by Mike Mahan
My awareness of the war was also heightened every day when we hoisted the flag out in front of the elementary school, which was housed in the Boyd Building on Oak Street. We were a little band of patriots, and we performed our duties very solemnly. Eventually, the flag became rotten and tattered, and we had the crematory ceremony prescribed by the government. Charlotte Peterson, the principal, was in charge, and all the children performed. It was an impressive and proper tribute.
So we were keenly interested in the war, and we were always impressed by any soldier who returned. Mr. W. L. Wooley came back from his tour of duty with an amazing souvenir—an ear he had sliced off a Jap. Now, as twelve-year-old boys, we hated Japs with a passion, and this pleased us no end. Mr. Wooley hung out on Main Street in front of Jeter’s Mercantile, and several times a day you could see him reach in his pocket and pull out that ear, a war hero standing in front of an awe-struck boy.
Cousin Leslie Hubbard joined the Navy during World War II. He had a medical degree from Hillman Medical School in Birmingham, and he served on a destroyer as a physician. And Bobby Lacey, son of Aunt Kate’s husband by his first wife, was very young when he enlisted, serving in an armored division of the army. I knew Bobby, and I recall being at Aunt Kate’s house when they would receive letters from him explaining what was happening on the front. Young and impressionable, I was set on fire by the high romanticism of his letters. I wanted to be in those tanks racing across Europe. Bobby also fought in Korea, where he was killed in 1950.
My sense of the war was most heightened because my Aunt Ween was married to an officer, Colonel William B. Morrell, whom we called Bill. Bill, a dashing young Boston native, came to Birmingham to play for the Birmingham Barons, a farm team for the Boston Red Sox. He spoke with an aristocratic Boston accent, speaking of cars as “cahs” and tomatoes as “tomahtoes.” Ween was a beautiful, sensuous woman, and she fell for William and he fell for her. The family was not so sure it was a good match. After all, he was from up north.
Bill had been in a reserve unit in WWI, after which he remained in the reserves. He played two years for the Birmingham Barons, then went up to the big leagues, pitching for Boston for one year. But he threw his arm out and his ball playing ended. He returned to Birmingham for a while, then became a coach in the Georgia-Florida League, a class D organization that fielded small town baseball teams in these two states. The teams were supported by local industry, particularly cotton mills, paying the players (most of whom had full-time jobs in addition to playing ball) as well as the management. He was first in Valdosta, and later he joined a team in Cordele. In time, he and some others bought the Cordele team.
By 1939 there were rumblings of war in Europe. By 1940, Hitler had invaded Poland, France had fallen, and Rommel had invaded Africa. In 1942, Bill went to Africa as a second lieutenant, experiencing combat under General Patton. Subsequently, he went to Sicily and Italy and was involved in the campaigns there. He was moved from the regular army to the Army Air Corps and went to France, where he fought in Patton’s operation. When the war ended, he had made the rank of Captain.
Uncle Bill Morrell, far left, and me with a teammate a few years before World War II while he was playing in the minor leagues for Panama City, Florida.
Bill was next assigned to the post-war trials at Nuremberg. While there, he developed a heart condition and was in the hospital for a good while. Ween went to Germany to take care of him. She was said to be the first army wife allowed to come over after the war.
Because Bill was so polished and well-educated and because Ween, though a little girl from Carbon Hill, was so socially adept, they were set up as good will ambassadors in a large palace with a heavy iron fence around it (said to have belonged to Goering), entertaining dignitaries who came in for the trials at Nuremberg. The palace was full of fine furniture, and massive oil paintings hung on the walls. Bill and Ween were driven around Nuremberg in a limousine that had been owned by the Nazi higher-ups who had lived in the house. Assigned to them was a couple called Mom and Pop, who had been servants to Goering.
Bill and Ween had chamber music every Sunday afternoon and various other entertainments. The guest book I now possess contains notes from many guests. Bill and Ween remained there about a year.
