Louise Stansbery's Great Adventure, Part 5

by Glenn N. Holliman

Cuba...an Island of Political Unrest....

This concludes a five part series on Louise Stansbery Sherwood's beauty pageant trip to Havana, Cuba from her home in Bristol, Tennessee in 1935....a era gone by....Louise is a grand daughter of G.W. and Frances Wilson Osborne.

Below International Radio Club beauty contestants, one being Louise Stansbery Sherwood  (1915-2006), met President Carlos Mendieta of Cuba, December 9, 1935.  Two days later Mendieta was forced out of office in yet another turnover of leadership in an unstable nation.   

 To most 21st Century Americans, Cuba is known as an island controlled by the two Castro brothers who led the 1959 revolution that overthrew a former Cuban army sergeant and quasi-dictator, Fulencio Batista.  

Somewhere in the average American's high school memory is knowledge of the 1898 Spanish-American War when Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, plus the U.S. Navy, expelled the Spanish colonial administration from Cuba.  For a few years, the U.S. cast a protectorate over Cuba, before the Cubans began, fitfully, to expeerience governmental independence.

After four centuries of Spanish rule, exercising that sovereignty proved vexing.  Cuba was a deeply class ridden society with a few who were very wealthy and the many who were very poor.

 Below, Louise Stansbery Sherwood and other beauty pageant young ladies await to shake hands with President Mendieta in the ornate Presidential Palace reception room.

Amazing in the memorabilia of Louise Stansbery was a tourist booklet highlighting the 'charms' of 1935 Cuba.  Appearing in the visitor's puff piece was this photograph below of a 'typical' Cuban family.  Cuba seethed with political unrest and violence, and studying the picture below suggests why.

While in Havana, Louise was interviewed on the Havana radio.  The next day, she wrote home that the building in which the broadcast had been made, was bombed by would be revolutionaries!  Such was the unrest in the culture, that each contestant was issued a police card, see below.

However this being a beauty contest, the International Radio Club had to crown a queen (below left). The winner was not Louise, but the twenty year old girl from Bristol, Tennessee had had the time of her young life as the tickets indicate!  

 
      December 12th, the ship sailed back to Florida, and the Havana excursion ended.  The next day, the WOPI Bristol, Tennessee party boarded a bus in Miami, and undertook a more than 24 bus ride, with several lay overs, back to East Tennessee. Louise took home wonderful memories and saved numerous mementos of that marvelous week, including, alas, a Greyhouse bus luggage stub, a reentry ticket, if you will, back to reality!

Next posting more reunion photographs from the John and Rebecca Wilson family of Ashe County, North Carolina....

 We invite you to rediscover your heritage at a Wilson, Greer, Wilcoxson, Osborne, Forrester, Adams and other families Forum, Saturday, 9 :30 am, July 19, 2014 in the community room of the Boone, North Carolina public library.  Sunday, July 20th is also the annual Wilson Homecoming at Sutherland United Methodist Church in Ashe County.

 In addition, a detailed family tree of the above families is growing at a MyFamily.com site. For details and schedule on the above event and web site invitation, contact glennhistory@gmail.com.  Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson are great, great grandparents of this writer.

Louise Stansbery's Great Adventure, Part 4

by Glenn N. Holliman

Louise Stansberry's Great Cuban Adventure of 1935!

Our series continues....

It was the adventure of a lifetime for the 20 year old young lady from Bristol, Tennessee. For a week, she represented WOPI of Bristol in an international beauty contest for the International Radio Club.  

Below, Louise Stansbery in 1935.

     

After a busy two days in Miami, the group of 24 'girls', almost all blondes and over 60 convention goers traveled by ship to Havana.  A police escort met the group, and with sirens blaring guided them to the convention hotel, the famous National Hotel of Havana.



For whirl-wind three days, the young ladies were wined and dined and toured the city

This was a beauty contest after all.  In sessions, the ladies were judged on beauty and personality, including a swim suit competition, but a rather modest one as the news picture below illustrates.

 

Above, a menu from the Havana Plaza Hotel

With her strong East Tennessee Methodist upbringing, Louise had been taught that intoxicating beverages were sinful. (Her late grandfather, G.W. Osborne, had been ordained a Methodist minister in Sutherland, North Carolina in the 1870s.) Although constantly offered alcoholic beverages on the trip, she must have refused indulging. Note the personal note from one Hayden R. Evans below!

Left and right a program and pictures of a luncheon.                                                                                                                                                                 Newspaper coverage was extensive as the business community of Cuba desired greatly to encourage tourism.

 Below, more newspaper coverage from Havana. 

There were parties, there were tours and there were dinners.  But behind this life on the high side, Cuba was dealing with poverty and political unrest....and that intruded on their time in Havana...next posting, a rebel bomb and a change of presidents!

 We invite you to rediscover your heritage at a Wilson, Greer, Wilcoxson, Osborne, Forrester, Adams and other families Forum, Saturday, 9 :30 am, July 19, 2014 in the community room of the Boone, North Carolina public library.  Sunday, July 20th is also the annual Wilson Homecoming at Sutherland United Methodist Church in Ashe County.

 In addition, a detailed family tree of the above families is growing at a MyFamily.com site. For details and schedule on the above event and web site, watch this space and/or contact glennhistory@gmail.com.  Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson are great, great grandparents of this writer.