Mind, muscle and ‘angels’ power the Great Alabama 650

The world’s longest paddle race showcases the wonder of Alabama’s waterways

Story by Paul South
Submitted photos from Max Jolley, Great Alabama 650

Max Jolley was 7 when he picked up a paddle for the first time. And from that first pull of wood through water – a centuries-old skill he says takes the whole body, head to toe, mind and muscle – he’s been a recreational kayaker on the Coosa River and its companion lakes, Logan Martin and Neely Henry.

Needless to say, in 2019 – when the Alabama Scenic River Trail launched the maiden Great Alabama 650 – the world’s longest paddle race – he was intrigued. Fifty miles of the race traverses St. Clair County.

“Last year, I was interested in it,” he says. “This year, I was really looking forward to it.”

Jolley isn’t a competitor, but he and others like him play a valuable role in the 10-day race, He’s a “trail angel,” one of a small army of good Samaritans who do everything from providing meals and places to sleep to portage, helping weary paddlers portage their craft over land and in and out of the water at all hours of day and night.

The racecourse passes Jolley’s home. He helped competitors portage their craft out of the water at Logan Martin Dam. But the paddlers, not the paddling, draws Jolley to the competition, one of the least known events in American sports. For paddlers, it’s a magical mystery tour of Alabama rivers and lakes, featuring changing currents, landscapes, flora and fauna.

And for the trail angels like Jolley, friendships are forged. Competitors came from as far away as Hawaii.

“There are a lot of different-walks-of-life people that you meet,” Jolley says. “It’s just interesting talking to the paddlers and their ground crews, to see what they do and how they do it and why they do it.”

Alabama tourism officials, like Clarke County resident Linda Vice, president of the Alabama Scenic River Trail, hope the 650 puts the spotlight on Alabama waterways, the reason behind the race. Alabama has 5,300 miles of accessible waterways, stretching from the mountain streams of north Alabama southward to the salt and sand of the Gulf Coast. State tourism officials bill the trail as the “most experience-diverse river trail in America.”

“We started the Scenic River Trail as an environmental and tourism project, as well as a recreational thing,” Vice says. “What we wanted to do was get people out on the waterways so they could see the natural beauty and so that they could find a low-cost sport that anybody could participate in if they had a kayak or a canoe.”

The trail was the brainchild of Fred Couch, a veteran Alabama kayaker. It was decided that the trail needed a premiere event to draw attention to the river trail. After fact-finding trips to paddle races in Alaska, Colorado and around the country, Alabama organizers learned something.

A calm day and smoothe water as kayakers cross the lake to the stopping point

“We realized through them that we had the best race in the nation, because of the types of situations they would find themselves in as they traveled the trail,” Vice says. “It’s also the longest, with 632 miles. So, what we did was put together the race.”

While the inaugural race was open to all comers, qualifying was required to compete in 2020. COVID-19 sank qualifying this year, but 20 participants – tandem and individual racers, male and female – competed, and most finished the race.

“We started this race to draw attention to Alabama’s rivers as recreational waterways,” Vice says.

In a sports-crazy state that lives and dies each autumn Saturday with roaring football crowds, the Great Alabama 650 is different, the slap of wood on water, the silence of shifting currents, the quack of ducks and the splash of jumping fish.

“The diversity of landscape is a really big deal,” Vice says. “There are all kinds of fossils and plants. There are so many things.”

And then there are trail angels like Jolley, who do anything and everything to help the paddlers, from helping schlep wet, heavy kayaks, to cookouts featuring sizzling Conecuh County sausage.

“A lot of our angels will take them to their houses and cook ‘em a meal,” she said. “We have chapters of supporters and paddlers around the state.”

In its short history, the Great Alabama 650 is generating attention in the paddling community and beyond.

“The 650 is the most challenging race in the world according to the participants,” Vice said.

