Two Mothers and an Orphan

This Sunday marks the commemoration of Mother’s Day, so I thought I’d feature in today’s post something about someone who had no mother and a few comments about my own two mothers.

Annie was a sad inmate at a notoriously bad orphanage, and she desperately wanted to be adopted by a good family so she could escape that place. She had been born in August 1924 and was introduced to the world as a ten-year-old girl. She lived throughout the Twenties, Thirties, and Forties, and even into the Seventies. In fact, she never really died but continues to live in various ways even today.

The orphan girl to whom I refer is none other than Little Orphan Annie, she of the curly hair, wearing always the red dress, sporting hollow white circles for eyes, and frequently saying “Leapin’ lizards!” She was usually accompanied by her dog Sandy and alwyas supported faithfully by her benefactor “Daddy” Warbucks, a hard-working, conservative businessman who had made his millions by producing war materiel during World War I.

Little Orphan Annie was the brainchild of cartoonist Harold Gray, who was born on January 20, 1894. He himself became an orphan when both of his parents died before he graduated high school. He got a job as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, served as a bayonet instructor during World War I, and freelanced as a commercial artist before landing a job as a cartoonist. At first, he only did the lettering for The Gumps, a strip created by Sidney Smith. But he would soon advance to drawing his own strip.

Gray got the idea for his own comic strip from the poem “Little Orphant Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley. In the test strip for the cartoon, Annie prays that a loving family will adopt her so she can escape the orphanage.

The strip debuted in the New York Daily News on August 5, 1924, but it was called at the time Little Orphan Otto. Later that year, an editor at the Tribune changed the name to Little Orphan Annie, and it stuck.

Although the strip inspired a radio show in 1932 and films in 1932 and 1938, it didn’t really thrive, however, until the end of World War II and into the Cold War. Time magazine named the strip one of the top five comics in 1950, but the writers warned that readers were becoming increasingly less patient about following an extended plot line such as that employed in Little Orphan Annie.

It was during the Cold War that Gray’s strip weathered its most severe criticism. Ironically, he simultaneously was “accused of being both a right-wing warmonger and a Communist sympathizer.” Editors disliked his depiction of “violence, drug use, and anti-labor sentiment,” and it “set off a firestorm of protest, and thirty newspapers canceled the strip.” [Brian Walker, The Comics: The Complete Collection (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2008).]

Gray shot back, “I shall continue to pound on the idea that the old time way was the best for us–individual freedom, honest hard work, and a chance for any man with the proper drive and decency to gain and hold wealth and power.” [Ibid.] He had always dealt in the strip with political corruption, criminal gangs, and villains of all sorts. He was especially critical of the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt, and labor unions. And, despite the criticisms, he continued to use the strip as “a platform to express his conservative views on politics, economics, and social injustice.” [Ibid.]

After Gray died in 1968, Leonard Starr tried to reintroduce the strip with the simple title Annie in 1979 after the phenomenal success of Annie, the Broadway stage adaptation of the strip. But his effort proved short-lived and unsuccessful.

Just as Annie was orphaned, so was Gray, who spent life after his teens without parents. Therefore, he could empathize with his fictional cartoon strip character.

Thankfully, God allowed me to have the influence of a godly mother into my early adult years. I also enjoyed the privilege of having a good mother-in-law, and the lives of those two female influences on my life overlapped by a little more than a year. Mother was tragically killed by a drunk driver shortly after our first child was born. She never knew the other three daughters. My mother-in-law passed about three years ago, but she was able to witness the births, growing up, and marriages of all four girls.

Both of those women had a profound influence on my life. I still miss them, never more than when I watch my grandchildren (who would have been their great grandchildren) growing up. I wonder how much joy they both would have received from having them around.

If you still have your mother, I hope that you’ll honor her this Mother’s Day. If she is no longer with you, you can still honor her memory by recalling all the good she was to you.

Divine Titles

I’m always on the lookout for writing topics and ways to lend support to my writing. For example, I look for material, such as illustrations, examples, statistics, and quotations, that I can incorporate into my work to support my points. I’m also on the lookout for possible titles for the things I write. Although I might find them almost anywhere, one good place to find them is in the Bible.

For example, I’ve used several phrases from Bible verses for articles, blog posts, and even books that I’ve published, including many that are not even about religious subjects. Here are some of them:

• “The Womb of the Morning” (blog, February 16, 2018, https://www.dennislpeterson.com/blog/search/the%20womb%20of%20the%20morning, Psa. 110:3)
• Look Unto the Hills: Stories of Growing Up in Rural East Tennessee (2017, Psa. 121:1)
• “The Ready Writer” (Spirit-Led Writer, March 2004, Psa. 45:1)
• “Consider the Ant” (Junior Trails, June 5, 1994, Pro. 6:6)
• “Gaining by Losing” (Confident Living, September 1991, Matt. 16:25)
• “From the Mouths of Babes” (The Freeman, May 1983, Psa. 8:2)
• Evil Angels among Them (unpublished novel manuscript, Psa. 78:49)

