Wedding announcements of the 60s

 

Wedding announcments used to fill the Sunday newspaper

It’s a different newspaper today than it was 50 years ago.

No baseball box scores, no full-page stock tables, no TV and radio listings. And obituaries? No problem as long as you are willing to pay for the obituary, by the word.

A staple of the Sunday paper in those bygone days was the wedding announcement. The Sunday “Home and Family” section was filled with them.

 Typical was this wedding announcement that I picked at random from the January 17, 1965 of the Kingsport Times-News, headlined:

Melinda Edwards Becomes Bride

It was one of 19 (!) wedding announcements in that Sunday’s paper!

 Wedding announcements always began by setting the scene:

Broad Street Methodist Church was the scene of the wedding of Miss Melinda Carol Edwards and Stephen Kent Fritschle. Rev. Ted R. Witt Jr. performed the double-ring ceremony at 4 p.m. Saturday.

Then they introduced the bride, groom and their parents:

The bride is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd L. Edwards, 2352 Pendragon Road.

The bridegroom is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Clifton E. Fritschle of 4171 Skyland Drive.

Next came a narrative of the ceremony:

Mrs. L. P. Gregory, organist, and Mrs. F. L. Hamilton, vocalist, provided a program of wedding music.

The church was decorated with a background of smilax with large cathedral candles at the front of the church. Arrangements of white snap-dragons, gladioli, and chrysanthemums were used on each side of the altar. The pews were marked with white bows and white flowers.

[For the uninitiated, like me, smilax is a genus of about 300–350 species, found in the tropics and subtropics. They are climbing flowering plants, many of which are woody and/or thorny.]

Perhaps most important in those days, a detailed description of the bride’s gown:

Given in marriage by her father, the bride wore a silk organza floor-length sheath with scoop neckline and bridal point sleeves. Re-embroidered chantilly lace and pearl trim encircled the bodice and skirt, which had a detachable bouffant chapel-length overskirt. Her shoulder-length veil was of English silk illusion with organza petals of Chantilly lace and seed pearl trim. She carried a cascade bouquet of white cattleya and phalaenopsis orchids.

Now the wedding party with more fashion descriptions:

The maid of honor was Miss Mary Lawson Groseclose. She wore a floor-length turquoise chiffon sheath with scoop neckline, empire waist, and matching chiffon overskirt edged in velvet.

Her headdress was a matching velvet bow with tiers of turquoise veiling. She carried a cascade bouquet of white camellias and roses.

Bridesmaids were Miss Paula Ripley and Miss Vicki McIntyre. Their attire was identical to that of the honor attendant. They carried cascade bouquets of white camellias.

The father of the bride-groom served as best man. Ushers were Mark Fritschle, brother of the bridegroom, and Albert H. Agett Jr.

Next came details about the post-wedding reception:

Following the ceremony, a reception was given by the bride's parents at Ridgefields Country Club, under the direction of Mrs. Graham Porterfield and Mrs. Blake Faris. [I should note that my mother baked many groom’s cakes for Mrs. Portefield and Mrs. Faris and I suspect she did the groom’s cake for this one, too.]

Mrs. Henry C. Meeks introduced the guests to the wedding party. Miss Gay Edwards, cousin of the bride, presided at the bridal register.

Assisting in serving were: Mrs. Russell H. Miles, Mrs. Wiley H. Weaver, Miss Cathy Weaver, Mrs. C. B. Duke, Mrs. Kenneth Umberger, Mrs. W. Allen Exum, Mrs. James Edwards, Mrs. T. W. Glynn III, Mrs. W. B. Greene, Miss Jan Fritschle, and Miss Elizabeth Fritschle, sisters of the bridegroom, and Mrs. Val Edwards.

And finally the honeymoon details:

For her traveling costume the bride chose an aqua blue three-piece double-knit suit, with a jacket of matching suede. Her accessories were beige and brown. She wore the orchid from her bridal bouquet.

Biographical sketches of the bride and groom followed that:

The bride was graduated from Dobyns-Bennett High School and attended East Tennessee State University where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pi Sorority. She is employed by Bennett and Edwards, Inc.

The bridegroom was graduated from Dobyns-Bennett High School. He is attending the Georgia Institute of Technology where he is majoring in engineering mechanics. He is a member of Theta Chi fraternity. He is employed by the firm of Wallace and Poole, associated architects.

Let us not forget all the folks who feted the bride in the weeks leading up to the ceremony:

Pre-nuptial parties included an open house given by Mr. and Mrs. R. F. Looney and their daughter, Allison Looney; a linen shower given by Misses Paula Ripley, Mary Lawson Groseclose and Vicki McIntyre. A kitchen shower was given by Mrs. Heywood Modlin and Mrs. Thelma Blankenbecler.

