Jim Nunnally

Beloved cheerleader for
Ashville, hometown hero

Story by Joe Whitten

Jim Nunnally

Submitted photos

A quote on Facebook, “Hometown is the place where I was born, where I was raised, where I keep all my yesterdays,” express well Jim Nunnally’s affection for Ashville, Ala., his own hometown.

And although he lived and worked in Texas for many years, he returned to Ashville for his “golden years” and left an enduring influence. Shortly before his death in 1968, Ashville High School dedicated its yearbook to him and established the Jim Nunnally Award to an outstanding athlete.

Born Aug. 5, 1888, James Renfroe Nunnally was the seventh of the 10 children born to Robert Thomas and Emma Mary Montgomery Nunnally. He grew up in Ashville, and when World War I engulfed the globe, he joined the Army and served in the 167 Infantry, the Rainbow Division, which earned renown in France and Germany.

Garrett Spears, a young distant cousin of Jim’s, researched Jim Nunnally for his fourth-grade history project, sponsored and judged by the St. Clair Historical Society. He noted that after the war ended, “the Alabama troops were honored by parades in Gadsden, Anniston, Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile before being discharged at Camp Shelby.”

Surviving both the war and the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, Jim lived and worked in Birmingham. According to research by Jerri Jenkins of Springville, Jim married Fannie Archer of Birmingham in 1921, but the 1930 U.S. Census shows them as married but living apart: Fannie living with her parents in Birmingham and Jim boarding with Albert and Pauline Teague back in Ashville. By the 1940 census, Jim was divorced and living in Houston, where in 1940 he married Effie Violette Torrance, a naturalized Canadian. Effie died Feb. 4, 1953 and was buried in Forest Cemetery in Gadsden.

Around the time of Effie’s death, Jim returned to his hometown of Ashville and lived in the Teague Hotel, owned by his cousin, Annie Teague McClendon. In July 1958, Jim married Louise Heath of Gadsden, and they continued to live in the hotel until it was sold.

The salient memories of those who knew Jim personally deal with his love of all things Ashville and especially the Ashville High School teams – baseball, football and basketball – that he faithfully supported. Dr. John McClendon, Temple University, recalled recently, “He was there for every sporting event, every practice. I remember when I was in the fifth-grade – I was manager, water boy with the team – and we played somewhere on Sand Mountain, and we got up there about an hour early to warm up, and there were he and Louise already in the stands. I remember the coaches saying, ‘You can’t play far enough away for Jim Nunnally not to be the first person there.’”

Jim’s enthusiasm for all Ashville Bulldogs sports earned him the reciprocating respect and love of the players and students. Dr. McClendon recalled, “Just a few days before Jim died in 1968, the senior class decided to dedicate the annual yearbook to him. The class visited with him shortly before he died to tell him about the dedication. He’d been in the hospital several days and was back home and he died at home.”

The yearbook dedication reads, “Sixteen years ago Jim came back to Ashville after many years away. During these years he endeared himself to all of us because we knew that he was our friend. He had a keen and enthusiastic interest in us and our many activities. He had the ability to be any age he chose to be. Toddlers met him on equal ground. He easily became a pre-teen when one of them sought his company, and he was one of us – the high school gang. He was ageless!

“His three loves were the Rainbow Division of World War I, the town of Ashville and ALL young people.

“To show that we returned his feeling for us, we the Seniors of 1968, lovingly dedicate the annual to his memory.”

Jim died May 7, 1968. To further show their love and respect to this man who had won their hearts, Ashville High School established The Jim Nunnally Memorial Award with these words in the annual: “In honor of a great man who was loved and respected by all at Ashville High School, a memorial award has been established. This athletic award will be presented each year at graduation to a senior girl or boy who has been selected as the ‘Best Athlete.’ We hope this award will promote athletic desire, sportsmanship, scholarship and determination.”

Harlan Sanders, 1969 Ashville High School yearbook photos

The first Jim Nunnally Memorial Award was presented at the 1969 graduation to Harlan Sanders, son of Mr. and Mrs. Austin Sanders. The 1969 yearbook recorded of Harlan that he lettered four years in football, playing center on offense and linebacker on defense and was voted to the All-County Team. Harlan became the first Ashville player to be voted to the Birmingham Post Herald’s All State Team. He lettered four years in basketball and was team captain of the 1968-1969 team which went to the state tournament and placed on the All-County and All-Area teams his senior year. Harlan also lettered two years in baseball. John McClendon recalled that “the football team Harlan was on was one of the best in Ashville history – 8-2 record.”

The Jim Nunnally Memorial Award is still presented at Ashville High School with one change. Today, awards are presented to both male and female outstanding sportspersons. Winners for school year 2018-2019 were Chris Sanders (Harlan Sander’s nephew) and Erika Williams, and the recently named 2019-2020 winners are J-Brelin Cook and Chloe Wills. Recipients of the award are chosen by Ashville High School coaches of all sports.

Life at the Teague Hotel

The Teague Hotel, where Jim took up residence around 1953 was located on the town square where today stands the Union State Bank. The hotel was owned and operated by Jim’s cousin, Annie Teague McClendon. Annie was a sister to Mattie Lou Teague Crow. The genealogical connection with Jim Nunnally and the Teagues came through Annie and Mattie Lou’s mother, Tullulah “Lula” Nunnelley who married John Teague in 1886. (Jim spelled his name differently from his relatives.)

Lula and John’s marriage ended in 1905 with John’s sudden death, leaving Lula with two daughters and four sons to raise and provide for. Mattie Lou in her memories wrote, “My mother purchased it when I was 3. … My father was a farmer and a schoolteacher. When he died in 1905, my mother sold our farm in Beaver Valley and came to Ashville.” She recorded that not only did her mother have children ranging in age from 19 to 3 years in age, but she also had “our grandmother Nunnelley, who was then 80.”

Caroline Ballard, great-great-great-granddaughter of Lula Teague, researched the Teague Hotel for a school project and found it was built as a stagecoach inn by a Mr. Cranford in the early 1800s. Later, Curtis Grubb Beason ran it as an inn and trading post. Caroline wrote, “Mrs. Lula Nunnelley Teague purchased the Inn and ran it until her death in 1942. Annie Teague McClendon, my great-great-grandmother, ran the hotel after her mother’s death.” Annie lived in the hotel until it was sold.

Lula Teague’s granddaughter, Nancy Willison, recently described the hotel as “… an L shape with two stories on the side parallel to the courthouse and there may have been two stories on the entire building. There was a porch at least on the long side. There were two large rooms on the side next to the courthouse.

“Miss Anna Smith, longtime fourth-grade teacher, lived in one of the rooms during the school year. The hall in front of these rooms led to a few steps down to a landing in front of the bathroom, and there was a door to the dining room from this landing. The table was usually full for one family-style meal, and, when necessary, a second seating was served. My mother, dad and I ate lunch there often during the week. My grandmother did most of the cooking with help. She made wonderful tea cakes that I have worked for years, unsuccessfully, to duplicate. She pulled those cookie sheets out of that woodburning stove using her apron or bare hands.”

Nancy married in 1969 and remembered Jim’s wife as a “delightful lady who enjoyed attending my bridal showers.” However, Jim had moved back about the time Nancy left for college. So, growing up she saw Jim infrequently and remembered him as “… a mysterious person. He would randomly appear in Ashville, stay for some period of time and then disappear. He was my grandmother’s nephew. I remember when he would come to Ashville that he would spend time in my dad’s store, Teague Mercantile Co., visiting with everyone who came in.”

Annie Teague McClendon, who married Perkins McClendon, wrote of her mother’s buying the hotel. “After she had made a small down payment on the place, we had no money, so we all worked helping as best as we could. The boys helped, not only with the chores, but at any job they could find in order to buy their clothes and shoes and to help with the expenses. I stopped school to help with the housework. Our baby sister, Mattie Lou, did her part, too.” Of her mother she wrote that she “arose long before daylight and worked long after dark.”

Mattie Lou Teague Crow remembered that the boarders at her mother’s establishment were “… school teachers, a music teacher, a judge, superintendent of education, clerks, young men who were high school students, a sprinkling of laborers – road builders and sawmillers – and a young doctor and his wife.” She spoke of the meals served and that when the dinner bell rang, there was rarely an empty chair at “our banquet-size dining table.

Exciting times at the hotel for Annie were court weeks. She remembered the “… judges, lawyers and farmers at the same table and had such a good time. I remember the old jury room where thirteen men stayed for many days and nights and had at our table three square meals a day.”

Poignant moments

Annie’s memories flowed from her heart to the written page as the Teague Hotel, her old home, was being taken down, beam by pegged beam. So many years ebbed and flowed that one hears both sorrow and happiness in her words. “I remember when our baby brother left home to find a job and never came back. I remember he was identified by his registration card which was in his pocket. I shall never forget that our mother never stopped grieving and she never stopped working, nor did she fail to keep faith in the One that is over us and hears our prayers.”

An open hall ran through the hotel providing a cool “summer living room,” Annie recalled. The hot days would find the women of the house sewing or mending garments while other townsfolk and guest congregated to visit. “Often, there were as many as 12 or 14 regular boarders at our house. Many were cultured, educated people who brought us treasures unnumbered – books, conversation, music and, best of all, friendship.”

Annie wrote that the rooms were named for people who stayed in them – Mama’s Room, just off the living room; Drummer’s Room, the front bedroom; Jury Room, the big bedroom upstairs; and her brothers’ room called the “Bull Pen, because it was so often full of boys, their friends and cousins who came whenever they wished.”

Lastly, Annie spoke of her cousin’s return to Ashville and his living in the hotel after his second wife died. “I remember when Jim Nunnally came home to live. He was all alone, and he took a room across the hall from the living room. It was so good to have someone whom I loved to share the old house with me again. That room will always be Jim’s Room in my memory.”

Being a never-meet-a-stranger man, Jim soon renewed friendship from former days and made new ones throughout Ashville, and everybody knew he lived at the hotel in “Jim’s Room.”

Annie and Perkins McClendon’s grandchildren have wonderful memories of Jim and the hotel, which was almost a second home. As Jim’s younger cousins, he quickly became friends with them.

Susan McClendon Kell, recalls, “Jim’s room had very high ceilings and was across the breezeway that was off the wraparound porch. All the cousins loved visiting him there and were always welcomed. We loved Jim. He loved us and all of Ashville’s youths.”

The cousins loved playing in the hotel, Susan recalled. “There was a large upstairs ‘plunder’ room filled with treasures my brothers, cousins and I loved to play with. Old trunks, soldier uniforms, etc. Fond memories of that fun-filled room. I would love to see all those items again now that I could appreciate them.”

Martha McClendon Richey, Annie’s granddaughter, vividly recalls her grandmother, “Big Mama” Annie McClendon, and Eddy McClendon, a cousin, crying as they watched the Teague Hotel being torn down. Being too young to understand their sorrow, their tears disturbed her and linger in her memory.

Mattie Lou knew the sorrow and wrote of the hotel where she grew up, “For all of us there was something about our house. … I believe that very old houses hold memories of all the lives that have been spent there.” Annie, Eddy, and no doubt, Mattie Lou, wept because they saw the dismantling of the past.

John McClendon, Susan Kell’s brother, loved Jim like a grandfather and cherishes wonderful memories of him. “I never knew either of my grandfathers, but I had Jim. And, boy, was he the best grandfather a boy could have. Fishing, tossing the baseball, roasting marshmallows, long conversations and all the stuff one could expect from the best grandfather ever.

“We had this daily ritual of going to Whitney Junction to watch the train go by at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. And it would deliver the mail. Haley Nelson would pick up the mail; that was his job. And he would be there at Miss Sheffield’s store – and he’d get the mail and take it back to Bunt Jones at the post office in Ashville. We would eat sardines and crackers and watch the train go by. That was the big event, watching the train go by!

