CAPT. HENRY WILL JONES

rded with Mr. and Mrs. W.G. Smith.

The fateful day of December 7, 1941 came.  America was at war.  Jones left his teaching position to enter the United States Marine Corps.  Jones reported to the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, where he graduated as a second lieutenant on August 25, 1942.  From Quantico, Henry Will was sent to New River, North Carolina, where he completed his training as a paratrooper in October 1942.

Before he was transferred to San Diego, California, Jones spent a few days with his family and friends back in Georgia.  In December 1942, Henry Will was shipped from the west coast to the killing area of the South Pacific.  Holding the rank of first lieutenant, Jones was attached to the first Paratroop Division of the First Amphibious Division.  Lt. Jones was stationed at New Caledonia until September 1943.  He landed on Guadalcanal in September and from there went to Bougainville.
While in this zone, he saw service and suffered a slight wound.   Henry Will remained in Bougainville until January 12, 1944, when his paratrooper detachment was sent home to be organized into the 5th Marine Division.  As the war progressed, paratroopers were no longer needed.  Jones and his buddies were retrained to be regular infantry fighting Marines.

Captain Jones landed with his outfit at San Diego on February 7, 1942.  Ten days later, he was back home in Lakeland on a well-earned leave.  The following day, Lt. Jones became Captain Jones.  Before his return to the Marines, Captain Jones drove to Dexter for one last visit.

Captain Henry Will Jones returned to the West Coast and was assigned the Fifth Marine Division, which was stationed at Camp Pendleton, near San Diego, California.  The captain was given the chance to remain in the country for an indefinite time to participate in training of recruits. Since he wasn't married and had no children, Henry Will decided to go into combat and let someone with a wife and kids stay in San Diego and train new Marines.

Captain Jones' first new assignment was as commander of Company I,  3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Division.  He led his company in the invasion of Peliliu Island, the main island of the Palau Islands.  His last two letters were dated October 12th and 13th.  On October 18th, 1944, Captain Henry Will Jones was reported killed in action when his tank was struck by enemy aerial bomb buried just beneath the surface of the ground.

In honor of his admirable valor, the Secretary of the Navy posthumously awarded the Silver State Medal to Jones' family.  On March 24, 1997, the State of Georgia honored Captain Henry Will Jones with the naming of a bridge in his home county of Lanier.   The resolution read:

WHEREAS, Captain Henry Will Jones of Lanier County was killed in action on October 18, 1944, while serving as a  commanding officer of a United States Marine Corps company in the South Pacific during World War II; and he was awarded  posthumously the Silver Star Medal by the Secretary of the  Navy in recognition of his exemplary valor; and


WHEREAS, he had graduated from the University of Georgia and was an instructor in the Laurens County school system when he enlisted in the military following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; and he completed officers candidate school, paratrooper training, and advanced military training with  the Marine Corps and was recognized as a distinguished officer with considerable potential; and

WHEREAS, his fearless leadership, great personal valor, and  unrelenting devotion to duty in the face of extreme danger  contributed substantially to the success of his division in  capturing a vital stronghold; and his courage and determination upheld the highest traditions of military service; and

WHEREAS, he enjoyed nature and had a strong attachment to the region in which he had spent his youth exploring the rivers, forests, and wildlife; and he often expressed his dream of returning to the Alapaha River in his letters home to his family; and

WHEREAS, it is most fitting and appropriate to honor this  outstanding young officer who so gallantly gave his life for  his country.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF GEORGIA that the bridge on Georgia Highway 37 that crosses  that portion of the Alapaha River in Lanier County be  designated the Captain Henry Will Jones Bridge.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Commissioner of  Transportation is authorized and directed to place signs at  appropriate locations along the highway designating the  bridge over the Alapaha River as the Captain Henry Will  Jones Bridge.

        A Henry Will Jones chapter of the Future Teachers of America was established at Dexter High School.

       Jones was inducted into the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Athletic Hall of Fame in 2013.

KYLE T. ALFRIEND

KYLE T. ALFRIEND
A Super Superintendent


When the Dublin City Board of Education began to seek a replacement for W.R. Lanier as Superintendent of the Dublin City School System, they knew they needed to find the best man -women weren't considered in those days- for the job.  As one of the leading cities in the state at the time, the appointment of a highly qualified individual was critical.  The board chose, and wisely so, Kyle Terry Alfriend of Hancock County, Georgia to take charge of the five hundred and twenty five
student system.   Though this would be the only time in his career that Alfriend served as a superintendent of a public school system, he was regarded by his peers as one of the foremost educators in the state.  Morever, many considered him to be one of the finest educators in the Southeast.

