i!
No one, to our way of thinking,
better exemplified the true sports
man than George R. Fuller. We felt
that way about him when he was
our next door neighbor during
diaper days, and, grown to man
hood’s estate, we still clung to the
same emphatic opinion.
Big George, more than any New
Bernian of our time, was priv
ileged to enjoy the warm friend
ship of those who were nationally
famous. Yet, lie never boasted of it,
nor did he ti*y to capitalize on his
close association with the likes of
Babe Ruth, Irvin S. Cobb, Bud
Fisher, Christy Matthewson, or
Frank Stevens, the concessions
king.
Perhaps we’re thinking about
him today because there’s a hint of
Autumn in the coast country, and
the song of fhe trail is in our
bones. Fuller loved the great out
doors as few men do. Hunting and
fishing were as much a part of him
as breathing.
That’s why he ended up in New
Bern in the first place, to spend
a half century here as a merchant
unanimously respected. A native
of Georgia, he decided to move to
North Carolina and open a music
store. Less concerned with business
prospects than available woodlands
and streams, he found a map, cir
cled the name of a town he had
never seen, and struck out for it.
&
He did his traveling in a wagon
loaded with organs, drawn by a
team of horses." Selling those or
gans along the way financed his
-trip;,..And-one©, he gdt here be was
as happy as a June bug in a water
melon rind.
The NEW BERN
"71
aaoo^* IT. r,
14*.
VOLUME I
NEW BERN. N. C., FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, T958
NUMBER 23
Just How Old
Is This Town
Called Home?
To get an idea of how old New
Bern really is, consider these facts
George Washington wasn’t born
until 22 years after pur town was
settled. "The stork brought Daniel
Boone a year after Washington
showed up. Twelve monhts later a
baby christened Paul Revere put
in an appearance.
There came a time when Patrick
Henry shouted, “Give me liberty
or give me death,’’ but New Bern
was already 26 years bid when he
made his very first cry—not for
liberty but for milk and a dry dia
per.
‘ttf
Come to think of it. Big George
always was happy, even when ill
ness, forced him to give up hunting
and fishing in the latter years of
his well spent life. Instead of feel
ing sorry for himself, he was
thankful for the good times he had
s/iared with celebrities and un-.
knowns.
ff--
He devoted more hours to gard
ening, caught up on his reading,
and showered boundless affection
on his beloved garndchildren.
We’re no doctor, but it always
seemed to us that he gained a new
lease on life with each additional
grandchild.
Big George wasn’t one to restrict
his affection to his own flesh and
blood. He loved all kids— in fact,
all fellow humans in general. In
the 45 years we knew him intimate
ly, we never heard him speak evil
of his fellow man.
As a matter of fact, his children
will tell you that the gentleness he
. displayed in public was likewise
displayed in the privacy of his
home. Even on those rare occas
ions when he was irritated, as
mortals are bound to be sometimes,
he never raised his voice.
Few of us possess a sense of
humor that could measure up to
his. He liked to hear a good story,
and when he told one of his own
yarns, based upon an actual ex
perience, it was always worth
listening to. ,
Fuller never made a show of his
charities, but none of us will ever
know how many kindnesses he did.
He never quibbled about price tags
and profits / When a little back-
woods church, here in the coast
country, needed a piano.
For 21.years, until his death, he
furnished pianos and organs with
out cost for the Yuletide Revue.
We had no way of foreseeing that
it would be his last Christmas on
earth, when at long last he agreed
to let us dedicate one of the Re
vues to him. He was there, God
bless him, and we’ll be thankful
for that the longest day we live.
Yes, Big George was a big man,
and all the modesty in the world
coudn’t hide that fact. That’s why,
when Autumn comes to the coast
country—turning the leaves to gold
and red, we’ll think of a gentle
Of course, a few mighty import
ant folks did get into tlie world
ahead of our historic first State
Capital. In fact, Benjamin Franklin
was all of four years old when
Baron de Graffenreid landed at
the junction of the Neuse and
Trent.
What about Abraham Lincoln?
Well, if he waited another year to
be born, Nevr-Bern would have
been a hundred years old. As it
was, the town was 102 years old
when Charles Dickens checked in,
and 125 years old when Mai>k
IVain was born.
Noah Webster, who gave us our
dictionary, arrived on earth 48
years after the founding of New
Bern, just three years later than
Nath.an Hal,e.. The town was 57
years old when Andrew Jackson
came alollg, and 67 years old by
the time Henry Clay got his first
night’s rest in a cradle.
So you see, we’ve been around
for a long time. In just 471 days
we’ll be celebrating our 250th an
niversary, but it won’t be much of
a celebration unless we get off our
haunches, rub the sleep out of our
eyes, and try to make up for lost
time.
We can’t expect folks elsewhere
to get excited, as long as we’re
yawning and dragging ourselves
around in a state of civic distemp
er.
HAS THE ANSWER—New Bern motorists who growl be
cause there’s no place to park near the Post Office aren’t
as enterprising as this canine citizen. He solved the prob
lem by getting up early enough to have the whole block all
to himself. If this photo proves nothing else, it should con
vince you that The‘Mirror’s editor will do anything for a
picture, even when it means climbing out of bed at the
bust of dawn. Incidentally, the photo isn’t a posed one. We
don’t know the dog, and this parking business was strict
ly his own idea.
Village Males
Find. Blondes
Eye Catching
Don’t poke fun at that old
wheeze about gentlemen prefer
ring blondes.
Visitors Love Our
Crepe Myrtle Trees
Most New Bernians take our
crepe myrtle trees for granted, but
tourists appreciate them to the
fullest.
This year in particular there
have been countless favorable com
ments from visitors. Such trees
don’t grow and bloom satisfactorily
north of Virginia, so they’re a
pleasant oddity to a high percent
age of our out-of-towners.
