•Part 2
"For any American who had the great and priceless privilege of being raised in a small town there always remains with him nostalgic memories… And the older he grows the more he senses what he owed to the simple honesty and neighborliness, the integrity that he saw all around him in those days."
----President Dwight D. Eisenhower
The product of a small Louisiana town, John Norman Gallaspy has carried the integrity that goes hand in glove with it all his life. Rectitude is his strong suit. And with great humility, which Mr. John exudes, he began our visit declaring, "The things I tell you - it will be true, but it's not going to be that dramatic." Oh, but it was.
Born in Pelican, Louisiana, a tiny farming village just south of Mansfield just south of Shreveport, in 1932, Mr. John described the settlement as similar to Enon or Rio. A lovely, little spot in the road, in DeSoto Parish. His father was Francis Norman Gallaspy (1906-1988), and his mother, who sadly succumbed when John was barely three years old, was Hazel Weeks Gallaspy (1911-1936). Hailing from Florida, she had come to Pelican on the heels of her older brother who was working on an oil rig - there were shallow wells - in Pelican.
Digressing, the town got its name "almost romantically," according to Mr. John. In 1885 Texas & Pacific (T & P) Railroad built the line that came through what became Pelican and went on, eventually, to New Orleans. And there was a small sawmill there that had, as mills did then, a logging pond where colossal sixteen-foot logs were unloaded and the wood pulp fiber was probably preserved.
Notably, those were the days of virgin timber. Old Mr. Carroll went to his mill and found a pelican perched on the edge of the pond. Later research confirmed for Mr. John and his family that there was a hurricane that year that influenced the pelicans, promoting their presence in Northwest Louisiana. Voila, the town became Pelican!
A beautiful small country town with three doctors and about one hundred residents. These pioneers had come from South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi, settling in Northwest Louisiana in the post-Civil War years. As was often the case in the early years of our country, they situated themselves near the T & P Railroad which enabled them to ship cotton, the principal crop, and timber.
John's father Francis was a college graduate, the first four-year graduate produced by Pelican. In addition to being a farmer, he was the only employee of Pelican State Bank which, on sound footing, was one of the few banks that did not have to close during the Great Depression - not until the village depot railroad agent came walking up the road with a telegram from the federal government that he absolutely had to cease operation. But Pelican State Bank was only out of commission for about six weeks while President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got financial matters in our country under control, during this bank holiday in early 1933. Interestingly, Roosevelt had been elected on November 8, 1932, which was the day John had been born.
A widower, Francis Gallaspy wed Mary Leigh Marshall Gallaspy (1913-2013) at All Saints Chapel in Stonewall, Louisiana, on August 10, 1938. The daughter of Henry and Pearl Williamson Marshall and a native of Stonewall where her father was a large landowner, Mary attended The Normal in Natchitoches, Louisiana, beginning in 1928 and graduating four years later with a home economics degree. Turning down the opportunity to do graduate studies at LSU, she instead moved to Pelican, arriving by train in the fall of 1932 to teach home economics.
I pondered whether Ms. Mary might have known my great-Aunt Ozzie Brumfield Crain (1899-1996), my Pa-pa's (Thomas Colter Brumfield) sister who also, receiving her teacher training, graduated from The Normal. And another thing nagging at me - I once knew someone else from Stonewall, Louisiana. Sister Mary Magee, the wife of my first cousin once removed Dr. T. C. W. Magee, informed Mr. John. She, also, was from Stonewall in DeSoto Parish, and apparently the two Marys were not only acquainted but distantly related. A small world, it is.
Back to young John, he had three siblings - an infant baby brother who died when he was two weeks old and two stepsisters, Kathleen Gallaspy Myers, born in 1940, and Virginia Gallaspy Garlington, born in 1948.
Mr. John recalled starting school very young in Pelican. It was a wonderful school, from which his father Francis had graduated in 1923. But John had to start earlier than normal. As he explained, it was the heart of the Great Depression. His dad was the cashier at Pelican State Bank - a very good job which paid a magnificent salary of almost $100 a month. Accordingly, Mr. Francis prevailed upon the school board to allow son John to start school at age four, making him a good two years younger than his classmates. While he was disadvantaged in not being able to participate in athletics, he lamented that there were not enough boys to have football anyway.
His Uncle John Baker Gallaspy (1895-1969), his father's older brother, had been in France during his service in the Great War. I got the impression that he was a large influence on Mr. John's decision to join the military - more on that in a future column. Mr. John was impressed with his uncle, who had gone to work for an oil company that was drilling shallow wells when East Texas was becoming famous for them. Mr. John described his Uncle Baker, "He was jovial and tremendously strong with rather dry humor. They farmed and operated a general store which carried everything from baby clothing to handmade coffins like the Monks make in Covington." In his youth, John not only worked in the fields - harvesting hay, oats, and timber - but also he loaded fertilizer and helped in his uncle's general store.
With only eleven grades in the schools at that time, John graduated from high school in 1948, at age fifteen. Then, he matriculated to Louisiana State University. Mr. John disclosed that he was the youngest student at the time at LSU. And he admitted to being the greenest. Apparently, young John inquired of his dad, "Should I join a sorority?" "I think not," his father said.
•Stay tuned for next week's column, picking up with John Gallaspy at the "Ole War Skule."
