Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

Subject:Remove me from your mailing list.

(Name withheld at Editor's discretion)

Tommy,

I have enjoyed reading your work and appreciate all you have done to keep the memory of days at Lee High School alive for us though the newsletter. However, with the printing of the article with the "cheer" supposedly from Council High, I'd like to request that my name be removed from the email list. My memories of the childhood days in Alabama with the racial segregation issues are not something I am of which (sic) I can be proud. I'd like to think I have evolved beyond those days at this point in my life. I don't need those reminders.

I'd rather not be a part of the group in the future. I'd like to leave the racial stuff behind me, especially since the country seems to have a positive new beginning with our first African American about to take office as president.

Best wishes to you in your retirement.

(Editor's Note: Below is my response to the sender.)

Dear _______

I will honor your request and no longer send you emails notices about the publication of Lee's Traveller.

I regret that you were offended by anything I wrote, but in my life others have been offended by something I have said or done, and I have no control over that. It has historically been the result of something not being communicated in a proper manner.

I never meant for my statement to be taken as a racial slur - which apparently you interpreted it that way. I was only trying to pose the question to verify my own memories and to see if that was only something that was a memory to me or if others had also been exposed to it. As a writer, having already written two books on growing up in Huntsville in the Fifties and Sixties and several articles for the Old Huntsville magazine on similar topics, I have a quest and necessity to prove or disprove historical facts that might be mentioned in my writings. I thought that I had put the question in that perspective. It was a statement that validated that I did know of Council, and one that proved that point, in the same way that the girl in Thailand sang "Oh, I come from Alabama" to prove to me that she actually had heard of Alabama.

I am glad that you don't need reminders of the past, but for me, it only validates the change and the growth in character of my own life when I can look back at the environment in which I grew up and see how I have been able to change myself into being a better human being.

Best of luck to you.

Tommy Towery

Class of '64

The Most Illustrious Editor

Lee's Traveller

After sending this response, I have heard that at least two others remember the cheer as well, which is all I wanted to know in the first place.

_________________________

Subject:This Site

Sandra Stephenson Presley

Class of '67

This is a terrific site for all to communicate wow, I appreciate this being available! Does any one have information of a reunion for 1967 class ??? The last one I attened was Sharon Johnston Park (N. Huntsville). Most remember my brother..Jimmy Stephenson (grad 1968) he was pretty active in school and was very well known : ) My best friends were Suzanne Metzger, Doug Blaise and some others that I would love to hear from just to talk about memories at LHS. I am employed by AMCOM, Redstone Arsenal, still live here in Huntsville which has changed an awful lot! I used to talk with Mr. Hamilton's son, he worked at the mall. He told me Mr. Hamilton had retired in Gulf Shores and playing golf, however, I heard he had passed recenly. I was very sad to hear that! Go Generals! Sandy (Sandra Stephenson)

From: Hartselle, Alabama

Email: sandy.presley@conus.army.mil

___________________________

Subject:Segregation Comments

Charlie Hancock

Class of '66

I moved to Huntsville in the Spring of 1965, my Junior year. I had lived in New Orleans before and greater Seattle before that. I recall in Mr. Fox's Chemistry class during my Senior year, a black fellow sat directly in front of me. I think he never asked even one question. He had straight A's. I struggled and flunked Chemistry at the end of the first semester. I had to drop my study hall and take 2 other classes to graduate. I regret now I don't even recall that fellow's name. Now I have to struggle with the year book. I recall many of the name but don't recall which classes we shared. I didn't expect THAT to happen until I was my parents age. Oh no! I'm older now than they were then! How'd THAT happen?!

During my time in the Military, I met many Black people. Soon I found that mostly, they're pretty much just like me.

______________________________

Subject:Enough

Jim Bannister

Class of '66

Tommy, ENOUGH! It has been over 40 years since the racial barriers started comming down. I feel that we have made our peace with the past. You are absolutely right, we were raised in a culture where these things existed but most of us have overcome this indoctrination. I have travelled and lived in foreign countries and held residence in several cities above and below the Mason-Dixon Line. The South is by far the friendliest and most open of all the places that I have been. St. Louis , MO and Boston, MA are far more racist than Birmingham, AL. As for Jim Ballard, I think he may have seen "Braveheart" one too many times. Let's get back to the music, the stories and having fun!

(Editor's Note: As a long time reader and a freqent, well respected, contributor I will respect Jim's request...after this issue this subject will take this subject off the table. Before we do, we will go out with a positive look, sent in by Don Wynn - a classmate and another frequent contributor.)

