The Roanoke Valley In The 1940s

"A collection of little known historical stories in Roanoke, VA"--

The history of the Roanoke Valley during the 1940s has largely been unexplored until now. This significant decade bore witness to the birth of the local civil rights movement, the impact of World War II and the postwar boom in public projects and private development. The J-Class locomotives, Carver School, Woodrum Field, Victory Stadium, Carvins Cove, the Roanoke Star, the end of streetcars, and the advent of drive-in theaters all marked the decade. Crowds thronged to see the biggest names in radio, film and music at the American Legion Auditorium, the Academy of Music and the Roanoke Theatre, while Major League baseball and professional football brought exhibition games to Maher Field and Victory Stadium. Local historian Nelson Harris provides a detailed account of this dynamic decade along with 300 archival photographs.

Drag racing at Starkey, the debut of television, mass polio vaccinations, college football games at Victory Stadium, Roanoke's Diamond Jubilee, Salem's Sesquicentennial, and Vinton's Dogwood Festival American Viscose closed, the N&W Railway switched to diesel and the General Electric plant opened. The Roanoke Valley welcomed the Children's Zoo on Mill Mountain and the Miss Virginia Pageant to Hotel Roanoke. From a new terminal at Woodrum Field to the erection of Cave Spring High School, municipal projects reflected the economic boom times. Sears Town, Miller & Rhoads, the viaduct, and a new main library altered downtown Roanoke. WDBJ and WSLS television stations went on the air, premiering local programs such as Saturday Session, Top O' the Mornin', and Uncle Looney. The nation's top entertainers performed at the American Theatre, Lakeside, and the American Legion Auditorium. The valley's arts scene produced the Roanoke Fine Arts Center, Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, and Showtimers. Minor league baseball teams played to large crowds in the stands at Maher Field, Municipal Field and Springwood Park. Black leaders campaigned for equal pay, desegregation, and neighborhood equity. By searching every edition of the Roanoke Times and the Roanoke Tribune from January 1950 through December 1959, local historian Nelson Harris documents the decade's local events in sports, business, crime, arts, entertainment, religion, civil rights, politics, individual achievements, and healthcare.

Author Nelson Harris delves into the annals of history to uncover these marvelous and mostly unknown stories of the Star City of the South. How did a Roanoke neighbor's secret upend North Carolina politics and why did a weeding scandal in Big Lick make front-page headlines in New York? These questions and many more are answered in this exciting volume of hidden stories and forgotten tales from the Star City. Discover why a Roanoker was found frozen in the North Atlantic and what Mother's Day crime and trial shocked the city in 1949. Meet the Black Cardinals, a semi-pro African American baseball team that played in the 1930s and '40s, and find out how a fistfight at Shenandoah Life helped save the company.

The Williamson Road area, which was annexed by the city of Roanoke in 1949, was originally a part of Botetourt County and thereafter of the northern part of Roanoke County. "A Place Apart" traces the history, places, and families of the Williamson Road. The book begins with various sketches of Roanoke Valley pioneers and early land owners. The second part of the volume continues with sketches of families that arrived during the late 18th or early 19th century, including Barren, Bushong, Campbell, Cannaday, Fellers, Garst, Harshbarger, Huntingdon, Nelms, Nininger, Oliver, Petty, Read, Rudd, Stokes, Watts, and Williamson. Community leaders associated with the Roanoke Valley's recent history are treated elsewhere in the book.

Making moonshine, working blue-collar jobs, picking fights in bars, chasing women, and living hardscrabble lives . . . Clayton and Saford Hall were born in the backwoods of Virginia in 1919, in a place known as The Hollow. Incredibly, they became legends in their day, rising from mountain-bred poverty to pickin’ and yodelin’ all over the airwaves of the South in the 1930s and 1940s, opening shows for the Carter Family, Roy Rogers, the Sons of the Pioneers, and even playing the most coveted stage of all: the Grand Ole Opry. They accomplished a lifetime’s worth of achievements in less than five years—and left behind only a few records to document their existence. Fortunately, Ralph Berrier, Jr., the grandson of Clayton Hall and a reporter for the Roanoke Times, brings us their full story for the first time in IF TROUBLE DON'T KILL ME. He documents how the twins’ music spread like wildfire when they moved from The Hollow to Roanoke at age twenty, and how their popularity was inflamed by their onstage zaniness, their roguish offstage shenanigans, and, above all, their ability to play old-time country music. But just as they arrived on the brink of major fame, World War II dashed their dreams. Berrier follows the Hall twins as they travel overseas, leaving behind their beloved music, and are thrust into the cauldron of a war that reshaped their lives and destinies. Through the brothers’ experiences, the story of World War II unfolds—Saford fought from the shores of North Africa to Sicily and Europe and finally into Germany; Clayton fought the Japanese in the brutal Pacific theater until the savage, final battle on Okinawa. They returned home after the war to find that the world had changed, music had changed . . . and they had, too. IF TROUBLE DON'T KILL ME paints a loving portrait of a vanishing yet exalted southern culture, shows us the devastating consequences of war, and allows us to experience the mountain voices that not only influenced the history of music but that also shaped the landscape of America.