Guardians of the Advertiser

September 17, 2015
Personal History, Schools
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Dianne and Orren Smith at the Holmes County Advertiser in 1978.

WHEN WE WENT BACK to school for sixth grade in 1966, there was a new librarian at Bonifay Elementary School. Dianne Williams Smith was returning Holmes County royalty — the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of editor-publishers of the Holmes County Advertiser, whose family founded the newspaper in 1892.

By ninth grade she was teaching us the glories of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and beginning a distinguished career as a tough but respected English teacher.

Her husband, Orren Smith, a native of nearby Greenwood in Jackson County, had come home with her from Atlanta, where they married, to help run the family business. Orren wasn’t a newspaperman, but he was a quick study, and the Advertiser benefited from his business acumen. A few years later, after Dianne’s father was sidelined by a stroke, Orren took over as editor and publisher.

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One tough teacher

July 15, 2015
Schools
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Miss Vann was aware of the power of her raised eyebrow and pointed finger.

FROM A CARING Mrs. Ruby Coleman in first grade to a nurturing Mrs. Sarah Segrest in seventh, and on through the demanding Mrs. Mable Harris for senior English, we were fortunate to have some wonderful teachers.

Last weekend we lost one of the very best: Miss Lynelle Vanlandingham, who taught ninth grade civics for decades at Holmes County High School.

Miss Vann had a richly deserved reputation as a tough taskmaster. A pointed finger and an arched eyebrow were usually all it took. A firm thump on the ear when necessary. You did not want to be directed to step outside.

We had no choice but to learn something in Miss Vann’s classroom. There were no distractions. She was thoroughly prepared. And the subject was interesting: current events, and how a democracy works, and a citizen’s responsibility to help make it work.

Miss Vann taught generations of Holmes County students, including some she prepared also to become great teachers.

“Nelle taught me ninth grade civics,” remembered Mrs. Dianne Smith, who taught us ninth grade English the same year we had Miss Vann, and later would succeed Mrs. Harris as an equally demanding senior English teacher.

“Even at my relatively young age at the time, I caught on that a stern teacher controlled the classroom better than the teachers who wanted to be ‘best friends’ with their students,” Mrs. Smith said. “As stern as she was, though, she could still say some funny things at times. In the summertime, she frequently chaperoned house parties at the beach, so we got to see another side of her. She was a lot of fun and knew how to keep a bunch of silly teenage girls in line. We loved her.”

Mrs. Smith said she picked up some of Miss Vann’s approach to teaching.

“Not only did I absorb some things about the importance of classroom management and discipline, but also I learned about the importance of organizational skills for students. She made us keep a notebook just for her class, and she graded it at the end of each six weeks.”

After a long career in the classroom, Miss Vann had a long retirement. She was 93 when she died.

“I went to visit her last Sunday at the nursing home,” Mrs. Smith said. “She told me some funny stories, and seemed to be in good spirits. Like all nursing home patients, she told me several times how much she wanted to go home. When I heard that she’d died, my first thought was that God had taken her home.”

MORE: “That eyebrow kept working“

Honor thy father and thy mother

June 21, 2015
Neighbors
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James Omer and Lizzie Pearl Wells

Esto’s Lizzie Pearl Watford Wells and James Omer Wells on their 50th wedding anniversary

THEY SOLD THE FAMILY HOME after their mother died at age 87, only a few years after they’d lost their father, also at 87. And the nine children in Esto’s Wells family always regretted it.

“Well, we all had houses,” said Frances Wells Kirkland. “We did the wrong thing — we sold it. Then we wanted it back as soon as we sold it.”

“Even after we sold it, we just couldn’t let it go,” said Jeanette Wells Berry.

They watched the house waste away, in recent years sitting empty and silent, without the life and laughter of their big happy family or any other. By then the two Wells sisters lived together next door in a modern brick home. When the opportunity to buy back the house unexpectedly came along last year, they did not hesitate.

Their brother Billy, now 79 and the baby boy of the family, stopped by one morning, as he usually does, and announced the family home was for sale.

“So me and Frances high-tailed it down to Bonifay and bought it,” said Jeanette. The listing price on the home was $10,000, but they got it for $9,000. And then they faced the daunting task of what to do with it. “It was filled with trash from the front to the back,” said Jeanette.

A neighbor got to work and made restoring the house his pet project, refusing pay. Their sister Louise Wells McGowan, 80, volunteered her son, a skilled carpenter, to help out. Jeanette, 84, cleaned up the outside. Frances, 76, and a nearby neighbor did much of the inside painting.

“This was my retirement project,” says Frances. “We had to put in new everything. And we had a good time doing it.”

Other neighbors chipped in. Some donated furniture. Their preacher and his wife gave some things. Another sister, Martha Sue Wells Register, 86, persuaded her son to bring over a piano he’d bought for his daughter.

“We never ate by ourselves when we were growing up,” said Jeanette. “Everybody came by.”

