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Photograph
by Don Dozier, husband of Christine Binkley Dozier Class of '53
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Please e-mail us any news, photos or historical articles about our Alma
Mater that you'd like to share.
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IMPORTANT!
Re: Our annual printed "Blast". What Are Your Wishes?
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| For whatever
reason, some alumni prefer not to receive any communication about the
Association and its activities. This is your opportunity to express those
desires. If you prefer to receive The BLAST and other communique's through
e-mail, let us know. Also, if you prefer no information,
that option iscertainly open as well. Please send your e-mail to Paul
Rawls at prawls33@bellsouth.net
or regular mail to 225 Mockingbird Rd., Nashville 37205.
Indicate your preference for future ILAA communications and please include
all details regarding your name, maiden name, class and address with
your request. |
The
Tennessean, Sunday, 09/02/07
Sewanee Hall of Fame adds Nashville's
Carter
By JOE BIDDLE
Staff Writer |
 Ronald
Downing ('49) was elected President General of the SAR
for the 2005-2006 year.
View
Details |
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 It
was a wonderful weekend on Monteagle Mountain for native Nashvillian
Clarence "Buggs'' Carter. The longtime University of the
South football and basketball assistant coach was inducted into the
school's Athletics Hall of Fame. Carter was born in East
Nashville, was a great athlete at Isaac Litton —'52 and
became an honorable mention All-America football player at Wyoming.
In 1957, legendary Sewanee football coach Shirley
Majors hired Carter for his staff.
Carter also assisted Sewanee basketball
coach Lon Varnell. He also coached baseball and wrestling while
at Sewanee.
Carter was known as one of the toughest
to ever play at Wyoming. He brought that tenacity to the Mountain after
he left former Wyoming coach Phil Dickens. He had moved with
Dickens as a graduate assistant at Indiana. It was Dickens, a Hartsville
native who played at Tennessee, who recommended Carter to Majors.
Those who played for Carter over his
21 years at Sewanee say he was perhaps the coach they most feared, but
by the time they left and later in life, the coach they respected most.
He molded them into men, yet deeply cared for them.
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Litton
Alumni Honored:
Metro-Nashville
Public Schools "Sports
Hall Of Fame"
A new sports
hall of fame for Metro Schools has just been announced.
Litton is represented by 3 alumni, more than any other
school in Nashville. Those chosen for this new hall of fame are: George
Volkert, class of '53; Bobby
Tillman, Class of '56; and
Bonnie
Sloan, class of '69.
Induction ceremonies
will be at 11:30 am, Tuesday, April 26, 2005, at the Coliseum West Club,
home of the Tennessee Titans.
What an awesome honor this is for these individuals
and for Isaac Litton High School. This is just another reason to continue
to be proud to be a Litton Lion. |
On
April 12, 2004, Nashville-Metro Schools honored the "Teachers
of the Year" at
a banquet on the General Jackson Showboat. For the first time, "Principals
of the Year" were also honored from elementary, middle
and high schools.
In the elementary division, Rick
Binkley (Litton class of '70) was selected. From high school,
Sammy Swor, Jr. (Litton class
of '64) was selected.
In their remarks, both were extremely humble and
gracious. They made Isaac Litton High School proud. Both Sammy and
Rick are retiring this year, and they are both going out on top. Litton
graduates are still making their mark in this world in a big way.
It was a proud moment for all of us; one that I
just had to share with you. |
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MEMORIES
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Ex-classmates at Litton High keep the
past alive
Jay
Hamburg covers a variety of stories for The Tennessean. He can be reached
at jhamburg@tennessean.com |
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Fast-growing
cities tend to pave over their pasts the way jungle vegetation soon
covers any stone or building left untended.
Old schools and homes get pushed aside. Or simply disappear.
Behind a tangle of new growth, the reminders of a half-century ago
slip out of sight.
But inside Nashville's rapidly expanding metro area --
now more than 1 million strong -- there are a dozen friends from old
Isaac Litton High School, class of 1944, who meet every month to renew
a bond begun back when Nashville was a city of 155,000.
They chat, laugh, tell of recent happenings.
But mostly, they tend to their memories, keeping
shared experiences alive, reminding themselves of their common journey.
Most of them actually started school together in 1932
-- first grade at Jere Baxter Elementary in the days when some of
the rooms were heated by pot-belly stoves. A lot has changed
with Nashville, of course. Some of it good. But not all, according
to the group.
Isaac Litton High is gone, the buildings demolished. The
name now belongs to a junior high. And the city has kept expanding
to the point that their once-separate community of Inglewood (where
it wasn't uncommon to see log homes in the 1930s) seems engulfed by
the rest of the new concrete-and-asphalt branches of growth.
