T.K. Thorne

Springville author pulls back curtain on untold stories of Civil Rights Movement

Story by Scottie Vickery
Photos by Graham Hadley
Submitted photos

Author T.K. Thorne was just a baby when her mother and grandmother attended secret meetings of White residents who were willing to drive Blacks to work during the bus boycott in Montgomery. It was a bold move – and a dangerous one – during a time when the Ku Klux Klan ruled with threats and violence.

“After one meeting, a cross was burned in my grandparents’ yard,” Thorne said. “My grandfather, who was a very gentle man, borrowed a shotgun and sat up all night. It was not until years later that I learned of my grandmother and mother’s courageous stance for civil rights.”

Although her family’s story didn’t make the pages of her newly released book, Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Days

(NewSouth Books), Thorne shares many little-known or untold stories of White citizens who quietly or boldly influenced social change.

“Much of the truth of Birmingham in the civil rights era is ugly, plain and simple. This book is not an attempt to revise that truth,” Thorne wrote in the book’s introduction. “The darkness, however, is always what allows the light. And in Birmingham’s darkness, individual lights grew – some from shades of gray that bloomed into sparks, some lanterns of courage.”

Thorne, who lives with her husband, Roger, on 40 acres on Straight Mountain just above Springville, said she was first approached via email by four Birmingham men – Bill Thomason, Karl Friedman, Doug Carpenter and former Birmingham News reporter and photographer Tom Lankford – about writing the book. They wanted to tell the stories “of those who worked for peace and racial progress under extraordinary circumstances in extraordinary times,” she wrote in the book’s preface.

That led to eight years of intense research, during which she interviewed 50 people, read numerous books, combed the archives of several newspapers and watched many video interviews in the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum’s collection. The process seemed overwhelming at times, and the book includes 682 footnotes, which, along with the bibliography, take up 32 pages.

“The research and writing were interwoven,” she said. “One would make me have to do the other. The biggest challenge was the time frame. I had all these vignettes, but I felt it was my responsibility to use them in a chronological way that made sense.”

During the writing process, Thorne said she realized just how much we can learn from history. “There were some power players who made a huge difference, and there were other players, like women who were not in powerful business positions, who found ways to make an impact,” she said. “The lesson to me is that it doesn’t matter who you are, you can make a real difference.”

Finding her voice

The path to author was a winding one for Thorne, who grew up as Teresa Katz in Montgomery. Her father, Warren Katz, taught her to question everything, and her mother, Jane Katz, was the state chairperson for the League of Women Voters. Her mother exemplified, among other things, the principle that “one’s primary responsibility in life is to make the world a better place,” according to Thorne.

T.K. Thorne, far left, at 4 years old playing in a swimming pool made out of an old tire and tarp in 1958 at the home of Civil Rights leaders Bob and Jean Graetz. Bob Graetz was a White minister of a Black congregation and joked that this was “the first integrated swimming pool in Montgomery,” Thorne said.

After abandoning her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut in order to meet aliens, Thorne briefly considered a career as a writer after her grandmother, Dorothy Merz Lobman, helped her fall in love with books and stories. “By the time I was 15, I knew that was where my heart was, but I also knew making a living at that was a longshot,” she said.

Thorne, 67, eventually earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Alabama, and after landing a job as a grant writer for the Birmingham Police Department in 1996, she was tasked with applying for funding for a computer-aided dispatch program. In order to better understand the need, she rode along with police officers. The grant was awarded, the department got its first computer, and Thorne applied for the police academy.

“I enjoyed not knowing what was going to happen next,” she said. “I just wanted to try it. I had no idea it would turn into a career.” She served more than 20 years with the department, working as a patrol officer and detective and climbing the ranks before retiring as captain of the North Precinct and becoming executive director of Birmingham’s City Action Partnership, a position she held for 17 years.

Through it all, she never stopped writing. Her first three books were published while she was still juggling the demands of a full-time career, which she left in 2016. She’s published two award-winning historical novels, Noah’s Wife and Angels at the Gate, and the first two books in a trilogy (House of Rose and House of Stone) are set in Birmingham and feature heroine Rose Brighton, a police detective who discovers she is a witch.

Her first nonfiction endeavor, Last Chance for Justice, focuses on the investigation of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963. Thorne said she thought that book was the reason she was approached by the four men – three of whom died before the book was published – about writing Behind the Magic Curtain.

“I asked them if they were making the mistake to think that I was a civil rights expert because I wrote that book, because that wasn’t true,” she said. Instead, Bill Thomason told her it was her Noah’s Wife that convinced him she was author for the job. “He said, ‘Anybody who could write about a woman who has been dead for thousands of years and make me believe that’s how it happened can write this book,’” Thorne said with a laugh.

Pulling back the curtain

She wasn’t convinced she’d take on the project until she read some of the notes Lankford had written during his time covering the Civil Rights Movement. Lankford, who passed away in late 2020, was a controversial journalist who was embedded with law enforcement and worked with local police and FBI agents in secret wiretapping and intelligence operations.