After the war, Bill remained in the Army Reserve until he retired as a colonel in the 1960s. We were told that he was the oldest reserve officer in the military. Moving back to Birmingham to be near Ween’s family, they were full of stories of their experiences, and we all delighted in hearing them. One story had to do with their packing up and leaving Nuremberg. Ween and Bill always wanted to have fine things—silver, furniture, art—and it pained Ween especially that they were allowed to bring only one container back to the states. There was so much silver and china and other fine things that they decided, against army regulations, to pack up several barrels. As they transported their riches to the ship in a deuce-and-a-half truck, they were stopped at the French border and were found to have more containers than allowed. The inspectors removed the barrels from the truck and rolled them down the hill. Only one was rescued, and some of its contents had been destroyed. Some silver pieces embossed with the swastika were saved. They were marked with the words, Das Gasthaus, which Ween says was a small house behind the palace they had occupied. Ween always blamed Bill for having lost all the treasure.
Returning to the U.S., they were stationed in Baton Rouge. From there they would come to Birmingham to visit Momma, always driving down to Montevallo to see us. One summer they took me in their 1941 Chevrolet four-door sedan back to Baton Rouge for a few weeks’ visit. Bill always meticulously cleaned and maintained his Chevrolets, which he always bought from Edwards Chevrolet, a company he much admired. He prided himself as being an excellent driver. As we drove to Baton Rouge in the deep of night, he would explain to me how best to take a curve: slow down as you approached it and accelerate as you went around the curve. I was impressed, but Ween, who I thought was quite often verbally abusive of Bill, was not so impressed. She would complain about his speed, especially on the curves. He never raised his voice back to her, at least when I was around.
Ween entertained the other officers’ wives on Sunday afternoon at the Officers Club, and once I went there with her. She often played bingo while there, and she loved the slot machines too. She gave me a roll of nickels so I could play the one-armed bandits myself. I didn’t win anything that day, nor have I since.
Another passion of Ween’s was cats, and she had them throughout her life, even though it was not always easy to transport them when they moved around from place to place in the military. But she even had them in Nuremberg. Once she asked us to keep a cat for her when they were transferred, and we agreed, but the cat ran away, causing quite a crisis in the family.
Ween and Bill had no children—no one knew why. The family seemed to think it was Bill’s fault. I was, in some ways, like an adopted son—a favorite nephew.
After their time in Baton Rouge, they went to England, where he was an instructor for the Strategic Air Command. There Ween bought linens, woolens, and fine clothes, and she looked like a fashion plate when they returned to Birmingham. They bought a small house in what is now the Hoover area. During the latter part of the war, Ween had lived in Berkely Apartments on Highland Avenue, not far from Five Points South, and her great aim was to open a tea house in an exclusive district of Five Points. But she never realized it.
In retirement, Bill took to writing letters to coaches, giving advice on how to improve their teams. He wrote many letters to coaches in the Big Leagues, and he even wrote some to Bear Bryant.
All told, Ween and Bill were a wonderful couple, and they gave me many experiences I wouldn’t have had without them.
I was keenly aware of the war in one other way. After the war, when soldiers were disinterred from their battlefield graves at the request of their families, I became thoroughly sensitive to the cost of the
war. There were so many funerals the government could not handle them, and the local American Legion had to step in. They lined up Teddy Ziolkowski or Johnny Ziolkowski and me to play echoing bugles for the ceremonies. Wearing starched khaki pants and neat white shirts, one of us would go up on the hill and the other would stay near the grave. Slowly and solemnly, we played taps. We must have performed at twenty or twenty-five of these ceremonies at Montevallo Cemetery and at little churches in the surrounding communities. Once we even went to Calera. We also played for veterans who died after returning from the war.