And the race is having an impact on tourism in St. Clair County, even with its short span in the county. Ecotourism is a growing sector of the local economy.

“We’re delighted that they’re here,” St. Clair County Tourism Director Blair Goodgame says. “Any economic, or any ecotourism is going to promote quality of life for the area here. It’s going to promote a healthy lifestyle, our connection to nature and wildlife and really push our citizens to be guardians of the resources that we have.”

Ironically, COVID-19 has led to an increase in outdoor activity, as residents look for socially distant activities to combat coronavirus cabin fever.

“COVID-19 has amplified things. But even before the pandemic, people were beginning to re-invest in the outdoors in their local communities. And luckily for St. Clair County, we have the natural assets here to be able to play on that. So, we have become just an outdoor recreational paradise because we do have so much potential to grow,” Goodgame says.

Don Smith, executive director of the St. Clair County Economic Development Council, says the 650 fits in the ecotourism sector of the county’s economic vision. Interestingly, Smith saw something similar, thanks to the trail angels who serve hikers along the Appalachian Trail. For hikers, those angels spark a fondness and an everlasting memory of those communities, and perhaps a desire to return.

“I think if we can continue to encourage those racers as they’re going through our community, the word about how we support those communities will get out and hopefully will get folks to come back and visit with us,” Smith says.

The kayakers in the Great Alabama 650 share the waters with ski boats, bass boats, sailboats and pontoons. And sometimes, hospitality comes in colorful – yet illegal ways.

“A guy in a boat offered one of the paddlers a beer …,” Jolley says with a laugh.

Not unexpectedly, the paddler refused the offer.

The paddlers, you see, have am abiding reverence for their sport. And like many of the residents on the Coosa, on Logan Martin and on Neely Henry, they have a reverence for the land and water. The attention wrought by the Great Alabama 650 may deepen that respect.

“It certainly won’t hurt,” Jolley says. “Boaters in general – kayakers, canoers, outdoor sports people in general – they respect the environment. They understand the water, and they know what happens on the water. And they want to keep the water clean.”

Bob Curl’s amazing life

At 95, World War II vet Bob Curl recalls horror of war, an unconditional love and a wonderful life

Story by Paul South
Submitted Photos

Barely a year out of high school, Bob Curl saw things a kid his age ought never see: the shattered bodies of young men, their lives snatched in a twinkling.

He’s also known the joy that every human heart should know, the magic of an unconditional, long-lasting love that endures to this day, though its beloved is years gone.

Like a Frank Capra movie of the 1940s, Curl – now 95 – has known horror and heartbreak, love, laughter and selfless service, the stuff poured into a life well lived.

A resident of the Col. Robert L. Howard Veterans Home in St. Clair County, Curl still drives, running the roads, snapping photos of his trips with cameras from his large collection of vintage photography gear. He’s been interviewed by historians from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

His smiles and his stories are well known at the place he calls home – a wonderful place, he says, where he’s been known to join a side in a rollicking game of volleyball. “I tell people I live at a country club,” he says.

Chat with him long enough, and Curl will tell you stories of bloodied French beaches, a department store fire, the Sabbath morning he first saw the love of his life and the time he met the legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle.

What a life.

First, let’s tackle the hard part of Bob Curl’s days.

Hill over Omaha Beach

In June 1944, his job as a Navy radarman was simple – to use the high technology of the day to find Omaha Beach. He did. In a briefing in Britain days before the invasion, the teenage sailor learned that he would be part of the first flotilla of Allied vessels, facing batteries of German 88s, heavy artillery protected by reinforced concrete pillboxes.

“We were told we were probably going to be killed,” Curl said. So, I wrote a letter to my mother. I told her I wish I’d been a better son. She didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. But I thought that was the end of me.”

A strike on one of those pillboxes, Curl believes, saved his life.

On June 9, three days after D- Day, the initial Allied thrust onto the European continent, aimed at ending Nazi occupation, Curl slogged ashore through bloodied water and shrapnel-peppered sand. What he saw is seared in memory, more than 75 years later.

