'SOMETHING WE COULD CALL OUR OWN’

Betty Freeman can close her eyes and see the line of people  stretching all the way down to Broadway.

Betty Freeman (Photo by Dsto Moore)

“They came from everywhere,” she said. East Macon. Tindall Heights. Fort Hill. The Pleasant Hill neighborhood.

She remembers the laughter, the anticipation, the excitement of going to the Roxy Theatre with her friends on Saturdays.

“It brought people together,” she said. “It was something we could call our own.”

She was about 9 years old. She and her twin brother, Jim, would go at least twice a month. 

She loved the Bugs Bunny cartoons right before the main feature. Often, that would be a Western starring Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Rex Allen or maybe the Lone Ranger.

The Roxy, built by Phil Kaplan, opened on Hazel Street in late 1949 as a venue for Black patrons during the Jim Crow era. Now, the Quonset hut-style building is on Historic Macon’s Fading Five list of endangered places across the county. HMF will also nominate it for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

Freeman said her grandmother talked about the Roxy “all the time.”

Of course, it was hard not to notice. It’s right across the street from the home Freeman grew up in — and has lived in all her life.

“It was segregated,” the 71-year-old said. “We couldn’t go into the white theaters. That was the main entertainment we had. We had a TV, but it was black and white, a small screen.

“When you’d go to the theater, it was exciting to see people on that big, wide screen.”

She remembers the marquee outside the theater, advertising the current shows, and wonders what happened to it. 

The old Roxy, with marquee intact.

You can’t talk about going to see movies at the Roxy back then  without mentioning Capitola Flour. Inside those sacks of flour were metal tokens you could use for free admission.

A Capitola movie token

“We mostly got in on those Capitolas,” Freeman said, laughing.

She had a Plan B, though. When there were no tokens or they didn’t have the money, she and her friends would sit on the bank of her front yard and at least get periodic peeks through the theater’s front door when it opened.

“We were lucky to be directly across the street.”

A young James Brown, the Godfather of Soul

There were also talent shows at the theater. Otis Redding sang there. Freeman says James Brown and “Little Richard” Penniman performed there too.

“We had a lot of important people who started out at that theater.”

(Brown and one of his first bands, the Famous Flames, recorded a lean version of what became his first hit, "Please, Please, Please," in the basement of radio station WIBB in 1955.)

Freeman remembers Little Richard pulling up outside the Roxy once and stepping out of a limo. Even when he made it big, she said, “Whenever he came to town, he’d always stop in front of the Roxy for a few minutes.”

Redding once worked at the Quick Car Wash right down the street across Broadway, she said. Her mom worked there too for a time.

Guys at the car wash would tell Redding: “You ain’t never gonna make it singing,” Freeman said.

“The theater was a good thing. It was good for our area” — the Greenwood Bottom neighborhood. “It brought people together. That’s what I liked about it.”

It was also a balm for the area, including the nearby Tybee neighborhood, which faced its share of challenges. Toward the end of the Roxy’s run and soon afterward, homes in the Tybee neighborhood began coming down, making way for “urban renewal,” said James Timley, a former Macon City Council president who led a tour of the area recently. City officials blamed substandard housing and the area’s  “crime-ridden” environment for much of the demolition. 

This plaque on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard gives a concise history of the Tybee community.

Equncer High (Photo by Oby Brown)

Equncer High was born on Ash Street, one street over from Hazel. So it was easy to get to a movie at the Roxy, which she and her friends called “the show.”

The children would ask each other: “Y’all going to the show today? … Yeah, ’cause we got us a Capitola!” 

They even had curbside service.

“Daddy would put all three of us in a wheelbarrow and take us  over.” 

She thinks it cost 9 cents for children to get in. Maybe a dime.

The theater sold popcorn, candy, cookies and drinks. “But we didn’t have that kind of money to buy that,” High said.

Her brother, Martin Kendrick, worked there.

She remembers how soft the red, leather seats were.

She loved Esther Williams movies.

“We would always sit down near the front — all us kids,” the 81-year-old said. “We used to have that theater full on Saturdays.”

A man named Leroy Scott would walk around checking on people with flashlights.

“Y’all down here cuttin’ up?” he’d ask sternly. “I’ll put y’all out for two weeks!”

If that happened, High and her friends would just walk down to the Douglass Theatre, about a mile away.

She saw more than movies at the Roxy. There was a dancer named Shirley Hill and a singer named Bill Jones. She heard a band there once called Patty Cake.

“We were around there all the time.”

The whole area bustled with business. There was the B&B Service Station at Hazel and Third, where you could also catch a cab and get something to eat in the back. (She says the H&H Restaurant actually started there before moving to Broadway, then Forsyth Street.) The car wash. The Floyds’ store. 

Whatever they did, though, they made sure to get home on time.

Her dad told her: “When that street light comes on, you better be home.” He’d take a switch to the children if they were late.

“Our parents didn’t play,” she said. “Kids didn’t run the street and cut up like they do now.”

Ronnie Gary (Photo by Oby Brown)

The Roxy — one of three Macon theaters for Black residents — was “part of our Black history,” said Ronnie Gary, 72, a retired letter carrier.

He grew up in the old Enterprise Homes off Broadway, up near what is now Eisenhower Parkway.

There wasn’t a lot for a 10-year-old to do at the time, so the Roxy was a big deal to the kids.

There was the Douglass, Grace Hill swimming pool on Dempsey Avenue and a nearby baseball field where future major leaguer John “Blue Moon” Odom once played.

“That was the entertainment for Black folks,” he said. “You came here. We enjoyed ourselves. You’d go in and have fun and watch the movies.”

He remembers Mr. Lester’s filling station down the street, a pool hall and McLendon’s Cafe around the corner.

