Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2C
THE JACKSON HERALD
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2009
Bennett, Caldwell to wed March 21
Mr. and Mrs. William J.
Bennett, Hoschton announce the
forthcoming marriage of their
daughter, Ashley Nicole Bennett,
to William Anthony Caldwell Jr.,
son of Debra Mooney.
The bride-elect is the grand
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Billy
Bennett, Hoschton, and the late
Mr. and Mrs. Johnnie Sharp,
Warm Springs.
Miss Bennett is a 2003
graduate of Jackson County
Comprehensive High School
and a 2007 graduate of Lanier
Technical College. She is
employed with ENT of Duluth.
The future groom is the grand
son of Mr. and Mrs. Jimmy
Mooney, Winder.
Mr. Caldwell is a 1995 gradu
ate of Winder-Barrow High
School and had a four-year tour
in the U.S. Army. He is employed
TT
MR. CALDWELL AND
MISS BENNETT
with Over Head Doors Corp.,
Atlanta.
The wedding will be March
21, 2009, at New Liberty United
Methodist Church.
Fairview plans supper, music
FAIRVIEW Community Center will hold a “Poor Man’s
Supper” with a local musical artist performing March 28, from
6:30 p.m. until the music finishes.
Fairview Center is located off Highway 60 North, Pendergrass,
at 102 Fairview Road, Jackson County.
A family-style buffet, with take-out available, will cost $3.50
for adults and children 11 and under eat free. Menu: Southern
country food dishes prepared by community members and
friends.
“Come join your family, neighbor and friends in a Jackson
County event of friendship,” coordinators say.
Food giveaway set for March 19
USDA COMMODITIES will be given out on Thursday, March
19, at Sardis Presbyterian Church on Gordon Street, Jefferson.
Distribution begins at 8 a.m. and is first-come, first-served.
Recipients must be a resident of Jackson County and be income
eligible.
For more information, call Linda Crawford, ACTION, Inc., at
706-367-9599.
Maysville library lists March events
THE MAYSVILLE Public Library will celebrate Dr. Seuss’
birthday at 10:30 a.m. Friday, March 13, with a pre-school story
time and craft.
The library events will continue throughout the month, includ
ing a family game night at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 19, and a
Friends of the Library meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 26.
For more information, contact Delana Lovell, library man
ager, at 706-652-2323 or maysville@prlib.org.
UDC to meet Sat. in Commerce
THE J.E.B. Stuart Chapter of the United Daughters of the
Confederacy will meet at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, March 14, at the
Commerce Public Library
All members are encouraged to attend.
The UDC is a nonprofit organization which objectives as
“Patriotic, Benevolent, Civic, Memorial and Historical.”
Anyone interested in joining may contact the chapter registrar
at jebstuart861 @hotmail.com.
Low cost spay/neuter offered
THE NON-PROFIT Leftover Pets/The Pet Mechanics will be
bringing a mobile spay/neuter unit to Jackson County on March 16,
17 and 31. Call 800-978-5226 for more details and prices.
CCC Camp continued from page 1C
CCC Camp located at Commerce in ‘33
FOR ABOUT a year, there was a CCC encampment, Camp MAR-NAV-ARM, Ga. P-69,
located at Commerce. It was the only camp in the Fourth Corps Area established by an officer
of each branch of the Armed Services - Marine Corps, Navy and Army.
Local leaders included Jack Storey, Jefferson, and Omer O. Wood, Commerce. J.T. Irvin,
Talmo, was an assistant leader. Members of the camp included men from Commerce,
Jefferson, Pendergrass, Homer, Maysville, Gillsville, Talmo, Comer and Winder, as well as
those from further away in Georgia and Alabama.
The Georgia men were established at Fort Moultrie, S.C., on June 2,1933, then moved about
a mile and a half from Commerce on the Commerce-Atlanta Hwy. on June 21, 1933. They
camped on a wooded hillside near a creek.
A June 1,1933, edition of The Jackson Herald noted that many local men had already been
sent to other camps in the state. Some 200 men were expected at the Commerce camp, on land
on the Jefferson-Commerce Hwy. that had been used by Commerce High School for forestry
students.
Work projects included building fire breaks, roads, fire towers and telephone lines. Two
groups of Alabama men joined the camp, and a sub-camp was established at Gainesville in
February 1934 to work on Hall County roads.
On June 14,1934, the company moved to its new campsite at Glencoe, Ala.
— Sources: Memories of District B, Civilian Conservation Corps, 1932: The Jackson Herald
.. we shall never forget the days we spent together in the CCC
and we are grateful to our president who made it possible that we
might have this job. ” — from Co. 456, Robertstown
About the Civilian Conservation Corps
THE CIVILIAN Conservation Corps was established as the Emergency Conservation Work
Act as a part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The first CCC enrollee enlisted
37 days after FDR was inaugurated on March 4,1933.
A “peacetime Army,” the CCC was set to battle erosion and destruction of natural resources and
initially gave work to unemployed, unmanied men ages 18 to 26. A six-month enlistment was set,
although many men reenlisted and earned $30 a month, with $25 to be sent home to family.
The CCC worked with federal and state organizations, such as the Soil Conservation Service,
National Park Service and National Forestry Service,
During its span of work from 1933 to when it was abolished due to wartime on July 1, 1942,
the CCC served more than 3 million men. During that time, CCC camps built 3,740 fire towers,
created or improved 97,000 miles of fire roads, fought fires, planed 3 billion trees, offered flood
recovery, improved forests, built recreation sites and handled erosion control. The list goes on and
on.
The sign-up was that day in Jefferson, so
Smith put on clean overalls and a clean shirt.
Everything was faded and he had no shoes, but
he rode bareback on the mule the four miles to
Nicholson to meet the mail carrier.
