Eastman #4; Before Costco; Kingsport's WWII Spy

 

When Eastman was Number 4.

In 1926 the Kingsport Times surveyed the local employment scene and published a chart listing – not in any particular order – the fledgling city’s top industrial employers.

If you had asked Kingsport folks in the 50s who they thought was the city’s top industry thirty years earlier, most of them would have guessed Eastman.

But it wasn’t.

Kingsport Press was.

Eastman was fourth, only a handful of employees ahead of Kingsport Hosiery Mill.

The newspaper estimated the local population at 12,000 with more than one-third of them gainfully employed.

“It is probable that there is no other city in the United States which has a larger percentage of workers and a smaller percentage of drones.”

 

 

Before there was Costco, there was Poston’s Grocery.

The tiny market located at the so-called Upper Circle (now the intersection of East Center and Memorial Blvd.) advertised in 1954 – two decades before Costco’s first warehouse store opened in Seattle as Price Club - “Groceries by the Case” economically priced at “25 cents per case over our wholesale cost.”

 

 

Larson and Suzanne Hall in 1949

Kingsport Woman Was Wartime Spy

Suzanne David Hall, war bride of Kingsport soldier Larson Hall, worked for the French Underground before meeting her future husband.

She described the experience to Times-News Staff Writer Herman Giles in 1949:

Her time during World War II reads like a spy story and that's what it is. Mrs. Hall was a member of the French underground, and if the Americans had not invaded Normandy when they did, she may never have lived to tell about it.

She was one of 140 persons in Cherbourg who worked with the French Marquis. Now she is one of the four members of that group still alive.

The Germans were taking the men of France and shipping them to Germany as forced laborers. Before they went, they were examined by doctors to determine whether or not they were physically fit for the job. But the doctor in Cherbourg was not as trustworthy as the Germans thought.

He sent out false identification papers, changed reports of other physicians in other towns. How he got these papers is not known, but he sent them out of his office by Mrs. Hall. She carried them sewed in her coat lining, sometimes in a hollow slot carved in the heel of her slippers. One wrong move could mean death, and one day she made that move.

She was on a train, and one of the papers she was carrying fell to the aisle. A German guard found it, and she was taken into custody. Despite her denial of any knowledge as to where the paper came from, she was jailed for further questioning.

The first night she was in jail a sentry suddenly walked in, threw open the doors and set all the prisoners free. It was unbelievable! Once free, she learned what had caused the miracle. The Americans had landed, and the Nazis were retreating. There was no time to worry about prisoners.

Mrs. Hall is eligible for the Purple Heart, too. She has two pieces of shrapnel in her body, the result of bombing raids on Cherbourg

"American shrapnel," Mrs. Hall smiled with mock accusation toward her husband. But she quickly explained she was only teasing "Some of the French were bitter about those killed by the bombers, but there is always death where there is war. Those killed were nothing compared to the many saved from certain death. The French know that now, and they are grateful."

At present, Mrs. Hall has no idea when she will be able to visit France again. She's more interested in finding an outlet for the restless energy which an adventurous life has left her, and she wants to take a job in Kingsport as soon as she can find one.

"I think I’d like telephone work,” she said. "I like to hear a voice by itself, and then try to imagine what the person looks like from the sound of it. It's an exciting game."

 

The next year she was awarded the Croix de Lorraine by General Charles de Gaulle for her heroism.

She never got that telephone work. She raised her son Larson III (Larry) and daughter Tina in Kingsport. Her 2011 obituary listed her as a homemaker.

Suzanne Louise David Hall became a naturalized citizen of the United States in November 1975.

The 2003 novel “For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy” by Newberry Award-winning author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley was based on her life.