“There was no fussin’ and fighting — none of that stuff,” he said. “We had fun. It was safe.”

Ruby Moore liked the cowboy pictures too.

“I could sing all the songs with ’em,” she said.

Those Capitola tokens were important to her too. Thank goodness her grandmother, Sallie Fullmore, made biscuits for her grandfather, Arthur, to take to work at Robins Air Force Base every day for lunch.

She knew the more biscuits her grandmother made, the more flour she’d use — and the more Capitola tokens there’d be in that bowl on top of the refrigerator. 

“When there were enough tokens in the bowl for us all to go, we all went to the movie together,” the 71-year-old said. “Our minds were on the Roxy Theatre.”

She still has that bowl.

Sometimes she’d get a dime for allowance. If she had a Capitola token and a dime, she had it made. Maybe she could get a Sno-Cone too.

The movie offerings were all over the road. She saw “The 10 Commandments” there. Then one week there was something called “Peyton Place.” (Trailer promotion: “Where scandal, homicide … and moral hypocrisy belie its tranquil facade.”)

Moore remembers the beautiful women and colorful clothes — and a lot of kissing (and more) going on.

When she got home, somebody asked her: What movie did you see?

“I didn’t want to tell that,” she said. “They didn’t know what ‘Peyton Place’ was. But her parents found out, and when they  did, “There was no more of that” for a while.

The times were much simpler then. The pace was slower. There was joy in the little things we often take for granted  these days.

While Moore was sharing her memories of the Roxy, she paused for a moment, perhaps lost in reverie of those happy days.

“I loved my childhood,” she said.

For all the nostalgia about the Roxy’s golden days, a new chapter in the theater’s life is on the way if a Macon man’s plans take hold.

Wes Stroud won a $5,000 grant earlier this year to draw vendors to a blacktop area behind the Roxy. In time, he has plans for a food park, a pedestrian plaza, public art and a concert area, among other initiatives, to help revitalize the area.

He wants to have a soft opening by early 2021, complete with fireworks, performers and, of course, food trucks.

‘It has consumed my life’

Somebody is buried here. But you wouldn’t know it from what you see.

There’s no headstone. The ground around the makeshift plot is hard and broken. Peeking through a patch of grass is a sliver of brickwork that covers the vault. If a gullywasher hit, the whole thing could vanish under rock and mud.

That’s the way it is in much of the Oak Ridge section of Rose Hill Cemetery, where Black men, women and children — many of whom were slaves — are buried. There are marble headstones there, but lots of them are in pieces. 

One Macon man, though, is trying to set things right, one plot at a time.

At daybreak one recent morning, Joey Fernandez pulled into Oak Ridge, his tow-behind trailer filled with the tools of his trade: shovels, hammers, clamps, epoxy, lime mortar, tarps, and a leaf blower among them. 

“Eighty percent of the monuments in here I can repair,” the 49-year-old said. “I don’t think anybody took me seriously until I started doing the work.”

It’s a labor of love that started innocently enough — as these things often do. Fernandez was driving near the Interstate 75/475 interchange one day when he saw a marker off the side of the highway. It piqued his interest. 

“All I saw was a sign that said Stokes Cemetery. … I went to the real estate company and asked if I could go look at it. They said they had moved it. I said ‘Let me check.’ ”

So he did. The site was overgrown and hadn’t been touched in years. It took him two days to get to it, hacking away at the dense brush.

There he found Civil War graves — and plenty more. Many of the markers were in pitiful shape.

“It upset me,” Fernandez said. “You realized that people were buried there. People prayed there, cried there. Loved ones … (I wondered), “Who’s gonna come out here and take care” of them? 

“I knew somebody had to be doing it. I started looking and I couldn’t find anyone. So I took it in my own hands, started spending my own money. I learned how to do it.

“From that moment on, it has consumed my life.”

He began driving to Savannah and taking classes on everything he could related to  grave-site repair, some of them with Jonathan Appell, a leading gravestone and monument preservationist.

Soon he began volunteering at Rose Hill, a cemetery park that opened in 1840 and was named for Simri Rose, who designed it.

Over time he showed what he could do and earned his stripes before he drew paying jobs, some of them from Historic Macon. He’s cleaned monuments. He’s repaired headstones. He’s re-pointed brickwork. He’s rebuilt entire burial plots that had collapsed.

Sometimes he’s “just had to puzzle the pieces together.”

It also took him awhile to gather the proper materials to work with that wouldn’t hurt the stones.

He uses lime mortar, for example, and not Portland cement for his repairs. That’s better for the stones and truer to the original work.

He even tries to match the size of the sand in particular mixes. One morning he was pulverizing marble chips into dust with a hammer so he could mix it with lime mortar to get the authentic look he wanted.

“No stone is the same,” he said. “I’m doing it the same way they would have back in the 1800s. The less you do to it, the better. 

“There’s a thousand of ’em in here that need work. It’s not just fixing it. It’s preserving it. You want to pass it along for future generations.”

One repair alone took him about 200 hours.

His passion and craftsmanship are evident to those who know and work with him.

"Joey is exactly the combination of expertise and enthusiasm that Rose Hill needs,” said Matt Chalfa, Historic Macon’s director of preservation field services. “I've had the opportunity to see him work both in the field making repairs and at various events as an advocate for the cemetery, and in both settings he is an invaluable partner for HMF as we work toward restoring this Macon landmark. 

“The local history and culture that reside in Rose Hill are in excellent hands. Joey is a true asset in preserving that heritage."

Now, the word is getting out about his skills and his company, Preserving our Georgia Cemeteries. He’s done work for Macon-Bibb County and other cities and counties across the state, as well as churches, veterans groups and preservation clubs. Earlier this year, Historic Macon honored him with a Preservation Award for his revitalization work.