Mrs. Kenneth Y. Umberger, Mrs. E. J. Triebe, Mrs. Ralph Baldock and Mrs. Millege Daniel were hostesses at a coffee. A luncheon was given by Mrs. C. A. Ross Jr. and Mrs. Russell H. Miles. A miscellaneous shower was hosted by Mrs. Harley Needham, Miss Margie Fleenor, Mrs. R. G. Dillard, Mrs. A. P. Harkins, Miss Melba Minton, Miss Peggy Leonard, Miss Rita Archer and Mrs. Ray Clark. A coffee was given by Mrs. Henry C. Meeks, Mrs. C. B. Duke, Mrs. W. B. Greene, Mrs. Wiley H. Weaver, and Mrs. James Edwards.

The rehearsal dinner was given by the bridegroom's parents at Ridgefields Country Club.

[Melinda Edwards was D-B ’63; Stephen Fritschle was D-B ’61. The wedding pictures here are not of Edwards but are typical photos of 60s brides. Her wedding picture on the microfilm was too dark to reproduce here.]

 

Wedding announcements weren’t so elaborate thirty years earlier. Here’s a typical one from the April 11, 1935 edition of the Kingsport Times:

Mr. and Mrs. John N. Lady announce the marriage of their daughter Margaret Maxine to Mr. Faustine I. White Monday, the eighth of April nineteen hundred thirty-five in Bristol, Virginia.

The wedding was solemnized on Monday morning at 11 o'clock in the home of Rev. Sullins Dosser. A few out-of-town guests of the bride and groom attended the wedding.

Mrs. White is the attractive daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Lady of this city.

Mr. White is the son of Mr. and Mrs. J. J. White and is an employe of the Meade Fibre Corporation. He is a graduate of the Dobyns-Bennett high school.

Mr. and Mrs. White will leave today by motor for Washington. They will be at home after April the fourteenth, at 837 Dale street.

 

Lest we forget that not all weddings go according to plan, here is this 1935 story from, where else, Newport, Tennessee:

WEDDING GUEST IS CAUSE OF MIDNIGHT FIGHT AT NEWPORT

Two Newlyweds and Three Guests Are Locked In Jail, Awaiting Charges of Last Night

Newport, May 5. - Two newlyweds and three guests at their wedding celebration are locked in the Newport jail today, awaiting charges of breach of peace as the result of a midnight fight in which the son-in-law of the new bridegroom was shot thru both hips, struck with a poker and stabbed.

Howard Morgan, 40, the wounded man, is alleged to have sat in the lap of a 17-year-old girl at the wedding party, bringing on the general fight. Ill feeling between Morgan and several other guests is known to have existed for some time, the police were informed.

 

Bobby Peters, Singing Star

Kingsport football star and state senator Bobby Peters had another claim to fame in the sixties, a recording career, albeit a brief one. From the Dec. 13, 1963 Kingsport Times:

Bobby Peters Records Ballad About Kennedy

Former state Sen. R. L. (Bobby) Peters has turned his talents to the field of music.

Peters, a Kingsport businessman, announced today that he has composed the music and written lyrics for a ballad titled "A Sunny Day In Dallas" in an effort to express the emotions felt by Americans and other peoples following the assassination of

President John F. Kennedy. Peters said he has recorded the song and that the record, released to area radio stations Thursday, will be available to the public here soon.

Peters, who narrowly lost the nomination for Congress in Tennessee's First Congressional District in 1962, is a graduate of Princeton University.

While at Princeton, he met Kennedy who was a student at Harvard and then did not see him again until the two met in Nashville while Kennedy was campaigning for the presidency.

Peters said he composed the song "out of great respect” for the late President.

Link to Peter's recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWRtXWTKpCY

If this link doesn't work, go to YouTube and search for "Honorable Bob Peters.")

At the time of this recording, Bobby Peters was, in addition to being a State Senator, the president of Clinchfield Supply, a building supply company on East Market Street. He named his record label “Clinchfield Records.”

The recording is included with 15 other songs on the album “Tragic Songs from the Grassy Knoll: John F. Kennedy 50^th Anniversary” (Norton Records of Cleveland, Ohio, 1994, $14.95).

Kingsport in 1911, Robert Leonard, Bobby Cross

 

Kingsport In 1911 As Told By W.G. “Gould” Davidson To Mary Clement In 1951: 

"Kingsport Was One House Wide and Two Miles Long"

 

"I used to ride up to Kingsport from New Canton [a neighborhood in what is now Church Hill] on an old pack horse with two rolls of wool to swap. There were lots of boats on the river then hauling grain and wool. And a sight o' logs rafted down to Chattanooga.

