This is the very rough draft of an article soon to be submitted. If you have any comments or suggestions I would appreciate your input.
We all continue to learn as we progress through the stages of life. Friends, neighbors, family members, and buddies each leave benchmarks and stepping stones. I was recently looking at a list of what someone deemed newsworthy people who passed away in 2009 and I thought about some of your recently deceased neighbors who left positive or lasting impressions on many local citizens.
One of the first individuals who had a 'stage' name was Brian 'Big Daddy' Hicks who was a local rock and roll deejay. A truly affable individual he fashioned his 'Big Daddy' name like Cousin Brucie and other rock and roll spinners.
Brian was a good guy, loved to laugh, and had their rare talent of making you feel important. He also has the distinction of making 7 hole in one's. What makes this feat unique is that he made 4 left-handed and 3 right handed. His weekly poker buddies pay him tribute by having his seat vacant with his picture taped to the chair.
The sound of her high heels walking down the hall would cause students and teachers to sit up a little straighter. Mrs. Tina Duvall was the jr. high principal and as former student Jimmy Ring said, you would try not to walk by her but if you did you were silent and invisible. As Johnny Jaynes commented, her occasional scowl would melt you, but her administration of the board of education was much feared.
In the old jr. high building she would cut on the intercom in order to moniter how the teacher was instructing and managing the class. Once when I was in the 7th grade I was in a Spanish class with a group of smart 8th graders. It was purely a clerical error on someone's part that I was in this class. However one day we were blindfolding students and letting them strike at a pinata and we were apparently enjoying the festivities a little too loudly because the intercom clicked on and this commanding voice said, "Mrs so and so, please control your class." It may have been the whitest I ever saw an adult's face become.
Jim "Boo' Haynes was the first 'character' I ever knew. He could regale you with some wild tales. He was about six or seven years older than I and to listen to him you would think he had toured the world. At age 25 he decided to join Bob Lynch and play college football at Georgia Military College. He was dismissed from the team during the season when on a rainy game night he put a raincoat over his football uniform. The raincoat annoyed the coach but he also got caught smoking a cigarrette in the third quarter.
He performed an act that I thought was very admirable. He was the bus driver for which mostly delivered kids to the Edgewood subdivision. There were a few kids on the bus who lived further from the school and were usually the last ones left off. One of the girls was a rather homely, slow and poor girl who was unmercilessly teased for her looks and status. She listened to the insults with a quiet dignity and never fought back. She suffered these playground insults for a couple of years.
One day Boo took the bus directly to her house for the first stop. After she left the bus he pulled away a short distance and stopped the bus, then he stood up and said there would be no more teasing of this young lady, looked directly at the older boys, and said if any riders did not like his edict they were welcome to step off the bus for a challenge of fisticuffs. There were no takers.
In the mid fifties there was a new term popularized called juvenile delinquency. Teen age problems became a new social phenomena. The mobility of families and the absence of fathers due to the war, rock and roll, more leisure time, money, and cars for teenagers were some or a combination of reasons that kids were getting in to trouble. The local high schools were points of disruption.
In the late 50's the Camden School Board hired a no-nonsense principal named Francis Snelgrove and this new sheriff quickly restored order. Mr. Snelgrove was very professional and quickly established order. In the following years he eventually became the county superintendent of schools. As the superintendent he never played politics. Once when a certain school board member wanted a certain individual for an administrative position Mr. Snelgrove proposed 17 people for this position before he ran out of options.
One interesting story of being sent to Mr. Snelgrove's office happened one spring afternoon. The basketball coach signed out several of us from study hall and we would go play basketball every day during the last period of the day. Sometimes we walked and some times we rode if someone had a car.
This paticular day we were just going to ride over to the gym when Charlie Wilson said why don't we go to the four ball golf tournament. We all agreed to the change, but as we started to a leave a coach caught us and sent us to Mr. Snelgrove's office. On the way to the office we collabarated on our story.
Mr. Shelgrove walked in the room and looked around and asked Charles Ives what was our story. Charles spun such a tale I thought we were on our way to Alcatraz.
Thank you for your attention.
Here's Buster's e-mail address:
beckhamfam(at)hotmail.com
I think that we grew up around an enviable cast of notable characters.
So far as teachers go I have several memories which have stuck with me throughout the years. One is from Mr. Rawson Hipp who tried to teach me some geometry. I remember him telling the story of how his back became injured during WWII while he served in the U.S. Navy. As I recall the story, he was steering a landing craft toward a beach landing when he got knocked off the back of the boat and a nerve in his back was pinched beyond repair requiring him to walk, rather unsteadily, with a cane for the rest of his life. Mr. Hipp had a great sense of humor extending even to his injury and I remember him telling the tale on himself of having to use the toilet at home late one night and he didn't want to turn on the light and wake Mrs. Hipp so he was walking down the hallway leaning on the wall in order to steady himself. Unfortunately someone had left a closet door open and, as he put it, "I kept leaning until I fell right into the closet". Well, I don't know if those were his exact words, but they're close. I never did do well in geometry though!
I believe it was in the 11th grade that I had English with Mr. Toms and the class was right after lunch. Mr. Toms always locked the class during lunch and when someone in the class decided that English should not be on the agenda for the day a pencil point would be broken off in the doors keyhole. Mr. Toms would try for about 5 minutes to unlock the door, without success, and then send everyone to the library. This seemed to be at least a weekly occurance.
Who was it who could sleep with his eyes open in Mrs. Schreiber's French class?
In this digital age which encourages self publishing I think we should do a compilation book of memories from as many former classmates as would like to participate. It wouldn't cost anything other than the cost to buy the book if the contributor chose to do so and we would be preserving these memories for all time.
Is anyone interested?
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