Kyle Terry Alfriend, Sr. was born on October 17, 1874 in Hancock County, Georgia.  A son of Benjamin Abram and Mary Alfriend, Kyle was a member of the first graduating class of Sparta High School.  He attended George Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he obtained his formal training as a teacher.  For eleven years, Alfriend taught Latin and history at Georgia Military College in Milledgeville.

Based on outstanding recommendations, the Dublin Board of Education appointed Kyle Alfriend as school superintendent for the 1906-1907 school year.  During his first year, Superintendent Alfriend was paid the grand sum of $1250.00.  As superintendent, Alfriend occupied an honorary seat on the Board of Trustees of the newly constructed Carnegie Library.  He completed his second term in 1908, before a wealthier system called upon him to take charge of their main high school.

Beginning in the fall of 1908 and for four years, Alfriend took over the principalship of Lanier and Gresham High Schools, Macon main boy's and girl's secondary schools respectively.

He returned to Milledgeville, not at Georgia Military College, but down the street at Georgia Normal and Industrial College.  As chairman of the Department of History and Sociology and active in the civic affairs of the old Capital City, Professor Alfriend became a well-known leader in the college and in Baldwin County as well. The voters elected Alfriend in 1919 to represent them for a two-year term in the Georgia Legislature.  Naturally, he was named to chair the House Committee on
Education.   Representative Alfriend led the fight for a compulsory tax to support local public schools and the Barrett-Rogers Act consolidating smaller schools to increase the amount of funds available directly for education.

Professor Alfriend was always an active member of the Georgia Educational Association.  In 1919, he was elected the secretary of the group of educators dedicated to the promotion of advances in Georgia's schools.    The following year, his fellow members elected him vice-president.

In 1920, Kyle Alfriend took a new job and moved across the downtown area back to Georgia Military College, this time as President of the institution.

Two years later, President Alfriend took office as President of the Georgia Educational Association.  During his term, the organization's membership tripled its number of members.   In addressing the delegates at the convention in Columbus, Alfriend stated his belief that, "Our main purpose is to better the conditions in rural schools.  Not only do we want to better school houses," he said, "But, we want a better environment, better equipped teachers, all of which means that we will need more money," Alfriend concluded.

Alfriend specifically addressed the members of the Parent Teacher Association in attendance pointing out the critical need to co-ordinate the three essential elements of education; home, church and school.

Though he was addressing educators more than eighty-five years ago,
Alfriend's words still ring true today.  "It is extremely difficult for teachers to
properly carry out their work in the schools if they do not have the absolute
sympathy of the parents," he said as he appealed to all of the mothers in the state to
support their schools and their teachers.

Alfriend urged his congregation to eliminate the evils of ignorance and
poverty among the student population believing that poverty perpetuated ignorance
and ignorance perpetuated poverty.

In the years following the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution allowing women to vote, President Alfriend urged the women present to register to vote so as to empower them in making decisions in the operation of schools in the state, thereby insuring the happiness of their children.

To make a point about the necessity of more investment into the public school systems, Alfriend pointed out that usually a community's crown jewels were its courthouse and jail. He urged the community leaders in attendance to shift their efforts to building bigger and better schools and to show them off as a symbol of their town's commitment to quality education.

Later that year, Alfriend conducted an unsuccessful campaign for the office of State School Superintendent.  After losing the election to M.A. Brittain, Alfred returned to the classroom as Professor of History at Bessie Tift College in Forsyth, but continued to serve as Secretary of the Georgia Education Association.  While at Bessie Tift, Alfriend served as Dean. He also taught education and psychology.

In his family life, Professor Alfriend married Katherine (Katie) Elizabeth Cone, daughter of his Georgia Military College supervisor, Professor Oscar Malcolm Cone,  on December 22, 1904 in her native home of Milledgeville.    They had five children: Kyle Terry, Jr., Malcolm Cone, Mary Watts, Rebecca Hunt and Katherine Carr.

An accomplished Mason, Alfriend was elected Master of the Benevolent Lodge # 3 in Milledgeville in 1922.

