Bobbye Weaver

A life filled with the stars

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Photos by Michael Callahan

Bobbye Williamson might never have imagined that a simple wink would determine the course of her life, but it definitely did.

That single, innocent, little action set off a series of events that sent her globetrotting, mingling with celebrities and experiencing her own brushes with fame.

She would visit five continents; meet Rock Hudson, Clint Eastwood, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball and a legion of other stars; be part of a “Ben Casey” rehearsal; and lunch with Dustin Hoffman’s parents. She would even have to use her acting skills and an exaggerated Southern accent to talk her way out of trouble with President Richard Nixon’s Secret Service detail.

That little wink happened back in 1949 while she was working at Roberson’s department store in Pell City during Christmas break from the University of Alabama.

Emmett Weaver, an Anniston native and young editor of Pell City’s newspaper, came into the store. Bobbye greeted him with a pleasant salutation and a wink (which was actually a facial tic).

Emmett thought Bobbye was flirting, so he invited her to Citizens Drug Store for a soda.

Those few minutes over refreshments made clear that “we just had a lot in common,” Bobbye said.

They married in June 1950.

Scarcely three months later, Emmett – who had been a medic during World War II – was reactivated because of the Korean War. He was stationed at a military hospital in New York.

“Every night, we were at a Broadway show, if he wasn’t on duty,” Bobbye said. “That was the heyday of Broadway – Ethel Merman, Carol Channing, … . That was a lot of fun.”

When Emmett completed his military service in 1953, he became entertainment editor at the Birmingham Post-Herald. Bobbye taught music at Saks Junior High School. The two also attended Birmingham-Southern College – Emmett to do his master’s coursework, and Bobbye to finish her degrees in English and Spanish.

Through Emmett’s 30-year, award-winning journalism career and Bobbye’s various endeavors, the two met one celebrity after another, ended up in humorous situations and earned a spot on many prominent Christmas card lists.

Until recently, the Weaver home in Vestavia held reminders of the eventful life Bobbye and Emmett shared.

There was the ashtray from Bob Hope, the miniature piano from Liberace, the stirrup from John Wayne, the original artwork from Jack Lord. The Weavers’ collection of memorabilia is extensive and diverse: original scripts, photographs, letters, costumes, playbills, posters, keepsakes from premiers and gifts from famous people.

The treasures go on exhibit in 2019 at Oxford Performing Arts Center in Oxford, Ala. John Longshore, the center’s executive director, said the collection will be a semi-permanent exhibit. He noted the magnitude of the collection, saying its variety will marry well with the array of entertainment that the center brings into Northeast Alabama.

 

Always the performer

According to cousin Beth Geno of Kingsport, Tenn., Bobbye was born to perform.

“She has been a performer ever since she could talk,” Beth said.

Bobbye, whose parents were Robert and Lillie Kate Williamson of Cropwell, was talking and singing by 8 months, doing impressions as a toddler, studying music at a conservatory by age 8 and teaching piano lessons at 13.

In high school, she helped to lead worship services for evangelist Billy Graham’s “Youth for Christ” program.

As an adult, Bobbye chaperoned Miss Universe, Miss International and Maid of Cotton contestants, even designing a costume for one woman that captured media attention. Bobbye broadcast live updates about the pageants to Birmingham radio stations WCRT and WSGN.

A popular musician, Bobbye played piano and organ for many secular and religious events and the ukulele in an ensemble at Vestavia Hills Baptist Church. For decades, she taught music at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham and in the music suite of her home.

She sang with choruses, operas, and numerous church choirs and in the High Holy Days service for Temple Emanu-El. In addition, she was a backup vocalist for Tom Netherton during his concert in Birmingham.

On Alabama Public Television, she hosted the show, I Hear Music.

All-Star Attractions, the production company she operated with Marvin McDonald, brought to Birmingham such personalities as Judy Garland and Victor Borge.

“Judy Garland just packed the house,” Bobbye said.

Bobbye-Weaver-the-Actress could be found in dinner theaters and Town & Gown Theatre (now Virginia Samford Theatre) in Birmingham. She appeared in such productions as Fiddler on the Roof, Arsenic and Old Lace, Annie Get Your Gun and Carousel. For her role as “Bloody Mary” in South Pacific, she won the Obelisk Award.

Emmett – along with James Hatcher and former Birmingham Mayor David Vann – established a seasonal professional theatre called Summerfest. Through Summerfest, Bobbye appeared opposite such talents as Edie Adams (in Hello, Dolly!), Joe Namath and Phil Crosby (Bing Crosby’s son).

As guest artist at Birmingham-Southern in 1987, Bobbye played “Fraulein Schneider” in Cabaret, even wearing the same costume that Lotte Lenya used in the Broadway production.

