A Guide to Historical Salem - Volume 8, Number 3 -- Summer 2002

• Trouble Cued As Pool Comes to Salem
  Objections broke out to Billiards in 1907
• Students Protest Dismissal
  Salem High Principal Fired for Mishandling 'Indiscretion'
• Salem Boy Had A Fling With Fame
• Survivor Endured the "Unthinkable"
• Two Schools Built During Tough Times
• Lula Marable’s Love Triangle Ends Happily After All
• The Best Basketball Team In The History Of Southwestern Virginia
  (One Man’s Opinion)
• Fifteen Boys Perish 'Over There'
• Killed In Action
• Area Citizens Recall World War II Fighting

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Trouble Cued As Pool Comes to Salem
Objections broke out to Billiards in 1907

By John Long

A pool table! Don’t you understand? Friend, either you’re closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge, or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community!

With those beguiling words from Meredith Wilson’s play “The Music Man,” con artist Harold Hill swindled an Iowa town out of a small fortune. The local poolroom was so great a threat, he claimed, that only his bogus boy’s band could save the town from moral corruption. Broadway fiction—but in real life Salem of the early 20th Century, the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table was of genuine concern to many citizens.

The turmoil began in 1907 when Robert H. Carper added pool tables to a bowling alley he ran on Main Street. It sounds harmless enough today, but in 1907 pool halls for many represented everything sinister—gambling, drinking, dancing, late Saturday nights. There was no telling what went on in such establishments—and no respectable person would enter to find out. In a phrase that would make Harold Hill smile, one mother wrote in an editorial “the cluck of the ivory balls is music far more sweet to [youngsters’] ears than the voices of mother and father around the home fireside.”

A cry went up from concerned citizens to close the pool hall. A boycott was obviously out of the question, since those most concerned never frequented the place. Their only recourse was government action, and so after about a year of fretful complaints they turned to Town Council.

I say that any boob can take and shove a ball in a pocket—and I call that sloth, the first big step on the road to the depths of degradation—I say first, medicinal wine from a teaspoon, then beer from a bottle!

Led by local ministers David Bush (Methodist), C. K. Hunton (Lutheran), Nathan Maynard (Baptist), and J. A. Morehead (president of Roanoke College) the petitioners asked Council to place restrictions on operators of pool rooms that would in effect make the business impossible to continue.

Among their requested regulations: prohibiting anyone under 16 from entering a pool hall, closing at 10 PM, and banning blinds, partitions, or anything else that would obstruct a plain view from the street of whatever it was that went on in those places of iniquity. But most crucial to the plan would be a license tax of $500 a year—an unthinkable sum in those days, deliberately high enough to put Carper out of business.

You’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table; pockets that mark the difference between a gentleman and a bum, with a capital B, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for pool!

Town council listened to the petition with interest. They agreed to the unobstructed visibility, but set the closing time at 10:30 (ironically the meeting ran past midnight that night), and the minimum age at 18. The question of the license tax was more difficult to resolve. Some councilmen felt that Carper had gone into business in good faith, and to tax him $500 after the fact would be unfair. But they were also politicians, and they could read the sway of public opinion. How to balance the anti-pool sentiment with basic fairness to Carper? In the end, they set a graduated schedule for license fees: a dollar a week until the following September 1st, whereupon the fee would increase to $2.50 for the remainder of the calendar year. After January 1st, the fee would increase to an unthinkable $40 per week.

That game with the fifteen numbered balls is the devil’s tool!

In essence, the Town Council had invited Carper to go out of the poolroom business by the end of the year, or face dire consequences. For his part, Carper felt that the tax was confiscatory, but agreed to abide by the regulations. He would indeed phase out the pool tables; fortunately he soon discovered another fad that would bring flocks of ticket buyers to his doors: motion pictures. Carper began to operate a theater out of the old Town Hall that November.

Most people thought the issue had died, but it would reappear only three years later. In 1911, two local businessmen. O. D. Oakey and J. E. Townes, acquired the Hotel Crawford on Main Street, and made it clear that the only way to run that establishment profitably would be to include a pool hall on the ground floor. They petitioned Town Council in January to rescind the prohibitive measures of 1908, and council agreed 3-2 (with one member absent) to repeal their earlier decision. Instead, the license fee was lowered to $40 per annum, and the closing time moved to 11:00 PM. The restrictions on obstructed views from the street were retained, and additional regulations added that banned any back or side entrances and prohibited gambling. The age limit of 18 was expanded to prohibit entry by any college student as well. Oakey and Townes were satisfied, but not surprisingly the opponents of poolrooms soon appeared.