Lest you think I’m a little strange in this regard, I’m not the only writer who does (or has done) this. In fact, I’m in some good company following this practice. Several famous writers have used Scripture phrases as their titles. Consider, for example, the following familiar names and the titles of their works:

• The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway, Eccles. 1:5)
• The House of Mirth (Edith Wharton, Eccles. 7:4)
• East of Eden (John Steinbeck, Gen. 2:8)
• Absalom, Absalom! (William Faulkner, 2 Sam. 18:33)
• Go Down Moses (William Faulkner, Exo. 32:7)
• The Violent Bear It Away (Flannery O’Connor, Matt. 11:12)
• Go Set a Watchman (Harper Lee, Isa. 21:6)

And these are only a few.

Years ago, I began keeping a list of such phrases that I might one day use as possible titles for some of my articles or books. I ran across them during my regular daily Bible-reading time. (If I don’t write down such things, I inevitably forget them when they would be most opportune!) Some of them might come in handy one day. What do you think of these?

• “There Was a Garden There” (John 18:1)
• “The Secret Place of Thunder” (Psa. 81:7)
• “Consider the Days of Old” (Psa. 77:5)
• “And the Locusts Came” (Psa. 105:34)
• “Songs in the House of My Pilgrimage” (Psa. 119:54)
• “Yet Trouble Came” (Job 3:26)
• “In the Day of Battle” (Psa. 140:7)
• “A Good Degree” (1 Tim. 3:13)
• “A Vessel Unto Honor” (2 Tim. 2:21)
• “Proven with Mirth” (Eccles. 2:1)
• “Wisdom, Madness, and Folly” (Eccles. 2:12)
• “The Sacrifice of Fools” (Eccles. 5:1)
• “This One Thing” (Phil. 3:13)
• “Three Years in the Desert” (Gal. 1:17)
• “I Declare!” (Psa. 66:16)
• “One More Night with the Frogs” (Exo. 8:9-10)

As you no doubt have noticed, many of these came from the Psalms. David, Asaph, and Moses were certainly skilled wordsmiths!

Since titles cannot be copyrighted, some of the Scripture phrases I’ve listed might spark some thoughts for your own writing. Better yet, why not read through the Bible yourself and see what possible titles leap out at you from its pages? Maybe the exercise will “prime the pump” when you’ve reached a dry, barren desert along your own writing journey. (You might find some valuable “soul food” there, too!)

The REAL Yours, Mine & Ours Family

Perhaps you’ve seen the 1968 movie Yours, Mine & Ours, starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball with Van Johnson in a supporting role. It tells the story of a widower with ten children who marries a widow with eight children and recounts the hilarious struggles they face before melding into a close-knit family unit.

What many people don’t know (I didn’t until recently) is that the movie is based on the real-life experiences of the real Beardsley family. The story was first told by Helen North Beardsley in her 1965 book Who Gets the Drumstick?

Lucille Ball read the book, loved it, and bought the film rights to it through her production company, Desilu Studios. She visited the family, and a unique bond was formed between the family members and the actress. She then hired writers to prepare a script for the movie, and the finished product was released by United Artists on April 24, 1968.

The movie is eerily similar to the real Beardsley family’s experiences. Frank Beardsley was a Chief Warrant Officer in the Navy, and he had ten children by a previous marriage. Helen North also had eight children by her previous marriage. Both Frank’s and Helen’s original spouses had passed. After the two married and the families melded into one, the Beardsleys had two more children of their own, bringing the total to 20.

One major difference between the movie and the real story is that in the movie the blended families moved into a “neutral” house, leaving their respective homes in their memories. In reality, however, the family simply added onto Frank’s original home to make room for the suddenly expanded numbers.

The Beardsley family has been described as characterized by love, life, kindness, goodness, idealism, and hope. With that many people vying for space and attention in one house, it had to be all those qualities and more.

In addition to their involvement in the movie about their family, the Beardsleys also starred in ads for the Langendorf Bread Company, and they were featured on the sides of the company’s trucks. In addition to the monetary payment they received for this, they also received 50 loaves of bread a week from the bakery, and they went through every bit of it.

After retiring from the Navy, Frank bought and ran three bakeries himself. Helen ran a hut and gift shop.

The movie received popular and critical acclaim, an instant success. In 1968, it won the Golden Laurel Award for General Entertainment, and Lucy won a Golden Laurel for Female Comedy Performance. Fonda was also nominated for a Golden Laurel Award for Male Comedy Performance. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture in 1969, and Lucy was nominated for the Best Actress Award.

If you haven’t seen the movie (the original 1968 release, not the 2005 remake), find it in your local library, online, or at a local video store. It’s good for a lot of healthy, wholesome laughs. It also will help you appreciate not only the struggles but also the blessings of large families. This is especially true in our current society of selfishness and me-ism when children seem to be more of a burden than the immense blessings they are.

