11/24/07 - NNHS Newsletter - I Won't Last a Day Without You “What we do not see, what most of us never suspect of existing, is the silent but irresistible power which comes to the rescue of those who fight on in the face of discouragement.” - Napoleon Hill (26 Oct 1883 - 8 Nov 1970)

Dear Friends and Schoolmates,   

   Today's theme comes not from my Magic Shower or from my Haunted Radio, but from these words which keep replaying in my mind.  It must be a message......

  From Norm Covert ('61) of MD - 11/23/07 - "Birthdays?":

Webdoll,

 

OOPS!! Thirty lashes with a wet noodle for me. Dyslexia setting in perhaps? I've misinformed you. Mother, Betsy Goodson Covert's (June '37 MD) birthday is Monday, Nov. 26th, Baby Sister Fayetta Covert Stansbury (Ferguson HS '72) is today, the 23rd. They both are forgiving as long as we don't mention the ages. Sorry you have to make yet another change.

 

Norm Covert ('61 MD)

   GIGGLES!!! OHHH, I do know that feeling, Normie! Thanks for letting me know! I've switched them over now:

http://www.nnhs65.00freehost.com/Happy-Birthday.html

BIRTHDAYS - BELATED, TODAY AND UPCOMING:

   Happy Belated Birthday to Fayetta Covert Stansbury (Ferguson HS - '72) of FL, whose birthday was actually yesterday!

   Happy Birthday today to      Sharon Hilsdon Bryant ('68) of VA!   Happy Birthday tomorrow to    Donnie Satisky ('56) of OR!  On Monday, we'll have another Three-fer: Betsy Goodson Covert (June '37) of MD,    Donna Price Devers ('66) of NC, AND    Diana Price Carter ('66) of WV!

   Many Happy Returns to you all!

http://www.nnhs65.00freehost.com/Happy-Birthday.html

GUEST BOOK SIGNERS:

1. Lynda Tosh ('68) of NC (soon to be VA) - 11/23/07:

   Thanks, Lynda! Come back anytime - and congratulations!

  From James Harris ('70) of MD - 11/22/07 - "Re: 11/22/07 - Happy Thanksgiving!":

   Thank you, James! I really appreciate your note!

      From Gloria Woolard Price (Hampton HS - '65) of FL - 11/22/07 - "Re: 11/22/07 - Happy Thanksgiving!":

Regarding the Daily Press article - 11/17/07, on "Where was the first Thanksgiving?"

According to a USA Today article, Nov 21:

Florida teacher chips away at Plymouth Rock Thanksgiving myth

Rocking the boat: Robyn Gioia maintains that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in St. Augustine, Fla.  Robyn Gioia doesn't look like a troublemaker. Far from it.  Gioia is a wife, mother and teacher, and her green eyes twinkle when she talks about her fifth-grade students at the Bolles School just north of here in Ponte Vedra.

But Gioia, 53, has written a children's book, and just the title is enough to peeve any Pilgrim: America's REAL First Thanksgiving.

"It was the publisher who put real in capital letters," she says, "but I think it's great."

What does REAL mean? Well, she's not talking turkey and cranberry sauce. She's talking a Spanish explorer who landed here on Sept. 8, 1565, and celebrated a feast of thanksgiving with Timucua Indians. They dined on bean soup.  If you do the math, it is 56 years before the Pilgrims sat down and shared a meal with natives at Plymouth Rock.

Who knew? Not even Gioia, until she attended a teachers' workshop two years ago and heard Michael Gannon, a retired history scholar from the University of Florida, tell the story of Pedro Menendez de Aviles.

Gannon, 80, first laid out the premise of an earlier Thanksgiving in his scholarly book The Cross in the Sand in 1965, but few picked up on it. He says his mention of Menendez's meal was a "throwaway line that lay fallow for 20 years."

That was, until a reporter for the Associated Press in 1985 exposed Gannon's academic findings to the world, which caused what Gannon remembers as "a storm of interest. I was on the phone for three days straight."

Traditionalists, especially in New England, dubbed him "The Grinch who stole Thanksgiving."  Gannon took it with good humor.