“And my older brother and sister, Eddy and Susan, did the same thing when they were kids. He’d been taking kids to watch the train go by for years.” John paused, reflecting, then said, “Eating sardines as a kid – which is lovely. He was always there.”

John’s memories kept flowing. “Jim had a classic car. I don’t know what it was, but it was clean. This was in the mid-60s and it was a car out of the ‘30s. I wonder if anyone would know the make?” John’s young nephew Garrett Spears had it recorded in his history report: “Jim drove a black Chrysler c1930.”

Not only did John and Jim meet the train and eat sardines, but they also fished. “We’d go over to Red Wood’s lake and to Canoe Creek and to Lake Camac to fish. We went to the creek all the time – down Double Bridge Road at the creek there.”

A 911 forerunner and more

Of Jim’s Ashville activities, John recalled that “Jim took a job at the Sheriff’s Office. He was a radio dispatcher in the courthouse. He was a friendly, social guy, and this job and its location placed him smack in the middle of the ‘goings and comings’ of day-to-day activity in the middle of town. He did that maybe three or four years before he died.

“I was a kid, and I would go up to the courthouse and spend the day at the Sheriff’s Office right there on the first floor. Jim would be manning the radio. They had four or five cars at the most in the county, and he would be the dispatcher for that. The original 911, I guess. Way before 911. But I think he wanted to have a reason to hang out at the center of all action – the drugstore, the post office and the courthouse. Always friendly and up for good conversation, this fit Jim perfectly as it meant Jim was central to the daily lives of the town as ‘best friend’ to everyone.”

Helen Sweatt, daughter of a deputy, recalled Jim as clerk in the Sheriff’s Office as well as dispatcher. “My daddy, Lee Allen Thompson, was one of three deputies at that time. When Daddy would come home for lunch, he would park the patrol car in front of the house. Although the car wouldn’t be running, the police radio would stay on. My younger brother, Timmy, loved to play cops and robbers, and often he would get in the car and pretend to be our dad, whose call number was SC3. Timmy would key up the mic and say ‘SC3’ to whomever he thought he was calling.

“Mr. Nunnally would call our house phone and say, ‘Lee, your boy is on the radio again.’ Daddy would run out on the porch and say, ‘Boy, get out of the car and stop playing with the radio!’ Timmy never got a spanking for playing on the radio,” Helen laughed.

“Daddy had to furnish his own car,” Helen added. “He had a 1955 black Ford that he had a siren installed in it that worked from a button in the floor, just like the old-style light dimmer. Timmy would set off the siren and upset the neighbors because during that time, unlike today, a siren meant that something terrible had happened.”

After the hotel closed, Susan Kell recalled, “Jim and Louise lived in a house right down from the church. My grandmother, Stella Moorer, lived in one half and Jim and Louise in the other. Grandmother Annie McClendon lived directly across the street from Stella and Jim.”

Lasting legacy

2020 winners J-Brelin Cook and Chloe Wills

As the interview with Dr. John McClendon drew to a close, he spoke of Jim Nunnally’s influence. “Jim didn’t just belong to me or the local kids, he belonged to all of Ashville. Think about this: He was not a principal, teacher or a coach. He was not a famous or rich alumnus. He was never an elected official. He never held any official position in the town that would suggest a role with the school. But the Jim Nunnally Award is presented still today. He was ‘Jim: supporter and friend.’ A great person loved by all who knew him.

“In short, Jim loved Ashville and Ashville loved Jim – and it was an unconditional love, the best kind of love there is. So, I guess, an even better word to describe Jim is ‘love.’ He cared deeply for the town and its people.”

There could be no better affirmation of a man’s life than to be remembered as a man who loved. Such was James “Jim” Renfroe Nunnally.

A long journey

Dry cleaner escaped Holocaust, traveled storied route to Ashville

Story by Joe Whitten
Submitted photos

For Bernie Echt, the journey from Gross Kuhren, Germany, to Ashville, Alabama, included stops in Africa, China, the Dominican Republic and sojourns in various cities in the United States.

Bernie’s parents, Solomon and Erna Czanitsky Echt, already had daughters Ruth and Eva when Bernie was born on Nov. 4, 1937. Sister Sarah would arrive Nov. 4, 1938.

His parents and grandparents owned a farm in Gross Kuhren and dealt in horses and cattle. Although Jewish, they conducted business with both locals and the German military before the war.

Relations seemed good with people in the area, for as Bernie recalled, “My parents and grandparents had lots of connections; that’s why we are still here. Otherwise we would be …,” he let those words hang, then added, “They helped us to get the hell out of there.”

Bernie wasn’t yet a year old when they fled the Nazis, so he recounts what he was told by relatives. In spite of the apparent good relationship, “At the end of 1937 or the beginning of 1938, one evening, they knocked on the door, and calling Solomon by his nickname, they said, ‘Sally, you need to go with us down to headquarters.’”

Solomon and Erna both asked for a reason, but the only answer they got was, “We can’t tell the reason; you just need to go with us. You don’t have to take nothing along.”

Erna asked where they were going, and they replied, “To town.”

“It was the Gestapo,” Bernie continued. “They took him to the concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, and put him to work in the stone quarry. He was in there until the end of ’38, or thereabout.”

Bernie is unsure of how this happened, but his mother and grandparents paid off certain Nazi officers to get Solomon out of Sachsenhausen. He believes they gave money and cattle, and that one of the officers was a close friend who used to visit on Sunday afternoons.

The officers warned that Solomon must disappear immediately, so within 24 hours of release, he was on a freighter to Shanghai, China. He lived in Shanghai a year before Erna and the children could journey there.

And what a journey Erna and the children had getting to Solomon in China. The grandparents hoped to emigrate to Palestine, but borders closed before they could leave. They never got out.

Along with other Jews, Erna and the children secured passage to China on an Italian freighter. Difficulties arose at the Suez Canal when authorities refused the freighter permission to proceed.

Low on fuel and food, the ship diverted to an African island where it languished for six months. A Jewish organization managed to get money to the captain so he could continue to China.

Finally, in 1939, Erna and children joined Solomon, where he worked on a missionary farm in Shanghai.

Because of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), the Japanese occupied Shanghai. For the moment, things seemed peaceful. “The Japanese soldiers would come to the house,” Bernie remembered, “and my mother would cook them something. They had a good time.”

Concentration camp

All that ended Dec.7, 1941 – Pearl Harbor. “The Japanese came for us,” Bernie remembers, “put us up on a truck and took us to a camp. They took our passports. Everything. We had just the clothes we wore.”

There were 2,000 in this Japanese concentration camp with 16 people to a room. They devised privacy curtains with the bed blankets during the day, then took them down for cover at night.

The rabbis in the camp made sure Jewish boys received religious instructions. Going and coming from the place of instruction had its dangers, as Bernie recalls one night: “I remember rabbi took us one evening to the main building there, and the Japanese were shooting the guns with light-balls to light up the streets inside the camp, so they could see if anybody was walking around. And the rabbi said to us, ‘Just stand against the wall and don’t move.’ That’s what we did, and that’s how we always got through.”

The rabbis made sure that the kids who went to temple had kosher food for Passover, a sacred necessity for Orthodox Jews, such as the Echts.

World War II ended, and liberation finally followed. Bernie recalled, “McArthur came, and the streets were full of military. The Japanese commander who mistreated so many – he didn’t do it personally, but he had command over it – the teenage boys in the camp went to the Japanese headquarters, got the commander out, brought him to the camp and got sticks and hit him.”

Bernie didn’t participate in that. “That wasn’t my idea. I couldn’t join in beating him. He was only a man. I look at things a little bit different. I shouldn’t, maybe, but I do. A human being is a human being.”

The American nurses took the internees into the country, gave them food, and American military doctors gave physical exams.

The Americans taught them songs, Bernie recalled. “The first song we learned was ‘God Bless America,’ and then we learned the military songs – the Navy song and ‘This is the Army, Mr. Brown.’” He laughed and added, “We changed that one a little bit.”

Wanting to leave China, Bernie’s family went to the consulate and asked about being able to come to the United States. A Jewish organization (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) took over and organized the Echts’ and others’ exodus. They left for San Francisco on the Marine Lynx, an American transport ship. “We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, and it was wonderful,” Bernie said. “I was 9 or 10 years old.”

In San Francisco, the family stayed quarantined in a hotel for six weeks. Bernie recalls that the Jewish organization fed them and took them to a clothing store and bought them garments and shoes. He got his first pair of long pants and pair of shoes.

Dominican Republic

When the quarantine ended, the Jewish Distribution Committee came to tell the Echts the three countries available for relocation: Australia, Canada and the Dominican Republic. The family chose the Dominican Republic.

As early as 1938, General Truijillo of the Dominican Republic offered to the Jewish organization refuge to as many as 100,000 Jews fleeing Germany. On the north coast, now Sosua, General Trujillo set aside a large section of wooded land, and the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA), a Jewish group, cleared land and erected barracks. “It was similar to a Kibbutz,” Bernie said. “They all ate together, and the women did everybody’s laundry. There wasn’t that much that each one had separate.”

DORSA built houses on plots of land, families with kids got the first houses built, then couples without children. To get them started, for the father of the family, DORSA gave 10 cows; for the mother, six; and for each child, one. A family paid so much a month to DORSA until they had paid for the farm, house and livestock.

The Echts lived on one of the DORSA farms until Bernie’s mother died in 1949. After her death, Solomon left the farm and moved the family to the city. When Bernie turned 13, his father and sisters arranged his bar mitzvah. “I learned all the rituals,” he said. “I already knew a big part of it. I was very orthodox when I started out. Very orthodox until my mother died, then I slowly let it go.”

Home-life deteriorated for Bernie after his mother died, and a few months after his 13th birthday, he set out on his own. He had only the clothing he wore and no money.

He went to the Jewish organization in Sosua, met with the administrator, and told him about leaving home and needing a job. The administrator told Bernie he had no job for him because he lacked education and job skills.

Unsuccessful there but undaunted, he made his way to the farmers’ cooperative and told them his predicament. “I need a job. I need something to do to make a living.”

They listened to him, then, offered him the only available job, cleaning the animal intestines in the slaughterhouse, which paid $25 a month.

Bernie took the job. He lived in a barrack room for $3 a month, which included electricity and water. He commented, “I earned $25, paid $3 for lodging, and had $22 left. I didn’t need nothing.”

Work ethic rescues him

Although he started with a nasty job in the slaughterhouse, Bernie worked hard, and that served him well. The manager of the meatpacking plant soon took him out of the slaughterhouse and taught him about choppers and carvers. Mr. Meyerstein, who had worked for Armour and Swift in Chicago, taught him how to make sausage.

A careful observer and fast learner, Bernie said, “When I saw anybody doing something I wanted to learn. I caught it with my eyes and remembered it. I had no other choice. There was no Social Security, no unemployment, no insurance. Nothing. I had to learn.”

Management liked Bernie’s work ethic and raised his salary to $45 a month. He saved $10 a month until he had about $30 put aside. Then he went to a farmer to buy a calf. When the farmer found he had the money, he asked where he would keep the calf, and Bernie bargained with the farmer to pasture the calf for $1 a month.

They both agreed that when the calf became a milk producer, the milk belonged to the farmer, but calves born to those cows belonged to Bernie.

Next stop: USA

In 1957, when Bernie came to the United States, he was earning $85 a month and had 12 head of cattle, which he sold to finance his trip to the States and for Washington’s required $300 security deposit in case his job fell through.

Some Marines were the first who tried to help Bernie get to the United States. They said if he were willing to join the military, they would help him join the Marines. Bernie was willing, but the Marines weren’t – he was 2 inches too short at 5 feet, 5 inches tall.

Regulation height was 5 feet, 7 inches tall.