And now they do again. Although there’s still work to be done, and no one actually lives there, the family home is once again a gathering place. On Tuesday nights the ladies from Esto Baptist Church get together there. The sisters also host game nights, with the card game they call 3/13 a favorite. The extended family will come for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

When a neighbor stopped by on a recent Saturday night, she gravitated toward the piano and sat down to play the old hymn, “What a Day That Will Be.” Jeanette and Frances sang along. “That’s the song y’all sang at mother’s funeral,” the neighbor remembered.

“It’s like being at home again,” said Frances.

“Life has been so good for our family,” said Jeanette. “You may remember: We had a good mama and daddy.”

He is not here

May 20, 2015
Churches, Neighbors
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ONE OF OUR Esto neighbors is the choir director of a nearby church. For Easter this year, she decided to add some extra drama by re-creating the empty tomb from which Jesus arose. She got a big cardboard box used to ship a piano, painted on rocks, and added a few sprigs of ivy. Before the choir began its Easter alleluias, a young boy she recruited was to look into the empty tomb and announce, “He is not here. He is risen.”

The moment came on Easter morning. The little boy ran up the aisle, looked into the empty box, turned and announced to the congregation: “Jesus ain’t here.”

Return to Esto

May 20, 2015
Neighbors
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esto

A TRIP HOME to Esto always reminds me that some of the finest people in the world come from my little hometown of 215 people. I’ve had an opportunity to travel and meet many interesting people. But I’ve still never met a finer man than U.T. Kirkland, nor a kinder person than Jeanette Wells.

Jeanette Wells

Jeanette Wells

U.T. Kirkland

U.T. Kirkland

Esto gets its own little library

August 9, 2014
Neighbors
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Founder Lisbeth Kidd welcomes young patrons to Esto's Little Free Library.

Founder Lisbeth Kidd welcomes young patrons to Esto’s Little Free Library.

WHEN ESTO RESIDENT Lisbeth Kidd read an article about the Little Free Library movement — a drive to create book exchanges around the world — she knew she wanted to participate.

After all, she lives in a small community without a library, treasures books and has been a major promoter of children’s books among her circle of family and friends.

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She enlisted the help of Jodi and Connie Moore, who are fellow members of Union Hill Baptist Church, where Kidd is music director. The Moores donated their time and labor to build the library, which is an impressive double-walled, weather-proof wooden box.

The little library — registered as charter number 12,475 in the Free Little Library movement — was officially opened with a gathering of neighbors and friends on August 9, 2014. A highlight of the opening was a time of reading stories to the children in attendance by Esto residents Betty Treadwell, a retired Holmes County assistant librarian, and television executive Ben Tew.

“One of the stated missions of the Little Free Library movement is to ‘foster a sense of community and connection as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations,'” says Kidd. “With my brother Gary Jacobs as my chauffeur, I gained a bit of that connection while spreading news of the library throughout our community, greeting old friends and meeting new folks who were excited about the library and donating books.”

She was especially moved by a neighbor whose grandson, battling health issues, loves dinosaurs.

“I came home and discovered a book filled with dinosaurs hiding behind moveable flaps that open to reveal a T-rex, pterodactyl and friends,” she says. “I can’t wait to deliver that one.”

The world’s newest Little Free Library is located in Lisbeth Kidd’s back yard on Fourth Avenue North in Esto.

Photographs by Sara Heijkoop

Read More: “The Low-Tech Appeal of Little Free Libraries”

The blueberry patch

June 26, 2014
Food, Neighbors, Personal History
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blueberries

Dear Mary,

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE BOY growing up in Esto, there was a blueberry patch down the hill and across the highway that ran in front of our house. It was on land owned by U.T. Kirkland. Those initials were all the name he had, but he was a kind-hearted, hard-working farmer whose wife Delma — I called her Big Mama — kept me in the years before I started school. (She also taught me some of my most important early lessons. When I turned 5 and got one of those sit-down blackboards, I sat right down and wrote my first word: S-H-I-T. She wouldn’t say it, but she frequently spelled it, and apparently I had been paying attention.)

T and Big Mama were all-important to me. My mother left early every morning to drive across the Alabama line to work in the Van Heusen shirt factory in Hartford, and my father died young just as I turned 4. I loved T and Big Mama. And blueberries always bring them back to me.

Thank you for that perfect blueberry flip you shared last night — and for the memories that came with it.

Sybil Taylor honored on her 90th

January 30, 2014
Churches, Neighbors
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ESTO’S OWN Sybil Taylor, a longtime supporter of Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama, was honored in the school’s chapel on January 30, 2014, her 90th birthday. She received a proclamation from President Billy D. Hilyer proclaiming it Sybil Taylor Day on all four Faulkner campuses. “Thank you, Mrs. Taylor, for your unwavering support of Christian higher education and Faulkner University,” he said.

Sybil Miller Taylor was born near Esto and lived on Highway 79 just south of Miller’s Crossroads, which was named for her family. She was active all her life in the Esto Church of Christ. In recent years she moved from Esto to a new house built for her on Alabama Christian Drive on the main Faulkner University campus in Montgomery.