Gallatin Road, now a commuter-jammed thoroughfare, was
a fairly peaceful place when they watched President Franklin Roosevelt
drive by in the 1930s. Some even remember roller-skating down that
road.
That Nashville is gone. "It's getting too big. Problems
keep growing," said Billy Brent, who played center for the Litton
Lions football team and later ran an appliance store before retiring.
None in the group thinks the city should return to kerosene
lights or the darkness of segregation. But several can't help believing
that this latest spurt of growth in the 1990s began to erode the character
of the town they grew up in.
And that growth happened to coincide with the terms
of Mayor Phil Bredesen.
"It seemed to me when Phil came in, he brought this,"
said Justine Perry Duke, who was treasurer of the honor society in
1944. "When people come from the North to the South, they try
to change us. Leave us alone. Let the South be the South."Some
of the touchstone experiences of their past seem to hold
meaning for fewer and
fewer people. But that's the fault of time more than any politician.
Hardly anyone remembers when going uptown to a
show meant going to downtown Nashville's Paramount Theater to sing
along with the man at the organ. But this group does.
And who else might remember the neighborhood dances
at Litton High featuring singing groups from other schools, not to
mention George Terry and the Cedar Hill Gully Jumpers?
They were 12 years
old when a quarter would cover the cost of a streetcar ride to Nashville,
admission to a movie, some popcorn and the ride home.
They lost touch for a while -- caught up in the rush to
make a living and raise a family. But after a class reunion 10 years
ago, about a dozen of the friends decided to keep meeting.
Now -- when nearly all of them are 73 -- they keep meeting
every month.
"We just bonded," said Alice Speight Stilz, who
was a band majorette and a member of the science club.
Stilz said the togetherness amazes her adult daughter,
who told her: "I don't even know my classmates now."
Many in the group believe that living through World War
II together increased their connections. They listened to the radio
addresses of President Roosevelt while sitting together in a large
school room.
Litton sent 500 classmates into the service during the
war years. And 31 died.
Today, 55 years after graduating from high school, 67 years
after starting first grade together, they still recall a Nashville
that is fading from memory. A Nashville where the sound of an airplane
drew kids from their homes to look into the sky, and where smoking
an "Indian cigar" meant smoking the seed pod of a catalpa
tree.
"They'd make you sick as a mule," said Louise
Hunter Sloan, who went on from Litton High, where she was member of
the knitting club, to help design circuitry for one of the Bell telephone
companies.
Nearly all of them remember a seminal event from their
school days.
The Blue Ribbon Parade.
Blue Ribbon students were those who had good grades
and good health habits, including eating vegetables and sleeping at
least eight hours a night with the window open to get the benefits
of fresh air.
Blue Ribbon kids got to parade around in front of admiring
onlookers inside one of the pavilions on the state fairgrounds.
They don't know if kids were actually healthier then, but
"you walked to school; you didn't have momma and daddy to carry
you," said Bettie Gebhardt Warf, who worked on the school newspaper,
The Litton Blast.
As the most recent get-together was ending and the Blue
Ribbon students from old Jere Baxter Elementary were saying their goodbyes,
they got to wondering about something.
"Who was Jere Baxter, anyway?" asked Mary Lowery
Pate, a former member of the 1944 Litton Girl Reserves.
That stopped everyone.
Justine Perry Duke looked around at her former classmates. "I
guess we need to read the plaque. |
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Goodbye
to a friend |
Isaac
Litton provides a Lion's share of memories from high school days
from
the Nashville
Eye
submitted
by Justine
Perry Duke ('44), ILAA Archives
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By
JAMES SUMMERS '59
 SEVERAL
weeks ago while visiting your fair city, which is also the place of
my birth and rearing, I found myself with my two sons staring at the
dead, dilapidated shell of once-proud Isaac Litton High School.
I stared in disbelief as one would stare at
the headstone of a loved one who had died before her time.
How did this happen? Was it by the stroke by a black pen in the cold,
thoughtless hand of some alleged “expert” with a Ph.D in
education who just decided one day that Isaac Litton’s time had
come? Or was it a committee that ruthlessly made a decision to pull
the plug on my dear, departed loved one in the name of progress?
How it happened doesn’t matter now.
The foul deed is done.
We stood there in silence that cold, gray
day, no words passed between us. My boys, although young, seemed to
understand that there was something sacred about the moment to their
old dad. With careful discretion I wiped the tear that was trickling
down my cheek and they, gripped by the moment, acted as though they
did not see it.
