Tag: charlotte nc

What would a hotel want with an iron lung?

Iron lung — what a name. The recent reissue of “Breath: Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung” by Martha Mason made me wonder about other surviving iron lungs. This one sure has a curious provenance.

Even at the height of the polio epidemic, why would a “Charlotte Lifesaving Crew” need an iron lung? And why would it have wound up at the Mecklenburg Hotel?

Here’s what Anne Anderson, curator of East Carolina University’s Country Doctor Museum in Bailey, has to offer:

“It is unclear how the Mecklenburg Hotel came to possess the iron lung. It was gifted to the Museum in 1998. [The hotel closed in 1975.] I believe the “Charlotte Life Saving Crew” refers not to Charlotte, N.C., but to the Charlotte Life Saving Station on Lake Ontario near Rochester, N.Y. This station was eventually taken over by the U.S. Coast Guard, and a history of the station indicates they had mobile life saving equipment at the facility. Perhaps this included the iron lung, as these respirators were known to help regulate the breathing of divers and rescue victims….

“Hand-written notes made on adhesive bandages on the exterior of the iron lung lead me to think it might have been used in a hospital setting at some point. [One message reads], ‘Please leave the light off at all times unless needed for treatment or observation.’

“Many of our older guests recognize the iron lung right away and will share stories with us about their personal, or a loved one’s, experience with polio. Alternatively, many of our youngest guests (school children) have never heard of polio and guess the iron lung is a washing machine or a tanning bed.”

Mighty was the mouse, less so the governor

“North Carolinians assembled in an auditorium at Charlotte one evening last week to see and hear what sort of person was Mrs. Nellie Tayloe Ross, the woman whom Wyoming elected three years ago to fill out her deceased husband’s term as Governor (1925-27).

“Mrs. Ross soon demonstrated her femininity. Down an aisle, terrified by the surrounding forest of North Carolina feet and ankles, scampered a mouse. ‘If I appear a bit disconcerted,’ shrilled Mrs. Ross, ‘It’s because a woman may be a governor but she’s always afraid of a mouse. If it comes up here I’m going to jump on the TABLE!’ The mouse mounted. So did Mrs. Ross.”

— From Time magazine, April 2, 1928

What NC cities boroughed from NYC

Until recently I knew only about Charlotte’s Brooklyn neighborhood, not about Raleigh’s or Wilmington’s. Is this nomencluster anything more than coincidence? Does the name appear elsewhere in North Carolina? (If so, it avoided Michael Hill’s exhaustive expansion of the Gazetteer.)

The Brooklyn (New York) Public Library offers this entertaining look at its “Brooklyn (non New York)” files, but no mention is made of North Carolina neighborhoods.

None of these, of course, is North Carolina’s most famous Brooklyn.

Charlotte changes its mind about Lindbergh

On this day in 1941: Reacting to Charles Lindbergh’s opposition to United States involvement in the war against Germany, Charlotte City Council changes the name of Lindbergh Drive to Avon Terrace.

A property owner had complained to the city that “judging from the man’s stand in regard to his country, he does not deserve to have a street in Charlotte named for him.”

‘There’s no place like Charlotte’ (and he’s glad)

On this day in 1986: New York architect Robert A.M. Stern, host of PBS’s “Pride of Place” series, tours downtown Charlotte and pronounces it “the ugliest collection of third-rate buildings in America. Charlotte has defined a type unto itself — a town that has grown very fast in a very mediocre way. There’s no place like Charlotte.”

For FDR, ‘the greatest tribute — utter silence’

“Franklin Roosevelt, honorably discharged from all his wars, rode slowly through Charlotte’s sorrowing thousands last night….

“Stretching the length of the railway station and packing the streets that opened out upon the tracks, the people… paid him the greatest tribute they knew — utter silence.

“As the crowd awaited the arrival of the train, they stood quietly and talked in low tones. And as it came slowly through, the only noise was that of the soldiers as they brought their rifles smartly to the salute.

“When the train had passed, and only a glimpse could be caught of the great American flag that covered the copper casket in which lay the body of the fallen chief, the crowd, still without a discordant word, turned and went away.