Kyle Terry Alfriend, Sr. died on March 20, 1946 at the age of seventy-two.  He is buried in  Milledgeville next to his wife. 

THE REV. JAMES DICKEY

BISHOP JAMES E. DICKEY
“Faith of His Father, Living Still”

Have you ever see a man with true faith?  If you knew James E. Dickey, you would have known a man whose faith was implanted his in soul by his father, nurtured by his mother and blossomed on the campus of Emory College in Atlanta. Frederick Faber never knew James Dickey.  But when he wrote the classic hymn Faith of Our Fathers, he would have told you that Dickey’s faith was true and lived still until his final breath.

From the moment of his birth in a modest house in Jeffersonville, Georgia on May 11, 1864, James E. Dickey was prepared and groomed  to preach the Gospel. His father, the Reverend James Madison Dickey, was an itinerant Methodist Minister of the North Georgia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. Though he spent most of life in North Georgia, Rev. Dickey did serve churches in Dublin in 1852 and in Jeffersonville in 1864, the last dark year of the Civil War.

James attended schools in Atlanta, Gainesville, Elberton and Calhoun as his father annually moved around serving new churches.  His summers were usually spent on the Richmond County farm of family of his mother, the former Miss Ann Elizabeth Thomas.  When Rev. Dickey’s health failed, the family moved to the solace of the farm.  James left school and worked on the farm.
 
Dickey’s life changed forever in 1878, when the elder Dickey died.  James took his father’s lifeless hand and asked his grandmother Thomas if his father was dead. When she responded in the affirmative, James knelt down and asked God, whom he considered to be his only father,  to grant him the ability and the resources to achieve his goal of attaining an education and making the most of his life.

For nine years, James Dickey worked as a store clerk and bookkeeper.  He never lost sight of his goal.  He studied at night and when he could took some courses in hopes of qualifying for entrance into a college.     His logical choice was Emory College in Atlanta.  So, on the opening day of classes in the 1887, James Dickey stepped through the doors of  college.  At the age of twenty three and older than those who had just graduated, James Dickey was determined to graduate.  And that he did.  In the spring of 1891, the man who never graduated from high school, walked across the stage as the salutatorian of his class.

So impressed were the president and faculty of Emory College with Dickey’s intellectual ability, they asked him to remain at the college as a professor.  Dickey readily accepted and with a secure position in hand, took the hand of Miss Jessie Munroe in marriage as classes were about to begin.

As Professor of Mental and Moral Science, James Dickey taught Christianity, economics and history until he felt the calling to follow in the footsteps of his father. After being licensed to preach, Rev. James Dickey was assigned to Grace Methodist Church in Atlanta, where he served from 1899 to 1902.

Although Rev. Dickey only served a church for three years, his destiny to serve the  Methodist Church was permanently determined when he was named President of Emory College.    As the head of his alma mater, Dickey faced the daunting task of turning the falter  college , which despite its support by the Methodist Church, had woefully fallen on hard times.    Dickey would not accept the status quo.  He designed and built new and modern facilities.  More and more students enrolled.   More and more money began to flow into the school’s endowment fund.   President Dickey saw the need to improve the law school at Emory, currently ranked as the twenty-second best in the nation.  He did so.  And, he thought that a Methodist supported college should have a School of Theology, so he created one in 1914.  Named in honor of Rev. Warren Akin Candler, Chancellor of the College and Bishop of the Methodist Church, the Candler School of Theology was created in 1914 and is today one of thirteen seminaries of the world wide church.  At the time, the school was the only Methodist seminary east of the Mississippi River.

Dickey was known across the state as an effective fund raiser.  In the spring of 1909  Dickey preached a sermon at the Methodist Church in Dublin.  He left the pulpit with $2500.00 in cash and pledges to further the growth of Emory.

During his tenure at Emory, Rev. Dickey tried to resign twice to further his career.  In 1910, he yearned to leave the college to become the Secretary of the Board of Education of the Methodist Episcopal Church South.  The college’s trustee refused to accept his resignation and convinced him to remain at Emory.    Five years later, Dickey tendered his resignation once again citing the fact that he could never be promoted as long as Bishop Candler was Chancellor of the College.  This time the trustees accepted his offer, but requested that he remain as a trustee of newly chartered Emory University in its new campus in Dekalb County.  Rev. Dickey was further honored by the bestowing upon him of an honorary Doctor of Laws Degree.

