Calhoun County provides north Mississippi with a bucolic idyll between the burgeoning metro areas of Tupelo and Grenada. The Skuna and Yalobusha Rivers run east to west through Calhoun at equal distance into the Yazoo via the Tallahatchie, so geographically the county is divided into thirds. The land is typical of north central Mississippi; wooded hills creased by bottom lands.
Given the proximity to Oxford, the county provides a model (if not original) of Yoknapatawpha, but the county seat, Pittsboro, arguably the smallest county seat in the state, is a sleepy village, much the opposite of Faulkner’s bustling Jefferson. Pittsboro sits atop a ridge of hills that marks the southern edge of the Skuna River valley. To the south, the land slopes in a more leisurely manner to the Yalobusha just south of Vardaman, Derma, and Calhoun City.
Jo Brans is a member of the Reid family, who have lived in Pittsboro for time out of mind. Brans’ writings have explored many subjects, most in a much more scholarly vein, but Feast Here Awhile is a thoughtful examination of the changes in American cuisine from the 50s to the 90s. Feast Here Awhile (the title, by the way, is taken from Shakespeare’s Pericles, I,iv,107) is the story of her own culinary coming of age that takes her from the gentle hills of north Mississippi to Belhaven College in Jackson (which was strictly for young ladies until the year after she graduated, in 1955), to various locations in Texas, Minnesota and, finally, New York City as well as through two marriages, one to an American journalist, the other to a Dutch academic.
Brans moves from her mother’s kitchen through college cafeterias, Texas eateries and European fare on to DeNiro’s TriBeCa Grill. She also moves through (predictably, since the book has a pronounced literary bent) Child, Beard, and Rosso, managing to mention Proust, Welty, and Kerouac on the way. Indeed, Brans is somewhat of a compulsive name-dropper, both of the famous and the near-famous, but I was infinitely proud of her for managing to squeeze in Ernie Mickler and his wonderful White Trash Cooking.
In short, Feast Here Awhile is a personal encapsulation of the American culinary experience in the second half of the twentieth century, and a compelling read from any standpoint. It helps, of course, to be up on the literature, culinary and otherwise, but Brans is an excellent writer and rarely boring. I would recommend this book for any Southerner interested in food and cooking, more specifically Mississippians of that bent and particularly the good people of Calhoun County itself.
In preparation for this article on her, I attempted to get in touch with Brans for an interview, but countless attempts to discover her publisher or literary agent failed. Finally my friend Michelle Hudson, who heads up the reference department at the Welty Library asked, “Have you tried the phone book?”
Well, no. Sure enough, in minutes Michelle gave me a number to call. When I did, early on a Saturday evening, a polite young man answered the phone and said he’d pass my message on to Jo. Within an hour Ms. Brans called. After making sure I was from Calhoun County (that didn’t take long at all) we chatted. She said she’d think about my request and let me know. Some three days later, I received her reply. I reproduce it here as evidence of her talent and grace.
Dear Jesse,
After serious reflection, I have decided that the project you propose is not for me. I enjoyed writing Feast Here Awhile. I am pleased to find that it has found favor with readers, including, especially, you. Many folks, over the years since its publication, have looked me up (“on purpose,” as we Southerners say) to offer thanks and to relate their own pleasures at the table. I would have had material for several sequels.
But no, I thought, and think, not. Essentially I have said in Feast what I have to say about the changes in American eating over the last five or six decades. It’s all there, from the joys of good home cooking and the family dinner table to the more complicated pleasures of Julia Child and those whom she terrified, taught, and liberated–usually all three–and beyond.
Feast Here Awhile is also a personal odyssey, if that’s not too highfaluting a term for just growing up. I ate my way from childhood in a small Southern town through various stops along the road to life in New York City, and recorded the trip, hit or miss, in “The Food Book,” which became Feast. Though food was the focus, I was always aware as I typed away that I was recording the arc of my own life. No news for either of us there: that’s what writers do.
Jesse, I’m flattered that you want to work with me, but don’t be content to retread. I really like your piece about Sambo Mockbee and I suspect, from our brief communication, that you want to be a writer, not an editor. If I’m right, cut loose. My way in was food. Maybe yours is food, too, but your food, not mine. Find your own way in. Tell your story. And send me a copy when the book comes out. Good luck and God bless, Jo Brans
Belhaven University has been around for a little over 120 years – longer than the neighborhood in which it resides and only five years removed from the beginning of neighboring Millsaps College. The college began as a girl’s school, progressed to co-educational sixty years later, burned three times, and merged with an institution that no longer exists. It provided pasture for cows in its early days and boasts campuses throughout the southeast today. But I may be getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.