How I would have liked to have taken them
through those big double doors — doors through which I had passed
countless numbers of times in days gone by. How I would like to have
walked with them down those once-hallowed halls, going from room to
room to introduce them to teacher after teacher who had made a profound
contribution to my life: Mrs. A.E. Wright, Annie Ruth Stroud, Coach
Ronald Webb, Coach Herschel Moore, and, yes,
Principal Marshall Foster.
I thought of how my boys would have enjoyed hearing
teacher after teacher tell them about some of my little antics in
their classes, all untrue of course; and they would realize that their
old dad was young once, too.
But a stroke of a black pen in the cold, thoughtless
hand had made that impossible.
They followed me to the back of the building, the
silence still unbroken, where we stood gazing at the arena where the
proud Litton Lions had moved up and down the field, winning victory
after victory. Just for a moment I thought I heard the roar of the
crowd. Ever so briefly that old Lion spirit rushed through my soul
as I thought I heard the blare of the brass section as the Marching
One Hundred marched up and down the field with exact precision, and
then it was gone.
As we started to walk away, the silence was
broken only by the gravel of the parking lot as it crunched beneath
our feet as we made our way back to the car. As we drove away, I had
a lump in my throat. My boys stared out the window, realizing no doubt
that old dad’s fit of melancholy soon would be over, but also
realizing that there was something, they were not sure what, sacred
about the event in which they had been curious participants.
Why this article? Well, you see, since those
bygone days I have become a preacher and in that capacity have been
called on to bury many loved ones and friends. I just wanted to be
sure that the proper words had been said, publicly, over this important
loved one. I wanted to be sure that she was put away in style and
that her death would not go unnoticed.
(The Rev. Mr. Summers is senior pastor
for Northwest Baptist Church in Miami.)
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Our Alma Mater
Paul Rawls
Before
Isaac Litton High School there was Jere Baxter, the man. Founder of the
Tennessee Central Railroad, Baxter donated land for a school building
and around 1900, Jere Baxter Grammar School was built. This wooden, frame
structure burned some fifteen years later.
A new, four-room brick building was completed
in 1915. After eight years, it was too crowded so another school was
built on the same plot of land. The older building was renamed "Jere
Baxter Junior High School," devoted exclusively to the 9th and l0th
grades.
By
1929, however, it was too crowded again. In response, the Davidson County
Board of Education bought 11.1 acres on Gallatin Road from Richard Spotswood
with the goal of having a senior high school ready for the 1930-'31 school
year. The completion target date was missed, so the high school students
started their '30-'31 school year in Inglewood Methodist Church's basement.
Isaac
Litton Junior High (now Isaac Litton Middle School) was completed in
1954.
The
senior and junior high schools were administered as a single entity,
even though the combined enrollment was 2,100 students by 1960. The two
institutions were finally split in 1966. In 1971, soon after that year's
senior class graduated, Isaac Litton High School ceased operations.
The
school remained vacant and without upkeep. In the 1990s, the main building
and its north wing had deteriorated so severely, those structures were
razed and a small park was built on the premises.
The gym building, Kenneth Duke Building
(a.k.a., band building), and football field were still in place.
Through a grant from the National
Football League's Community Football Fields initiative plus locally raised
funds, the football field was restored and is currently used by the Isaac
Litton Middle School team. Efforts are ongoing to raise funds for restoring
the gym building and creating within it, a separate area for Isaac Litton
High School historical items and memorabilia.
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I’m
sure that everyone remembers the Color Guard which marched ahead of the
Marching 100; those eight or so young women, six carrying lightweight
wooden rifles, one carrying the national colors and one carrying the
school flag. There was another color guard, however, which has become
almost lost in memory through the fog of time. It was the original and
consisted simply of two flag bearers and two riflemen.
Soon
after Litton’s 1950-'51 school year began, Johnny Kimbrough ('51,
deceased) said he wanted me to help him form a color guard. I wasn't sure
I even knew what a color guard was or what one did. Litton had never had
one, so there was no precedent. Patiently, Johnny explained to me that:
• We would be a part
of the band. (The band? Hey, I wasn't sure I wanted that.)
• We would wear band
uniforms only with different headgear. (I wasn't too enthused about walking
around in scarlet and royal blue, either. I trended more to jeans and
sport shirts.)
• We would get into
all football games without paying. (Well, that's a positive.)
• We would ride on
the band bus wherever the band went. (Oh, really? And all the cute coeds
in the band? Where do I sign on?)
So Johnny and I got busy.