“… Bodies and parts of bodies all over the place,” Curl remembered. “(Pulitzer Prize-winning newsman) Ernie Pyle came on our boat. He went on the beach the second day (June 7) and when he came back, he wrote what he saw. They censored it and wouldn’t let it go through. At that time, the only way you could make a copy was carbon paper and onion skin paper. And he submitted his story, and they thought it was too graphic and too bad. So, they censored it.”

Pyle, who was killed in the Pacific while embedded with an American unit, on D-Day wrote of bloody boots and the mundane and the strange that fighting men carried into the carnage – cigarettes and writing paper, a banjo and a tennis racket.

Pyle saw what he thought were two sticks jutting out of the sand. He was mistaken.

“They were a soldier’s two feet,” Pyle wrote. “He was completely covered by the shifting sands except for his feet. The toes of his G.I. shoes pointed toward the land he had come far to see and which we saw so briefly.”

As Pyle finished the dispatch that War Department censors quashed, Curl asked him for the trash-can-bound carbon of the story and Pyle gave it to him. It’s long lost, but after the war, as a college student struggling with an English class, Curl copied Pyle’s story word for word, hoping for a needed good grade.

“I thought, ‘Oh boy, I got him now,’” Curl said of his tough taskmaster professor.

Pyle’s work earned Curl a C+.

After victory in Europe, Curl was preparing for the invasion of Japan on Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands when he learned of victory in Japan.

A love story

He would have a personal victory once he returned home. He married his wife, the former Nell Spring. The Methodist minister’s son met his future wife at a church youth social on Valentine’s Day in 1943. They dated for three months. He enlisted in the Navy the Saturday after graduation in May.

Bob and Nell Curl

He fell in love with her earlier that day, as he walked into church with a friend on his first Sunday in a new town.

“When I walked into church that morning, the most beautiful girl I ever saw was giving the devotion up there,” Curl recalled. “I nudged that boy next to me – I was 16 or 17 – I said, ‘I don’t know who that girl is, but I’m going to marry her.’”

It was the beginning of what would be a 69-year marriage, an old-fashioned love affair. She’s gone now, but every night, he talks with her, looking into the eyes of her picture adorning a wall in his room.

“She was the most wonderful lady I’ve ever known.”

Early years

Theirs is a magical story, one of several he tells. He got his first job in a local movie theater. Armed with a broomstick with a nail poking sharply from its end, Curl picked up trash.

His salary in the teeth of the Great Depression? “I got to see all the movies for free,” he said. The cost: One thin dime.

Another story was like something from a movie. As a nine-year-old while shopping with his mother at Birmingham’s iconic Loveman’s department store, a fire broke out, filling the store with smoke.

“We couldn’t go down the elevator,” Curl said. “I had my mother by the hand. We made it down to the first floor. The smoke was so thick, we couldn’t see. But we heard a voice telling us, ‘Come this way,’ That voice led us all the way out of the store. We got out through a broken show window.”

Visiting the World War II memorial

Ironically, Curl spent his professional life after the war as a Birmingham firefighter, who would go on to help train new recruits in the fire service. Like so many of his generation, Curl gave back to his community, while at the same time raising his family.

Now in retirement, he’s still impacting lives. A small bottle of shrapnel-laced sand from Omaha Beach – given by Curl to the veterans’ home – is part of a display honoring those who served.  But more than the artifacts of war, Curl radiates happiness.

Said Hiliary Hardwick, director of the Veterans Home, “He definitely doesn’t act 95. He just has the most positive outlook on everything. I’ve never heard him or seen him when he’s upset. He just kind of takes life as it comes, and he just makes the most of it.”

 She added, “He’s probably one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. He generally thinks of others before himself. He’s unique. You know, they call the World War II guys ‘The Greatest Generation.’ He’s truly the epitome of that. He’s selfless in everything that he does.”