Get the ball in the pocket! Never mind getting dandelions pulled or the screen door patched or the beefsteak pounded! Never mind pumping any water ‘til your parents are caught with a cistern empty on a Saturday night, and that’s trouble!

At the next Council meeting, several churches presented petitions against the new license, and ministers again spoke of the deleterious effects of pool tables on the morals of youth. Concerned citizens demanded that the license not be granted to the Crawford. One anonymous resident was quoted in the paper: “Some folks are bound to play pool and drink likker, and I say to them, let them go on to Roanoke where you belong!” Nonetheless, council refused to reconsider their recent reconsideration. The license was granted, and by April the poolroom at the newly renamed Hotel Salem was in operation with three tables.

There is little record to indicate what decay in public morals resulted. It seems that over time the issue faded away, and the presence of a pool table or two became an accepted fact. Today, few would give a second thought to restaurant or bar letting patrons rack ‘em up; but once upon a time the issue spelled Trouble—with a capital T, that rhymes with P, and that stands for Pool!

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Students Protest Dismissal
Salem High Principal Fired for Mishandling 'Indiscretion'

By John Long

Students activists in the streets, demanding justice. Hints of a sex scandal. A boycott of classes. A march on government offices with protest signs waving. Leading citizens urging calm and moderation. Others demanding the resignation of officials.

Thinking Berkley 1968? Would you believe Salem in 1929?

For a few brief days in the spring of that year, Salem was the scene of heated school controversy culminating in a student strike and a principal’s resignation. Although the case seems quaint by modern standards, it sharply divided Salem and prompted heated rhetoric on both sides.

The great controversy began with a typical classroom event: a teacher at Salem High School intercepted a note being passed. The contents of the note, however, were shockingly atypical for 1929: it accused a female student of certain indiscretions. Although newspapers of the day were too genteel to say so outright, the modern reader can conclude that the girl (whose identity was never revealed) was suspected of being pregnant.

A group of teachers took this information—little more than gossip—to the school secretary and then to the principal, Andrew M. Bruce. Mr. Bruce immediately called in the county social welfare worker because, as he later explained, the case was one best “to be handled by a lady.” Apparently unknown to Bruce or to the girl’s guardians, the social worker, Miss Virginia Sanborn, took the girl to a local physician. An examination revealed that the girl was entirely innocent of the charges.

The case could have ended there, except that the girl’s guardian came to Bruce to protest the handling of the affair (the records of the case are unclear whether this was a parent or a legal guardian). He apparently believed that she was the victim of malicious slander, and that the physical examination was an unnecessary humiliation for her. Bruce agreed to a point, but insisted that he had acted properly given the information he had from “mature, experienced teachers.”

The Roanoke County School Board, when apprised of the case, disagreed. At an emergency meeting, they questioned Bruce, the teachers involved, and the girl’s family. After a closed deliberation, the Board rebuked Bruce for his referring the case to the social worker without consulting the girl’s family first, and asked for Bruce’s resignation effective June 1. Bruce, obviously incensed, tendered his resignation effective May 1 instead. Miss Sanborn later resigned as well.

Again, this may have ended the episode, except that when the news of Bruce’s resignation spread many in the community jumped to his defense. The teachers of Salem High unanimously signed a letter of support, as did the local PTA. Most notably, the students of the school sprung into action. On May 1, they launched a student strike in support of the now unemployed educator. More than half of the student body also participated in a protest march from the High School on Broad Street (now City Hall) to the County Courthouse on Main. There they heard a speech by J. P. Saul, a local lawyer, who urged calm, and had a photo taken with placards announcing “We want A. M. Bruce in 1930!” “The lid blew off of the Salem High School” proclaimed the Roanoke Times the next day.

The student strike lasted two days and only ended when Bruce himself pleaded with the students to return to class and take no further action on his behalf. The school board continued to debate the matter, and even conferred with the state superintendent of public education. Finally, the members acknowledged the receipt of petitions on Bruce’s behalf, but refused to act upon them and reconsider the resignation. The case was closed. With that, the furor eventually died out.

A. M. Bruce went on to serve as principal of schools in Blacksburg and Charles City. He died in 1987 in Newport News at the age of 97.