However, when a Mr. Weinberg came over from New York City, Bernie had success. He asked Weinberg if there was a newspaper in New York where he could run an ad for work in the United States. Yes, there was, the Aufbau, published in New York City for the German Jewish Club. Weinberg placed the ad: “Young butcher looking for a job in the U.S.”

Bernie waited. Then a letter from a Mr. Krucker arrived at the consulate in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Krucker owned a Swiss restaurant in Pagona, N.Y., and needed a butcher there by May 27, no later.

Bernie leapt into action. A visit to the consulate produced a list of “must do” things in order to leave. He took the list and returned in two days with everything else on the list.

Then he needed a “quota number,” but the consulate said that would take two weeks, and that would be too late to make it to New York by May 27.

Bernie tells it best. “It was hard to get out of the Dominican Republic at that time. Because of Nazi persecution, I was stateless – no passport. All I had was an ID from the Dominican government, like a driver’s license, but not a driver’s license.”

Bernie had to be in New York by May 27, so he begged the consulate to call Washington and get a quota number. “I will pay for the call,” Bernie said.

The consulate said, ‘Are you serious? We don’t do that normally.’ But with a little more pleading from Bernie, he said, ‘All right. Go outside and sit and wait. I’ll let you know. I can’t promise you.’

Bernie waited an hour and a half before the consulate came out and said, ‘I can’t believe it. I got you a quota number. Everything’s ready. Go to the airport and get yourself a ticket and you’re ready to go.’

Then, another problem loomed. Bernie had no passport, but he knew who could help. A German Jew named Kicheimer could work miracles almost. Bernie told Kicheimer why he was in a rush and gave him his paperwork.

Kicheimer returned the next day with the necessary documents, and Bernie was ready to leave. At the airport, Ruth and Eva were crying, afraid of what the police would do if they found out how he’d gotten his documentation. Bernie told them, “I did nothing; the man did everything. I’ve got a legal piece of paper.” He laughs and adds, “I was so glad when that plane went up and I looked down.” He was on his way to a new life that one day would land him in Ashville.

Bernie woking at Krucker’s Restaurant

When Bernie arrived at the restaurant, Mr. Krucker gave him a place to stay in his hunting shack, telling him to unpack, come to the restaurant and eat, then rest for the next day when they both would go to New York City to buy fish, meat and vegetables for the restaurant.

Bernie spoke of Mr. Krucker’s kindness to him, saying, “He treated me like I was his son. He was very good to me. When I bought my first business, he co-signed the loan for me.” Bernie’s respect for Mr. Krucker was evident when Krucker asked him not to wear his David Star because it made some German patrons uncomfortable. Bernie removed it, saying, “Mr. Krucker, I am Jewish in my heart, I don’t have to show it.”

Saying, ‘I do’

The restaurant’s head waitress, Pia, was a German gentile in an unhappy war-bride marriage that would end in a divorce. She was 10 years older than Bernie, but age presented no problem to him, and a few years later she became his wife. She converted to Judaism, going through the counseling sessions with the rabbis.

This was important to Orthodox Jews for descent is traced through the mother and gives both male and female children irrevocable Jewish status. It was a happy marriage that held strong until Pia died of brain cancer in 1979. The couple had three children: Bernhard “Bernie” Jr., Daniel and Katharina.

Bernie and Pia in the 1950s

Mr. Krucker had urged Bernie to ask Pia out. He was reluctant to do that because of lack of money. Pia knew this and said, “This time, I will buy you a root beer float and a hamburger. If you did have money, I don’t want you to spend it. You are new here, and you need to save your money.”

They didn’t go out again until Bernie had saved up some money. Mr. Krucker knew this and came to Bernie and gave him an envelope and said, “That’s for you.”  It contained his $50 weekly pay, inside. “I was rich,” Bernie said.

Never afraid of hard work, Bernie worked in the restaurant through the summer and into the fall, and when the number of diners dropped, Bernie got a job in the meatpacking plant in Mazzolas, N.Y., earning $65 a week. When he got off work there, if an auction was being held, he would sell hamburgers at the auction house. “You know, a couple of bucks here and there, and I made money,” he said. On Saturday and Sunday, he worked at the restaurant.

Bernie and Pia were engaged now, and he wanted more income. One day he asked the man who picked up and delivered the restaurant’s laundry if there were money to be made in laundry work. He told him, “If you work hard you can make money. It’s on a percentage of what you collect.”

So, Bernie went to see the owner, Frank Senatores, who told him, “I don’t pay until you bring in work. You deliver it and collect, and I pay you a commission on that. You have to use your own car. I don’t supply no vans or anything.” Bernie accepted the job.

Making of an entrepreneur

He worked hard – and so did Pia. After working his dayshift at the meatpacking plant, he and Pia would run the laundry and dry cleaning routes until about 8 p.m. Pia would drive, and he ran to the houses delivering and picking up. “I’ve been doing that for 60 years,” Bernie said recently. “The same system. And it works. Believe me, it works.” They built up a good route and eventually bought the drop business.

In another village, he saw a laundry and dry cleaner that wasn’t doing well because of the lazy owner. Obtaining a bank loan, Bernie bought that company and gave up the restaurant job to concentrate on the laundry business.

Always the quick and thorough learner, Bernie learned the dry cleaning and laundry business hands-on. He bought a 1952 Chevrolet truck van, put hanging racks inside, and had a high school art student paint the truck white with a crown for Imperial Laundry and Drycleaners, with the address and phone number.

From the beginning, Bernie has never turned down a challenge, for he’s always assumed he could do it. Early on, a man came in with a wide lapel, double-breasted suit wanting Bernie to cut the lapels down to a narrower size. Although he had never done alterations before, Bernie said, “We can do that, but it will cost you.”

Pia thought he was crazy, but Bernie said, “Don’t get excited. We have a suit hanging here. I’ll lay it on top of the one to alter, mark all around the lapel but leave a half inch. Then we’ll cut the material off and turn the rest under and sew it.” They did, and the customer was so happy he gave them a generous tip. After that, Pia learned to do whatever alterations that were needed.

By the time Pia died of cancer, they were living in Florida, and Bernie had expanded into selling laundry and dry cleaning equipment.

Five years after Pia’s death, Bernie exhibited his machines at a convention in Atlanta. One evening after the exhibits closed for the night, Bernie went to eat a restaurant where there was dancing. There he met Doan, who was buying merchandise for her dress shop in Springville, Alabama.

The magic of dance

She and Bernie danced that evening, and that dance blossomed into a courtship that resulted in a wedding the next year, 1985. The love affair has lasted 35 years. Although Doan didn’t convert to Judaism, she attends temple with Bernie.

Doan and Bernie Echt in Ashville today

It was Doan’s St. Clair County roots that brought them to Ashville and the establishing of Imperial Laundry and Professional Drycleaners there in 1994. Their pickup and delivery routes extend into Jackson and Cherokee counties. Bernie’s original method of building a business by meeting and knowing his customers still holds him in good stead today.

Katharina Echt says of her father, “My brothers and I were raised with a strong foundation of what it means to work hard. We each have a keen understanding, by our father’s example, of what is possible with sheer will and determination. Ever present is his steadfast belief in our ability to achieve anything we set our minds to. And so we have.”

Bernie never lost hope or purpose in the face of hardship, adversity or tragedy. He has focused on the good of life rather than the bad and remains a cheerful man who is a delight to know.

Stop by and say hello. You’ll enjoy meeting him. 

Chandler Mountain landmark

Mt. Lebanon First Congregational Methodist Church

Story by Joe Whitten

Submitted photos

Pioneers settling here were generally people of the Christian
faith, and very soon they formed churches. First Baptist Springville (1817) and
Ashville United Methodist (1818) are documented as over 200 years old.

Two hundred years ago, St. Clair County’s forested mountains and
lush valleys had welcomed a number of pioneer families into its boundaries.
Early written accounts record that these hearty settlers established homes
among the Native Americans who populated the area until their removal by
President Andrew Jackson.

But oral history speaks of an older one. In the 1975 Some Early
Alabama Churches, published by The Alabama Society Daughters of the
American Revolution, is found written about today’s Macedonia Baptist in
Ragland, “… this church is said to be the oldest church in St. Clair County,
and it is thought [that] it was organized in 1812.” However, it gives no source
for this date, and so far, none has been found. One hopes that someday an old
diary or family Bible might establish the correct date of this church.
Presbyterian churches appeared later in the 19th century, and as the
century progressed, populations increased, and churches sprang up throughout
St. Clair County. Several of these will turn 200 years old in a few years, and
many have celebrated over 100 years of existence.

One of the loveliest places in St. Clair is Chandler Mountain’s
high plateau, which extends about 10 miles in northwest St. Clair County. Today
it is the county’s garden spot, but it lay a wooded wilderness when Joel
Chandler settled at its base in the early 1800s. Oral history states that
hunters had a trail up the mountain near Chandler’s home, and it came to be
called Chandler’s Mountain. Over time, the apostrophe “s” dropped off, and we
have today’s name.

Vivian Qualls, in her History of Steele Alabama, records
that in 1855 Cicero Johnson was the first brave soul to forge his way up the
mountain to settle. Gradually, other settlers followed, but it wasn’t until
1905 that the first church was established there. However, community worship
and revivals occurred before 1905, for people of faith have always worshiped together
in some fashion even when denominational churches had not organized.
Established churches existed at the foot of the mountain, but getting there
wasn’t easy, for the trip would have been by foot, horseback or wagon down a
mountain trail. Like any early settlement community, believers met together in
homes to worship as often they could.

One of the early settlers, Hezekiah McWaters, was a Methodist
preacher, and Mrs. Qualls writes that he preached and conducted revivals in
Greasy Cove at the foot of the mountain.

The roots of today’s Mt. Lebanon rest solidly in Ellijay, Ga., for
a large percentage of early Chandler Mountain settlers came from there. Among
those were the Robinson brothers, Bob, Jake and Dan. It was through the
influence of this family that the mountain’s first church came into being.

Another Robinson brother, William J., a Congregational minister,
would travel from Ellijay to Chandler and conduct revivals. It was a big event
when William visited, and the collective Robinson families would attend his
revival services. As a result of the 1905 revival, Mt. Lebanon Congregational
Church organized with 11 charter members: William Robinson, J.J. Robinson,
Elvina Robinson, Daniel Robinson, Elizabeth Robinson, Della Robinson, J.B.
“Bent” Engle, Lucy Engle, Hettie Hyatt, Delia Wood and Ollie Engle Wood. Bent
Engle sold the church two acres on which to build a sanctuary. Cost? $4.

William Robinson served as the first pastor of Mt. Lebanon from
1905-1911. He moved from the mountain, but in 1912, he returned to preach the
revival services, and during that revival fell ill and died. His remains were
interred in the cemetery across the road from Mt. Lebanon church.

The Congregational Church came to America through the English
Puritans who suffered persecution for their non-Anglican doctrines. Coming to
America, the Puritans established in 1620 the Parish Church, Plymouth, Mass.,
as the first Congregational Church in America. By 1640, 18 churches had been
established in Massachusetts.

Jonathan Edwards, considered America’s greatest theologian,
pastored a Congregation church when he preached the sermon, “Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God.” A sermon documented as having a profound effect during
the 18th century revival movement known as the First Great Awaking.

We don’t know who brought the Congregational Church to Ellijay,
but we do know that members of that denomination moved to Chandler Mountain and
organized Mt. Lebanon Congregational Church.

Mt. Lebanon’s name has changed more than once over the years as
the original Congregational denomination became less traditionally biblical in
their theology. In the 1970s, the denomination’s name changed to United Church
of Christ, which changed the meaning of “congregational” church. Therefore, on
Oct. 24, 1981, Mt. Lebanon held a conference to discuss membership in the First
Congregational Methodist denomination. A month later, the church voted to make
the change, and on Dec. 18, 1981, Lebanon was accepted to full membership.
Today, the church’s name is Mt. Lebanon First Congregational Methodist Church.
The denomination’s headquarters is in Boaz.