"I’ve slept all night on the ground where Kingsport is when the river was so high you couldn't ford it or ferry it."

Davidson was born November 19, 1861, in Hawkins County, 3 miles from Rogersville. He has been married four times, each time to a girl from East Tennessee, and has two sons living, Charley, of New Canton, and Jim, of Ellensburg, Washington. A Southern Methodist and a Democrat, he once served as a constable and also as deputy for Sheriff John Barton in Hawkins County.

In the year 1922 alone, he says, he helped capture 272 moonshine stills. He has little sympathy with lawbreakers of any sort. "Any good citizen ought to be a law-abidin' citizen," he says emphatically. "Just because a man is a poor man doesn't mean he can't abide by the law if he tries."

Davidson spent 22 years as a farmer and now makes his home at 533 Peach Orchard Drive, Lynn Garden.

Although he uses a cane for walking, he is still robust. He has a keen memory and a lively sense of humor.

An "exhibition" held at the Bradshaw's Chapel School when he was 14 is one of his most vivid recollections.

"I was just a chunk of a boy then," Davidson explains," but I always had a lot of brass. There were 32 young men on the platform that day. I gave a speech about Indians and I won the medal."

The old man paused for emphasis, and directing his level gaze at his listeners, repeated from beginning to end the oration that won the medal for him - the saga of a lonely Indian in a land won by the white man.

Davidson recalls the time when he could milk 28 cows in an hour and a half, and stack as much as fifty tons of hay in one day.

But in spite of that, he thinks life was better in the old days when Kingsport was just a little boat port on the Holston and beef sold for 4 1/2 cents a pound. His heart is with the carefree days when money didn't mean so much and people took things a bit slower.

"My grandfather, Gould Davidson," he recalls, with a twinkle in his eyes, "owned all the land that Gate City now stands on. But he was an awful feller to drink.

"One day he went into the court house over there at Gate City and the judge fined him ten dollars for cussing.

"Gould pulled a twenty out of his pocket, handed it to the judge, and headed for the door. The judge called to him to wait a minute and get his change. ‘Oh, no, Judge,’ Gould said. 'You just keep it. I may want to cuss again directly.'"

 

 

 Name Your Baby "Bobby"

Bobby was a big name in Kingsport in the fifties and I can trace that fact to a column that ran in the Kingsport Times on Sunday Oct. 16, 1938.

It was a sports column by sports editor Frank Rule and the headline read NAME YOUR BABY "BOBBY"

“Kingsport has had its Bobby Dodd, its Bobby Peters and several other all-something-or-other stars in recent years and now comes along a lad who so far has bewildered this corner by his dazzling feats on the gridiron. Bobby Cifers. well on his way to establish a new scoring record for Kingsport, the Big Six conference and the state, has another year to shine with the Indians, but already he has marked himself as one of the immortals.”

 Those three Bobbys – Dodd, Peters and Cifers - gave us many of the local high school sports stars like Bobby Tate, Bobby Bedford, Bobby Slaughter, Bobby Reagan and Bobby Strickler.

We lost two well-known Kingsport Bobs last month: All-State basketball player Bob Leonard and All-Conference football quarterback Bobby Cross.

 

Robert Leonard RIP

Robert “Bob” Leonard, star of the Dobyns-Bennett basketball teams of the early sixties, died January 18th in Winston-Salem. His obituary mentioned his NBA career. I didn’t remember it, probably because I was in college at the time, the time being before ESPN and sports talk radio.

I dug around and discovered the Robert Leonard-NBA connection.

A May 12, 1966 Kingsport Times-News story was headlined “Leonard Drafted By Lakers” and gives a good overview of his basketball days:

 

Robert Leonard, an All-State basketball player at Dobyns-Bennett High School, was drafted yesterday by the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball League in the fifth round of the NBA draft.

An All-American standout at Wake Forest last season, Leonard now has his chance to have his dream come true, and that is to play pro basketball.

While at Wake Forest, Bob tallied 1,637 points in his 80 varsity games over a three- year period and averaged 20.4 points per contest. His freshman average was a neat 19.9 points per game.

Bob's 1,637 points is the school's third highest. Bob netted 603 points last season playing for the Deacs and he joined three other Deacon standouts in this honor. The others were Dickie Hemrick, Len Chappel and Paul Long.

He was also an All-Atlantic Coast Conference performer for the past three seasons at Wake Forest and picked by the pro scouts to the second team All-American team last season. He made the Helm's All-American squad in his junior year.

Not only did Leonard lead the Deacons in rebounding last season but averaged 23.3 points a game.