Beth said Bobbye was never one to be timid in front of a crowd. “At the drop of the hat, she would stand up and sing with somebody.”

In fact, Bobbye did that at a party with famous soprano Eileen Farrell.

Afterward, “she invited me up to her house in Maine,” Bobbye said. “Emmett and I kept in touch with her.”

 Because of Emmett’s work as entertainment editor, the Weavers were familiar faces at premiers. Rocky, Music Man, My Fair Lady, A Bridge Too Far, The Spy Who Loved Me and Smokey and the Bandit are among the 42 premiers the Weavers attended. Thirty were world premiers. At the New York premier of Norma Rae, Bobbye even interviewed actor Beau Bridges for WCRT.

Annually, CBS, NBC and ABC sent Emmett to California to talk with stars appearing in shows and movies that were to be released the following year.

During one of those trips, Lawrence Welk encouraged Bobbye to go in another musical direction.

As Emmett and Welk were dining at the Palladium, Bobbye was invited to join them. Enjoying the musical entertainment, Bobbye began drumming a sequence on the table. In his distinctive accent, Welk told her she was “a natural” and should learn to play drums.

For Christmas that year, Emmett gave her a set of Slingerland drums. She taught herself how to play and later took gigs in Birmingham at Parliament House, The Club, the Luau, Downtown Club and the Elegant.

When Welk came to Birmingham to do a show in 1973, he engaged Bobbye to play in the “Dixieland jazz” segment.

Subsequently, the famed band leader made Bobbye an offer: Bobbye would have a six-month training period, followed by a two-year road tour, after which she could become part of Welk’s “family” of entertainers.

Though she gave it some thought, 40-year-old Bobbye declined because she knew she would have to get her teeth straightened. Plus, she just, plain and simple, preferred to stay in Alabama.

For 10 years, she taught drums. She even wrote an instructional book, called Through the Back Door, to give her students shortcuts for learning technique.

She also wrote and performed two one-woman shows, called Four in One and Raccoon Ridge (a comedy about Minnie Pearl’s cousin). In Four in One, Bobbye appeared as Ethel Merman, Carol Channing, Marlene Dietrich and Sophie Tucker.

Bobbye toured with those shows eight years.

In 2008, Emmett was diagnosed with a chronic condition, and Bobbye left performing to care for him. He died in 2014.

“He was fun up to the end,” Bobbye said of her husband.

In September, Virginia Samford Theatre recognized the couple’s contribution to local theatre, particularly Bobbye’s sponsorship of the recent production of Hello, Dolly!.

Now at 87, Bobbye still heats up her Slingerland drums and is writing two books. One of the books is for children and is about dealing with bullies and challenges in life.

“She’s done so much in life,” Beth said of Bobbye, adding that Bobbye and Emmett were well matched as a couple. “They made the most of life and enjoyed everything they did. They were great partners.”

Editor’s Note: Margaret Vaughan, Jo Ann Winnette,
Beth Geno, Dr. Patrick and Sandy Bernardi assisted with this article.

 

Dry Creek Farms

Christmas in the Country

Story by Paul South
Photos by Susan Wall

This time of year, thousands of electric lights welcome visitors at Dry Creek Farms. Barns, fences, even a waving wire Santa behind the wheel of a wire tractor, pass on Yuletide greetings with a gentle glow that grows brighter as darkness falls.

It’s all part of the joy the St. John family has shared now for three years on their working cattle farm, where even at Christmas, white-faced Hereford cattle trump red-nosed reindeer. On the weekend of Dec. 7-9, Dry Creek will host its third annual “Christmas on the Farm,” a gift to the people of Pell City and surrounding areas.

Santa and Mrs. Claus will be on hand to meet the children and hear who’s been naughty or nice, as well as Christmas wishes. Gallons of hot chocolate and plates full of goodies will be served. And farm animals – a bottle-fed calf, bunnies, chickens and a horse – will give children a taste of life on the farm.

Photos with Santa are available for $10 each. And kids will also be able to write and send letters to Santa at a small post office in the barn.

But for Joyce St. John, paternal grandmother of this farm family, the lights, tinsel, trees and Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus who come to Dry Creek, dim in comparison to the lights gleaming in the eyes of children and in the Christmas story she loves to share. Dressed in red velvet as Mrs. Kris Kringle, Mrs. St. John reads Clement Moore’s classic, ’Twas the Night Before Christmas. But her true joy – and to her and many others “the reason for the season” – the telling of the birth of Jesus, born in a Bethlehem barn more than 2,000 years ago. For Joyce, the event is more Nativity than North Pole.