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Salem Boy Had A Fling With Fame

By John Long

Charlie Hammitt was a local boy who tried to make it big—without saying a word. In a career that was all too short, this Salem High grad became a star of silent films and later a model for national magazine covers and ads.

Charlie had what seems an idyllic youth here in Salem, starring in football, tennis, baseball, and basketball at Salem High, and getting his start acting in the school Dramatic Club. If anything was lacking in his early years, it was a father, for Charlie Hammitt Sr. was seldom if ever in Salem. His path took him far and wide, according to an account Charlie Sr. later wrote. He claimed to have peeled potatoes on a Pacific freighter, washed dishes in New Mexico, and to have followed the US Army into China during the Boxer Rebellion. “I’ve slept in the finest parks in America, also occupied the royal suite in the best hotels,” he told the Bristol Herald Courier, his hometown paper. He was delivering milk in Philadelphia when he got his break—a chance to star in a New York stage production of “Paid in Full.” By the late teens he was Ned Finley, star of stage, motion pictures and head of Ned Finley Films, Inc. It was in the capacity of producer that he sent for his son.

After a stint in the army in World War I, Charlie Hammitt Jr. took the stage name Dick Camp, and was hyped by his father as the next up-and-coming star. “Ned” cast “Dick” as the lead in a twelve part Western serial, the “Copperhead” series. Charlie Jr. played Copperhead Freeman, a Carolina mountaineer falsely accused of murder in a feudal war. It is unclear how widely these films were distributed, but they did play in Salem, where Hammitt’s old school chums cheered his silent antics. No copies of the “Copperhead” films seem to survive today.

Charlie was handsome, had a starring role under his belt, and had every hope of a bright future. But none of this was to be. Dick Camp’s film career was cut short by his father’s death in New York in 1920—apparently a suicide by drinking strychnine.

But Charlie’s star had not fallen quite yet. If the silver screen was a lost dream, Hammitt’s good looks could still get him before the public as a model. Over the ensuing years, Charlie was featured on numerous magazine covers—Collier’s, Saturday Evening Post, Detective Story Magazine, People’s—and in dozens of photograph ads for products ranging from shaving cream to Panama hats to swimwear. He also modeled for paintings by well known illustrators of the day, including C. D. Williams, Edgar Franklin Wittmack, and his Salem neighbor Walter Biggs. A portrait of Hammitt by Biggs is on display in the Salem Museum.

But eventually the modeling career dried up as well, and Charlie returned home by 1929 to work for the Bank of Salem. In later years he delivered prescriptions for Brooks-Byrd Pharmacy and lived above the store. His theatrical talents were applied to hometown productions at the high school, Roanoke College, and for community theater groups. In a day when minstrel shows were not yet considered insensitive, the local Lion’s Club for years turned to Hammitt to handle the make-up in their annual event.

Health concerns and alcohol took their toll on Charlie, and he died in 1975. He is still remembered by many of his Salem neighbors, but few realize that at one time the Salem boy almost became a star.

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Survivor Endured the "Unthinkable"

By Candy Long

Eighteen months before the United States declared war on Japan, Coy Daugherty left his home at the foot of Fort Lewis Mountain for Staunton to enlist in the army, telling his parents, “It looks like I’ll have to help fight this war that’s coming.” When his country sent him to the Philippines, he had no idea that his fight would be for mere survival in unthinkable conditions. Nor did he know he would be considered by many at home an unsung war hero. Some of his experiences have been recorded here as he remembers them.

The Japanese bombed Clark Field in the Philippines on December 8, 1941 and dropped propaganda over Corregidor assuring the American forces there that they were not forgotten. True to their word, Japanese high altitude bombers and dive bombers attacked Corregidor several weeks later. These heavy air raids persisted until May when Corregidor fell to the Japanese.

“On May 2, 1942, we had taken cover in the gun emplacement. The Japanese got a direct hit with a 240 mm howitzer shells on the powder room. The concussion was so severe that a 20 ton 12 inch mortar was blasted off its mount and 10 feet of the barrel penetrated into the concrete and steel wall. The concussion threw me against a concrete wall and I was knocked unconscious and buried in the rubble. When I finally came to, someone was calling my name and asking if I was hurt. I had a big knot on my forehead and dirt and foreign matter were embedded in my forehead. The blast was so terrific that we all were in a state of shock.”