Who Was Dr. Fitzhugh?
Dr. Louis T. Fitzhugh (1841-1904) was the founder of the modern Belhaven College and served as its initial owner and first president. He came to Jackson in 1894, following a successful career as president of Whitworth College in Brookhaven. He had previously been a member of the faculty at the University of Mississippi. He launched Belhaven as a private school for girls and was influenced in his academic endeavors by Millsaps College and his association with the W.B. Murrah family. Fitzhugh’s new school was named for the old Belhaven mansion purchased from Colonel Jones Hamilton. The house, called Belhaven in honor of the Colonial’s ancestral home in Scotland, was located on raised ground near the present day intersection of N. Jefferson and Boyd (Bellevue Place) Streets. At the entrance of the original home, carved in the stone step, was the name Belhaven, which was also inscribed on the cut glass chandelier shades in the interior of the home. The Hamiltons were descended from Lord Belhaven of Scotland. Fitzhugh served as president of Belhaven until his death in 1904, at which time he was succeeded both as president and proprietor by James Rhea Preston. (2) (3)
Fire and Fate – Historical Twins
Three separate fires played a major role in the College’s early history. Belhaven was chartered as a private, one owner (Dr. Fitzhugh) institution in 1894. It was designed to be a four-year girl’s school. It was located in Dr. Hamilton’s deeded mansion on Boyd Street (now the 900 block of Bellevue), and was called Belhaven College for Young Ladies. This structure was totally destroyed in a massive fire on February 7, 1895 and replaced the following year with a single dwelling frame structure on the same site.
Mrs. J.R. Preston, wife of Belhaven’s second president, remembered in a mid-20th century address details of the first early campus. “As I recall the scenes of Belhaven as I first knew it, the white buildings with green blinds came before me, the two story dormitory and school building as one, with a porch adorned with attractive grill work, running along the front; the cupola rising above all, by its presence. I see beautiful, far-reaching views to be seen from all buildings for there was no northeast Jackson then. It comes vividly before me, the grounds of ten acres, most of which was in the campus, the rest in pasture for the Jersey cows, where in the spring they stood literally knee-deep in clover. I can still see the campus naturally adored with the native trees, oak, elm, hackberry and a few magnolias, with a row of pink crepe myrtle for the southern boundary. Still to be seen from the south as one drives down Belleview (now Bellevue), were the rockeries (rock gardens) adding a formal touch and there was a basketball field nearby. I recall the graveled driveway entering the campus at Mr. C.H. Alexander’s home, just south of Boyd Street on Jefferson. A quaint landmark was the stile by which pedestrians gained access to the board walk leading directly to the dormitory. This climb by day was breath-taking, and by night more than spooky”.
Dr. Preston (1853-1922) came to Belhaven from his presidency at Stanton College in Natchez. He was a former State superintendent of education and largely responsible for the public education system in place in Mississippi today. The State’s official motto Virtute et Armis (Valor and Arms) was coined by Preston and has appeared on the Mississippi coat of arms since 1894. A second devastating blaze began on October 19, 1910, from a furnace spark which landed in the dining room of the main building. According to Mrs. Kenneth Kraft and Mrs. Henry Mills, Dr. Preston’s daughters who witnessed the fire as children, the October day was dry and windy. The fire wagons came immediately, but the hydrant was at the foot of the hill. With no water pressure, nothing could be done. Preston decided for business and personal reasons not to rebuild Belhaven. He discussed his decision with his pastor J.B. Hutton of First Presbyterian Church in Jackson. As a result, the Presbytery received as a donation by Preston title and charter to the school which was renamed the Belhaven Collegiate and industrial Institute on July 25, 1911. The Boyd Street site was abandoned and construction began on a new academic building on the corner of Harper and Park Streets– later to be renamed Pinehurst and Peachtree. Belhaven Street, to reach from the center of the campus to North State, was a dotted line on the maps of the day, a dirt road and as they say “only a gleam in the eye.” Fate would intervene again in a number of ways 16 years later. (3), (4), (5)
How Did Fitzhugh and Preston Halls Get Their Names?