“A lot of children who don’t get to experience the things of the manger and all because they’re not involved in church, this is a way of being a witness to them that Christmas is not about Santa Claus, it’s about the birth of Jesus,” Mrs. St. John says. “You’d be surprised at how many children will start asking questions once I start telling the story of Jesus and how He was born in a stable and His bed was a trough that the cattle ate out of. They start asking questions and then you can start sharing about Jesus, and they’re so surprised. Then you have children who can tell you the story of Jesus, and it’s amazing how excited they get being able to tell you stuff about Jesus.”

Grandson Carter St. John runs the day-to-day operation at Dry Creek, which along with raising and selling show cattle, serves as a popular celebration venue. He hopes the event will spark an interest in a generation of kids more familiar with Fortnite than farming. The St. John show cattle compete in events statewide and around and across the country in fairs and other agricultural events.

 “We want (youngsters) to come in here and actually get to know livestock,” Carter says. “That’s how we were raised, and we want other people to see that . . . Maybe it will help their future, maybe they’ll love livestock and not do bad things on the street and make this a hobby for them, loving animals. It kept me out of trouble because it kept me busy.”

He added, “It gives them different options, because they didn’t know farming was out there . . . It’s just like playing baseball or football. It’s a hobby for them. We want more kids involved in farming.”

Six stalls offer different activities for children and their parents. Refreshments, the letters to Santa, spots to visit Santa and his bride and more. At big box retailers, holiday festivities may be best remembered for long lines and long waits. But at Dry Creek, it’s joyous “organized chaos,” Joyce St. John says with a laugh.

Some kids steer classic, pedal-powered metal toy tractors. Others run to Santa. Still others cuddle furry baby bunnies or pet pigs. Sometimes the barn is as quiet as a Christmas Eve mouse, but more often it’s a blizzard of activity. About 150 kids, with parents in tow, flocked to last year’s event.

“Sometimes the barn would be full,” she says. “Sometimes there would be little breaks, but it seemed like someone was in there all the time.”

Joyce St. John has a gentle, welcoming voice that overflows with kindness. The kindness remains when she takes on the role of Mrs. Claus. But, she says, her personality changes when she dons the red velvet dress and hat.

 “I just love how excited the children get to sit in Mrs. Santa’s lap. I also do the story, ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, and so many of them have heard the story about Santa. You do kind of change your character. My character changes while telling the story of Jesus’ birth compared to ’Twas the Night Before Christmas.

She senses a transformation when she tells the story of the baby born in the Bethlehem barn. Her already happy heart overflows with joy while telling the Gospel story. Sometimes, she says, children return to hear the story again and again and again.

“Telling the story of Jesus, it puts you almost like you’re almost there in the barn witnessing it and being a part of it. I get excited talking about Jesus. There’s a big difference talking about Santa Claus and talking about Jesus.”

The St. Johns string lights, hang tinsel and decorate trees weeks before the Dec. 7-9 event. But for Joyce St. John, only one beacon matters – the Light of the World. She sees Christmas at the Farm as “a ministry,” countering the commercialization of Christmas.

 “Several children . . . just to see their eyes light up when you told them the story about Jesus, especially those who really didn’t know about Him.” You knew that this may be the only time during the year that anything is really said about Jesus.

Doing this Christmas on the farm . . . It’s about the true meaning of Christmas. If it touches one person’s life, and they come to know Jesus, it will have been worth it.”

For more information about Dry Creek Farms, visit www.drycreekfarmscattle.com.

Got Her Goats

Rental ruminants help clear kudzu from Ashville farm

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

Cindy Massey took more than a casual look at the kudzu-covered cliffs that surrounded her Ashville farm and knew she had to put a stop to the invasion.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, describes the invading kudzu as climbing, coiling and trailing perennial vines introduced in America from Asia in the 19th Century. It’s even earned the infamous reputation as ‘the weed that ate the South.’ But never mind the lore behind it. All Massey knew was that it had to go.

She had kept it under control for years through a treatment process. But when that process was skipped a couple of times, the vines enveloped the hillsides and rock formations – top to bottom – that form a natural, dramatic backdrop all around her expansive valley acreage. That is, when you can see them.

She asked her landscape architect, Rodney Griffin at Gardens by Griffin, for advice, and his answer would set in motion a solution not seen all that much around these parts. “Why don’t you rent a goat?”

It was no time for conventional means anymore, said Massey. So, she turned her attention to the internet and made a discovery that’s catching on around the country – renting goats – and lots of them.

She found a company in Tennessee – Rent-A-Ruminant – that would bring a herd of goats to Alabama and let them do what goats do best. And on a warm, sunny day in August, kudzu started tumbling down like a row of dominos given a mighty thump.