Early minutes record interesting history. In the November 1928
business meeting, offerings received from members totaled $28.44. After paying
National Conference dues and other expenses, $6.95 was “cash turned over to
church treasurer.”

From August 1947 a penciled note in the record books states that
it was a wonderful year with nearly “100 conversions. Mary (Ma) Smith said,
‘the whole of Chandler Mountain got saved.’”

Unlike the United Methodist, the First Congregational Methodist
local church owns its own property, chooses its pastors, baptizes by emersion
and oversees itself rather than being presided over by bishops.

The church records contain the names of all who have served as
pastors. The pastor who served from 1933 to 1936, Annie Moats, is of interest,
for women pastors were not approved by most churches in those days. According
to Mt. Lebanon’s history booklet, Annie and Alley Mathis “Mac” Moats came to
Chandler Mountain in the early 1930s. Of German ancestry, Annie Struckmeyer
Moats was an ordained Congregational minister. Having pastored churches in
Cullman and Lawrence counties, she met and married Mac Moats in one of those
counties. Annie died in 1937 and was buried in the Mt. Lebanon Cemetery. The
Moats’ granddaughter, Barbara Robinson, was a member of Mt. Lebanon from 1959
until her death on April 13, 2019, age 92. Barbara’s husband, C.L., was a
church member from 1948 until his death on Sept. 27, 2018, age 91, and served
as a deacon until his death. He was a direct descendant of charter member Dan
Robinson.

In the 1940s, Mt. Lebanon replaced the original wooden church with
one of cement blocks painted white. This building had a covered porch at the
entrance and three new Sunday school rooms at the back. These rooms were fitted
with doors that folded so the space could also be used as a fellowship hall.

As years passed, the block church was bricked and a steeple added
in the mid-1980s. Around 1989, the church added a Fellowship Hall and in the
1990s installed a baptistry in the sanctuary and added more restrooms and a
pastor’s study. The 2000s saw the inside of the sanctuary refurbished with new
drywall, carpet and lighting in time for the 100th anniversary in
2005.

Prior to the baptistry being added, Susan Kell remembers when the
church baptized converts in the creek and later in Chandler Mountain Lake.
Karen Beasley recalls being baptized in the lake. “I was baptized in Chandler
Mountain Lake by Carl Gaskin and Wayne Deweese. It was so funny, because my
sister-in-law, Faye Beasley, was being baptized the same day, and her dog went
out into the lake, and we couldn’t get that dog to go back, and the preachers
finally said, ‘Well, just let him come on out.’ And they went ahead with the
baptizing.”

However, a building with all conveniences is not the church; the
individual members and the pastor who shepherds them are the church. So it has
been with Mt. Lebanon, and it has flourished through the years because of the
members’ faithfulness in serving God and in nurturing family and friends.

Caring for one another

The story is told of a teenage couple who wed and started married
life in relative’s home. This did not work out and the adolescent couple
suddenly found themselves without a place to live. Needing work, the husband
went to a member of Mt. Lebanon, told him his predicament, asked, “Could I farm
with you?”

This godly farmer and his wife took the couple under their
compassionate wings and provided the help needed. The farmer is now in Heaven,
but not forgotten, for the young man learned to farm well and successfully.
Recently, he saw the farmer’s widow and told her, “Your family has meant a lot
to me. Your husband put me on my first tractor, and told me, ‘Farm.’”

Yearly events at Mt. Lebanon include the Easter Sunrise Service;
Homecoming every fourth Sunday in May; Women’s Conference in August; an October
Fall Festival with soup, chili and desserts; then in December, participation in
Franklin Graham’s international Samaritan’s Purse ministry, a Christmas
program, and a fellowship meal. Of the Easter Sunrise Service, Susan Kell said,
“That is a beautiful service. It’s outside, right on the bluff overlooking the
distance.”

Many of Mt. Lebanon’s activities and events occur in cooperation
with Chandler Mt. Baptist and churches in the valley. Karen Beasley told of the
October Trunk-or-Treat event. “Our men always come together and cook the
hotdogs — we do 700 — and everybody helps wrap hotdogs. This event is sponsored
by all the area churches donating and working together.” No hotdogs remain when
the fun night ends.

Youth Night includes all churches. “We have Youth Service,” Karen
said, “where we do a community Youth Night with all the local churches —
Ashville First Baptist, Chandler Mt. Baptist, Steele Baptist, Deerman’s Chapel
and Reeves Grove. We do that on nearly every fourth Sunday night. The churches
rotate. Susan’s grandson, Garrett Spears, played the guitar at our last one at
Chandler Mt. Baptist.”

Four churches work together to prepare Backpack Buddies. This
local mission outreach provides nutritious food for families who need help in
providing for their families.

A nursing home visit each month is another local mission’s
outreach. “We go to the Attalla nursing home and Gadsden Healthcare,” Susan
Kell said. “Brother Alvin Turner, our pastor, brings a short sermon, and the
residents enjoy that spiritual contact — even the staff enjoys it. Our choir
members who are not working also go. We take a keyboard with us. The lady who
plays it is in her 80s, but you’d not know it. Afterwards, we go out to lunch.”

Mt. Lebanon has international missions outreach as well. For
several years, the church has partnered with New Desire Christian Ministries
Church and Mission in La Ermita, Honduras.

Bro. Alvin Turner has pastored Mt. Lebanon for 16 years, which is
a testimony to his ministry considering the fact that some churches change
ministers often. In an interview, he said that growth in numbers is good if it
is connected with spiritual growth. His heartfelt desire is for the church
members to continue to grow spiritually as the years progress.

In speaking of Mt. Lebanon’s missions’ work, Bro. Alvin’s voice
revealed the excitement. “Going on a mission trip will change your life.” He
feels blessed to have made several mission trips, for the church has worked a
number of years in Honduras at La Ermita with a mission and a church owned and
run by New Desire Christian Ministries. Mt. Lebanon has helped support them
financially and physically with constructing buildings there. By returning year
after year to the same place, the church has built a relationship with the
community. Bro. Turner sees these mission trips as obeying God’s command to “go
into all the world” and share the Gospel.

Current Mt. Lebanon deacons are Josh Kell, Jerrell Jordan, Jason
Ballard, Steve Bryant, Eddie Beasley and Johnny Beasley. Bro. Alvin said that
he and the deacons “have a wonderful relationship” working together in the
church. Brothers, Eddie and Johnny Beasley, are descended from early Chandler
Mountain settler Bob Robinson.

For the music of the church, Sandra Dobbins, pianist, and Bro.
Alvin, choir director, work together in selecting congregational songs and
choir specials.

When asked about the church’s senior member, Frances Kell, Bro.
Alvin spoke of her as “an amazing lady” who is a godly influence in the church
and community. He also spoke of Frances’ husband, Ernest, and of his work in
the church, recalling that “he didn’t like to spend money.” And that’s a good
thing since a church is using God’s money given by its members.

When asked about church members who are or were influential in the
church, Karen Beasley and Susan Kell both responded with these names: Aunt
Margaret Fore, Ernest Kell and Wayne Deweese. Both ladies talked of Deweese,
telling how people used to walk to Mt. Lebanon, and “… you’d see them coming
through the fields and hear the most beautiful singing as they sang all the way
to church.” Ernest Kell’s widow, 94-year-old Frances, is a sustaining influence
in the church today.

Of Ernest Kell, Susan said, “My father-in-law, Ernest, remembered
coming from Ellijay to the mountain in a wagon. He said he walked a lot of the
way, but when it would rain, he would get up in the wagon, and his mother would
cover him with her long dress. He said somebody had been here and came back to
Ellijay and said, ‘That’s where we need to go; there’s all sorts of farmland.’
He was 12 years old.”

An autumn drive up the mountain with the sunshine making a
stained-glass canopy of arching multi-colored trees ended at Frances Kell’s
home. Although in her 90s, she remains more active than many folks who are years
younger. She drives herself to church and Steele Nutrition Center during the
day, but confides, “I don’t drive at night.”

She and Ernest married right after he came home from World War II
and settled in to farming, first growing cotton and then tomatoes. She recalled
the early freeze of 1948 that caused enormous loss to the farmers. “We were
picking tomatoes in that field right over there, and somebody said, ‘We’d
better turn our buckets over, it’s gonna snow tonight.’ We turned the buckets
over, but we didn’t think it would. But boy did it come a big one.”
Interestingly she did not mention the financial loss, which gives evidence of
faith and courage in the face of adversity.

She spoke lovingly of her church and workers there, mentioning
Margaret Fore as having taught the Kell children in Sunday school. She told how
Ernest had been a deacon, a Sunday school teacher and the song leader for many
years. “He attended those old-timey singing schools,” she recalled, “and he
really learned music. I went, but I didn’t learn it. When he was getting to
where he’d forget which verse he should be on — that problem had started to set
in — they were trying to decide on a new song leader. They talked to one they
were interested in, and when they asked what he’d charge, he said, ‘Why, I’ll
not charge you anything.’ And Ernest spoke up and said, ‘That’s your man!’”
Declining in some ways, perhaps, but he was still thrifty with church monies.
That was Ernest Kell.

Revivals, fellowship kindle memories

When asked if she remembered any special church event, she told of
a revival conducted by Bro. Bean. “He tried to bring it to a close three times,
and it kept going — went on for three weeks. People were going to the altar and
getting saved. That was the revival that Ma (Mary) Smith said, ‘Everybody on
the mountain got saved.’ And all of her family did get saved, and they were
grown men. People prayed back then,” she said thoughtfully.

Every church-going person knows funny things sometimes happen in
church meetings, and Frances’ memories go down this path. “People would shout
back then,” she said. “Bellie Hyatt was shouting in a service one day, and she
looked out the window and saw their mules had got loose from the wagon. She
stopped shouting long enough to tell her husband, ‘Quinten, the mules are
loose!,’ then went back to shouting.”

Another memory came to mind. “Aunt Mollie Barnes shouted, too. She
had long hair that she rolled up in a knot on the back of her head, like women
did back then. She’d get to shouting and her hair would shake loose, and bobby
pins would go flying. Joe, her husband, would come behind her picking up the
pins off the floor and give them to her when her shouting was over.”

The subject of church fellowship dinners came up, and when asked
what special dishes she took, she replied, “I usually take cakes. I used to
take different ones, but now they like for me to bring my strawberry cake.”
This cake is famous at Mt. Lebanon for it is Frances’ own recipe. “My husband’s
favorite cake was coconut — you know, the old-fashioned kind with seven-minute
icing. Well, one year we had so many strawberries that I wondered why I
couldn’t use strawberries and sugar instead of coconut and sugar for the icing.
So, I tried it, and they loved it.

“I have a friend who’s been bedridden for years, and he loves that
cake. So, I made him one for his birthday. I enjoy doing that for people.”
Frances may never have given thought to this, but she has a ministry of baking
that is as useful in God’s work as any other area of service. Recently on the
PBS The Great British Baking Show, a contestant said this of her
cooking: “When I cook for family and friends I mix in love. If I’m kneading
dough, I knead in love; if I’m mixing cake batter, I mix in love. I bake with
love.” That seems to describe Frances Kell’s method as well.

When Frances’ great grandson, William “Will” Kell Spears, was
asked what he loved about his great-grandmother’s cooking, he said, “Her
biscuits! Nobody can make biscuits like she does. I’ve tried and mother has
tried, but we can’t make them as good.” When Frances heard this, she laughed
and said, “They just don’t try often enough. I’ve been making ‘em a long time.”

