The Teen Center!

 What to do with our teenagers...

Build them a Teen Center!

Before 1940 the Kingsport Times had published the word “teenager” exactly once: in a 1939 story about a dress pattern with broad shoulders and a flared skirt that was “very becoming for thin teen-agers.”

The word teenager didn’t really hit the language until late in the war when Kingsport adults began worrying about what their high school age children would do after school and, especially, after dark.

Talk of a “teen center” began in earnest in 1944 when the Kingsport Business and Professional Women’s Club offered to sponsor such an endeavor.

And thus the above 1987 Out of the Attic photo, which had originally been published in the Kingsport Times in 1945 with the caption “THESE ARE THE ELBOW GREASE BOYS.” The boys in the picture had, the caption told us, done “most of the hard work of cleaning, painting, hammering and general tinkering to get Indian Lodge into shape for fellow students and friends to enjoy.”

Indian Lodge was the name of the first local teen center.

The caption continued, “Their labors were recognized on opening night, when the entire group posed for this picture. Left to right: Paul King, Harlan Harrison, Ralph Mellons, Bert Shanks, Roy Williams, Kenneth Hauk, Buster Brown, J. L. Palmer and Dick Loveless.”

When the photo ran in Out of the Attic 42 years later, it was submitted by Ken “Fat” Hawk, who told the Out of the Attic editor, “Back in the 40s the Business and Professional Women’s Club sponsored the Indian Lodge for teens age 16 to 21.” (That was expanding the definition of teenager past 19 to 20 and 21.)

Hawk told the editor, “It was located in a building next to what is now WKIN radio on Market Street. The building belonged to Holston Ordnance Defense which used it for storage. They gave the room to the club provided the teens keep it up. All the businesses chipped in and donated furniture, a ping pong table, a pool table, a grill and a hot dog machine. We’d hire bands from Knoxville and around and had dances every Saturday night. Membership was about $5 and was open to teens from Dobyns-Bennett, Church Hill, Blountville and Sullivan High Schools. The club eventually moved into space in the Civic Auditorium.”

Not quite that simple.

There’s a reason most of us have never heard of Indian Lodge. That’s because Indian Lodge lasted less than a year.

The Lodge opened to much fanfare on Saturday April 28, 1945 with a dance featuring music by Buddy Marsh and His Orchestra.

The gloriously-named Kingsport Times reporter Florine Cooter wrote about the opening in the next day’s paper:

“The old Trailer Camp Recreation Building vibrated anew Saturday night as more than 500 teen-agers turned out to make the opening of Kingsport's Indian Lodge what sponsors and members alike termed ‘A splendid success.’

“The floor was filled with jitterbugs as well as more conservative dancers the entire evening. Robert Pyle (of the Tennessee Eastman Recreation Center) rendered several vocal selections and the ever-popular juke-box furnished current tunes until arrival of the orchestra about 9 p.m.”

Despite that smashing beginning and a strong summer, by fall attendance was down to 94 a day. The Indian Lodge was no longer a hit with teenagers.

In December the building was sold to Clinchfield Supply, owned by Bobby Peters. On July 28, 1946 the local women’s club was running one of those “divorce” classified ads: “The Business and Professional Women’s Club of Kingsport will not be responsible for any debts made by the Indian Lodge or any member of the Lodge.”

Indian Lodge was dissolved.

And that’s why you probably never heard of Indian Lodge. It was open for a grand total of seven months.

For my generation “Teen Center” meant that back room at the Civic Auditorium.

But that was actually Kingsport’s third attempt at a Teen Center.

The folks involved in Indian Lodge didn’t give up easily. A week after the “divorce ad” Indian Lodge president Jack Huntoon was standing in front of the weekly Jaycees meeting asking the group’s support in reviving what the newspaper called the “teen tavern.”

And the Jaycees agreed.

It took two years and $40,000 but on Saturday November 13, 1948 a new teen center, actually called “Teen Center,” opened in a brand-new building erected specifically as a teen center. The Jaycee had partnered with the Kiwanis Club, which had donated proceeds from the 1948 Kiwanis Kapers, to buy the land at 134 Cumberland St. If that address sounds familiar, keep reading.

The newspaper covered this grand opening, too. “Crowds of old and young were on hand Saturday night for the opening of Teen Center, the Junior Chamber of Commerce’s $40,000 gift to Kingsport's younger generation. The older people were mostly there early in the evening to view the building and attend the dedication ceremonies. The teen-agers attended the Center's first party, a Sadie Hawkins Day dance with music by Sammie DeVault's orchestra from Bristol. The dedication was broadcast over WKPT, and later in the evening the radio station carried a 15-minute program of the dance music.”