After leaving Emory, Rev. Dickey returned to preach, first at the First Methodist Church in Atlanta from 1915 to 1920 and at North Georgia College until 1921.

As early as 1906, the Methodist hierarchy saw special qualities in James Dickey.  His name was often mentioned as a possible bishop at the General Conferences which he attended in 1910, 1914 and 1918.  

At the General Conference in 1922 in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the delegates elected Dickey to serve as a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church South.  He was assigned to a district which encompassed Texas and New Mexico.  After four years in the Southwest, Dickey was transferred to Louisville, Kentucky, where he supervised Methodist churches in Illinois, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Bishop Dickey appropriately preached his last sermon on Easter Sunday in 1928.  He woke up the next morning in great pain.  His appendix had ruptured.  Surgeons attempted to repair the damage, but the failing minister lingered for one painful week before he died just before midnight on April 17, 1928 with his family beside his bed.

And so ended the life of a man, whose faith carried him through a life of service of others before himself.  His abiding faith in himself and more importantly in God, became a driving force in the resurrection of one of Georgia’s most important institution of higher learning.

LAURENS COUNTIANS APPEARING BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT

THE SUPREME COURT
Laurens Countians Before the Bench


 On September 24, 1789, the Congress of the United States adopted the Judiciary Act. In doing so, Congress created the Supreme Court of the United States, placing upon the court the power to hear cases involving Federal laws and to interpret them. Many will argue that the court has become a Super legislature in of its self.  Its decisions are often controversial and many are decided by a margin of a mere one vote.  Many more seem to be based on personal ideologies of the justices themselves and not upon established common laws and statutes.  A relative few lawyers in our country ever have the opportunity to argue their client's case before the panel of nine justices in the most hallowed, revered and chastised courtroom in America. This is the story of four Laurens Countians, all of whom at one time maintained homes in the Calhoun Street neighborhood.

The first Laurens Countian to appear before the bench of the Supreme Court was the venerable, and somewhat controversial, Thomas B. Felder, Jr.   Felder, a former mayor of Dublin, gained a reputation as an outstanding trial lawyer in Atlanta.  In the early 1920s, Felder was one of the legal advisers to President Warren Harding.  Consequently, Felder became entangled in legal troubles of his own and died under mysterious circumstances, as did many other members of Harding's inner circle.

In 1906, Felder represented Armour Packing Company against the State of North Carolina, which had imposed a tax of $100.00 per county for the maintenance of a meat packing plant.  Felder argued before the justices that the tax constituted an interference with interstate commerce and that it was also violative of the 14th amendment.  Although the stipulated facts defined what a meat packing plant was and that the activities of Armour did not constitute a meat packing plant, but merely a cold storage facility, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision ruled in favor of the State of North Carolina. Felder's client lost another case to the other Carolina state in 1909 when the court sided with South Carolina's right to regulate and prohibit the sale of alcohol within her borders in the case of Murray v. Wilson Distribution.

Despite his success as an attorney, Felder lost in his third and final appearance before the court in the case of Crichton v. Wingfield, which involved a suit between an aunt and niece over ownership of promissory notes.  The case primarily dealt with which court, Mississippi or New York, had jurisdiction over the assets of the dear departed Mr. and Mrs. E.H. Lombard.

Thomas Hardwick, a former congressman, senator and governor of Georgia, lived in Dublin in the mid 1920s.  During that time he practiced law and published the Dublin Courier Herald.  Hardwick's first appearance in the Supreme Court came in 1914, when he represented the widow  and four minor children of one Mr. Dicks of Augusta.  It seemed that Dicks petitioned the Federal court for a declaration that he was bankrupt.   Sadly, Dicks died three weeks later.  His family attempted to have
some of his estate set aside to them for their support, a right unique to Georgia spouses and minor children. The bankruptcy trustee Hull disagreed and argued that Dicks's estate  solely belonged to his creditors.  The Supreme Court unanimously agrees with Hardwick and allowed the grieving family to have enough money and property to at least help them get back on their feet. In 1918, Hardwick's client, the Georgia Public Service Corporation, a forerunner of the Georgia Power Company, was successful in its argument that the company was entitled to raise utility rates with the authority of the Railroad Commission, despite the fact that it had agree to a fixed five-year rate with the Union Dry Goods Company.