Alpha Delta Pi officials have also reached out to him about restoring the brick wall at the site of the sorority’s founder, Eugenia Tucker Fitzgerald, who is buried in Rose Hill. (ADPi, as it’s commonly known, was founded at Wesleyan College in 1851.)

He’d also like to tackle the grave site of Joseph Bond, who is buried in the Holly Ridge section of Rose Hill. The large angel monument at the site, carved from Carrara marble, is one of the most well-known in the cemetery. Vandals and a tornado have taken their toll over the years, though, including a missing portion of the angel’s right arm. (Fernandez himself has found more than 50 scattered pieces of Connecticut brownstone that are missing from the site.)

He guesses that about half the damage at Rose Hill over the years has come from Mother Nature. The rest is from vandalism, theft or human error.  Cars have backed into statues along some of the narrow paths, he said, and contractors have also done their share of damage over time.

“A lot of people come here and never see the broken monuments,” he said. “And it’s been robbed of a lot of things.” Cast-iron fencing. Urns. Finials. Arms on statues. 

Rose Hill needs help, he said, but it has great potential as a tourist draw. It could use directional and exit signs at strategic points, and some of the small roads should be blocked off.

He calls Rose Hill “an untapped gem — one of the best things Macon has to offer” —  that too many folks take for granted.

Many people know about the Allman Brothers shrine, but the cemetery is full of Macon history that’s being lost to time.

With some work and better marketing, “more people will come here,” he said. Guided tours on weekends and more special events would help.

So would more folks joining the Friends of Rose Hill, which supports the cemetery’s work. (To do so, contact Historic Macon’s Matt Chalfa at mchalfa@historicmacon.org or (478) 742-5084, ext. 103.)

For now, Fernandez is doing what he can to make a difference, one grave site at a time. He knows, though, that he’ll never get to them all.

“I wish I had started this when I was young,” he said. “I had no idea. But I want to do as many of ’em as I can. I want to save the ones that are here before they’re gone.”

THEY BUILT IT, AND ONE DAY WE’LL RETURN

It was big news across Macon when it opened 91 years ago this week. So big, in fact, that the city’s mayor, Luther Williams, even asked bosses to let their workers leave early that day: April 18, 1929.

Mayor Luther Williams’ proclamation

“I, therefore, proclaim Thursday afternoon … to be a holiday as far as possible,” the mayor said, “and respectfully urge upon all our people to come out in force, and furthermore would request that the merchants allow as many of their employees as can be spared to attend the opening. … Let us consider it a part of our duty to be present.”

There was a baseball game that day at the city’s brand-new (and unnamed) stadium in Central City Park. Kennesaw Mountain Landis, baseball’s first commissioner, even threw out the first pitch.

Times were good. The start of the Great Depression was six months off.

Within two weeks City Council members named it Luther Williams Field, in the mayor’s honor. It cost about $60,000 to build. 

This iconic sign greets visitors to Luther Williams Field.

Macon native John “Blue Moon” Odom was a star for the Oakland Athletics.

If there ever were a priority list of historic places to preserve (and history to share) in Macon, you’d have to include Luther Williams Field. (And there is: It’s Historic Macon’s Saving Places Index.)  The ballpark is on the National Register of Historic Places. Its old-time look is much the same as it was back then. The brick entryway. The words MACON BASE BALL PARK in block letters right outside steps to the grandstand. (There’s even a Walk of Fame that honors players who’re either from Macon or who played in Macon.) 

The park has witnessed both glory and despair over the years. Jackie Robinson played at Luther Williams on April 7, 1949, during an exhibition game between his Brooklyn Dodgers and the Macon Peaches. In the process, he broke the color barrier in Georgia.

Pete Rose and other members of the Macon Peaches were a championship team in 1962.

Hank Aaron, Ted Williams and Joe Dimaggio also played there. Old-timers remember seeing future Cincinnati Reds stars Pete Rose, Tony Perez, Lee May and Tommy Helms, among others, play for the Peaches in the early ‘60s. 

Vince Coleman set a base-stealing record for the Macon Redbirds in 1983 (despite missing a month of the season with a broken hand.) Chipper Jones, Jermaine Dye, Andruw Jones, John Rocker and Rafael Furcal played for the Macon Braves when it was an Atlanta Class A affiliate.

It also sat empty for years, waiting on much-needed repairs.

High school teams — public and private — once played in the Lem Clark Tournament there each spring. In the mid-’70s, college-age players home for the summer formed a league and took the field there too. (I remember a few at-bats in each.)

Since the 1950s, seven different major league teams operated farm teams there: the Dodgers, Reds, Phillies, Tigers, Cardinals, Pirates — and the Braves, who last played there in 2002 before moving to Rome.

Now it is home to the Macon Bacon, a wood-bat collegiate team in the Coastal Plain League about to begin its third year of play — we hope — as we also wait for the major leagues to return.

Despite shelter-in-place orders and other social distancing measures, the Bacon are preparing to play a full season. The roster is set. They’re selling tickets and lining up sponsors. County workers are cutting the grass. 

“We’re going full bore planning for the home opener May 29,” team President Brandon Raphael said. “April and May are our go time. Everyone is prepared to get this thing moving.” (UPDATE: The league season will begin July 1, with a 28-game schedule for the team. Social distancing will restrict attendance at home games to about 1,300 fans.)

Giant fans will help tamp down the heat.

If you haven’t been inside the stadium lately, there are plenty of improvements: A beer garden and group areas on the first- and third-base sides. Picnic and children’s play areas. Seating and painting upgrades. And new for this season: four huge ceiling fans with 16-foot blades to help beat the heat.

