by Macy, Beth
Chapter 3: The Town the Daddy Rabbits Built
Interviews: John Bassett, Tom Word, Frosty Landon, Ward Armstrong, Bernard “Bunny” Wampler, Spencer Morten, Joe Philpott, Jerry Epperson, Robert Jiranek, Jane Bassett Spilman, Sonny Cassady, Bettie Alley
Factory coping strategies during World War II: Among the Southern furniture companies that limped through the war years, Bernhardt Furniture Company made airplane parts, and the Kittinger Company built PT boats, according to Michael Dugan in The Furniture Wars: How America Lost a Fifty Billion Dollar Industry (Conover, NC: Goosepen Press, 2009).
Hams instead of bonuses: Dorothy Cleal and Hiram H. Herbert, Foresight, Founders, and Fortitude: The Growth of Industry in Martinsville and Henry County, Virginia (Bassett, VA: Bassett Print Corporation, 1970).
“Mr. J.D. had personally surveyed”: Bettie Alley, interview with the author.
Bonce Stanley’s puppetry: This was documented for decades by Roanoke Times journalist Frosty Landon, who—full disclosure—is my husband’s uncle. When Stanley died, in 1970, Frosty, a young editorial writer, opined that “the Stanley years would go into the history books as a shameful period that, by design or otherwise, crushed anti–Byrd Organization forces (Democrat and Republican) by raising, in Biographer [J. Harvie] Wilkinson’s words, ‘false hopes for an eternity of segregation.’ ” Frosty’s stinging observations—published almost before Stanley’s body had grown cold—had the Families of Henry County lighting up the newspaper publisher’s phones. It resulted in Frosty’s being transferred to the newsroom, where he manned the night copy desk for years before he managed to work his way back up the editorial ladder.
Virginia’s circumvention of Brown v. Board of Education: The term massive resistance was coined by Senator Harry Byrd, who said: “If we can organize the Southern States for massive resistance to this order I think that in time the rest of the country will realize that racial integration is not going to be accepted in the South” (“Brown v. Board of Education: Virginia Responds,” exhibition, Library of Virginia, 2003).
Governor Stanley’s announcement of massive resistance: See WDBJ7.com civil rights archives, August 1956.
J.D. Bassett wasn’t brilliant: Bernard “Bunny” Wampler, interview with the author, August 24, 2012.
Family squabbles: Spencer Morten, interview with the author, echoed in Cleal and Herbert, Foresight, Founders, and Fortitude, 49–51.
Martinsville real estate magnate: Heck Ford’s great-grandfather Colonel Joseph Martin led the area’s Colonial forces during the Revolutionary War (and gave Martinsville its name). Ford began selling real estate at twenty-one, and by thirty he had brokered the deal that lured in the region’s first textile plant, according to Cleal and Herbert, Foresight, Founders, and Fortitude.
Origin of W.M. Bassett factory: Spencer Morten, interview with the author.
$1.5 million sold in 1929 by the W.M. plant: Thirty Years of Success: A History of Bassett Furniture Industries (Bassett, VA: Bassett Furniture Industries, 1932).
Ernst and Ernst brought in to inventory assets: Cleal and Herbert, Foresight, Founders, and Fortitude, 51.
“just build another plant”: Found in the archives of Desmond Kendrick at his Martinsville–Henry County Museum; written by Crawford Remsen in the early 1930s, publication unknown.
Conveyor-belt lessons: Wilson was executive vice chairman of the War Production Board. He later served as the secretary of defense under President Eisenhower.
“printin’ money”: Joe Philpott, interview with the author, June 29, 2012.
$1 million of furniture sold in a month: Documented in a photograph at Martinsville–Henry County Museum, archived by Desmond Kendrick.
Waterfall furniture description: Jerry Epperson, e-mail to the author, and paper, “The Forty Year Styling Study with a Review of Changing Merchandising Concepts,” Furnishings Digest, February 2002.
Price of waterfall: Ozzie Osborne, “Family-Owned Firm Has Had Many Good Years of Business,” Roanoke Times, July 31, 1983.
Strengths of designer Leo Jiranek: Robert Jiranek, interview with the author, September 17, 2012.
“you’re only the damn crumb”: Oft-repeated story recounted by Carolyn Blue in an interview with the author.
“Daddy Rabbits” reference: Thomas O’Hanlon, “5,350 Companies = a Mixed-Up Furniture Industry,” Fortune, February 1967.