 The Winston-Salem Journal of June 29, 1966 picks up the story under the headline “Bob Leonard Fails to Make Laker Roster:”

The pro basketball career of Bob Leonard, the Wake Forest standout, lies somewhere between Los Angeles and Baltimore.

Leonard, picked by the Los Angeles Lakers in the college basketball draft this year, attended tryout camp in Los Angeles recently.

"I did all right," Leonard said yesterday, "but they just have too many guards. They told me that they would get in in touch with Baltimore (the Bullets) to see if they might be interested in having me try out."

The Lakers have signed John Wetzel, who played at Virginia Tech. according to Leonard. "They have always wanted to get a tall guard, and Wetzel is 6-5. I don't know how he will do when he runs up against some fast guards," Leonard said.

Concerning his immediate future, Leonard said, "Right now I just want to get through with school; I can think about basketball later."

Leonard is completing his requirement for a bachelor's degree at Wake Forest by taking one course this semester.

 

True to their word the Lakers got him a tryout with the Baltimore Bullets. According to an Oct. 5, 1966 report in the Winston-Salem Twin City Sentinel:

Paul Long, who will captain Wake Forest's basketball team this winter, and some of his buddies went to Charlotte Saturday night to see the Baltimore Bullets play the St. Louis Hawks in a National Basketball Association exhibition game.

Long was hoping to cheer for Bob Leonard, who is now on the Baltimore roster, but the former Wake Forest captain didn't get into the game. Mike Farmer, the Bullets' coach, used only six players as his team beat the Hawks, 114-109, and snapped a three-game losing streak.

Leonard said he hadn't played much in the exhibition games. He suffered a groin injury early in the Bullets' training camp and it slowed him down some. But he's feeling fine now, has survived the first squad cut and thinks he may stay with Baltimore.

"I'm trying to sharpen every phase of my game now," said Leonard. "Your whole game has to be better to stick up here. I really haven't had trouble with any one thing. I'm just trying to improve everything."

Bob Ferry, the Bullets' center, is one of Leonard's biggest boosters. "I've been in this league 10 years and Bob is the best defensive rookie to come up.”

 

Leonard made it to the final 16 on the roster but on Oct. 8, 1966, he was one of the Baltimore Bullets final three cuts.

He returned to Winston-Salem, finished his undergrad degree and began law school, all the while staying in shape by playing in the local city league.

 

Then on June 12, 1969 the Winston-Salem Twin City Sentinel reported:

Bob Leonard, a former Wake Forest basketball star, is listed on the rookie camp roster of the Carolina Cougars. But Leonard, who is in law school at Wake Forest, says this does not mean that he is trying out for the team.

"I have finished two years of law school and I am in the summer break," said Leonard yesterday. "I have been playing basketball every winter in the City League, on the same team with Whitey Bell (a former N.C. State player). I'm not in mid-season shape, but I'm in pretty good shape. I think it will be fun to go over there and see what I can do.

"I'd like to see Coach (Bones) McKinney again and some of the boys who will be in the camp. I'd like to see how I could do against them. It's sort of a challenge."

[Bones McKinney was his coach at Wake Forest.]

If things go well, will Leonard play with the Cougars?

Bob hesitated. "I just don't know," he said. "I think I would have to wait and make that decision when it comes. I have another year of law school and I have worked too hard these first two years to give it all up."

 

He did decide to go to rookie camp but once again the numbers were against him and he didn’t make the squad.

He finished law school, got his law degree, passed the bar and in 1972 was elected Forsyth County District Judge, at 28 the youngest judge ever elected in North Carolina.

 

D-B Scoring Leaders

From the March 15, 1962 Kingsport Times-News, Dobyns-Bennett basketball’s top scorers of the 1961-1962 season, Robert Leonard’s senior season:

Robert Leonard finished the 1961-62 season with 479 points as Dobyns-Bennett's top scorer, followed by Walker Locke with 346 and Ken Pruett with 186.

Others in order were Eugene Bush, 135; Earl Lovelace, 121; Richard Arnold, 120; John Shipley, 80; Charles Hunley, 69; Dick Nelms, 63; Ron Litton, 35, Tony Poe, 35; Jerry McClellan, 15.

 

 

I never heard anyone call Robert Leonard “Bobby.” It was always Robert or Bob. I had breakfast frequently in the early 2000s with his older brother Charlie and he always called him “Robert.”

But there was another genuine Kingsport “Bobby” who also died recently. Bobby Cross’s full name, as announced in the Kingsport Times when he was born in August 1943 was Bobby Gerald Cross.

Bobby Cross was an Honorable Mention All-State quarterback who led Dobyns-Bennett to its second consecutive state championship in 1960 (this was before playoffs, when polls determined the state champion). He died January 28 at age 80.