“He gave me a ride in his car to Jefferson by
the Brockton Road,” Smith said. “I’d never rode
on a paved road before.”
At the ordinary's office at the county court
house, Smith spoke with “two girls who were
filling out the paperwork.”
“’How long have you been unemployed?’
they asked,” Smith remembers. “I’d never heard
that word. ‘When was the last time you had
work?' I work every day, I said. ‘Well, you can't
get in,' they said, but they did the paperwork.”
That night a member of the CCC commit
tee stopped by the house to tell Smith he had
made it.
“The next morning, I ate breakfast, put my
stuff in a sack and had to be at the Athens post
office,” he said. “I rode to Athens in a wagon
with mules and I got there with five minutes to
spare. By 9 o’clock, I was on my way by train
to Atlanta. At Ft. McPherson, we slept six to a
tent.”
CCC DAYS
After an initial “grass-cutting” period in
Atlanta, and a close call with getting his shots
on time. Smith joined a group of young men on
the train to Gainesville.
“There was a load of us, not knowing where
we were going,” he said. “There must’ve been
a thousand of us. We got off the train at
Gainesville and they put us four to a car. I had
never been to the mountains. I had never been
nowhere.”
Next stop, Robertstown and Tray Mountain,
on the other side of Helen, where Company 456
set up camp on Smith's Creek in a cornfield.
(Interestingly, during that same time Smith was
shipped to Robertstown, there was a CCC camp
set up closer to home, just outside Commerce,
See sidebar.)
“Helen was a little place then, with cows
walking down the street,” Smith said. “There
was no road where we would camp back in a
cornfield. We had to get the cornstalks out to put
our beds up. There were 100 of us in camp...
They were from all over. There was even one
fellow from Dry Pond.”
Smith was enlisted for six months, then
reenlisted for another six months and then for
an additional three months, for 15 months total
in the CCC. Although he did his share of work
ing on road improvements, he got his start in
the forestry division, on the government-bought
land that made up the Chattahoochee National
Forest.
“We worked in the woods and we brown-
bagged it, although they wanted us to have a hot
lunch every day,” Smith said. “We’d go around
to see where houses had been and we’d find a
piece of tin and cook our meat on it. It tasted
pretty good.”
In “the forestry bunch,” Smith and his co-
workers made their way through the woods,
killing off the big, old oak trees that, with their
shade, would make it impossible for cash crop
white pines to grow.
“We’d cut notches all around to kill them,”
he said. “They gave us these little, tiny hatchets.
We laughed at those things. We were used to
big axes.”
Smith remembers competitions where the
men would see who could notch a “tree” (in this
instance, a pole) the fastest.
“I run around that thing in 13 seconds and
then I chopped it in two in 31 seconds,” he
said.
Smith said he spent about a year working
with the National Forestry Service, and spent
the rest of his stint on road work.
As for the road improvements, the men
would use smooth river rocks - no light weight
— on the mountain roads and trails. It was all
hard work, Smith conceded, but said that he had
already been used to hard work on the farm.
“We helped build roads up on Tray Mountain
with a pickaxe and shovel and rocks from the
river,” he said. “I was used to that heavy work.
People aren’t used to that anymore.”
The men in the CCC camp got involved in
the community while they lived there. They
attended church, they went to school events,
they sometimes had dinner with the residents.
One of the men even married one of the girls
from the area.
As for the CCC itself, “It was a great change
of life,” he said. “It was needed.”
Smith admits he believes the country is
headed for another Depression.
“People talk about hard times now.. .it ain’t
got there yet,” he said. “Back then, there wasn't
any unemployment. Sure, we’re headed to a
Depression. When you blow up a balloon too
much, it's gonna bust.”
BACK HOME,
BACK ON THE TRAIN
In 1934, Smith was notified one Monday that
he would be shipped home the next day.
“I caught the train at Lula, and my brother
met me at Center,” he said. “I went right back
to farm work I missed the CCC. I missed that
$5 a month, too. I saved it all.”
After a time on the farm, Smith found work
driving a Pepsi-Cola truck for two years. He
also worked in construction in Athens, and
remembers it was Oct. 14, 1938, when he first
started paying toward Social Security.
In 1940, with the help of a former teacher.
Smith was able to enlist in the military. He got
a ‘To Whom It May Concern” letter and “car
ried it to Gainesville. I got my ticket to go to
Alabama the next day.”
During his travels, he saw a boy he'd been at
CCC camp with in 1933-34.
“When I got to Alabama, they said ‘We’ll
take anybody,’ and they had me hold up my
hand and swear to protect the flag,” Smith said.
He added that in later years, when he worked at
the University of Georgia, he had “a hard time
when the students were demonstrating and
burning the flag.”
During World War n, Smith worked on fight
er planes, particularly the B-17 and B-24. He
spent “five years, three months and eight days”
in the military. But before he left home, he met
“the prettiest thing I ever saw” and ended up
marrying his wife, Meta, after she graduated
from high school at Benton.
“I was 11 years older, I was an old man,” he
said. "With war coming on, I had to go. But
in 1940,1 got a letter saying she had finished
high school. She'd told me she wouldn’t marry
me until she finished high school. So I took a
journey home and it took three days to talk her
into it.”
At that time, an underage girl had to advertise
the forthcoming marriage for three days or have
her parents' consent.
“It was too late,” Smith said. “I had to go
back to the Army the next day.”
As it turned out, the paperwork got some
dates changed, and “it all worked out.”
The couple, who later had three children,
married on June 6, 1941. Smith’s next leave
was two weeks later, and the newlyweds had
a one-day “honeymoon” to Tray Mountain
where Smith had spent his CCC days.
Another phase of life had begun.
“The CCC gave me a little more push to go
ahead,” Smith said.
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