A Friendly Hand on the Shoulder

The other day, I ran across a post written by Alycia W. Morales for the Write Conversation blog. Titled “50 Best Tips for Writers,” it featured quotations from some great, well-known authors and several lesser- (or little-) known ones.

One of the quotations was, “The best authors are those who cheer on those behind them and put their hands on the backs of those in front of them” (Blythe Daniel).

The other quotation: “Have a servant’s heart. It’s not all about you. Have a generous spirit that helps other writers along their writing journey, too. Writing is a collaborative partnership–you, God and others” (Lisa Carter).

Those two quotations made me think immediately of several people who exemplify those very traits, people who have helped and encouraged me on my writing journey.

The first article I ever had published was the result of some blunt words from my wife. After an especially frustrating day in the classroom, I wrote down my feelings, and then I read them to my wife. She commiserated with me but left it there. I set the notebook aside, but every few days thereafter, I would add to that initial draft, unburdening other expressions of frustration. It became a sort of therapeutic form of release for me. After each writing session, I would read the whole thing aloud to my wife.

One day, after she had experienced her own classroom frustrations, she had heard enough.

“I don’t want to hear any more of that!” she exclaimed emphatically. “Either send it off to someone or keep it to yourself, but I don’t want to hear anymore!”

That hurt. My ego was badly bruised. But sometimes solutions to problems are painful even if effective. Diseases sometimes require bitter medicine or difficult surgeries to be cured. And sometimes writers need a not-so-gentle nudge.

Not to be totally shut down, I submitted the article, which I titled “Help Wanted: Laborers,” to The Freeman, an economics journal to which I subscribed. In hindsight, it wasn’t the best possible market (I knew nothing about market research at the time), but it was the right topic at the right time for the right person. It struck editor Paul Poirot as “an inspiring message,” and he published it. That was the first of 10 or so articles I subsequently wrote for that journal.

Next, Dr. Charles Walker of the American and Tennessee associations of Christian schools (AACS and TACS) published the first article I ever submitted to the Journal for Christian Educators, of which he was the editor. He encouraged me to continue submitting articles to him, which I did. He published at least 40 of them and hired me for several editing projects on which he was working.

Dr. Walker’s son, Dr. Brian Walker, continued to employ my writing services after his father retired. I had edited an academic paper or two for him when he was working on his doctorate, and I had contributed sporadically to the quarterly Parent Update, another publication edited by the senior Dr. Walker. The younger Walker increased my involvement with Parent Update by asking me to write two articles a year for it. To date, I have written at least 14 such articles and have two more in the research stage for the 2024-25 school year.

The late Dr. Gerald Carlson provided encouragement by hiring me to provide writing and editorial support on several curriculum-revision projects for Positive Action for Christ (aka ProTeens). Even after he retired and right up until a few weeks before he passed, he continued to encourage my writing.

Dr. Carl Abrams was instrumental in prompting me to research and write what would become my first book, Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries (McFarland, 2016). The success of that book led to my next two books, Christ in Camp and Combat: Religious Work in the Confederate Armies and Evangelism and Expulsion: Missionary Work among the Cherokees until Removal (TouchPoint, 2021 and 2022, respectively). All of these books, by the way, are available on Amazon in both paperback and e-book formats.

Perhaps the most encouraging encouragement most recently has come from a fellow blogger and family historian in Iowa, Joy Neal Kidney. We met online as a result of our books and blogs, and she has since offered invaluable support by offering words of encouragement, making guest “appearances” on my blog, beta reading pre-publication manuscripts, sharing information about my books on her blog, nudging me to contribute to the national Our American Stories radio broadcast with host Lee Habib, and gaining me an invitation to be interviewed by Mark Prasek on PJNet.tv. And I’m by no means the only writer she encourages; there are many other beneficiaries of her counsel, advice, and words of cheer. All that in addition to her own writing efforts amid the problems incident to the fibromyalgia with which she suffers.

From caustic criticisms to gentle nudges to bold invitations, all of these people have been partially responsible for whatever success I’ve gained as a writer. And such it is, I believe, for all writers if they’re honest. We all stand on the shoulders of encouragement provided by others.

Although I’m grateful for such encouragers, the quotations with which I began this post make me wonder if I’ve done the same for anyone else. Have you?

It reminds me of the following poem by James Whitcomb Riley:

When a man ain’t got a cent, and he’s feeling kind o’ blue,

An’ the clouds hang dark an’ heavy, an’ won’t let the sunshine through,

It’s a great thing, O, my brethren, for a feller just to lay

His hand upon your shoulder in a friendly sort o’ way.

It makes a man feel curious, it makes the teardrops start,

An’ you sort o’ feel a flutter in the region of the heart;

You can look up and meet his eyes; you don’t know what to say

When his hand is on your shoulder in a friendly sort o’ way.

Oh, the world’s a curious compound, with its honey and its gall,

With its cares and bitter crosses, but a good world, after all.

An’ a good God must have made it–leastways, that is what I say,

When a hand is on my shoulder in a friendly sort o’ way.