___________________________________

My Disc Jockey Days

by Tommy Towery

Class of '64

When I was at Lee High School I always wanted to be in a rock-and-roll band like so many of my classmates. Right off the top of my head I can name band members Jerry Brewer, Eddie Burton, Lehman Williams, and Terry Preston for starters. I did not let the fact that I could not play an instrument nor carry a tune ever erase that desire from me. I was sure I was on the right road the year I got a guitar for Christmas but no matter how much I practiced, I never became proficient at playing it. That was during the beginning of the folk song era, and after months of practice, I was finally able to play enough of the dirty-dozen notes to sing with my church youth and Scout groups, but never made it up on stage where I wanted to be. I remember that three of our classmates, whom I cannot name at this time, were in a folk group they called “The Generals Three” and played in the church circuit and a few other gigs. I was not even that good, but I enjoyed the folk music and would have probably settled to just be on stage in a folk music trio instead of a rock-and-roll band.

I tried again in college; got myself a tambourine, but still never found my place in a rock-and-roll band. When I was in the Air Force and living in Ft. Worth, Texas, we had some really great parties on base and had a guy who brought his music and would DJ for them. He called his act “25 Years of Rock-and-Roll” or something like that and in the 1972-1978 timeframe played the Fifties and Sixties songs that I loved. I was mesmerized by the way he took control of the party and the dances and would take requests and make everyone happy with the music he played. One day I seized an opportunity and bought myself a juke box for home. I started going to Goodwill and Salvation Army and other such thrift shops trying to find 100 great oldie-goldie songs to put in it. It seemed like each time I had it filled, I would find some better 45rpm records than the ones I had in it. Before I knew it, I was collecting 45rpm records and quickly outgrew the capacity of the juke box to play all I music – but I kept on buying.

By the time I moved to Omaha in 1978, my collection had grown to over 1,000 oldie-goldie 45rpm records – but I kept on buying. We started going to a weekly auction at a barn in Omaha and over a period of time became friendly with the people who hosted the auction. They learned of my collection of records in talks we had about why I was buying up all they had to auction each week. It turned out that they held a teenage dance each Friday night and were having to pay a DJ much more than they wanted to, an expense that cut deeply into their profits. I got a call from them one night saying that their disc jockey had made a late minute cancellation and they needed someone to play music for their dance and asked me if I had enough gear to pull it off. I stripped the stereo equipment out of my bookcase and the 300-watt Kenwood (Vietnam era) speakers off the floor of my den, loaded up them and my records into the back of my van, and headed to the barn.

I got the system set up, did a sound check, and was ready to go before the crowd started arriving. My first gig as a disc jockey was a giant flop. This was during the period that was the start of the disco era, and all I had were oldie-goldie songs. This was also before the movie “Grease” became a cult hit and the kids just didn’t like the music I was playing at all. I was playing music that no one in the crowd knew and no one wanted to hear, let along dance to. It took an intervening action and a plea for understanding by the promoters to stop the lynch mob. The owners explained to the kids that I was a last minute substitution and I was doing the best I could with what I had to help them enjoy the night. Had I not accepted their request, then the dance would have had to be cancelled. If the kids wanted, they could have their money back and the dance would be stopped right then and there. They didn’t want to go home, so they stayed. Little by little we worked out which records in my collection were acceptable to them and which they could do some kind of dance to, and the night was saved. A couple of the regulars at the dance became invaluable aids to a stranger in a strange land.

Before it was over, several kids volunteered to bring their own records if I would bring my equipment and play the next week, and I went out and bought a few collections albums of my own and we merged my collection of oldies with their newbies. This arrangement had lasted about a month when the promoters lost their lease, and we all worked together to have a good time. “Happy Days” first aired in 1974 and by 1978 was starting to be a really big hit show. Some of the kids from the Friday night dance went to the local high school and when the school decided to have a “Happy Days” type sock hop; I was contacted to see if I could play my old rock-and-roll music. Needless to say, I was well prepared to meet that request. The dance was a big-time success – because I had the music they wanted and expected to hear at a Fifties sock hop. I had as much fun as the kids did.