That 1960 football team went undefeated against Tennessee opponents, losing only to Roanoke (Virginia) Jefferson High 14-12.

Bobby had been the back up to All-Southern quarterback Wally Bridwell on the 1959 state championship team that went 9-0-1, with a tie against Roanoke Jefferson.

Bobby lived two doors down from me when I was growing up. I can remember him as one of the big kids, playing football in my next-door neighbor’s backyard. Many future D-B football stars came out of those backyard games, including Bobby, Danny Minor, Darwin Compton and Ken Tolliver.

Every now and then the big boys would let a tyke like me play – I was four years younger than the youngest of the gang, and eight years the junior to many.

On one of those rare plays that I got in, I decided to use the “body block” technique that I had just learned on Gary Cox, who was seven years older than me. Needless to say, I got the wind knocked out of me.

The first big kid to run over to me was Bobby Cross, who kept telling me, “You’ll be okay, just take a deep breath.”

It worked. I’m still here.

That was the way Bobby was, a big heart, and the first to notice and run to help when someone else was struggling.

 

I wasn’t much bigger than a football when I watched those big kids play next door. There were usually four boys to a side and they wore out the grass in that yard.

The homeowner, Walter Shankel, was watching the game one autumn afternoon when his friend Grady asked, “Aren’t you worried that those boys are going to destroy your lawn?”

 Walter, one of the calmest people I have ever known, replied, “That grass will grow back. But someday those boys will be gone.”

 

D-B’s 1960 Football Team

D-B’s football team finished first in the state in both the UPI and Litkenhous rankings in 1960 but wound up second to Nashville Litton in the AP poll. Litton, which was undefeated in the regular season, went on to lose in the Nashville Clinic Bowl to Battle Ground Academy. But that was after the final AP poll. D-B actually had more first place votes in the final AP poll but were ranked fourth and fifth on a number of, uh, middle Tennessee ballots.

The Litratings, which relied on a mathematical formula based on difference-by-score, didn’t conclude until after the bowl games. BGA finished second to D-B in the Litratings.

D-B finished with a 104.8 Litrating. BGA had a 101.1, which meant, according to Dr. Frank Litkenhous, creator of the rating system, that if the two teams met on a neutral field, D-B would win by 3 or 4 points.

The lowest ranked east Tennessee team in the final Litrating was Boones Creek with a score of 13.7.

The highest rated team in the state was Chattanooga Baylor with a 108.2 score but they were fenced off into a separate category with seven other private prep schools. 

Making the Society Pages Fun to Read

 

It was the year the Kingsport Times’ Society pages became fun to read. Normally the Society section was filled with wedding notices and bridge club scores. It was a tough slog to read, lots of names of bridesmaids and descriptions of outfits along with bridge winners and scores. That all changed in June 1943 with the arrival of a summertime hire from the University of Tennessee. Nineteen-year-old Betsy Morris was named Society Editor that summer, filling a void created when all the regular Society staffers were moved to the News department to replace reporters and editors who had been drafted into the service (19 in total from news, advertising, circulation and the pressroom were drafted).

What new Society Editor Morris did was create the Kingsport Times first society column. Wedding notices became more than just a dull recitation of the flowers and the dresses. And bridge parties became fun events.

In just her third column she interviewed many of Kingsport’s first families about their summertime plans in the face of war-time restrictions – meaning no drives to Cape Cod or cross-country trips to the Grand Canyon in light of gas rationing.

In the current news climate interviewing two people is enough for a story and interviewing three people makes it an investigative report.

Betsy Morris talked to 21 locals for her story about thwarted vacation plans, among them such bold-face names as Mrs. J. Fred Johnson, Mrs. Ross N. Robinson, C.K. Koffman (longtime Dobyns-Bennett principal), Mrs. J.C. White (her husband was the head of Eastman), Mayor Glenn Bruce and Mrs. W.B. Greene of the hardware store family.

Morris called her new column “I See By The Times,” and that name stuck until Betsy went back to UT four months later.

Her replacement, Rosemary Stelling, changed the name to “Don’t Say I Told You But” and the style to a chatty letter from one girlfriend to another. The first “Don’t Say” column on November 7, 1943 even began: “Dear Betsy [a nod to her predecessor Betsy Morris], How’s the ole college gal doin’ now?” Stelling, who was the daughter of press room foreman S.J. Stelling and sister of city editor Tom Stelling, even signed the column off with “Love, Rosemary.”

Stelling, who was training to be a nurse, wrote 67 columns over the next year before giving way to Helen West, who would later become women’s editor. Helen ended her gabfests with “Love, Helen.”

