 |
Leon and Carolyn Purvis
Ivy Leon Purvis was born October 16, 1930 to
sharecroppers Barnie and Susie Brown Purvis in a log
cabin near Trezevant, on a farm called the "Jim Green
place". Leon was the fourth child in the family that
would eventually boast seven children: two girls and
five boys.
When he was just a few months old, they moved to the
Harvey Quinn farm near Walker's School, a one-room
schoolhouse located about four miles north of Atwood,
where five of the Purvis children would attend classes.
Leon recalls teachers Flora May Pendergrass and Bertha
Lynn Walker among the succession of two or three
teachers who taught around 30 students in the
first-through-eighth-grade school.
"One teacher with 30 or more students made it hard to
learn," Leon offers. "I had to rely on my brothers and
sisters to help teach me at home. Dad and Mother had
little time to help; besides, they both had very little
education, if any, but they could still sign their
names, count money and figure cotton weights."
"By this time there were five of us children big enough
to help Dad and Mom on the farm," says Leon. "We were a
very poor family as far as money was concerned,
however, I can't ever recall going to bed hungry. My
mother was an excellent cook and could always come up
with three meals a day, maybe two in the winter months.
"In the spring and summer, we always had a good garden
that provided plenty of fruit and vegetables. In the
fall and winter, we had canned fruit and vegetables
along with cured pork meat from the smokehouse, plus
canned tenderloin and sausage.
"One of the first things I remember at school was
swapping my sausage and biscuit lunch for some peanut
butter and crackers. We never could afford peanut
butter. In fact, there was never any in the cupboard
until I married and went to work in a grocery store in
the early '50s in Trezevant."
The family's nearest neighbor was Clip and Bertie
Palmer, who owned the first radio in the community.
"It was a huge radio, about two and a half feet wide
and half as tall as a modern refrigerator," relates
Leon. "The dial was about the size of a tea cup and it
had about eight or 10 buttons for tuning. This is where
I first heard the Grand Ole Opry out of Nashville."
His eyes glowing in golden memory, he describes
Saturday night gatherings at the Palmer home, where 15
to 20 neighbors sat around the room waiting for "the
Solemn Old Judge", George D. Hay, to blow "something
like a fog horn" and say, "Let her go boys!"
From 8 p.m. 'til midnight, hands were kept busy pulling
cotton from cotton bolls the Palmer family had piled
high as the ceiling in an empty room.
"What good fellowship!" Leon recalls, his memories as
thick as mist as he surveys the room in his mind's eye.
"No one thought about going home 'til the Opry went off
at 12; we only talked during commercials."
~
Leon and his brother Glynn enjoyed tagging along
with their father on trips to Curtis Tate's small
grocery store in Trezevant on Saturdays, where their
"absolute needs" were purchased "on the credit."
Arriving in their two-horse wagon, the boys would play
marbles and spin tops until around 4 p.m. when it was
time to go home.
"Wait a minute!" the boys would say, scrambling to the
store to spend the nickels each had been carrying all
day. On the way home, they'd rummage though the grocery
box while their dad drove the wagon.
"We found no goodies, just necessities like flour,
sugar, coffee, and coal oil for the lamps, as we didn't
get electricity in our area until about 1944 or 1945."
Leon and Glynn were the only Purvis children still in
school when, in 1941, the family moved to the Cobb
place, about two miles east of the Hollyleaf community.
Loyd was in Europe in the Army; Mildred was married and
her husband Bill Smith was fighting the Japanese in the
Pacific; Billy Joe had died at 17 months old with
colitis in 1938; Imogene quit school when she was 13;
and the youngest, Jimmy Lee, born in 1941, was just a
baby.
Argo School, better known as "Cross-eye", was about a
mile across the fields. Legend had it that several
women teachers had been run off by some of the older
boys, who at around 20 years old were more interested
in mischief and meanness than either learning or work,
and got their kicks out of seeing how fast they could
run off each new teacher. The problem was finally
solved when a "big, tall, ugly cross-eyed man" took the
job and got their attention.
"The students said they couldn't tell who he was
watching, so they all learned to behave," Leon laughs,
"Thus the school was referred to as Cross-eye until it
was torn down in the mid-'40s and everyone then was
bused to the city schools."
Leon ranked first in his class when he graduated from
the eighth grade in 1944, and also last, since he was
the only student in his class. His teachers, Rachel
Coleman Akin and, later Mozelle Pinson - both of whom
he was very fond - boarded with people who lived near
the school as "it wasn't feasible to go back and forth
to Trezevant or Jarrell Switch five days a week."
After moving to the Carl Wallace place, then back to
the Cobb place for a time, the family in 1945 moved
"into our own home built by Dad with a hammer, handsaw
and a square, little more."