One of the places in Ft. Worth where the Oldies music had been best received was at the Officer’s Club, so I decided to try my luck at the Officer’s Club in Omaha. By that time I had upgraded my act and added a better amplifier, two turntables, and an input control box for the turntables. My collection of music continued to grown, and I spent many hours filling out Rollodex cards with the name, artist, and year of each song in my collection. The 45rpm records were all put in boxes in alphabetical order by title and I could easily get to any song I wished in a matter of seconds. The biggest obstacle I faced was working at the O’Club when I was an officer myself. It was kind of a breach of protocol, but I was the only one offering that type of music and in the end they allowed me.

My first night there was a success in my mind. The only problem that surfaced was when people wanted to hear some newer songs than were in my oldies collection. I finally came up with the solution to the problem by informing the requestors that I was hired to do an Oldie-Goldie show and that was what was being advertised and that was what the majority of the people came to hear. There were three other weeks in the month when others DJs came and played the newer music, and only on the nights I played could people hear the oldies. It would not be fair to those who came expecting the oldies to not give them what was advertised. I was amused one night when an African-American officer came up and whispered to me the question of why I wasn’t playing any “black” music. I had been playing The Platters, Jackie Wilson, James Brown, and Little Richard and Little Anthony and the Imperils all night. It turned out he really wanted to hear some new black music, not the oldies.

I soon learned that I could easily entertain people when they participated with me in selecting the music of the night. I was happiest when I had a stack of requests handed to me by the participants and I spent the evening playing songs I knew they wanted to hear. I put the Rollodex cards out on the table for the audience to look through. Some folks spent hours just looking at song titles I think. Sometimes someone would come up and request some really off-the-wall song. If I had it, I played it. Others would look at me funny when it started, but after it was over I’d get a visit from the requestor and a heart-felt handshake and thanks for letting him hear a song he hadn’t heard in many years. That happened one night with “Black Denim Trousers.” I was the first DJ that had ever been able to play it for him. Often songs that were requested were associated with a young love, or a special event, and it made someone’s night just to hear it one more time.

There were a few communication problems, of course, such as the night that someone handed me a napkin with a request for “Chicago” written on it. I went to my alphabetically arranged songs, found and took out “Chicago” by Frank Sinatra. It was quickly explained to me that they wanted to hear a song by the group “Chicago’ not the song “Chicago”. Communication problems happen in all parts of our lives I suppose.

As the number of show dates grew, so did my understanding of how to “work” the audience. I developed a list of songs in my head that could fill a dance floor, even with the most reserve audience. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis, “Last Dance”, “Unchained Melody, or “Sleep Walk” always drew slow dancers to the center of the dance floor. “Rock Around the Clock”, “The Twist”, “Shout”, and “Land of 1,000 Dances” would do the same for the fast dance crowd. The secret to pleasing the crowd was to know how many fast songs to play in a row before you killed someone with a heart attack, or how many slow songs to play without putting half the audience to sleep. It took a mixture of slow and fast to please everyone. After a while, all this became second nature and I went home happy. And all the while my enjoyment of the “work” I was doing grew. I got so involved with the music and the fun each night that I had to wind down after each evening’s performance. And that was what it had become to me, a performance – just like being in a rock-and-roll band. I sang with the songs, danced with the songs, told stories about the songs and danced with the requestors. I was hugged for playing special music and had drinks bought for me. Heck, I even had a jumpsuit made that had “Rock ‘n Roll Rides Again” embroidered on the back. I was a star in my own mind, and I had filled that void left in my soul of never being in a rock-and-roll band.

I started playing at squadron events, and church events, and special parties. When I moved to England I took all my stuff with me and played at events there as well. I played for weddings and other parties. Sometimes I did it at church events for free and other times I got paid what I thought was way too much money for the fun I had. I remember one night at the Officer’s Club in England when this one couple was on the floor all night. When I played a slow song, they danced slow. When I played “The Twist” they twisted with the best. I started trying to find songs to “stump the band” and force them to set down. I played swing music, and they would swing. In a last ditch effort I came up with what I thought was the perfect song to end their reign of the dance floor. I even verbally challenged them with “Let’s see you dance to this one!” as I put the needle on the record. When “The Orange Blossom Special” started up I saw the smiles on their faces. I knew that I had been had. That’s when they started up with the best cloggin’ steps this side of Arkansas. The whole room stood still and watched a performance that would have won the couple first place on “Dancing With The Stars.” It turned out they were dance instructors in their previous lives in the states before they were stationed in England. I shook my head and smiled. I was humbled. They had a blast – because my music was so varied and they got to do so many different dances that they would not have been able to do anywhere else.