Raphael actually remembers the first time he set foot inside the ballpark: July 27, 2018. He’d flown in from San Antonio, Texas, for a visit while he was considering taking the president’s job. He had done a little research on Macon and the ball field, but “I did not realize how much history I was going to be exposed to” at Luther Williams Field.

“I will never forget it,” he said.

In October, his family — wife, Kimberly, and their two children, Caden and Brooklyn, came to Macon for the first time. Raphael brought them to the ballpark. His son had just finished a book report on Jackie Robinson. As the two of them strolled around the field, they sat in the home dugout at one point.

“Do you know who you’re sharing a bench with?” Raphael asked his son. “Jackie Robinson played baseball here at Luther Williams Field.”

Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Georgia when he played at Luther Williams Field in 1949.

The park’s throwback features have made it a Hollywood favorite for 45 years. You know the titles. “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings.” … “42.” … “Trouble With the Curve.” … “Brockmire.”

Luther Williams Field on April 18, 1929.

Yes, they all make us miss baseball. And at a time when we’re turning to such diversions, we can take some solace in a line from another baseball movie, “Field of Dreams,” that has an uncanny relevance these days as we hope for the best in the midst of our collective turmoil:

“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again.

“But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.” 

The Macon Bacon are proud to honor baseball’s past at Luther Williams Field.

Socially distant, but historically connected

Mother Nature may be the only entity unaware of the public health concerns we hear more about each day.

The sun continues to shine, and cherry blossom trees gave us their annual splendor, almost adding insult to the injury of having to call off our town’s prized Cherry Blossom Festival. But, as community organizations have kept us in the spirit with virtual programming, we are all discovering ways to stay connected with and supportive of our community.

Trent Mosely, Rachelle Wilson pause during a bike tour earlier this month.

One way to stay connected is by taking a tour of one of Macon’s historic districts and learning more about our historically rich community. Historic Macon’s website has amazing resources and guides, enabling you to take most of these tours virtually from the comfort and safety of home, on foot or by bike — or even by car.

Many of us have taken to neighborhood walks or bike rides these days, alone or with immediate family members and at a safe distance from others, to maintain healthy practices and get a glimpse of this gorgeous spring. Local advocacy organization Bike Walk Macon has compiled a list of local and national guidelines for walking or biking outdoors while complying to recommended safety practices for yourself and others. (As things change daily, please consult the most recent public advisory before leaving your house. )

Below we have compiled a list of resources for historic tours throughout Macon to experience whichever way you feel most comfortable. And here’s a video of our recent tour. Enjoy!

Music History Tour

virtual • bike • foot • car

In and around downtown, this tour is full of interesting facts and plenty of fun. Many of the sites are marked with plaques that denote a spot of significance. Click here for a map and to access the tour brochure and here for a playlist with some of the featured artists.

Cotton Avenue District  

virtual • bike • foot • car

During the 20th century, Jim Crow laws forced African-Americans to establish separate business districts in Macon. The Cotton Avenue District became one of these areas, and it grew into a major center of black business. Click here to access the tour brochure for this historically significant area folded into present-day downtown Macon.

Industrial District  

virtual • bike • foot • car

Now’s a great time to explore a neighborhood or historic district on bicycle.

On the outskirts of downtown Macon in what was once known as the Tybee neighborhood, you can find the Industrial District. Click here for the tour brochure and insight into this surprisingly vast historical area.

Lights On Macon

virtual • bike • foot

A truly beautiful experience, Lights On Macon compiles a brief history of more than 150 historic houses in Macon. This is an experience that can be divided into neighborhoods and enjoyed over time or all at once.

Historic neighborhoods

bike • foot • car

From Ingleside to Cherokee Heights to Pleasant Hill and North Highlands, Macon has many historic neighborhoods with unique houses. To break up the monotony of days at home, consider driving through one of these historic districts and learning a bit about a neighborhood you may have never experienced before.

As you go on your historical journey, whether virtually or in person, be sure to share your experience by using #maconispreservation and tagging @historicmacon.

Ghosts of the past come rushing back

Social distancing — and disruption. The closing of schools, factories, small businesses and churches. Quarantines. Panic buying.

They’re all making the news these days, harkening back to the so-called “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918.

An estimated 30,000 Georgians died from it. All told, about 675,000 Americans succumbed, most of them young adults 20 to 40 years old. Worldwide death estimates range from 50 million to 100 million — many of them soldiers, in trenches and barracks. 

An emergency hospital in Kansas during the 1918 influenza epidemic. (National Museum of Health and Medicine)

Back then there were no vaccines, antibiotics, ventilators or electron microscopes. Health officials could not test people with mild symptoms so they could self-quarantine. There was little protective equipment for health-care workers. And it was almost impossible to trace contacts, since this particular strain of H1N1 flu seemed to engulf entire communities so quickly.

The outbreak came in waves. The first one hit that spring. The second, in the fall, was the most deadly. (Health officials are worried about that prospect now in the face of our current circumstances.)

In all, a half-billion people were infected — about a third of the world’s population at the time. One estimate says the virus infected up to a quarter of the American population of about 103 million people.

Safety guidelines from Illustrated Current News (National Library of Medicine)

It was a silent foe for months. In the early days, many folks didn’t take it seriously. Back then, authorities “didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know what to do and, therefore, they did the human thing, which is to say it’s not happening,” Dr. Alfred Crosby says in his book “America’s Forgotten Pandemic.” Then people started dying.

In Georgia, the flu wave hit Camp Hancock near Augusta in early October. Recruits received physicals, then were sent off to crowded training camps for later deployment to Europe to fight in World War I. Military trains brought the virus to camps near Atlanta, Columbus and Macon — Camp Wheeler — before it spread to nearby cities. (And Camp Wheeler had just dealt with a measles epidemic the year before.)