No Bassett furniture in Jane Spilman’s home: Jane Spilman, interview with the author, June 18, 2012.
Perle Mesta: Known as the original “hostess with the mostest” for her lavish Washington, DC, political society parties, Perle Mesta was an American socialite and the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg from 1949 to 1953.
$33 million in annual sales: Bassett Furniture Industries corporate history, 1952; the number of employees comes from Cleal and Herbert, Foresight, Founders, and Fortitude, 55.
$6 million in factory modernizations: Ozzie Osborne, “Family-Owned Firm Has Had Many Years of Good Business,” Roanoke Times, July 31, 1983.
Chapter 4: Hilltop Hierarchy
Interviews: Junior Thomas, Mary Thomas, John Redd Smith Jr., John Kern, Jane Bassett Spilman, Pat Ross, Coy Young, Spencer Morten, Mary Elizabeth Morten, Howard White, Carolyn Blue, Mary Herford, John McGhee, Naomi Hodge-Muse
Nabs: Southern slang for the Nabisco-made packets of orange peanut-butter crackers and other cellophane-wrapped snacks.
Tobacco to textile: When R. J. Reynolds acquired many of the Martinsville tobacco companies and relocated them, the town’s fathers had enough money to turn the old tobacco plants into textile mills, according to “Martinsville & Henry County—Historic Views” (Martinsville–Henry County Women’s Club, 1976) and local historian John Redd Smith Jr.’s interview with the author, December 11, 2011.
Black working conditions: John Kern, “Bassett Historic Context,” Roanoke Regional Preservation Office, interviews conducted 2008–2010.
Blacks excluded from work in North Carolina plants: Blacks in North Carolina were relegated to the lower-paying lumberyards, according to Bill Bamberger and Cathy N. Davidson, Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 31.
Black worker versus white worker pay: Pay stubs found at the Bassett Historical Center showed a white worker making twenty-two cents an hour around the same time.
Pay disparity in 1960s: John Kern, interview with the author.
Employment of black women: Fayette Street, 1905–2005: A Hundred-Year History of African American Life in Martinsville Virginia (Fayette Area Historical Initiative and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2006). Though white women and some African American men worked in the first two Jobbers plants, black women weren’t hired until the opening of Jobbers’ third plant, located in a building the locals dubbed Pneumonia Hall because of its single woodstove.
J.D. Bassett’s advice to hire blacks: John Kern, “Jim Crow in Henry County, Virginia: ‘We Lived Under a Hidden Law,’ ” lecture delivered at Virginia Forum, April 16, 2010.
Mary Hunter’s disability: Oral history gleaned by Bassett family servant Gracie Wade for a school research paper by Mona Clark and Anne Marie Ross, “In Search of Mary Hunter,” collected in the archives of Bassett Historical Center, 1978.
Naming of Mary Hunter Elementary and Mary Hunter’s age: Jane’s father, John D. Bassett Jr., known as Mr. Doug, was chairman of the Henry County school board when Mary Hunter Elementary was built, according to interviews with Jane Bassett Spilman and Pat Ross. Mary Hunter’s reported birth year ranges from 1861 to 1868; it was recorded differently from census to census. “Mary Hunter School,” a history on file at the Bassett Historical Center that documents the $40,000 gift, was written by John B. Harris, who was the first principal of Mary Hunter Elementary.
Jane Spilman’s maid: Account of Dorothy Menefee’s relationship with the Bassett family relayed in author interviews with Carolyn Blue and Mary Herford, August 14, 2013; Jane’s gift of house to family servants confirmed by Ro
b Spilman.
Children of furniture cofounder and maid: Interviews by the author with several Henry County residents past and present, including Naomi Hodge-Muse, whose father was a Bassett family chauffeur and whose grandmother was a Bassett family cook; Coy Young; Pat Ross; Spencer Morten; Mick Micklem; and Junior and Mary Thomas.
Henry “Clay” Barbour obituary: Martinsville Bulletin, December 12, 1993.
Not shunned but not invited to dinner: Coy Young, interview with the author, July 6, 2012.
Ed Bassett getting Carver Lane finally paved: Junior Thomas, interview with the author, January 28, 2014.
“The Negroes made me”: The recording of J.D. Bassett Sr. saying this was destroyed when Spencer and Mary Elizabeth Morten’s house burned, but both of them reported the quote, word for word, in separate interviews. “I never heard the word nigger in our house,” Mary Elizabeth added.