In addition to his detailed notes and journals, he had an amazing memory, Thorne said, adding that the first notes he shared made the decision to write the book much easier. “I was hooked,” she said. “I was just so intrigued, and I realized this man was on the in-inside. That began the journey of researching this book.”

As captivated as she was, Thorne was also a little wary. “That I relied extensively on (Lankford’s) memories and notes does not mean that I endorse all his methods or actions,” she wrote in the book’s preface. Despite the controversy surrounding his methods, Thorne said Lankford’s unique perspective gave him the ability to document the events of the time in a way no one else could.

“I think the closest thing I could say about what motivated him is that he was driven by wanting to tell the truth,” Thorne said. “He admitted to me that he crossed the line as a journalist; he was too close to his subject matter. But he said, ‘I wouldn’t take a bit of it back.’”

While researching the book, Thorne relied on the skills she learned in the police department. “The job of a detective is to discover what the truth is and trying to tell it without bias,” she said. Many of the truths she discovered involved White leaders of the Jewish, Christian, business and education communities; others were just White citizens who followed their hearts. Regardless of their standing in the community, they all “quietly and moderately or openly and boldly” worked for change.

The following vignettes are among those she shared:

Karl Friedman, an attorney and one of the men who approached her about writing the book, “had many deep friendships across the color line,” Thorne said. One of those friends was J. Mason Davis, a young Black civil rights attorney. Friedman and attorney Jack Held often ate lunch out of the courthouse’s vending machine with Davis, who wasn’t allowed in a downtown restaurant. Later, all three became partners at Sirote & Permutt, of which Friedman was a founding partner. Friedman hosted many meetings of Black leaders at his home, and a bullet was shot through the front window as a result.

Eileen Walbert knocked on doors in the Black Rosedale community of Homewood to encourage the residents to help integrate the White schools. She picked the children up and took them to school and often brought them home with her so they could swim in her backyard pool. Having a cross burned in her yard and receiving threatening calls from KKK members did not deter her. “I was learning how to be brave,” she said in a 2014 interview with the Homewood Star. “A bully, if you let them know you’re not scared, they’ll back off.”

Paul Couch, a detective with the Mountain Brook Police Department, was moved to action on his day off when he heard about the murder of 13-year-old Virgil Ware, who was killed the afternoon of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four young girls. Virgil was riding on the handlebars of his brother’s bicycle when two 16-year-old White boys on a red motorcycle shot him with a .22 pistol. Couch followed a hunch and drove around the Fultondale area to look for the shooters, Thorne said. After he copied down the motorcycle’s tag number, the case was solved in two days. The shooters received probation.

White people in a green car came to the aid of James Ware after his brother was shot. After seeing James on the road with Virgil’s body, they asked the teenager if there was anything they could do to help. James asked them to go find his mother and bring her to the scene, which they did. More than three decades later, James still remembered the act and said, “I would like to thank the White people in the green car – whoever they are, for helping me and my family that night.”

A quiet home

Thorne wrote the book from her mountaintop home, a beautiful place that reminds her of her childhood visits to Virginia and Clifford Durr’s farm at “Pea Level” on Corn Creek in Wetumpka. The Durrs were longtime family friends, and she has many special memories of the cabin there, including the time she sat on the front porch with Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat on the bus sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. Clifford Durr, an attorney, was one of the men who bailed Parks out of jail and later served as her counsel.

For the most part, though, Thorne remembers the fun she had playing in the creek and climbing on the nearby boulders. “That was my favorite place in the world,” she said. That’s why, when a real estate agent showed them the land and the nearby Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River, Thorne was sold. “We’re going to live here,” she told her husband.

It proved to be the perfect spot to quarantine, finish the book and reflect on the lessons she’s learned and the impact she hopes it will make.

“The main thing I learned is it’s complicated,” she said. “We are wired as human beings to want the simple story. We want heroes and bad guys. That simplified version of history is an illusion, though, and that is true of all history. We need to learn from that because if we can understand our history, we can better determine our present and our future.”

Dr. Penny Njoroge

Ms. Senior St. Clair is personification of empowerment

Story by Scottie Vickery
Photos by Graham Hadley
Submitted Photos

Growing up in Kenya, Dr. Penny Njoroge wanted nothing more than to get an education. The oldest of 10 children, she longed to learn and had big dreams, but they seemed to be out of reach.

“In my village, girls were raised to get married, raise families and serve the extended families in the communities – never to go to school,” she said. “I pestered my father until he got tired and registered me in school at age 11. As a result, he was kicked out of his family and clan, disinherited and forced to take us from our ancestral home. We ended up in the poorest slums of Nairobi.”

In the decades that followed, Dr. Penny, as she’s known to most people, survived domestic violence, depression and other hardships before finally starting college in the United States when she was 56. The reigning Mrs. Senior St. Clair County, she’s a psychologist, counselor, mental health advocate, award-winning motivational speaker and life coach.