“As some 40 singers from the various churches… began singing ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ and ‘My Faith Looks Up to Thee,’ hats went off all up and down the tracks.

“Farther down the tracks at the other end of the station, a Negro group sang spirituals. For Negroes were there, too, hundreds of them, paying their tribute to the man whom hey looked upon as the best friend they ever had in the White House.”

— From “Sorrowing Charlotte Thousands Pay Final Homage to Roosevelt” by LeGette Blythe, Charlotte Observer, April 14, 1945

Blythe, a prolific newspaperman and historian, was the grandfather of Will Blythe, author of “To Hate Like This Is to be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry” (2006).

Babe Ruth pays memorable visit to Charlotte

On this day in 1926: Babe Ruth visits Charlotte for a spring training exhibition and sets the town on its ear.

Before the game he gives the local press a brief hotel-room interview. Reclining nude beneath a sheet and smoking a large cigar, he remarks on Southern women (“all they were cracked up to be”) and the demands of celebrity (“Not exactly annoying. One gets used to it. Doesn’t one?”).

A crowd of 4,000 jams Wearn Field to see the potent Yankees toy with the Brooklyn Robins (later Dodgers). To give Ruth’s legion of admiring kids a better look, the Yankees move him from right field to left. They swarm out of the stands and spill into the outfield.

In the seventh inning Ruth grants the crowd its wish. In the words of Observer sports columnist Jake Wade: “Ruth had previously singled, but that only whetted the appetite of the hungry mob. They had come from miles around to see Babe Ruth knock a home run. Nothing else would satisfy them.

“The Bambino took his stout stand at the plate. With the air tense with excitement, he slammed one of Williams’ fast ones out of the park, bringing home Paschal and Gehrig ahead of him. Immediately after the smash of the Bam, the crowds began to file out of the grandstand. Everybody was happy.”

April 8, 1926: Babe Ruth visits Charlotte for a spring training exhibition and sets the town on its ear.

Before the game he gives the local press a brief hotel-room interview. Reclining nude beneath a sheet and smoking a large cigar, he remarks on Southern women (“all they were cracked up to be”) and the demands of celebrity (“Not exactly annoying. One gets used to it. Doesn’t one?”).

A crowd of 4,000 jams Wearn Field to see the potent Yankees toy with the Brooklyn Robins (later Dodgers). To give Ruth’s legion of admiring kids a better look, the Yankees move him from right field to left. They swarm out of the stands and spill into the outfield.

In the seventh inning Ruth grants the crowd its wish. In the words of Observer sports columnist Jake Wade: “Ruth had previously singled, but that only whetted the appetite of the hungry mob. They had come from miles around to see Babe Ruth knock a home run. Nothing else would satisfy them.

“The Bambino took his stout stand at the plate. With the air tense with excitement, he slammed one of Williams’ fast ones out of the park, bringing home Paschal and Gehrig ahead of him. Immediately after the smash of the Bam, the crowds began to file out of the grandstand. Everybody was happy.”

Goodbye, guppies — here comes fluoridation!

On this day in 1949: Mayor Herbert Baxter throws the switch on a machine that ostensibly begins pumping fluoride into Charlotte’s water supply. In reality, the media event is a ruse designed to flush out anti-fluoridation hysteria. Indeed, complaints quickly begin pouring in about hair falling out and pet fish dying.

A month later the city will reveal the truth, and Charlotte really does become the first city in the South and the 14th in the nation to fluoridate.

Charlotte went ‘off its rocker’ for Tallulah

“Tallulah [Bankhead]’s last ‘Private Lives’ tour [in 1950] was blighted by her dissipation…drinking, sniffing cocaine and smoking pot.

“But the show again did sensational business.  ‘A box office riot,’ Variety reported from Charlotte, North Carolina. ‘Town has gone off its rocker.’  Tallulah’s… performance had been sold out weeks in advance. Tallulah had said she wouldn’t do two performances on a one-day stop, but after the mayor appealed to her, she agreed to to add a matinee.”

— From “Tallulah! The Life and Times of a Leading Lady” (2008) by Joel Lobenthal

“Looped,” starring Valerie Harper as Tallulah circa 1965, opened this week on Broadway.