Vic Weals, Another Influential Author

When writing the post for this blog a couple of weeks ago,(https://www.dennislpeterson.com/post/authors-who-influenced-a-young-mind), I inadvertently failed to include one other influential local author I enjoyed reading. I’d like to introduce him to you today.

I did not become acquainted with the writing of Vic Weals until I was older, probably because my parents didn’t subscribe to “the other paper,” the Knoxville Journal, for whom Weals wrote. Whereas my parents subscribed to the News-Sentinel, an afternoon paper, the Journal was published in the morning. Daddy didn’t have time to read the paper in the morning.

Victor R. Weals was born on March 17, 1918, in East Springfield, Ohio, and attended Ohio University, majoring in pre-med. (That, incidentally, was the same major that my father declared during his brief time at Lincoln Memorial University. But that’s a different story for another time.)

Weals served in the Army during World War II and achieved the rank of sergeant major. He was stationed in Knoxville for a while near the close of the war, during which time he apparently fell in love with the area, especially the Smokies. He entered the University of Tennessee in 1946 and continued to live in the area the rest of his life.

In 1847, Weals got a job at the Knoxville Journal, where he worked first as a stringer and later as a general assignment reporter and headline writer. He eventually worked his way up from reporter to copy editor and wire editor. By the 1950s, he had his own column, a six-times-a-week feature titled “Home Folks.” Later, he initiated and wrote another column titled “Tennessee Travels,” which he continued to write for 10 years. The latter column is the one I remember reading.

In his columns, Weals sought to feature the lives of hard-working, everyday people, especially those who labored with their hands outdoors. He also incorporated in his writing his dry humor.

For example, in one 1952 column, he wrote about a father who took his two sons, nine and four years old, fishing, and they caught two big bass. The father teasingly told his four-year-old that he would have to clean the fish himself. Later that day, the father found his toddler in the bathroom scrubbing the fish with a soap-and-water-filled washcloth.

Everyone who worked with Weals found him to be not only a good writer but also one who set a good example for younger reporters to emulate and learn from. They all esteemed him as one of the best writers the Journal had, and one called him “a newspaperman’s newspaperman.”

Perhaps one of the most frequently encountered questions writers are asked involves where they get their ideas. Weals got his from odd places, objects, and people. He habitually collected stuff during the process of covering his reporting assignments, things that had absolutely nothing to do with the subject of his current assignment. But he sensed that he might use it some day in a story for his column. He might not use it for years, but he would find sometime a place where it was appropriate.

Late in life, Weals published two books and a booklet. The 10-page booklet he compiled sometime during the 1960s was titled Hillbilly Dictionary: An Edifying Collection of Mountain Expressions. It was illustrated by his Journal colleague cartoonist Charlie Daniel.

Unlike many similar booklets seen in gift shops of the South, his booklet wasn’t meant to poke fun at the quaint and often odd-sounding vocabulary of mountain residents. Rather, his was meant to show that those mountain residents actually were speaking a purer form of English than the “flatlanders,” whose language had been diluted over the years by outsiders and numerous foreign languages.

For example, in his foreword, Weals wrote, “The speech of the Appalachian mountain people is . . . the language of 400 years ago. . . . So, we should not immediately reject mountain English as poor English, or low-class English. It is, rather, older in its forms and vocabulary, and, in that sense at least, a purer English.”

In 1991, Weals published perhaps his most famous book, Last Train to Elkmont. It is “a look back at life on the Little River in the Great Smoky Mountains.” It explores in words and photographs the young lumberjacks who worked in the logging industry in the Smokies. The trails, roads, and campgrounds of the national park are ever-present remnants of their lives and work.

Perhaps Dudley Brewer, a former columnist and editor for the Journal, best summarized Weals’s reporting and writing style: “He revitalizes times gone by, but he does so still as the observant reporter, not as an erudite historian who has a thesis, evaluates critically, makes opinionated surmises and moralizes. Weals leaves it to the readers to form their own opinions.”

His final book, Legends of Cades Cove and the Smokies Beyond, was published posthumously in 2002, just months after he died of a heart attack. Although Weals himself is gone, his legacy remains in the form of his writings. He is buried in the Tennessee State Veterans Cemetery in Knoxville.

Footprints in the Pollen

It’s pollen season in South Carolina!

Although we don’t get much snow in the Upstate of South Carolina, we make up for that deficiency in pollen.

Just when springtime arrives and people begin to plant their gardens, spruce up their ornamentals, and get their mowers out in anticipation of mowing season, Mother Nature also gets active. Azaleas break into bloom, redbuds and dogwoods brighten the landscape, deciduous trees shoot forth their bright green leaves, and conifers dust everything with clouds of pollen. Even the normally clear view of the mountains is made fuzzy by the pollen cloud.

Bees love this time of year. Not so among people who strive to keep their deck furniture “sitable,” their vehicles shiny and clean, and their respiratory systems clear.

I noticed the first tell-tale signs of the arrival of the season a few weeks ago when I got into my white truck and noticed that seemingly overnight it had been transformed into a pale yellow. I turned on the wipers, and the air was suddenly beclouded with a fine, yellow dust.