“My desire is to empower, equip and encourage people not to quit,” said Dr. Penny, now 74. “I want to inspire people to dream big and pursue their life goals, regardless of how old or young or how rich or poor they may be.”

The path from Kenya to Trussville, where Dr. Penny lives with her son and his family, was filled with challenges and heartache, but her experiences have equipped her to be a compassionate advocate. “I can understand,” she said. “I’ve been there. Things may be bad today, but they can be better tomorrow.”

Life in Kenya

Dr. Penny’s desire to go to school cost her family, and life was hard. There was no sanitation in the slums they called home, and they constantly struggled, “selling scavenged bones and metal pieces for food, clothing and tuition.” She had promised her father he would never regret sending her to school, so she worked hard, became a top performing student and earned a spot in her country’s top girls’ high school.

Flagging a group to climb Mt. Kenya, the highest in the country.

“Being the first of 10 children, my parents couldn’t afford to send me to college, so I started educating my siblings and working in the corporate world,” she said. She married at 22 and had four children – three boys and a girl. She loves her children dearly – “they are my backbone,” she said – but she endured a lot in her marriage.“ I survived 30 years of serious domestic abuse and violence, 25 years of depression and two attempted suicides until I ran for my life,” she said.

Her escape came by way of Servants in Faith and Technology (SIFAT), a Christian nonprofit founded by Ken and Sarah Corson, an Alabama couple who were missionaries in Bolivia. They started SIFAT in Lineville in 1979 and have trained church and community leaders from more than 80 countries to help meet basic needs in developing countries.

Dr. Penny’s church sponsored her 6-month community development training at SIFAT, and while she was in Alabama, she met some fellow Kenyans, including one who worked at Carraway Hospital. She was inspired to become a hospital chaplain, and after getting a visa, she moved to Alabama permanently in 2000 and began training at Carraway.

New Beginnings

Dr. Penny enrolled in college at 56 and earned a bachelor’s degree through distance learning from Carolina University and a master’s degree in Christian Counseling Psychology from Carolina University of Theology. She also earned her doctorate in Clinical Psychiatric Counseling Psychology from the Cornerstone University of Louisiana and worked as a board-certified trauma, hospital and psychiatric chaplain at St. Vincent’s East Hospital for 16 years before retiring as lead psychologist. 

“The U.S. has been a God-given home for me; it gave me a second chance in life,” said Dr. Penny, who became a citizen in 2017. “I have loved Alabama. To me, it is a place of healing and advancement.”

Dr. Penny with her Most Motivating Woman Award

Not one to sit still, Dr. Penny opened Angel Counseling Services. “My greatest passion is to remove the shame and stigma of mental illness,” the trained telehealth provider said. “Given a chance, anybody can survive and make a difference. People have a great sense of endurance if they have just a bit of a chance. I want to be able to offer compassion, to give a listening ear to someone, to give hope to someone.”

Some of Dr. Penny’s co-workers from St. Vincent’s encouraged her to enter the Ms. Senior St. Clair County pageant, and after winning that she was first runner-up in the Ms. Senior Alabama event. She also won Ms. Congeniality and People’s Choice honors.

“They said they were not looking only for beautiful faces, but also a beautiful story,” she said. “I wanted to share my inspirational story of great struggles, shame, rejection and deprivation accompanied by a spirit that refused to quit on my dreams.”

Dr. Penny said her children and grandchildren are her biggest supporters and sources of strength. “I would not be anywhere without that team,” she said. “We must intentionally cling to our families so we can face storms. I’ve gone through many storms, but it has been worth it because I am able to stand with people today and give them hope.”

Vegetables for Sale

Former Pell City Schools Superintendent Michael Barber pens uplifting book

Story by Scottie Vickery
Submitted photos

Michael Barber was 10 years old the day he took his daddy’s prized Pontiac Catalina for a joyride. After returning it safely to its covered parking spot, he thought he’d gotten away with his grave sin. But a twist of fate and a dog named Whiskers caused things to take a terrible turn. Let’s just say a dog mistakenly left overnight in a car is capable of causing a whole lot of damage. 

That’s not the only lesson young Michael learned that day. He realized his father loved him far more than his most prized possession. “My father never stood behind a pulpit and preached a sermon, but he taught me the most important spiritual lesson I carry in my heart to this day,” Barber recalled. “Total forgiveness is just that, it is total.”

A former teacher and retired superintendent of Pell City Schools, Barber has spent his adult life educating children, but the “eternal lessons” of his childhood were learned outside of a classroom. They often took place on front porches and came in the form of joyrides, dogs, shotguns and a cheap necklace.

Barber shares seven stories from his childhood – including the story of his father’s Catalina – in his new book, Vegetables for Sale: A Child’s Discovery of Redemption in the American South, published in November. “It’s a simple book for a complicated time,” Barber said. “These are stories of redemption, unconditional love, forgiveness and mercy.”

The title comes from a sign 5-year-old Michael helped his grandmother make, a testament of his grandmother’s wisdom. She was tired of him asking for candy money, so she set up a vegetable stand on the side of the highway and put young Michael in charge. “My grandfather had a third-grade education, and my grandmother only finished sixth grade, but they knew we needed to know the value of certain things, and one was the value of money,” he said.

