Believe Memphis

This week's "Because I Said So" column is all heart. Believe it.

Good seats still available on 'Believe Memphis' bandwagon 

I was born and raised in Memphis, weaned during the 1970s on a steady stream of negativity flowing through a city whose dreams had slipped into the river and whose borders had become porous. Everyone, it seemed, wanted out. The grass must have looked greener in the next county over, a neighboring city, any other state. 

But things have turned, haven’t they? Negativity is passed from generation to generation like a bad gene, and the only way to arrest it is to flip the off-switch in our DNA. My children are being raised in a new Memphis, one with possibilities imagined from the uppermost reaches of government down to the teacher in the classroom, from the 7-foot-1 defensive player of the year to the CEO to the waitress serving sweet tea. 

And it’s borne upon one word: Believe. 

It’s a directive being spread around these days on billboards, the airwaves and a little yellow towel, but the attitude has been growing in us all along. We have flipped that switch and begun believing in ourselves and our city, and to proudly share the stories that make us who we are. 

Believe Memphis. So powerful is this simple command that it isn’t just for those born and raised here. It’s for everyone everywhere. We are all of Memphis. If you have a favorite pop star and dance to your radio, if you’ve stayed in a hotel, shopped in a grocery store, shipped a package or tasted the perfect pulled pork sandwich, then you are of Memphis. And we’re glad to have you. We welcome you. 

The term “bandwagon” gets used in a negative way, but I say come on board. Ours is a wagon that has been hitched in the past to teams of Tigers, a couple of kings, two pandas and a Redbird. It has been loaded into the belly of a purple and orange cargo plane. More recently, it has been pulled behind a 400-passenger paddle wheel steamboat, a fleet of food trucks, and bicycles along a 7-mile Greenline, through a revitalized park, and eventually, it will cross the river over the Harahan Bridge. When there was no one to pull it, we stoked its steam engine with issues of Forbes magazine and the words of bitter columnists from afar. Currently, it’s being pulled by a grizzly bear. So climb on: It’s a bandwagon with an actual band led by Booker T. Jones fresh from a concert of American soul music at the White House. 

My children already have their own memories of Memphis to share, their own stories of visiting the Memphis Zoo and the Levitt Shell, of standing riverside to gaze at the water, exploring Midtown’s cafés and riding the trails at Shelby Farms. They’ve visited the farmers markets and Botanic Garden, caught movies at the Summer Twin Drive-In and danced at the Stax Museum. They’re old enough to understand the news they see and hear, and open enough to understand that it’s not all perfect. But they have the sense that it can be changed for the better, and that is a brand new sensation. 

I’ve loaded my family aboard this wagon, and I’m stopping the cycle of negativity for my own children. I am of Memphis, and my children believe because they’ve never known any other way.

5 Years of Saying So

In the spring of 2008, at a time when I was pulling my hair out over the willfulness of a 2-year-old and with running my own business, I was asked by Stacey Greenberg if I'd like to alternate Thursdays with her writing a column for The Commercial Appeal about what it's like to raise kids in Memphis. I had been writing about my kids on this very blog for two years already so I said, "Sure, why not."

The truth is I might have used an exclamation point or two in my answer. The truth is I never expected "Because I Said So" to last six months, such is the volatile nature of the newspaper industry and the tenuous grasp of any freelancer on any project. Yet here we are, five years later and I'm still given the opportunity to write it, still pulling my hair out over the willfulness of a now-6-year-old. Stacey has moved on so the opposite Thursdays are filled with . . . something, I don't really look at the paper on those days.

It's been a dream job, more than you can imagine. To be able to document the awesome responsibility of raising four children, the fun, the heartache, the fear. Those noises and smells. It's fun when we're stopped out at the grocery store or the bookstore by readers who ask, "Are these the children you write about?" And I answer, "Children? These aren't mine, I don't really have any kids." Oh, my children laugh at this every single time. It's the most minor celebrity anyone could ask for and the kids are always there to bring me back down to my proper level, and then some.

A lot has changed over these five years and hopefully some of it has produced interesting fodder for such a column. A lot more will happen over the next five and I hope I'm here tell you so in this column. We'll see. Thank you to everyone who helped make it possible, to my family for putting up with their foibles, faults and flatulence being spotlighted in the newspaper twice a month, and especially thanks to all of you who read regularly. Thank you for the comments, the letters and e-mails, the remarks in public. It means more to me than you will ever know.

On this fifth anniversary, here is the very first "Because I Said So" column that ran in The Commercial Appeal on April 17, 2008.

Real kids shrink notions of big family 

My grandparents, Bob and Shirley Fachini, raised seven children, a respectable number by anyone's standards. 

It was the 1950s and '60s, a much simpler era, I'm told. Families were larger then because this country needed as many citizens as possible to fight communism, go to Saturday movie matinees for a nickel and colonize the moon. 

They would later come to call these babies "boomers," because of how much noise that many children, at one time, in one place, will make. 

Their house was warm and loving and, sure, it was cramped, but they made do. Bob built a table large enough for everyone to eat around, and Shirley sewed dresses for the girls. 

It sounds like an idyllic time, and the stories of the antics of my aunts and uncles as kids have engaged me since I was a child. 

It was those stories that had me wanting a large family of my own. 

My wife, Kristy, and I have four children between the ages of 21 months and 10 years. And, as it turns out, we're done. 

That's right. I don't know what got into my grandparents' brains to make them think seven kids was a good idea, but I'm afraid something had to be a little off for two intelligent people to willingly welcome that many little people to live with them. 

By stopping now, we're not squashing my dream of raising a big family, because four is the new seven. 

When Kristy and I tell people, especially new parents with only one child, that we have four, the look we get is generally awe and amazement. 

Never envy. 

Maybe just a hint of pity. Yes, mostly pity, now that I think of it. 

The truth is, we weren't exactly sure at the beginning what we were doing. 

Kristy researched parenting styles, while I was content, and over my head, just keeping the kid alive and somewhat happy. Ten years, and three babies later, it's still all I can do. 

But our home now is full of love. Just as much with love, in fact, as it is with discarded Pop-Tart wrappers, broken and mismatched toys, half-emptied cups of milk and diapers, both clean and dirty. 

Parenthood is an easy enough club to enter, though staying in the good graces of the club's membership board -- your kids -- is tricky. 

Nothing was easy for my grandparents either, yet they signed on for seven kids and dealt with them as they showed up. And if they could handle seven, then four should be cake, right? Or at least a chocolate icing-smeared face smiling up at us. 

We're doing our best with our quartet, in the spirit and with the tenacity of my grandparents. 

We'll send them to the best schools we can, we will communicate openly with them and we'll raise them to be caring and informed citizens, who will one day, hopefully, grow up to colonize the moon.

© 2008 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 

Because I Said So: Teach kids to enjoy city with family

The kids' spring break was a couple of weeks ago and I had big plans. I was going to get on a plane by myself and fly to Antigua where I would charter a sailboat and wend my way down through the Caribbean. Those plans didn't pan out - didn't even make it out of my head - so I opted for a "staycation" instead. I loathe that word, but there it is. I hate it almost as much as the word "blog," yet stay we did. And we cationed, I suppose. And now, I blog.

