqueline Kennedy and released try,’� the statement read. statements following the death of Gardner Wright Jr., the then presiPresident John F. Kennedy. dent of Floyd County’s Republican JFK, the 35th president of the Association, said all Americans were United States, was assassinated by shocked by the “despicable and tragic Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas, death of our President,� regardless of on Nov. 22, 1963. their political inclinations. Some of the statements and tele“Thank God, however, that through grams were printed in the Nov. 24, His guidance our forefathers, in estab1963, edition of the Rome Newslishing our form of government, there Tribune. will be an orderly transition,� Wright The Floyd County Democratic continued. Association and Floyd County Young “We now ask God’s guidance on Democrats statement said they were President Johnson in his difficult days “deeply grieved and severely shocked to come,� Wright concluded. “The by the tragic events of Friday.� sympathy of all Americans goes out to Kennedy was elected as a member the Kennedy family, not only in their of the Democratic Party. personal loss, but in the loss of the “We feel that during this time of nation as a whole.� national tragedy and mourning that it T.H. Selman R., then the chairman behooves each and every citizen of of the Floyd County Board of Roads these United States to sincerely and and Revenue, said many “Floyd earnestly search his own soul, count Countians did not vote for him or his many blessings, and in the words agree with some of his political views,

(but) every one respected his right to have these views and respected his ability as leader of the free world. “We are all shocked and grieved by his untimely death. The sympathy of all Floyd County goes to Mrs. Kennedy and the family,� he concluded. Floyd County’s local military organizations also chimed in, offering their respects for their brother-in-arms. Kennedy served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was deemed a hero for leading his crew to an island in the Pacific when his PT boat was cut in two by a Japanese destroyer. “Members of Post 42, American Veterans of World War II and Korea, extend deepest sympathy in the tragic death of the President,� said Hoyt Holcomb, commander of the FrostHarless Post 42, American Veterans of World War II and Korea. “ We salute his ability, his courage and his devotion to duty.� The American Legion members of Shanklin-Attaway Post 5 may have

“(W)e stand with you in the death of our Commander-in Chief as we stood with you during his life.� Telegram to the Kennedy family

summed it up best in their telegram to Mrs. Kennedy. “Nothing can be said that would lessen your sorrow at this time,� read the telegram. “However, we stand with you in the death of our Commander-in Chief as we stood with you during his life.�

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