Wednesday, July 25, 2001
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Wednesday, July 25, 2001 |
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The Catholics
are coming!
Everything's relative, of course. When we moved here 30 years ago, we were considered newcomers for some locals, their worst nightmare. They just knew Peachtree City would bring Yankees into Fayette County, maybe even Catholics. "Can't help where you're born," I used to whimper, begging for acceptance. "We're doing our best to get over it." To the astonishment of friends we forsook in New Jersey, we avowed populists joined the country club here simply because in 1971 it offered the only swimming pool, tennis courts and restaurant in town. Our daughter Jean, then an enterprising third-grader, earned pocket money collecting and returning soft drink bottles from construction sites like Twigg's Corner condominiums. She read the first of these impromptu histories and wrote her memories of Willowbend as a "1960s-ugly strip that was already dingy by the time we got there." The post office was built across the east end of the strip "at the same time that Pac-a-Chick built its building out closer to the corner." (We learned recently that Liz Stargell of Waffle House fame worked there then no wonder she's always seemed like a long-lost friend.) Jean called the roll at Aberdeen Village Center: "Partners II on the end, followed by Mrs. [Judy] Brown's interior decorating store, then the record store (Jack R...?), followed by the Davis' sporting goods store and Thompson's drug store on the other end. There was a dress shop [the Cedar Chest]. I can't remember the back except for the beauty shop and the dentists." She fondly mentioned Pat Hicks, who "was nice about giving us girls a Coke at the visitor's center." Pat worked then, I believe, for Bessemer Corp., the principal developer, in the building that later became the first City Hall. I ran into Mary Kaurin Moore while collecting these vignettes, and she told me how she became the city's first full-time city clerk. Prior to that, Bessemer shared the secretarial skills of Sandra Prince with the city, along with a desk in one corner of their office. The job went full-time, and Mary hired on. She recalls how cramped the city's space was. "If I was at my desk and [Mayor] Howard Morgan wanted to get something out of the file cabinet, I had to stand up," she said. Mary was a widow with three youngsters, and the city could not provide her children health insurance. When Bob Bivens came to town and turned Bessemer into Garden Cities, he offered benefits, and Mary went to work for him, staying for four years. She later returned to City Hall as a city councilman. For the record, Susan Highsmith followed Mary as city clerk, then Frances Meaders held the post from 1973 until 1995. Young as Jean was when we moved here, I was surprised that she remembers Peskie Park, a ball field now occupied by First Baptist Church, and a touch football field later covered by First Presbyterian's expansion. I was not surprised she recalls the 1972 completion of the original pedestrian bridge crossing Ga. Highway 54, allowing her and her sister to ride bikes to their school on Wisdom Road. She said there was "nothing across the lake unless you include the old stables and Fayetteville." Her memory is suspect. What she considers "old" stables were built about 1972 as the centerpiece of an equestrian-style neighborhood (street names include Bridlepath, Palomino, Paddock and Clydesdale). A persistent problem with houseflies hastened the stables' being razed and replaced by soccer fields. Jean also mentioned a tornado that pounced on Flat Creek Club early one morning. The weather bureau insisted it was straight-line winds, but emergency workers who responded have never forgotten the damage inflicted on the club's dining room. Shards of glass stabbed chairs and tables that would have been crowded with diners had the storm struck during business hours. And the sight of the drapes hanging outside the walls proved that the roof had actually been lifted by the wind. Jean mentioned too that the Presbyterians worshipped in the old bank building before their sanctuary was built, an arrangement typical of the era's generous spirit. We were all pioneers, and churches shared space as their fledgling congregations grew and outgrew. Annie Zink, now a spring chicken of 88 her own words claims that she and her husband Charles "were the first Catholics in Peachtree City, Jonesboro or Newnan." (I bet she hears about that claim.) The Zinks did precede Delta's 1972 purchase of Northeast Airlines, flooding Atlanta with Massachusetts transplants who brought with them incense and liturgy, unheard of in these traditionally Protestant enclaves. Miss Annie recalled Father James Sexstone of Holy Trinity Catholic Church and Pastor John Weber of Christ Our Shepherd sharing an office in a borrowed warehouse on Dividend Drive. The Seventh Day Adventists had it on Saturdays. She said the Catholics first gathered at the elementary school, then met in the developer's information center, moving from there to First Presbyterian's sanctuary, then to the warehouse, and then to the basement of the rectory Vince Rossetti built on Walt Banks Road. "It was not very long before we didn't have room there," she said, noting that even today, with a newly expanded sanctuary, "it's practically the same thing we've outgrown our building." Oddly, Miss Annie didn't realize that the Lutherans were also worshipping in the warehouse, at an earlier hour. Those of us around then still joke about folding Sunday School tables and chairs as the clock neared 11 a.m. and the cry rang out: "The Catholics are coming! The Catholics are coming!"
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