Leon graduated from Trezevant High School in May 1948
and immediately went to work in a grocery store for
Curtis and Marg Tate called H and T Grocery, making
$12.50 per week. A couple of years later, Roy Watkins,
asked if he would like to cut meat for him in a larger
store just down the street.
"I told him I had no experience at this and he said, 'I
know that, that's why I want you; I'll teach you the
trade. The last two or three butchers thought they knew
how, but they were just botchers.' My starting pay was
$25.00 a week. Boy, what big money! I thought I would
fill up a corner in the local bank."
When he wasn't busy in the butcher shop, he helped bag
beans and other grocery items to load on John Bunt
Adams' "Doodle Wagon", a rolling grocery store mounted
on a wagon pulled by two big horses, through different
routes, five days a week. Later, a bob truck was able
to make the runs faster.
A few years later, Glynn King and Ben Everett, owners
of the U-Tote-Em grocery chain and KECO Milling
Company, bought the Watkins' store and retained Leon as
their butcher. After several months, he became the
chain's youngest manager at the age of 24, a position
he held about ten years.
Leon continued living on the family's 65-acre farm
until, in 1954, he married Wanda Gay Castleman of
Gleason, and moved to Trezevant. The couple had one
child, Leon Keith, born in 1957, and also raised Leon's
niece, Donna, from the age of three.
"We have two grandchildren living in Germantown:
Austin, age 15 and Lindsey, 11, says Leon, "and Donna
had two children, both girls: Monica Terry, 22 and
Sheena Tegethoff, 18. They seem just like
grandchildren, in fact, we taught them to call us
Granddaddy and Granny."
~
Between the years of 1947 and 1950, Leon and several
of his friends formed a country music band with Leon
singing, Hilliard Mann on mandolin, J.L. Rodgers on
steel guitar, and Millie Frances Burpe on rhythm
guitar. They played at community centers, picnics and
"just anywhere we were asked that didn't sell or allow
alcohol on the premises", as well as radio programs as
far away as Humboldt.
Leon and Hilliard later formed a gospel quartet called
the "Rhythmaires" with Leon singing first tenor, Fred
Gowan singing tenor and sometimes lead, Richard Welch
singing lead and other parts, and Mann singing bass.
Fred's wife, Patricia, was pianist.
"We had a good time singing at homecomings, revivals,
and community events and did a Sunday morning radio
broadcast over McKenzie's WHDM radio station for two or
three years, with the studio being under the old
McKenzie Hotel in a small section of the basement,"
Leon says. "After this group, I filled in for other
members of the McKenzie Quartet while some were out due
to illness. One long period was when Gillman Presson
was out with a throat problem."
In love with "gospel music and good clean country
music", Leon began attending country singings in
Carroll, Gibson, Weakley, Henry and Benton counties.
"Usually there were from one to three singings every
weekend within driving distance," he says. "Some were
all day singings with dinner on the ground. I know you
old timers know what I am talking about."
At the singings, Leon and Gay were called on regularly
to sing in quartets made up of people pulled from the
audience to "change up" the singing and give the
regular attractions a little rest.
"They seemed to call on the same ones nearly every
singing, and I said to the others, 'We need to get
together and practice a little and maybe sing some good
ole Southern Gospel songs.'"
Thus was formed the Happy Five Quartet, named by the
late J.T. Jones. Soon, the quartet was offered a
45-minute spot on WHDM radio station Sunday mornings
from 7:15 till 8:00, a tradition that continued from
1960 until 1995, nearly 35 years. The group was made up
of Leon, tenor; Gay, alto; Lewis Garner, bass; and
Donna Bates, lead or soprano. Some of the group's
pianists over the years were Nancy Hicks, Linda
Lawrence, Kay Joyner and Shirley Wade.
"During those 35 years, we also were usually found
singing somewhere in West Tennessee, Kentucky and
Arkansas," Leon relates fondly. "We would usually
travel in two or three cars; we never thought we could
afford a bus. I cherish those years as the best years
of my life. For years our radio program was shown on
McKenzie cable TV simultaneously with the radio. It was
pretty early to get up around 6:00 a.m. and dress in a
suit and tie for these programs, but it was worth it to
know we were doing the Lord's work."
~
Just when his days seemed most dim after losing Gay
unexpectedly on January 11, 1994, Leon was jolted into
renewed awareness by a customer at E.W. James Grocery
Store in McKenzie where he was manager in 1994.
"Carolyn said she was just going to forget about you,
if she could," Montez Pratt, Carolyn's sister,
admonished him.
He remembered having received a sympathy card from his
friend of many years ago. He had received an Easter
card from her in April as well: a beautiful sentiment
likening Christ's resurrection with his own loss.
He'd placed the sympathy card in a box along with "two
or three other hundred" and, still in shock after his
wife's death, had set the Easter card aside as well
after noting its inscription: "I live alone also. If
you would like to call me sometimes, or write, I would
like to hear from you."