Downtown Macon in the early 1900s.

“Today in Georgia History” pegs the date the virus descended on Macon as Oct. 15, 1918. “The Spanish influenza epidemic sweeping the nation hit Macon, with 250 new cases reported in the previous 48 hours.”  

Two huge forces were at cross-purposes that fall: continued soldier recruitment to fight (and the close quarters that effort entailed, from military trains to troopships), and the need for social distancing and shutting down activity to quell the virus’ spread.

It’s hard to believe, but the virus and its devastation weren’t often front-page news at the time, at least not in Macon. 

The major countries fighting in the war didn’t want to give their enemies any advantage, so the extent of the flu’s rampage — from both local and national leaders — was often minimized. There was wartime morale to consider. And officials wanted to preserve the public order and avoid panic.

Dispatches about the flu often ran on page 3 inside The Macon Daily Telegraph, said Joe Kovac Jr., a senior reporter for The Telegraph who looked at the paper’s coverage and tweeted about the outbreak recently:

“Our Spanish Flu coverage in Macon in October 1918 included an editorial on embracing inconveniences to avoid spread. (Wearing masks appears to have been encouraged: “A city of bandaged faces is better than coffins piled up in our morgues.”)

One subhead read: “Total of 191 New Cases Are Reported at Health Office, 46 Being from Payne’s Mill

Spanish flu update in The Macon Daily Telegraph.

From an editorial of the day titled “Flail the Flu,” which Kovac cited:

“If these men who have our community health in charge come to the decision all public gatherings should be closed they will act promptly and without fear because public sentiment is already strongly for that,” it read in part. “Fortunately it seems we are so far from the epidemic stage in Macon there is every hope it will not even threaten to reach that stage and that as it stands now it can be as well handled by people going pretty well as usual about their affairs provided they exercise due personal diligence in protecting both themselves and other people.”

As for our current challenge, we don’t know yet if the past is prologue, as Shakespeare told us. But we do know this: In this time of great uncertainty, what has gotten us through other national crises will serve us well now: Setting aside differences and pulling together. Helping each other however we can, from a video call to a grocery run for an older neighbor. Staying connected, through social media or across a backyard fence. Letting others know that they are not alone.

Stay safe and take care. And let us hear from you.

A Macon street bears his name, but you don’t know his story

You’d have to forgive Louis Persley if he had occasional bouts of identity crisis.

He was born in Macon in 1890 and died in 1932. You’ll find his first name spelled both “Lewis” and “Louis” in different registries. Census records from 1900, 1910 and 1920 spell his family’s last name “Pearsley,” “Parfley” and then “Persley.” There are even variations in his middle name (Hudson/Hudison).

A Macon street named for him (or his family) is spelled “Pursley,” and that’s how his name reads on his gravestone in Linwood Cemetery, where he is buried.

Louis Persley

But make no mistake. There was never any confusion about his talent in his chosen field, architecture. And that was at a time when such an achievement was virtually unheard of for a person of color. In fact, the Macon native was the first registered black architect in Georgia. It happened 100 years ago, on April 5,  1920.

Still, few people have ever heard of Persley. One reason is that there’s not a lot of information out there about him.

“He’s still obscure in history,” said Muriel McDowel Jackson, the head genealogy librarian and archivist at Washington Memorial Library. “We have black history, but we don’t have all of black history. We’re still learning information about people.”

(Jackson also told us about Wallace A. Rayfield, who was born in Macon in 1874 and also went on to become an architect. He designed the famous 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., that was bombed in 1963 during the civil rights movement.)

Persley grew up in the Pleasant Hill neighborhood, now a historic district. His mother and father, Maxie and Thomas, lived with their four sons at 215 Madison St., although it’s now 122 Madison St. thanks to a recalibration of street addresses decades ago. 

Persley attended public schools in Macon and then headed to Lincoln University, a historically black university near Oxford, Penn. He graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology with an architecture degree in 1914.

Robert Robinson Taylor

Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama — now Tuskegee University — offered him a teaching job. (“He still had to come back south to practice,” Jackson said.)  He taught mechanical drawing until 1917, when he volunteered to fight in World War I. (A man named Robert Robinson Taylor was director of the college’s Mechanical Industries Department at the time. Remember that name.)

When Persley returned from the war, he was promoted to head of the Architectural Drawing Division.

He hadn’t been at Tuskegee long when he designed a new building for the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Athens, one of just a few projects he ever had in Georgia. (The church began as Pierce’s Chapel in 1866, during Reconstruction, and is thought to be the first congregation in Athens that black families forged after the Civil War.) A marker erected there in 2006 tells the story.

Marker outside the First A.M.E. Church in Athens

He designed the Chambliss Hotel in 1922 and helped with the seven-story Colored Masonic Temple in Birmingham, a Renaissance Revival building that was dedicated in 1924. There are also references to Atlanta jobs and design work on a two-story brick-and-stone funeral  home in Macon.

But he really made his mark at Tuskegee, designing many of the campus’s iconic buildings, several of them while working in partnership with his colleague, Robert Taylor, during the last decade of Persley’s life. Taylor & Persley Architects may have been the country’s first-ever formal partnership of two black architects.

In 1921, the two men completed their first building for the campus, James Hall, a dorm for nursing students. Among the others were Sage Hall, a dorm for young men where the Tuskegee Airmen would later live; Logan Hall, which merged athletic and entertainment facilities; the Armstrong Science Building; and the Hollis Burke Frissell Library.

An early rendering of Logan Hall

In a short YouTube video “The Persley House: An Architectural Gem in Tuskegee,” Persley’s granddaughter, Linda Kenney Miller, tells viewers about the house that Persley designed for his second wife, Phala Harper. He completed his final design for the home, located near the university, just months before he died, and he didn’t get to see the finished product. 

