Truckin' on the Western Branch

I was a tomboy and had a close relationship with every tree in Churchland. I was a wanderer and loved every inch of Churchland. Old Porter Hardy would bring his stake body truck down to take us kids to his farm to pick out a watermelon to bring home. We spread newspapers on the back porch to eat the melons. There were only 11 children in the village then—the Coopers had the other six.

She graduated from Churchland in 1943, worked in the ticket office of the Seaboard Railway and met a sailor, Don Williamson, at the skating rink. She was 18.

We got married when he was home on survivor leave in August 1945 after his ship had been sunk under him. He never talked much about that. We were married on a Wednesday in his parents’ dining room in Clinton, Indiana. A neighbor sang “I Love You Truly.” My parents sent us $25 by wire. We didn’t have rings—but we had a three-layer cake with chalk figures of a bride and groom. We never had a lot of money but we had a lot of love and fun.

In 1945 I stayed with mother and daddy until we rented a three-room house on West Norfolk Road. Don rode a bike to work at Craney Island.

Betty Cooper Hunt Betty Cooper Hunt, born in 1931, was one of the six Cooper children who shared watermelon with Williamson. They lived where the Churchland post office is now. She remembered Pearl Harbor. December 7, 1941, was a cold, sunny Sunday, and we heard the news on our console Philco radio. President Roosevelt spoke. Then the blackouts and air raids started. We had to put dark things over the windows and shielded headlights. We were prepared for the long whistle of the air raids. Pig Point was close by, and we brought servicemen home for dinner after church in the old Centenary Methodist. Later our father had polio and we were quarantined—couldn’t leave the yard. He was left with one weak arm. My parents later bought a farm on Tyre Neck Road. I graduated from Churchland and was in nurses training when I met Jim Hunt—a bridge toll collector— who used to see me riding by with my boyfriend. Jim was in the Air Force in 1951 when we got married and we moved to Phoenix. We finally ended up in Crittenden and Jim worked at an oil refinery in Yorktown.

Eddie Russell : “I don’t know that you could have grown up in a happier place than Churchland.”

Mary Frances Ayers Fortson : “It was community looking out for community in the early 1950s.”

Betty Cooper Hunt (right) and her daughter Sherrie Gardner (left). Image by Sheally

Chris Hall : “Growing up in Churchland was something I’d wish for my children and grandchildren.”

Tom Parker : “Churchland was close knit—everyone knew everyone—that helped you walk a straight line.”

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