One of those veterans was Deacon Gregg, who had been a big football idol. He owned a service station and tire store in town and was a very popular figure. He was tragically killed in an automobile accident, and it seemed the whole town turned out for his funeral. It was quite an impressive ceremony. There were seven guys with rifles who did a twenty-one gun salute. Johnny Z and I were the buglers, and we stood next to the rifle squad. We watched the flag from the coffin being carefully folded and presented to the weeping widow.
Johnny Ziolkowski, far right, my bugle playing partner, with Dudley Pendleton and Emily Vest (soon to be Pendleton) at the Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
Johnny Z and I took our places to play taps, with me standing at the foot of the casket and Johnny stationed on a nearby hill. For the first time ever at one of these ceremonies, I felt overcome with emotion. I had known Deacon when I worked at the Gulf Station and at Western Auto. He was just down the street. As I pulled the bugle up, I made the mistake of looking over at Deacon’s beautiful wife, who had broken down in tears. I blew on the bugle but nothing came out. I tried again, summoning all the grit I could, and I blew for all I was worth. The sound came from the bugle, and Johnny echoed it. We got through it, though it wasn’t as good as it should have been. I went directly home and told my mother that I couldn’t play at any more funerals. “I understand,” she said, and I loved her for understanding. And I never did play for another military funeral.
I never served in the military. Dad had not had to fight in World War II, nor had any of the other Shelby Street dads, so all and all the war seemed rather distant to me. My cousin Philip Lacey served in Korea, and my cousin John Mahan went to Annapolis and was full-time military for life. But somehow none of this registered very clearly with me at the time. I saw one-star and two-star banners hanging in people’s windows and understood what it meant, but I gave it little thought. My friend Gene Baldwin went to Gordon Military Academy in Georgia, and some guys in town went to Marion Military Institute; I suppose the war must have been less abstract for them. I knew, of course, that I would be required to register for the draft when I was eighteen, but even that caused me very little worry.
On June 21, 1952, I drove to the county seat in Columbiana in Dad’s 1947 Chevrolet and presented myself to the draft board personnel. I signed my name to an official document and was told because of my age and apparent good health I would receive my 1-A draft card soon. But still the chance of being involved in war seemed distant to me.
When I went to Auburn later in 1952, the chance of being drafted became a much greater possibility. It seemed advisable to join the ROTC program, so I joined the Air Force ROTC, donning a blue uniform and playing in the ROTC band. In my military classes I learned a lot of basic military terminology and procedures, and of course I learned to march, which was quite easy because of my experience in marching bands. I also began to hear much more about what was going on in Korea, and the idea that I might be sent there became much more real. That my friend Gene Baldwin was already in the Air Force and flying jets also made the war seem less abstract.
Learning to protect the country in the Auburn Air Force ROTC.
In my junior year at Auburn, the Korean conflict ceased, and the draft board announced that you could be deferred if you were in the upper twenty percent of your college class. Since I fit this new ruling, I dropped out of ROTC. After graduating in the summer of 1956, I notified the draft board I intended to further my education, but I felt sure that they would call me if they needed me.
In my last year at Auburn I began dating Carol Clark and fell in love. We hoped to get married as soon as I could get myself set up financially. The music education and performance degree I had just received didn’t offer many prospects for making a living sufficient for starting a family.
In the spring of my senior year, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra came to Auburn for a concert. My string bass teacher, Mr. Edward Glyde, arranged for me to audition with the symphony’s principal bass player, who taught at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He liked what he heard and offered me a fellowship at the conservatory as well as a job in a church orchestra. I accepted, and before my marriage I made the two-day trip to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music with the possibility of enrolling for one or two years, but the trip revealed that that was not a good avenue for a career. I found there were about forty bass players, all as good as I was, and I couldn’t imagine enough orchestras in America to hire all of them. My future as a bassist looking so dim, I loaded my bass in my 1940 Plymouth and after less than twenty-four hours in Cincinnati, I was headed home to Alabama. I decided to go back to school at Alabama College in Montevallo and study biology and chemistry. I took a job working for my friend Ralph Sears in the public relations office. I now felt I could afford to get married, and I did. I reported my new status to the draft board and was told that they could still draft me—married or unmarried, student or non-student.