On August 9, 1927, lightning struck the main building and destroyed the major part of the plant and most of its contents. This was the building facing Peachtree Street which housed dormitories on the first and second floors, a kitchen and dining area on the north end and a chapel and gymnasium on the south. One can only imagine what went through the mind of President Guy T. Gillespie as he received a Western Union wire while on board a train to Princeton University to deliver a speech. It appeared at first that the building was a total loss. Yet from the ashes of that summer day rose the phoenix of the modern day Belhaven University. It reset the course of the school’s history. The board of trustees met the following day and began plans to rebuild. Meanwhile, Gillespie had plans of his own. While taking an architecture course at Columbia University, he was required to do a design project. He applied this experience to the task at hand. He never really liked the campus being all one building and so he developed a plan for taking out the burned center section creating two distinct buildings which are Fitzhugh and Preston Halls today. Between the buildings was built a concrete lagoon with columns on either side. The beautiful lighted fountain which can be seen from far down Belhaven Street stands in this location now. (3) (6) (7)
The Years of Famine
Dr. Guy Gillespie began his presidency in 1921 and remained as head of the college for 33 years. He faced nearly insurmountable challenges in areas of endowment, enrollment and accreditation during his tenure. It would be no stretch to say that while Fitzhugh and Preston fathered the institution, Gillespie saved it during its formative years. The battle for accreditation, the lifeblood of every serious educational institution, began in earnest at a May 21, 1929 meeting when Gillespie announced to his board that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools had denied accreditation to the school. Their reasons were that endowment was $100,000 short of the required amount, the library needed 2,000 additional books, faculty salaries were far below the Association’s minimum and the faculty included only one Ph.D. The following 25 years were a testament to tenacity, endurance, courage and prayer. While church, local municipalities, out-of-state funding sources, local businesses and private individuals did their best to help the college meet its endowment needs and other accreditation criteria, there was a depression to contend with followed by a world war.
Through perseverance and God’s help on the morning of June 1, 1946, Gillespie was able to read the following statement to his board: “The outstanding event of the year was the admission of Belhaven College to membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools at the annual meeting of the Association in Memphis on March 28, 1946, and with the full accreditation of the institution as a standard liberal arts college.” Academically, Belhaven was legitimate. Its future was secured. Other historical landmarks were the designation of Belhaven as a co-educational institution in 1954, transfer of the college by the Synod of Mississippi Presbyterian Church in the United States to the Belhaven College Board of Trustees in 1972, and renaming the college Belhaven University in 2009. (3)
A Historical Anomaly
While many consider the birth of Belhaven as 1894, when Fitzhugh purchased the Hamilton property and received a charter for the establishment of the school, others point to 1883 as the beginning. Technically, others are correct. We have discussed the college’s difficulties with achieving accreditation which hindered its growth and academic credibility. One means of addressing this deficiency was a merger with the Mississippi Synodical College in Holly Springs on April 14, 1939. Consolidation of the two colleges took place under the following terms:
(1) Mississippi Synodical College would not close (but eventually did), but continue as a part of Belhaven College. (2) Consolidation would take place as of June 1, 1939, and the Belhaven College Board would assume functions of the Mississippi Synodical College Board of Trustees. (3) Assets and liabilities of the Mississippi Synodical College would be taken over by Belhaven. (4) The Christian aims of both colleges would be preserved. (5) The endowment, assets, and other permanent funds of Mississippi Synodical College would be kept intact and used as nearly in accordance with the intention of the original donation as possible. (6) After liquidation of the outstanding indebtedness of Mississippi Synodical College, the residue would be used in the construction of a building or in some way to perpetuate the name of the college on the campus of Belhaven. (7) Records of the Mississippi Synodical College were to be preserved at Belhaven. (8) Dr. Robert Franklin Cooper, president of Mississippi Synodical College, was named vice-president of Belhaven.
Mississippi Synodical College opened in 1883. This date was adopted by the Board of Trustees as the founding date of Belhaven as it represented the oldest founding date of all of the institutions (Belhaven had merged with the McComb Female Institute when it was reopened by the Central Mississippi Presbytery in 1911), which were eventually absorbed into the college. (3) (8)
Today’s Belhaven
Belhaven University has come a long way from Fitzhugh’s dream of a Christian girl’s school in 1894 and that hot, windy afternoon in 1910 when Preston’s daughters watched fire consume that dream a second time only leading to a third. The college has survived three fires, a depression economy, elusive accreditation, myriad ownership and four name changes.
