Gris List: Poetry, frozen rivers, ‘big girls’ and bricks

Wesleyan professor read inauguration poem  

When Miller Williams was chosen to read his poem “Of History and Hope” at the second inauguration of President Bill Clinton, longtime Maconites might have remembered his name.

Williams was a professor in the science department and taught biology at Macon’s Wesleyan College from 1958-60.

At the time of the inauguration on Jan. 20, 1997, Robert Frost and Maya Angelou were the only other poets to have been invited to compose Inauguration Day poems. 

Frost read his poem “Dedication” at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at Clinton’s first inauguration in 1993.

Williams wrote more than 25 books of poetry and was the father of Lucinda Williams, a three-time Grammy Award winner singer-songwriter. (Lucinda attended first grade in Macon at Joseph Clisby Elementary, now Vineville Academy of the Arts.)

The family lived on Hendley Street, near the Lanier School for Boys. Unable to support his family on a professor’s salary, Williams later moonlighted as manager of the furniture department at the old Sears Roebuck on the corner of Riverside Drive and Third Street.

He became one of the founders of the University of Arkansas Press in 1980 and served as its director for more than 20 years. Clinton, a native of Arkansas, presented Williams with the National Arts Award for his lifelong contribution to the arts. The two men met when the former President taught law at the University of Arkansas in 1975.

Williams had spina bifida and was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He was professor emeritus of literature at Arkansas at the time of his death on New Year’s Day in 2015.

 ‘Big Chill’ of 1886 deep froze the city

There was a “Big Chill” in Macon 139 years ago this weekend. On Jan. 12, 1886, the thermometer hovered around 3 to 5 degrees above zero, the deepest freeze in more than a half-century.

 It was so bone-chilling the Ocmulgee River froze. Nearby Central Pond, a reservoir owned by the Central of Georgia Railroad, also froze. Only a few Macon residents owned a pair of ice skates. A woman who had brought them from her native Germany dazzled the onlookers with her figure skating on the frozen pond.

According to newspaper accounts, wells and pipes froze across the city. All the streets were dirt, and the icy glaze rendered them nearly impassable. The surface was as hard as concrete, and folks later laughed and proclaimed it “Macon’s first street paving.”

People shivered in their homes because firewood could not be delivered by the wagons. A fire broke out at Ralston Hall, a theater on the corner of Cherry and Third Streets. The water was frozen in the hydrants, and the firefighters had to build fires to thaw them. The Ralston, and several nearby businesses, were destroyed by the blaze.

No one is sure why Macon plunged into such extreme freezing temperatures. Some speculated it was due to the eruption of the Krakatoa Volcano. The volcanic eruption in Indonesia had taken place three years earlier and was one of the most destructive in history. It led to uncharacteristic worldwide weather patterns for many years, cooling the planet with a heavier-than-normal cloud cover.

The two coldest days on record in Macon also came during the month of January, but the river did not freeze over. It dipped to minus-6 below on Jan. 21, 1985, and was minus-1.7 degrees on Jan. 29, 1955.

 Along with the Great Flood of 1994, the city’s most famous meteorological event came on Feb. 9-10, 1973, when a record 16.5 inches of snow fell.

Macon songbird climbed to top of charts

  Beatrice “Bea” Carter was born in 1924 and grew up in a Macon orphanage. As a student at Miller High School for Girls, she studied classical music, took piano and voice lessons and sang in the glee club. 

During World War II, she performed with a band at Camp Wheeler in Macon. The soldiers often would send her corsages to show their appreciation. She went on tour with the band, playing at USO clubs. She went on to sing with renowned big band leader Al Donahue and Garwood Van’s orchestra at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

She got her big break when she auditioned for legendary band leader Sammy Kaye at the Astor Roof in Times Square. It was Kaye who suggested she change her stage name to Betty Barclay, in keeping with other singers with alliterative names like Nancy Norman and Mary Marlowe.

Barclay appeared twice with Kaye in concerts at the Macon City Auditorium, a year apart in January 1946 and ’47. Three months after her first hometown concert, “I’m A Big Girl Now’’ rose to the top of the charts. It was her only No. 1 single, and it became her signature song.

On her headstone at Evergreen Cemetery, off Houston Avenue in Macon, is the inscription: “She’s a Big Angel Now.”

‘Burns Brick Build Better Buildings’ 

You have to have a few years on your “hearth” to remember the signs from the Burns Brick Company. They were an icon in Middle Georgia in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. 

The “Burns Brick Build Better Buildings’’ signs were 3 feet long with  block letters. They were fixtures on chimneys left standing in the remains of farmhouses and roadside restaurants that had been destroyed by fires. Locally, they became as much of a landmark as Burma Shave signs and “See Rock City” barns.

The company was founded in 1936 by Henry Burns Sr., Henry Burns Jr. and Derry Burns Sr. The Rev. Billy Burns, who was a Presbyterian minister,  came up with the slogan, and it became a familiar jingle on WMAZ radio.

Burns Brick was recognized for several innovations in the brick industry. In 1939, it installed the first continuous tunnel kiln in the country. A decade later, it had the nation’s largest mono-cable aerial tramway. And in 1954, it became the first plant in the Southeast to begin “packaging” brick. 

The company drew media coverage from the BBC to anchor Walter Cronkite on the CBS News. It was sold to a subsidiary of Boral Bricks in 1981.