The society column hung around for a decade even as the section changed its name from “Society” to “Society and Women’s News” and the column was renamed, again, to “Have You Heard.”

The final Dear Liz-Love Helen column ran on October 14, 1951 with coverage of the weekly Ridgefields Bridge Club luncheon where a new arrival in town was introduced, Mrs. Cy Bahakel.

Four years later, in September 1955, Dia Bahakel, by then general manager of WKIN radio, would promote a country music show at the Civic Auditorium. The middle act was a fellow from Memphis named Elvis Presley. Years later Dia would tell me there were only 270 in attendance that night and that she paid Elvis and his band $37 for their performance.

Here are highlights from a few of those early Society columns, beginning with the stay-at-homes column (with my own addition of bold-face) of June 20, 1943:

 The citizens of Kingsport are responding with the urgent request of the government that civilians refrain from travelling and are going no further than their own backyards for their vacations this summer.

Typical attitude was that of Mrs. W. C. Hagan, faced with the prospect of a whole summer in town. When asked what she was planning in the way of a vacation she laughingly replied, "Nothing, just like everybody else."

The Ross N. Robinsons have a vacation spot in their side yard that rivals any mountain resort in the coolness. The stone terrace is the center of the family's social life and many a picnic supper is spread here. Mr. Robinson and daughter Mary were away when we stopped by, but Mrs. Robinson, daughter "Tish," sons Ross Brown and Charles, and "Snookums" the dog, were enjoying life in their favorite spot.

Taking care of three young and lively children is a career in itself but attractive Mrs. C. J. Bryan manages to keep Linda, Gene and Clark looking as if they had just come out of a band-box and at the same time she is an active club woman. The young Bryans were all cleaned up for the afternoon when we arrived and were enjoying a glass of ginger ale with their mother out on the terrace. They certainly made a very striking busy family portrait.

1943: Goerdel, Libby and Bryan families.

The Glenn Bruces are looking forward to a delightful summer at Bruce's cabin out from town on Crescent Drive. [The Bruce home was at 914 Watauga Street, a distance of a mile and a half from “Valley View Cabin,” as it was known.] They always spend their summers there and count themselves particularly fortunate to have such a place this summer.

We could just hear the smile in Mrs. J. Fred Johnson's voice when she told us on the telephone, "I'm practically running a nursery for the summer." The neighborhood children spend their days playing on the swings in the Johnson's back yard and Mrs. Johnson thoroughly enjoys playing hostess to the little people.

The C. K. Koffmans and the Paul Scotts spend all their spare time on joint fishing trips to Galbraith Springs [in Hawkins County]. Says Mrs. Scott, "We just sit on the bank and wait for the fish to nibble." Mr. Koffman has quite a booster in the person of daughter Anne who says "Daddy catches more fish than anybody."

Mr. and Mrs. J. C. White, 1224 Linville, have had as their guests their son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Jack White, and their daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. George Schilling. Mrs. Jack White is the former Miss Hunter Johnston, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. T. P. Johnston. She and Jack are home from Cornell University at Ithaca, N. Y. Jack has been spending most of his time building a children’s house in his parent's back yard. Mrs. Schilling is the former Miss Barbara White. She and her husband visited the Whites on their way to Camp Davis where George is to go to Officers Candidate School.

Mrs. A. D. Brockman, 1122 Watauga, said that her garden really doesn't deserve the title "victory garden." Evidently, she feels that she hasn't been exactly victorious in the game of gardening.

Mrs. W. B. Greene, 1647 Belmeade, told us her family enjoys eating summer meals in the out-of-doors. Valerie, eight, and Billy, five, gather their young friends in the yard for badminton and croquet.

 

1943: Lela Johnson engagement photo

I knew about wartime rationing: gas, tires, coffee and sugar. But in one of Betsy’s columns, I discovered another item that was rationed, shoes:

The engagement of the week is that of the popular and pretty Lela Johnson to Mack Slaughter. Lela and Mack met at a dance down at the University of Tennessee when Lela was visiting Sherry McClellan. After that Lela found herself practically a commuter to Knoxville, making all the important football games and formals on the "Hill.”

Lela and her sister, Mrs. Forrest Pilgrim, along with Sherry McClellan, made a trip to Bristol this week and spent the day just "looking, looking, looking," for trousseau items.

When we asked Lela if she was having any difficulty with the shoe rationing problem, she laughed and replied that she had used Mack's coupon that very day. That, indeed, is true love, when the groom-to-be offers in proof of his affection his shoe ration stamp.

 

1943: Engagement photo of Jacqueline Pinckney White of New York City, who married Kingsport (and Princeton) football star Bobby Peters. 