All of* us are indebted to those
citizens who have planted them in
the city itself, and along the Coun
try club road in years past. Their
blossoms linger long, and we’re no
doubt missing the boat by not lin
ing our streets with them.
Wilmington’s success with aza
leas was a community effort. The
same enthusiasm could work won
ders here with crepe myrtles.
We Were None Too
Soon with Building
We didn’t get New Bern High
school’s modern spaciousness any
earlier than we needed it. As of
now there are 830 students milling
around the place.
Picture with a shudder, if you
can, what it would be like to have
that many teen-agers trying to get
in that outmoded Griffin building
on the Academy green.
New Bernian by choice who loved
nature, his family and his friends.
If it takes an apple a day to
keep the doctors away, it’s a won
der more New Bern teachers don’t
end up on the sick list.
Gone is the era when these
fruit-loving public servants could
expect one or more delicious wine-
saps each and every morning, come
rain or come shine. Them kind of
pupils ain’t no more.
grapes and maybe a tangerine.
If the average local teacher was
the recipient of a fruit shower to
day, she would probably go into
hysterics.
In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact
that they get an apple once a year
at their plate, when the Civitans
hold their annual Teacher Appreci
ation night, most teachers would
have to buy their own apple
Back in the old days, kids were
n’t satisfied with bringing apples
regularly. They used to have
“fruit showers” and on those oc
casions they loaded the teacher up
with a big basket that included not
only apples but oranges, bananas.
You would think that a young
ster who can’t add two and two,
•and is apt to fail his grade, would
bring an apple to class now and
then—just in self defense. It does
n’t happen, however.
Maybe it’s part and parcel of the
new outlook on education, or per
haps the kids are much too busy
getting steamed up over nuclear
warfare and outer-space rockets to
mess around with anything a^
commonplace as fruit.
A confidential survey conducted
by The Mirror, with representative
New Bern males as the guinea
pigs, failed to reveal a single red-
blooded man who doesn’t look
twice when a chick with golden ^
hair passes by.
Admittedly, some of these gents
look twice at any sort of a lass, be
she blonde, brunette or redhead,
so we allowed for that. However,
even with this allowance, it’s ob
vious that nothing hereabouts
makes the masculine gender light
hearted quicker than a light-head- >
ed gal.
“I married a brunette,” one well-
known New Bernian told'us, “and
to tell you the tnith, I don’t re
call dating a girl seriously in my
courting days who didn’t have dark
hair. I’d marry a brunette again,
but 18 karat or peroxide, a blonde
always catches my eye.”
Males of every age seem to be
equally interested in the charms
of a fair-haired femme. One or two
gentlemen we interviewed were
old enough to know better, if they
’re ever going to know, and some
were young upstarts.
Ask a man why he feels the
way he. does about blondes, and
he’ll get tongue-tied. That’s like
Asking a kid why he loves ice
cream or candy. All he can tell you
is that for him it’s the most, and
that’s good enough for him.
Which does a New Bern male
consider the more attractive, a
blonde with blue eyes or a blonde
with brown eyes? Actually, it does
n’t seem to matter. One astute
judge of feminine pulchritude siz
ed it up pretty neatly.
“I don’t pay much attention to
her lamps,” he confided. “All I
can see is that hair, and I’d have
to take a second look if I knew my
neck would pop in two -the moment
I turned my head.”
And that, gals, is the way it is.
Whatever the reason, an apple
for the teacher is today only a
myth, or to put it another way,
from a pupil’s point of view, it’s a
lot of applesauce.
If Storm Must Pep Things Up,
We'd Just Like It to Be Quiet
New Bern may be a rather un
exciting place at times, in fact,
most of the time, but nobody wants
a hurricane to come along and pep
things *up.
It wasn’t always that way. Until
the three big blows of 1955—Con
nie, Diane and lone—many tempo
rary residents and quite a few fool
ish natives expressed disappoint
ment when a long series of hurri
cane scares proved to -be false
alarms.
They felt an awful let down, aft
er buying a supply of candles and
filling the pantry with extra food.
Young folks, who had never been
in the middle of such a wind,
were understandably disdainful,
Then it happened. Connie came
to town on August 12, 1955, lifting
our swollen rivers 3.6 feet above
normal. Five days later, on Aug
ust 17, Diane arrived, and that
time the water rose to 7.8 feet
alxive normal.
It wasn’t over yet, as on Septem
ber 19, lone struck with a flood
that was 10:57 feet above the us
ual water line. Few families in
town were exempt from damage
that exceeded 15 million dollars^
Folks who had wished for a hur
ricane, just for the fun of it, dis
covered too late that an honest to
goodness hurricane isn’t much fun.
It’s a frightening thing, and woe
fully expensive.
'Things have been different since
the year of the Three Swift Sisters.
Most of all it was different last
week, when the first hurricane
scare of 1958 put in an appearance.
Nobody in town, and we do mean
nobody, wished for a chance to
have some excitement. All anyone
wanted was the happy announce
ment that the whirling winds—
packing a velocity of 115 miles per
hour—had veered to the northeast.
A burnt child dreads the fire,
and windswept New Bernians are
wise enough now to dread a hurri
cane. They acquired their wisdom
the hard way.
A LADY WITH LISTENERS —
Evelyn McDevitt, hostess for
WHIT'S Talk of the Town, is a
newcomer to the local radio
scene, but her program caught on
quickly wth the feminine audi
ence hereabouts.
A native of Craven who spent
11 years in Mississippi, she was
formerly affiliated with Mc-
Comb's WAPT. While there she
formed a Confederate book club
that now has chapters in 15
states.
Her program, aired at 9:05
a.m., Monday through Friday,
features club news, social activi
ties, fashions and household vig
nettes.
, V
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