Curl, she says, “just radiates happiness.”

Curl credits his heart for others to his dad, the late Rev. John Wesley Curl, whom he calls, “the best man I ever knew.”

Asked how he would sum up his own wonderful life, Curl responds with the two words he hopes will be his epitaph:

“He tried.”

St. Clair Veterans Cemetery

St. Clair Memorial Gardens serves as county’s only dedicated veteran burial ground

Story by Jackie Romine Walburn
Photos by Graham Hadley
Submitted Photos

When folks at St. Clair Memorial Gardens and Usrey Funeral Home decided to dedicate a section of the cemetery to U.S Armed Forces veterans, owner Steve Perry first consulted with local veterans.

“I actively got together with a group of veterans in town,” Perry says. “We wanted their input, to know what’s important to them.”

The veterans’ group with members who served in Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War supported the idea and helped Perry work up rules and regulations for the veterans’ section in Pell City, which opened in 2012.

The rules they decided on are pretty much the same as those used by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs’ official U.S. veterans cemeteries. The section is for veterans and spouses and dependent children. Official honorable discharge papers – known as DD214 – are required to qualify.

Alabama’s only official U.S. National Cemetery is the Alabama National Cemetery at Montevallo and is one of 148 national veteran cemeteries, 33 soldier lots and monument sites in 42 states, according to the VA.

The idea behind the Pell City veterans’ section was not to take away from Montevallo but to expand on it and to offer a nearby choice for St. Clair-area veterans.

“The vets were all behind the idea and wanted to see it happen,” Perry said. “They liked the idea of the burial ground being closer to home and wanted to make sure things were done right, and we didn’t just throw up a veterans’ section. That’s why we follow the strict rules and regulations.

Stone markers represent each branch of the U.S. Armed Forces.

“We take comfort in knowing that vets had a part in putting this together,” said Perry, whose family has been the funeral home business since 1927, with Usrey’s Funeral Home in Talladega, which is now operated by Perry’s brother Mike. The Pell City location – funeral home and cemetery – were purchased one after the other in 2003 and 2004.
St. Clair Memorial Garden’s veterans’ section is set off from the rest of the 14- acre cemetery by a U.S. flag and large granite markers for each division of  the U.S. Armed Forces – the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard.  The first burial in the veterans’ section was in 2012 – the wife of one of the veterans Perry consulted early on.

The veterans’ section is laid out in lots of 16 grave spaces for a total of 352 spaces, which are filled in order – not by selection, the same way official veteran cemeteries are filled.

Spaces can be pre-purchased, but purchasers cannot pick the space location. This tradition of going in order, not pre-selected location, is the way the national cemeteries operate, Perry says. Burial spaces for a veteran and a spouse can be together with companion markers.

All honorably discharged veterans of active service are entitled to a free marker, a burial flag and military funeral honors, regardless of where they are buried. Usrey and cemetery officials help veterans apply for these benefits, including the bronze markers used at St. Clair Memorial Cemetery. No large family markers are used in the veterans’ section.

National VA cemeteries provide the burial space and opening and closing at no cost to the veteran’s family, according to www.va.gov. Families are still responsible for funeral home, cremation or other burial costs.

Because the St. Clair cemetery is not associated directly with the VA, spaces in the veterans’ section are purchased, in advance in a pre-purchase or at the time of burial planning.

However, Perry and staff handle the paperwork for veteran families, applying for the free grave marker, which are bronze as all markers are at the St. Clair cemetery. They also help arrange for military funeral honors at the family’s request.

Military funeral honors provided by the VA for qualifying veterans buried at veterans’ cemeteries or elsewhere include a presentation of a U.S. burial flag, folded and presented to the family and the playing of taps, according to www.va.gov. Federal law defines a military funeral honors detail as two or more uniformed military persons, with at least one being a member of the veteran’s parent service of the armed service.