Corregidor was surrendered to the Japanese that day with destruction so severe that not a single tree was left standing on the fortress.

“We were all lined up while the Japs took over. I’m telling you, you don’t know what your country’s flag means to you until you’ve seen it hauled down by an enemy you don’t like one bit. As Old Glory came down that mast, I don’t think there was a dry eye in the whole group. It was a day or so afterwards that we were lined up near an overpass when the Japs drove General Wainwright by. As his car sped under the overpass, we all took our hats off – ‘cause he was a swell guy – and he saluted us smartly.”

Approximately 14,000 soldiers from all branches of service were captured and detained at the 92nd Garage Area, an airplane hanger about the size of a football field. For more than seven days these men were held without food and only the water they had in their canteens at the time of their capture. American soldiers were ordered to pick up the Japanese dead, stack them into piles, and burn them, an unbearable stench unforgotten by Sgt. Daugherty.

“From Corregidor we were taken by small fishing vessels to Manila, marched down Dewey Boulevard through Manila to the railroad station. We were packed like animals in the boxcars and the doors were locked shut. The odor was terrible and the heat so terrific that we almost suffocated – some did. We were taken to Cabanatuan POW camp where conditions were deplorable – 40 to 50 men were dying per day. There was one young man out of my outfit in this camp – a boy I had put through boot camp. He came to me and told me that he could not eat the filthy rice. I pointed to a hill where men were being carried to mass graves and told him that if he didn’t eat that rice, he would end up on that hill. Less than a week later that boy died of starvation. I saw three POW’s forced to dig their own graves then stand by them – the Japanese shot them and they fell into the graves they had dug. I knew that I had to get out of this camp. The Japs asked for a 150 man detail and I volunteered. We did not know what we were volunteering for, but nothing could be worse than the Cabanatuan POW camp. We were taken to Bilibid Prison in Manila then on to Palawan. Conditions were poor but we did get a little rice (barely enough to keep us alive) and on occasions we would get sweet potato vine soup.”

The Japanese’s plan was for this detail of American POW’s to build an airstrip in the jungle. It was sometime later when another 150 man detail arrived to help with the task. Using only picks, shovels, chisels, and wheelbarrows, these men had to level land, dig around coconut trees and cut the roots, and chisel coral rock even with ground level. “We built a fairly good air strip considering we had barely nothing to work with.”

American forces began bombing the Philippines in preparation to retake the islands. In September 1944, 150 men were loaded onto “Hell Ships” en route to Japan while the others remained on Palawan including Rollie Rudd, Sgt. Daugherty’s best friend.

“There is something I need to tell you about Palawan,” Sgt. Daugherty said in almost a whisper. “On December 14th 1944, the detail went out to work but was recalled and given the explanation that an air raid was expected. The POW’s were herded into bomb shelters and strictly ordered that no matter what happened they were not to even lift their heads out of these trenches. Gasoline was poured in the shelters and ignited. Those men who tried to escape the inferno were either shot or bayoneted to death. Rollie Rudd was one of those men.”

Of the 150 American POW’s that remained on Palawan, 139 men died in that massacre. One of Sgt. Daugherty’s buddies was one of the eleven men able to escape and swim the five miles to survival. He told him later, “As I was swimming, I was praying; not for myself but for one man to survive to be able to tell the story.” A detailed account of the story indeed was told in the national bestseller Ghost Soldiers researched and written by Hampton Sides.

On or about September 30th, 700 men including Sgt. Daugherty were ordered into the hole of an unmarked, filthy cargo ship previously used to transport cattle. Some of the prisoners made hammocks out of blankets tied to the bulkheads which made enough room for those remaining below to sit or squat.

“As night drew on, I dropped into a sleep and was awakened by a nightmare – I felt as if I were suffocating. I did not go back to sleep that night as I was afraid to. When morning dawned, I was leaning against a dead man. I did not know him nor what caused his death. After this incident, I tied my blanket up on the ribs of the ship and this is where I stayed for the remainder of the 39 day voyage.”

“I received about a handful of unseasoned rice, once a day. It was dirty and
contained bugs but I was so hungry that I ate it. I may have received a gallon of water during the entire trip. For three days, I had no water until a buddy gave me a drink of his. There were no toilet facilities for the POW’s on this ship; a bucket was passed down on a rope and there was never one available when needed. When the bucket was pulled up, the POW’s were splattered with its contents. The conditions were so deplorable that it is hard for anyone to believe what actually happened.”