G & S dig Isaac Hayes' ride

My plan was to see the city, to introduce the kids to where they live, from what they are molded and what it is they should cherish. I wanted to see Sun Studio and the National Civil Rights Museum, the Memphis Botanic Gardens and the Mississippi River itself. I wanted to stroll around the grounds of the Dixon Gallery & Gardens and maybe watch the ducks march at the Peabody Hotel. I wanted soul food from the Four-Way Restaurant.

Fate, however, conspired against us. There was some sickness and days of rain and cold. And, all of these things are quite expensive to do, so we had to be choosey. We visited the Stax Museum of American Soul and had lunch at Dino's Grill, now celebrating their 40th year in business (congratulations!). There was a chalk festival at the Brooks Museum of Art, and some time at the Memphis Zoo.

It was a nice week without much structure as is our wont. And there was plenty to learn, and to relearn, about the city and all it has to offer, from music to food to friends and family. Everyone everywhere, given the chance, should get on a plane sometime and head to the islands and, if you can't do that, then get out in your city and explore. You never know what you might learn.

Last week's Because I Said So column:

Teach kids to enjoy city with family

The week before last, for about half a week, it was springtime in Memphis. Remember that? Temperatures in the 70s, sunshine, the
saucer magnolia in my front yard even dared to show its colors. Luckily for my kids, that was during their spring break, and we took full advantage of it.

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art held a chalk art festival with folks creating their own works of art on the plaza in front of the museum. Kids got into the act as well and turned the concrete into a rainbow of butterflies, puppies, squiggly lines and shapes. It looked as if spring had fallen upon Midtown alone and blossomed in chalk dust.

From there, it’s only a hop and a skip to the Memphis Zoo. A short trip unless it’s 70, sunny and spring break. The line of cars waiting to get in snaked through the park and down Poplar. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to see the snakes. Or, more accurately, they wanted to touch a stingray. We never did make it into that exhibit; the lines there were too overwhelming for impatient children (and adults). We’ll make a special trip for the rays.

The highlight of the week for me was a visit to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. The museum is a treasure trove of soul, blues, styles and grooves. My kids laughed at Isaac Hayes’ hats and boots; they dug his car with its fuzzy floor and gold detail. They swayed and strutted on the dancefloor in front of a floor-to-ceiling episode of “Soul Train,” and they marveled at the display of black Frisbees. “Those are records,” I explained.

My favorite part is the short film shown at the beginning of every visit. I’ve seen it before, and it never fails to bring a lump to the throat. Stax, in its heyday, rode a wave of hits, fame, funk and, most inspirational, family. Steve Cropper, legendary guitarist for Booker T. & the MG’s, says in the film that when you walked into Stax, you were family. Color did not matter. Until it did. When things turned after that tragic April 4 in 1968, a day we’ll commemorate next week, neither Stax nor the city of Memphis would ever be the same.

In the 10 years since the museum opened, though, that tide has turned again. I saw it two weeks ago in a museum where black and white, young and old, all studied the rise and fall of a great American sound. We laughed at the size of the collars, wiped a tear at the story of a plane crash and danced to the same beat. In a park across town on another day, my kids sidled up to others from throughout the city to revel in color. At our world-class zoo, where there was once a day of the week set aside for black-only visitors, multitudes of all ethnicities wandered.

Last week saw the official first day of spring, though the predicted snow the following day said otherwise. Either way, the long winter hibernation is over. It’s time to get out and visit your city, wherever you live; learn what it holds, its history good and bad, and enjoy time with family that you know, and that you have yet to meet.

© 2013 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

James Conaway's "Nose"

Way back in 1993, James Conaway published his memoir MEMPHIS AFTERNOONS. Not long after that, he came to Memphis for what was then the River City Writers series of lectures at the University of Memphis. I went to a reading and signing of the book, and we later met for drinks at Old Zinnie's in Midtown. I was writing then, though I never would have said of myself, "I'm a writer." It was all too new for me, I was an unfocused and gangly 23-year-old, still green on the vine. But I wrote every day and I told Jim this and he told me that, if that were the case, then I was already far ahead of many of the graduate students he'd taught. He implored me to continue. I didn't ask him to read anything I'd written and, blessedly, he didn't ask to see any. I can't imagine what I might have been working on then, but know for a fact it would have gone down bitterly, with an aftertaste of youth and angst throughout.

Nose by James Conaway

Jim advised me to go on writing daily and yet I did not. Things happened in the intervening years, movement, a business was bought and sold, kids were born and, for a time, I stopped writing altogether. I lost whatever advantage I may have had by simply putting my pencil down. And then I started back, wrote some short stories, some journalism, a few novel manuscripts, and seventeen years later I would find myself sitting across the table from the novelist Richard Bausch. Over copious glasses of wine, coincidentally, he would bolster the idea in me that a writer must write every day. "Do the work," he would say, and he would also tell me and my fellow Moss workshoppers that the goal was to make it all seem effortless. He said, paraphrasing, to write it and rewrite it and work at it until the reader doesn't even realize he's reading.

I've just finished reading Conaway's latest novel, NOSE (Thomas Dunne Books), and it is effortless. The sense I had while reading it was that I was sitting down with the author in a comfortable bar, sipping wine, and listening to a story being told. The story in this case is of a valley in Northern California where wine, and the subsequent effluvia, is the main cash crop with players going back generations or, in some cases, only days. Les Breeden tumbles into town on a Pacific breeze to work at the area's small newspaper, only to be laid off before that breeze has ceased to blow. He meets some regulars in a bar called the Glass Act and becomes entangled with the wife of Clyde Craven-Jones, the preeminent wine critic. Craven-Jones – CJ, as he's known – has had a mystery bottle of Cabernet left on his doorstep that garners his highest rating. But who left it there? No one comes forward and the hunt for the mystery vintner leads us through a valley peopled by farmers, high society, drunks, scientists, capitalists and immigrants; oenophiles all, their veins flowing with the thick, fruity stuff.

Conaway is knowledgeable in wines and how they come to be, there's no disputing that. His nonfiction bestsellers NAPA and THE FAR SIDE OF EDEN can be consulted if any question to pedigree arises. The trick here is that he doesn't hold that knowledge over us. The danger in a novel such as this is that talk of climate and soil, microbes and fermentation, will bog us down and make the vintage undrinkable. Not the case. It's all there, yet is handled in such a way, with humor and a certain amount of industry self-deprecation, that we don't even realize we're learning something new.

I've read many of Conaway's books and enjoyed them all, but there is a special place on my shelf for MEMPHIS AFTERNOONS, the vine of that memoir being grafted, as it is, with Conaways and Alleys. There is much to love in this new pour as well. There is mystery and some tragedy. There is great dialogue and wit and hope. These are the ingredients necessary to blend a book that is enjoyable, fast-paced, fun and effortless.

Read more at NOSE and at Thomas Dunne.

Because I Said So: History lesson for kids to include what Klan does not stand for

I remember being petrified of the Ku Klux Klan when I was a kid. I would read about it in history books or watch documentaries and the nighttime scenes of hooded figures with burning crosses and ropes were the stuff of nightmares. What they did and represented to African Americans was atrocious enough, but there was something personal to it as well: as students in Catholic school we were told they hated Catholics, and I'm Catholic.

