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 Theirs is a girls club, and they're proud of it. Down to about a dozen regular members now, they're the "Benton Girls" -- proud graduates of former Benton High School, now torn down, but alive in the memories of the women who still call it their alma mater. "I have some of the old bricks from the school," said longtime member Eddye Vaye Lockey Davis, in whose Bossier City home the club meets each December for Christmas cheer. She graduated in '38, "and there were only 13 in my graduating class."
Now in their '70s and '80s, the women meet the third Thursday of each month, changing the member's house. The hostess gets to choose the restaurant for that meeting. This month, Davis chose seafood, at Red Lobster in Bossier City.
In the years before World War II, when most of the women graduated -- the youngest member, Barbara Grisham Bearden, hails from the class of '41 -- there were only 11 grades in state high schools.
"When I graduated, I was only 16," said Jo Hall Oden, class of '40. Her father was Dr. J.B. Hall, who practiced more than 50 years, delivered Davis "and treated most of the others here at some time in their lives," his daughter said.
While most of the women are former students, one was their teacher.
"These were my students -- they were all good ones, of course," Moriece Gleason said. "I was a brand-new teacher, and was not all that many years older than them. And now the years have all disappeared -- we're all about the same age now."
Like most of the members of the lunch club, Gleason has a story to tell. Shortly after World War II began, she quit teaching and joined the Navy. After 28 years in service, she retired, earned a doctorate and took up teaching again, this time at the university level. She taught one year at LSU, then served 11 years at LSUS, retiring from there in 1978.
She has a good Navy tale to tell.
"Once, on a submarine tied up to the dock in New Orleans, I became so seasick I had to leave," she said. "I never lived that down."
To be fair, the submarine was moving, because of choppy water from a storm.
"It was moving up and down, back and forth -- every direction but forward," she said.
"We don't ever lack for something to talk about," Oden said.
Only one of the women -- Vicky Cade Fischer, class of '37 -- is still married. The rest -- including Fischer's older sister, Emmaline Cade Luttrell, '31 -- are widowed, divorced or never married.
Fischer has been married twice. Her first husband, whom she met through Barksdale Air Force Base, died in a car wreck in England in 1953. She remarried -- again "to another German from Barksdale" -- and next November will celebrate her golden anniversary. And she just recently became a great-great-grandmother.
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The Shreveport Times December 25, 2004 |