Word is still spreading about Usrey’s services for veterans and the Pell City location’s veterans’ section, Perry says, noting that some veterans and families don’t know about the section just for veterans and others have family burial plots already purchased or family traditions of church cemetery burials.

“We just want veterans and their families to know this is here. We’ve always supported veterans, and this is a tribute to them,” Perry says.

The support takes on a personal meaning to the Perrys, too. Both of their grandfathers were World War II veterans, with the paternal grandfather serving as a paratrooper and the maternal grandfather serving as a medic in World War II, Perry says.

“This is a tribute to their service, too.”

Wreaths for Veterans

A special way to honor those who served

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Photos courtesy of Jerry W. Garrett Jr. and John Bryant
Submitted Photos

During the Christmas season this year, it will be a time to reflect on the gift of freedom and to pay tribute to those who secured it.

At 11 a.m. Dec. 19 at St. Clair Memorial Gardens, the second annual Wreaths Across America (WAA) observance will place wreaths at gravesites of veterans.

Hundreds of wreaths will be put on veteran graves at St. Clair Memorial Gardens, Valley Hill Cemetery, Oak Ridge Cemetery and elsewhere in the county, said Mindy and Keaton Manners and Julia Skelton, local WAA organizers.

The first WAA event in St. Clair County was Dec. 14, 2019. That morning, families, friends and volunteers placed 300 live, evergreen wreaths on veteran graves as part of a nationwide effort.

“Each year, millions of Americans come together to remember the fallen, honor those that serve and their families, and teach the next generation about the value of freedom,” notes the national WAA organization. “This gathering of volunteers and patriots takes place in local and national cemeteries in all 50 states” and some American cemeteries in Europe. “… In 2019, approximately 2.2 million veteran wreaths were placed on headstones at 2,158 participating locations around the country in honor of the service and sacrifices made for our freedoms.”

Broken Arrow Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), along with Steve Perry and Usrey Funeral Home, worked to bring the local event together. Giving their assistance were St. Clair County High School JROTC, Canoe Creek Society of Children of the American Revolution (CAR), Henderson Builders Supply Co. in Pell City and numerous residents of Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home.

JROTC members salute during service at St. Clair Memorial Gardens.

Susan Bowman of Pell City was touched by the number of wreaths and the number of people who came to help place those wreaths.

This was her first time to be part of such an observance.

She got to place wreaths at the graves of her father, Jesse Hooks, and her sister, Kathy Lynn Hooks, both of whom had served in the Army.

“I was very proud and teary-eyed. I was very teary-eyed,” she said. “Just emotions running through me.”

Those same words would describe the writer of this article and her sisters as well. Only two months before WAA, our dad – retired Chief Master Sgt. Porter Bailey – had been buried with military honors.

Getting to place a WAA wreath at his gravesite stirred the pangs of grief. But it also filled our hearts with pride for the 37 years he served this nation in the Army, Air Force and Alabama Air National Guard.

The day brought emotional extremes for Lyle and Shelly Harmon, who are the parents of three sons.

Well in advance of the ceremony, Harmon – who is St. Clair County’s district attorney and chief warrant officer 4 with Alabama Army National Guard – had agreed to serve as master of ceremonies. Then, hardly a month before the observance, son Sloan (known as “Boo”) was fatally shot just off an I-20 exit.

An airman first class with the Air Force, Boo was a KC-135 crew chief at the Alabama Air National Guard’s 117th Air Refueling Wing in Birmingham. He had just turned 20 a few days before the murder.

Though serving as WAA master of ceremonies so soon after Boo’s death was difficult, “I felt I should,” Lyle Harmon said. “… I can’t even express how humbling that was to do that. … It was quite humbling.”

At the same time, it was “a huge honor,” Harmon added.