J.P. Alley

The Klan is mixed up in my family's own folklore. Just typing that sentence makes me feel dirty, but at least we're on the anti-Klan side of those stories. My cousin, Dan Conaway, writes a fantastic weekly column for The Memphis Daily News. He wrote about his grandfather, my great-grandfather, J.P. Alley, and his work against the Klan in a column last month (read Dan's column here). I figured there was room for two anti-racism columns in this town and used it all as a springboard for the "Because I Said So" column that ran yesterday.

My kids shouldn't be scared of the Klan. Hell, they shouldn't even know about the Klan other than what they read in textbooks or see in documentaries. It's still hard for me to believe that they're learning about it on the front page of the daily newspaper. Maybe this will be the last time it warrants such real estate. We can hope.

Lesson for kids: What Klan doesn't stand for

It’s been all over the news lately that at the end of this month the Ku Klux Klan plans to march on Memphis. Like any good civic organization staging a rally, or a circus, they’ve applied for and received a permit from the city. And they have presumably tidied themselves up with Tide and some Snuggle fabric softener. It’s always important to make a good first impression.

But this is not their first impression, is it? They’ve been around for far too long. In 1923, my great-grandfather, J.P. Alley, was editorial cartoonist for The Commercial Appeal, and he, along with editor C.P.J. Mooney, used their respective talents to speak out against the KKK. They won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service that year.

And now, 90 years later, we’re still talking about this gaggle of radicals? It’s the sort of news story I ignored for a while, hoping it might all just go away, thanks to good, common decency. But it looks as though this stain just won’t wash out.

I enjoy teaching my children about their family history, about the good that their great-great-grandfather did, but in this context it seems a bit ridiculous. As far as civil rights has progressed — right here, in this city set as a stage for the world — to have a conversation about a group of misanthropes hiding cowardly beneath cowls in this day and age is surreal.

This needs to be a time, not to teach children what such a group stands for, but what it is they don’t stand for. Equality. Decency. Common sense. Good, Southern manners.

And then there’s the irony that this current brouhaha is over a park. If there is one place in society where we should be teaching our kids to play fair and get along, it’s in the park. Games of freeze tag and kickball, waiting in line for the slide or a turn at the swing, making friends with strangers so there will be enough for a proper game of flag football. This is what should be happening within our parks.

For this discussion, our opinion on what that specific park on Union Avenue should be named is irrelevant. We’ve progressed a lot in 90 years and there are more civil and expedient ways to debate such a subject than with robed anachronisms.

Living in a house with many children, I’ve learned that lines of communication must be left open, that there are ways to work through any disagreement of territory and ownership. Even the newest parent learns quickly that tantrums are ineffective.

As a parent with some years under my belt, let me assure you that a kid wrapping himself in a bed sheet and shouting his misguided tenets at me would land that kid in time out and not upon a pulpit in front of the courthouse.

On the day of the Klan’s proposed rally, we’ll stay away; there’s no reason to poke a hornet’s nest. Perhaps we’ll take the kids to another park where they can run and play and get to know kids of varying ethnicities. Perhaps there will be a history lesson so that, hopefully, we’re not doomed to repeat our mistakes.

I’ll include a chapter on cowardice and one on standing up for your ideals, and that some clans who claim to be better than others because of the way they look are merely cartoons of themselves.

© 2013 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A Tale of Two Cemeteries

Back in September, I took C over to Elmwood Cemetery where he and some friends, having read The American Plague by Molly Caldwell Crosby, were making a documentary on the Yellow Fever Epidemic for school. I stopped in the main office to get a map of the grounds and take my other three kids on a tour of Memphis’s past. I’d been there as a kid many times but it had been a while since my last visit. I was immediately impressed by the offices, the architecture, the old-world feel and the contemporary use for such a space. I asked a few questions of a staff member and later pitched Phillips Cottage as a Hidden Memphis story to my editor at The Commercial Appeal.

The idea was for a story, to run the Sunday before Halloween, not on Elmwood itself, which has deservedly received much press over the years, but on this one, 146-year-old, continuously used structure within the cemetery. She liked the idea, but didn’t think there would be enough for a whole feature and suggested finding something else to go along with it. My immediate thought was the Crystal Shrine Grotto in Memorial Park, the elaborate, cave-like shrine built in 1938 by Mexican artist Dionicio Rodriguez. It’s another place I visited as a kid.

Grave of cemetery founder Rev. Morris Henderson

As I sat around searching the internet from home, I came across this great story on Zion Christian Cemetery by Paulene Keller in the October issue of The Downtowner magazine. Surprisingly, I’d never heard of this cemetery on South Parkway founded by a group of former slaves in 1876. The more I read, the more intrigued I became.

I spent a morning interviewing Kim McCollum, the executive director of Elmwood, complete with tour of Phillips Cottage and the cemetery, then I drove over to Zion, not far away, and was struck by the stark difference. Elmwood is orderly in its own way, historically cited everywhere you turn and seems intent in its orderliness on preserving and educating. Zion, on the other hand, is overgrown, unwelcoming, mostly neglected and, well, sad. The headstones, where they still exist, are crumbling or leaning or have fallen over. They bear names and dates of death, but in many cases there are no dates of birth or, if anything, only a year. I walked the grounds, interested in the gravesite of Dr. Georgia Patton Washington, one of the first female African-American physicians. She died in 1900 at the age of 36 after giving birth to a son. She asked that a magnolia tree be planted to mark her grave and it towers now, surrounded by other markers, and its growth and size has knocked to the ground an ornate obelisk marking where she, two of her young children who died within their first years, and her mother, all lie. Looking back at my notes from that day, I wrote that “much of the 15-acres is unused” but that is a misconception as I later learned. While there are relatively few grave markers, there are nearly 40,000 buried there. Elmwood holds 75,000.

I visited Memorial Park that day as well and toured the Grotto, and I spoke later with Ken Hall and Rhodes professor Milton Moreland, both of whom have worked extensively on the Zion Community Project and were enormously helpful. As I began writing the story, it quickly became unwieldy. Our initial thoughts were wrong and it turns out there was enough for a feature on Phillips Cottage alone. There was more than enough for a feature on Zion, and all of these places deserve their own write up. I decided to focus on the Cottage and Washington’s magnolia, and to save the Grotto for another day. (During the time of the initial story pitch and near-publication there had been some upheaval at the CA and my longtime editor had, unfortunately, been one of those laid off. My new editor, understandably, had a full plate made even more so and this confusion is in no way her fault.)

 I sent in my 1,500-word story and had to leave town unexpectedly the next day for a family matter. I returned on a Saturday and the next day opened the newspaper to find a shortened, 600-word, single-source feature on Phillips Cottage alone (Hidden Memphis: Elmwood Cemetery's caretaker cottage endures as treasure-trove of history, Oct. 28, 2012). My editor was out of town so I couldn’t find out what happened until today. Turns out there were only photos of Elmwood to run with the story, so they went with that portion instead of both. Any issue with a story I’ve written has had to do with photos and never with the copy I’m hired to write.

But these things happen. I just hate it for Zion which deserves some recognition. The  40,000 souls there, many of them former slaves themselves, deserve their dignity. To learn more about the Zion Community Project, visit zioncommunityproject.org.