Louis Persley’s granddaughter, Linda Miller.

“Mr. Persley is another of these unsung heroes,” Miller says in the 3-minute video. “History has remembered Robert Taylor and not Louis Persley. … They were great compatriots and they worked together on so many projects. It’s a mystery to me.”

Persley died July 13, 1932, while hospitalized for kidney disease, and they held his funeral at Logan Hall. But he accomplished much before his death at a young age, like so many other renowned Macon residents over the years.

 “We should remember that Macon produced two African-American architects” during those turbulent years, Jackson said, “proving that anyone can become anything.” 

Service is baked in for this HMF stalwart

You could almost set one of Vickie Hertwig’s holiday grocery-shopping lists to “The 12 Days of Christmas.”

Ten pounds of bacon, nine pounds of onions, seven pounds of cheeses, four pounds of mushrooms, three pounds of spinach, … four dozen eggs.

There’s much more, of course, but that’s what it takes to knock out 30 quiches as a fundraiser for Historic Macon, which Vickie has done for about 10 years now. (Her record is 36, by the way.)

And so it begins …

It’s a labor of love, and as is often the case, the kitchen extravaganza has connections to Historic Macon’s Flea Market.

Each year, dozens of women and men give thousands of volunteer hours to pick up, sort, clean and price items donated to Historic Macon in preparation for the markets.

One year, “A couple of us wanted to do something for the volunteers and bring them lunch,” Vickie recalled. So they baked quiches, and the offerings were a big hit. Now, the practice has evolved into a holiday tradition that many folks look forward to as December rolls around on the calendar each year.

When the process begins, she always gets help from other Historic Macon friends. Janis Haley cooked spinach and grated the Swiss and feta cheese, and Susan Hewitt-Hardacre fried bacon.

In fact, Vickie didn’t have to tell Janis when she’d begun her own prep work. When the two were in the car for an outing this past weekend, Janis asked her point blank: “Have you been cooking onions?”

(Well, yes. About nine pounds.)

Yes, they’re that good.

And that’s the key: organization and preparation. Mise en place. On the scale that Vickie bakes, it takes much of the week to make sure the finished products are ready for delivery at the Cottage Christmas, which is coming up this Sunday, Dec. 15, at the Sidney Lanier Cottage.

“Everything always takes twice as long” as you expect, she said, laughing. But as with everything, “The more often you do it, the less daunting it is.”

Her contributions to Historic Macon don’t stop at the kitchen entrance, though. She moved to Macon from St. Petersburg, Fla., in 2001. (Her husband, the late Charlie Hertwig, grew up in Macon and lived here, which brought Vickie to Macon.) She had attended Eckerd College, then Stetson University’s law school, and had practiced law in Florida for 17 years, including real estate work.

That background and knowledge equipped her to help Historic Macon in a variety of ways, from board service and research on historic buildings to crafting National Register applications for new historic districts in Macon.

Years ago, she even served as a volunteer executive director of Historic Macon for about eight months.

She likes the people — and the mission. “I’ve always been interested in historic preservation,” she said.

"Vickie helps us in so many ways," said Ethiel Garlington, Historic Macon's executive director. "She is an invaluable member of our team and contributes so much to our mission. I don't know what we'd do without her."

Added Janis: “She’s such a great cook, and she loves to use that talent to help others. She inspires us to give back.”

(You may not be as good a cook as Vickie, but there are plenty of other ways to volunteer for Historic Macon and share your talents, and we’re always grateful for the help.)

Here’s the spinach, mushroom and feta cheese quiche.

Vickie gets satisfaction herself in all that she does for the organization.

“Being involved with Historic Macon gives me the opportunity to work with a great group of people — volunteers, members and staff, many of whom have become good friends,” she said. “The fact that it is in support of an organization whose mission is important to me makes it a win-win.”

Getting a window seat in Warroad

WARROAD, Minn. — They call it Hockeytown, USA, although Detroit and a few other cities across the country stake that claim too.

A walleye sandwich was a favorite lunch order.

But here in Warroad, six miles from the Canadian border, hockey and ice skating rule (along with walleye pulled from Lake of the Woods). There’s no movie theater or bowling alley. The nearest Starbucks is 138 miles away, and if you need something from Walmart, well, that’s an 80-mile run.

There is one commercial engine in this town of 1,782 people: the family-owned Marvin Windows and Doors Co. It operates within 2.2 million square feet of work space on 45 acres, employing about 2,000 people here (including one person whose full-time job is to replace light bulbs throughout the sprawling campus.) 

In late October, eight men from across Middle Georgia got a chance to tour the plant and get a closer look at how Marvin’s products are made. Frank Ferrer, who runs Architectural Visions Inc. in Macon, led the crew, which included Ethiel Garlington, Historic Macon’s executive director, and five contractors. (AVI is a Historic Macon Preservation Partner.) 

Frank Ferrer, far left, led the crew that toured the Marvin Windows and Doors factory late last month.

From the wood processing area to the 3-D printing room, the operation is a synthesis of cutting edge technology and old-school craftsmanship. 

 When we walked into wood processing on the first day, we were dwarfed by huge stacks of lumber that seemed to go on forever (It called to mind the closing scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” when a worker wheels a crated-up ark of the covenant to oblivion alongside hundreds of other boxes.)

But there are no voids here. About 8 million board feet at a time are rolling through the plant. Long gone are the days of chop saws and hand routing. Technology reduces errors and maximizes yields.

Stacks of wood pour in, and they’re sorted by hand. Machines measure moisture content and “read” all four sides at one time. One machine uses a software program to tell another one where to make cuts (or, down the line, where router tips should make particular grooves.) 