My hardest nights were the nights when it seemed I was the only one interested in the music. With no requests for favorite songs, I would select and play songs that I thought people wanted to hear. Sometimes I just played songs I wanted to hear if no one asked for anything special. It was sometimes obvious that my selections were not as loved or appreciated to the others as they were to me. Many times when I had put a song on to play, I would look out at the audience and see that no one wanted to hear it. At that time I’d slide the volume lever back on the song being played and fade it to silence as I advanced the volume on the next song cued to play. I also found that some songs were never meant to be dance music, but there were still many people who sat in the room that loved to listen, but never wanted to dance. The events were normally not listed as dance parties but as Oldie-Goldie Music nights. So if they just came to listen, who was I to try to make them dance? Usually only a handful of people assisted me with their requests and helped me select the music of the night. Many times I was like a personal, living, breathing, juke box playing one selection after another for the same participant. I didn’t even mind that, because I was entertaining someone, and that was what I loved to do.

In the end, before I started collecting CDs and finally turning them into MP3 songs, I had amassed a mighty collection of 45rpm records along with about 100 vinyl 33 1/3 albums, mostly in the “Best of…” category. There are 2,242 songs cataloged in my 45rpm collection, in conditions ranging from fair to mint in condition. To some of my fans it didn’t matter if the song was scratchy when they heard it. Many of them remembered each “tick and pop” in their own copy that had been played on their own record player until the groves were almost gone. It was the memories connected to each song that was important to them, not how good the song sounded when played at a dance. The memory was the goal, not the aesthetic quality of the media upon which it was recorded.

I have played for several College functions - even brought out the roller skates and skated like at Carter's while I spun the records. You haven't lived until you've seen senior citizens doing the "Hokey Pokey!"

I would have to say that the highlight of my disc jockey days came in 2003 when I got to play for my classmates at the Homecoming 2003 barn dance. By that time I had over 3,000 song tracks in MP3 format loaded onto my laptop computer. With a Disc Jockey program I was able to cue up multiple songs at a time and still take requests and work them into the playlist at my pleasure. The laptop computer gave me in one box a replacement that was better than the two turntables, mixer, and amplifiers, with almost instant access to any of the songs. That night’s activities gave me the feeling that I had always wanted to have as a high school student – being up in front of my peers and playing and dancing to the music that we all loved. Only then did I feel that I had filled the void in my life.

(Next Week - The Moral of this Story)

_______________________________________

Memories of the

Football Team

from the 1966 Season

by Don Wynn

Class of 67

Several articles from the past few weeks have made me remember something very positive that happened during my Senior Year at Lee. I played football and remember the August workouts before the start of the season that year(the 66 season). Council High was being closed and the students were being absorbed into the other high schools in the city. If they wanted to play football, the only option the players at Council had was to join the team at their new schools. The coaches at Lee told the team that we were getting some of the players who had played at Council. They also told us that the new players were to be welcomed as team-mates should be welcomed. Even with the positive approach taken by the coaches, change is uncomfortable for everyone. We didn't know what to expect and I am sure it was harder for the former Council players than it was for us. Everyone was probably a little apprehensive right up until the new players ca me out for practice.

On the appointed day, the former Council players came onto the practice field. As I remember it, there were only 6 or 7 players from Council that came out. School hadn't even started so that gave us a chance to get to know each other a little before having to attend classes. These guys fit into the team immediately. They were good players and they proved to be good team-mates too. With significant contributions from the Council players, our team earned a 9-1 record and won the Tennessee Valley Conference Championship. The season was magic.

Of all the memories I have of that season, the most vivid is about the bus ride back to school after the games. After our first game, Porter Moore, one of the Council players, taught the team some songs. I am sure they were modelled after songs that must have been sung on the Council bus after games. We had won the first game at Bradshaw High in Florence by a score of 62-0. We were ecstatic and we sang the songs that Porter taught us until were were so hoarse that we could't sing anymore but we continued to sing anyway. We weren't black or white, we were just team-mates sharing our feelings after a great win.

I only remember part of one line from one song ( I wish I could remember more)

"We are the Generals, the mighty, mighty Generals........"

I am sure the black students felt sadness and anger that their school was being dissolved. I hope the black athletes look back on that time with a smile on their faces and that they remember the bus rides with the same pleasure that I do.

Incidentally, Porter went on to play at A & M. He died of a massive heart attack in his early twenties. I remember how sad it made me when I learned of his death. He was a great football player and was always fun to watch play. He was an even better person and was responsible for my fondest memories of my last football season.

_________________________________