Newspapers / The State’s Voice (Dunn, … / Feb. 15, 1935, edition 1 / Page 5
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introducing a few solons and others Tt is hard to get cuts and data f 1 'mbers of the legislature at for * e time. We are running f!lC nicture^ of several members of ,ne 1 T wrote in the last issue, and w hon1 _, wlinm wp mav Wake Forest in 1888, I found sev I Bertie County boys al :;(,v advanced to the high and vlitv state of sophomores and libe one or two to that of jun ■ ‘; Wavland Mitchell, from Co Lin was one of the sophomores. It will be 44 years in a few days silKe one of the hottest society po litical contests ever waged in North Carolina occurred in the Euzeliaor Hall at Waok Forest. There were two factions and the battle was fought out and won by the poor folk faction all along the line from president down to doorkeeper, but the crucial line-up was between liernard Spilman (now Rev. B. W. gpjhnaii, D. D., of national and in ternational fame) and Wayland Mitchell, both members of the class of 1891. We poor folk won, and Wayland was defeated by two or three votes. Soon lie is gone back to Bertie with his sheepskin. Later I begin to hoar of him as Dr. Wayland Mitchell. For these two score years helms been a friend of the sick and distressed in good old Bertie, not once till last year, I believ,e, ever seeking political recognition. But the legislative bug bit him last win ter and he went out, as did a n'um ber of other physicians, and won the nomination for the senate. And. on the extreme right of the . senate hall you will find the Bertie senator -and you will not find many, if any worthier fellows in the body. I have hoped to be able to get several chats with him and thus to renew old acquaintance, but it seems hard to find the fellows when you can talk with them. Yet as usual there are a few ubiquitous ones, whom you can -see .almost at every turn—just a happen so, as with the case of my tall friend Hobbs of Raleigh, long-time drum mer. If he is in a town, I almost invariably see him within a short sojourn, and of course he sees me— both of us having an attraction for each other. When R. E. Sentelle Was a School Boy. okip from the winter of 1891 three years and I too have had my sheepskin since June 1892 and am teaching up at Clyde, Haywood Cfnu‘ty. Over in another valley to the southwestward a few miles jjev- E. A. Sentelle was teaching a “ne l°t of boys and girls, for Hay "°°d was almost unquestionably the most advanced county of the fountain area in educational facili ies- ^’ayncsville had an excellent hdd-: building, with a Sampsonian, at(1 Wilson, afterward a profes *ar of astronomy in one of the mid jo states, as co-principal. Clyde j;l(l a fairly good brick building; ,etliel (I believe that was the llap,le °f the Sentelle school) had a!1 excellent brick building; pos ,M the Crabtree community had Canton, then a tiny vil ^ COi'dderably less than Clyde, j b' had a wooden building. <> 'yas invited over by Principal 1 "‘telle to bo one of three judges ,„i,at? oratorical contest at his as T° - Sentelle was a senior, tW recoIlcct> and a participant in gott °ratoriCal contest. I have for SenSi u1t° ,WOn> but not young ever T 1 am quite sure- ^ow' ’ rec;di that the speeches were marvels for high school boys. Rev. R. A. Sentell seemed an old man to the youth who is now sixty five. But close to forty of the in tervening forty-one years were spent by -the aging school man* in his work as minister and teacher. He died only a year or two ago at an age above ninety. His life was a benediction to Haywood county, and that son R. E. has thus far lived a most useful life. Like his father, he became a teacher, and SENATOR JOHN SPRI NT HILL Former strong* supporter of prohibi tion who is fathering a bill to estab lish State liquor stores. like him a county superintendent. But now the boy of forty-one years ago is a lawyer and is representing Brunswick county in the house of representatives. If he isn’t on the Education committee he should he. If the son lives as long as did the father, you may expect R. E. Sen telle to be coming back to Raleigh if he chooses to, for a third of a century more. He is a high-type man, and few counties have sent a worthier one to the 1935 legisla ture than has Brunswick. Another Veteran School Man. He is not a member, of the legis lature, but librarian for the senate. Nevertheless, there is scarcely a. more interesting character in either of the houses than Mr. W. D. Martin, a veteran school teacher of 80 years, still strong and robust of body and mind. Mr. Martin began teaching in 1874 up in his native county of Yadkin. Yadkin is al most as Republican as Wilkes, but the Democrats are kind to the lone ly Democrats, and I find Mr. Mar tin librarian in the senate and Mr. Holcomb as disbursing officer over in the house, a man who is quite popular with the representatives when, they are not right up to the notch on the payroll. Six Worthy Sons and One Daughter. Mr. Martin was in the schol busi ness 57 years, 17 of which he served as teacher examiner and county superintendent. His last teaching was in 1932, but he says, and I can readily believe him, that he could be teaching now. But the remarkable thing about the man s life is the fact that upon his farm and from a salary of something like thirty dollars a month, he edu cated six sons and one daughter— and I mean 1educated them, re our dear girl teachers will starve upon an' income twice as great in dollars as Mr. Martin’s income from both farm and school aver aged for thirty or forty years! Bead here the names and protes sions of those children and marvel at the output of that piedmont at me miupLu. ----- * farm home. Right here in Dunn. iaim -*-**&"- . is Doctor J. F. Martin eye. ear, nose specialist; y°n^r i ton is Dr. J. A. Martin genera practioner and baby specialist, at Raleigh is Dr. T. Martin, den tist ; at Smithfield, G. A. Martin, lawyer; at Benson, Miss Leona Martin, a member of the Benson school faculty; and