There are automated screw guns and even “vibrating bowls” that shoot screws to the guns in the right direction. Another machine applies a thin layer of silicone to the inside of a frame — and even wipes itself off afterward.

What if a board is too short or has a flaw or defect? 

April Richter, our tour instructor.

“A hundred percent of the lumber we get in, we use,” said April Richter, our tour instructor. If a board cut is more than 1/64th of an inch off, it meets another fate, which may include the mulch pile. (Sure enough, we looked out a window a few minutes later to see a mountain of sawdust bound for the boiler system to generate heat.)

They even have a “tear-down lab” where a blind order that someone in the Marvin corporate offices submitted is dismantled piece by piece — up to 200 of them — to check for quality.

Did we mention that Warroad is isolated? That means Mavin folks have to take care of themselves.

“Everything is handled in-house,” Richter said. “We have to be self-sufficient.” There’s even a separate shop just to keep the knives on machine heads razor sharp.

That precision is crucial.

“If we don’t machine it properly, it’s not going to fit together over in production,” Richter reminded us.

Sometimes the Marvin folks get special requests to replicate an old feature on a home or building that’s long past its prime. Their 3-D printer can do that once they get a 3-D scan.

“We can duplicate what was originally there,” Richter said.

While we were there, an employee named Chris showed us a refashioned corbel from the printer made of solid aluminum that had been milled away to get the desired shape. (A corbel is a piece of stone, wood or metal, often in the form of a bracket, that projects from the side of a wall.) It took about 27 hours to mill one particular piece.

In some cases, Marvin workers make full-size mock-ups of projects to make sure they’ll get it right.

And some of those replicas are massive.

Greg Muirhead, with the company’s architectural department, described one window project for a school that was 80 feet by nearly 190 feet. (For each college that they work on, the Marvin folks hang a school banner. Right now, there are more than 120 of them, including one from Mercer University.)

For the Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf in Ontario, the company generated a handful of mock-ups. It took a month to develop the massive prototype, which weighed 43 tons in all when a truck pulled out for the 500-mile trip to the school. (The weight limit to cross into Canada was 40 tons, though, so the company had to send another truck to help.)

A year of research and consulting preceded construction on a 15-by-23-foot rose window (and front-entrance centerpiece) for St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Potsdam, N.Y. That preservation work also involved joining together 816 pieces of stained glass. (Get a closer look at the work here.

The trip was a real eye-opener.

“We were fascinated with the broad range of production and fabrication equipment used in the factory,” said Christopher Haun of Haun Design Build. He and his brother, Brandon, were among those who made the trip.

“We respected the extent of hands-on production work still being performed, the quality control over their high-end (Signature) line, and their ability to consult with general contractors and architects on custom order products for historic restorations.”

He added, “We were impressed with the Warroad community as a whole and especially the hospitality of the Marvin employees.”

And Marvin preservation work finds its way back to Macon too.

Hardman Hall, a former Carnegie Library, was a second remodeling project on the Mercer University campus. (A $20,000 Carnegie grant was seed money for the building in 1906.)

“We knew we had a reputation to uphold, and Mercer University sought to maintain the historical look of the building with modern, energy-efficient windows that would last as long or longer than the original windows,” Ferrer said. “We worked with Historic Macon Foundation and BTBB Architects to achieve the look. 

“Historic Macon Foundation was a crucial component in receiving state and federal approvals,” he added. “Their guidance was indispensable.”

Taking the trip were, L-R, Clint Brimmer, Christian Yun, Oby Brown, Brandon Haun, Ethiel Garlington, Christopher Haun, Tom Yun and Frank Ferrer.

‘You are as good as anyone’

Ruth Hartley Mosley always made an impression.

She was tall and beautiful, with piercing eyes. A commanding presence in any setting.

She didn’t have time for trifles. Her mother died when she was 12. Her father, a boot maker, instilled in her a sense of resolve and self-sufficiency that guided her all of her days. 

She was born in Savannah in 1886, but lived in Macon most of her life, moving here with her first husband, Richard Hartley (Years after his death, she married Fisher Mosley.) She was a successful businesswoman during a time when the odds of such an achievement were squarely against a woman, especially a woman of color.

She owned a funeral home, more than a hundred rental properties and was one of the first women anywhere to earn a mortician’s license.

A nurse by training, Mosley helped teach dozens of black midwives. She also was active in Macon’s civil rights movement. After her death, she was an inductee into the Georgia Women of Achievement. (Authors Margaret Mitchell and Carson McCullers were in the same class.)

Still, many folks have never heard of her. 

“She had a vision, and she knew what she wanted,” said Gerri Marion-McCord, executive director of the Ruth Hartley Mosley Memorial Women’s Center. “She believed that if you had the ability to give, it was your responsibility to do so. … Not enough people have been exposed to her throughout the community.”

The Women’s Center is located in Mosley’s former home. It’s a beautiful old building on the short stretch of Spring Street near the Cotton Avenue Historic District. It is a “contributing building” to the Macon Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Until recently, that district — Macon’s leading black business community at one time — was on Historic Macon’s Fading Five list of endangered properties because of intense commercial development pressure. The district itself has made substantial progress thanks to preservation efforts and the work of such groups as the Cotton Avenue Coalition, but the Women’s Center is not on so firm a footing. It needs structural work. There’s plenty of rotten wood. The plaster walls are deteriorating.

“It’s shameful for a place like this to be in our community and not be recognized or preserved,” McCord said during a look around the center. “I don’t think we know what we’ve got here.”

But that could change — with the community’s help. McCord announced Tuesday that the center is in the running for a share of $2 million in preservation grants. Just 20 historic sites across the country that honor women’s history are eligible for the Partners in Preservation funding, provided by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express.