Hardwick became the only Laurens Countian to appear before the court as a resident of Dublin in 1926.  Hardwick, representing Fenner, a cotton futures dealer, was unsuccessful in his argument that state laws restricting the sale of commodities were violative of the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution.    Hardwick, a resident of Augusta in 1934, won the case of Gay v. Ruff in which the railroad prevailed over the father who lost his son in an railroad accident.

Eugene Cook, a native of Wrightsville and a short time resident of Dublin while he served as Solicitor, was elected to serve as the Attorney General of Georgia in 1945.  As Attorney General, Cook's first case involving the Supreme Court came in 1946.  The case was one of the primary attempts to set aside Georgia's county unit system of voting in state wide elections.  The process allowed larger counties six votes to the top vote getters, while most of the smaller counties were allotted two votes.  Some Fulton County voters objected, primarily on racial grounds, asserting that their votes were diminished by the allocation of votes.  The Supreme Court disagreed and affirmed the process, though it would not be long before the process would be overturned by a more civil rights minded court.

In 1955, Cook and the State of Georgia in Reece v. Georgia  were unable to persuade the justices of the court that the state's system of requiring a criminal defendant to challenge the composition of the grand jury before his indictment was valid.

Cook was on the losing side of the case of Georgia vs. the United States in 1958 when the court unanimously affirmed the case in favor of the Federal government without issuing an opinion.  A year later, Cook successfully defended the state in the case of N.A.A.C.P. v Williams which involved a technicality on a fine in a criminal matter.

M.H. "Hardeman" Blackshear, Jr., an Assistant Attorney General under his former neighbor  Eugene Cook, made his first appearance before the Court in 1950 in the case of South v. Peters another suit involving the county unit system and which was also upheld by the court.  Blackshear represented the State of Georgia against the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company in 1952.  The bank claimed it was exempt from taxation under its state granted charter.

Blackshear, who authored many briefs during his tenure with the Attorney General's office, made his final appearance before the Supreme Court in 1953 in the case of Avery v. Georgia.  Avery was convicted of rape and sentenced to death. Avery's attorneys successfully argued that Avery was denied the right to a fair trial under the Constitution.  The court based its decision on the jury selection process where the names of white voters were written on white paper and black voters were
written on yellow paper.  Despite the fact that the State claimed that blacks were included in the jury pool, the presiding judge drew sixty potential white jurors and not a single black juror.

Maybe some day, our county will once again be home to an attorney who will zealously argue the rights of his client before a court which was established two hundred and twenty six years ago. 

REMEMBERING CLEM MOYE

“Remember me as you pass by.  As you are so once was I.  As I am now, so you must

be.  Prepare yourself to follow me.”  

        That appeal is engraved on the grave of Private First Class Clem Moye.   Part of Clem’s story lives on through his letters to and from his mother in his last year on the Earth.  And, thanks to the Rev. Greg Lowery for providing the letters and information about his great uncle, we now have a  keen insight into war and just how horrible it can be.

Ever since there was a postal service, soldiers have written letters home to their mothers, fathers, family members and their best girls.  Clem Moye and his mother were no exception to this practice.  For the first six months of 1944, Clem and his mother corresponded nearly half way around the world as often as they could.  Those letters have survived, along with a few from and to other members of Clem’s family.

Clem Moye was born on November 13, 1911, one of seven children of Lucian and Alice Gay Moye.  Clem grew up on the family farm east of Rentz near Cedar Grove, the ancestral home of his mother’s family in the Burch District of southern Laurens County.

The Moyes lived on a dirt road in the Pine Barrens - Wiregrass region of the county, a full day’s wagon trip from Dublin.  Clem knew little of the war in Europe as did many of the farming people of the day.  Clem was able to obtain only an eighth grade  education like many of the young boys on Laurens County farms during the 1920s and 30s.  Once Clem left school in the mid 1920s, he worked full time  on his family farm.

When the call came from Uncle Sam to serve his country, Clem answered it.  Clem traveled up southeast of Atlanta  to Fort McPherson,  where he enlisted on June 22, 1942.  At five-feet, five inches tall and weighing in at 131 pounds, Clem was somewhat small and at somewhat old at the age of nearly 31 to be accepted into the service.