“I didn’t make much money, but the lesson I learned was worth millions,” he wrote in the book’s introduction. “It is better to earn than to be given, with the exception of God’s love.” As a reminder, Barber framed the sign he made with his grandmother (“She wrote the letters and I painted it”) and hung it alongside his diplomas in every office he has ever had.

A preacher, public speaker, and bluegrass musician, Barber didn’t set out to write a great work of literature or theology. He intended the book to be a ministry tool, one he could leave behind when he spoke at prisons, jails, nursing homes or revivals. “These are stories I’ve used from the pulpit,” said Barber, the pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church. “I knew some had the ability to move people because I’d seen how God had used them during sermons.”

The book is a small one, measuring 5 inches by 7 inches with fewer than 100 pages, and that was Barber’s intention. “It’s designed to be a book you could put in a purse, in a glove box, in a tacklebox,” he said, adding that his hope was to make the book more inviting by writing something that could be read in one sitting. “It’s written by a preacher, but it’s not preaching. Whatever God wants to do with it, it’s out there. He’ll put it in the right hands.”

A special place

Barber, 55, grew up in Pell City with his brother and sister in a time when life was simpler. “The American South has changed in the past half century of my life, much for the good, but I admit sometimes I find myself missing a place I never left,” he wrote.

His days were filled with bike rides, fishing, baseball, watermelon, peach cobbler and lessons he didn’t realize he was learning. “I’ve always had people invest in the right things in my life – my parents, my grandparents, church folks,” Barber said. “They made sure we learned the right things. We were held accountable if we did something wrong, and they didn’t always come to our aid bailing us out.”

They also served as wonderful role models. His father, who was the first in his family to go to college, was a certified registered nurse anesthetist and owned an anesthesia corporation. “I think he put everyone in the county to sleep at some time,” Barber said. His mother was a registered nurse, and Barber thought he would follow in his parents’ footsteps and enter the medical field. His plans changed, though, when he got a feeling he just couldn’t shake. “The Lord kept leading me to education,” Barber said.

Mother Pearl, Cobbler Cook Extraordinaire

His Sunday school teacher, Andrew Wright, was the principal of Iola Roberts Elementary School at the time, and his pastors were teachers, as well. “To have three men in your life who were elementary school teachers and in ministry showed me how God could use you in education,” Barber said. “God has always put the right people around me.”

Although he retired from the school system in 2019, Barber performs contract work for the Alabama Association of School Boards. “I’ve had a great experience in public education,” he said. “To me, education is ministry,” he said.

Barber was an assistant principal in 1995 when God called him to preach, as well. He had a guitar and his Bible, and he traveled around ministering at nursing homes and “wherever God placed me.” He landed at Mt. Zion as a deacon and has been preaching for about 25 years.

One ministry he particularly enjoys is Cake Walk, the bluegrass band he helped form that earned its name from the early days of playing at cake walks and fall festivals. “Mt. Zion is a musically blessed haven,” he said. “Anyone you pick out of a pew can pick something, play something or sing something.”

Barber, who plays mandolin, guitar, banjo and bass, said the size of the group fluctuates and the members range from 8-year-olds to 90-year-olds. “We’re not the best musicians in the world, but for some reason when you put us all together, it sounds pretty good,” he said. “It’s a joyful noise, I know that.”

The group plays live every Sunday morning on WFHK 94.1 The River, and before the coronavirus pandemic, the members regularly shared their music at nursing homes and other places. “I’ve seen people who were really sick wiggle a toe under the cover when they hear the banjo,” Barber said. “It’s a wonderful ministry, and members of the band have said they had no idea that service could be so much fun. For me, that’s when you really hit the mark.”

A tool for ministry

Barber’s outreach ministry was the impetus for Vegetables for Sale, and the idea had been in the back of his mind for a while. “I had a bunch of stories I wrote years ago, and I’d always planned on doing something with them, but I didn’t know what that would look like,” he said. Once the pandemic hit last March, Barber finally had time, so “I went to the attic and started gathering stories I’d written in old spiral notebooks.”

Although he’d planned to leave them behind at speaking engagements, COVID-19 changed those plans, so Barber started to give them away. “My idea of promoting it is leaving a copy on the table at Starbucks,” he said with a laugh.

After his wife, Legay, posted about the book on social media, it started taking off. “We accidentally, I guess, launched it,” Barber said. “The potential to reach people through the internet is mind boggling.” The book, which features a childhood photo of his father on the cover, is available through Amazon, Walmart.com, Barnes & Noble and Kindle. It will soon be available on Audible, an audiobook book service from Amazon.

Barber said he read the book for the Audible recording because the subject was so close to his heart. “This is a book about my mom, my daddy, my sister and brother and my grandparents,” he said. “I sure didn’t want someone reading it and having it be just a book to them. Besides, I hate when people try to fake a Southern accent.”