 All across Massey’s 135 acres, one by one, members of the herd of 47 goats made their way up and down and all around the hillsides, craning their necks to reach their ‘gold.’ Some stood on hind legs to get an extra boost toward their target. They tracked, tromped and chomped on one hillside and then headed to the next course at Taylor’s direction.

If one man’s trash is another’s treasure, the same holds true for goats. According to Rent-A-Ruminant owner Jax Taylor, kudzu is like the “golden corral” to them. She compared the bottom to broccoli, the next layer to a chocolate fountain and at the very top, they strike gold.

As Maddie, an Anitolian Shepherd, Great Pyrennes mix herded the goats, keeping them inside temporary netting that encloses each section designated for their clearing prowess, Taylor talked of how her story began.

Now a veteran, she was in Kuwait, about to be deployed to Iraq. A library in Los Angeles had donated out-of-date books to soldiers, and she picked up one on suburban homesteading. For the next 15 months, she would read that book over and over again and became “intrigued” with the concept of self-sufficiency and homesteading.

She decided when she returned home, she would buy a goat. And that she did. Her first was a Nigerian Dwarf, Becka, and you might say that goat cleared the path forward for her in more ways than one. After a second tour, this time in Afghanistan, she decided that when her Army career ended, her next career would involve goats. She had already started her farm and had moved to standard sized goats.

Her herd has grown sizably since then, and so has the territory for Rent a Ruminant, a franchise company begun in 2004 in Washington State. Besides Taylor’s franchise in Tennessee, there are others in Louisiana and Texas.

This was Taylor’s first time to herd in Alabama, and she settled into a loft apartment above the barn on Massey’s land for the two and half weeks she was there with the herd. She and her goat caravan have traveled to parts of Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky clearing property and taking care of the environment.

“We try to run the business like animal lovers would run the business,” she said, noting that most are rescues. She calls them by name if they venture where they’re not supposed to go as if they are wandering toddlers.

There are three generations out there, she said, proudly pointing to each. Becka is the matriarch. Fiddle is her first kid, and Banjo is Fiddle’s first kid.

How do they get their names? “Sometimes, they just come to us. Pineapple is “off the wall.” Morgan is named after a niece. Sir Richard? He’s their “problem child.” He jumps the fence. “They do something that gives them a name,” she explained.

Taylor likens their approach to clearing the kudzu to the atmosphere of a Jurassic Park – “like dinosaurs attacking.” 

And when they were done, Massey’s property was cleaner that it had been in years. By the end of their stay and multiple work days, Massey was calling the goats by name, too.

“I saw firsthand that running a goat rental business is not for the faint of heart,” Massey said. “Some of our terrain is quite steep and while it was no problem for the goats, Jax and her husband, Mathhew, had to clear brush and install fencing to contain them.

“I love the fact that they demolished a lot of kudzu, and no chemicals were used. I try to be mindful of the wonderfully diverse ecosystem we enjoy here. The goats neutralize seeds in their gut rather than broadcasing them as with a machete or Weedeater.”

She noted that the goats were extremely efficient and worked quickly, returning her property to the picturesque landscape she first fell in love with.

“The goats and the Taylors were a delight,” she said. “I missed the sounds of tinkling goat bells and ‘baaaaah’ after they left.”

Caroline’s Mill

St. Clair Springs couple returns to days gone by

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

For several of the 40-plus years Tommy and Sibyl White have lived in St. Clair Springs, they have gazed out their living room window at the swampy spring-fed pond across the road and said, “Wouldn’t it be neat to have a water wheel there?”

The pond was on a piece of land that didn’t belong to them, so the couple never dreamed their idea would go anywhere. But the owner decided to sell that four-acre plot, and when Tommy learned about it, he pounced. The deal was sealed early this year, and Tommy set to work clearing the property and building that wheel and a mill to house it.

“Three springs feed the mill pond,” Tommy said. “A stream ran out of it constantly all year round. We thought it would be the perfect place for a water wheel.”

He didn’t have a drawing of what he wanted, but that wasn’t an obstacle. “I had in the back of my head what I wanted it to look like,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time he had plunged feet first into a building project. The host of White’s Mountain Bluegrass Festival for 12 years, he built a wooden train, a general store and an amphitheater and stage at the top of White’s Mountain Lane. Tommy and Sibyl live at the bottom of that lane. When the bluegrass festival got too big for them to handle — they were doing one in the spring and one in the fall — they quit. But the lure of old-time music and old-fashioned folk ways proved too much for them. So about five or six years ago (Tommy isn’t good with dates), he came up with the Chimney Corner Celebration to take its place.