Then it rained. The runoff gushed from the downspouts and across the sidewalk, puddling at the intersection of the sidewalk with the driveway Then it dried, leaving in its wake a distinct yellow line of pollen that reminded me of the ring left around the bathtub after I had bathed when I was a little boy playing all day int he woods and cow pastures of my grandfather’s farm.

Even our solar lights outside can’t receive a full charge because the photocells are coated with pollen, blocking the sun’s recharging rays.

This morning, I went to sit on the deck and write, but I decided that first I should wipe down the furniture. Didn’t want to soil my dark pants. I dampened a paper towel and swiped it across the seat and arms of the chair, removing a grand harvest of pollen. Then I used another paper towel to dry the seat. It, too, revealed a bountiful harvest. I repeated the dual process and came up with still more pollen. I think the furniture absorbs the pollen as it falls.

My wife then came out and exclaimed, “Look! We’re leaving footprints in all this pollen!”

Sure enough, our dark-stained deck was lighter in color, and multiple footprints remained as evidence of our presence.

I’m noticing even as I write (I write my initial drafts in longhand) that my pen seems to move a little sluggishly across the paper whereas it normally glides. The nib is getting clogged with pollen, which continues to fall, settling on my pad without any concern for my efforts. Pollen is an equal opportunity annoyance.

But a more serious problem for many people is the physical reaction of their bodies to all this pollen. Coughing, sneezing, running noses, sinus drainage, scratchy throats, itchy eyes.

I never had a problem with “hay fever” until I married, then it hit me hard, making up for lost time, I suppose. I used to tease my wife, saying that I was allergic to her. It was at its worst in Pennsylvania. (Or maybe I was allergic to my kids, all of whom were born there.)

My doctor there said that I was allergic to everything that grew in spring. He prescribed a steroid shot at the beginning of the season and–PRESTO! No more reactions. So I continued to get the shot annually.

When we moved to Tennessee and pollen season approached, I asked my doctor there for “the shot.” (No, not “that” shot; not “the vaccine!”) He refused. “That’s overkill,” he averred, “like killing a fly with a cannon.”

“But it worked!” I argued. I was concerned only with results.

He wasn’t convinced. “There are plenty of over-the-counter medications that will work just as well,” he countered.

I had no other choice. But the products available at the time made me drowsy. I was afraid that one day I’d find my students waking me up rather than the other way around. Thankfully, Big Pharma soon developed non-drowsy meds for such allergies as mine.

Then suddenly my allergic reactions ceased. They occasionally return, especially when I’m mowing, but even those are relatively mild and temporary. Maybe it’s because the kids were by then all married and out of the house. Or maybe my body has finally, after 45 years of marriage, acclimated itself to my wife. Or something. Anyway, I think I’ll keep her.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to wash my truck, dust the deck furniture, sweep the sidewalk (maybe even pressure wash it sometime), and blow my nose. I definitely can’t change Nature. All I can do is accept it and adapt as best I can. I’d rather do that than shovel snow!

Authors Who Influenced a Young Mind

Growing up in rural Knox County, Tennessee, I never realized until years later how my parents unintentionally exposed me to some of the region’s greatest journalists of that era.

Our home was filled with numerous publications to which they subscribed. There was the local newspaper, of course, the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Then there were several farm-related publications, such as Tennessee Farm Bureau News, Tennessee Farmer, and Progressive Farmer. And there were several religious periodicals.

Within each of those publications were several columnists of note–Don Whitehead, Carson Brewer, Bert Vincent, and Pettus Read, to name a few.

My exposure to these writers began with my overhearing my parents reading excerpts to each other.

“Hey, Ralph, did you read what Bert Vincent said this man uses to keep slugs from his tomato plants?”

“No, what’s he say?”

What followed would be a snippet from Bert’s column, or from that of one of the other journalists they read. Sometimes informative. Sometimes funny. Always interesting.

I was in upper elementary or junior high school when, after having just read Don Whitehead‘s The FBI Story, I learned that he wrote a regular column for the News-Sentinel, and I became a faithful reader. Knowing my enjoyment of his columns, Mother even cut out some of them and mailed them to me when I was attending college out of state. She continued to do so even after I was married and living in Pennsylvania.

I especially remember a column in which Whitehead spun a purely fictional tale of a man named Mostel Doctors whom some manufacturer paid big bucks to use his name in the firm’s advertising: “Mostel Doctors recommends (name of product).”

He and the manufacturer made a lot of money that way, and word soon spread to other businesses’ ad departments. Requests poured in for the right to use Doctors’s name in other firms’ ad campaigns. Before long, the ad writers modified both the spelling of the verb and the man’s name: “Most Doctors recommend (product name).”

Well, so many readers believed Whitehead’s fictionalizing that a few weeks later he was forced to issue another column titled “On the Fine Line Between Fact and Fiction,” explaining his use of a vivid imagination and revealing the gullibility of many of his readers.