"I became rather famous at the time for saying that by the time the Pilgrims came to Plymouth, St. Augustine was up for urban renewal."
Gannon thinks the word is finally, but slowly, getting out, but he's well aware that the victors write the history books. And history, once written, is hard to change.  "The English wrote the history and established the traditions," he says. "That's life. Get over it."

But Gioia believes the rising Hispanic population in America could spark interest in the nation's Spanish heritage and by association, Gannon's findings.

Meanwhile, Gioia is firing the next shot across the Mayflower's bow.

After Gannon's talk, she thought an illustrated book was the perfect way to tell the first Thanksgiving story to her students. It seems to have worked. With them, at least.

When Gioia recently asked her students who believes the first Thanksgiving was in Florida, every hand in her classroom flew up in the air.

Off the page and into the kitchen

Gioia, who serves her own family bean soup on the Sept. 8 anniversary, has her work cut out for her elsewhere, however. Even on the site where Menendez's Thanksgiving feast is believed to have been held.

"I always thought the first Thanksgiving was at Plymouth Rock," says Betty McDaniel, a gift-shop clerk at the Ponce de Leon Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, which sits next door to Nombre de Dios Mission, where Menendez landed and celebrated with the natives after a Catholic Mass.

John Fraser owns the "Fountain of Youth" attraction and calls the where-was-the-first-Thanksgiving brouhaha "a ticklish issue."

"The people from the North just wouldn't believe it," he says when the idea of a Spanish Thanksgiving first surfaced in the press. "They just couldn't get it through their heads."

Martha Hird, a colleague of Fraser's at the site, thinks it might be as much Floridians' fault as anyone else.

"We just haven't had enough people to jump up and down and publish more books about this," she says.

Susan Parker, executive director of the St. Augustine Historical Society, says there's more to it than just getting the word out. She agrees with Gannon that written history is hard to change and adds that traditional accounts of America's past often come with "a Protestant twist," as that was the predominant culture.

"There's a tradition of diminishing the Catholic presence of our early history," Parker says.

But it also doesn't help that there's virtually no mention of the Thanksgiving feast anywhere in town. Not on the historic marker at the Menendez landing site —Tradition holds that the first Mass in the new colony was celebrated here — and not at the Government House Museum at the downtown Visitors Center. In 1565 Menendez established St. Augustine, named for the feast day on which he sighted land.

Not a word about Thanksgiving.

Bill Adams, director of Heritage Tourism for the City of St. Augustine, says people need to understand that much has happened in America's oldest city in the past four centuries.

"We're covering 400 years of history in the museum, and there are a lot of events we need to focus on. … We have so many firsts here, it's just one of the many."

He then voiced a sentiment of many St. Augustinians. "We're constantly overlooked and ignored … and we do a lousy job of marketing."

Gannon agrees that St. Augustinians are "somewhat reluctant to engage in such arguments" and are unsure about getting their facts straight.

"It's an area we need to work on," says Gioia. "Everyone I talk to doesn't know about it."

Or doesn't buy it. And that includes the city's tour guides.

Robert Makin drives an Old Town Trolley through St. Augustine, reciting the town's storied history. At Stop 17, the Menendez landing site, he talks about the founding of America's first permanent settlement but mentions nothing about a Thanksgiving feast.

"Well, it's very arguable," he says when asked. "I also don't think they called it Thanksgiving," he says. "You can't even call it Thanksgiving if it's not even English. Thanksgiving is an English word."

He then shrugged his shoulders as he drove on. "It's fine if they want to think that, I guess. It really doesn't matter."

"From what I can gather from Mike Gannon, who is very thorough, there was a Thanksgiving meal. And I think Menendez had sense enough to realize he had to work with these Indians. He was greatly outnumbered."

The folks at Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts, site of the 1621 Thanksgiving, acknowledge that most people visit their site with the belief that it's the birthplace of Thanksgiving.

"Plimoth Plantation prides itself in peeling back the layers on America's favorite holiday, but we never claim we held the first Thanksgiving," says Jennifer Monac, referring instead to the fact it's a national holiday decreed by Abraham Lincoln.

She's not sure any place can stake such a claim.

"What people celebrate today as Thanksgiving is pretty much a myth. It's nothing like what the people in Plymouth or Jamestown or St. Augustine, for that matter, celebrated."

So there.
Please pass the cranberry sauce.