During the ceremony, veterans of the Army, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines each placed a wreath at the respective monuments that stand at St. Clair Memorial Gardens. Because the veteran who was to place the wreath at the Air Force monument could not attend, Shelly Harmon did it.

Lyle Harmon watched his wife – a grieving, heartbroken mother – place a wreath of tribute at the Air Force monument.

Thinking back on what Shelly did that day, Harmon recalled, “I’m just so proud of my wife. She is unbelievably faithful and strong.”

The origin

The simple request of another grieving mother was the catalyst for the local WAA observance.

In early summer of 2019, that mother contacted a DAR group in Birmingham, explaining that she was unable to place a wreath or flag for Memorial Day on her son’s grave in St. Clair Memorial Gardens. Mrs. Manners – a member of Broken Arrow DAR in Pell City – and her husband volunteered to lay the wreath.

When Mr. and Mrs. Manners went for that reason to St. Clair Memorial Gardens, which is the only cemetery in the county with a section specifically for the military, the couple were surprised by the number of veterans’ graves they saw.

In the two-mile trip from the cemetery back to their home, Manners – an Army veteran – and Mrs. Manners decided they must organize a tribute to veterans interred there.

Honoring St. Clair veterans at the memorial service

For about six years, the couple had attended WAA observances at Alabama National Cemetery in Montevallo. Now, they felt it was time to bring that tribute to St. Clair County.

They set a goal of 300 wreaths, 260 of which would be for St. Clair Memorial Gardens. The remainder would go to graves in Valley Hill Cemetery, Oak Ridge Cemetery and Broken Arrow Cemetery at the request of various families.

St. Clair County High School JROTC joined the effort, raising funds for 100 wreaths and providing military color guard for the ceremony.

The JROTC leaders, Retired Maj. Channing McGee and Retired Sgt. 1st Class Vicki Glover, said participating in WAA “teaches cadets the importance of community service and instills patriotism by honoring these veterans and their sacrifice.”

For the 2020 event, the cadets plan to provide another 100 wreaths. (For information on how to help the cadets meet their goal, see the accompanying story, “Sponsor a wreath.”)

St. Clair debut

The first WAA event in St. Clair County was met with such support in the community that the entire ceremony was finalized within three months, the Manners said.

But the enthusiasm following the event brought the 2020 ceremony together even quicker.

“Two days after this past event, we had it all lined up for this year,” he said.

This year’s event will also feature a replica of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. (For more information, read the accompanying story, “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier replica to be on display.”)

After attending last year’s WAA, John Bryant of Alpine encouraged fellow members of the Knights of Columbus, Assembly 2972, Our Lady of the Lake to volunteer to lay wreaths of remembrance on graves of fallen heroes and to honor those who served the nation.

“I can’t think of anything that shows more patriotism than to honor and to show respect for our veterans,” Bryant said. “… I feel like we need more patriotism. We need to let this country know we love it, and we need to remember that the privileges we have today are because of our veterans.”

Skelton, who is also a member of Broken Arrow DAR, said volunteers will be needed to help place wreaths at St. Clair Memorial Gardens and possibly at Valley Hill Cemetery and Oak Ridge Cemetery.

Wreath placement generally is guided by military designations on headstones or footstones. However, Mrs. Manners said wreath-placement requests can be made for veterans whose grave markers have no military designation. A copy of the veteran’s DD-214 or a photo of the veteran in uniform will suffice as proof of military service.

Editor’s Note: To request wreath placement and provide documentation, email Mrs. Manners at mindy.manners@yahoo.com.

Carolyn Hall

Amazing handiwork tells a story in every delicate stitch

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Photos by Graham Hadley

Carolyn Hall is surrounded by heritage.

In her parlor are shelves of medical books belonging to her grandfather, Dr. R.A. Martin, and a wicker baby scale from a nursery unit at Martin Hospital. A collection of apothecary jars recalls the three generations that her family ran the corner Rexall drug store in downtown Pell City.