Below is the version I wrote.

The Cottage and the Magnolia

There are 95 acres in the heart of Memphis, two disparate plots of land that are nevertheless equally important to the city, reverent to the families of those entombed there and meaningful to any who seek to understand how a city is built and nearly destroyed, who its staunchest defenders, outlaws, leaders and healers were, and how such information might be saved or lost over time. 

Elmwood Cemetery was founded in 1852 and has maintained Phillips Cottage on its grounds as a memorial to its history, and the history of Memphis, for nearly that long. Zion Cemetery was founded in 1876 and has deteriorated over time through neglect, lost records and a lack of attention, its greatest monument now a towering magnolia tree planted at the grave of a forgotten, though remarkable, woman.

Phillips Cottage - Elmwood

A picture tells a thousand words, and the black-and-white images decorating the interior of Phillips Cottage in Elmwood Cemetery are no exception. But the plaster walls of the cottage have more stories to tell than just those captured in the earliest days of photography; stories of grieving loved ones remembering their dead, of a fever that spread and threatened to eradicate the population of Memphis, of generals, mayors, and the men and women whose final journey, whether on horse-drawn carriage or by automobile, passed by its front door.

Phillips Cottage was built as a one-room structure for Samuel Phillips, the cemetery’s second superintendent, in 1866, 14 years after the founding of the cemetery, as a place to conduct the business of overseeing funeral arrangements and tending to the grounds. Despite its utilitarian use, the cottage was designed in the ornate Victorian Gothic Carpenter style, popular at the time with its gingerbread trim and church-like windows. A steeple-shaped finial decorates the northern peak of the original standing seam metal roof.

Phillips Cottage has been used consistently since its construction, but is much more than mere office space today. It is a living, working museum with records and artifacts dating back to the 19th Century. The small staff welcomes the public to peruse and take a trip back to that Victorian era when the cemetery itself was outside the city limits and only the first of its 75,000 bodies were interred. “We are a repository of historical information,” said Kimberly McCollum, executive director of Elmwood. “We have lot books that go back to the founding of the cemetery, we have an amazing collection of archives. Anybody is welcome to come inside the cottage and look at it. In fact, we encourage people to.”

In those first years there were two entrances to the cemetery – one at the south end and the second, the only entrance still used today, at the north end of the 80 acres just off of Dudley St., is where Phillips Cottage stands.

Circa 1900, a second room and a walk-in vault were added to the existing cottage, as was a full-length front porch, altering the shape of the original gothic-style windows along the front. The added room is now an office and communal space with worktable, furnishings and floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with volumes on Memphis history for use by genealogists and researchers. The vault, brick-lined and left open to the public, holds old city directories, more photographs and a small gift shop.

In 1998, more space for offices and an archival-grade vault to the east was added. “We are interested in historic preservation and keeping everything with the same feel, and Jack Tucker was very specific that he wanted to honor that tradition,” McCollum said. To that end, the late architect Jack Tucker kept strictly to the design and style of the original cottage so that no matter where a visitor goes, the woodwork and sense of the old is seamless.

Above the 1900-era vault, attached to the roof and hung from scaffolding, is a bell that was used to call the students to class at the State Female College on McLemore, donated in 1885 after the school’s closure. That bell has rung for every funeral procession that has passed over the narrow entrance bridge for the past 127 years.

Inside, one will find the cottage’s cat, Howard, with its half-tail, walking among a hall tree once belonging to Robert Church, landowner and Memphis’s first black millionaire, donated by his family in 1983; a desk that once belonged to Alfred Jefferson Vaughan Jr., confederate general and Shelby County criminal court clerk in the late-1800s; and a refurbished sofa once owned by Mayor E.H. Crump.

“I think that I might have one of the most beautiful offices in Memphis,” McCollum said. “I am very fortunate to be surrounded by this beauty, and this history.”

Washington’s Magnolia - Zion

Just over two miles from Phillips Cottage and Elmwood, on So. Parkway East, there is no ornamental bridge leading to ample parking. There is no parking at all to speak of. Arching from stone feet, a metal, paint-flecked sign above the rutted entryway reads: Zion Christian Cemetery. A nearby historical marker denotes its importance as having been founded in 1876 by a group of former slaves known as the United Sons of Zion Association, as “ … a respectable burial site for African-Americans.”

For decades, the private cemetery, inherited by descendants of the founders and eventually given over years later to the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, has languished in disrepair and neglect, at the mercy of the elements, vagrants and crime in the neighborhood. At one time, though, “it was by far the most active African-American cemetery in Memphis during the postbellum period, the period of Reconstruction and so forth,” said Milton Moreland, Chair of the Archaeology Program and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College.

In recent years, a group of individuals and organizations, including Rhodes, has begun the Zion Cemetery Project, leading tour groups and volunteer clean-ups to restore the cemetery itself and to instill pride in the surrounding neighborhood. “If we can revive that cemetery as a major tourist destination, then that helps the community,” Moreland said. “The success of Zion will also be the success of the South Parkway and South Memphis community along with it.”

“The first day I stepped foot in there in 1999, the brush and bushes were six or seven feet tall all the way up to the fence at the road,” said Ken Hall, who, as executive director for the volunteer organization HandsOn Memphis at the time, was contacted by neighbors to the cemetery tired of the rodents and crime the lot harbored. “We’ve gone in foot by foot, yard by yard, with machetes, axes, hoes and knocked that back.”

On a recent crisp, fall day when the leaves were turning from green to gold, and beginning to cover the plots, a crew worked to clear weeds and brambles, to tend to the resting place of those who tended to others while alive. The most notable detail in the cemetery, other than the headless angel leaning over the grave of Rev. Morris Henderson, one of the founders, and the myriad other toppled stones, is the lack of exact birthdates. In some cases there are only birth years given to further infuse the facts with uncertainty, but in most cases, there is only a date of death.

Dr. Washington's magnolia

A ledger full of those buried there, as well as the records of T.H. Hayes Funeral Home, closed in 2010, but which conducted some 5,000 funerals at Zion, have been obtained and scanned by Rhodes College. The ledgers can be viewed at zioncommunityproject.org, a site built and maintained by the school.

It is difficult to believe there are upwards of 40,000 buried underfoot as you walk among the 1,000 or so markers still standing. The last burial in Zion Cemetery was in the late 1960s, Hall said, though most of the plots were filled by the 1920s.

The scattershot and weather-worn headstones are monuments to history and, among the sweet gum trees, oaks and vine-choked maples, on a rise midway within the cemetery, soars a stately magnolia. It’s not a man-made, chiseled monument yet it marks the resting place of Dr. Georgia Patton Washington, born in 1864 and died in 1900, who was one of the first female African-American physicians. “She’s talked about extensively in Ida B. Wells’s Memphis Diary,” said Moreland. “In her day, she was quite an active person, missionary and practicing doctor.” Washington asked that a tree be planted at her grave and now, in the shade of those waxy leaves, her official obelisk lies on its side, still readable, yet marking little.

While Elmwood has been a resting place for well-maintained and detailed records since its beginning, Zion is having to play catch up to cobble its history together. Any cemetery, first and foremost, should be a dignified place for those laid to rest there, a place where family can visit to remember and pay homage, but it also acts as a city’s memory where the names and dates act as plot points on the timeline of our people’s history.

