My Adema Cousins - Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

Recently while sojourning in the warmth of a February Florida, my wife, Barb, and I stopped and visited my cousins, the Bob Ademas.  You may recall I wrote of the Ademas, my 2nd cousin, through the George W. (1844-1928) and Frances Wilson Osborne (1851-1940) line; these two persons are great grandparents of both Bob Adema and myself.

Below, Bob and Gayle Adema in Brandenton.  The photographer in the mirror is yours truly.

This time in what is becoming a twice annual meeting, we met Bob and Gayle's daughter and son-in-law, Vicki Adema McIntyre and her husband, Todd McIntyre.  Below, Vicki, Todd and Barbara Holliman.

Vicki for many years was with the Ringing Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, in charge of ordering feed for the many animals, and especially the elephants.  With the closing of the circus, she is now taking some time off before her next adventure.  Todd is writing a book on chemicals we may not know we are ingesting or inhaling in our 21st Century lives.

Below, Bob holds a picture of his mother, Vicki's grandmother, Gladys Osborne Adema (1913-2003) who lived in Damascus, Virginia.  Gladys met and married Bob's father, Howard Adema (1909-1984), who was working in the 1930s for the Civilian Conservation Corp in Virginia, but whose hometown was Buffalo, New York.

During our meeting this year, I remembered discovering a photograph of Gladys when she visited my Aunt Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006), a grand daughter of G.W. and Frances Wilson Osborne.  Louise and Gladys were first cousins.  Below, Louise, right and Gladys at Louise's home at Scenic Point, Louisville, Tennessee, April 2, 1978.  Ft. Loudon Lake (the Tennessee River) is in the background.

So, I close this remembrance with a picture taken in Damascus, Virginia in 1938, almost 40 years earlier, in which both Gladys and Louise were present.  Left to right are Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (the writer's mother, 1923-2015), Louise, Gladys and Doris Osborne Akers (1912-1986). Two sets of sisters, both first cousins visiting the home of Dave and Pearl Osborne Wright.

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.

Louise Stansbery's Great Adventure, Part 3

by Glenn N. Holliman

It was the greatest adventure of her 20 year old life - Louise Stansbery, daughter of Charles and Mayme Osborne Stansbery of Bristol, Tennessee, off to Florida and Cuba as a beauty pageant contestant in December 1935.  This is the third in a series of articles capturing her fantastic trip and the times in which this event occurred.

The headquarters building in Miami, Florida was the stately Columbus Hotel, now long gone but then one of the most prestigious facilities in south Florida. Photographs were taken and a fancy banquet was held by the sponsoring organization, the International Radio Club.

Below in the left photograph, but right in the picture is Louise in a stylish black and white outfit and right photograph, wearing a hat with what appears to be wires (netting?) protruding.  Another contestant, left picture, also stylishly outfitted, wears a white overcoat, suggesting an unusual cold wave.  Note the 1930s automobile on the right of the picture.

Left, the Columbus Hotel, built in 1926 and now replaced on Biscayne Bay, was the headquarters hotel and the site of the opening banquet.  As common at the time, Louise collected autographs of those at her table.  My mother, Geraldine Stansbery (1923) remembers that famed radio personality of the time, Lowell Thomas, described the pageant contestants as the 24 most beautiful blondes in America!

 

 The next day, it was off to Havana, Cuba on the P and O liner, the S.S. Florida for an overnight cruise.

 While on board, Louise was asked to pose for news photographers with three other contestants.  She is second from the left.

 There was the arrival in Cuba, captured in this newspaper photograph of the day.  The young ladies were placed in open touring cars and with a police escort driven to their hotel.

Next posting a whirl wind of tours, dinners and a turbulent political scene....

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.

Louise Stansbery's Great Adventure, Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

Our series on my late Aunt Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006) continues.  She is one of the great grand daughters of Isaac (1822-1864) and Caroline Greer Wilson (1828-1911) of Sutherland, North Carolina. Her grandmother, Frances Wilson Osborne (1851-1940), was one of the children assisting her father in the Ashe County cornfield when he was shot from ambush during the American Civil War in June 1864.

Louise Stansbery, age 20, left Bristol, Tennessee in early December 1935, en route to Miami, Florida and then by ship to Havana, Cuba.  The International Radio Club was sponsoring a beauty contest, and Louise -  Miss Bristol that year - was tapped by WOPI radio to represent the station.  WOPI owner  W. A. Wilson and others accompanied Louise on this adventure.


They took the bus!  Of course commercial flying was in its infancy and expensive.  Why not the train?  One suspects the bus was cheaper, and Wilson must have been counting his pennies and dimes in those early days of radio.

Left, a model 1932 Greyhound bus.

Heading south, one of the first stops was Statesville, North Carolina and Gray's Restaurant.  Louise saved the menu, an elegant publication for its time.   

What is remarkable to 21st Century bank accounts is how inexpensive the food was. Steak only 50 cents and sandwiches for a dime.  Of course the average annual income for American families in the middle 1930s was approximately $1,500 per year and during those Depression years, many such as my Osborne and Stansbery ancestors, made do with much less.  




It is a bit unusual posting a menu, but it captures the cost of an up-scale restaurant of its time...a cup of coffee for 5 cents!




In a quick post card home from Georgia, Louise complained they were running late. That probably explains the railroad timetable contained in her memorabilia. Remarkably, she was assigned a private room for the overnight run from Jacksonville to Miami, Florida. One suspects Mr. Wilson wanted Louise rested and looking refreshed when they arrived in Miami for the first phase of the conference.