Although he never expected to sell a single copy, Barber said he’s heard from people from all over the country who have shared how the book has touched them. A hospice nurse shared how a family read it together during the last hours of their mother’s life, and it gave them a chance to laugh and cry together. Another woman wrote to say the book helped her after receiving a cancer diagnosis.

“If God doesn’t use it for anything other than that, it was worth writing it and putting it out there,” Barber said. “I’m definitely not a writer, and I’ll never be a best-selling author, but this was a labor of love. Whatever voice we have, whether it’s a guitar or an ink pen, as long as we’re giving God the glory, He’ll use it.”

Derrick Mostella

Becoming Ashville’s
mayor was a lifelong destiny

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photo by Meghan Frondorf

Derrick Mostella was destined to be mayor of Ashville. The first time he walked into the old B&R Grocery on Sixth Street as a kid, proprietor Bill Murray looked down at him and declared, “You’re gonna be mayor one day, kid.”

“My mom told that story so much with me growing up, at some point, I just decided it was already written, that it was something I had to do,” Mostella says. “She told the story like I didn’t have a choice.”

The path to the mayor’s office wasn’t a straight one, nor was it lined with roses and violins. Rather, it was a circuitous route fraught with identity issues because of his biracial background. But dealing with those issues shaped Mostella’s character and, ultimately, his vision for the City of Ashville. It’s a vision that is changing the face of the downtown area and the way city government operates. Mostella hopes it’s changing the way Ashvillians feel about their town, too.

“My mom and I do a Thanksgiving dinner every year that’s free to the public,” Mostella says. “We did it take-out style in 2020, but it really kind of embodies what we want for Ashville. We want it to be a kind of mix of Mayberry and Cheers, where everybody knows your name.”

Derrick Mostella and his mother, Belinda Mostella

When Mostella was elected mayor for his first term in 2016, he was 37, making him one of the city’s youngest mayors and its first biracial one at the same time. Local newspaper headlines portrayed him as the city’s first Black mayor, and that made Mostella cringe. He works hard at avoiding labels, believing they are meant to separate and divide. Besides, calling him “Black” doesn’t tell his whole story.

“I do understand the pride our Black citizens feel about my election, and I appreciate the fact that they feel they have a voice now where they may have not in the past,” Mostella says.

It’s no secret that Mostella has a Black mother and a white father. His mother, Belinda Mostella, was a dispatcher at the city jail when she met his father, James Murray, who was an Ashville police officer. Although he has never had an in-depth relationship with his father’s family, Mostella has always known where he came from and is proud of that.

“I’m a child of Ashville,” he says. “Everybody knows who my folks are. I would hope that race doesn’t do a whole lot to dictate how somebody feels about me. I got elected not by Black people, not by white people, but by the people of Ashville, and I like to thinkthey elected me because I share their values, and they trust me, and none of that has anything to do with race at the end of the day.”

Race played a big role in Mostella’s childhood, though. He was raised in a Black household by his mom and his great-grandparents, Walter and Lila Mostella, but his light skin and curly blonde hair led casual acquaintances to think he was white. That made for some testy situations, some of them funny, some of them heart-breaking, all of them shaping his view of the world.

“My first experience in elementary school, and I can remember it like it was yesterday, was having a white kid ask me, ‘Why you gittin’ on the bus with all those N****s?” Mostella recalls. “Same thing on the playground. I’m out there with my brother, my cousins, and some kid comes up and says, ‘What you doin’ over there with them, why ain’t you over here?’ A shy kid, often he just ran off and cried. “There were many, many times I would cry myself to sleep,” he says.

His great-grandparents tried to shield him from the slings and arrows of racial tensions as much as they could. “I can remember our church going to Six Flags and my great-grandmother wouldn’t let me go because she was convinced something bad would happen to me,” he says, choking back tears at the painful memory. “She said, ‘Being this little white kid over there with all those Black folks (from his church), everybody having fun, not paying attention, they’re not going to watch you, and something will happen, you just can’t go, baby.’ As much as that hurt, I knew she did it because she loved me, and she was really, really trying to protect me.”

He sees wry humor, however, in a repeating high school experience. His all-time favorite teacher was Gina Wilson, who now works for the St. Clair County Board of Education. Every time a standardized test came around, she would allow Mostella to stand up in class and flip a coin to decide his race for that day. “You know those standardized tests where they ask for your race,” Mostella says, smiling at the memory. “I would say heads Black, tails white. So that was a running joke, what color are you going to be today, dear?”

His nickname, Flip, had nothing to do with that coin toss, however. An uncle who was a fan of comedian Flip Wilson gifted him with that moniker and it stuck. “Everybody knows me as ‘Flip,’” he says.

Mostella says his early years were tough because he caught whacks from both ends of the racial stick. “I’ve probably seen more racism than the average 100 percent Black person. There was a period in my life where I wasn’t white enough for white folks and not Black enough for Black folks, and that was rough,” he says, the tears flowing freely now. “It was brutal. My great-grandmother was my rock. She was the one I would go and cry on.”