“You kind of forget what was happening in the 1880s or 1890s unless we can memorialize them in one way or another,” Moreland said. “Cemeteries really are part of a living community, and when you have a vibrant cemetery, you actually have a vibrant living community.”

For more information on these cemeteries, Phillips Cottage or Dr. Georgia Patton Washington, visit elmwoodcemetery.org and zioncommunityproject.org.

  
All photos by the author

Because I Said So: Grade-school lunchtime a real eye-opener for dad

While dropping G off this morning, I was called out by the principal of Richland Elementary School because of today's "Because I Said So" column. It seems she began the day with phone calls about it. I wrote about having lunch with G in their cafeteria last week - the smells, the food, the ominous silence.

Mrs. McNary took it all in the manner it was intended, laughing along with my desperate attempts at humor, but she also wanted to explain. Richland was built in 1957 by the progressive architect team of Bill Mann and Roy Harrover in a style that must have looked as futuristic then as TV dinners. Mann and Harrover were also responsible for the Memphis International Airport and Memphis College of Art among other well-known buildings. As contemporary and cutting edge as the school certainly was 55 years ago, things change. I don't know if the walls, floor and ceiling of the cafeteria became more acoustically cantankerous or if children have become louder since then, but Mrs. McNary told me this morning that a parent once took a decibel meter into a lunch and the needle was off the charts. They had an architect come in to study it for possible sound dampening measures and were told that it would cost close to $100,000. In lieu of spending that kind of cash, they opted for making half the lunch period silent.

This seems reasonable. I'm sure there is concern for the children's hearing long term and we've all been to too-noisy restaurants, that's never a pleasant dining option. G told me that day that they weren't allowed to talk while they eat because they might choke and I laughed out loud at the reasoning (I was shushed). A certain amount of control needs to be had at all times to prevent chaos and, I'm sure, once it gets beyond a certain point, there is no returning to normalcy.

The kids seemed happy and ate well in their antique/futuristic school, and that's what is ultimately important. I had a good time at lunch with G and her friends. Kids are funny in groups and for a limited amount of time. I hope you will find a quiet place to sit and enjoy today's column.

Grade-school lunchtime a real eye-opener for dad

I had a lunch date with my youngest child at her school last week. She was Star of the Week for her first-grade class, an exalted position that affords her, along with acting as emcee of her own daily show-and-tell, the honor of eating in front of me.

It's an interesting thing, sitting with a table full of 6-year-olds. I recommend you all try it at least once. One time should just about do it.

Walking into an elementary school lunchroom, for me, is like walking through a portal back to my youth, such is the power of the sense of smell to memory. It's that mixture of food smell with feet smell; that oddly comforting yet nauseating scent that is anything but appetizing. Lack of appetite was not a problem as it was only 10:15 a.m., lunchtime for Memphis City Schools.

Also not a problem because these kids were not sharing. The lunch box buffet laid out in front of me offered a tempting, yet off-limits feast of lunch meats, tubes of yogurt, grapes, cookies, cheese sticks, potato chips, mayonnaise, apple slices, crackers and juice boxes; I provided my own hand sanitizer.

The first-grade students were required to eat in total silence for the first half of the allotted lunch period, a policy I'm not on board with. Lunch should be the one place, after recess, when kids are allowed to socialize and laugh and cut up with each other. I understand the need for control of small children; I have four of my own. Without control there is chaos and possible mutiny, but I found the apron-clad wardens walking the line to be a bit much.

The kids I ate with last week were a chatty bunch, too. When, at the halfway point they were released from their shackles of shushes, we discussed summer vacation plans, loose teeth, tofurkey, big sisters, throwing up and middle names.
I asked the kids around me if they ever trade lunches the way I used to.

"We're not allowed to," my daughter said. "We'll get moved to another table."

What we have in the lunchrooms of local elementary schools is a failure to communicate, and solitary confinement is the preferred deterrent. It seems that a lunch spent in the box for these tiny Cool Hand Lukes is what keeps the room quiet.

"But only if we're caught," piped up one of her friends who shall remain nameless, but who will surely be at my table for our next lunch date.

Such hushed hegemony isn't exclusive to Richland Elementary, where I dined last week. It was the same scene when our kids were at Downtown Elementary several years ago. I'm not sure whether it's a Memphis City Schools policy or a practice the principals share at their regular district meetings. I picture them sitting around an enormous conference table, bottles of ibuprofen in front of them, popping them like Chiclets and sharing trade secrets for ways to infuse their schools with sweet, sweet silence.

Can we blame them? I just described the post-bedtime ritual at my house, and possibly yours, assuming you're also washing down the Advil with a glass of wine and soaking in a bath of antibacterial soap.

Richard J. Alley is the father of two boys and two girls. Read more from him at uurrff.blogspot.com. Become a fan of "Because I Said So" on Facebook: facebook.com/alleygreenberg.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Hidden Memphis: Lloyd T. Binford

For almost two years, every other month, I've written the series "Hidden Memphis" for The Commercial Appeal. It's a lot of work, which is probably why it hasn't become a monthly series. Coming up with story ideas, researching them, locating experts or descendants or anyone who might have a connection to a 60-year-old building or industry or individual takes a lot of time and research. Looking at it as a freelance writer, it probably takes too much time when you get down to dollars per hour. But I love it. I love learning about little-known characters and finding images from our city's prodigious, notorious, colorful, shameful, hopeful, ill and progressive past, and sharing what I learn with others. And, to be truthful, the amount of time spent on any one story is probably, in large part, my own fault. When I get into the Memphis & Shelby County Room at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library and the helpful librarian brings me a stack (it's always a stack, if not a truckload) of newspaper clippings, scholarly papers, letters, photos or marginalia from early last century, I just can't help but read through it all. And when Wayne Dowdy, resident historian and manager of the room, happens by, I can't help but pick his own gray matter file for information and perspective.

Such was the case with the story that ran in yesterday's paper on Lloyd Tilgham Binford, the chairman of the Memphis Censor Board from 1928 until just before his death in 1956. I'd heard bits and pieces, anecdotes, about Binford over the years as I researched Film Row or the long-gone movie theaters of the past, but he was never a major subject in either of those stories so I just filed his name away for later. When my editor suggested Binford for a "Hidden Memphis" topic, I somewhat reluctantly agreed. It seemed to me that everyone already knew about him, how hidden could he be? And how much information could there possibly be on one man who wasn't a mayor or civil rights leader in this town? So I put out a call to all of the usual suspects, and some unusual suspects, that I look up for such stories, packed up my legal pad and pencils and headed to the Memphis Room. And, of course, they had everything I might need: pages and pages of stories and obituaries on Binford. He was quite notorious in his day, and quite often quoted. Perfect.

I pieced a story together through the voluminous wordage published on the commissioner, and talked with his great-granddaughter, Tamara Trexler, and grandson, Fred Trexler. I picked the brains of movie house historian Vincent Astor, University of Memphis professor Danny Linton, film directors Willy Bearden and Craig Brewer, film commissioner Linn Sitler, Malco magnates Michael Lightman and Nancy Tashie, Google and Dowdy. I sent the story in and, as I am wont to do, spent the rest of the week rewriting it in my head. The only problem with newspaper writing, I've found, is the limited space available; this story could have easily been twice as long.