But it will all depend on the number of votes that the center gets by Oct. 29. McCord urged Middle Georgia residents to go to voteyourmainstreet.org/macon and vote for the center. You can vote up to five times a day. There will also be a free Rockin’ and Rallyin’ for Ruth concert from 6-9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, in High Street Park, right up the street from the center and across from First Baptist Church of Christ. You can vote there too.

During the turbulent 1950s and ‘60s, Mosley hosted civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, as well as Thurgood Marshall, before he was a Supreme Court justice. Her home was a refuge for them in the Jim Crow South, much like other sites that were featured in the movie “Green Book.”

Mosley cherished Macon, and she wanted the best for its residents. Since it opened its doors to the public in 1978, the nonprofit Women’s Center has provided help in keeping with her wishes: increasing educational opportunities for women and enhancing their life skills, as well as providing services for the community. That has included classes for aspiring nursing assistants.

Her estate included two trust funds. One provided financial assistance for needy students who wanted to become nurses or other health care providers. It’s been depleted. The other fund established the Women’s Center, but it, too, will soon be exhausted.

“She put her money where her mouth was,” McCord said. “It was very important to her to give back to the  community that gave so much to her. She tried to fulfill needs she saw in the community.

“She lived in her moment. She didn’t know that things would open up and be more inclusive. She left resources to provide for her people.”

Mosley died in Savannah in 1975 at age 89. She is buried in Linwood Cemetery, in the Pleasant Hill neighborhood.

The next time you’re strolling around Tattnall Square Park, take a moment to stop by the majestic fountain in the middle of the park.

At the base of the fountain wall, you will find words of inspiration and encouragement from influential Macon residents who’ve made a difference over the years.

Ruth Hartley Mosley is among them.

Her message there, set in stone, is as timeless as the values she held dear.

“You are as good as anyone. Never let the fact that you don’t have anything keep you from achieving.”

Here’s what ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ film crew thought about downtown Macon

Flint’s Grocery is gone. So too are Weber’s Cafe, Jay’s Beauty Salon and the Rathman/Lewis drugstore, “where you get what the doctor ordered.”

The Middletown Journal, like hundreds of its latter-day brethren, has also shut down.

They were all part of the filming for “Hillbilly Elegy” along Poplar Street. Now, workers have knocked down scaffolding and repainted storefronts up and down the street.

Photo: Oby Brown

It was our latest close-up for a major film, and several members of the small army of women and men working here said Macon should be proud of what it has downtown.

In particular, what it has saved downtown.

“You’ve got great buildings,” said Rick Riggs, the charge scenic artist on the set. “We were very pleasantly surprised at the architecture around town. … You’ve got great little storefronts. … There’s a great opportunity to revitalize the downtown area. We see it.”

Photo: Oby Brown

Riggs was standing outside a row of remade storefronts in the 600 block of Poplar. He described the process of replicating street scenes from Middletown, Ohio, where most of J.D. Vance’s bestseller is set, during three periods: the late 1990s, in 2012 and the late 1940s -- in that order -- for shooting. Workers had to “distress” a site one day, then use historically accurate touches -- appropriate colors, for example -- when they re-created the boom times of post-World War II Middletown. 

In all, at least 20 stores or buildings were transformed for filming across the county, most of them in and around downtown. Ron Howard is directing the Netflix movie, which stars Amy Adams and Glenn Close. The memoir tells the story of Vance’s family in Middletown and their struggles with poverty, alcoholism and abuse.

During the height of filming in Macon, one worker took a break and extolled what he’d seen downtown. Standing on the sidewalk, he noted the old Armory Building at the corner of First and Poplar, which was completed in 1885, then pointed out St. Joseph Catholic Church a little farther up the hill.

He called downtown Macon “a gold mine.” The buildings, by and large, are in good shape, and for movie purposes, you can take a store, add neon signs and you’re back in the 1950s. Then you can take out the neon and add LED lighting for a more modern look. But the sites work equally well for both settings, he said.

Photo: Oby Brown

Most of the folks in town for filming had never been to Macon, and almost all of them are gone now. Matt Sparks, a native of Jefferson, near Athens, is getting to know the city well, though.

He was assistant location manager for “Hillbilly Elegy” and a scout too. He arrived in town about a month before shooting began, and he’d just been in Macon in April for four days of shooting on HBO’s “Watchmen” series. During that filming, workers turned parts of Second and Cherry streets into 1940s Brooklyn.

“There’s a lot of room for opportunity here,” he said. “I look at the buildings and wonder, ‘What did this used to be?” Downtown Macon, he said, “has so much to offer.”

Plenty of forward-thinking Macon residents have reached the same conclusion in recent years as they converted long-dormant buildings into new retail or living space. You need only look at the soon-to-open Kudzu Seafood on Poplar, Famous Mike’s nearby, the Macon Beer Co.’s new taproom, which is nearing completion, or the dozens of other sites breathing new life, thanks to the preservation mind-set.  

When he could, Sparks took walks down alleyways and even paid a visit to the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park while he was here.

“There are parts of history that just flash out,” he said of downtown’s buildings. “For me, it brings character to the city.”

In time, one stretch in the 600 block of Poplar that was used for filming will be torn down to make way for the planned Hyatt Place, a six-floor hotel with more than 100 rooms. 

Joe Couch, another member of the “Hillbilly Elegy” crew, saw a good bit of that work during his years as a Savannah resident. But he knows you’ve got to pick your spots carefully.

Couch, a prop maker for more than 40 years, said he marvelled at what he saw downtown.

“These are beautiful,” he said, looking around. “You don’t see this much any more. A lot of places, they’re tearing down everything. You haven’t done that.”

Then he paused.

“You should show a reverence for them,” he said of the old buildings. “If not, they’re long gone.”