A haunting “pinging sound” could be heard occasionally during the voyage. It was of little concern until one of the POW’s, a submarine technician, explained just what they were hearing. American subs had detected the convoy of about 10 Japanese vessels and were “pinging” them with radar to determine how large the ships were and what was being carried.

“It was so hot in the hold of that ship that at times I wished the ship would be blown to pieces so I could feel the water and get a breath of fresh air before I died.”

Whether or not the American subs knew the ship carried American POW’s was never determined. However, eight of the ten Japanese vessels were lost and the two remaining turned and headed for Hong Kong, China. From there, they were taken to Formosa.

“When I tried to walk I could see what those 39 days of hanging in a hammock did to me. I lost over 50 pounds on this trip and was so weak I could hardly walk. When I tried to run, I would fall.

“Once again, I worked as a slave laborer for two months loading rocks on freight cars. I contracted malaria on Formosa. Some POW’s contracted a disease which caused severe headaches that almost run them crazy. Some died from this disease. I also had beriberi. My feet and legs swelled so bad, I could not walk on them. We received no medication for our illnesses.”

After two months at Formosa, Sgt. Daugherty and other POW’s were put on another ship, the Sanko Maru, and sent to Japan.

“The living conditions aboard this ship were slightly better though the rats and lice were terrible. I was awakened at night by rats scampering over me. We picked lice off of each other.”

The ship landed in Moji, Japan on February 11, 1945 and the men were taken to a prison camp in Northern Honshu where they stayed for only a few days before being sent to Sendai POW 111-B Hosokura. The men were once again forced to do slave labor at the Mitsubishi Mine and Metal Company.

“We were issued no clothes up to this time and when we arrived in Japan in summer khakis, the temperature was below freezing – we almost froze! In Moju, Japan, I was issued an old brown overcoat that looked like burlap with no lining. All we had for shoes was old Japanese tennis shoes. We worked in water sometimes up to our knees in these mines. The Japs would blast while we were in the tunnels. We breathed all that dust and dirt from the lead and zinc ore. One POW lost a leg to lead poisoning. The ground was so frozen that we couldn’t even dig a grave for a fellow POW who died. We slept on the floor in a wooden building with no heat. If anyone picked up a chip of wood on the way back to the building from the mines, they got hit over the head with a stick. The only way to keep from freezing was to sleep close to each other. We thought we would surely freeze.”

On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped the first of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Japan destroying five square miles of the city and killing approximately 100,000 people. After no response came from the Japanese, a second bomb was dropped over Nagasaki killing nearly 40,000 people.

“We knew that something had happened, we just didn’t know what. A Japanese officer came in and pulled up a box – the Japs always spoke to us POW’s on a box on account that most of them were shorter than we were – and he began to speak. This is what he said, ‘The American’s dropped big bomb on a town. No more town. We thinking. The Americans dropped another big bomb on another town. No more town. We surrender’. Just before we were liberated, I had boils all over me. Colonel Gaskill, our camp doctor gave me six shots of penicillin that had been dropped by the Americans into our POW camp. I had also come down with Malaria in this camp. I don’t think I could have lived another six months in a Japanese POW camp.”

Sgt. Daugherty was flown from Okinawa to the Philippines where a hospital ship awaited to take the surviving POW’s back to the states.

“All that time I was a Japanese POW, I received one letter and it was from her,” Coy Daugherty said pointing to his wife. She shrugged and sweetly replied, “We wrote to everybody.” Six months after he stepped off the train onto hometown soil, he married the younger sister of the girls he courted in his youth.

After the war, Coy Daugherty and his wife visited the parents of Rollie Rudd. “I needed to tell them what happened to their son – my best friend.

“I still have nightmares. They will follow me to my grave. I often wonder why I was spared and some of my best friends were killed or died in prison camps. I think of the guys we left on Palawan – we were closer than brothers – they were within several months of being liberated when they were massacred.”

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Two Schools Built During Tough Times

By Lon Savage

The Depression and the 1930s may have been a time of austerity, but Salem managed to build two of its most important schools during that decade.

Andrew Lewis High School was built to serve as Salem’s high school for white students George Washington Carver School to serve Roanoke County blacks. Both came only after controversy.