I wanted to be fair to Binford, although being fair to someone when all evidence points to the fact that he banned films from the viewing public for racial reasons, or kept adults from seeing movies he felt to be too racy, both in image and language, is difficult to do. Government censorship doesn't deserve a fair shake. But Binford's background is interesting – a self-made businessman who grew his company from nothing, built an iconic home office that is a treasure in downtown Memphis today, and all with little more than a grade-school education. He also headed the Mid-South Fair from 1928-1931, and gave more than $10,000 to farm youth organizations. He was active in politics and acted as campaign manager for E.H. Crump. He was vice president of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce, a member of the board of trustees of the National Council and YMCA, on the board of Baptist Hospital; he was a Mason, Shriner and an Elk. And, according to newspaper accounts and Tamara Trexler, because of his charitable works here and in his hometown of Duck Hill, MS, there were over a hundred children throughout the south who had been named for him.

But then again, he banned movies from being seen because they deal " ... with social equality between whites and negroes in a way that is not practiced in the South." And in an attempt, seemingly, to reclaim - or dispute - his reputation, he was quoted in the Memphis Press-Scimitar on Sept. 26, 1947: " ... I'm one of the few white men in Memphis that got a six-pound fruit cake from negro friends last Christmas. I also received 18 Christmas cards from colored folks – and sent out the same number."

Does that help or hurt his case? Wayne Dowdy and I had discussions theorizing that Binford banned all-white or mixed-race audiences from seeing all-black or mixed-race casts for fear that the white audience members would riot and not for any danger from the black viewers. I looked for any evidence of this, for Binford simply mentioning it in one of the copious interviews he said he disliked to do, yet gave at the drop of a hat, apparently. I couldn't find anything concrete, so it remains a theory.

Regardless, it's the perceived fairness held in his own mind that makes Binford a complex and fascinating person; a real-life movie character himself who was, perhaps, stranger than fiction. The very fact that Memphis had a Board of Censors is strange enough until you place it in context, in a time when blacks and whites couldn't use the same water fountain or bathroom, when people were openly discriminated and physically assaulted for their beliefs. Strange times, indeed, and worthy of study so that they are never, ever repeated.

Banned or 'Binfordized

"Brazen." "Rowdy … unlawful … raw." "Salacious and risqué."

All adjectives that might be used to sell a movie to today's viewing audiences. You can just imagine such adjectives in big, bold letters plastered beneath the title or across the screen of a coming attraction. From 1928 until 1956, however, these were scathing words used by Lloyd Tilgham Binford as he edited films or banned them outright from being shown in Memphis.

Recently retired from the company he founded, Columbian Mutual Life Insurance Co., Binford wasn't looking for work in 1928 when he was appointed chairman of the Memphis Board of Censors. He awoke one morning to learn from the newspaper that he'd received the appointment from newly elected Mayor Watkins Overton. Binford accepted the position on a temporary basis for only 90 days "as a favor to the mayor," his obituary reads.

It was a title he would hold for 28 years, retiring at age 88 in 1956.

Born in Duck Hill, Miss., where he would eventually have a high school named after him, Binford had a simple, religious upbringing that would one day help to inform his decisions when it came to film censorship. He quit school at 16 and went to work as a railway mail clerk for the Illinois Central Railroad. As a clerk, his train was once held up by the famous train bandit Rube Burrow; as a film censor, he would outlaw films depicting train robberies and the like, including "The Outlaw," the serial "Jesse James Rides Again" and "Destry Rides Again." Though opposed to violence of any sort in films, he did allow that "if we stopped every movie with a murder in it, there wouldn't be any left."

Lloyd T. Binford

He went to work for various insurance companies, eventually starting his own in 1917. That company was moved over the course of a weekend from Atlanta to Memphis, where Binford would build a new headquarters, an iconic monument on the Downtown skyline, the Columbian Mutual Tower on the northern edge of Court Square. It was one of the first skyscrapers in Memphis; Binford ran his insurance and censorship empires from a top-floor office. The building would be sold years later and renamed the Lincoln American Tower, but the visages of Binford's children can still be found carved into the building's facade.

A millionaire when he retired from insurance, he accepted the chairman position for $200 a month. As a civil servant, he upheld the standards of the state, the city and the Hays Code, a set of guidelines used to govern studio film releases from 1930 to 1968, and named for Will Hays, a Presbyterian elder enlisted by Hollywood to improve the image of its studios. The Hays Code, also known as the Motion Picture Production Code, was used until 1968 when the Motion Picture Association of America adopted the rating code in use today.

As chairman of the Memphis Censor Board, Binford enjoyed free rein to edit films — known as having been "Binfordized" by Hollywood — or ban them outright. A moral gyroscope in the Crump political machine, he passed judgment on pictures that were "immoral or inimical to public safety, health, morals or welfare."

"The Little Tramp" did not pass muster with Binford. All Charlie Chaplin films were banned from Memphis theaters, Binford telling The Associated Press upon banning "Monsieur Verdoux" in 1947 that "we don't have to give our reasons" before adding that "(the film is) a comedy that makes murder a joke."

But the reasons weren't always found within the frame of a particular film; the character of the actor or actress mattered to Binford as well. He thought Chaplin a "London guttersnipe" and expounded to the Memphis Press-Scimitar in 1952 that "America has been good to Chaplin and has made him rich, but he has not been a good American … (Chaplin) is a traitor to the Christian American way of life, an enemy of decency, virtue and godliness in all its forms, a reputed endorser of the Communist Party."

Ingrid Bergman fell into his cross hairs as well with 1950s "Stromboli" being banned from cinemas. "It would be inimical to the public morals and welfare to permit the public exhibition of a motion picture starring a woman who is universally known to be living in open and notorious adultery," Binford told The Commercial Appeal in February of that year. Bergman was having a public affair with the film's director, and married man, Roberto Rossellini, at the time.

Binford's reach and notoriety stretched as far as Hollywood and New York, and screenwriters would send him scripts and scenarios ahead of time to get his approval and keep their product from being "Binfordized" after the fact.

In an era when movie theaters were segregated between the races with balconies reserved for African-Americans, if at all, or special days when they could attend movies, Binford sought to ban those movies with all-black or mixed race casts. Famously, Binford banned Hal Roach's "Curley" — a re-imagining of his "Our Gang" series — in 1947 for depicting white and black children in school together. United Artists would appeal and the case would ultimately make it to the Tennessee Supreme Court which, in 1949, stated that "the Memphis Board of Censors has no authority to disapprove a picture because there are Negro actors appearing in it."

"We'll just have to pass these pictures," Binford told The Commercial Appeal, though that same year he banned "Lost Boundaries," stating, "It deals with social equality between whites and Negroes in a way that is not practiced in the South. We banned it for that reason."