Beginning in the latter part of 1943, Clem and his mother Alice began to correspond.  Alice saved many of her letters from Clem.  Only some of Alice’s letters to Clem have survived. The oldest surviving letter was written by Clem some eleven months after he enlisted in the Army.

“I want you to remember not to worry about me for I am getting along fine and I think I will continue to,” Clem wrote.  Alice worried anyway, as all mothers do.   Clem was a mechanic and had little doubt that he wouldn’t return home safe.   Clem’s biggest worry was not if he was coming home, but when.  Although he hadn’t been in the service a full year, he began to bug his major about his getting out of the service.  He was told he would be in the army until 1949 when he turned 38.

By New Year’s Day 1944, Clem was stationed on the West Coast - exactly where he did not  know.  He liked it, especially the better chow he was getting. Some four weeks later,  Clem surprised the family from his new home with the 287th Ordinance Company in  New Guinea, just across the Arafura and Coral seas north of Australia.  Clem liked his new home and was happy that he didn’t get seasickness like many of his buddies did.  It did take a while for Clem to adjust to the boiling hot January of the Southern Hemisphere.

Most of the time Clem and his mother talked about the farm, family and friends.  The 1944 crop was a good one and his cows were doing fine.   Clem’s life overseas appeared to be somewhat lacking in exciting news, although he was probably hiding the harry moments from his mother.

Whenever the paymaster issued Clem a check, he placed it in an envelope and mailed back to his mother to deposit  it in his bank account.   When the checks didn’t come on time, Clem never hesitated to apologize for the delay.  Alice never minded the late checks, she was glad to get a generous check for a Christmas or birthday gift.

“Fix it where you and mama could draw it out in case something was to happen to me.  Of course, I haven’t got the least idea that I won’t be coming back home after the war,” Clem wrote in a letter to his father in February 1944.

“I get all I want for four cents a pack.  I think that’s cheap enough for anybody, don’t you?  Money is no good over here. I only spent 83 cents last month.  There is nothing to buy here,” Clem wrote as he asked his mother to stop sending him packs of cigarettes.

“Ma Ma, I can’t say just how everything is over here. But, I want you to remember that I’m all o.k. and don’t you worry about me,” as Clem tried to console his mother about his safety.

As Clem and Alice talked about his friends in the service, Clem yearned to see a familiar face, “anybody,”  from home.  Alice, too could not wait to see her son again and very soon.

While most of the letters were conversations about what was happening to family friends, Clem did comment on the killing of Cadwell Police Chief John Faircloth and the re-election of his cousin, Sheriff Carlus Gay.

On April Fool’s Day, Clem wrote, “I guess you see my address has changed, but we are still in New Guinea.  I think the Japs are really catching hell over here now.  Maybe the war will soon be over. I hope so anyway.”

As the spring came, the pace of Clem’s letters began to rise. It is easy to tell that Clem was ready to come home to his Mama and Daddy and the rest of the family and go to the sings at Oak Dale Church.

Clem confessed to Alice that he was beginning to worry about himself, “I get to studying about some things and can’t help it,” as he moved north of the Equator, closer to Japan.  And, Clem was still feeling fine when he wrote on May 25, 1944.

Two days later, the 41st Division of the U.S. Army landed on Biak Island off the northwest coast of New Guinea.  The Japanese instituted a new policy of allowing the Americans to land unimpeded to lure them into a killing zone.  On the following Sunday night after church, Alice sat down and wrote a letter to Clem hoping to see him soon.

At the very moment, the American and Allied armies were landing on Normandy Beach, Clem was driving a truck, laughing and talking with his friends.  An artillery shell struck the truck and  killed him instantly,

They laid his body to rest under a white cross in a makeshift military cemetery overlooking the sea.

Alice, unaware of her son’s death, kept on writing. On June 25, Alice answered Clem’s last letter by hoping that he would come home in 1945.

“I was sitting in the back hall on Friday night and watched the moon go down and thought of you so much until I couldn’t hardly stand it.  I could almost see you,” Alice remembered.

On July 2nd Alice wrote,  “Clem,  I am thinking of you and to see if I can hear from you. It has been nearly two weeks since I have heard from you.” As she closed her letter, she promised to write more when his next letter came.