Roanoke County – which operated the schools before Salem became a city – really didn’t have much choice about building Andrew Lewis. A fire damaged the old Salem High School on Broad Street (the current City Hall) so badly that the county had to do something for white students. Before that crisis was fully resolved, it was clear something had to be done for black students as well.

The fire, caused by faulty wiring, broke out in a second floor hall of the Broad Street school shortly after midnight on Monday morning, January 19, 1931, the day mid-year exams were to begin. Although firemen fought it effectively, the blaze spread through classrooms and laboratories, the roof collapsed and the dome over the entrance came crashing down into the library. Bad as it was, the building was not totally destroyed.

Next day, students were assigned classes in churches, other public buildings and at Roanoke College as temporary expedients. And folks started talking about a new school.

Schools in Salem had needed a lot of work and support well before the fire. Academy Street Elementary School and Salem High were bulging with 1,538 students, and the Academy Street buildings were in deplorable physical condition. The financially strapped school board had not responded to pleas and pressures for relief. Folks even talked of Salem becoming a city so it could manage its own schools, but the town’s 1930 population of 4,833, although up more than 15% from 1920, was still shy of the 5,000 minimum required for city status.

Eleven days after the fire, a bond issue to pay for a new high school was proposed at a joint meeting of the town council, the county board of supervisors and the county school board. The county scheduled an election April 14 on a bond issue for $200,000 for a 30-room high school in Salem and $150,000 for buildings and additions elsewhere.

There was opposition immediately. To build support, the referendum was postponed until May 12, money was added for a school in the Williamson Road area and $50,000 was cut from the Salem allocation. Still, on May 12, voters rejected it by a vote of 1,343 to 1,299. Seventy per cent of Salem voters approved it; eighty per cent of Vinton voters opposed it.

That summer, emergency and makeshift measures were put in place for the 1931-32 academic year, including holding classrooms in the reconditioned school building on Broad Street and in other public buildings. If that weren’t bad enough, teacher salaries were cut that fall by 10 per cent.

In January 1932, a “Better Schools” project, coordinated by the Kiwanis Club, was organized, and things began to look up. It was obvious to all that new school facilities had to be provided.

In February, the county board of supervisors, after much wrangling, finally worked out a compromise to provide $100,000 for a high school in Salem and $50,000 each for high schools in Williamson Road and Vinton, financed with current funds and loans. The site for Salem’s high school already had been selected: at College Avenue and 4th Street where workers already were clearing the site, tearing down the five-story building that once had been Hotel Salem and more recently the Lutheran orphanage. The $100,000 school contract was let, with occupancy scheduled in September 1933, and the school was named Andrew Lewis High School. The town of Salem even came up with $22,000 to add back an auditorium that had been deleted from the plans.

Finally, on Sept. 8, 1933, Andrew Lewis High School was dedicated with an open house and a speech by Dr. Sidney B. Hall, state superintendent of public instruction, and overjoyed Salemites flocked through the new building. The following June, 167 students became the first graduating class. The building on Broad Street, meanwhile, had been converted to an elementary school.

Even then, the need for more classrooms didn’t end. Two 12-room additions to Andrew Lewis were built in 1936 and 1938-39, respectively.

By then, a quite different controversy over school building needs had arisen - over the need to build a new school for black students.

Until then, black students from throughout Roanoke County attended the Roanoke County Training School, a facility, originally built in 1899 as the Graded School A on Water Street (now South Broad Street) and School Alley. Both Principal Theron N. Williams and School Superintendent Roland C. Cook felt it needed to be replaced by a more modern and larger facility. Most residents seemed to agree, but the controversy arose over where to build it

The county’s choice for a site was a tract west of town along Main Street in Salem, the site of today's Oakey Field. However, this raised the ire of many white residents, who claimed that the site was unsuitable for various reasons ranging from traffic hazards to declining property values. They favored a site on 4th and Water Streets just a couple blocks from the new Andrew Lewis High School – where Carver eventually was built.

The town, in its opposition to the Oakey site for a school, even claimed that the tract was needed for its planned new water system and filed a condemnation suit to acquire it. Two weeks later Town Council sent a letter to the school board expressing another reason: it opposed the Oakey site “either for white or colored children because of its location on the only east and west thoroughfare through the town.”