These are reasons that Binford's great-granddaughter, Tamara Trexler, wishes had not been. A film producer herself ("Charlie's War,"2003; "Dear Mr. Cash," 2005), she also was the Nashville Film Commissioner from 2000 to 2002, and would begin speeches in that capacity with anecdotes of her notorious ancestor. Her great-grandfather was an intelligent man who, though he left school as a teenager, wrote several volumes of his own encyclopedia with information on science, philosophy, religion and politics. And though she might agree with his notion that there is too much violence in films, on the racial issue, she says "that hurts that he did that."

Binford married Hattie Nelson of Memphis in 1895, and the couple had four children listed in his obituary as Mrs. Tom Thrash, Mrs. Fred Trexler, Mrs. Elizabeth Moon and Lloyd T. Binford Jr. Hattie died in 1927, and he married Jennie May McCallum in 1937, living at 1723 Peabody.

Trexler's father, Fred Trexler, is a Southern Baptist minister who recalls visiting Binford in his Midtown home. He remembers his grandfather as "very much an individualist with a very strong personality, that's why he did what he did." More exciting than those home visits, though, were the perks that went along with being Binford's grandson. "My mother and I would be invited on occasion to the Paramount where he previewed his movies."

Though movies might be banned from local theaters, it didn't mean they escaped the eyes of film buffs completely. "His iron thumb saw plenty of movies miss the Memphis market altogether," said Daniel Linton, a professor with the Communications Department at the University of Memphis. "Some of the 'scandalous' movies he banned were screened in West Memphis instead, and so a little booming film market was created in a place that doesn't even have a theater these days."

"It was the Joy Theatre in West Memphis, so I've been told, that showed the movies he wouldn't let play in Memphis," said local movie theater historian Vincent Astor. "It made lots of money."

Linton says: "Many major cities had similar boards, though they weren't always known as 'censor boards' per se ... This all sounds like ancient history, but actually the last one finally disbanded in Dallas in 1993."

Binford died on Aug. 27, 1956, and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. His legacy lives on in a city that has struggled with issues of equality and acceptance, and has, in recent years, seen a burgeoning film community take shape. From 1928 until 1956, however, Binford always had the last word on the town's big-screen culture.

"I have no regrets about the movies I've banned," he told the Press-Scimitar in 1947. "Take 'Duel in the Sun.' It was unquestionably the dirtiest movie I've ever seen. And I can't say anything too bad about that Charlie Chaplin."

Some Films or Stage Productions Banned or ‘Binfordized’

“Rope” (1948): Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; “brazen and immoral … revolting and repulsive.”

“Annie Get Your Gun” (1947): A Broadway stage musical with a mixed-race cast; the show “is not being allowed to play anywhere in the South, except Texas, and whatever those folks in Texas do doesn’t surprise me.” In addition to the cast’s ethnicity, “the musical score is suggestive, salacious and risqué.”

“Bamboo Prison” (1955): “Unpatriotic”; was to be exhibited by Malco, decision to ban later reversed after suit brought by Columbia Pictures.

“Forever Amber” (1947): “Entirely filthy.”

“Stromboli” (1950): On star Ingrid Bergman: “It would be inimical to the public morals and welfare to permit the public exhibition of a motion picture starring a woman who is universally known to be living in open and notorious adultery.”

“Lost Boundaries” (1949): “It deals with social equality between whites and Negroes in a way that is not practiced in the South.”

“The Wild One” (1954): “That was the worst, the most lawless bunch I ever saw and the most lawless picture I ever saw. There was nothing immoral in it, it was just rowdy and unlawful and raw.”

“French Line” (1954): Binford called police to keep the uninvited from entering a private preview of the movie at Malco Theatre.

“Miss Sadie Thompson” (1953): Banned for a dancing scene by Rita Hayworth; “The whole picture is a travesty on religion and everything in it is raw.”

“Tragic Ground” (1953): Play banned in Memphis that played at the Plantation Inn in West Memphis.

“Monsieur Verdoux” (1947): “a comedy that makes murder a joke.”

“A Song is Born” (1948): “inimical to the public welfare”; cast includes a “rough, rowdy bunch of musicians of both colors … there is no segregation”; “The musicians are raising the dickens … Jazz and the blues were actually born in Memphis anyway, down on Beale Street. There is too much French in New Orleans for jazz. It’s a rough, bawdy, noisy picture dealing with band musicians, in general a mixed-up jamboree.”

“Wedding Rings” (1930): “… the absolute violation of the sanctity of marital relationships …”; Shown at the Orpheum with a stretch of film bearing only the words “Cut out by board of censors.”

Others, banned unless otherwise stipulated:

“The Southerner”
“Brewster’s Millions”
“The Outlaw”
“Duel in the Sun”
“Jesse James Rides Again” (serial)
“Destry Rides Again”
“Jesse James”
“The Return of Frank James”
“The Daltons Ride Again”
“The Macomber Affair” (Hemingway novel, banned until deletions were made)
“Pursued” (censored)

HIDDEN MEMPHIS
This occasional series profiles people, places and things, past or present, that are quintessentially Memphis. Do you have an idea for someone or something for this series? E-mail Richard Alley at richard@richardalley.com.

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

On Cotton Row

From Peter Taylor's short story "A Friend and Protector":

I stood at the top of the stairs watching the three old people ascend the two straight flights of steps that I had come stumbling up half an hour earlier – two flights that came up from the ground floor without a turn or a landing between floors. I thought how absurd it was that in these Front Street buildings, where so much Memphis money was made, such a thing as an elevator was unknown. Except for adding the little air-conditioned offices at the rear, nobody was allowed to do anything there that would change the old-fashioned, masculine character of the cotton man's world. This row of buildings, hardly two blocks long, with their plaster facade and unbroken line of windows looking out over the brown Mississippi River were a kind of last sanctuary – generally beyond the reach of the ladies and practically beyond the reach of the law.

From my piece on unique museums found within the Mississippi River Corridor of Tennessee for the River Times magazine:

Cotton Row in downtown Memphis was the hub of worldwide cotton trading in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Cotton Exchange – at the intersection of Union Avenue and Front Street, firmly in the center of the Row – was a place for sellers, traders and buyers to meet, discuss the issues of the day and industry, and keep track of the most up-to-date pricing. "A lot of our history, art and culture comes to us as a result of the people who gathered here," says Melissa Farris, special events coordinator for the museum. That exchange floor now is home to the Cotton Museum and welcomes those interested in agriculture – and the Southern way of life – from around the world.

Visit the Cotton Museum on Front Street and at memphiscottonmuseum.org.

Read Peter Taylor's story in his fine collection, The Old Forest and Other Stories.

Bird Man

A year ago tomorrow I had a story in The Commercial Appeal about Gordon Hall (No adversity could keep flying man Gordon Hall on ground; April 24, 2011). Mr. Hall began flying airplanes at the age of 17 after flunking out of high school because, as he told me then, “I had no desire to learn algebra, chemistry, geometry and physics, all the stuff they were trying to jam down my throat."

Instead, he wanted to fly. And fly he did.

In 1946 he joined the Air Force but was found unfit to fly because of a lack of depth perception. He spent the next 18 years as a radio controller and air traffic controller. They couldn't keep him down and he continued to fly on the side as a charter pilot and instructor. When the Army came looking for those with commercial pilot ratings who wanted to transfer and train to fly helicopters, Mr. Hall jumped at the chance.

