Fond memories shared

Published 9:37 am Friday, November 25, 2011

It’s been a week for sharing memories.

Rose Rose of Walters came by Wednesday to share a photo from 1955 of her then 8-year-old brother, Tommy Babb, with the family’s pet deer, Dixie.

Rose and Tommy’s father, George T. Babb, found the deer in the woods near the family homestead in Sebrell.

“It was a small deer and he brought it home,” Rose said. “We raised it on the bottle. After that we just let it roam. It always came back.”

Dixie eventually had a fawn.

“We kept the deer and she (Dixie) would come back every night to feed that deer,” Rose said.

A hunter killed Dixie after several years.

“She was a wonderful pet,” said Rose, the oldest of five children. “That was one of our favorite things.”

Tommy Babb passed in 2001 at age 58.

• Leroy Hardy Jr. of Sedley came by with a Hayden High School yearbook from 1939. His 88-year-old aunt, Gladys Warren Chapman of Suffolk and a Zuni native, gave Leroy the yearbook.

“She gifted it to me,” Leroy said. “She’s just passing things on.”

A former Windsor Elementary School teacher, Gladys is photographed in the book with the Dramatic Club. She served as vice president. Gladys also wrote the class poem, which appeared in the yearbook.

Student named the most brilliant was Mandell Johnson, best looking Sadie Chavis, biggest flirts Ellen Joyner and Alvesta Murphy, and tallest Eliza Reid and Edna Wilson.

In the junior class the most popular was Fritz Turner, biggest heartbreaker Theodore McClenny and the one who tried to be bad, Marcella Barnes.

Leroy’s aunt Verlie Hardy was said to be never right, yet Leroy might not agree.

“That changed,” he said.

Yearbook sponsors included William Johnson Funeral Home, C.A. Cutchins and Son, West’s Tailor Shop on First Avenue in Franklin, Lyon’s State Theater, Leggett’s Department Store, Camp Manufacturing, and Drs. A.B Harrison and Frank M Harris. Harrison was Franklin’s first black mayor.

Gwen Albers is managing editor of The Tidewater News. Her e-mail address is gwen.albers@tidewaternews.com.