Held the third weekend of October, it is named after the warmest spot in any bygone farm house, the corner between the pot-bellied stove and the fireplace. The Celebration warms up at sundown on a Friday with a jam session of local bluegrass musicians. It continues from 9 a.m. until “whenever” the next day with more bluegrass, bagpipes and other period music and dance. Activities and displays include sorghum syrup and cider making, spinning wheel operations, hominy making, quilting, chair caning and blacksmithing.

“We just love that kind of stuff,” Tommy said. “The old ways of doing things bring back memories of the old days, when people had to make it, grow it or do without it.”

The star of the show this year was supposed to be the new mill, but it wasn’t quite finished in time. Tommy had planned to demonstrate grinding corn and wheat, and the water wheel was supposed to produce the electricity to power a generator for the lights of the mill house. The water level was a couple of feet below what the mill wheel needed. So, the demos would have to wait for the rainy season.

He made the eight-foot by two-foot mill wheel in his shop by modifying a metal spool used to roll electrical wire. It’s an undershot mill, meaning water runs under it to turn the wheel. Two grinding stones, one stationary and one moving against the first, form the basic elements for grinding grain. Tommy cut grooves in the mill stones so the grain could pass through them.

“To harness water power, you must have height and volume,” Tommy explained. “To get the volume, you raise the water level and restrict it to a narrow channel that is called the mill race.” The wheel sits at the discharge end of the race, and water pressure will turn the wheel. A control valve will lower and raise the water level. When the wheel runs, water will pass through the mill race and into a stream that continues under Highway 23 and into Little Canoe Creek.

Made of pressure-treated pine lumber and siding, the mill building is 12 feet by 16 feet, including a porch that wraps around two sides. It has traditional mill-style windows, which are openings cut into the siding with wooden covers that slide out of the way. “I remember Mom had windows like these in her kitchen,” Tommy said. “I would go outside and climb up and open them on a hot day.”nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Mosquitoes were a hindrance to the property clearing at first, but Tommy’s son found a $400 fogger machine online, and it cleared out the mosquito population from the quarter-acre pond in a hurry. Once construction started, curious passersby on Highway 23 stopped their cars frequently, asking questions and admiring the project.

 Begonias, coleus, geraniums, hasta and caladium add color to the place, along with hanging baskets of ferns and an airplane plant, thanks to Sibyl’s green thumb and eye for landscaping. “I had to contain her, or she would have filled the place with flowers,” Tommy said. “She had some good ideas, though.”

The mill won’t sit dormant between celebrations, either. “I’ll decorate it for the Christmas season and use the electricity the wheel generates to power the lights, provided the rains come and bring up the water level,” he said. “We’ll just grind whatever folks bring us, too.”

Meanwhile, at the top of the lane where the Chimney Corner Celebration is held, Tommy has built a number of buildings that help tell of bygone days. He has a general store and post office combination, something that was quite common in the early history of the U.S. Postal Service.

The back room of the building holds some of the old-fashioned machinery he has collected, including two corn shellers, a grist mill, treadle sewing machines, several ice boxes and a cast-iron cook stove that is vented through a fireplace chimney. An avowed tinkerer, he rebuilt the corn sheller that had belonged to Sibyl’s dad as a boy by using another one as an example.

Shelves in the front room are filled with old glass and pottery, such as the soft-drink bottle embossed with the words, “Ashville Bottling Company,” that he found when he cleaned the sludge out of the mill pond. Post office boxes at the front of the store came from the St. Clair Springs post office that closed around 1949. “St. Clair Springs was a town before Springville was,” he said, a touch of pride in his voice.

He restored a cider mill that he uses at the celebrations. “I found it in northeast Alabama, or rather, I found what was left of it,” Tommy said. “A fellow advertised it on the internet, and I finagled a deal.” Sibyl researched it and had photos and diagrams for him to go by.

Both bluegrass musicians, Tommy plays guitar, and Sibyl keeps the beat on a bass fiddle, while friend David Connor plays banjo in the unnamed trio they form. They play at the Chimney Corner Celebration and area events such as the Looney House Festival, and at the annual Christmas Pickin’ the Whites hold in the back room of the General Store.

In another nod to times gone by, all electricity is turned off at the store that night, and those lucky enough to get an invitation play by the light of the fireplace, oil lamps and lanterns.

Tommy and Sibyl’s granddaughter, six-year-old Caroline, has taken an interest in learning how to play the guitar, and Tommy plans on teaching her what he knows. “We’re calling it Caroline’s Mill in her honor,” Tommy said.

A life of ‘firsts’

Beatrice Muse Price:
Serving with the
Tuskegee Airmen
and breaking barriers

Story by Scottie Vickery
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Submitted photos

As she looks back over photographs of her life and loved ones that hang in her room at the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home in Pell City, Beatrice Muse Price feels the need to pinch herself. “I’ve had a strange life with a lot of firsts,” she said. “It’s been an interesting, interesting journey.”

