Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

You Can Go Back

by Dale Meyer

Class of '66

This story is for all the classmates who grew up in Huntsville during the Space Race and hold pleasant memories of Huntsville as a great place to live. I was an Army and civil service brat who moved to Huntsville in late 1959. This story is about going “home”.

When we first moved to Huntsville, we rented a house off of Governor’s Drive but Dad used his GI bill and we bought a new house in Lakewood on Norris Road. I soon learned that the 7th grade was added on to Lakewood Elementary and then I moved to Lee as it morphed into a High School. I left Lee in the 9th grade as Dad took one last promotional opportunity in setting up the Army Mobility Command in Michigan. I would have graduated in 1966.

Although I breezed through Huntsville once in the '70s and rekindled my friendship with Steve Kerschner, I only returned one other time on a corporate trip to see Proctor and Gamble surgical pack manufacturing facility. As an avid reader of the Traveller, I often wondered what Huntsville was really like versus the mind’s eye of a 13 year old. Somehow, I convinced my brother-in-law and another friend we went to high school with that we needed one more road trip.

Last Friday at 0400 we discovered that my brother-in-law was down with a pretty bad tooth abscess. Since we had already picked up the rental car and it was fully loaded, my friend Karel and I decided that we were still going to Wally World! Armed with a Tom Tom navigation system we took off and had a great drive down. I cut across to Fayetteville to look for a house that one of my friends that I work with, owns. It is a beautifully restored home in town that was built in 1850. He was stunned that I actually knew where Fayetteville was as I told him that one adventurous day we dove our bikes up there.

Since we had plenty of light we came down 431/231 and took Mastin Lake Road over to Lakewood. I surveyed the school and ball fields where I was part of the mighty Lakewood Lakers little league team. Now to Norris Road. I will insert this footnote to say that my memory of my address was better than Google, which had caused me to fear that the house had been moved or that I simply could not remember my address from 50 years ago. I drove up and a black couple was curiously eyeing us parked in front of their house. I quickly explained my pilgrimage and that I was the lone descendant of the folks that had built their home. They were very gracious and wanted to know where I moved and what had led me back. They talked about the neighborhood and how it was stable.

I asked about the Lake, which after all was only two or three blocks away. I regaled them with my camping stories and battling Terry Barnes and Steve Kerschner in our homemade canoes on this beautiful spring fed lake. They seemed very puzzled that they had never heard of the lake. My friend and I navigated all the way around the area and Tom Tom or not, could not find the spring or the Lake. Not being one to give up I stopped a gentleman who was cutting grass. He too was very outgoing. I soon learned that he was a retired FBI agent and the head of the neighborhood watch. He talked very proudly of their accomplishments of taking back the neighborhood. He informed that the Neighborhood Watch was the largest in the area and had up to 40 people helping keep law and order. He just simply put the stake in the ground and said, “ I’m retired and I am not moving”! He also explained their was a police precinct across from Lakewood Elementary and that they worked well together and that they simply did not put up with any nonsense. I had expected the worse, as people had hinted the neighborhood was on the decline and with bars on the windows. It was nice to see and hear the success story of a neighborhood on its way back up.

But where is my Lake I pleaded? With reflection, this gentleman informed that alas the Lake is gone. Apparently, there has been some flooding in years past and the Corps of Engineers decided to eliminate the Lake and it is now just part of Pinhook Creek. I asked what had happened to the Revolutionary War graves that were there but there was no information on that issue. I thanked the gentleman who, by the way, was cutting an elderly lady’s grass. He explained that she was a Seventh Day Adventist and he had to finish before sundown. How about that boys and girls!

Saying our goodbyes, we ventured over to Lee High School. Funny how I thought it was bigger as a student. Unfortunately, we did not get a picture but I refurbished my mind’s eye and regaled my friend of how serious they take football in this neck of the woods and of my band days.

We had a great weekend and ate way too much food. I am pleased to report that Gibson’s Barbeque is as it was and the Brunswick stew is still worth traveling for. We were invited back for free pie as they were celebrating their 53 years in business. I also met a lady at a Century 21 office who turned out to be the Broker/Owner and she was able to fill in the holes of what had replaced what. She laughed when I told her I still had the 12 or 15 real silver dollars from the Silver Dollar Sale at Montgomery Wards. She told me I would be welcome to come down and practice real estate but I better hurry because she is 73. I laughed and told her based on looking in my wallet and 401Ks that I would be working to 85!