tm the farm is Clyde, while at Yadinville is D. D. Martin, principal-, of the town school. ;; As county superintendent Mr. Martin conducted, the first county teachers’ institute* ever held in Yad kin. It was in 1882,. when I was just twelve. The expert sent to as sist him was none other than the late Dr. Mclver,-_and that was his first institute. Thu§ Mr. Martin SENATOR RIVERS JOHNSON Veteran Duplin County legislator and probably the best speaker in the General Assembly. -—-----— has seen the schools run the whole gamut from a puny three-month term with teachers’ salaries ranging from, say, $18, to $30, to a state supported school with high school open to everyr boy and girl in the state for eight months, and with more money spent annually upon them than- was spent in all the schools, including pay schools, pub lic schools, colleges, seminaries, in stitutes, etc. from 1860 up to that teachers’ institute of 1882—and then perhaps a few millions to spare. Evidently Mr: Martin was the J. A. Campbell of Yadkin or the R. A. Sentelle. The “Country Boy” From Bladen. U. S. Page was a tow-headed lad when I lived in Lumberton. He is now as representative from Bladen designated variously as “Bladen’s Huey Long,”- “Bladen’s Bomb shell,” and the “Country Boy from Bladen”—the latter is the designa tion that he himself prefers. Mr. Page won renown as chief of police at Mount Olive, where he killed a bunch of assailants and be cause .of - which and possibly for killings elsewhere stood three trials for murder. He later was police chief at Dunn. He became so ac customed to weeding his row that he has undertaken to weed out the whole of Bladen; but the anti Pagerg down there are counting upon the senators from the district to hackstand, them. Watch the dailies for reports of what happens to Mr. Page’s Bladen program— it will either be a “great victoree” for Mr. Page or his Waterloo. But successful or not in his leg islative program, Mr. Page is as independent as they are made. Down there at that beautiful Page’s Lake he is as well fixed for living as any “country boy” should desire. He fed a big crowd1 of legislators and" other* friends at a barbecue some days ago, and spent about $4 in cash in doing so—the pigs, year ling, and other foods came from that Bladen farm; A Few Short Introductions. Itj is probably a good thing that I do not know the full story of each of. the members—I should never get even, a god start in intro ducing them. Here is Mr. Page’s • neighbor, Representative C. D. Gar rell of Columbus county. Like Mr. Page he is no college man, but a , ~ “country boy,” though not playing up that fact. He resides at Tabor, one of the principal strawberry towns of Columbus. He-beat out three opponents for the nomination last summer. He is a bright-look-*r ing youngster, and is making Co lumbus a good representative, I judge. Granville’s Senator. Mr. John S. Watkins has fallen heir to the senate seat so often held by Mr. Hicks of Oxford. Mr. Watkins is no new hand at the leg islative business, having served in the house in the sessions of 1923, ’25, and ’27. His name also carries me back to Wake Forest days. He wasn’t a Wake Forest man, but his brother George W. had just graduated and was often spoken of as preparing for the China mission field, a serv ice that partook considerably of the heroic in those earlier days. Bo cause of health reasons Rev. George Watkins forewent his as pirations for a missionary’s life and became pastor of the Goldsboro Baptist church and wound up a most honorable career at Oxford in his native county a few years ago. Three of his sons, maybe four, are most honored citizens of Durham—twjo physicians and one lawyci. Senator Watkins attended Scotts burg Normal College ,a private in stitution over in Virginia. He ha* resided on his tobacco farm and op erates a warehouse at Oxford dur ing the tobacco season. I adjudge Senator Watkins as one of the most sensible and de pendable men in the legislature—-it is that good old horse-sense which I have in mind. ^ . Our Benson Neighbor. " It is rather difficult to change one's conceptions of Preston Wood all as one of our neighbor town Benson’s best merchants and exten sive farm owners to that of a leg islator. But here sits our friend, and this is the third term that Johnston county people have had the god gumption to send Preston Woodall to the house. Sitting next to him in his colleague Mr. Lee, a first-termer. • If you find Mr. Woodall’-S picture on these pages, you will discover in his image evidences of only a solid, plain-appearing citizen. That is what he is, a man who was edu cated by the notable teacher Ira Turlington, and has played a straight-forward part in business, in the church (he is a Presbyte rian), and in civic affairs. I would as lief place my confidence in the sound sense and dependability of Preston Woodall as in that of any . man in the house. Nash s> Young Abemetby. Nash’s yeung attorney and repre sentative is not of the group of Abemethies springing from the Rutherford college family, but of native Nash stock. C. C. Aber nethy took his LX. B. degree at Wake Forest in 1927. He began to practice law at the good town of Spring' Hope in his home county and from that place comes as one of the younger members of the house. Mr. Ajbernethy recently in troduced a bill that had real merit, but which was killed on the plea that it lacked respect for the North Carolina judiciary, in that it de prived them of their right to use discrimination in penalizing convict ed drunken drivers. Yet only a few days before the same house had de feated Representative Jonas’s bill to give a judge discretionary power in capital cases in which the convict ing jury recommended mercy, by sentencing such culprits to life im prisonment instead of to death, if (Continued On Page Six) Sj' . .3 ~ Pic. Z - P.
The State’s Voice (Dunn, N.C.)
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Feb. 15, 1935, edition 1
5
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