The granddaughter of slaves, young Beatrice started school at age 4 and never stopped blazing trails. The little girl with humble beginnings grew up to break color barriers in order to serve her country as a nurse during World War II. General George S. Patton was among her many patients, and she made history when she was assigned to help care for the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black pilots to serve in the U.S. military. “We took care of their medical needs and made sure they were in good shape,” she said. “Our job was to keep them flying.” In 2012, nearly 70 years after her service with the Airmen, she was presented the Congressional Gold Medal for her efforts in the war.

At 94, Price can’t think of much she would change about her life. After leaving the Army, she was a nurse at the Birmingham VA Medical Center and started a health and wellness program at her church, which she counts among her greatest accomplishments. Despite growing up during the height of segregation she lived to see Barack Obama become the first African-American president and was among the estimated 1.8 million who flocked to Washington for his inauguration in 2009. Four years later, she was the special guest of U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell during President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address.

“Every time I turn around, I’m involved with something that’s made me think, ‘Can you imagine this?’ I’ve never seen any reason to stop with less than you were capable of doing. Now that I look back on it, I can’t remember anything I was afraid to do, and I think that’s why I had such great opportunities everywhere I went,” she said.

Price was born in Bessemer on Jan. 21, 1924, the second of Henry and Frances Muse’s six children. The family moved to Hale County when she was 3, and she grew up on a farm in Greensboro, where her parents modeled strength, courage and determination. Badly injured in World War I, her father was in and out of the VA hospital for much of her childhood. “Mama had to run the farm, and boy did she run it,” she said. “She believed in doing everything possible to make life better for all of us.”

For that reason, Price got an early start on her education “My sister Ruth, who was 11 months older, was afraid of everything, including her shadow,” she mused. “When she went to school, Mama started me too, even though I was only 4, just to be company for her.”

Price excelled in school, despite her many chores around the farm and the time she spent helping to care for her father. That experience is ultimately what set her on her career path. “My father always said, ‘Bea, you would make a good nurse.’ He told me that from the time I was 3. By the time I graduated high school, he had convinced me totally,” she said.

The problem was, she graduated early, at age 16. “You had to be 17 to go to nursing school, so Daddy got a birth affidavit for me. Because of midwives, a lot of people didn’t have birth certificates, so rather than have me sit out a year, he aged me a year on my birth affidavit,” she said.

Despite never having left Alabama, she boarded a train by herself and went to the Grady Memorial School of Nursing in Atlanta, graduating three years later in 1944 as a registered nurse.

During her college days, “segregation was at its height,” she said, and she remembers the superintendent of nurses telling her and her classmates to “go back to the cornfields and cook kitchens where you belong.” The white students and black students were separated, but Price didn’t allow the racism she experienced to affect her focus. She graduated with one of the highest grade point averages among both groups of students.

By the time she finished nursing school, “they were appealing for Army nurses with every breath,” she said. “We had recruiters at school every week or so, but you had to be 21 to join the Army. Daddy got a birth affidavit for college, but he said he wasn’t going to mess with the military.”

Instead, she spent a year in Trinity Hospital, an all-black private hospital in Detroit before becoming a U.S. Army Nurse in 1945. She joined the Army three days after turning 21 and was one of 12 black nurses sent to work at a hospital in Fort Devens, Mass., after completing basic training. “We were the first black nurses there and when they took us to breakfast the next morning, the forks were hitting the plates so hard we were looking to see how much china was broken,” she said with a laugh.

After earning the respect of her colleagues, she was the first black nurse to be promoted to head nurse at the hospital. Although she can’t remember what he was treated for, Gen. Patton was a patient in her ward. “Everyone called him ‘Blood and Guts’ because he was so forceful and fearless,” she said, adding that he wasn’t difficult or intimidating during his stay. “He disappointed me,” she joked.

After being promoted to First Lieutenant, Price was stationed at Lockbourne Army Air Base in Columbus, Ohio, and was assigned to the Tuskegee Airmen. The pilots, who trained in Alabama as a segregated unit at Tuskegee Institute’s Motion Field, were subjected to discrimination both inside and outside the military. “They were trying to be the best they could be in spite of the fact that people didn’t want them to do it at all,” she said. “I enjoyed working with them to the highest.”

Price said she got to know some of the pilots and flew with them on a few practice flights, even taking the controls on occasion. “They had to keep their hours up and they were so happy to have company along, they taught you everything they knew. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you that,” she said with a grin.

After the war ended and Price returned home, she continued her nursing career at the Birmingham VA Medical Center, where she worked for 34 years. She was married twice and has three children, two stepchildren, four grandchildren, five step-grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Through the years, she’s “adopted” some others and counts them as her own. She credits her family and her career among her greatest blessings.