But Whitehead’s initial fame came not from his column or fiction writing but from his reporting as a war correspondent. After working for the Lafollette Press, the Harlan, Kentucky, Daily Enterprise, and as a columnist for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Whitehead worked for the Associated Press, covering World War II. He also covered the Korean War. I’ve written about Whitehead and other war correspondents in an earlier blog post (https://www.dennislpeterson.com/post/they-covered-the-war-and-more).

Whitehead was the recipient of the 1950 George Polk Award for wire service reporting and Pulitzer Prizes in 1951 and 1953, the latter being for “The Great Deception,” covering president-elect Dwight Eisenhower’s secret trip to the Korean front. Whitehead authored eight books, including The FBI Story, Border Guard: The Story of the United States Customs Service, and Combat Reporter (posthumously).

Carson Brewer was for forty years a columnist for the News-Sentinel. He quickly gained a reputation as a leading promoter of conservation of East Tennessee’s natural wonders, especially the Great Smoky Mountains. He wrote one of the first and most comprehensive histories of the Little Tennessee River Valley, Hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains, and a history of the Tennessee Valley Authority titled Valley So Wild: A Folk History.

Brewer had been born in Hancock County, Tennessee, and attended Maryville College for two years before joining the Army and serving in Europe during World War II. He later attended the University of Tennessee, but illness prevented his obtaining a degree. Instead, he began writing for the News-Sentinel, covering city hall and the court house.

He described himself as a “meanderer,” writing on a variety of topics, all of regional interest. His columns ranged from descriptions of Appalachian autumns to preservation of natural resources to vegetable growing–and everything in between. He was a master storyteller.

His numerous awards included the 1974 Golden Press Card Award, the 1978 UPI award for his column on sourwood honey, and the 1984 Tennessee Conservation League’s Z. Cartter Patten Award. In 2023, following Brewer’s death, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a resolution honoring his memory.

Another of my favorite columnists was Bert Vincent, who was born in 1896 in Bee Springs, Kentucky, graduated from Kentucky State Normal College, and was a World War I veteran. He began writing for the News-Sentinel in 1929. About four years later, he began writing the column for which he is now most famous, “Strolling with Bert Vincent.”

In “Strolling,” Bert wrote about a plethora of subjects, from folklore to simple living, from recipes and superstitions to vegetable growing. He promoted numerous charitable efforts and suggested what became the now-famous (or infamous, depending on one’s taste buds) Ramp Festival.

The extent of Bert’s influence is evidenced by the Bert Vincent Memorial Library at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, and his induction into the University of Tennessee’s School of Journalism and Electronic Communication Hall of Fame.

Finally, and most recently, there was Pettus Read. He is the editor of the Tennessee Farm Bureau News, Director of Communications for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation, author of the column “Read All About It,” and, most recently, the District 8 Commissioner in Rutherford County, Tennessee.

Everything about Read promotes agriculture and the rural lifestyle. His column, which is published in more than 50 newspapers, is a mixture of agricultural news and promotion and homespun humor. I especially enjoyed the columns that featured “Uncle Sid and Aunt Sadie,” who always had some “good ol’ common-sense advice” for the readers’ benefit.

After we moved from Tennessee to South Carolina, one of the things I missed most was reading Read’s column in the Tennessee Farm Bureau News. Seeking to alleviate my withdrawal symptoms, I googled his column one day and learned that he had compiled a little book of some of his writings. I ordered Read All About It: A Rural Psychology Primer and, when it arrived, devoured it in one sitting.

“Rural farm life had its challenges,” he wrote in the preface, “but those bumps in the road presented opportunities and rewards that may not have been mine if my life had begun elsewhere. People who were just what you saw shaped my growing up. Family ties were everything, and good morals were expected. . . . An active imagination is something I have possessed all my life, and being bored was never allowed around our house.”

Both Read’s book and all of his columns are filled with what he calls “rural psychology” applied to everyday situations. That philosophy reflects how he and I were reared, and those principles are as good today as they were then.

What about you? Which authors did you read in your youth whose writings have affected your own life’s direction and principles? Be sure to share them in the comments.

The Influence of Good Teachers

The key factor in determining whether one likes or dislikes history (or any subject, for that matter) is the kind of teachers he or she has. A bad teacher can easily turn a student away from the subject, but a good teacher can dispel that negative influence and instill a life-long interest in the subject.

I’ve had both kinds of teachers, thankfully more of the latter than of the former, and they had a far-reaching influence on my love of history.

I suppose the teacher who first awakened me to the enjoyment of history was Mrs. George in fifth grade. It was through her reading contest that my eyes were opened to the vast expanse of interesting books on historical subjects that lined the shelves of our small school library. The Landmark Books by Random House were just the beginning, but they were the spark that set me on fire.