When Mostella was in middle school, his mom moved to Memphis. He persuaded her to let him stay in Ashville with his great-grandparents. She convinced him to join her when he was 15, and it was his first time to leave the state of Alabama. That move lasted six weeks. During the middle of those six weeks, he returned to Ashville for a football game and ran into Amanda Minton. After admitting they had crushes on each other, they hung out, and he decided then and there to move home.

Mostella was always near the top of his class at Ashville High School and wanted to go to college. His grandparents couldn’t read or write, so they couldn’t sign applications for college and financial aid. Amanda, who is now his wife, did all of that for him. “She forced me to do it, letting me know it needed to be done and holding me accountable to get it done,” he says, tearing up again. “She’s fantastic, she really is, and I probably don’t tell her that enough.”

Mostella and Minton, who is white, graduated from AHS in 1997. Both went to UAB for a year, then transferred to Gadsden State Community College to finish their prerequisites. Around 1999 or 2000, both moved to Memphis, where he worked and lived with his mom while Minton lived in the dorm and got her occupational therapist degree at UT-Memphis. They stayed in Memphis for a year or two after she graduated, then returned home to Ashville in 2004 and got married. “We knew that whatever we wanted to accomplish, we wanted it to be here,” he says.

He worked for his father-in-law, Terry Minton, at Teague’s Hardware for a couple of years while contemplating his next move. He enjoyed most of his time there, but it’s also where he had some of the same type of painful experiences he had growing up. He was often the guy standing in a corner that no one knows is part Black.

“I couldn’t believe some of the hatred that people would spew and really more for laughs,” he says. “What was hurtfulmore than anything is that it was for chuckles and giggles and little one-off comments and things like that, and that really was just like a thousand cuts.”

He considered buying the store from Minton but decided that was not what he wanted to do with his life. So, he enrolled at Jacksonville State University, finishing in 2013 with an accounting degree.He worked in the accounts payable office at Steris Instrument Management Services in Birmingham for a few years, then joined Boatner & Pugh, an accounting firm in Gadsden. “Being mayor here by nature is a full-time job with part-time pay, and that’s why I’m very selective about the places I work,” he says.

Early political career

Mostella’s first foray into politics was in 2012, when he was elected to the Ashville City Council. His motivation to run for office came from some of his experiences while working at Teague Hardware, where he heard people complain about city government without offering any solutions. “Hearing how much they cared about the city and all the things they wanted for it just motivated me to get involved and to try to see some of these things through,” he says.

His frustration with the way city government was being run prompted him to run for mayor in 2016. “The one thing that I learned in being on the Council is that Ashville never had a cash-flow problem, we had a cash management problem,” he says. “We were run inefficiently. We had an antiquated way of doing everything.”

He didn’t have a picture in his head of the way he wanted Ashville to be or to look like, he just wanted people to get more involved, to take ownership of their town, and to realize its potential. “I wanted to empower people and let them know that the City of Ashville should be a reflection of what the people who live here want it to be, not (a reflection of) one person who sits at City Hall, not the mayor or the City Council. What we should be striving to do should be a reflection of what the people of Ashville want to see.”

One of Mostella’s earliest projects during his first term was to revamp the city’s employee handbook. Working closely with the Council and City Clerk Chrystal St. John, he re-wrote the old handbook that was simply a photocopy of one belonging to another city that had nothing in common with Ashville. “We had no pay scales, no job descriptions, nothing like that, so we had to start from scratch on a lot of stuff,” he says. “We revisited literally every policy and procedure, every city ordinance, that’s on the books.” The update resulted in pay raises for many employees.

Mostella talks with city employees after a Council meeting

His second term got off to a bumpy start, however, when a pair of candidates who fell short in the general election sued their opponents over alleged voter fraud. Former Mayor Robert McKay sued Mostella, while McKay’s nephew, Randy McKay, sued Councilwoman Sue Price. Mostella and Price breathed a sigh of relief when the pair dropped their lawsuit after three days of hearings at the St. Clair County Courthouse.

With a lot of input from local citizens, the same team that revamped the employee handbook is reworking an old, 20-year Comprehensive Plan to cover the next 20 years and developing a five-year strategic plan. Those plans include a new library, revamping downtown’s image and updating the city’s parks systems.

The city purchased the Alabama Power Building on U.S. 231 Southwith the intention of moving the library there. They shifted gears when they discovered that the medical building next door, which the city already owned and had been vacated by Dr. George Harris when he consolidated his offices in Springville, was more suitable. Bids for its renovation are still out. The process will be helped by a $100,000 donation from David O. and R.L. Louisa McCain, a couple with deep roots in Ashville. “David is from Ashville, and his wife was heavily involved in the Shelby County Library System,” Mostella says. “They recently moved back to the area, read the original newspaper article about our library plans and wanted to help.” The former Alabama Power Building was leased to the state’s Pardons and Parole Board for five years, and the lease money is paying for the building.