Three days later, the Western Union Telegram came addressed to E.L.Moye, Rt. 1 Rentz, Georgia.  “The Secretary of War desires me to his deep regret that your son, Private Clem Moye, was killed in action on Seven June on Biak Island - letter follows.”

In an soul numbing instant, Alice Moye collapsed into disbelieving grief.   Alice’s request to get a picture of Clem’s grave was denied by the Army.  Clem’s parents were able to have his body removed to the Moye-Gay Cemetery not far from his family home.

Alice  never got over losing her precious Clem.  She died a week before Christmas in 1948 and is buried in the Moye-Gay Cemetery beside her sons, Clem, Albert Clay and Menzo and her husband,  Lucian (E.L.) Moye, who died in 1955.

Recently, Laurens County dedicated the bridge over the Land Branch of Limesink Creek in memory of Clem Moye, just down the dirt road from where Clem grew up.

So, if you ever drive along Moye Road and cross the creek, remember Clem Moye for as he once was, soon you will be.

CHARLIE BRADSHAW

CHARLIE BRADSHAW
From Gridiron to Boardroom

Old time Dublin High football fans will tell you that he was the greatest player ever to wear the green and white.  With the possible exception of Tennyson Coleman, he is certainly the best Dublin player ever to play on the old Battle Field.  But Charlie Bradshaw's success as a football player, first in Lake City, Florida, Dublin and later at Wofford College, was eclipsed by his success as a businessman and entrepreneur. Today, Charles J. Bradshaw, a former Dublin High quarterback, stands as a legend in the business community of South Carolina.

Charlie Bradshaw, the fifth of six children of James W. and Florence Sanders Bradshaw, was born in Lake City, Florida on July 15, 1936.  Bradshaw grew up in the sleepy community of Lake City, where he played football for Columbia High School. Bradshaw tells the story of how he was too young to work in the local tobacco warehouses.  With the help of his mother, Charlie sold snow cones to workers at a profit superior to that of his hard-sweatin' brothers.

When Charlie was a junior in high school, the Bradshaws made the 162-mile trip up U.S. Highway 441 to their new home in Dublin, where the elder Bradshaw worked at the V.A. Hospital.  In his first year at Dublin High, Charlie was instantly popular with his classmates, who elected him as Class Secretary and Representative on the Homecoming Court.  Charlie was a five-sport star in football, basketball, golf, tennis and track.  There were no other sports for him to star in.  In his senior season in 1953, Charlie was named the All Region quarterback and Mr. Dublin High School.  But Charlie wasn't just a jock.  He was a member of the Beta Club and the Spanish Club.

.

JOE HARNELL

ONCE UPON AN ANECDOTE
THE SUMMER OF ‘38

Joey never forgot the summer of 1938.  How could he?  For several weeks, Joey left his home in a crowded brownstone neighborhood  in the East Bronx of New York and went south to spend some time with what he called his “adventurous uncles.”  For the next 65 plus years, those magical days of that summer long, long ago still resonated in his mind.  Perhaps they were a prelude to what became a legendary musical career.

Joey Hittelman  was born on August 2, 1924 in New York.  His father Philip was a baker and a son of a baker.   Joey began his musical career at the insistence of his father Philip,  a former vaudeville fiddler- accordionist, who insisted that Joey practice on the piano at least twenty minutes each day.  At first, Joey hated the piano, but soon he became enthralled with playing all 88 of its black and white keys.

In his 2001 autobiography, “Counterpoint.  The Journey of a Music Man,”  Joey wrote of the fond memories of that magical summer when he was thirteen years old:

“I spent that summer with my adventurous uncles in their huge, wood frame house with a wide veranda that accommodated several rocking chairs. I remember going to the bathroom at night in my bare feet and stepping on a cockroach the size of a mouse.  It crunched and I still recall the feeling of revulsion.  I’m very squeamish for a big masculine-looking fellow.”

“My uncles sent me out in one of their three rolling stores. They were trucks with shelves on either side holding different commodities that farmers needed.  We traded with them - sewing equipment for a small ham, a frying pan for a bag of okra.  I remember its kind-a-slim look and the smell of it cooking. I still love okra.”