In junior high, I had two good teachers who furthered my interest in history and what was required to get the most from it. Richard Booher (left) helped me realize the importance of place (geography) to developing an understanding of history. And Frank Galbraith (right) taught me the excitement of history by acting out historic scenes in class. I can still see him (in my memory bank) rushing into the classroom and dragging a classmate from the room, calling out as they exited that he was going to make a sailor of him, all to illustrate the methods of Prince Henry the Navigator in developing a navy for Portugal and thereby initiating the Age of Discovery.

Then, in high school, Hubert Lakin epitomized the skill of mentally “seeing” history as it unfolded. He often taught sitting behind his desk (something that was anathema for one of the principals under whom I later taught). I often watched him staring out the window as he waxed quietly eloquent about some historic event, something he was “seeing” in his mind’s eye. Suddenly, he would leap excitedly from his chair and pace up and down between the rows of desks, drawing some conclusion or making some application from what he had “seen” and had been trying to get us students to see from his description.

In college, I had several good history teachers, but two stood head and shoulders above the others. Dr. Edward Panosian taught History of Civilization to all freshmen, but his main teaching assignments were upper-level and graduate history courses. As a freshman, I sat mesmerized as he taught, awed by not only his vast knowledge but also his dignified manner and sonorous voice. I could hardly wait to take his upper-level courses. His much smaller senior course in Reformation history only increased my admiration for the man, and his love for his subject was contagious. So enthralled was I with his lectures that I sometimes forgot to take notes. I left the classroom mentally exhausted but inspired to imitate his electric teaching style.

I’m by no means the only one whom Panosian influenced. Among the literally hundreds of others so influenced was Asa Hutchinson, governor of Arkansas, who wrote, “I will never forget the passion of Dr. Panosian’s teaching of history and the clarity with which he taught about two different world views that have defined our past. He instilled into me a love for history and how it can inform us as we address the challenges of this generation.”

Finally, there was Dr. Carl Abrams. He spoke with a quiet, somewhat gravely voice, a stark contrast to Panosian, so I made sure to sit in the first or second row of his classes so I could hear. When I was unable to fit his class on the History of the South into my schedule because of my work schedule and the fact that the course was offered only every three or four years, he worked out a deal with the dean so I could take it.

I would meet him in his office after work once every two weeks, and he would teach me one-on-one. He gave me a long list of book titles related to Southern history on which he had highlighted ten titles that he dictated were required reading. I was to choose an additional ten titles and read two books and write a paper on one of the two books every two weeks and then meet him in his office to discuss them. At the end of the course, he gave me profound advice that I’ve employed in researching my own writing projects: Whenever you read a book, study the author’s bibliography and read many of the books listed there. As a token of my thanks and appreciation, I presented him a copy of my first published book, Confederate Cabinet Departments and Secretaries, for which he had been a great encouragement.

Following his advice, I will certainly never run out of books to read! More importantly, I’ll learn more and have a vast storehouse of source material for my own future writing on historical topics.

Those are the teachers who fired my interest in history. What about you? Which teachers have influenced your own favorite subject and how? Please share in the comments.

Friends

Every so often, I, like you, no doubt, receive a “friend request” on social media. And we’ve all no doubt often even sent our own such requests to others with whom we want to connect–or reconnect.

I received one friend request recently that made me recall an essay I once read. Written by Judith Viorst, it categorized types of friends and was appropriately titled “Friends, Good Friends, and Such Good Friends.”

Most of the people to whom we refer as “friends” are really only acquaintances. Many of them are work colleagues, neighbors, or people with whom we once went to high school or college. But we never really got close to them or have lost track of them after we graduated, each of us moving in our own direction in life. We might even have at one time considered them close friends or even “best buds.”

But then life happens. We marry, have kids, have different careers, move in different circles, and lose touch. We have a lot of such “acquaintance friends.”

Then there are good friends, and the number of those we have is far fewer than our number of acquaintances. Good friends rise above the mere acquaintance level. They are probably the people with whom we currently share interests and involvements, do things together, even confide to a degree. But there is still a distance, something that prevents total commitment, transparency, and trust.

And then there are the “such good friends,” people with whom we have a very close relationship. We share things with those people that we wouldn’t share with the “good friends” and certainly never with the mere acquaintances. We confide in them and are transparent with them and seek their advice and opinions.

Even if we are separated by vast amounts of time and distance, when we do get back together, whether virtually by phone or social media or in person, we pick up right where we left off.

It’s often said that if in life one has even five such true friends, he or she is well blessed. Many people have fewer than five. “Such good friends” are few and far between.

I, like you, have “friends” in all three of those categories.

I read a report recently that said 52 percent of Americans indicate they are lonely; 47 percent say the relationships they do have are meaningless. Fifty-eight percent say they feel that no one knows them well. Most alarming (to me, anyway) is that more than 80 percent of people under age 18 say they are lonely. (See the full report here: https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/loneliness-statistics#:~:text=Key%20Loneliness%20Statistics%20%26%20Facts,t%20have%20any%20close%20friends.)

These startling statistics come at a time when the average person on social media reportedly has 669 “social ties,” or “friends,” and the average cell phone user has 506 social ties. With so many people having so many “friends,” how is it that so many people say they are lonely?