We decided that he and I would be the riflemen who marched at each side
of the color guard. He would be at the right flank; I would be at the
left. We would have to recruit someone to carry the U.S. flag and someone
else to carry the Litton school flag.
Johnny obtained four WW II, olive-drab
helmet liners from Friedman's Army-Navy Surplus and we spray-painted them
with white enamel. With one roll of red and one of blue Scotch brand,
1/4"-wide plastic tape, we fashioned an "L" on each side
of the helmet liners, and not to be bragging, but they looked pretty good.
We obtained our band uniforms
from Mr. Swor and then bought pairs of white gloves, so now we had our
basic outfit; except for weapons.
Well, I owned a .22 caliber,
bolt-action, single-shot rifle. That's a weapon. And Johnny said he could
borrow one from a friend, so there you go.
Next came learning how to properly
carry the weapons and to move them from one position to another. We surely
could have used a copy of the Army's Field Manual FM 22-5 which explains
in detail everything one needs to know about handling a rifle before,
during, and after parades; but we didn't have a copy.
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Where Johnny got his information, I have no idea; but we managed to hold
our rifles (one time, Johnny used someone's 12 gauge shot gun) in a respectable
position of right shoulder arms and to shift to a port arms position
where the rifle is held diagonally across the body, and to shift back
again.
In time, Jim King of
our class agreed to bear the national flag and Joe Galbreath of the '54
class bore the school flag (later, Paul Dickson of the '54 class carried
the school colors); so while the band did its marching practice up and
down the football field, the four of us were off to one side practicing
our marching, rifle movements, and flag salutes. Naturally, that physical
activity made us exempt from phys. ed. classes and that was another plus.
Our function at football
games wasn't all that exotic. At half-time, we marched onto the field
in front of the band until we reached the fifty-yard line. Then we made
a right angle turn and marched toward one sideline. There, we wheeled
about--which had to be done correctly to make sure the U.S. flag was
always to the right of the school flag. We wound up facing the field
and waited until the band completed its performance.
Then we marched onto
the field, timing it so when we turned toward the exit end zone, we would
be in front of the band. I don't know how many paces the drum major,
Fred Schott, was behind us. After
all, it was his job to maintain the proper distance and at that point,
he and the rest of the band were following us.
Before too many appearances
of marching with mismatched weapons, we were able to borrow two official,
U.S. Army M-1 rifles from the Junior ROTC people at East High. Those
weapons made us look like a real color guard, especially after we began
borrowing bayonets, too, and affixing them to the rifles.
The bayonets payed off
during the Christmas parade in 1950. We wound through Nashville's streets,
past the court house, and turned onto Second Avenue, South; headed for
the parade's terminus at Broadway. Now, Second wasn't a very pleasant
place to be back then. It was mostly dingy, warehouses, and sundry humans
of questionable character.
I thought Second would
be pretty well vacated; but, surprisingly, about as many people lined
that street as any other. Somewhere just south of Union Street, I heard
Johnny yell "Port, Arms." I didn't know why, but I executed
the rifle maneuver anyhow. Then he yelled something like, "Guards,
to the curb, March!" I'd never heard such a command. Nevertheless,
I went off to my left at about a 45 degree angle until I was nearly at
the curb; then I changed to straight ahead.
Just short
of Broadway, Johnny yelled for us to resume our previous positions. Marching
at an angle back toward the flag bearers--who'd continued
marching in the middle of the street--I saw that Johnny was holding his
M-1 at the reverse angle. The stock of his rifle was at his left hip
and the rifle tilted to his right instead of the other way around. With
Johnny's command to return our rifles to our right shoulders, we swung
alongside flag bearers and finished the parade route.
Before we boarded the band
bus, Johnny asked if I saw why he'd given the curious commands. I didn't
know, so he explained that on his side of the street, he saw an inebriated-looking
man lurch from the sidewalk crowd and onto the street, and appeared to
be eyeing the high-stepping majorettes.
Johnny's objective was
to keep the man from coming any closer. It had worked, Johnny said. The
man jumped back in a hurry when he felt the point of Johnny's bayonet
graze his cheek. Then I understood Johnny's carrying his rifle at the
reverse port arms position.
Naturally, most of our
marching occurred during football season and by the time the band was
to march in the Armed Forces Day parade in the spring of 1951, we had
become rather well practiced. At least some people said we looked good
at what we were doing. And it turned out that the school year as a member
of Litton's first color guard wasn't as traumatic as I had imagined at
the onset. Maybe that's the way it goes with a lot of things: it can
be right pleasant once you get in there and try it.
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