Shortly after our marriage, Carol got pregnant. About the same time we discovered this, I got a 1-A draft notice to report to Montgomery and get examined. I thought to myself that this was it, but I happily discovered that there was a new loophole in the draft law. If you were drafted and a volunteer presented himself to the draft board, he could take your place if the draft board approved. I was in Montgomery ready to go when I learned that there was a volunteer in Shelby County, and I was set free. I immediately packed up and hitchhiked home. Sometimes I look back on the event and wonder if my Dad’s political influence in Shelby County government had any connection with the sequence of events that were so much in my favor.
I never really tried hard to “beat the draft,” as it was termed by those who didn’t have to go. I just assumed that Uncle Sam did not need my services. And that was quite all right with me.
24
Masonry
Shortly after World War II ended, a great change came into our lives. Dad became a Mason, as his forebears had been for 150 years. His great-grandfather Edward and his grandfather Jesse had both sat in the east as masters of their lodges, and Jesse and Dad’s photographs still hang at Central Lodge 70 in Montevallo. For some reason, Dad waited until middle age to join, but his life was never the same afterwards. As a young man, Dad had been a rounder, and church for him never mattered a great deal, although he attended to please my mother. Masonry became the center of his spiritual life. Perhaps it was the pageantry and the archaic language that attracted him at first, but its intrinsic teachings rapidly took hold in him, and he seemed to gain greater reverence for life after joining the order.
With my dreams of an orchestral life dashed, I took a job with the Alabama College Public Relations Department as a photographer.
My most memorable photograph, picked up by the national wire services and printed in newspapers across the country, was of outgoing college president, Dr. Franz Lund, right, and Dr. Howard Phillips, the incoming president, seemingly sharing a rather intimate moment.
Dad took on an almost missionary spirit about Masonry, though the Masons never actively set out to recruit members. At our house he began to tutor those who were interested in becoming Masons, and he traveled around to lodges in Boothton, Siluria, Randolph, Calera, and even to the state headquarters in Montgomery as a lecturer. The Montevallo lodge purchased a slide projector for him to use in what were primitive Power Point presentations. That proje
ctor is in the lodge to this day.
Nothing pleased Dad more than to bring a Mason up through the ranks, and he spent much of his off-time on Masonic activities. There is no telling how much time he devoted to committing the lectures to memory. Masonic publications recorded the prescribed rituals and teachings, but the transfer of this information was largely oral, as it had been since the time of King Solomon. I could hear him in the living room going over and over the lectures until he had them firmly in his mind. There were quite a number of these lectures, each taking thirty to forty minutes to deliver, so it was no light matter to take on this job.
To some extent Masonry also became an important component of his social life. This fraternity of Masons—made up of prominent educators, including presidents at Alabama College, and successful businessmen—met monthly, and Dad valued his association with the other Masons. Especially close to him were Reggie Lawley and Mr. John Cunningham because they, like him, were interested in teaching and lecturing.
Wherever Dad traveled, he sought out Masonic lodges and attended meetings. Once I was with him when we visited Tootsie in Poughkeepsie, New York, and it was vital for him to go to a lodge meeting there. He loved the consistency of Masonic teaching worldwide, and he always knew he would find brothers wherever he went.
But Masonry was in some ways rather disruptive to our family. Mother clearly was not altogether happy with how obsessed he had become and the time he spent with it, but I think she made her peace with it, knowing that it was preferable to a lot of other things he could have become obsessed with. Dad wanted Mother to join the Eastern Star, but she never wanted to learn the lessons and move up through the ranks. In fact, Dad was far more interested in the Eastern Star than she was, and I think it disappointed him that it never became an important part of her life.