"Best I can remember she said call if you want to,"
Leon advised Montez in the store. "I reckon I didn't
want to at the time, but if she feels that way about
it, I will."
He and Carolyn had met when she was just about 15, at a
"guitar pull" put on by her brother, Hubert Blackburn,
who was a friend of Leon's.
"She got word there was going to be a nice looking
young guitarist up there," he grins.
Despite the six-year difference in their ages, Leon
managed to take Carolyn on their first date to the 1952
Huntingdon fair, along with her sister and her husband
and children, who agreed to accompany them as
chaperones.
Another date had the couple, chosen from the dance
floor, singing "Goodnight Irene" in front of the band,
with Carolyn dressed in green taffeta. The dance was
held at the National Guard Armory, then located by the
old Wilker Brothers factory (now Vyn-All), which was
brand new at the time.
But when the couple ventured to Medina to go skating,
which, he stresses, in the 1940s and '50 s was a long
way from home, their trip home was delayed by "an awful
storm." When he pulled up in front of her house on
Church Avenue at 11 p.m., her parents were waiting.
Hauling her out of the car by her arm, her mother
scolded, "Young lady you've got some explaining to do!"
"This probably terminated our dating," Leon mused with
wide eyes and raised eyebrows. And it was just as well;
she and her family moved, not long afterwards, to
Niles, Michigan.
When he arrived home after speaking with Montez at the
store earlier in the day, he picked up the phone and
called Carolyn.
"This is Leon Purvis," he blurted, "Since you lived
down here we've really come out of the kinks. We've got
a Wal-Mart, and we've got a McDonalds. Now when you
(come home to visit) why don't we go get a big Mac?"
Answering softly, she replied, "I'd like that."
"I would too," he said firmly.
Although she returned to Tennessee each year to visit
members of her family, the two had seen each other on
only three occasions over the years: when she lost her
dad in 1968 and Leon and Gay sang at the funeral
service; ten years after that, when they also sang at
her mother's funeral, and in 1989, when her brother
Hubert died.
When Carolyn came for a visit in May, Leon - dressed in
a tie and with a nick on his face caused from his
nervousness while shaving - went to the door of her
sister's house with a dozen roses.
"She looked as pretty as she ever did, she was a doll!"
he exclaims.
After dinner that evening at the home of Carolyn's
niece and her husband, Jane and Kenny Carroll, the two
saw each other every day, including a trip to see the
Grand Ole Opry.
After getting together as often as possible over the
next few years, in April 1996 Leon surprised Carolyn
with an engagement ring when she came to visit.
He laughs, recalling he first struggled down the
hallway carrying a shirt box as if it were too heavy to
handle. Opening it, she found a man's shirt.
"Oh, I got the wrong box," he declared, coming back a
second time with a box about half the size of a
shoebox. She opened that box only to find another box
inside. After the third or fourth box, she finally got
down to the ring.
Leon got down on his knees at the couch to propose.
Crying, she said, "I thought I was going to have to ask
you."
 "We
squalled and hugged so you'd think we'd lost one of our
children," Leon laughs.
At the end of September, Carolyn quit her job at
American Rubber Company in LaPorte and moved in with
her sister until the couple married on October 12, 1996
in the Gleason Cumberland Presbyterian Church, where
Leon was choir leader for 31 years as well as being an
elder, Sunday School teacher and Sunday School
supervisor.
Carolyn had been alone for 25 years after her first
marriage ended in divorce. Her daughters Kim Lehman and
Shari Hutton, who live in LaPorte, and son Rick Hutton,
who resides in Lancaster, California, as well as Kim's
22-year-old son, Brannon Sneed, accepted Leon as their
own.
Choked up with love and gratitude, Leon manages to
express his feelings: "I just can't explain how good it
makes me feel. They love their mother to death, they
call every week... When we all get together it's a
ball; they keep something going all the time. They come
in here with their laughter and it's the best
medicine."
Carolyn went to work in the dietary department of
McKenzie's hospital for three years before retiring
three days before Leon in 2001. He retired from E.W.
James Grocery after 23 years, for a total of 53 years
in the grocery business.
"The Lord has blessed us; he's still blessing us," says
Leon.
After he regains a bit more strength after having four
bypasses this past September, the couple plans to
travel to California to visit Rick as well as other
locales.
Though they still attend singings regularly, "there's
not as many as there used to be," Leon laments, "the
young people are not interested and the old people are
dying out."
Leon is the assistant choir director of the Carroll
County RSVP Choir while Carolyn is one of its members.
"We sing at eight different nursing homes," he boasts
happily, "We go to one every Monday... We go to those
nursing homes expecting to be a blessing to somebody
and do you know who gets a blessing?
"We do!" he exclaims. "We leave with the biggest
blessing... Our weekend is not over until we get done
with our Monday services at the nursing home." |
|