Mostella caused a minor uproar when the city tore down the old rock building at the corner of U.S. 231 and Sixth Street. It was necessary, he says, to accomplish the facelift he wants to see around the Courthouse Square. That facelift includes updating the sidewalks and increasing the turn radius at the traffic light to accommodate the large semis that come through. To do that, overhead utilities will have to be moved a block.

The city will build a pocket park where the rock building stood, incorporating some of the rocks saved from the building as well as the historic mounting block that stood in front of it. Plans also include updating signage, some of which is almost unreadable in places, and repairing sidewalks, which are buckled and have grass growing in the cracks in many places.

Retail shops have come and gone around the Courthouse Square for several years, and part of the problem is absentee ownership of the buildings there, according to Mostella. A lack of parking and publicity have contributed to the retention problem, too.

The city purchased an old gas station behind the former Ashville Drugs building and tore it down to provide more parking and has contacted the state highway department about signage near the Ashville I-59 exit. Meanwhile, several of those buildings were purchased by local people recently, and the city hopes to make announcements soon regarding new shops and businesses moving in.

“One of the problems we fought downtown was thatthe property owners weren’t very heavily invested, and I think the city has to take a large part of that responsibility because we haven’t progressed and created an environment down there that’s conducive to a business surviving,” Mostella says. “No parking, not a whole lot of aesthetics there. The flow of it doesn’t work from one side of the street to the other, there are no crosswalks painted, you’re literally dodging 18-wheelers at times, so we never put in the work to really build it up.”

 Mostella believes the city’s futurelies in residential growth, and that people will see Ashville as an alternative to what he calls “big-city living” in Springville. The city’s approach under his administration will be to keep that small-city feel without the small-town mentality. “We wanted to play up the small-town feel but modernize our approach to it and get somemodern amenities for our citizens who may never have experienced something like that, and for the other generations that are coming along, where green space and pocket parks is not a foreign language,” he says.

Eventually, he plans to upgrade the city’s parks system, which includes the City Splash Pad Park and D.O Langston Park (in front of City Hall), maybe even hire a parks and recreation director. That upgrade will include more green space, more walking trails and replacing outdated equipment at the splash pad.

“Half of the equipment at that park was there when I was a kid,” he says. “We haven’t replaced it because I think it’s an inefficient approach to just go in and say, ‘Hey this piece of equipment is old, let’s put another one in its spot,’ when we need to be looking at the park as a whole.”

He says the city has the capital and the potential to do so much more now than it did four years ago due to better money management.

“My saying has always been that I just want Ashville to be the best version of itself that it can be,” Mostella says. “I’m not here to dictate what that is, I’m here to make sure that we do so efficiently and that we do so together.”

Polly Warren

A Greek bearing delicious gifts, a star-studded past

Story by Scottie Vickery
Submitted photos

When it comes to cooking, Polly Warren has trained with the best. As a young girl growing up in Greece, she learned the intricacies of meals and pastries from her mother and grandmother. After marrying an American and moving to Georgia as a young bride, she mastered Southern dishes in her mother-in-law’s kitchen.

The result is something she calls American Greek cooking – a delicious blend of both countries born from two families full of tradition and love. “I love the cooking,” she said, her Greek accent still heavy. “I love to learn and do new things. If I see something I like, I make it, add to it, and make the recipe my own.”

As a result, she’s bridged the divide between two cultures by introducing her favorite Greek dishes to her American family and friends and taking some Southern favorites home to her family. “I made them chili,” she said, laughing at the memory of the first American dish she shared with her loved ones in Greece. “They loved it. They thought it was great.”

A popular caterer in St. Clair County, Polly works out of the kitchen of the Pell City KFC, which her family has owned for nearly five decades. In addition to weekly meetings of the Rotary Club of Pell City, she caters everything from tailgate parties and luncheons to teas, rehearsal dinners and weddings. “Whatever anybody wants, I can cook it,” she said.

Growing up Greek

Born Polyltime Stavridis, the daughter of Dimitri and Kostantina, Polly grew up in Athens, Greece, with her brother, Costas, and her sister, Vaso. Whenever she thinks of her childhood, the first thing that comes to mind is the family kitchen. “I can still close my eyes and see myself there,” said Polly, now 72. “We’d always be in the kitchen. Always the girls served the men.” The main meal was served at 2 p.m., and after an afternoon siesta, the men would return to work. “Then they would come back, and we would eat leftovers,” she said.

Even as young girls, Polly and Vaso worked alongside their mother and grandmother, who lived with them. “We started when we were young, 5 or 6,” she said. ‘“They always gave us a little dough so we could participate. We would clean the potatoes, help with the dough, make cookies. When we were 10, 11 or 12, we would start participating completely.”

Family favorites included stifado, a Greek beef stew; spanakopita, a spinach pie; bifteki, which Polly describes as a stuffed hamburger; and keftedes, or Greek meatballs. “My mother used to make a big pan and leave it on the stove, and we’d eat it like popcorn,” she said.