The only catch? Passing a Class 1 physical, including an eye exam and depth perception test requiring him to look into a viewfinder and pick out one circle of five that appeared to stand out among five separate rows.

Photo by Dave Darnell

He told the story: “As I started to look into the viewer, the phone rang, and the flight surgeon picked up the phone, smiled, turned around and engaged in the conversation, so I read off fictitious numbers," Hall said. "And then I just sat there trying to look bored because I was worried sick that he was going to ask me to repeat. So I just sat there, and he turned around and said, 'Well, that's about it.'"

He flew supply missions in Vietnam, at one point rescuing two downed pilots in the Gulf of Siam as North Vietnamese sped towards them in boats. It was his “greatest accomplishment and adventure in Vietnam.”

Mr. Hall lost all vision in his right eye in 1966, yet continued to fly charters and as instructor until 1996. I got word over the weekend that he passed away Friday evening at the age of 84.

I had a great time getting to know Mr. Hall and hearing his stories. He kept a map in his home office with red pushpins in the location of every airport in the country he’s landed in. The entire thing was a sea of red.

He wrote in his memoir, "Tiger Lead, Your Flight Is Up," published in March 2011: "Ever since third grade, I used to lie on an incline in the grass during the lunch break and I would spend time looking up at the beautiful, soft, billowy, white cumulous clouds as they floated with the wind. I was absolutely entranced at the thought of being a bird or perhaps a bird man or even being able to fly an airplane among those puffy white clouds floating in the blue sky."

Fly on, bird man.

No adversity could keep flying man Gordon Hall on ground

Gordon Hall dropped out of high school because he found its pace too slow, too rooted in the ground, and he needed to fly.

"I had some hard times in high school," said Hall, who lives in Bartlett. "My mother wanted me to go to college prep school, but I had no desire to go to college, and I flunked out of high school. I had no desire to learn algebra, chemistry, geometry and physics, all the stuff they were trying to jam down my throat."

Ten days later, in 1946, he was in the Air Force training to be a Morse code radio operator, eventually being sent to the Aleutian Islands for 14 months. The northern Pacific Ocean, he said, was a place that "impressed me more than any other place I've ever been."

Growing up in Connecticut, his father worked as a fireman or engineer on steam locomotives during the Depression to support Hall and his five older sisters. But while his father was moving across the terrain at ground level, his son had dreams of soaring.

Hall writes in his memoir, "Tiger Lead, Your Flight Is Up," published in mid-March: "Ever since third grade, I used to lie on an incline in the grass during the lunch break and I would spend time looking up at the beautiful, soft, billowy, white cumulous clouds as they floated with the wind. I was absolutely entranced at the thought of being a bird or perhaps a bird man or even being able to fly an airplane among those puffy white clouds floating in the blue sky."

In 1945, after VE Day, flying restrictions were lifted on the East Coast and the chamber of commerce sponsored 40 hours of ground school for kids. After ground school, Hall bought a block of flying time and began training, soloing only two months after his 17th birthday.

Despite his love for flying and his early training, he was unable to fly in the Air Force because of his lack of education and a deficiency in depth perception. Instead, he spent the next 18 years as a radio operator and air traffic controller.

The Army came looking for those with commercial pilot ratings who wanted to transfer from their current branch of the service to train as helicopter pilots. From 1960-64, Hall had been flying on the side as a charter pilot and flight instructor, building his time in the air. He qualified for the chance to join the Army, but he had to complete a Class 1 physical.

On the day of his physical, the final exam was the depth perception test requiring him to look into a viewfinder and pick out one circle of five that appeared to stand out among five separate rows.

"As I started to look into the viewer, the phone rang, and the flight surgeon picked up the phone, smiled, turned around and engaged in the conversation, so I read off fictitious numbers," Hall said. "And then I just sat there trying to look bored because I was worried sick that he was going to ask me to repeat. So I just sat there, and he turned around and said, 'Well, that's about it.'"

Hall was accepted into the Army as a warrant officer aviator in June 1964 and was sent to Fort Rucker for helicopter school, where at 36 years old he had the most military and flying time, and was the oldest of 16 students learning to fly the Bell UH-1Y or "Huey," as it was known.

"While these guys were starting out, I already had 2,200 hours (of flight time)," he said.

Bryce Haugsdahl first flew with Hall after moving to Memphis from Los Angeles in 1984 to work as a charter pilot and flight instructor.

"He gave me my first ride as a co-pilot in a jet," said Haugsdahl, the current president of United Way of the Mid-South "It was a real thrill for me; that was the first jet I'd ever flown. Gordon was one of the first guys to help me get my career in Memphis off the ground as far as flying."

Hall finished school in 1965 and, he said, "45 days later I was in Vietnam."

"We were the first company to pioneer air mobility, carrying troops into combat by helicopter," Hall said. "If we weren't flying combat, we were doing support for little detachments or units in our vicinity."

He took his tour in the southern part of Vietnam, mainly ferrying South Vietnamese troops into combat. On Dec. 15, 1965, while returning from a resupply mission, Hall and his crew of co-pilot and gunner were told a Navy plane had gone down in the Gulf of Siam (now the Gulf of Thailand) and the pilots had ejected. Being in the closest aircraft, Hall was asked if they were able to help with the rescue effort. He turned around and headed out over the water, spotting two crewmen in life boats not far off the coast and two hostile boats on the way to the scene. With no hoist or harness on board, Hall had to make the daring rescue of putting the helicopter's skids into the water so his copilot could pull pilots John Sutor and George Dresser aboard.

"It was my greatest accomplishment and adventure in Vietnam," Hall said.

He left Vietnam credited with 940 hours of combat flight and combat support time, was awarded 27 air medals, including two with a V for valor, and was recommended twice for the Distinguished Flying Cross in only 101/2 months.

He lost all vision in his right eye due to histoplasmosis, a fungal infection, in 1966, the same year he retired from the Army, and eventually had that eye removed. Despite this infirmity, he continued to fly as an instructor and for corporate charters, a job that brought him to Memphis to fly for the Murff Cotton Co.

When asked if the incident over the Gulf of Siam was the closest he has come to any real trouble in the air, Hall produces a sheaf of papers listing problems he's encountered as a pilot, mostly alone, though some were with student pilots. The emergencies include dropping oil pressure, stalled engines and engine fires.

"I was so impressed: Here was a guy who only had one eye, and yet he had a waiver to fly and he was so smooth on the controls, a very accomplished precision instrument pilot," Haugsdahl said. "He had the basics and fundamentals down so well that he was very comfortable in the airplane. ... He performed just exactly as I would expect him to perform without a ruffled feather."

Hall retired completely from flying in 1996 at the age of 68, having been an active pilot for more than 51 years -- 30 of them with an artificial eye -- and with 18,603 hours of flight time in his log books. A map of the United States in Hall's home office is riddled with dots, 528 of them marking every airport where he's made a landing. In his career, he's had the privilege of flying 66 different types of aircraft into those fluffy clouds he gazed upon as a young man.

"It was a challenge and a sense of satisfaction; that's the whole key," he said of learning to fly and maintaining such a long career. "I've had a great life, and I've been a lucky boy."

"Tiger Lead, Your Flight Is Up," is available online and locally at Davis-Kidd Booksellers.

© 2011 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.