“The other enterprises were two fish markets - little hall squares , they were clean as a whistle and quiet as can be.”  The ----- courthouse clock which got my attention every time.  The big hand jumped to the next minute and made a loud clunk that echoed around the square.  Three to four thousand people lived there and  everybody knew everybody.  There was a diner that sold wonderful barbecued pork sandwiches.  They dipped the whole bun so that it was oozing gravy. I have never eaten anything like it before or since.  I enjoyed the strawberry and orange Nehi sodas delivered from the drug store.”

“It was like play land to be around my uncles. They did not know how to fly an airplane, but they bought one a little Piper cub.  Eddie, the oldest, learned how to fly - probably not legally - but well enough to take an airplane off from a field with trees on the end of it.  He would take farmers up. Sometimes he would take me. That was my first exposure to flying.” said Joey, who would later obtain his pilot’s license and log more than six thousand hours in the air.

“Eddie, Bernie and Murray  (the  Carnot brothers)  were my idols since identification with my father as a hero just didn’t exist.  I still cling to people I respect and they become an influence in my life,” Joey concluded.

By now, you may have guessed that the town Joey was speaking about where his uncles  lived was  Dublin, Georgia.  In 1938, they lived on West Drive and in 1940 at 407 North Drive at the northeast end of Stubbs Park, with their Russian-born mother, Esther Carnot.

“My mother’s mother, Esther Carnot, was a tiny woman with a heavy Yiddish accent and no sense of humor,” Joey recalled.

The Carnot Brothers sold  fish, seafood, eggs and any kind of meat from their market on South Lawrence Street. The brothers also sold stove and oak wood and just about anything anyone wanted to buy.  By the end of 1940, the Carnots moved away leaving Uncle Eddie behind to collect their accounts receivable from his hotel room in the New Dublin Hotel.

Joey returned to his home in the Bronx and began playing in school orchestras and ensembles for parties and religious celebrations.   After attending the University of Miami on a musical scholarship, Joey joined the Army Air Force, hoping to take up the great bandleader Glenn Miller’s offer to join his band.  That great honor to a young man of 18 was too hard to pass up.  But fate quelled his chance to join Miller’s band when he was still in basic training when Miller’s band was reassigned to another post.

After his days in the service were over, Joey studied music under musical geniuses Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein.  As the 20th Century came to a midpoint, Joey played gigs with such legendary artists as Judy Garland, Pearl Bailey, Robert Goulet, Maurice Chevalier, Frank Sinatra and Marlene Dietrich. A new phase of Harnell’s career came when he served as the pianist of the Dinah Shore Chevy Show in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Joey’s big break came in 1958, when he became the full-time pianist and arranger for the incomparable Peggy Lee.  In 1962, it appeared that his career might be over in an instant.  A vehicular accident left Joe out of work.

At his point, let me tell you that Joey Hittelman is better known by his stage name of Joe Harnell.  If you are a fan of jazz and pop instrumental music  from the 1960s you will know his name.

Joe’s second big break came in 1963 when he recorded “In Other Words” for Kapp Records.  Harnell was asked to arrange the song in bossa nova style.  The record went to No.  14 on the Billboard Pop chart and No. 3 on the Adult Contemporary chart.   In the winter of 1963, the song, better known as “Fly Me To The Moon,” was No. 6 on the New York City charts. That year, Harnell’s unique arrangement led to the song capturing the Grammy Award for the Best Pop Instrumental Performance.  Harnell’s first album, went to No. 3 on the Billboard Album chart. Over the next four decades, Harnell released nearly 20 albums of easy listening and jazz music.

Fly Me To The Moon 

Take Five 

After a brief career as a jingle writer, Joe accepted the position of musical director  for the Mike Douglas show from 1967 to 1973, when he moved to Hollywood to start yet another career as a composer and arranger of music for television shows and movies.

Harnell’s most well known compositions were themes from science fiction shows, “The Bionic Woman,” “Alien Nation,” “V” and most notably, “The Incredible Hulk.”  It was his “Lonely Man Theme” from “The Incredible Hulk,” which expressed the anguish which the character  David
Banner felt as he struggled with his metamorphism into a monster in each episode.  Joe also composed music for drama shows, including  “Santa Barbara,” “Cagney and Lacey,” and “In The Heat of  The Night.”

Incredible Hulk Theme

Joe, the self proclaimed “Music Man,” died in Sherman Oaks, California  on July 14, 2005.  At the age of 80, Joe never forgot the grand and magical times he had in Dublin, Georgia in the summer of 1938.