There's No Place Like Home

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

How many houses have you lived in?

I started thinking about that the other day and calculated in my lifetime I have lived in 23 different houses and apartments. I have also stayed in several other places temporarily as well. In analyzing the influences on those places, I came up with three different reasons affecting where I lived and why. The first reason was because I was poor. Next, I was in the military, and finally, my finances became better later in my life.

When I was growing up, I never considered myself poor – but now, looking back at the life I lived before I graduated, I know I actually was. My family never owned a home the entire time I lived in Huntsville – we always rented places. I lived in nine different houses from the time I was born until I moved to Memphis the day after graduating from Lee. It is funny, but some of the places I lived in are today considered historic homes. I shall not go into detail on all of them but rather will highlight a few memorable ones.  We were living on Ninth Avenue in West Huntsville when I was born and the family lived in at least two different houses before I was three years old. We next moved to Milan, Tennessee, when my dad was transferred to work in the arsenal there. When we moved back to Huntsville, we moved into a house in Redstone Park. It was there I started the first grade at Farley Elementary School. I only went a half of a year there before we moved to a place on Halsey Street and I transferred to Rison Elementary School and met a lot of people I would later join as students at Lee. Before the first grade was finished we moved to Huntsville Park and I finished that school year by riding the city bus from West Huntsville to Rison and back each day.

Before I started the second grade we moved to East Clinton Street and lived there until I finished the sixth grade at East Clinton and the seventh and eighth grade at Huntsville Junior High. The house we occupied was a duplex and was built in 1902 and we paid $65 a month rent. It is now a part of Old Huntsville. My parents divorced when I was in the fifth grade, and that is when I now associate with becoming poor. Broken families were rarer back then, and it took everything my mother and grandmother could earn to make ends meet. Actually, we probably would not have been able to afford to stay there without renting out the upstairs rooms to men who were working at Redstone Arsenal.  Still, I consider the house on East Clinton to be the house with which I associate with most of my childhood memories.

Between the eighth and ninth grades my mother, grandmother, brother and I moved into a place on Hart Drive in West Huntsville which would have put me into going to high school at Butler. Before school started we moved again to a rental house on McCullough Avenue. That allowed me to start the ninth grade at Lee Junior High. I have lots of memories of that year, as the only year I ever rode a bus to school. It was the bus that picked up the students on the mountain and came by my house on the way to Lee.

Before I started the tenth grade, my family qualified for and moved into a house on Webster Drive in Lincoln Village. I never thought of it being subsidized housing, which it was, and in essence the fact our family income was so low we qualified to live there only demonstrates how poor we really were. These are houses in an area now thought of as “The Projects” by many. The funny thing is that it was the most modern house I had ever lived in.

My mother remarried when I was in the eleventh grade and moved to Memphis. Since I was about to start my senior year at Lee, I stayed in Huntsville with my grandmother. My mother and my step-father bought the Memphis house for $12,500 and when I graduated from Lee I moved into that house with them while I attended college. That was the first house I ever lived in that was not a rental, but owned (or was in the process of ownership). 

When I graduate from college and entered the Air Force I started traveling around, as military families do. Honestly, I did not move as much as some military officers do, but in the 20 years I spent in the Air Force I lived in two different cities in California, four places in Texas, two places in Omaha, and four years in a house we bought a house near the base in England. It was when I was stationed in Ft. Worth, Texas, I bought my first house. It was an older one, which was built in 1942, and we paid $14,900 for it. During odd periods of my Air Force life, I also lived in three different hotels for extended periods, tents, trailers, alert facilities, bachelor officers’ quarters, and Quonset huts while on temporary duty to different places. I don’t count those places in my house count.

Upon retirement from the Air Force and moving back to Memphis we bought a house, but a divorce forced me to sell it and move again. Finally, my marriage to Sue resulted in us buying and still living in our current residence. I was surprised to realize my current house is the one house in which I have lived the longest, a little over 20 years.

So, I have lived in Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, California, Nebraska, and England. I know living in 23 different houses is not a record in the most or the least homes for any of you. If you would, will you share with your classmates the number of houses and the longest you have been in one home? I think it would be interesting to hear some of your stories.

Who's Ready to Work on a Scaled-Down Reunion Later This Year?

The Survey Responses to the Question Last Week Showed People Wanted It.

So, what is the next step? I would suppose we need to establish a reunion committee to work out the dates and location. Basically, I guess we need to coordinate with a location for rooms and a meal. It is been suggested we tone down this get-together and spend more time just visiting with our fellow classmates. Who is ready to step up to the challenge of heading this up?

We need to come up with the dates for the mini-reunion. And what will we call it? A reunion, a mini-reunion, a home-coming or what? Since this will probably be held during football season and people have complained in the past, are we limited to having it on a weekend, or since most of us are retired, could it be held during the week instead? The first thing we need, and will be repeated as long as necessary. is someone to take charge and recruit a committee to assist him or her. We already have people saying they are willing to help, but we need someone to organize these efforts.

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Comments on Last Week's Issue

Joseph Harrison, LHS ‘65, "I would gladly help and volunteer (to work on the reunion.)"

Taylor Wright, LHS ‘66, "In response to your story about the song "I left My Heart In San Francisco", that song has been imprinted in my mind and heart for 54 years. While in Vietnam the Arm Forces Radio would play it as well as "California Dreaming" and it would bring on a longing for home like no other song.  All returnees from Vietnam had to pass through San Francisco on the first leg of their journey home. When I hear both songs even today it brings back bittersweet memories of a time that I as well as many others missed a part of our life and experienced things a young man should not have to experience."

Barbara Diamond, LHS ‘66, "Happy to help (on reunion plans) in some capacity from Pennsylvania. Will be there depending on the date."

Joy Rubins Morris, LHS ‘64, "My sister (Judy Rubins Allard) and I would love the mini-reunion.  Count us in."

Jim King, LHS ‘67, "Would love to see you have one. I have been coming and love it. the crowd would be smaller of course. But your class does a great job so may be surprised. "

John Drummond, LHS ‘65, "Being just recently retired I am available to donate time (via ZOOM from Atlanta) and/or a financial contribution toward a deposit to a hotel, restaurant or any other venue that will tolerate us.  My favorite part of the reunions has always been just hanging out on the Marriott patio outdoors,  chatting up classmates and renewing cherished friendships."

Photographic Memories - Who Are They?

Each week I plan to share a group of photos from the 1960 "The General" yearbook without disclosing the names of the individuals. You may stop and try to identify them here, and when you are through you may scroll to the bottom of this page to see the identities of your classmates in the photos.

Slow Song Selections

You Picked in the Past

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me (1965) - Mel Carter

At age 16 Mel Carter studied singing with vocalist Little Jimmy Scott. Carter recorded for Sam Cooke's SAR (Derby Records) in the early 1960s and had his first hit in 1963 at the age of 24 with "When a Boy Falls in Love", which was co-written by Cooke.

By the time he reached his commercial peak with Imperial Records in the middle of the decade, he was specializing in pop ballads. His biggest success was the Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me," which reached Number 8 in 1965. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

The Identites of the Classmates in the Pictures Above