Will Spears is a sophomore at the University of Mobile majoring in
Special Education, and he bears the hallmarks of a godly heritage received from
great-grandparents, grandparents, parents and church. At age 12, he went on his
first mission trip to Honduras, and has returned seven more times. In January
2019, he wrote in an online article, “I truly have no words to describe how
grateful I am that God has allowed me to be a part of New Desire Honduras from
the very beginning, and has allowed me to experience His presence at work. …
This ministry … has challenged me to grow in my faith, to love more, to listen
and trust God’s will for my life, and to know that we serve a God who is good
and can make even the worst of situations display His majesty and sovereignty
over our lives.”

Of Will’s 2018 trip to Africa, Will told in an interview, “My Trip
to Kenya changed me in ways I could have never imagined. I went on this trip to
serve, love and share the Gospel with the people in a large village outside of
Nairobi. I didn’t expect, however, to be taught so much myself, about God’s
love, His faithfulness, and what true worship looks like from the amazing
people I met there. … It truly rocked my world. Join me in praying for the
believers in Africa, Honduras and America, and know that we are all called to
make disciples, whether it be across the sea or across the street.”

Near the end of his Honduras article, Will wrote, “The people who
make up the New Desire Christian Church are some of the most loving people you
will ever meet in this world.” These words seem to describe Mt. Lebanon First
Congregational Methodist Church as well. You’d be welcomed to worship with them
on a Sunday or to join them for Bible study on Wednesday evening.

Try
to visit on a day when they’re having fellowship lunch afterwards and Frances
Kell is there with her famous strawberry cake. You’ll find food for both soul
and body at this historic St. Clair County church.

Carl Coupland

Historian, storyteller, family man, friend

Story by Joe Whitten
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Submitted Photos

This month’s travels along St Clair County backroads brings us to the Bethel community to stop at the home of retired Moody businessmen and local historian, Carl Coupland.

Born into a hardworking family on Jan. 16, 1932, Carl grew up with a work ethic that helped him succeed in his endeavors. He comprehended economics early-on. “I tried raising beef cattle on a small scale,” he said, “but it didn’t take long for me to get out of that, because you could go to your local supermarket and buy a bag of dried cow manure for your flower bed or garden plants for $0.20 per pound, but live cattle was selling for $0.18 per pound. The economy was all out of balance when the manure was worth more than the cow!”

Coupland family roots in St. Clair County go back prior to 1828, the year Carl’s great grandfather, Columbus Constantine “C.C.” Coupland, was born near Cook Springs. C.C. married Elizabeth Emaline Godwin in 1848, and they set up housekeeping in a home he had built in the Bethel community. Around 1856, on today’s Coupland Road, he built another home which served Couplands for generations. Carl’s granddad, Ira, was born in the house.

Carl enjoys telling how his parents met. “My mother, Mary Elizabeth Sheets, was born where Oak Mountain Park is located. Then she moved with her parents to land they owned where Greystone subdivision is today.

“Daddy, Lester Coupland, was down there doing rock work on Bold Springs Church and boarding with the Standifer family. He went to a Pie Supper at the church, where folk would bid on pies the girls brought. He saw that pretty girl there, and he bid on her pie – up to $5!”

They were married March of 1929 at Rev. Hurst’s home in Taylorsberg, Alabama, near today’s Kerr Road.

Lester and Mary Elizabeth set up housekeeping in a house on Coupland land where today’s Lazy V lakes are, but there were no lakes then. Two sons were born into the family, Joe (1930) and Carl (1932).

 Lester plowed with a mule farmland which was terraced to prevent erosion. Carl’s earliest memory there occurred shortly before he turned four. “I was in the yard, and my Dad said, ‘We’re gonna move way over there across that mountain.’ We could see Bald Rock Mountain. …I was three years and eight months old when we moved to Camp Winnataska.”

Lester worked as stone mason and caretaker at Camp Winnataska, owned by the Birmingham Sunday School Council. The Council provided the Couplands a rent-free home. It had a fireplace and a kitchen sink, and it made no difference to them that the house had no electricity, no running water, bathroom facilities or telephone, for they were accustomed to that. Lester’s salary of $35 per month had increased to $70 a month in 1940 when he moved the family back to the farm.

Carl and Joe explored every acre of the camp while living there. They attended school one year at Stewart’s Crossroads near Prescott and then rode the bus to Moody School two years.

Carl’s memories of Camp Winnataska and Lester’s stone masonry are in Discover, June-July 2012, and can be read at this link: bit.ly/2ryrTXu

On the farm, Joe and Carl plowed with mules, helping their Dad with the farming. In 1942, Lester took a job with the Coca-Cola Co. in Leeds, driving a delivery truck in Jefferson and St. Clair counties. After that, he drove a gasoline truck for J.W. McCraney Co. in Leeds.

In 1945, Lester bought the old C.C. Coupland home on Coupland Road. Carl’s mom and her friend Mable Moore wallpapered the house and got it move-in ready. This was their first home to have a bathroom.

Carl recalls moving day. “Daddy went off to work one morning, and Mother said, ‘Let’s move.’ I was 13 years old and Joe was 15. We hooked up the two mules, Old Jane and Old Kate, and drove that wagon and started moving our stuff. We moved all the furniture that day.”

There were two girls in the community, Carolyn Moore and Nelda June Taylor, who helped them move, and were a great help to Mrs. Coupland. She was used to boys’ help and enjoyed having girl-help that day.

Driving home from work, Lester saw smoke curling from the chimney, stopped and discovered a tidy home and supper simmering on the wood cook-stove.

Carl finishes the story. “The man Daddy drove the truck for also had a tobacco and confectionery company, and Daddy had brought home a box of Hershey’s candy. Now, chocolates were hard to come by during WWII. I don’t remember whether it was 12 or 24 bars, but those girls ate up our box of candy the day we moved.”

Carl chuckled and said, “The little 13-year-old Nelda June Taylor became my wife nine years later on 3 December 1954. As of now, I have been lucky enough to live with the best woman on earth for more than 65 years.”

Joe and Carl attended Branchville School through the sixth grade and then attended Odenville school. Joe graduated from St. Clair County High School in 1948, attended college and eventually earned a PhD from Ohio State. Dr. Coupland served as principal of Phillips High School in Birmingham and of Morgan County High School in Hartselle. He was director of Adult Education with the Birmingham City Board of Education when he retired. Shortly after retirement, he died of pancreatic cancer in June 1985. He was the first PhD elected to the St. Clair County Board of Education, of which he was chairman when he died.

A desire to serve

Carl’s interests took him in a different but productive direction. Six months’ shy of graduating high school, he joined the Air Force. Signing up before his eighteenth birthday, he couldn’t leave then because his parents wouldn’t sign for him. But, on his birthday, Jan. 17, 1950, he boarded Odenville’s Mize Bus to Birmingham and took the train for Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, for basic training.

As he tells it, “I was young and knew everything at 18 years old. My parents didn’t know anything, and I had the world by the tail with a down-hill pull!”

After Lackland, Carl went to Radio Operator School at Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Miss. The Korean War broke out in June 1950, so after finishing at Keesler in October, Carl and others were sent to Mitchell Air Force Base, Long Island, New York, for reassignment.

Carl’s family feared he was destined for Korea, but instead he landed at Ft. Meade, Md., in Aircraft Control and Warning. One day the commanding officer asked for three volunteers to go to work in Flight Safety at Air Defense Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs. Carl volunteered. 

Given a week’s furlough and having heard his buddies tell about hitchhiking, he decided to hitchhike home. He took a bus from Ft. Meade to Winchester, Va., then got on U.S. 11, put out his thumb, and the first car, a new 1950 Chevrolet, stopped.

Carl thought he recognized the driver’s voice but couldn’t place it. When they introduced themselves, it was Bert Parks, who had the famous New York radio program, Stop the Music. He was going to Rome, Ga., for a show and had to side-track to Columbia, S.C., to get two showgirls, and Carl went with him.

Parks thanked Carl for his service and paid for all the meals on the trip. “Wouldn’t let me spend anything on the way down,” Carl recalled.

Arriving in Rome at 2 o’clock on a cold, pitch-black December morning, Carl got back on the highway to catch a ride. No headlights lit the blackness all night. “Just after daybreak,” Carl said, “I saw a Greyhound bus coming that had ‘Birmingham’ written on it. I flagged him down and rode the bus to Springville.”

Carl paid $2 to a Springville taxi driver to take him to his parents’ home. He visited five or six days, then caught a bus back to Fort Meade, and from there, the volunteers took a train to Colorado Springs.

The train trip took two days with a four-hour lay-over in Chicago where the USO Club fed the volunteers and gave each one a Bible. The men left the train in Denver and took a bus 70 miles further to Colorado Springs.

The Air Defense Command had just been started, and to be in the center of the country had moved to a Colorado Springs Army Base and was redoing it. Headquarters were completed and in use, but the barracks weren’t finished. So, for about four months, the men lived in a hotel in Manitou Springs.

Carl bought a 1936 Chevrolet for $35.  He and two of his buddies drove it to and from the base until they completed the barracks.

Because Carl was a clerk and a radio operator, he was assigned to work with officer pilots who had to fly four hours a month in order to keep their flying status – their wings.

The United States had Aircraft Control and Warning squadrons as well as Fighter Squadrons stationed around the country.

Carl, promoted to the flight safety crew, tracked the locations on a large map above his desk. On it, blue pins showed the location of every Fighter Interceptor Squadron, and red ones of every Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron.

For this work, Carl knew secret information and had to have top secret clearance. The FBI investigated him, sending agents to Odenville and Branchville to talk with neighbors, friends, preachers and teachers. 

“My parents thought this boy was in trouble,” Carl laughs, “but I wasn’t. After that, whenever we had an accident involving one of our interceptor planes, we flew to investigate the scene.”

Carl’s crew collected wreckage. If fatalities had occurred, casualty remains had been cleared by an earlier crew. However, as he worked one site, the sun glinted off something. “I think that was roughest scene I ever went to,” Carl said. “Two F-86 Sabres flew out of the fog and right into the side of a mountain. There wasn’t much left.

“We collected wreckage parts and pieces and got ‘em piled up. I saw something shining on the ground. It was a man’s hand with a gold ring on it.  I picked up the hand and gave it to the commanding officer. He was to get the ring to the widow. I trusted him to do that.”

Such memories linger, and Carl reflects, “You know, I have sometimes thought about that hand at 12 o’clock at night.”

Carl and his buddies used free weekends exploring Colorado – Pike’s Peak, Will Rogers Shrine, Garden of the Gods, Seven Falls and parks. They made one Juarez, Mexico, excursion with Carl protesting it might not be a wise trip. Carl drove his car, and one buddy rode his motorcycle. At the border, Carl parked his car at a gas station and paid the attendant to watch it. His buddy chained the front wheel of his motorcycle to a telephone pole away from the station.

It didn’t take a long to realize Juarez wasn’t where they should be, and they returned to where they’d parked. “My car was fine,” Carl laughed, “but all that was left of the motorcycle was the front wheel chained to the pole.”

An interesting follow-up to Carl’s Air Force years is that his cousin, Adm. James A. Winnefeld, Jr., who had been an instructor in the Navy Top Gun School and had done the flying in the movie Top Gun, became the officer in charge of Carl’s old outfit in Colorado Springs. Adm. James A. Winnefeld’s mother, Fredda Coupland, was born in St Clair County. She married career Navy man, James A.Winnefeld Sr., later an admiral himself. 

In President Obama’s administration, Adm. James Winnefeld Jr., became vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the second highest ranking military person in the United States at that time, serving under Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman.

While Carl served in the Air Force, Nelda June Taylor earned her nursing degree. She had worked her way through three years training at the Jefferson Hillman Hospital in Birmingham, when the University of Alabama bought Hillman Hospital, and it became UAB Hospital. June’s graduation ceremonies were at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Carl and June married Dec. 3, 1954. As a registered nurse, June worked at ACIPCO Medical Group and at Dr. Davis’ Clinic in Leeds.