Today’s Belhaven University is a private four-year liberal arts institution and sits on a main Jackson campus of 42 acres bounded by Peachtree Street, Pinehurst and Greymont Avenues and Belvoir Place. It is composed of 13 classroom, dormitory and administrative buildings, a lake, a bowl, a pavilion, a commons and a lighted fountain. An Alumni Center is located on the west side of Peachtree Street near Riverside Drive. Every four years the City of Jackson hosts the International Ballet Competition and Belhaven University provides lodging for a majority of its participants from throughout the world. According to the Department of Communications, there are a total of 3,500 students, 1,100 traditional, with 500 living on the main Jackson campus, with 300 adult students on the Lefleur Campus. Seventeen hundred adult studies and graduate students are enrolled on campuses in Memphis, Houston, Orlando, Chattanooga and Atlanta, plus participating in a growing online program.
There are 27 undergraduate studies programs on the Jackson campus and five graduate studies programs including degrees in business and public administration. The ASPIRE Program, located in a facility on I-55 north in Jackson, provides an encouraging educational environment where adult graduate students can complete their degree programs while maintaining their careers and personal lives. The school competes well in the NAIA’s Mid-South and Southern States Athletic Conferences and the Baseball Blazers are looking forward to a stellar season this spring. A total of 17 bachelor and 13 graduate programs are housed on ancillary campuses in cities mentioned above. Associate degree programs are available on these sites as well. There are also extensive online studies available to the modern student. Remember back in 1929, when the library was 2,000 books short, insufficient for accreditation? The Hood Library now has 115,000 volumes and 500 periodicals. The Jackson campus has a faculty in excess of 90 professors and instructors, 20 of whom are Ph.Ds. The school has an endowment just under $5 million. (10) (11)
What Can We Do?
What can we do as a neighborhood to support this institution we see in many ways as our own? We can reflect a moment and ask ourselves some questions.
Have you spent some time on the campus walking trails lately to see all the new construction? Have you spoken with students or faculty members or walked along the lake by the practice fields and noticed the ducks and an occasional fisherman on a Sunday morning? Did a friend or relative attend Belhaven back in the day; are they students now or plan to be? Did you sit with your mother as I did as a child in the 1940’s by the lagoon filled with goldfish between Fitzhugh and Preston Halls and listened to her tell you of her own college days at Belhaven in the 1920’s? (She and the goldfish are gone but the memories and a magnificent fountain remain.) Have you or those you know of a later generation visited Bitsy Irby Visual Arts and Dance Center at Peachtree and Euclid Streets, the Entergy Pavilion down the hill from the Bailey Commons or the Belhaven College of the Arts with its magnificent ballet performances on the western rise of Riverside Drive for an evening of cultural enrichment? Did you know Eudora Welty who lived across the street? Do friends have coffee in her Shoebird Café in the McCravey Triplett Student Center? Did they visit the bookstore? Have you done reading or research at the Warren Hood Library or voted in its Barber Auditorium? Have you sat on the white benches along the faculty walk in Gillespie Commons? Do you know anyone who built a home in Belhaven in the 1950’s or 60’s on Belvoir and knew it was once the northern shore of Belhaven Lake? Did you swim or canoe in the lake as a kid or today watch its fountains display theior beauty near the practice fields? Did your gang play football or baseball as children the bowl on Peachtree or watch your own children play soccer there only last week? Have you seen or listened to the school’s free gift of the beautiful Belhaven Christmas Tree singing each season by the lake? Have you or one of your friends bought a home in the neighborhood and in some cases spent more on renovation than the purchase price just so you can live here? Do we as residents and friends fully understand who gave our neighborhood its name? Do you feel a sense of pride when people ask you where you live and you can tell them “Belhaven”?
There is always something which can be done to preserve a heritage of faith, courage, achievement and vision. There are commitments to be made, memories to be acknowledged, friends and associates to influence and work to be done. Dr. Fitzhugh will take the time in his eternal classroom to open to us his own book of life and acknowledge our support so that perhaps his hall and college will remain with us another hundred years attesting to the excellence of Christian good will. We have in Belhaven University a treasure and cornerstone to one of America’s great neighborhoods. You do not even have to go to school to realize how fortunate we are.
