By Carol W. Pelosi
For at least three decades (I think) one of the winter holiday season traditions was the Christmas Tea in the Community House sponsored by the Wake Forest Home Demonstration Club. Maybe it was only two decades, but we do have a picture of the tea in 1971 with Marie Joyner and her grand-nephew Paul Parker.
Does anyone remember or know for sure when the tea began and when it ended? Do we still have members of the club alive and kicking? When did the Home Demonstration Club here begin and end? Why?
It was a very pleasant tradition, though probably quite hectic for the club members who had to be sure to have enough tea – and coffee and maybe soft drinks for 100 or so people as well as dainty sandwiches, Christmas cookies and other goodies.
I know there was a very large tree which also served as the focal point and decoration for all the other meetings and parties and reunions at the Community House. And I think I know because someone told me years ago that the tree at times or once was entirely decorated with the imaginative items Marie Joyner created out of, well, trash. She could turn a sardine tin into an ornament.
Marie died in 2001, but she still is remembered today by many who knew her and of course by her family.
This is what I know; please fill in the blanks with what you know.
Marie came to Wake Forest as a teenager or very young woman to become an operator with the Home Telephone & Telegram Company that was housed in the basement of the Holding drugstore. Other operators were Ruby Reid and Cora Shearon, but the list has to be longer.
She met Millard “Shorty” Joyner and the Joyner family who had several enterprises in the Wilkinson building nearby, including showing the very new moving pictures. Marie became the piano player for those movies.
Think about what that entailed for a moment. She had to watch the screen and translate the action into music instantly. The theme from “The William Tell Overture” for chase scenes, tinkly little notes when someone was walking quietly, crashing chords for action, and so on. Marie had to be an excellent pianist and inventive, which she proved throughout her life.
She played Santa Claus at the B&S Department Store and perhaps in other stores or venues. She was involved in clubs – the Woman’s Club? – and in civic activities. I would love to have friends or family tell me of her other activities.
I know she worked hard. What jobs did she hold? When I think of Marie I think of adjectives like verve and independent and enthusiastic and dogged. What do you remember about her?
I remember her mostly because she and Shorty lived in a large white house on South White Street across the street from the Wake Weekly office when I worked there. She came in to bring Peggy and Bob Allen pecans she had picked up from her pecan trees or a few slices of a cake she had made or just to talk with them.
We were all distressed when the house burned a few years after Shorty died. Marie escaped but was terribly shaken. I don’t know where she lived afterward but I knew that she drove to the cemetery every day to drive by his grave and remember.
We do have to keep alive the memories of the people who made this town remarkable. And maybe someone can tell me why and when the Christmas Tea and the Home Demonstration Club ended.
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6 Responses
I love synchronicity. I had gone to visit Shirley Wooten, my neighbor, and had commented on remembering my first Christmas in Wake Forest. She and I reminisced about the Christmas Tea, and I had wondered with her about what happened to all the Christmas Tree ornaments. We remembered the fire, but couldn’t remember where Marie went after that. So glad to get all the information from Frank and John.
I remember the tea as a child going with my Great Grandmother Ora Lee Gill. I remember the little cucumber sandwiches and all the homemade cookies and the BIG tree. I still have ornaments that Marie made and gave to me in the 90’s. I gained a great deal of history from Marie…the good, the bad and the ugly. She & I would eat lunch together almost everyday at The Border.
Jimmy Allen would be a good resource for information about Jimmy. Also Myra Parker, Paul’s mother, who was Shortys niece. My Mother was an active member of the Home Demonstration Club and always involved in the Christmas Tea. One of her jobs was decorating the large stone mantels in the Community House. That holiday decor was also left in place for all December meetings The Community Christmas Dinner was held there several years. I think as members got older the tasks of their projects was just too much for a decreasing membership.
I sang a solo at the Tea when I was in Mrs. Wiggins’ kindergarten – probably 1960, so I know it was in place at that point.
I knew Marie Joyner in the late 1990’s, after she moved into a house in Glen Royall Mill Village. She must have been in her late 80s’ by then – or older – but she still went through life at a run. What a quick wit she had! After her house on S. White St. burned but before it was demolished, she began selling off portions of its architectural features. I bought her living room mantel, her newel post and staircase balustrade, a dining room door and a floor safe. Everything but the floor safe was restored and installed in my brother’s new house in Summerfield, NC. I still have the safe. She even sold me the light fixture that hung outside her garage, which now hangs outside my shed. She was one tough negotiator, and I paid up. After Marie moved into the Mill Village she took so many of her meals at The Border Restaurant that they hung her picture over the table she used on every visit. It hangs there yet.
Another operator was Mamie Knight.
Marie made all of the chili served at Shorty’s as long as Shorty Lived, and maybe longer.
Another interesting fact and rumor-fact: for many years all cash-mostly coins- paid for items at Shorty’s was thrown in a tin lard stand on the floor below the cash register-the staff were so busy fixing hot dogs etc that they didn’t take time to put the cash in the register-it was a mechanical register, and worked slowly; rumor: Shorty took it home every night and Marie counted it every day, deposited all the pennies, nickels and dimes, and kept the quarters and half dollars.
Once upon a time the Woman’s club, the Garden Club and the Home Demonstration Clubs had the same members-all for one and one for all! Ms Susie Powell started the Garden Club in the 20’s. The Home Demonstration Club was organized teach ladies how to use electric stoves and all the other wonderful electric appliances that came with electricity.
My somewhat educated guess is that Wake Electric sponsored it, possibly with grants from the REA. I know that Ms Stella Forest (wife of Rufus) served as the Home Demonstration Agent and Home Economics Teacher at Wake Forest High School The Home Economics Classroom-where Sylvia Shepard later taught Science after the new High School was built in 1958. The room had refrigerators, stoves washing machines, sewing machines etc that were replaced every year (sounds like federal money) so the students were acclimated to the latest models. For well into the 1950’s the Home Demonstration Club met there in the evenings when ladies from the community could participate.
Carol, did you encounter any of this when you reported your history of WEMC?