There were plenty of pastries, too. Melomakarona, or honey cookies, were a staple, as well as tea cakes and baklava. Polly remembers her grandmother rolling out big sheets of homemade phyllo dough that was used for pastries and pie crusts. “Back in those days we made it homemade,” she said. “It took two people.”

Cooking for a crowd proved to be a challenge. “Back then, we had a little bitty oven, and our oven couldn’t bake all those cookies and big dishes like stuffed peppers and tomatoes,” Warren said. They took their dishes and pastries to a nearby baker, who cooked it for them in his industrial oven. “You tell him you want it ready for the family at 2, you give him $1 or $2, you pick your food up and carry it home,” she said.

A good student, Warren skipped the sixth-grade and graduated from high school at 16. “I started modeling and playing parts in movies,” she said, adding that her uncle was a producer. “Somebody didn’t show up one day, and he calls me and said, ‘Polly, do you want to do this?’ It was a commercial for shoes.”

After that, she had a “little part in a movie here, a little part there,” including a role as a party guest in the 1965 Italian movie, The Three Faces of a Woman. The movie starred Princess Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiari, the ex-wife of an Iranian shah, and Richard Harris, who later played Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Young Polly’s acting and modeling career didn’t last long because she soon met her future husband – Wayne Warren, an American serviceman from Georgia who was stationed in Greece. “I have good memories of it, and I did it until I met Mr. Warren,” she said. “Mr. Warren, he says ‘no.’ He didn’t like all those guys hanging around.”

The two met when Polly’s friend, who was engaged to an American buddy of Wayne’s, invited her to a party. She was hesitant to go because she didn’t know what to tell her family. “Back in those days, you didn’t go off to a party,” she said. “I did a little white lying and said we were going to the movies.”

The two really did go to the movies a few weeks later, after Wayne had gotten permission from Polly’s father. “A commercial came on the big screen, and there I am big as life,” she said with a laugh. “I’m hiding under the seat, and he couldn’t believe it. It was a commercial for glassware for a wedding.”

After the two married, Polly left her beloved Greece in 1967 to move to the U.S. with Wayne. After a quick stint in Texas, they headed to Columbus, Ga., Wayne’s hometown. He was still in the Air Force, so Polly lived with his mother, Irene Warren, in her beautiful old house with a big wraparound porch. “It was very, very nice,” Polly said. “My mother-in-law, she loved me to death.”

Southern influences

Although she missed her family, cooking with Irene helped cure some of the homesickness. “We cooked together in this big kitchen, and you felt like it was home,” Polly said. “I learned how to do squash casserole, make creamed corn and snap peas.”

The dishes were different from anything she’d had before, but Polly appreciated good food when she tasted it. “Mac and cheese, I never ate it in my life, but once I tasted it, it was good. I learned to eat pork chops, and I learned to eat ribs and turnip greens. I loved it.”

As a new bride, she learned to fix some of her husband’s favorites, which quickly became hers as well. “I love a good steak and baked potato,” she said. “And vegetables with cornbread. I could sit and eat the whole skillet.”

Another Southern staple, fried chicken, soon became a big part of her life. After Wayne retired from the Air Force in 1970, they moved to Selma, where he worked with a dear friend who owned KFC franchises. He decided he wanted to open one himself. Although “we only had baked chicken in Greece, we never fried it,” Polly was on board.

Wayne started scouting locations, and while driving through central Alabama one day, he happened to stop at a gas station in St. Clair County. “An 18-wheeler driver told him to look at Pell City,” she said. “That’s what he did, and that’s where we are.”

Polly Warren plating her famous baklava.

While raising their three sons – Michael, Jimmy and David – the Warrens spent lots of time at various ballfields and soon became fixtures in the community. Polly got her catering start while working in the concession stands, where she cooked plenty of hot dogs and hamburgers. That led to dishes for athletic banquets and other events, and things took off from there.

“Before you know it, they asked, ‘Do you mind doing a tea,’ so you do a tea. Then they said do, ‘Do you mind doing a wedding,’ so you do a wedding. I started with 100 people, and I have been up to 600. That’s how it all got started,” she said.

Although Wayne passed away 10 years ago, Polly still loves cooking for her family and especially enjoys time in the kitchen with her four grandchildren. She’s happy to share recipes, although at times that proves a little difficult. “I never measure anything,” she said. “I put a little bit of this, a little bit of that. So, when they ask, I have to figure it out and write it.”

Alabama has been home for most of Polly’s life, but she still gets homesick for Greece on occasion. Yearly trips to Athens help, and she loves to get back in the kitchen with her mother, now 90, and her sister while she’s there. She makes sure to bring back her favorite fresh spices. “It grows wild over there,” she said. “You see rosemary, you see basil. I bring all that back. The American spices, they do not taste the same.” 

Whether it’s the spices or the love she puts in each dish, Polly’s cooking is always a hit. “It’s good therapy,” she said. “I get in the kitchen and get busy cooking, and I never leave. I make a lot, and I give it away to neighbors and family and friends. I love it when people eat it and say how good it is. No one has complained yet.”

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.