Bill Harvey February 2012
Sources
(1) Parrott, Roger, “Letter to Alumni and Friends of Belhaven” (December 2011) (2) Gillespie, G.T., Dr. Louis T. Fitzhugh, Commencement Address (1954) (3) Gordon, James F., Jr., “A History of Belhaven College 1894-1981”, Jackson, MS, Belhaven College (1983) (4) Preston, Mrs. J.R., “Memories of Early Belhaven”, speech (undated) (5) Belhaven College, Sanford Map Company, sheet 19 (1918) (6) Waibel, Paul R., “Belhaven College,” Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing Co. (2000) (7) Parrott, Roger, “Thinking About Higher Education” Belhaven Tartan: (Winter 2011) (8) “Belhaven University”, Wikipedia Encyclopedia (January 2012) (9) Parrott, Roger, quote from e-mail (1/13/12) (10) Belhaven University Department of Communications (11) Belhaven University website
Acknowledgements
Greater Belhaven Neighborhood Foundation Executive Director Virgi Lindsay for the idea
Henry Mills, M.D., grandson of Dr. and Mrs. James Rhea Preston for his kind hospitality and for sharing personal documents as to the early history of Belhaven
Bryant Butler, Director of Communications, Belhaven College, for invaluable information on Dr. Louis Fitzhugh, photograph reproduction of the Hamilton Mansion and current Belhaven data.
Charles Guidine, Archivist, Belhaven College Reference and Periodical Library for photos and access to current archival files
Nancy E. Harvey, my wife, who provided technical assistance in writing; proofing and encouragement
The Belhaven neighborhood itself by making this project worthwhile and for the privilege of allowing me to enjoy my old age as one who grew up with its landmarks, its institutions and its people.
How many of us have stopped at a gas station with cross front facing gable roof porticos supported by Greek Doric columns? How about one with an entablature below the pediment of the gable? Sure you have if you have dropped by the real estate office of Henry LaRose at 944 Poplar Blvd. or gassed up at 1301 Hazel Street and had a Popsicle back in the day.
The Shady Nook Service Station was built in 1928 (columns added in 1933) at Poplar & Hazel by A. Hays Town, a Louisiana architect who was getting his career started with N.W. Overstreet in Jackson. Mr. Town lived 101 years and designed over a thousand buildings throughout the country including Bailey Magnet School in 1938. Through the years his creation served as a provider of Sinclair (remember the dinosaur on the road maps?), Conoco, Phillips 66 and Chevron oil products. Later the building became the renovated home for the design, planning and selling of homes and office space for new horizons.
Shady Nook, 1969
A caption under a photo in the July 29, 1937 edition of the Jackson Daily News described Shady Nook as “The only northeast Jackson residential section concern of its kind. Here the autoist can get everything in the way of expert auto service. This includes tire repairing, washing, greasing, and general lubrication. There are hundreds of satisfied customers who trade here exclusively.”
Through the years Shady Nook had numerous managers and product providers. The first was Robert U. McDaniel in 1928, followed in 1930 by R.L. Foster. That was in the days when it had only the one regular gas pump. Ethyl had not yet arrived. In five year intervals there were C.H. McKeithen & Samuel Reid (1935), H.H. Cutrer (1940), jobber Hugh S. Williford (1945), Roy Daffener (1950), W. Fay Demmings (1955), George M. Hill (1960), Jack DerMoushegian (1965), and Merle Ainsworth (1967). The final listing of Shady Nook as a service station was in the 1969 Jackson City Directory with W.B. Tull as manager. Following the final year as an independent neighborhood service station, Shady Nook remained closed until Goodman and Mockbee Architects bought it in 1978. When Thomas Goodman and Sambo Mockbee adapted the structure for themselves, two draftsmen and a secretary a lot of work was needed to convert the old gas and oil format to a modern, odor-free office. “We had no problem with the conversion,” said Goodman, “except to pull eight 5,000 gallon gas tanks out of the ground. One of them still had gasoline in it and we had to sleep with it overnight.”
Goodman and Mockbee moved on to larger quarters in 1980 and the building was sold to Tommy Thames, where it remained until 1985 as J.H. Thames Real Estate. For a number of years the building remained vacant or served as temporary housing for neighborhood events or a political headquarters (Dick Molphus in 1997). Henry LaRose moved into 944 Poplar on November 30, 1997 where his office remains today.
But how did Mr. McDaniel’s old Sinclair station become Shady Nook? Ah. Therein hangs a tale with its origins as nebulous as a curl of smoke. Down around the corner on Hazel and up Pinehurst a block or so was this all-girls school we know as Belhaven College.