   Thanks, Gloria! I did see that article, but it was just moments before I released the Thanksgiving issue, which was already quite lengthy.  I appreciate your bringing it to our attention!

  From Barbara Brewer ('69) of VA - 11/22/07 - "Hail to the military in the Middle East":

   Thank you, Barbara - and please express our love and appreciation to both your sons!

    From Jean Poole Burton ('64) of RI - 11/22/07 - "Fall....Carol everyone will love this!":

Rainbow Of Fall
Makes you wanna go on a road trip...doesn't it...

 

RAINBOWS OF FALL...

   These are gorgeous, Jean - Thanks so much!

     From Me ('65) of NC to        Dave Spriggs ('64) of VA- 11/23/07 - "Train Station and Post Office":

I just posted your fabulous new post cards on OOSG: http://www.nnhs65.00freehost.com/SITE-MAP.html      http://www.nnhs65.00freehost.com/old-stomping.html           http://www.nnhs65.00freehost.com/OOSG-S-Z.html                http://www.nnhs65.00freehost.com/train-station.html                http://www.nnhs65.00freehost.com/post-office.html
		1908	1908

    Do we have any idea when and why so much of that beautiful old train station was demolished?? 

   Thanks again, Captain!

         From Dave Spriggs ('64) of VA - 11/23/07 - "RE: Train Station and Post Office":

Not a clue.  I do recall as a child (ca. 1951) seeing the covered tracks extending out onto the pier, because that was interesting to a little boy.  Not so much the architecture of the station.

I am sure that some older alumni can tell us when the tower came down ... and perhaps why.

   Good thinking - thanks, Brown Eyes!

   "Anyone?  Anyone?"

      From one of my Famous Marines,  Herb Hice of MI, who served in the Pacific Theater during WWII -  11/23/07 - "Dear Carol / Dimples, Thanksgiving":

   Thank you for that pretty reminder verse, Herbie Darlin'!

HOLIDAY REUNION NEWS:

The NNHS Class of 1958 Holiday Gathering will be held Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 6:00 PM
(Dinner at 7:00 PM) at Mike's Place, An Irish Pub, (757-599-5500) 458 Warwick Village Shopping Center, (Hilton Village,
across from the Cedar Lane entrance to the Mariners' Museum), Newport News, VA 23601-3240.
CONTACT: Jwdvt@aol.com

The NNHS Class of 1957 Holiday Party will be held Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 6:00 PM
at Angelo's (Route 17), Newport News, VA.
CONTACT: Pabletz@aol.com

DATES TO REMEMBER:

   Y'all take care of each other!  TYPHOONS FOREVER!  We'll Always Have Buckroe!

                          Love to all, Carol 

==============================================

NNHS CLASS OF '65 WEB SITE: http://www.nnhs65.00freehost.com

PERSONAL WEB SITE: http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/cluckmeat

==============================================

Carol Buckley Harty
219 Four Ply Lane
Fayetteville, NC 29311-9305
910-488-9408

I Won't Last a Day Without You

(Carpenters)


Day after day, I must face a world of strangers
Where I don't belong, I'm not that strong
It's nice to know that there's someone I can turn to
Who will always care, you're always there

When there's no gettin' over that rainbow
When my smallest of dreams won't come true
I can take all the madness the world has to give
But I won't last a day without you

So many times when the city seems to be
Without a friendly face, a lonely place
It's nice to know that you'll be there if I need you
And you'll always smile, it's all worthwhile

When there's no gettin' over that rainbow
When my smallest of dreams won't come true
I can take all the madness the world has to give
But I won't last a day without you

Touch me and I end up singing
Trouble seems to up and disappear
You touch me with the love you're bringing
I can't really lose when you're near
When you're near, my love

If all my friends have forgotten half their promises
They're not unkind, just hard to find
One look at you and I know
That I must learn to live without the rest
I've found the best

When there's no gettin' over that rainbow
When my smallest of dreams won't come true
I can take all the madness the world has to give
But I won't last a day without you

When there's no gettin' over that rainbow
When my smallest of dreams won't come true
I can take all the madness the world has to give
But I won't last a day .............................without you

"I Won't Last a Day Without You" lyrics courtesy of http://users.cis.net/sammy/wontlast.htm - 11/23/07