And talk about bold face names, that same column also announced the marriage of local football hero Bobby Peters:

Kingsport is all excited over the surprise wedding of Robert Lynn Peters, Jr., and glamorous Jacqueline Pinckney White in New York.

Plans for the wedding had to be put on an accelerated war-time basis in order for "Jackie" to accompany Bobby to California, where he is to be stationed at Camp Beale, and news of the marriage came as a surprise to the many friends of the Peters family here in Kingsport.

The ceremony was a very quiet and simple one performed by the Rev. Thomas J. Delihanty at the home of the bride's parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Pinckney White, 125 East 84th street, New York City.

Lieutenant and Mrs. Peters left immediately for the west coast. The wedding has been of much interest in eastern circles as "Jackie" was introduced at the famous Bachelors' Cotillion in Baltimore last New Year's Eve.

 

1943: New York Daily News story about wedding of Bobby Peters

Footnote to the Bobby Peters’ wedding story:

A day later the  New York Daily New reported on a honeymoon hoax perpetrated by Bobby and Jackie:

It seems a shame to spoil such an amusing story, but the night club set has fallen for the biggest hoax of the season. Most of them solemnly believe that Lieut. Robert Lynn Peters Jr. and his beautiful bride, the former Jacqueline Pinkney White, made the first lap of their honeymoon trip in a railroad baggage car.

Bob and Jackie started the story themselves when they were having trouble in getting train reservations. They finally got a pair of upper berths, but the baggage car gag seemed good enough to keep up.

Details were added as the story made the rounds of a bunch of the wedding guests after the reception on Tuesday. The baggage car became an empty box car. The railroad had promised to fix them up comfortably with a few wooden crates and a couple of old gray blankets ordinarily used as packing.

 

Rosemary Stelling also incorporated the war into her Jan. 9, 1944 column:

Dear Betsy,

I've heard of so many interesting things this week. One that I thought might interest you, is the list of unusual gifts that some of our Kingsport soldiers sent home for Christmas.

I had lunch with Linda (Mrs. M. D.) Massengill the other day. I had to hear all about the things that M. D. had sent her from Oran, Algeria. The last box had some beautiful linens in it. There were two luncheon cloths and napkins, one pink and one white, two bridge cloths and napkins, one green and one yellow.

They are all of sheer linen, with hand drawn work, all handmade, and really something to be proud to own. While M. D. was being transferred to India, he sent Linda twin brass vases. They are about five inches high, engraved around the sides in red, blue and gold, which makes a sort of Paisley design.

Mrs. J. B. Stevens, Pineola Ave., had some interesting things to tell me. One of the nicest gifts she has received from her husband, Capt. J. B. Stevens (formerly with Tennessee Eastman) was a clear glass decanter. It has compartments for four different wines.

He has sent her several pieces of jewelry, a small mounted cameo, to be used for either a necklace or a pin, a necklace and pin of silver filigree, an agate pin, a pair of coral car rings, and a piece of enamel jewelry.

Then there is the "spread," which is what it will be called, until Captain Stevens returns home and tells her how it can be used. Elizabeth says: "It is a piece of satiny woven tapestry, with a native scene woven into it, about the size of two double bed spreads."

She says when she does find a use for it, it sure will be a good one. Captain Stevens said the scene woven into the tapestry, was typical of North Africa, Sicily and Italy. Mrs. Stevens was the former Miss Elizabeth Cloyd and taught in the Kingsport schools before her marriage.

Tommy McNeer sent his mother, Mrs. Thomas McNeer, Fair Acres, several grass skirts. They are just "grass colored," the ceremonial skirts have only one layer of grass, but the every day ones have six layers of grass. His present to "Dr. Tom" was a Japanese clinical thermometer, which Tommy found in a hospital that once had been in the hands of the Japanese. Other things were shells, coins and beads.

I called Dorothea Hoskins, she is just recovering from the flu, but she told me about the box Bob (R. J. Hoskins, Birch Street) sent from North Africa. He sent her a genuine Egyptian scarab and a sandrose from the Sahara desert. A hand painted scarf, French perfume and handmade leather pocketbooks filled with African coins for herself and the children were also included in the box.

Love.

Rosemary.

 

In one of the last Dear-Liz-Love-Helen columns, from 1949, was this bridge club story that didn’t mention the high score or the lunch spread:

 

Dear Liz,

You remember Gene and Jamis Armitage moved to their country home on the Fordtown road not long ago. [Gene Armitage was the mayor of Kingsport at the time.] She has the house just about the way she wants it now - and a group of girls while playing bridge one day, decided it was high time they descended on her for a day of bridge and lunch.

They were considerate enough, though, to "pack their own lunch."