The real reason appeared to be more concern for a school for blacks in the proposed Oakey location. O. L. Stearnes, a local white businessman, wrote a long and scathing editorial in which he stated this in no uncertain terms:

“…it is proposed,” he wrote, “to gather up the young negro boys and girls, at their rowdiest, noisiest, and most nuisance-making age, from all parts of the County, and transport them in county busses (sic), some five or six hundred or more of them, and dump them down daily upon Salem's front doorstep, and permanently establish a nuisance there contrary to the comfort and well-being of our white people; and subversive of the kindly relations that should obtain between the white and colored people of our town. . . Here is a unique instance of the white citizens of a whole community being ‘sold down the river.’"

The land on Water Street south of 4th Street had several disadvantages, including being more cramped than the Oakey tract and having a stream running through it. Nonetheless, it became the preferred location of many in Salem, since it was more out of the way and adjacent to the Water Street Community. Over the following months, a protracted legal battle ensued over the sites, until an outside commission was appointed to evaluate the options. In April 1939 it recommended the 4th Street site. The problems with the site, said the consultants, were not disqualifying. Construction began and the new George Washington Carver school opened for the 1940 school year with T. N. Williams remaining as principal.

The dedication was a celebration of the values of the Salem’s Water Street Community and of African American society nationwide. Alice Webster, a 92-year-old former slave, helped lay the cornerstone, a reminder of how far blacks had come in a single lifetime. Carver, the great educator and scientist of the Tuskegee Institute for whom the school was named, had to decline an invitation to attend because of ill health, but he sent a congratulatory message saying, in part: "I trust that every pupil will regard the splendid school building as an opportunity to make their lives count 100 per cent as American citizens."

Through the years, hundreds of students would live up to Carver's advice, and the school became an anchor for the Salem’s Water Street Community for generations. Despite the controversy that surrounded its construction, the school was considered a wonderful contribution to the community, one of the most well equipped and modern schools in the state with a gym, auditorium, library, cafeteria, home-economics department and industrial arts classroom. Still, it was clearly below the standard set by Andrew Lewis High School, built a few blocks away.

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Lula Marable’s Love Triangle Ends Happily After All

By Lon Savage

Lula Marable, who lived with her mother on Academy Street in Salem in early 1902, had problems like many young girls her age: prob-lems with men. She was fond of a young insur-ance agent, Charles D. Haislip, but her mother objected. Mom had forbidden Haislip to visit Lula, and Lula, herself, was under her mother's close surveillance.

Still seeking romance, Lula got the name of another man, one John A. Chick of New Portland, Maine, from a matrimonial agency. They corresponded; things clicked, and, sure enough, soon they were planning matrimony. Although they had never met, Lula set the wed-ding date in March, and Chick made plans to come to Salem.

As the wedding date approached, Lula became frightened and disenchanted. She sent Haislip word of her plight through a third party. They developed a solution: they would elope. Acting according to a plan, Lula feigned the need to go to a nearby grocery to buy something to prepare for breakfast. Instead, she detoured to a place where she had left some clothing and dressed herself as an old woman, complete with mourning veil. Making her escape, she joined Haislip at the intersection of College Avenue and 4th Street, and they took the streetcar to Roanoke. After remaining two days in hiding at his sister's home, they drove a buggy to Cave Spring, where his parents lived, and bought two horses which they rode to, Leaksville - a two day trip. There, at Leaksville's Hotel Harper, they were married by the Rev. D. E. Field who told them it was his 1,810th such ceremony. Another two-day horseback ride brought them back to his parents' home in Cave Spring.

Meanwhile, on March 2, Chick arrived in Salem and learned of the elopement. The entire story came out in the newspapers. Lula's moth-er refused to forgive her daughter. Chick, bro-ken hearted, reportedly consulted lawyers about legal action.

One attorney, a newspaper reported, told him "he could sue for breach of promise, but that was an unheard-of proceeding in the South, and the best advice he .could give him was to get a ticket for Maine if he didn't already have one, and carry back with him his disappointment; with the best grace possible."

Chick nursed his broken heart in Salem for a while longer before returning to New Portland. While doing so, he met another Salem girl, Beatrice M. Carter, who also lived on Academy Street. They became friends. After his departure, the two realized, through the separation, that they cared deeply for each other. Chick came back to Salem and married Beatrice on June 13, 1902. They 1eft after the wedding to make their home in New Portland.

Editor's Note: This story is taken in sub stance from Norwood Middleton’s "Salem, A Virginia Chronicle, " which is available at the Salem Museum.