So Toto it was not Kansas but Huntsville. Nothing persuaded me that this is not still a great place to live. Who knows what the future holds for a kid with red clay stained sneakers.

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An Italian Grotto on Greene Street

Rainer Klauss

Class of '64

The YMCA pool is where I learned to swim in 1955. That kind of instruction was probably done at the Big Spring pool, too, but my parents signed me up at the Y. And I’m glad they did, too, because the Big Spring pool was cold, brother.

I remember the unpleasant sanitizing footbath one had to splash through to get to the main pool at the Y; you had to do that at Big Spring, too. My memory of the pool at the Y is somewhat tainted like Tommy’s, but not with as much danger. In that subterranean area of the building, where the light was kept low, the pool area was a glowing blue grotto—an effect enhanced, perhaps, by what the chlorine did to your eyes. The shimmering water cast reflections on the walls, making it more mysterious. I took several weeks of swimming lessons that summer, working my way up from minnow to shark. On the last day of my classes, the instructor (Lonus Hucks was his name, I think) asked me if I wanted to be on the swim team.

I never got a chance to ask my parents about participating on my first athletic team because that afternoon I came down with a severe case of strep throat (picked up at the pool?) that laid me low. In addition to being sick, I was bummed out because I was supposed to be spending the night with my best friend (who had a TV). The following Monday my mother took me to Dr. Sammons, our family doctor, and he turned things around for me with a shot of penicillin. I was still pretty much under the weather, of course, but I remember lying on the couch at home that afternoon and feeling that miracle drug coursing through my body, making me well.

I know I never went down to the blue grotto again, but I recall playing ping pong once with Bob Ramsey on the main floor many years later. Perhaps he was a member in those days, or some out-of-school function brought us there then.

I garnered some further information from the Internet and a very interesting book entitled Huntsville in Vintage Postcards. The Huntsville YMCA, designed by Edgar Love in a Neoclassical Italianate style, was completed in 1912. Love must have been the premier Huntsville architect at the early part of the century because he and his firm were responsible for designing several of the notable buildings of the flourishing city: the Elks Theater (which was right across Eustis Street from the Episcopal Church of the Nativity), the Carnegie Library, and many years later, the Post Office at the corner of Holmes and Jefferson. This building, constructed in 1936, was an unusual case:” The office of the Supervising Architect of the Department of the Treasury designed the Federal buildings of the early 1930s. Occasionally a private architectural firm was hired to design a public building. Perhaps, due to the failure of over half of the nation's architectural firms in the Depression, the design of public buildings by local firms was encouraged by the mid-1930s. The Huntsville Federal Building was designed by a collaboration of architects: Edgar Love and Miller, Martin and Lewis.”

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The YMCA Was Our Village

Craig Bannecke

Class of "65

As a young kid growing up in Huntsville the YMCA was a very influential part of my life. In particular the Central Y in down town Huntsville was a place where I spent a lot of time growing up. Tommy's recollections of swimming nude at the Y really hit home. I didn't think anyone else remembered having "gone necked" at the Y.

Tommy Bush, and I were close friends back in the late 50's and through the 60's and often I would spend Friday nights at Tommy's house. Come Saturday morning it was quiet common for his mother to drop us off at the Central Y for the day. That was probably about the 6th grade for us and the age of eleven. Can you imagine any parent today dropping their eleven year old child off downtown for the day ? It was a different time.

The Central Y gave us the opportunity to play basketball, jump on the trampoline, play ping pong, shoot pool, swim in a pool, hang out, or wander around the town square and the Five and Dimes. (Note the Creaky Wooden Floors)

Since Tommy Bush had been there before, he was familiar with swimming nude in the pool. This was all new to me but being the trusting friend I was and noticing the other boys going native I just found a locker and peeled off my street clothes and away we went. I remember the diving board, the narrow ledge around the pool and how hot and humid the room was. Fortunately I had learned to swim in Pennsylvania before moving to Alabama so getting around in a pool was fairly easy. The Y pool was where I first learned to play "Out of Water" tag and can remember my bare buttox sitting on that narrow ledge around the pool. The thought of not having on a bathing suit at first was a bit of an adjustment but in future trips to the Y it became apparent it was better than keeping up with a wet bathing suit all day. Boy's aren't ones to manage a garment.