After two days travel, the party arrived in Miami, and quickly, Louise sent a second post card home to her mother, Mayme Osborne Stansbery.  Below is Flagler Street, Miami in 1935.





Next Posting, two nights in Miami....one of the belles of Radio in 1935! 

 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.

Louise Stansbery's Great Adventure, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

My cousin, Donna Sherwood, passed along to me a large box of memorabilia of my late Aunt Louise Stansbery Sherwood.  Donna's husband, Vance R. Sherwood, Jr. is my first cousin.  In a container inside the larger box, I found envelopes of photographs and souvenirs from a special period in my aunt's life.  It is a delight to share this bit of Americana with the larger family and world.

Frances Louise Stansbery Sherwood (1915-2006) lived a long and gentle life as a housewife in Knoxville, Tennessee.  She is a maternal aunt of mine,  the grand daughter of G.W. (1847 - 1927) and Frances Wilson Osborne (1851-1940). Although known as Louise throughout her life, the Frances comes from her grandmother and her great, great grandmother, Frances Brown Greer, the Civil War heroine who stood off the Union patrol that were stealing her honey pot.  There was even Franklin Brown, the father of Frances Brown.

In 1918, she attended as a child of three the Wilson Reunion held on the Ashe County, North Carolina farm where her great grandfather, Isaac Wilson (1822-1864), had been killed just 55 years earlier near the North Fork of the New River in Sutherland.  Again a debt to Shirley Sorrell who identified the children in this picture.

Louise is on the front row, far right while an older cousin, behind her, Agnes Wilson, holds Louise's new born brother, Charles Stansbery, Jr.

Left, front row, left to right - Ernest, Clyde and Boyd Wilson, sons of Bessie and Arlie Gaither Wilson; Earl Wilson, son of Conley who is a son of John W. Wilson; Louise and Charles Stansbery, children of Mayme Osborne, the daughter of G.W. and Frances Wilson Osborne.


Back row, left to right - Thomas Earl Donnelly, who died at age 5.  He is the son of Mayme and Thomas Earl Donnelly.  Marie and Argus Wilson, children of Conley Wilson who is a son of John W. Wilson;  Robert Wilson, a son of John W. Wilson (Robert is the only grandchild of Issac and Caroline Greer Wilson in this picture); Dorothy and Agnes Wilson, the daughters of The Rev. William A. Wilson and Mary A. McClellan, who were Methodist missionaries to Japan.  Notice that almost all the children are bare footed!

Louise, the daughter of Charles S. and Mayme Torrence Osborne Stansbery (1896-1947), although born in Afton, Tennessee, grew up in Bristol, Tennessee, a mountain or two west of her mother's roots in Sutherland, Ashe County, North Carolina.  Louise's parents separated in 1930, and she went to work immediately after high school graduation in 1933 in the depths of the Great Depression.  Her jobs were retail clerk at Kress's and later waitress at King's Department Store.  Times were very hard for the family, and her small pay check kept her disabled mother, younger sister and brother in groceries.  Below, the beauty pageant announcement.

Then in January 1935, her life took a turn that led to  a larger world.  She had been blessed with good looks and a winning personality.  She was encouraged to participate in the Miss Bristol, Tennessee beauty pageant, and she won!  There was a preliminary contest on January 23, 1935 and then the finals on January 29.  The picture below appeared in the Bristol newspaper.

The newspaper clipping of the time states she would vie for Miss United States at Atlantic City.  The family has no oral history or memorabilia of such as contest, but she did attract the attention of the local radio station, WOPI that was looking for a beauty contestant for the annual International Radio Club conference.  The business gathering in 1935 was to be held in Miami, Florida and Havana, Cuba. 

Founded by W. A. Wilson (no relation to our Ashe County family), the station went on the air in 1929, the first air castle between Roanoke, Virginia and Knoxville, Tennessee.   Wilson was a good promoter; WOPI stood for 'Watch Our Popularity Grow' according the web site, http://www.wopi.com/history.html.  The original format was popular and mountain music.  Today WOPI, many owners later, is largely a sports station.

  Below, a post card Louise saved of the Cuban trip showing the early WOPI.

Below, one of the early announcers for WOPI was Tennessee Ernie Ford who was a Stansbery neighbor and fellow member of Bristol's Anderson Street Methodist Church in the 1930s. Ernest sang in the church choir and was a classmate with Louise's brother, Charles.  With the popular entertainer from the 1950s and 60s is W.A. Wilson in a photograph from the WOPI web site.  Mr. Wilson (1896-1967) and others would accompany Louise to Cuba and back.

With radio in its infancy, local station owners branded together in the International Radio Club, a trade organization run by one Jack Rice, an entrepreneur of his day.  The purpose of the 'club' was to promote radio and the sharing of ideas. 

There was an annual convention and in December 1935, that convention was held in both Miami, Florida and Havana, Cuba.   Below in Havana in December 1937 is Jack Rice, an aggressive promoter, who dreamed up the idea of a beauty pageant for the IRC as a way to attract attention and capture some publicity. 

When all said and done, 24 local broadcasters (there were about 65 members that year) tapped 'pageant queens' and paid their expenses to Havana.  For Bristol, Tennessee, the participant was the small town dime store clerk, my Aunt Louise, and she embarked on the great adventure of your young and to that date, sheltered life!

Next on to Florida and Cuba!