Could it be that their contacts, or ties, are not really friends after all?

That leads me to consider the best friend one could ever have: the Lord Jesus Christ.

It also reminds me of the words of an old (1855) hymn:

What a Friend we have in Jesus,

All our sins and griefs to bear!

. . . .

O what peace we often forfeit,

O what needless pain we bear,

All because we do not carry

Everything to God in prayer.

The hymn goes on to say that we can go to Him with our trials, temptations, and troubles, knowing that He understands and helps us deal with them. Doing so prevents discouragement and depression because He knows us–everything about us–really knows us!

Our “friends,” whether acquaintances or even “good friends,” often will disappoint or desert us, but Jesus never will. He promises, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee” (Heb. 13:5).

They hymn asks, “Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?” It then answers that Jesus will “take and shield thee” in His arms, and “thou wilt find a solace [relief, comfort] there.”

I can still hear in my mind my mother singing another old (1866) hymn, “I’ve Found a Friend, O Such a Friend!” It says that Christ’s love and true friendship is such that it makes one willing to pledge, “My heart, my strength, my life, my all are His and His forever.” It describes Him as a wise Counselor and guide, a mighty defender, and an eternal friend.

Still another old (1910) hymn, “Jesus, What a Friend of Sinners,” says that Jesus Christ is “a strength in weakness,” “a help in sorrow,” and a “guide and keeper.” And “when my heart is breaking, He, my comfort, helps my soul.” Its chorus ends with a general summary of just how great a Friend He is: “Saving, helping, keeping, loving, He is with me to the end!”

It might be good to have social media “friends” and to be such a friend to others, but the best friend is far better than all those. No matter how many social media “friends” one has, many are still left feeling lonely. Christ never leaves one with that feeling!

Learning to Accept the Inevitable

There are few certainties in life, but some things are inevitable. They will happen no matter what we might do or how much we might wish to prevent them. The challenge we all face is how we will deal with those inevitable things.

Benjamin Franklin allegedly said (I say “allegedly” because a lot of things have been attributed to him, as to Mark Twain, that he never actually said), “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

There’s not a whole lot one can do about death. No matter how safely or healthily one tries to live, death eventually comes to us all. “Death waits for no man,” someone wisely observed. And the Bible says, “It is appointed unto men once to die” (Heb. 9:27).

As for taxes, they’re inescapable because ubiquitous. I’m reminded of the following poem:

Tax his land, tax his bed, tax the table at which he’s fed.

Tax his tractor, tax his mule, teach him taxes are the rule.

Tax his work, tax his pay, he works for peanuts anyway!

Tax his cow, tax his goat, tax his pants, tax his coat.

Tax his ties, tax his shirt, tax his work, tax his dirt.

Tax his tobacco, tax his drink, tax him if he tries to think.

Tax his cigars, tax his beers, if he cries tax his tears.

Tax all he has, then let him know that you won’t be done till he has no dough.

When he screams and hollers, then tax him some more. Tax him till he’s good and sore.

Then tax his coffin, tax his grave, tax the sod in which he’s laid.

Put these words upon his tomb, “Taxes drove me to my doom.”

When he’s gone, do not relax. It’s time to apply the inheritance tax.

And then there’s the whole aging thing. That’s inevitable, too.

We recall our youth and what we could do “back in the day,” but we just can’t match those feats now that we’ve added several decades and more than a few pounds. I think wistfully of how I ran the half mile as my leg of the two-mile relay team in high school. Now I struggle to catch my breath after ascending the stairs to my office. And promptly forget why I came up. Memory loss–that’s another inevitability, associated, of course, with the whole aging problem.

I think I’m handling most of the inevitabilities fairly well. I’ve resigned myself to paying endless taxes. I know that death, too, is coming at my God-appointed time, and I’m trying to be prepared for that final event on this earth. I’m learning to accept the side-effects of the whole aging process: the increasing inability to do the things I used to do, the memory loss (although I seem to be getting better at remembering things from my distant past even while being unable to remember what I had for breakfast), even the growing arthritis in my wrists and fingers.

But I’m struggling with acceptance of one unexpected thing–hair loss.

I seem to remember that my paternal grandfather had a full head of silver hair when he passed. My barber had always told me I had a full head of thick, healthy hair. In spite of the fact that my father had a gradually receding hairline (I always thought it was caused by the way he wore the bill of his train engineer’s camp turned upward, making the cap grip his head tightly) and later began to develop a thinning spot in the back, I thought I had inherited my grandfather’s full-head-of-hair gene.

Alas, I’ve been noticing that that splash from the gene pool must have missed me. I’ve begun to develop a thinness of hair that is getting increasingly hard to hide with a simple combover. Every time I look in the mirror after showering, the scalp peeks through the hair to mock me. I can handle the gray hair that is rapidly outnumbering the dark hair, but baldness is a different matter. It’s an apparent inevitability that I can’t accept but that will be regardless of my rejection of it.

Should I fight back and try Rogaine, or should I just accept it?