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The Best Basketball Team In The History Of Southwestern Virginia
(One Man’s Opinion)

by Henry R. Bellinger

The title of this article is thought provoking and may lead to challenges and great debates, however, this is my story and I’m sticking to it.

The school year 1945-46 was an exciting school year at Carver High School in Salem, VA. World War II was over and the country was trying to get back on it’s feet. There was an atmosphere of happiness and participation in or attending sporting events was the thing to do. Carver, being a small all black county school, first grade through the twelfth grade, did not have a varsity high school football team, baseball or any of the other sports teams, but we did have a basketball team and a very good one at that. It seems that I was aware of that from the time I was born.

The team was very good that year compiling a 24-1 record and winning the district tournament. They were destined to be very competitive in the state tournament but due to some administrative errors, they did not play in the state tournament that year. I did not know much about what was going on because I was in the second grade.

We had the privilege of having recess in the afternoon when the “big boys” were also having recess. I noticed in late spring of1946 that coach Payne would be outside and the big “boys” would be training, getting in shape running around the field in pairs (I almost said the football field but of course football wasn’t established until 1952).

Coach Thomas Payne was the father of basketball in Salem. His teams won four district tournaments between the years 1941-1946. Mr. Payne let me take a shot at halftime of one of the games and I made the shot. That is why I really felt that they were a special group of “boys” going into the next school year, 1946-47.

That year I was a little more focused on sports and could tell that the school was really in the spirit. We could not wait until basketball season. The team was really good and all of the games were packed with fans. The adults would dress up and the children were orderly. Carver had a very successful season that year and were scheduled to host the district tournament. The district consisted of all of the black high schools that had basketball teams in Southwestern Virginia regardless of the size of the school. We were a very small school but we always held our own with the larger schools. The larger schools were Dunbar of Lynchburg, Langston of Danville, Jefferson of Charlottesville (later changed to Burley) and our greatest rival, Addison of Roanoke. The coach of that team was John T. Butler who had replaced Coach Payne.

The key to the Carver team, and something coaches dream about, was that it had seven experienced seniors. They were James Spurlock, Frank Landers, Rufus Dowe, Marcus Penn, Raymond Joiner, Benjamin Henderson and Douglas Dowe. They were disciplined, mature and good scholars. To round out the rest of the team was Paul Arrington, George Braxton, George Jones, Bernard Spurlock, Lewey Hale and Alfred Dowe.

The tournament was held the first Saturday in march 1947. The ground was covered with snow but it was not a very cold day. The tournament started at 9:00 AM. Carver was the top seeded team and had to play the first game.

This was my first tournament and I was not going to miss any games, especially any of Carver’s games. Carver easily dismissed Simms of Harrisonburg (it may have been Albert Harris of Martinsville) and was now waiting to play in the semi finals. Other games were being played in order to see who would lose to Carver in the semi-finals. Sometime in the early afternoon Carver met Langston of Danville.

Naturally the game should have been more competitive but Carver prevailed as we all expected. Now we all had to wait for the finals which was to be played between Carver and Jefferson of Charlottesville. Charlottesville had a host of super stars lead by a tall, long-armed guy named “T-bone”. They also had Van Brooks, George Jones and “Moon” (I have no idea what his real name was, all I can remember is that he was tall). This was supposed to be the match of the season. “T-bone” and his gang was no match for Carver that night, with Jimmy Spurlock having his best game of the season, Carver defeated Jefferson and won the District Tournament.

The team then traveled to Virginia State College in Petersburg, Virginia to compete in the state tournament. The team did very well in the state tournament, losing in the finals by one point to Armstrong of Richmond. (naturally there were some controversial calls by the referees that went against Carver).

The season was not over. Carver was invited to play in another all black tournament against the best teams from Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. This tournament was called the Tri-state Tournament and was held at Fayetteville State Teachers college in North Carolina. Guess what? Carver won the Tri-State Tournament. After the Tournament, five of Carvers seniors were given scholarships to Fayetteville State Teachers College.

Over the years Southwestern Virginia has produced some fine basketball teams, including some other very good teams from Carver, both boys and girls. However, when you consider the competition they played against, that they won the District Tournament, was runner up in the State Tournament, losing in the finals by only one point, and proved to be the best team in three states, well I rest my case as to who was the best.

Douglas and Alfred Dowe, two players from the team, contributed to this article.

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