In a sunny room down the hall are two exquisitely detailed quilts that her grandmother Ada Kincaid made prior to 1936. The stitching of one quilt forms an intricate feather design, while the stitching of the other quilt is an equally complex rose pattern.

Treasured heirlooms they are.

Such a setting seemed appropriate for discussing keepsakes – those Carolyn inherited, as well as those she is creating for her four children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

The trove of cross-stitch artistry she has sewn for her family represents thousands of hours of work spanning decades.

“I have done a little bit of everything with cross-stitch,” Carolyn said.

She has made switch-plate covers, Christmas ornaments, a multi-dimensional Christmas train, tablecloth and napkins, pillows, pictures and cross-stitch designs on sweatshirts.

Several colors of thread were used to get the shading just right.

Cross-stitch afghans are the bulk of her work. She has completed many different afghans, featuring lighthouses, dogs, cats, stars and sailboats, ABCs, mallards and fruit.

Each piece has its own unique story and exhibits the special bond between the giver and receiver:

The afghan with an Aztec motif was the choice of daughter Cindy, who lives in Tennessee.

Daughter Stacy, who lives in Birmingham, wanted the afghan of “ice cream colors” that Carolyn made in the 1990s. “This is my favorite (afghan),” Carolyn said.

Daughter Mick, who lives in Colorado, displays one of her mother’s afghans as an art piece. Mick’s features wild birds perched on branches that stretch from square to square across the afghan.

For the afghan of son Rob, who works in construction in Florida, Carolyn chose storefront designs. She even altered the size, shape and lettering on the apothecary sign to make it read “Pell City Drug Co.”

Each grandchild and great-grandchild has one of Carolyn’s afghans, and a stash of afghans awaits future great-grandchildren.

Susan Mann, assistant director of Pell City Library, said Carolyn’s creations are priceless treasures the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can “cherish. … They will be special keepsakes forever. And each time they see them or use them, they will think of her, and remember those sweet moments shared.”

Friends and neighbors also have been beneficiaries of some of Carolyn’s handiwork.

Much care goes into each cross-stitch piece because Carolyn wants flawlessness.

“I don’t want to do anything that isn’t first class,” she said.

Joyce Thrower of Pell City, who has known the Hall family at least 50 years, has seen nearly every piece Carolyn has finished.

“She does beautiful work. Everything she does is perfect,” Joyce said.

Susan, likewise, described Carolyn’s work as “meticulous.” She pointed out that Carolyn’s cross-stitch is as pretty on the back as on the front.

When trying to decide which of Carolyn’s afghans she likes best, Susan confessed, “Every time she does a new one, it becomes my favorite.”

But Susan did say her top three would be the colorful birds on a pale mint afghan; a kitten whose spilled milk “drips” down an afghan, and the Victorian “painted ladies” homes of Chincoteague, Va.

The last one is in progress. Carolyn started the “painted ladies” afghan around Labor Day 2019. In August 2020, she reached the halfway point.

Carolyn may spend a year or two, working almost every day, on one afghan until it is completed.

Her longest project took more than two decades. She started the piece – a cross-stitch, bed-cover quilt – when pregnant with Rob, her fourth child. She finished it when he was 23. In between, the project got shelved while she reared her children, was a homemaker and helped her pharmacist husband, Robert “Bob” Hall, run Pell City Drug Co.

A Pell City legacy

Carolyn’s grandparents – Dr. R.A. and Mary Martin – arrived in Pell City in its infancy.

“My grandfather moved here in 1903. He was a surgeon at the Gertrude Comer Hospital” at Avondale Mills, Carolyn said.

After the hospital closed in the 1920s, Dr. Martin opened a six-bed clinic above Pell City Drug Co.

When the building next door became available in the 1930s, Dr. Martin moved the hospital there. For more than 30 years, Martin Hospital occupied that building, which is now the law offices of Hugh E. and Gibson Holladay.