Price rejoiced in 2007 when President George W. Bush presented the Tuskegee Airmen – which included the nearly 1,000 pilots and support personnel such as armorers, engineers, navigators, intelligence officers, weather officers and nurses – with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor given by Congress. In 2012, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell presented Price with her own medal during a ceremony at her church, Sixth Avenue Baptist.

She is amazed at the honors she has received for what she calls fulfilling her calling.

 “There’s nothing in the world I could have enjoyed more than nursing,” she said. “It has really been the most rewarding career I could possibly imagine. I’ve had a rich, full life, and I’ve just been in the right place at the right time with the right things somebody was looking for. It’s how God works. He finds you and gives you assignments, and you’ve just got to try to carry them out.”

6th Day Creatures

Springville family turns passion into business, teachable moments

Story by Jackie Romine Walburn
Photos by Susan Wall

It’s hard to say exactly when 6th Day Creatures, an exotic animal education and entertainment venture headquartered in St. Clair County, really began for Jamie Hacker, his family and their collection of exotic pets.

The obvious start was when Jamie was asked to do a devotion at a children’s church event seven years ago, and he brought along a couple of small, friendly snakes and a black and white ferret with him “to illustrate how God created and loves all of us – even funny-looking animals and snakes.”

That impromptu devotion quickly morphed into more. “By Monday at school, our seven-year-old had volunteered us to do another program, and another.”

So officially began 6th Day Creatures, a business and mission that brings exotic animals and life lessons to children and adults at church, school and community events across Alabama and beyond.

The name 6th Day Creatures is based on when the Bible says God created all the creeping and crawling land creatures. As noted in Genesis 1:24. “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creatures after his kind, cattle, and creeping things and the beast of the earth after his kind,’ and it was so.”

But, the true beginning for 6th Day Creatures can also be traced to Jamie and his wife’s family traditions of unusual pets and their family’s ongoing love, knowledge and care for exotic animals.

Both Jamie Hacker, who works as registered nurse at St. Vincent’s Hospital in downtown Birmingham, and his wife, Trussville native Leigh Fox Hacker, a nurse who works at St. Vincent’s East, grew up around unusual pets.

The couple’s passion for exotic pets was honed during their childhoods and passed on to their children, daughter Lauren, 18, now a freshman at Jacksonville State University, and son Brady, 14, who is a freshman in high school.

Jamie’s father raised show pigs, modern bantam chickens and cattle in Oklahoma, where Jamie stayed when not with his mom in Mississippi. Leigh’s grandparents bred and raised chinchillas, the rodent native to Peru and Chile that are prized for their dense, soft fur.

They both love animals and value exotic species, but it was Leigh who first bought the children their own exotic pets. For son Brady, she purchased one of the family’s first corn snakes, and daughter Lauren’s got a chinchilla named CeCe. Lauren also around this time adopted a rescue Maltese Yorkie (Morkie) named Sebastian, who became a family pet, too.

As the number and variety of exotic pets grew, the family sometimes raised exotic animals for the pet store market. “At one time, there were 100 snakes being raised in our son’s bedroom,” Jamie recalls. Their pet count got up to about 400 when they bred for pet stores. Now the pet count is about one-tenth of that. Also, they used to breed several kinds of cockroaches, mainly for food for pets. “We have bred Red Runner Cockroaches, Dubia Cockroaches and mealworms in the past.”

Now they have only Madagascar hissing cockroaches, one of the largest cockroach species that can reach two to three inches long. “We only have hissing cockroaches now just for fun since they are really big flightless roaches that gross people out,” Jamie says.

The pet lizards get live insects because they will only eat food if it is moving, he says. However, the Bearded Dragons sometimes get dried meal worms on their greens – “like you put croutons on a salad.”

Live food is never fed to the snakes or other carnivores. They do not feed any live rodents, he says, to keep the snakes from having the instinct to strike and be aggressive. Instead, they purchase frozen rodents, Jamie says, remembering how the UPS man commented “ya’ll must eat really good,” about delivering packages of what he assumed were frozen steaks or other expensive people food. Then they explained that the boxes were actually frozen rodents.

Through their days as pet owners, then breeders and now with an animal adventure business, their veterinarian has been Dr. Carl Grimmett of Grayson Valley Pet Clinic. Knowledgeable about exotic pet care, which is a shared interest, Dr. Grimmett usually makes house calls for the Hacker family pets.

 

The family business

Since 6th Day Creatures came to life, it’s been a family project, with Jamie up front as the animal adventure master of ceremonies and either Leigh, Lauren or Brady assisting.