No, Liz, I didn't go to Jamis' house. I was in the same predicament that the old country lady was in when she couldn't attend a party. When asked if she went, she gave this classic answer: "No, I didn't went, didn't wanta went, had I wanted went, wouldn't gotta gone." The only difference is - I wanted to went.

Love, Helen.

 

I feel like I should end this post with:

Love, Vince

Jean Harris, Neighborhood Mom

 

Jean Harris on her 90th birthday - her son Lance is on the right.

The last time I saw Jean Harris was about five years ago when we were sitting around her kitchen table, talking about old times in the old neighborhood. As she lit her second cigarette, I joked what I always joked when she lit up: “Jean, those are going to kill you.”

They finally did. Jean died yesterday.

She was 95.

Jean was more than just my best friend Lance’s mom, she was the neighborhood mom.

Her backyard was our baseball diamond. Her side yard was our football field. Her basement was our rainy-day playroom.

It didn’t matter what she was doing inside, cooking or cleaning, she was always listening. One tiny shriek from the ball field and she was out the door, cotton ball and mercurochrome in hand.

One of the first columns I wrote for the Kingsport Times-News when I moved back to town 20 years ago was about Jean Harris.

Here is that column:

 Every neighborhood in the fifties had a Jean Harris; it just happened that in my neighborhood our Jean Harris was named Jean Harris.

Technically she was Lance Harris’s mother but in deed and in word she was the neighborhood mother. The gang would move from house to house when it rained or when it was muggy but we always seemed to end up at Jean Harris’s house. She had the basement room where we could have carnivals and secret club meetings and she had the refrigerator with a bottomless pitcher of Kool-Aid. But mostly she just had the house where everyone felt welcome.

In addition to being the neighborhood mom, Jean Harris was also the neighborhood chauffeur, an important position in the fifties when a lot of mom’s didn’t have cars or couldn’t drive. Her husband Raymond drove a Foremost Dairy truck so the family car was available. That meant that when we needed to get to Boys’ Club for football practice, she drove. When we needed to get to the Strand Theatre for Saturday afternoon Circle F movies, she drove.

Chauffeur, mom, and, oh yeah, one other job. She policed the neighborhood. Believe it or not that was a good thing.

If a marauding band of toughs from a nearby neighborhood tried to move in on our football field, she was out there, mop in hand, to tell them she would appreciate it if they would leave the local field for the local kids.

If a teenager drove 100 miles an hour down Clover Street, she was out there, broom in hand, to tell the young man that children played in that street and she would appreciate it if he slowed down his driving.

No kid from Clover Street ever ended up on a milk cartoon. And I like to think that Jean Harris had something to do with that.

I was reminded of Mrs. Harris contributions to our neighborhood over the Thanksgiving holiday. Lance was home and he and I got together to exchange stories that may or may not have ever happened.

The highlight of our storytelling was the highlight of her career as neighborhood mother. One summer Chippy Markel - not his real name - began lurking on our street. Chippy lived a few blocks away but he had decided to make our neighborhood his. Literally. Chippy was a horrible kid. I’m sure he was neglected at home and picked on at school. So he took it out on the timid and the meek. In our neighborhood that was pretty much all of us. He happened to make the mistake of singling out Lance Harris.

That would be Lance Harris, the eldest offspring of Jean Harris, neighborhood mom.

He stole Lance’s Roy Rogers rifle, which in and of itself, would have been enough to draw the wrath of Jean Harris. But she didn’t know about it because Lance didn’t tell her because he was afraid if he told her and Chippy found out then Chippy would beat him up. In short, Lance was scared of Chippy. There was no shame in this; we were all scared of Chippy.

But where Chippy made his mistake was in attempting to go to the well a second time. He came back to take Lance’s stick horse, in broad daylight, off the Harris’ back porch.

The Harris’s back porch just happened to adjoin their kitchen, which had a picture window in it, the first picture window I ever saw, a portal onto our playground.

Using that sixth sense that only moms have, she spotted him. And he spotted her spot him. He leaped off the back porch, a jump of at least four feet, and she leaped off right behind him. I had never seen a mom move like that before. It was an all out sprint and she caught him at the gate in the back fence. But just as she pinched his shirt collar he wiggled loose and broke away, turning west and heading straight for the Garden Basket. Her dad, Lance’s grandfather, came out of his house, hollering to see if she needed any help. She didn’t even break stride as she told him she could handle it.

Chippy ran for his life and she ran just as fast. But in the end he managed to dart across Bristol Highway and disappear.

He abandoned the stick horse on his way. 

She walked back, carrying the purloined stick horse; she wasn’t even breathing hard.

We never saw Chippy Markel again.