Before settling full-time as a realtor, Carl worked at different jobs. Gulf Oil Co. put him at a station on Highland Ave and 20th Street, with gas islands all the way around the corner.

He had the 11-to-7 shift and was by himself from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. “I had a money changer on my belt, a roll of money in my pocket, and was there by myself pumping gas at night. I felt safe back then,” he recalls.

Then he opened a service station in Branchville, at the location of the car lot today on the corner of Hurst Road and U.S. 411. He and June bought a house and nine acres across the road from the station.

Their son, Mike, was born there in 1957, and they lived there until 1968 when they moved to the property where their home is today. Eventually, he divided the Branchville acreage into lots for a subdivision there.

For a while, he had an insurance debit route from Cahaba Heights to Sylacauga. Realizing that wasn’t for him, he took a job with Leeds businessman, Judge McCraney, who owned McCraney Tobacco and Confectionary Co.

Asked about his real estate work, Carl said, “I started buying land and farms in 1955, while I was working other jobs. I did this until 1968 when I got my real estate broker’s license and opened an office in Leeds across from the Pants Store.”

While Carl was building his real estate business, Mike graduated from high school and married Jeanie Kerr. They became parents to twin daughters. Carl said of his daughter-in-law, “She is the nicest person you could have ever imagined in your life.” 

Mike became a union carpenter and had worked his way to a superintendent’s position. Advancement sometimes brings relocation, and in 1985, the company wanted Mike to move to Florida. However, he told his father, “I really don’t want to go.” Carl said, “Come into the real estate business with me, and we’ll see how you do.” Mike runs the business today.

Carl stayed in Leeds until 1985, then moved to Moody and opened Moody Realty. He and Mike together ran Moody Realty Co. until Carl retired at age 84 in 2016.

Recalling his work, Carl said, “My business was great. People were coming out of Birmingham and moving to Leeds, Moody and Odenville. I remember selling five houses in one day.”

Catherine Lovejoy worked in the gas company in Leeds next door to Carl’s office, and the Lovejoys and Carl became friends. “Lyman (Lovejoy) was selling real estate part time and holding down a full-time job,” Carl said.

“He came in my office one day and asked me, ‘Do you think if I got into the real estate business full time that I could make it?’ I said, ‘Lyman, the time is right. People are moving out of Birmingham. Get you six months’ grocery money ahead and jump into it.’

“He didn’t take my advice. He got a year’s grocery money ahead and jumped in. Well, it wasn’t long until he had enough business that Catherine had to quit work and help him. … Lyman was always honest with me. We trusted each other. He just had more nerve than I did. I made a living, and he made a fortune.”

Some land sales Carl remembers with pride, and rightly so. Leeds Memorial Park is enjoyed today on land he sold to the city through Mayor Jack Courson. Carl worked with the St. Clair County Board of Education to obtain land for the Moody High School, Junior High School and Middle School – and land for a second road into the school property. Shortly before he retired, he worked with Moody’s Mayor Joe Lee for the Jack’s Family Restaurant site to be located on Moody Parkway. And we all know that the problems of the world have been solved over breakfast at a Jack’s round table, Anywhere, USA.

 Of his son and Moody Realty, Carl says with pride, “Mike has done well with the business. Paula Krafft is his right arm, and Allie, her daughter-in-law, works in the office. Paula and Allie are the most knowledgeable real estate people I have ever known. Mike could go off fishing three days, and they could run the place.”

On occasion, a real estate person has not been above-board and honest with Carl, but he never retaliated. He quietly wrote the person’s name on a piece of paper, dropped it in his bottom desk drawer, and never did business with them again.

Today, June and Carl are doting grandparents and great-grandparents to Beverly and husband Alex Armstrong with their daughters, Allee June and Caroline, and to Ginger and husband, Jeremy Gilbert, with their children, Jackson Cade, Kinslee Morgan and Ellison Kate.

This younger generation is growing up hearing Carl’s memories of the past. But in case he doesn’t share this Halloween tale, we record it here.

One fateful Oct. 31, many years ago, Carl and three friends had the prankish idea to put a cow in their ball coach’s house while he and his wife were at a party. This they did and skedaddled – home free, they thought. However, when Mrs. Coach found a cow in her living room, she exclaimed, “Carl Coupland and (name withheld to respect the dead) did this!’ She guessed two correctly, but Mrs. Coach never told the pranksters’ parents. She had boys of her own.

Should you have an hour or two to visit him, Carl can tell you St. Clair County history that he learned from listening to his father and grandfather tell of their lives and from reading anything he can get his hands on.

Carl Coupland: father, grandfather, businessman, historian and conversationalist. Listen to him. He’s a St. Clair County icon worth knowing and hearing.

Whitney Junction

A place of memories, lore
and a storied past

Story by Joe Whitten
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Submitted photos

Whitney Junction, lying in northwest St. Clair County at the intersection of US Highways 11 and 231, is one of the many unincorporated communities throughout the county. The original junction, however, was east of there in 1891 when the Tennessee River, Ashville and Coosa Railroad connected with the Alabama Great Southern (AGS) Railroad.

Settlers had arrived in the area long before the building of the train station in 1872, when the AGS began operation and before the US Post Office began in 1875. The station and post office were named for Charles O. Whitney, a whiskey-drinking, gambling Reconstruction Carpetbagging politician, who had been active in establishing the AGS railroad from Birmingham to Chattanooga.

Records show that James C. Ward was appointed the first postmaster on March 22, 1875. Surnames of the other postmasters ring of old St. Clair County families — Yates, Box, Beason, Early, Partlow, Sheffield and Shelton.

The First Settlers

According to Linda Moyer, a Neeley descendant, around the time that Alabama became a state in 1819, two North Carolina sisters and their husbands settled in today’s Whitney. The two couples were Elizabeth Brumfield and William McCorkle and Charity Brumfield and Thomas Neeley. Coming with the McCorkles were their daughter and her husband, Eliza Louisa and Anderson Reeves. Louisa and Anderson had 15 children.

The area grew as the Partlow, Montgomery, Sheffield, Bowlen, Allman and Harp families settled there. Children grew up, fell in love, and these families became interconnected through marriages.

Cowan Sheffield married Mary Allman, and the home they built still stands off Highway 11, just south of Reeves Grove Church. Their granddaughter, Linda Moyer, believes they built the house in the 1860s, well before the church’s organization in 1872. “The Reeves Grove Church records,” she recalled, “say that my granddaddy would start the fire every Sunday morning in the potbelly stove.”

According to Moyer, Cowan Sheffield’s uncle, Wesley Sheffield, Sr. “…rode the horse his son had brought back from the Civil War to collect money” to build the Reeves Grove Church, and that John Partlow “hewed the logs and split the shingles” for the building.

Reeves’ descendant, Joe Sweatt, recalled, “My great-great grandparents, Louisa and Anderson Reeves, donated the land to build the church on.” Sweatt told of a c1872 family letter stating that the supporting timbers of the church were cut in Etowah County, shipped down the Coosa River to Greensport, and then hauled by ox wagon to the church location.

Attendance increased in the early 2000s, and the church added a new Fellowship Hall next to the sanctuary. By 2007, having outgrown the 1872 building altogether, they constructed a larger sanctuary, connecting it to the Fellowship Hall.

Rev. Paul Alexander became pastor of the church as the new building reached completion, and he conducted the first worship service in it. A few years later, the church began Phase Two, during which they added Sunday School rooms.

Church leaders today include deacons Clarence Harris, Jerry Payne, Johnny Kuykendall and Maurice Wilkins. Jerry Payne is Sunday School director. Music director is Charles Simmons. In addition to the choir, Rev. Alexander said, “We have a group of young folks who do special singing for us.”

Three pianists serve the church: Jenny Greggs, Deb Kuykendall and Cindy Alexander. Youth Directors Zach and Stormy Davis participate in community youth services sponsored by several churches that take turns hosting services during the year.

Expressing his vision for the church, Alexander said, “Our biggest goal is to see people come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. We would love for our church to grow, but I would rather that the church grows spiritually rather than just adding numbers. We don’t focus on numbers. We focus on people getting closer to the Lord and winning folks to Christ.”

Efforts to restore the historic 1872 Reeves Grove Church are detailed in Elaine Hobson Miller’s article in the April-May 2019 Discover.

Reeves Grove School

The original deed for Reeves Grove Church stated that the Eliza Reeves hoped the building would also be a school. According to Moyer, Cowan Sheffield served as first headmaster when the school opened in the church. Later, a schoolhouse was constructed across the road to the right of where the cemetery is today.

Ashville Railroad

Montgomery’s The Weekly Advertiser reported on April 23, 1891, “The Tennessee River, Ashville and Coosa Railroad has been completed from Whitney Station on the Alabama Great Southern Railroad to Ashville, the county seat of St. Clair County. The new line is now open for traffic. The road will be extended to the Tennessee River in the north and to a point on the Southern Pacific in the south at an early date.”

Mattie Lou Teague Crow records in her History of St. Clair County that the 1890s depression forced this railroad venture into bankruptcy. She wrote, “The steel rails were ripped up for scrap iron [sic]. The old ties rotted. Today’s Whitney-Ashville highway uses most of the old right-of-way.”

The 1886 African American Church

Organized in 1886, Evergreen Baptist Church, celebrated its 133rd anniversary on Sept. 22 this year. Name are of the first members are not available, but this soon after the Civil War, they doubtless were former slaves and their children.

Rena Blunt, grandmother of current pastor Elder Paul Jones, recorded in 2007 what she remembered of the history of Evergreen Baptist. She stated that the church “was founded by the Rev. Gales and Bro. Green Neeley. The first church was a small green church facing the railroad.”

She listed the following pastors: “Rev. Woody and Rev. Shephard; Rev. Brown, 1922-1966; Rev. Bell, 1967-1968; Rev. J. C. Evans, 1968-72; Thomas Jordan, 1973; B.J. Bedford, -1990; Jerry G. Bean 1990-2016; and Elder Paul Jones, 2016-present.”

Around 1922, Mrs. Blunt recalled, the church moved to U.S. 231 where today’s BP station stands. After I-59 was created, the church moved down to its present location on Sheffield Drive.

Elder Jones, said in an interview, “The church I remember was there by the interstate where the BP Service Station is now. It was a wooden church with tarpaper siding that looked like bricks. We had boards nailed between the trees for people to sit around and eat.” The other locations he’d been told of were the one by the railroad tracks and one on Highway 11, “but its name, Evergreen Baptist, never changed.”

Elder Jones spoke of his ministry: “God called me to preach. I was teaching Sunday school in another church, and then I would come over here. For some reason, the Spirit kept leading me back here, and the next thing I knew, God had planted Rhonda and me in this church family.”

The pastor of a small congregation has more responsibilities than the pastor of a larger church. Elder Jones plays the keyboard for the singing, conducts a Thursday evening Bible study, and heads up the Sunday school, also giving a weekly review of the lesson. “My plate’s pretty full,” he observes. First Lady Rhonda adds, “We often say we both wear three or four different hats. So, whatever is going on at any time, we do what is needed.” Picking up on that theme, Elder Jones mentioned the faithfulness of Pinkie Brewster and Effie Lee Brewster. “Others may have come and gone,” he said, “but over the years, those two have been steadfast supporters of Evergreen’s ministry…When God chooses you for a task,” Elder Jones testified, “you can’t quit. The love of God will not allow you to walk away from the souls you are over.”

When asked about his vision for the church, he replied, “It’s the Word of God. I must teach with knowledge and understanding. That’s the only way — His whole Word. I wouldn’t leave anything out.” He observed that some folk skip scriptures, but Elder Jones is fervent in preaching the whole Word. “Without a vision, the people perish,” he said.

Speaking of First Lady Rhonda Mabry Jones, his wife of 42 years, he reflects that her working for the Lord alongside him was vital to his preaching effectively.

