Patricia Lynn Hill Hollenbeck

LHS '64

? - March 23, 2025

Patricia Lynn Hill Hollenbeck, age 79, passed away at The Village at Allendale on March 23rd, 2025 after a hard-fought battle with vascular dementia. She was predeceased by her parents, John and Carol Hill, of Huntsville, AL. She is survived by her brother and sister-in-law, John and Susan Hill, of Kingsport, TN. Her work career included IBM and Microsoft. More recently, she drove a school bus for Kingsport City Schools. While living in Seattle, Pat joined the Mormon church. At her request, there will be no memorial service.

Trinity Memorial Centers Funeral Home (423-723-8177) is honored to serve the family, online condolences can be shared with the family on our website at www.trinitymemorialcenters.com

The Garage

LHS '64

Rainer Klauss

In 1952, about a year after we moved into our house on Bide-A-Wee Drive, my father and older brother, Dieter, built a garage adjoining it. I feel safe in claiming that it was the first garage in Darwin Downs. My father, the architect and chief construction engineer, filmed the early part of the construction process with a short home movie.

In that vignette, he panned the camera across the building site and captured all three of his sons, which I’m sure was part of his directorial intent.  We comprise a crew whose ages span ten years.  Gunter, a four-year old sprite, presides as the mascot of the project, happy to be with his brothers and father. Dieter, who is fourteen, holds a spirit level across a cinder block that he has just mortared into place. You can tell from his nod that the bubble is perfectly centered. He is my idol. He’s a suave teenager; I’m just headed for the second grade.

 I’m standing outside the perimeter of the foundation, a tanned onlooker in shorts. Even though I’m soon to turn eight, I’m still too slight to help with the work in any meaningful way. What I’d like to do is play in the sand pile and climb around on the stack of rough cinder blocks, but I know that might bring a reprimand.

I doubt if my father had any clear ideas about what modifications he wanted to make to the house as he saw it being constructed. His demanding work at Redstone Arsenal naturally came first. But on the home front, the garage soon became the inaugural project, the first manifestation of the promise the new home and its setting held and called out for.  My father and Dieter built a functional, sturdy, and roomy structure, a far cry from the smelly shed we had in Mayfair. It stood close to the house, its green shingles making them a perfect match.

Several years later, the structure proved its soundness when Dieter hauled the engine out of his ’53 Ford on a chain hoist attached to the rafters. As for me, the Playboy magazines I sneaked in there later on are probably still hidden in the eaves. 

  With the garage as a prelude, the next projects had to follow close upon one another over the course of a few months.  The two original porches were enclosed. One became an additional bedroom; the other served as our cozy eating nook. Because access to the house was lost when the porches and their doors became interior spaces, those changes necessitated the creation of new front and back doors. The two separate projects proceeded almost concurrently, but it makes sense to me that it was the back entrance which was finished first.  We got into the house on boards and cinder blocks. Soon, two new porches were completed to restore full, easy access, front and back.  I earned a promotion to junior helper sometime during all of that building.

On the interior, a superfluous door was sealed off and paneling was installed to make the living room and the dining room separate areas. Long before the concepts of feng shui ever became known in American, the house acquired a harmonious flow.

In the early 1950s, Darwin Downs was a starter neighborhood. Families coming into Huntsville during that initial population explosion could find affordable, well-built, but basic (large gravel for driveways, no garages, no lawns) houses to buy or rent there.  By late 1953, there was a small cluster of 4 German families living 2, 3, 4, and 5 houses down the street from us on Bide-A-Wee Drive (all members of the second wave of immigrants whose men were recruited to live and work in Huntsville and Redstone Arsenal earlier that year.)  Two years later, the families pulled up stakes and moved south over the hill to Montdale, a new housing development with bigger and better-finished houses (bricks, driveways, and two bathrooms), and the lures of brand-new Blossomwood Elementary and the established Huntsville Junior High and Huntsville High. We stayed in Darwin Downs, perfectly happy where we were. I treasure my young life there.

Continued Next Week

The Wayback Machine

Charlena

This was probably my favorite fast dance song sung by the Continentals when I went to the dances at Bradley's Cafeteria on the square. Below is a youtube video of them performing the song at a 2010 Rock and Roll Reunion. Also provided is the song done by the Sevilles. Please use the comments box below to share with us your favorite song sung by the group back then.

Charlena was a 1961 single by the Los Angeles R&B group The Sevilles, although the Mid-Knights' recording was significantly more successful. They were the first Canadian band to have a #1 hit on the Canadian charts. 

Thanks to Rainer for providing us his story about building a garage back in his early Huntsville days. We continue the story next week.

We've had a good few weeks of basketball with Auburn and Alabama teams both doing well in March Madness. 

Above is a question about your favorite song by the Continentals back then. Remember Jerry Brewer was a member of the Class of '64 and the drummer for the band.

LEE LUNCH BUNCH

Classes of ’64, ’65, ‘66

Thursday, April 24, 2025 11:00 a.m.

Carrabbas’s Italian Grill

(Upper parking deck at Parkway Place Mall)

Classmates from ‘64, ’65, and ’66, please mark your calendars for the next Lee Lunch Bunch. This begins the 15th year of our lunches together. This is also the 60th year from graduation for the Class of 1965. Hopefully, many of this group will be able to come on this date, share all of the latest from our daily lives, and have a good meal together.

Please do let me know if you are planning to come. I will need to let the manager know how many no later than a couple of days before. Thanks and hope to see you in April.

Patsy Hughes Oldroyd ‘65

304 Wellington Rd.

Athens, AL 35613

H (256) 232-7583

C (256) 432-3396

keithandpatsy@att.net

Last Week's Questions, Answers, And Comments

Tom Gilbert, LHS ‘67, "We moved to Huntsville from Columbus GA where my Dad worked on Fort Benning with a promotion. He had been a roomer for one year 1959-1960 when we moved to 417 Eustis St. Due to overcrowding, even though we lived down the street from Huntsville Jr High for grade seven, I had to attend Rison. We moved to Kavanaugh Circle in 1961 to a new home and l attended Lakewood. When Davis Hills opened, I attended grades eight and nine, then in 1963 went to Lee for grades 10-12. My sisters have visited the old house and the owner even took them on a tour of the interior, I guess five years ago."

Paula Smith, LHS ‘65, "Thanks for your hard work with the newsletter and keeping all of us in touch. I appreciate it. Have a good week."