One of my most vivid memories of the Central Y was that was where you went to weigh-in, if you played for one of the YMCA's youth football teams. I played for the Lakewood 85 and 105 pound teams along with a number of Lee High alumni such as Tommy Bush, Jim Harris, Skip Cook, Elbert Balch, Lynn Baeder, Randy Scherrill, to name just a few. To be eligible to play for a certain weight division team you had to attend weigh-in at the beginning of the season. The city wide weigh-in was held at the Central YMCA in the basement, across the hall from the pool, in the boys locker room. You would have swimmers coming in and out during the weigh-in. I don't remember if any of them were naked but if they were it was probably no big deal as many of the boys weighing-in were near naked. In order to make their weight they often had to strip down to their BVD's. There might be as many as 50 boys at one time in various stages of apparel and nudity waiting to weigh. Modesty in those days was not something of great consideration. If done today the ACLU would be measuring the YMCA for a law suite for corrupting our youth and exposing them to deviant behavior. The boys of our day might be naked but they were also clueless ?

In the late 60's a neighborhood YMCA was built in Northwest Huntsville. The first year they were open I was hired as an assistant pool manager and Tommy Bush and David Phillips were two of our lifeguards. Larry Andrews,(class of 1965) younger sister was one of our female lifeguards. The Northwest YMCA was a very active place and I can remember through out the summer parents would literally drop their kids off at the front door of the Y early each morning with a sack lunch as they headed for work. We literally were their kids baby sitters for the entire day. This was not a formal arrangement with the Y. It was just done.

The interesting thing is I can't recall there ever being a serious problem with a child throughout that summer. Children respected adults in those days.

Not sure the YMCA is as active an organization in Huntsville as it use to be, as that was a time of energetic kids and before the couch potato. But for that day and time it was our "Village" and a great experience.

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Mary (Ardrey) Aukerman, Class of '66 - That is a turtle “habitat”. We could buy little green turtles with the habitat for next to nothing but they didn’t seem to last long. They stopped being sold because of the scare of children catching Salmonella from them. They were so small it was easy to pick them up and hold them then children would put their hands in their mouths, transferring the bacteria and making the child sick. Unfortunately, our family went through several of these little turtles over the years. There wasn’t really instructions given with them and we figured the little tanks were all they that needed, along with food. I have since learned that they need much more than that. Now I just pity the poor turtle.

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Barb Biggs Knott, Class of '66 - The mystery photo was my pet turtle‘s home. It was made of plastic and you put water in it. The turtle could climb out of the water and sit under the wonderful plastic palm tree.

The turtles were very tiny and mine eventually died. I think I may have had more than one and none ever lived very long.

I’m sure one reason stores stopped carrying them was because people complained of cruelty to animals.

It reminds me of the fish tanks at Wal-Mart.

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Michael Griffith, Class of ‘66 - After our email exchange last week, I see that you have submitted the living quarters for those little turtles as your mystery photo. During our youth, in addition to colored Easter chicks, the Five-and-Dime stores sold baby turtles. Your mystery photo shows one of the “lagoons” that were sold for them to live in. Some of the turtles were sold as-is, with their “standard coloring” and others had designs / scenes hand-painted on their shells; if memory serves, it was also possible to have a name hand-painted on the shell right there in the store. I believe that, years later, the sale of these turtles was banned because it was determined that children were getting sick from salmonella bacteria that the turtles carried. It’s just as well because add painted baby turtles to a comment from one of your respondents last week, that their grandchildren found the story of colored chicks to be “disturbing” … and we could all be put in a similar classification as Michael Vick!

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Judy "Fedrowisch" Kincaid, Class of '66 - This week's mystery photo looks like something my brothers had for their pet turtles - which also could be purchased at a Five & Dime. And I seem to recall that they quit selling the turtles to kids because of some kind of illness you could get from handling the little creatures.

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Subject:Central YMCA

Michael Griffith

Class of ‘66

As per your story about the Central YMCA, my main memory of the pool in the basement was that it was where I learned to swim. While at Lincoln, all 5th grade students were taken out of school, to the YMCA and given free (or nearly free) swimming lessons. I cannot remember if this was every day for a week or two, or how it was scheduled, but I remember that the instructor stood on the diving board and to pass the course, each of us had to swim a number of laps back-and forth between the short side of the pool. I remember looking forward to this during my earlier years at Lincoln, but I have no idea how many years this practice continued; I suspect that the accelerated growth of the school system made it impractical a few years after I was a 5th-grader.