Serving Evergreen today as Deacons are Sam Blunt, Allen Looney, Henry Blunt and two Junior Deacons, Denzell Williams and Damion Jones. Elder Jones remembered two deceased deacons saying, “Deacons Robert Brewster and Earnest Brewster contributed much to God’s work here and helped make Evergreen what it is today.”

The church continues to improve the facilities as God provides. “All races are welcomed to worship together.” Elder Jones concludes, “If you’re looking for a church, come worship with us.”

Whitney, Alabama, Memories

Two articles in The St. Clair News-Aegis, Dec. 7, 1975, and July 3, 1976, record some of Nettie Lou Sheffield’s Whitney memories.

Appointed postmaster Feb. 28, 1936, Nettie Sheffield retired in 1965, and her daughter, Wanda E. Shelton, was appointed acting postmaster July 31, 1965. Official Washington, DC, records list Wanda Shelton as the last postmaster, but she was not. In 1976, Nettie Sheffield told The New-Aegis that when Wanda died soon after appointment, “The postmaster at Ashville said, ‘Take over,’ and that’s what I done. I’ve been here ever since.” Whitney Post Office was “discontinued” on March 31, 1967, and converted to a rural station of Ashville.

 “There was four stores, a train depot, a honkytonk — started out as a cafe,” Nettie said in 1975. She then added a refrain probably heard since Noah had grandchildren, “but the young people hung around, and you know how they are. Well, pretty soon it was a honkytonk!” She noted that the other four stores were owned by the Montgomery, Beason, Rickles and Baggett families.

In the 1976 article, Nettie still ran the store in the building where she and her husband first opened for business in 1936. She was a month shy of 81 and still opening around 7 a.m. and closed at 4 p.m. “I figure nine hours a day is enough for anybody to work — especially if they’re as old as me,” she said.

Joe Sweatt

Having lived in Whitney all his life, Joe Sweatt has fond memories. He grew up in the family home just below where he and wife Helen live today

 Asked about his memories, he said, “I guess the fondest is living close to Muckelroy Creek. Harold Whisenant and I rode our bicycles all around here back then. We took some old burlap sacks and filled ‘em up with dirt off the creek bank and dammed up the creek. My daddy built us a diving board. It was the nicest swimming hole you’ve ever seen. People from Etowah County used to come and swim there. We’d go down there in the mornings and ride on inner tubes until the sun came up and it got warm enough that we could get in that cold creek water.”

Enjoying his memories, Sweatt continued. “We always tried to save up a little money so we could go down to Hershel Montgomery’s store down at the crossroads. A Coca-Cola was a nickel and a pack of chips — corn curls — was a nickel, and he’d charge us a penny tax. He’d fuss if we didn’t have that penny for the tax.”

Prison Camp

 “I remember my grandmother talking about the prison camp, Camp O, they called it, up where the nursing home is now. She used to tell me tales, about when they heard the hound dogs, they knew some prisoner had run. Even back then, they used tracking dogs.”

Wayne Ruple’s fine collection of interviews titled, Remembering Whitney, has several memories about the prison camp. O.J. Moore also remembered the bloodhounds tracking a convict, saying, “Those dogs would put him up a tree. He’d come on down and go back to camp.” Wade Partlow recalled, “The prisoners did all the local road work…They used some road machines — many pulled by horses and mules.”

Tiny McKay said, “You know Number 11 was built by convicts…. They used mules and flip scrapes…231 was built by convicts.”

The prison camp discontinued at some point, and on that property a Rhode Island couple, Pat and Carol Roberson, built the Motel Linda c1960. Jimmie Washington Keith lived in Springville and worked at the motel. She recalled that many of the I-59 workers found lodging at Motel Linda. It’s believed the business ceased operation toward the end of the 1960s.

When Motel Linda closed, Whitney Nursing Home began operation there in 1969. It had been reconstructed to meet the standards of that time. When present owner, Pam Penland, took over in 1982, it was an intermediate care facility. Today it is Health Care, Inc., and is licensed as a Medicare-Medicaid long-term nursing home. In Remembering Whitney, Wade Partlow recalled Hershel Montgomery’s store at the crossroads and that across US 231 from the store “…there was a service station…and a restaurant known as Ma Washington’s Restaurant.” In a recent interview, Mrs. Washington’s daughter, Jimmie Keith, supplied additional information. Ralph Windham owned the building where her mother, Ophelia Washington, ran the restaurant in one side, and Billy George Washington, Ophelia’s son, ran the service station in the other side. Jimmie’s nephew, Joe Cox, recalled that it was an Amoco Service Station. The service station and restaurant are gone, but on Hershel Montgomery’s corner, a store still serves Whitney Junction.

Whitney on National TV

A segment of Jack Bailey’s Queen for a Day TV show was filmed in Whitney in 1956. Mrs. Dorothy Brock, the sole provider for her family, won the title with her need to stock a small store located northeast of Reeves Grove Church near the crossroads. NBC cameramen filmed while Jack Bailey emceed and crowned Mrs. Brock as Queen.

Sen. E. L. Roberts attended and officially cut the ribbon for the grand opening of the store. The Etowah News-Journal, Sept. 13, 1956, reported that 3,000 “from many states” attended the event. Entertainment was provided as well as balloons, ice cream, soft drinks for all ages, and “500 orchids were given away to the first 500 ladies who registered.”

Viola Hyatt, Ax Murderer

Three years later, in 1959, the area again made newspaper and television headlines when Ax Murderess, Viola Hyatt, threw a torso off at a vacant house in Whitney.

Hyatt, who lived with her father in White Plains, Calhoun County, killed two of their farm workers with shotgun blasts to the face. She hacked up their bodies with an ax and scattered body parts on a road trip through Etowah and St. Clair counties.

Joe Sweatt remembered it: “We were swimming up there at the swimming hole one day, and my mother came up and said, ‘Get out; they’ve found a body up the road.’

About a quarter of a mile toward Steele from the crossroads, Viola Hyatt, the ax murderer, had dumped one of the bodies there. In those days, they didn’t secure the crime scene like they do today, and I remember we pulled off on the side of the road, and I remember looking up and seeing the body lying there.”

Fear gripped local folk and didn’t subside until Viola’s arrest. She went to trial, was convicted, and sent to prison. However, in 1970, she was granted parole. Jacksonville locals remember that she returned to the family farm and that she also ran a store in Rabbitown, and a retired Jacksonville State University professor recalled her taking classes there.

Miracle — perhaps

An article about a community should not end with a murder, so this ends with Wayne Tucker’s story of a mysteriously prevented tragedy.

“When I was a teenager,” Wayne recalled, “a Church of God minister who lived close to Whitney Junction told me and his son, my best friend, about an accident at the junction. That was a dangerous intersection before the interstate opened, as evidenced by the number of memorial crosses placed there. A bad accident happened, and several men tried to lift the car to get a man out. They couldn’t lift it. Suddenly, a big man appeared and helped lift up the car. By the time the rescuers attended to the crash victim, the big man was nowhere in sight — and nobody saw him leave.”

Just the extra man needed to lift the car or a miracle? Who can say? However, Tucker remembers the minister as a godly man who gave God the credit for the man’s rescue. A miracle is much better than a murder. Somebody say, “Amen!”

Watson-Byers Home

Built of tradition, family roots and love

Story by Joe Whitten

Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

Submitted Photos

The white column c. 1910-1911 Watson-Byers House rests on a grassy knoll in Odenville, gleaming in summer sun as lovely as a jeweled tiara resting on a green velvet cushion.

A St. Clair County vintage home, indeed, but for those nurtured by previous Watson parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, it is a house of unconditional love. Talk with any child, grandchild or cousin, and you hear only happy memories.

The original owner, William Clayton “Will” Watson, was born March 4, 1861, in White Plains, Benton, later Calhoun County, to William Alvin P. and Eliza Ann Hart Watson. Eliza’s father, Andrew Hart, ran Hart’s Ferry on the Coosa River, ferrying between St. Clair and Calhoun counties. The Harts owned and farmed the land where Andrew Jackson constructed Ft. Strother in 1813.

 William Alvin P. Watson died at Vicksburg in the Civil War. Widowed Eliza Ann Hart Watson married John Lonnergan in 1869. John and Eliza Lonnergan eventually owned the two-story double dog-trot log home built by John Looney in Beaver Valley. In a recent interview, Will’s grandson, Frank Watson, recounted that family oral history said that “Grandpa Will, when he was 18, rode the horse over to the Looney’s and bought the house for his mother, and then the Lonnergans moved in.” Frank added, “Now, I haven’t checked this out; that’s family lore.”

Will attended Southern Normal School and Business College in Bowling Green, Ky., graduating in 1887. Then, two years after graduating, he married Mentie Cox of Ashville on October 9, 1889. Will and Mentie lived in the Ragland area of St. Clair County, where Will at various times worked as postmaster at Lock Three and as a teacher. Grandson Frank treasures the school bell his grandfather used in his school.

Will and Mentie had a large family of 12 children and desired them to have the best education possible. Therefore, when Odenville was chosen as the location of St. Clair County High School, Will began planning to move his family from Ragland to Odenville.

“It was about 1909 or 1910 that Will bought the land here in Odenville … and they built the house and moved here in 1911,” Frank recalled. Saraharte Watson Byers’ notes indicate it was completed sometime in 1910.

“He cut all the timber over there where he lived and shipped it here by rail, and this house was built out of rough timber,” great-grandson Jimmy Byers added. One of Will and Mentie’s daughters died in 1908, and their last child was born in Odenville. Eleven of their 12 children attended St. Clair County High School. Daughter Roberta graduated in the second graduating class in 1913.

In a conversation with this writer many years ago, Saraharte Watson Byers recounted how that after the house was completed, Will shipped their furniture by rail from Ragland to Odenville. Then the family came by train to their new home and new town. Arriving at the Odenville depot, the Watsons got off the train and walked to their new home. Father led the way, mother behind him, and the children behind her from oldest to youngest and like a moving staircase marched up the road.

For many years, the Watson-Byers House has had the square columns on the front, but those were not on the house originally. Frank reminisced: “It originally had double porches, not columns. I remember when it got changed. Uncle Hop, Will’s son who lived in the house, got tired of that upper porch. It was before they had treated lumber, and he got tired of replacing it; so, they took the upper porch off and put the little portico up there and put up the columns. Originally, a long, wide pathway wound uphill to the porch and visitors always entered at the front door. But the house hasn’t been changed much inside. Maybe the only change in the old house is the kitchen windows. They are double now, and they were single back then.”

Inside the home, a central hall extends front to back with high-ceiling rooms on either side. Most visitors today enter at the kitchen, furnished with table and chairs of the period of the home. The cook-stove looks like a wood-burning stove from 1911 but really is an electric stove that Saraharte Watson Byers had shipped from Canada after she and Alvin became owners. She also installed hardwood floors in all the rooms except the dining room, which retains its original pine flooring, the standard flooring of that day.

The rooms are large as was the turn-of-the-century custom, with tongue-and-groove pine walls rising ten feet. Those tall ceilings made the rooms cooler in the summer, but they could also make for cold rooms in the winter. The house was originally gaslit from a Delco gas system from which gas was piped into the light fixtures. One gas-lamp globe survives in Frank’s possession.

 A stairway leads to the second floor where several newlyweds started their married lives —Saraharte and Alvin Byers, Jimmy and Karen Byers, Al and Donna Byers, as well as cousins lived up there.

Frank remembered that the garage and the men’s toilet were across today’s U.S. 174, which did not cut through the property until years after the house was built. The ladies’ toilet, however, was located on the hill behind the house.