The new Teen Center even had a director, Miss Lucille Blankenbecler, younger sister of famous Kingsport High football and basketball star Emary Blankenbecler.

She seemed to have the requisite background to make this new Teen Center a success: “a former member of the Tennessee Eastman Corporation recreation staff, where she directed a local center in the Eastman plant and organized specialized recreation clubs. She assisted in organizing the recreation program in the wartime TEC plant at Oak Ridge.”

This Teen Center didn’t last quite two years. By October 1950 the building was being rented to the new Boys’ Club. That’s why the address sounds familiar – it would become famous as the Boys’ Club.

Letters to the editor blamed this teen center’s demise on two factors:

“The Teen Center was all right, until the ten and twelve-year-olds started coming there.”

“An unruly element.” In other words, fights.

Almost as soon as this Teen Center went under, local teens were lobbying for – yes – a teen center.

Every year on Student Government Day, when teens played mayor and other city officials, a resolution was passed in favor of a – yes – new teen center.

Recreation director Bill Jordan got the ball rolling again in December 1956, telling city officials that Kingsport had adequate recreation facilities for boys but almost nothing for girls. “The idea is for a place where young people could go on dates. At present their only choice is a movie.”

On July 7, 1957 Mayor Milton DeVault lead a charge of teenagers into the converted game room at the Civic Auditorium, rechristened the Teen Center and placed under the firm hand of advisor Mrs. Don Whited.

And that was the situation when I turned a teen. I even took ballroom dancing there when I was in junior high.

The Civic Auditorium Teen Center from the 1965 D-B yearbook.

If you are still reading, you’re probably wondering how this story ends.

Not well.

In 1975 the Civic Auditorium Teen Center closed. The city said it needed the space for storage. That was the official story. The letters to the editor had another cause: drugs in the parking lot.

But Kingsport teens couldn’t stand the idea of not having a dedicated teen center.  (Although I should note that Ft. Henry Mall opened in March 1976 and was immediately a teen hangout.)

It took them a while but they managed to get yet another teen center, Rascal’s, which opened Feb. 13, 1987 – more than a decade after the Civic Auditorium Teen Center closed. Rascal’s was located across the street from the old Boys’ Club which was actually the original “Teen Center.”

Rascal’s celebrated its 25^th anniversary in 2012, the longest lasting of all Kingsport’s teen centers.

It too is gone now.

I haven’t seen any letters to the editor lately about a new, new teen center. I don’t expect to.

Boola Boola

 

From Boola Boola To Legendary Teacher

 

Little did we know.

To those of us in her Language Arts class, she was simply Miss Riley, the formidable eighth grade teacher at Ross N. Robinson Junior High School.

She was always dressed to the nines, not a hair out of place, lipstick perfectly applied.

She wasn’t a mean teacher. She wasn’t a whipping teacher or even a yelling teacher.

She was an encouraging teacher, praising those who deserved her praise, never disparaging lesser work except with a lesser grade.

Sixty years later I still think she and Miss Spracher and Miss Snyder were the most influential English teachers I had in my twelve years in the Kingsport Public School system. And all three were fixtures in junior high.

But Miss Riley towered over all of them by force of personality. It was not for nothing that her college class elected her Most Prominent. Any room she ever entered, she was immediately the Most Prominent.

Oh, but what we didn’t know about her.

 

The Boola-Boola Girl

Mary Erin Riley, Miss Riley’s full name, was a four-year (!!!!) cheerleader at Alabama College for Women at Montavello, leading the other cheerleaders in such boola-boola era cheers as:

Ala-ga-zip!!!

Ala-ga-zo!!!

Ala-ga-zip-zam-zo!!!

Hit ‘em high, hit ‘em low,

Yea, Montavello, let’s go!!!

 

No, Montavello didn’t have a football team to hit ‘em high and low. It was a women’s college. So she cheered for the Purples and Golds, as they were called, to hit ‘em on the basketball court.

The school also had a field hockey team, a swim team and a tennis team but basketball was the number one spectator sport at Montavello in the early twenties.

My other favorite of her cheers:

Radiator, radiator, steam, steam, steam!

Mule and wagon, mule and wagon, team, team, team!

Montavello!

 

The Hubba Hubba Girl

Most Prominent was probably the most apt title the women of Montavello could come up with for their Mary Erin Riley. She is in a couple of dozen pictures in the yearbooks of her four years at the school - she graduated in 1926 - and she jumps off the page in every photo.

The Glee Club is packed and ready for a trip to Charleston, S.C. in one photo. And there she is, a stand out. In the cheerleader photo, the yearbook editors didn’t bother to hide her. They gave her an individual photo.