Carolyn and all four of her children were born in Martin Hospital.

Carolyn shows off one of her favorite afghans depicting famous lighthouses.

As for Pell City Drug Co., Dr. Martin established it soon after arriving in Pell City. “That was one of the first Rexall franchises (in the nation),” Carolyn said.

Her mother, Mary Ruth Kincaid, later inherited Pell City Drug Co. and then Carolyn and Bob acquired it after Mary Ruth’s death. Carolyn and Bob, who had met while studying pharmacy at Auburn University, operated the drug store from 1961 to November 2001. In just two more months, the store would have been 99 years old.

The drug store, with its iconic soda fountain, was such a fixture and a necessity in Pell City that is was open every day except Christmas.

Until her last child was in high school, Carolyn worked at the store only when needed. But after long-time bookkeeper Annie Scott Stephens died, Carolyn assumed that job.

Bob passed away six years after retiring.

No idle hands here

When Carolyn was in junior high school, her grandmother Mary Martin taught her to embroider. Carolyn’s first pieces were pillowcases and dresser scarves, most of which she still has.

Though she gave up needlework for a time, she resumed after college, putting it down again during child-rearing.

What drew her back to it is the fascination of creating an art piece one stitch at a time.

“The creating is what I like,” Carolyn said. “This satisfies my creativity.”

Instead of using pre-stamped, cross-stitch patterns, Carolyn prefers the challenge of starting with a blank “canvas.” She must align the subject perfectly and count each stitch she sews in order to be precise.

“With cross-stitch, you’ve got to pay attention,” because one mistake affects the entire design, Carolyn said.

Some of her projects are so complex that they may require as many as 75 different thread colors.

Though dealing with macular degeneration and glaucoma, Carolyn sews for hours each morning. Often, she becomes so engaged that she does not want to put it down.

“It’s calming. It’s peaceful. It keeps your mind occupied. And you’re creating something. What’s not to like? … My grandmother would be proud,” she said. “… My grandmother didn’t believe in idle hands sitting around at night.”

Carolyn also walks four times a week, reads mysteries and is a volunteer hostess for library events. She might also be found on a travel adventure, such as Iceland in winter.

Just the same, she is always looking to the next cross-stitch challenge. Already, she has another afghan to begin after she finishes the “painted ladies” … in about a year.

A Night at the Opera

Summer-ending concert may become
yearly event on Logan Martin Lake

Jason Rogoff and Jeff Thompson found the cure for the quarantined summer blues: an outdoor rock concert … during Labor Day weekend.

But it cannot be your normal concert.

This one has to be arranged in less than eight weeks; it has to feature a sought-after performer who just happens to be available because of pandemic cancellations; it has to provide seating that socially distances audience members attending by land and huge video screens visible to those attending by boat; it has to raise funds for two entities, and it has to be full of energy.

That concert – which was on Sept. 4 at Pell City Sports Complex on the shores of Logan Martin Lake – fulfilled all the requirements and quite possibly began an annual event.

For the concert, the Black Jacket Symphony performed the songs from the Queen album, A Night at the Opera, and featured the vocal talent of Marc Martel.

The stage lights up the night

Martel provided some vocals for Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic about Queen’s late lead singer Freddie Mercury, said Rogoff, director and producer of the Black Jacket Symphony.

Thompson, who is director of the Center for Education and Performing Arts (CEPA) in Pell City, said Rogoff approached him about an outdoor concert patterned after others that the Black Jacket Symphony had held in Birmingham.

For the Black Jacket Symphony, this would be a return visit to Pell City.

In February 2020, the Black Jacket Symphony performed Fleetwood Mac’s album, Rumours, in concert at CEPA and had scheduled Led Zeppelin IV for May. But COVID containment measures canceled Led Zeppelin IV.

Visit the Black Jacket Symphony online
at blackjacketsymphony.com

Marc Martel once again playing guitar during a BJS Queen show