Deeply rooted family tree

Frank was only five years old when his grandmother, Mentie, died in 1938 and barely remembers her. However, he recalls well his grandfather, Will. “Granddaddy loved to tell ghost stories to us grandkids, and he would frighten us all to death. He could tell good ones, and he had a knack of telling the punch lines. … He’d tell Civil War ghost stories about when they lived at Lock Three.

“After he came to Odenville, he was a merchant. But he went out of business during the Depression — let too much out on credit. In his later years, he would go down to the local store every day, and he would always carry his long umbrella. The guys teased him about that, and he’d say, ‘Pshaw! Pshaw! It might rain.’ But he was using it for a walking cane!”

Will died in 1950, and his funeral service was held at the house he’d built, just as Mentie’s had been in 1938. Both are buried at Liberty Cemetery, Odenville.

Will’s son, Hobson “Hop” Watson and wife Sally Robison Watson lived in the house with Will, caring for him until his passing. When he died, Hop and Sally became owners of the home and lived there with their daughter, Saraharte, called “Sade” by many friends. She grew up loving the old home, her family, Odenville and the people of the town. Saraharte graduated from St. Clair County High School in 1945. She attended the University of Alabama but earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Jacksonville State University. Later she earned her Ed.S. from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Saraharte Watson married Alvin Byers in 1947. Alvin had dropped out of school in 1944, his senior year, to fight in World War II. When the war ended, he returned to St. Clair County High School and graduated in 1946. Alvin attended JSU and earned a degree in education.

The Byers had three children. Jimmy married Karen Turner, and they have three children Matthew, Adam and Joshua. Al married Donna Colley and they have three children, Rodney, Jeremy and Zeke. Lynn married Jed Brantley and they have two children, Jacob and Rachel. Alvin loved sports and all three children got involved in sports. Lynn could play as well as her brothers. Her comment was, “He taught me to play anything that had a ball in it!”

Both Saraharte and Alvin had careers as teachers in Odenville. Alvin taught various subjects and coached various sports and is well-remembered for his baseball teams and both boys’ and girls’ basketball teams. Both teams went to state playoffs at various times. Saraharte taught elementary grades and retired as head of the elementary school.

Hop and Sally Watson lived in the house until their deaths. Saraharte and Alvin became owners at Sally’s passing. Then Alvin died in 2001 and Saraharte in 2003. After her death, great-grandson Jimmy Byers and wife Karen became owners/caretakers of the lovely old home.

The first thing Jimmy and Karen had to face was the bat infestation in part of the house. And not just any bat, but the protected brown bat, requiring that they be relocated. Only a wildlife relocator could do this. Jimmy located one of American Indian lineage who successfully got them out of the house and relocated. “We probably had a thousand bats,” Jimmy said. “The porch ceiling was sagging from guano. We had to redo the ceiling on the porch and redo two walls in the living room.”

When talking with Jimmy and Karen, their son Matt, and Jimmy’s first cousin, Judy Gibson Banks, one hears memories of loving parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles spilling out as refreshing as a fire hydrant at full flow on an Alabama summer day — memories of a house full of loving kindness.

Jimmy lived his first three years in this house, for Saraharte and Alvin lived upstairs in the house until they could build a home in Moody. Karen commented, “They brought Jimmy home from Leeds Hospital to the Watson House. Saraharte talked about having the heater upstairs and how they had to keep it warm for Jimmy.”

Jimmy’s face broke into a wide smile when this interviewer asked about his memories of his Granddaddy Hop and Grandmother Sally. He chuckled as he began. “Granddaddy was my buddy. I loved him with all I could love anybody. When I was a little fellow, I guess it was in ’54, Granddaddy bought a Shetland pony. We took the back seat out of the car, and we brought the pony home in the car. We named him Buckshot and he actually lived to be 34 years old.

“Later we had horses, but we had Buckshot before we had anything else. And because me and my brother Al were just kids and weren’t good with the reins yet, so Granddaddy would lead us all over the pasture — us on Buckshot.”

When Jimmy paused to reflect, Karen added, “Jimmy talked about Granddaddy riding him and Al around the pasture; well, he did the same thing with our boys. He would sit them on the pony and ride them around the pasture and they loved it. Our boys loved their Grandmother and Granddaddy Watson.”

“This happened later,” Jimmy continued, “but Granddaddy was — how can I put this — was feeling pretty good one day, and he brought Buckshot up the steps and into the living room and Buckshot messed in the floor. Needless to say, Grandmother put him and Buckshot back out of the house!”

Judy Gibson Banks and her sister Wanda grew up in the Byers’ home under the guardianship of their Uncle Alvin and Saraharte. Hop and Sally happily added them as grandchildren. Judy lovingly remembered “Grandmother and Granddaddy” and the good times she had at their house on the hill. “The horses were up there at the Watson House. Wanda and I started working with the horses, and we rode horses all over that hill. But Granddaddy would worry about us, so when we were riding — no matter where we were on that place — we could look up and Granddaddy would be somewhere on that hill watching to make sure we were OK.”

Hop and Sally loved their grandchildren and the grandchildren’s love for them comes shimmering through in interviews. Karen commented, “Hop and Sally, were two of the most giving people you would ever meet. She welcomed everybody into this house. The football team — Jimmy and Al would bring folks home, and some of ‘em stayed. She was so good about that. Always had food for them, cooked for them.” 

On the way to school each morning, Sade would drive her family to school, stopping at Sally’s to check on her. Every afternoon they would stop by again. A fond memory that lingers is how almost every afternoon Grandmother Sally would have divinity, or pound cake, or some snack for the grandkids after a long school day.

When Jimmy started college in Jacksonville, he recalls that when he and David Veasey commuted together, “I’d pick up David in Moody and then we’d come by here every Sunday evening when we headed to Jacksonville. And she’d fix us snacks for the week and feed us before we started up there.”

Legendary fried chicken and more

Sally’s cooking was legendary in the family. Jimmy remembered, “Every weekend we ate up here at Grandma’s house. And on Sunday — she had the best fried chicken you ever would eat. In all my life, I’ve never tasted any as good as hers.” He said that eating at Grandma’s on Christmas was like eating at a cafeteria she had so many dishes. “She was a diabetic,” Jimmy noted, “but she cooked it all!”

Jimmy’s sister, Lynn, joined the dinner-memory choir, saying, “Sunday dinner at Grandmother’s was amazing. She made the best fried chicken around.”

Lynn also spoke of her love for Granddaddy Hop. “I loved just spending quality time with my Granddaddy. He was one amazing man. I loved listening to all the stories Granddaddy would tell us.”

Another occasion for family meals occurred Easter Sunday. The family would attend church and then to Grandmother and Granddaddy’s house for a big meal — and of course it included Sally’s fried chicken! After lunch, the kids hunted Easter eggs hidden over the hilltop.

The family enjoyed telling about Hop’s pipe and Sally’s cigarettes. “Granddaddy smoked Prince Albert tobacco in his pipe,” Jimmy related, “and Grandmother smoked cigarettes. Well, she got tired of buying rolled cigarettes, so she used a brown paper bag. She would cut the paper bag up and roll her cigarettes using Granddaddy’s Prince Albert tobacco and smoke those brown sack cigarettes.” Sally bought cigarettes only when they visited relatives.

Sally did all the driving, for Hop never drove a car. The grandchildren told how when school was out in the spring, Sally would load the family in her car to visit relatives in various towns in north-central Alabama. “Granddaddy always went with us, but he had little patience with visits and was ready to leave soon after arriving,” Jimmy remembered.

Although Hop never drove an automobile, in his later years, he bought a riding lawnmower and had a good time riding it all over the home-place hill. Today, where he had such a good time, his descendants had enjoyed festive occasions. In the past several years, the hilltop has been used for wedding events.

Quiet home weddings have occurred in the home, including Donna Colley and Al Byers and Judy Gibson and Curtis Banks. However, Jimmy and Karen, wanting family members to continue enjoying the old home place, have hosted the garden weddings and receptions for family members. The first one of these was for Lynn and Jed’s daughter, Rachael. The ceremony took place on the wide front porch with guests sitting in chairs set up on the lawn. A white tent in the back, where Hop drove his lawnmower, served for the reception and dancing with a live band.

 One can hope that Hop and Sally and Sade and Alvin (should he be interested), somehow get a glimpse of those festive events at their well-loved old home.

Great grandchildren also have delightful memories of Hop and Sally Watson. Matt Byers in a college essay wrote this:

“The greatest man I ever knew was Hop Watson, my great-grandfather. … No child could have known a more caring, loving and understanding human being.  … I remember the look in his eye when his ‘little man’ would do something he’d taught him and do it right! From riding mop ponies to real ponies, I learned it all from him. He taught me so many things about life, the land, and most importantly, about love. … When my brother, Adam, came along, I had to share my granddaddy. That was tough for me, but I managed. … With the help of our granddaddy, we thought we could do anything. He loved us dearly and we loved him. After Granddaddy passed on, I made a promise to myself to let everyone I cared about know it. … I still think about him today. His influence over my life is still prominent and I owe him a lot. I just wish that I’d told him how much I loved him. So, to ‘the greatest man I ever knew,’ I love you.”

In a recent conversation, Matt joined the “Hallelujah Chorus” of Sunday dinner at “Nana’s and Granddaddy’s house. My great-grandmother fried chicken like nobody else. Her recipe, which to my knowledge has not been matched in St. Clair County, drew people from miles around. Everyone wanted some of that delicious, crispy-hot poultry. Granddaddy Watson had fresh corn and other vegetables to go with it. And if it was July, you could thump the watermelons and enjoy something delightful. Those were the days!”

A Christmas tradition

Shawn Banks, Judy and Curtis’ son, remembered Christmas time. “Some of my happiest memories are of Christmas at Granddaddy and Nana Watson’s home. Each year, a week or two before Christmas, Granddaddy would gather the grandchildren and set out to find the ideal tree. After traipsing down the hill, across the highway, through the woods along the creek, we would find our tree.

“When the tree was in place, everyone would gather in the living room to decorate our prize. We hung the stockings and … when the decorating was finished, Nana would say, ‘Isn’t that pretty?’ My favorite time was topping the tree with the star. Not an elaborate star; just a simple one that Granddaddy had made of cardboard and covered with tinfoil. Each year, a different grandchild got to put the star on the tree. It was an exciting time when my turn came around.”

To Shawn, the memory of that homemade Christmas star is “…a spark of inspiration. A little spark that could relight the ashes of burnout, until we spring forth like the Phoenix, finding a new zest and appreciation for family and happy memories.” Today, the cherished star radiates memories throughout the year from its protected place in a curio cabinet.

Sally and Hop were icons in Odenville, as were Sade and Alvin. Their many years of teaching in the elementary and high school bring fond memories to Odenvillians, many now in the senior citizen years.

Ode to Sade

Sade’s students undoubtedly remember her love for Alabama and Odenville history. She diligently collected local history and shared it with her students. When an Odenville history project was under way, she tracked down vintage photographs and located individuals who could contribute to the needed information. She was a cheerleader for Odenville.

Family members agree that Sade was the “Rock of Gibraltar” of the family and her heart was full of love for family and friend. Karen recalled Sade’s love for people and how she wanted everybody welcomed who came to the house, making sure that each had been introduced around to the others. Having grown up in a loving home, Sade knew how to love generously. That is a beautiful legacy expressed by her poet grandson, Matt Byers.

“Sade”

The picture of what love should be

Was seen upon her face.

The matron of our family

Displayed her love with grace:

Examples of how we should live

In order to bear fruit —

Examples of the way

To give to others as our root —

For Sade was more than we could see,

A wife, a mom, a saint.

A Mimi’s grandiosity

Whose ways were calm and quaint.

She cared for all as if her own

And never so for gain.

Her seeds of love were aptly sown,

Forever to remain.

Some sunny day, should you drive by this lovely home, think on this:  Happy memories are built on love, and love endures long after a dear one has left us behind. Such is the history of the Watson and Byers families.