Boats built by workers to get across the Smith River: Howard White, interview with the author.
Mary Hunter’s exclamation at seeing the beach sand for the first time: This story is recounted in Anne Bassett Stanley Chatham, Tidewater Families of the New World and Their Westward Migrations (Historical Publications, 1996), by the author’s brother Tom Stanley, the son of T.B. and Anne Bassett Stanley.
Description of Jane and father checking on the factories: Jane Bassett Spilman, interview with the author.
Chapter 5: The Cousin Company
Interviews: John Nunn, Howard White, Pat Bassett, John Bassett, Nelson Teague
Galax poaching: Galax is sold for more than a dollar a leaf in the international floral trade, part of an illegal $200 billion global natural-products industry, according to the National Park Service.
Hillbilly music origins: Blue Ridge Music Center and Sarah Wildman, “On Virginia’s Crooked Road, Mountain Music Lights the Way,” New York Times, May 20, 2011.
“the area was growing so fast”: John Nunn, interview with the author, July 26, 2012.
Early outreach from town to business investors: Galax Gazette, rotogravure special section, 1937.
Original lots sold in Galax: Ed Cox, golden anniversary souvenir booklet “Pioneers, Ghosts, Bonaparte and Galax,” 1956.
Black population still comparatively small: U.S. census estimate, 2011, shows blacks make up 6.7 percent of the Galax population.
Early businesses served multiple purposes: The post office housed a school, a casket company, and a furniture store. The Chevrolet dealership sold Frigidaires and offered electrical-wiring installation in homes, according to John Nunn and Judith Nunn Alley in Images of America: Galax (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2010).
Need for furniture post–Civil War: David N. Thomas, “Getting Started in High Point,” Forest History 11 (July 1967).
Decline of furniture factories in the Northern states: William Stevens, Anvil of Adversity: Biography of a Furniture Pioneer (New York: Popular Library, 1968).
Northern furniture makers’ inability to keep up with the times: Frank E. Ransom, The City Built on Wood: A History of the Furniture Industry in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1850–1950 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1955).
Bassett Furniture’s careful money-management style: Howard White, interview with the author.
Wyatt Exum’s rescue story: The movie Fighter Squadron, starring Robert Stack and John Rodney, is said to be loosely based on Wyatt Exum’s dramatic World War II rescue per Pat Bassett, interview with the author, August 2, 2012.
Exum’s Silver Star: Ibid.
Difference between working in Bassett and Galax: Ibid.
Mao Tse-tung’s Great Leap Forward: Dennis Tao Yang, “China’s Agricultural Crisis and Famine of 1959–1961,” Comparative Economic Studies 50 (2008): 1–29.
Suicides off tall buildings in Shanghai: “High Tide of Terror,” Time, March 5, 1956.
Taming of the Smith River: Since its completion in 1953, the Philpott Dam has prevented an estimated $350 million in flood damage, per the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington district.
John Bassett’s wild behavior in college: Nelson Teague, interview with the author, August 13, 2012.
Washington and Lee’s mock-convention history: Nikki Schwab, “At Mock Convention, Washington and Lee Students Showcase Their Uncanny Knack for Picking Presidential Candidates,” U.S. News and World Report, January 17, 2008.
Mr. Doug took his car away as punishment for bad grades: Nelson Teague, interview with the author.
Chapter 6: Company Man
Interviews: Pat Ross, Coy Young, Joe Meadors, Mary Elizabeth Morten, Jerome Neff, Bernard “Bunny” Wampler, John Bassett, Bob Jiranek, Spencer Morten, Colbert “Mick” Micklem, Betty Shelton
Company growth under W.M. Bassett: When Bassett announced the opening of a new fifteen-acre, two-and-a-half-million-dollar Bassett Table plant, the Henry County Journal boasted, “There was no architect nor contractor for the mammoth new plant. W.M. Bassett himself… designed and superintended the job” (Henry County Journal, November 7, 1957).
Five hundred Bassett-owned homes: Bassett homes rented for a quarter a room a week, and deductions for rent and power were taken out of employee paychecks, according to worker interviews and Jerry Bledsoe, writing in the Carolina Cavalier. For twelve dollars a year each, white employees could also use the $386,000 community center built by W.M., which included a pool, playground, and bowling alley. Smaller separate facilities were later built for black workers (Martinsville Bulletin, June 10, 1960).