“I love animals and kids,” says Jamie. His ease with both is plain to see as Jamie and Brady brought 6th Day Creature’s Animal Adventures to a Clearbranch United Methodist Church’s Wednesday night children’s service.

Like an exotic pet pied piper, children follow as Jamie walks around before the show, with Dewey the Bearded Dragon, an Australian lizard, clinging to his back or head or shoulder. “Put him on my head,” one child says. “Put him on my sister’s head,” another offers.

As Jamie introduces Dewey and then brings out Zelda, a colorful corn snake, he explains the 6th Day rules. If you don’t want to pet, see up close or interact with whatever creature Jamie offers, “just put your palm up, no thank you.” Even though you might make friends with 6th Day creatures, he tells the children, never touch a wild animal – like these or others – when you are outside in their territory. He also explains that audience members should consider it an “anointing” if a pet takes the opportunity to ‘relieve himself’ and reminds the kids that most of the exotic pets are not housetrained, so anything could happen.

After safety – 6th Day has never had an escape or incident with the exotic pets interacting with people – the main message this day is that God created us and all the creatures for a reason and that He loves us and all creatures of his creation.

“God has a reason for everything He does,” Jamie says, using the nonvenomous corn snake as an example. “The craziest thing is, without snakes, we wouldn’t survive,” he explains. Snakes eat rats and mice and keep the vermin’s population down and protect us from diseases they carry.

When Lucy the hedgehog makes an appearance, children see how God equipped hedgehogs to protect themselves – with their quill-covered skin and the ability to fold up into a ball.

When the so-ugly-it’s-cute hairless guinea pig is introduced, Jamie explains that the hybrid is called a skinny pig and reminds him of how God made us all different. “Some of us are tall, some small, some prettier than others,” he says. Telling a story about children teasing a boy in a wheelchair, Jamie encourages the young audience to appreciate the differences in all of us and never make fun of someone who is different. Instead, he urged, “use the way God made you special to do good and spread love.”

When Taco, the Chaco Golden Knee Tarantula, was introduced, the giant spider prompted squeals from the children, who could look but not touch. Ditto for the dwarf Caiman, an alligator relative from Central and South America whose jaws are taped shut for all outings. With 80 razor-sharp teeth, Caimans are generally more aggressive than their north American cousins who grow much bigger. Jamie points out its two sets of eyelids, so the amphibious carnivore appears to be asleep while he is actually watching for prey.

Up next is the African Spur Thigh Tortoise, slow and steady with temperature control built into its spurred feet. As a finale, 6th Day features its largest Burmese Python, named Sonnie, a male who is almost 11 feet long.

Big, little, scary or sweet, Jamie explains, God’s creatures are gifts and responsibilities and serve as testimony that God loves us all.

 

A growing family

Back at home, Jamie sits cuddling Pikachu, a Kinkajou that looks like a ferret-monkey mix. Pikachu is named for a Pokemon character. “We call him Pika because saying Pikachu the Kinkajou is a mouthful.”

Pika travels with 6th Day Creatures often. “He likes to snuggle and go hide in our shirts. A shy nocturnal animal like its cousin, the raccoon, the Kinkajou curls up inside his shirt as Jamie recites a list of animals that now live with the family in St. Clair County.

In addition to the family’s six dogs, the “regular” pets, the Hackers, and 6th Day currently have about 60 pets, including 25 snakes, all non-venomous, mostly colorful corn snakes and three Burmese Pythons, who often steal the show.

6th Day Creatures is a licensed and insured educational company. The business has an exotic animal exhibitor license with the USDA, which conducts annual inspections of the pets’ quarters in the Hacker’s home and yard in Springville.

Fees for the shows go to help feed and take care of the pets. The cost of a party or show varies according to how many miles the eight to 10 creatures need to be transported from the Hacker’s home in the 35146 zip code. The starting amount is $225, for up to 25 miles of travel, for an animal adventure of about an hour.

To count them down, 6th Day Creatures include the animals that starred in the show at Clearbranch plus: two pot belly pigs, two ferrets, several guinea pigs, two skinny pigs, more than 20 additional snakes, two more tortoises and several rabbits, including Rebunzal, the long-eared, 30-pound rabbit with 16-inch ears. They also have families of chinchilla which do not travel to shows because they cannot tolerate being hot or wet.

Seven years into 6th Day Creatures, with a daughter in college and son in high school, Jamie says they are working through a transition period with his key animal adventure helpers not available nearly as often as before. Feeding and caring for scores of unconventional pets is time consuming, especially after days of he and Leigh working 12-hour shifts as nurses.

But, the shows, the children and the chance to share his passion for animals while sharing beliefs in God’s love and wisdom prove to be worth the work.

Learn more about 6th Day Creatures – including how to book an animal adventure show – at www.6thdaycreatures.com.