Tuesday’s mail had the most pleasant surprise. The envelope was from Marie Maddox in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I immediately recognized the name. Marie is a teacher at Pi Beta Phi Elementary School in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. For Pi Beta Phi’s Centennial of Literary Service celebration in 2012, Marie wrote a play “Then and Now.” It starred students, teachers, and community members and it was topped by an appearance by Glenn Bogart, who was then the school’s principal (he has since retired). Glenn’s delightful daughter Rachel and his wife Vada were convention initiates at the 2013 Pi Beta Phi Convention.
Marie tells the story of Martha Cole Whaley. Martha and Marie met when Martha was 100. She is now 104. Martha grew up in the Gatlinburg area. She attended the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School, not the one in Gatlinburg, but the one in Sugarlands. The Sugarlands school wasn’t there long; it closed when the National Park Service started buying up the property for the Great Smokies National Park. Martha says, “I loved the Pi Beta Phi teachers who came to teach us up in the Sugarlands.” She says that teacher Ruth Chew, a Pi Phi from Ohio University, was the other “most influential” person in her life.
Before she married, Martha worked as a cook at the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School. There are a few other mentions about the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School, but this is a book about Sevier County’s oldest citizen. The Gatlinburg of 1910 is worlds away from the Gatlinburg of 2014. It’s wonderful to read Marie’s story.
“This book is more than a history of the area. It is a book filled with wit and wisdom, tributes from her friends and family to introduce the chapters, and the most-requested Martha recipes at the end because Martha has cooked her way through life. It is her talent and her means of showing people she cares about them.” wrote Marie in her letter to me.
Marie added, “Martha is still alive and well. I breakfast with her Saturday, and we just did our first book signing last Sunday.” Marie also said that when the play was staged two years ago, Martha was in a rehab center recuperating from some broken bones. Oh how I would love to have met her during that Gatlinburg trip!
I first visited Gatlinburg in 1992. I had read accounts of May Lansfield Keller’s trek to Gatlinburg after the vote to establish a Settlement School had been taken at the 1910 Swarthmore Convention. I quickly became well aware that the Gatlinburg I visited in 1991 was not the same one that May visited nearly 90 years before me. The Greystone Hotel still stood on the property where the aquarium is now. For years, Martha and her husband owned and ran the Greystone Hotel. Martha has lived Gatlinburg’s history. Anyone who has been to Gatlinburg and wondered about the history of the area would love the stories Martha tells of her life in the area.
The book is published by the History Press and I© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2014. All rights reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/‘ve added a link to it on the right hand side of this page near the top. And here is a link to a post about the Centennial of Literacy Service celebration http://wp.me/p20I1i-rM.