Her senior portrait said it all:

Mary Erin — those two words immediately bring a mental image to “ye scores of acquaintances” of all that one could tell in a volume. Wit - a made to order type to which is added a brand of Mary’s mirth. Striking? I should say. Sincerity? Enough to lavish it on all her friends, which are greater in numbers than the "Charleston" delegation! Ability? Scan her honors, then rub your eyes and read slowly. Charming? Could anything short of such result from the combination known as Mary Erin?

I didn’t know her as Mary Erin. But I wish I had.

 

The Girl with the Golden Voice

At Montavello she was in the Literary Society and the YWCA and on the yearbook staff and served as a class officer but music was obviously her true love. She was in the Glee Club all four years, presaging her arrival in Kingsport eight years later, where she became a much in demand vocalist. Newspaper clippings from the time note her appearances before civic organizations, church groups and conventions. In 1935 alone – her first full year in Kingsport – she sang for 42 different groups, including the Rotary Club, the Franklin Club, whatever that was, the Boys Scouts of America Jamboree and as a soloist at First Baptist church.

For the Boy Scout Jamboree of 1935 she sang “Aspirations” and “Give a Man a Horse He Can Ride.” The Kingsport Times noted, “Miss Riley's full rich voice was heard to great advantage in these numbers and she received much applause.”

She also began the first of what would become an annual event, her much anticipated performance at the Kiwanis Kapers.

By 1937 the newspaper was breathlessly reporting, “Yes, Mary Riley will sing for the Kiwanis Kapers this year. Naturally. The Chairman, the Casting Director, and the President of the Kiwanis club, all told this reporter that this announcement could safely he made. Mary Erin was up at Kapers rehearsal last night and the song was decided on. So watch for the Spotlight and Mary.”

By 1940 the Kapers critic wrote, “Oh boy-wait till you see Mary Riley. You have seen her? Yes, but not this Mary. Mary who always sweeps regally out to the foot lights in one of them there gorgeous slinky things-full of dignity and music. Well-Mary's dignity is Gone With The Wind, and we have Mary as a hill billy-or should I say a hillnanny (hope this does not- get Mary's goat), Mary doing a rousing square dance, Mary handing you a hot number, so hot it shoots sparks. This will wow you.”

She was literally the belle of the ball in early Kingsport.

But then there was this….

 

The Legendary Teacher

Mary Erin Riley arrived in Kingsport in 1934, following in her older sister Augusta’s footsteps and signing on with the Kingsport City Schools to teach Reading and English to high schoolers and junior high students. She quickly settled into teaching eighth grade Language Arts. Miss Riley taught generations of students, retiring after the 1970 school year.

If you were in her class – and I was during the 1960-1961 school year – you never forgot her.

The thing I remember most is her kindness. This was an era when not all teachers possessed that trait.

The World Series in 1960 was an afternoon affair. If you were lucky, and the game ran long or into extra innings, you might be able to race home and catch the last couple of batters on TV.

On the day of Game 7 between the Yankees and the Pirates, Tom McNeer smuggled a transistor radio into class. He ran an earphone cord up his sleeve and he would rest his head on his hand, covering the fact that he was actually listening to the game. He would turn around periodically and whisper updates to those of us who hung on every Yankee at-bat. I still remember Tom whispering that the Pirates had taken a two-run lead in the bottom of the eighth. Oh no. Then came the news that the Yankees had tied the game in the top of the ninth. Hurrah! A silent hurrah.

That’s when the earplug slipped out of Tom’s sleeve and rolled to the front of the room, where Miss Riley was talking about Evangeline and her forest primeval. It settled at her feet and the Yankees fan section fell silent. Miss Riley looked down and knew what it was. She could have punished our entire section. But she didn’t. As Tom quickly grabbed up the earplug, she said, “That won’t happen again, will it?”

He shook his head no and class continued.

She could have punished Tom. She could have punished us all. But she understood. 

Miss Riley retired a decade later, when she turned 65, and settled into retirement in a house at 1534 Waverly Road. She had lived for many years at the Kingsport Inn, until it was razed in the spring of 1960, and she moved in with her sister Augusta Tice on Watauga.

Miss Riley never married. This was in the era when school superintendent Ross N. Robinson forbid his women teachers from marrying or else they would lose their jobs.

Her sister Augusta had resigned as Music Director of Kingsport city schools to marry insurance man Henry Tice.

But Mary Erin was married to her students.

She died on May 9, 1976. Her modest obituary couldn’t begin to tell the story of her rich life.

I wish I had known all this about her when I was in her Language Arts class.