Selling the excess power: Barber Coy Young and longtime sales manager Joe Meadors, interviews with the author, August 16, 2012.
W.M. Bassett’s trademark fedora and his relationship with employees: Mary Elizabeth Morten and Jerome Neff, interviews with the author, August 6, 2012 (Morten), and April 24, 2013 (Neff).
Company size in late 1950s, early 1960s: “Bassett: Furniture Giant of Virginia,” Commonwealth, December 1961. “Bassett Deals in Mass Production for the Mass Market,” Milton J. Elliott wrote. He quoted Mr. Doug as saying, “We produce more than 2,000 rooms of furniture a day and hope to keep it that way.” (A 1959 article in the Virginia Record had a different number; the claim there was that Bassett was sold in 35,000 stores.)
W.M. Bassett’s bonds with workers: Pat Ross, interview with the author, July 26, 2012.
W.M. Bassett’s death: “Death of W.M. Bassett Mourned Throughout Va.,” Martinsville Bulletin, July 18, 1960.
Meeting of Bob Spilman and Jane Bassett: Bunny Wampler, interview with the author, August 27, 2012.
Bassett men impressed with Spilman: Spencer Morten, interview with the author.
J.D. Bassett’s hospital home: Asked why J.D. Bassett Sr. lived in the hospital for so many years, Junior Thomas, who still chauffeurs Bassett family members around, said, “He wanted curb service, head to toe!”
Annual birthday fishing outing: J.D. Bassett’s grandson Doug Bassett Lane, a former Lane Furniture executive turned fishing-supply retailer, strongly disputes my assertion that his grandfather may not have caught the fish. Told that the man was wearing a three-piece suit in the picture, he insisted, “I don’t care; he caught it!”
J.D. Bassett Jr. instructed to be friendlier: Jane Bassett Spilman, interview with the author.
The largest furniture maker: Fortune’s O’Hanlon called it the second-largest, behind Broyhill Furniture, but conceded that Bassett seed capital accounted for one-eighth of the entire industry’s volume (factoring in the cousin companies and spinoffs) (Thomas O’Hanlon, “5,350 Companies = a Mixed-Up Furniture Industry,” Fortune, February 1967).
“$60 MILLION IN 60 YEARS”: Home Furnishings Daily, July 19, 1961.
World’s largest chair: The chair shipped from Bassett to Washington in 1958 while J.D. Bassett’s son-in-law Thomas B. Stanley (Uncle Bonce) was governor of Virginia.
Company’s hottest-selling collection: Bassett’s bread-and-butter line was the Mayfield, an Early American design that “blends with America’s new times and desires but represents all the g
race and charm of our heritage,” according to an advertisement.
Defining the furniture belt: O’Hanlon, “5,350 Companies.”
State-controlled industrialization in China: Wayne M. Morrison, “China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States,” Congressional Research Service, September 5, 2013.
Mao’s order to melt down furniture and other household items: Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).
Mr. Doug’s treatment of Mr. Ed: Bob Jiranek, interview with the author.
Chapter 7: Lineage and Love
Interviews: Pat Bassett, Jane Spilman, John Bassett, Bernard “Bunny” Wampler, Joe Meadors, Fran Bassett Poole, Spencer Morten, Mick Micklem, Delano Thomasson
J.D. Bassett’s sexual escapades: Story related by Bunny Wampler, who heard it directly from Mr. J.D.’s grandsons George Vaughan and Tom Stanley Jr.
Hollins College history: Ethel Morgan Smith, From Whence Cometh My Help: The African American Community at Hollins College (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999). The school is now called Hollins University, and it’s acclaimed for its fine-arts curricula, particularly its creative writing, theater, and dance.
Shenandoah Club history: The Shenandoah Club was a white men’s club that didn’t admit women, blacks, or Jews until the late 1980s; Justin McLeod, “Woman Who Helped Change Roanoke Club’s Racist History Is Retiring,” WDBJ7.com.
Mao Tse-tung’s exaltation of communism: “Red China: The Arrogant Outcast,” Time, September 13, 1963.
Wharton School graduate Larry Moh: Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania alumni magazine (2007).
Company’s overarching emphasis on sales and employment: Joe Meadors, interview with the author.
J.D. Bassett’s house falling into disrepair: Mary Jane Osborne, interview with the author, May 15, 2013.
