The publishers of The Eagle Democrat have chosen to publish articles from the past Oldtimer’s Notebook in memory of Robert L. Newton. This article was first published May 31, 2000.
Oldtimers will recall this as Memorial Day time in Bradley County, a time when people seriously remembered in assorted wars and peace maintenance activities for our country.
Author and finisher of many a Memorial Day observance on the courtsquare was the Rev. Wayne Parnell, handicapped himself but ever a believer in the importance of memorials to those who had lost their lives.
Mrs. Abbie Richardson, who has adorned civic occasions in Bradley County for many and many a year, usually sang; sometimes the color guard from the American Legion came, bearing the flags.
The usual flagbearers were Sel Carmical and Don Ashcraft (father of the late Warren merchant, Harry Lee Ashcraft).
Mr. Carmical’s twin, R. Watterson Carmical, joined him as the starting guards on one of the earlier WHS football teams. Other brothers in the starting lineup then were R.C. (Bub) and Clyde Tracy.
Memory of memorial days is short, and that of long-ago wars, too.
Burned in personal memory is the day we learned, during World War II, that a young naval officer named Edwin Hampton had been killed when the destroyer Turner exploded in New York harbor.
Edwin Hampton was an elegant young man, younger son of the Graham Hamptons, whose home on Pine is now owned by Pat and Mickey Tucker.
Ed was educated at the now-defunct Western Military Academy of Alton, Ill. (along with S.B. Meek, Jr., N.H. McDaniel, and Charles Eerle, Jr.) and at Princeton.
He was perhaps in his late ‘twenties when he died.
…there were too many others joining Herbert Bradley Martin, First Bradley Countian to die in World War I, who rests, after the removal of his remains from a cemetery in France, at Oakland Cemetery.
Now, it is said, thousands of the veterans of World War II, none younger than age 70, are dying at thousands per month.
Two decades hence, not many will be left.
Their memory needs preserving.
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We heard about Ed Hampton’s death at the dinner table of the boarding house operated by Marie Scobey Wiltshire at the southwest corner of Pine and Main.
Mrs. Wiltshire’s mother had operated such an establishment there: Marie took over after her mother’s death and her own marriage to Percy Wiltshire, a native of Canada who was a filer at “The Bradley”.
Mrs. Wilshire had “two seatings” of ten or twelve people around her dining table.
First was at 11:30, second at noon.
Fare was what’d be called now “good, hearty food”. Meal cost: 25 cents.
Some of the diners included members of the family of the V.C. Fords.
Others were Margaret Thompson of Warren Bank and Trust and her husband, Joe; Mrs. Earl Hairston, an educator, and her younger son, Hugh (last man to drop-kick an extra point at Warren High), Mrs. Lillis Tarpley, Mrs. Lee Martin, Walter Lipford, and Mrs. Mina Meacham, mother of our good friend and neighbor, Mrs. Claude McKinney.
Didn’t Marion Hickingbottom, the teacher, eat there too?
And Bill Craven of Southern Lumber Company?
A regular diner, Dr. Rufus Martin’s office nurse, Mrs. Grace Cuthbertson, mother of James Cuthbertson (surviving member, by the way, of Warren’s 1931 state champion in all classifications basketball team).
Mrs. Meacham had a room there, as did Sue Dean Moseley, an attractive single lady who was a member of that burgeoning Moseley family from northwest of Warren.
I remember Mrs. Wiltshire took THE EAGLE DEMOCRAT: we didn’t have a subscription during my mother’s widowhood…we either read Mrs. Wiltshire’s or the copy at the home of our grandparents, which was on the site of the “Day and Night” Store, Pine and Martin.
Mr. Wilshire took all these lumbering magazines and I loved to scrutinize ‘em and read about ads for trucks. I’d never heard of like Peterbilt, Mack, and Autocar: these were not seen in Bradley County woods back then.
Times change.
The Wilshire house, handsomely restored, now is on the Heath Bryant property northwest of town.
The house even has a stairway in it now that came from the abandoned Arkansas City High School over in Desha County.
The Heath Bryant house is slam full of goodies.
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Charles S. Bray of 618 St. James here in town provides us with an interesting hand-drawn map of the Bradley Road area northeast of town, the area through which the proposed (if controversial) northwest bypass is to traverse.
Mr. Bray says the late Emmett Blankinship provided him with a tour of all the area many years ago, Mr. Emmett on his plow horse named “Grampa”.
Emmett Blankinship was the father of the late Jennie Dell Herring and the late Camille Blankinship Gibbs, Warren.
Mr. Bray remembers “who lived where” all the way from the “Sallee Brothers Mill” on the current site of the Bradley County Farmers Association all the way out to the “railroad tram” a logging road Bradley Lumber Company constructed east of the MoPac bridge between Warren and Wilmar so log trains could be run up into rich timber holdings the Fullerton brothers had in Cleveland County.
Until recently, a portion of a railroad bridge across the “bar pit” north of the Jim Young Bridge could still be seen.
Mr. Bray says there was a minority church back behind the property of Henry Robertson (his son James sold many of the lots for the new homes built there.)
He says there was also a telegraph line that went along Bradley Road connecting Warren with Monticello before long-distance telephone service was instituted.
Mr. Bray recalls some of the members of the Forrest and Bussell families lived on Bradley then (this being at midcentury, he recalls, when he made that horseback trip with Mr. Blankinship).
Home of Ben Martin is shown: Mr. Martin, prominent farmer and businessman, was the grandfather of Martin Hankins.
House of Beverly Morgan Richardson is now on that site.
Ancient cemetery though to be the resting place of Captain Hugh Bradley is also shown on Mr. Bray’s map.