Typing class, Belhaven College, c. 1928
Back in the Roaring Twenties, the matrons who guarded their little flock of princesses had to be careful where their charges would stray if not carefully supervised. Consequently, a number of local Jackson day and night spots were declared off-limits as they could tempt the unwary with transgressions such as cigarettes or beer or – God forbid – unchaperoned men. Shady Nook, however, was new and after all, a service station, not an alehouse so it was a time before guardians of virtue at the nearby college got around to issuing a forbidden designation for the facility. Thomas Goodman did a little research on all this before moving in.
It seems the little service station on the corner had become a hangout for the Belhaven girls. In addition to gasoline sales, the establishment had a small grocery store inside which sold candy, gum, ice cream, soft drinks and…cigarettes. It seemed that some of the girls would find their way down Hazel Street after class to the store and purchase a pack of smokes, lighting them up behind the store just like Bogie and Bacall. One of the girls was a student named (Mrs. Matthew) O’Riley, later Goodman’s third grade teacher. According to Goodman, It was Ms. O’Riley who suggested the name Shady Nook to the new owner and the name has stuck to this day.
Over the years many of the older residents of the Belhaven neighborhood remember their association with Shady Nook. Mr. Bob Canizaro recalls when he used his grass mowing money to buy Fudge sickles. Young Billy Harvey would take his bike by to air up the tires and buy a coke from a primitive drink machine where you slid your bottle down a little horizontal track and pulled up a spacer to get your soda. Kids would come by on their way to Laurel Street Park on Saturday mornings for a pack of Nabs or a bag of peanuts and it was always a good stop after school for an ice cream cone. All the while station attendants pumped $.25 gas, wiped windshields and checked the battery and oil. There was a bay on the left where cars were washed. The opposing space on the right was where cars were serviced and tires repaired. There was a counter in front for displays of combs and bobby pins. There were glass jars for candy and peanuts. There were some potted plants around for “atmosphere”. A few old trees were on the right and rear of the building shading the tiled roof.
Today Shady Nook is the real estate office of Henry LaRose, who first learned of the building’s history while dating Ann Tull in 1963. Her father Bailey Tull was then an employee of the service station. “As I walk up the front walk each morning,” Henry says, “I give thanks to God that I work here. Anyone with a passion for Belhaven and with a real estate license could walk into this building and make a good living.”
LaRose Realtor
Today the trees are larger or gone. The gas sells down on State Street for over $3 a gallon. Gum, candy and Dixie cups no longer cost a nickel and cigarettes are more than the gasoline. Henry has maps, computers and modern lighting. The telephones ring with a Led Zep riff instead of the old bell you could hear for a city block. There’s an arch now in front and the potted plants are gone, but never the memories. We hope that as long as there is a corner of Poplar and Hazel there will be a Shady Nook; that behind the modern façade of tiles and sheet rock and air conditioned comfort, there will be within the eight inch walls old grease spots and tire patch burns and perhaps an initial or two of some small boy who parked his bike long enough for the attendant to apply a hot patch to his tire puncture or that suspicious curl of smoke wafting up from that risqué co-ed entering womanhood with a Chesterfield like the one she saw Ingrid Bergman wave about at Rick’s Place the week before at the Paramount.
Shady Nook: It’s down at Henry LaRose’s place. For 87 years it has been a convenience and a part of this place we call Belhaven. Like many of us, it has a new façade and has stood the test of time.
Bill and Nan Harvey, August 2012
Nan Ertle Harvey is a native of Yazoo County, a graduate of Mississippi College and has lived with her husband Bill in the Belhaven neighborhood since 1994. She worked in a research position in the Department of Microbiology at UMMC, retiring in 2003. Nan’s hobbies are photography, nature study and family research. She is a volunteer at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Bill Harvey is a native Jacksonian, living most of his life in Belhaven. A MSU Bulldog, he has had careers in journalism, education and as development director of the Andrew Jackson Council, Boy Scouts of America. Bill enjoys photography, music, writing articles for neighborhood sources and sharing experiences with friends at a local coffee shop. (Text copyright Bill and Nan Harvey, used by permission of Bill and Nan Harvey.)
Sources:
(1) Shady Nook Photo: Jackson Daily News July 29, 1937 (2) “The Shady Nook Gets a New Lease on Life” by Lynda Smalbout, Clarion Ledger, May 14, 1979 (3) “Life After Death for Gas Stations?” by Andy Kanangiser, Jackson Daily News, Dec. 20, 1979 (4) Interview with Henry LaRose, LaRose Realty, August 27, 2012 (5) Narrative draft, application to U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service/National Register of Historic Places, August 20, 2012, p. 197 (6) LaRose Realty photo: Bill Harvey