As for the gym, I played Y-league basketball and do not remember a track around the top, but I do know that there was not room for one around the basketball court itself. The walls were so close to the boundaries of the court that going in for a layup shot meant that on one end the shooter would end up in the wall and on the other could end could end up out the door, in the hallway. Speaking of close quarters at the Y, I played little league baseball at the West Huntsville YMCA, and right field was very short and bordered the street, with a high chain-link fence; left field was totally opposite, and seemed to go on forever (especially, if I let the ball get by me)!

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Subject:Greene Street YMCA

Polly Gurley Redd

Class of '66

My main memory of the Greene Street YMCA was the smell of chlorine that totally permiated that building. The outside even smelled of chlorine. It is a wonder that the men who lived there could smell anything at all. I had forgotten the sawdust in the can by the shuffleboard table until you mentioned it. The local beer joint in the Rison neighborhood ("Alice's" near the mill) where my father stopped after work for a beer with the guys had one of those and it had a sawdust can also.

I have loved the discussion of dyed baby chicks and have wonderful memories of getting them for Easter - though I think ours came from the Southern Feed Store down by the railroad station. I learned this year in something that I read that there is a law in Alabama dating from the 50's that makes it illegal to sell baby chicks that have been dyed. I wonder how they got away with that if it was against the law.

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Subject:YMCA

Judy "Fedrowisch" Kincaid

Class of '66

My most vivid memory of the Green Street YMCA is of going to the swimming classes that were offered to all 5th graders back when we were kids. I remember how our voices and the splashing water echoed in the enclosed room and how big the pool seemed to be.

When I went to work as the office manager at the Weatherly Road YMCA in 1990 one of the things I did was go the the Green Street "Y" for a visit. It really hadn't changed much. It still had its wonderful creaky wooden floors and stairs, the gym with it's upper level seating, and the indoor pool. The smells and sounds were the same, but the pool itself was considerably smaller than I remembered!

Several years ago the old "Y" fell into the hands of some private individuals and has gone the way of all the other wounderful old buildings of our youth. It's still standing, but its old charm is either hidden behind closed doors or has been destroyed. What a shame.

Thanks for the memories Tommy.

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Subject:YMCA

Vern Lucas

Class of ''64

Tommy, I remember the YMCA well. Going to the 'Y' to play basketball a lot of Saturdays is a fond memory. Being somewhat vertically challenged and not particully good at the game, I never the less enjoyed those pick-up games. I learned to play ping pong and pool at the YMCA from a guy named Bill Murphy (Huntsville High) who turned out to be my roommate the first year in College. Now I play pool on my own table with a reasonable skill level thanks to Bill and 'Y'. As for Basketball, the knees won't allow it anymore! Thanks for the memories.

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Subject:Two Memory Jogs

Greg Dixon

Class of '65

Recent issues of The Traveller jogged a couple of random, buried memories.

The downtown YMCA was a key factor in my becoming a basketball player. Glenn Wallace, who went to Lee in the 7th and 8th grades before transferring to Butler, persuaded me to join a 13 and under team at the Y. I was a slightly chubby, no talent kid who was one of the last guys who got into a game that first year. Prior to the Y the only hard court I had ever played on was the one in SaraJane Steigerwald's back yard. One key thing about the gym at the Y is that it did, indeed, have a track which circled above the gym floor. The track, however, made a corner shot very difficult since it interfered with the normal trajectory of the ball. You could always tell a kid who learned to shoot at the Y since their corner shot was so flat. In high school, we had to unlearn this adaptation.

The second memory regards department stores. My first key memory was of Dunnavant's which had that very cool system of pneumatic tubes which handled all money transactions. You paid the clerk and she put the money in the tube and sent it to some central location. In only a few seconds, the capsule would return with the correct change. I think it would still amaze today's kids. The other department store memory is of G.C. Murphy's at the "new mall" built on the Parkway. To my suprise, my dear Mother got a job at Murphy's working from 5pm until 9pm when I was in the 10th grade. It did not occur to me that she was working to save up money for me to go to college. After I got my driver's license, I would drive down to pick her up at 9. Murphy's had a great soda fountain and it's signature dish was a banana split called a "whooper-dooper, five scooper" which had 5 scoops of ice cream. It cost 39 cents. I often arrived a little early to partake of this little delicacy. All the Murphy's employees worked there a long time and the store management held picnics and parties several times a year. I suspect that Murphy's and Sears both put a serious dent in the sales at the downtown department stores.

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