TO THY KINGDOM COME

The people of Meeks, Georgia were in general, regular, faithful, church going folk. And they believed that when their lives were over, they would go to God’s kingdom.  

That thought was not in the heads of the Odom brothers as they were playing around the sawmill of Linton Hutcheson near the town of Meeks, in southeastern Johnson County.  It was a cool, cloudy day with a slight threat of rain on the February 16, 1938, seventy five years ago this week.

Lamar Odom and his younger brother Lanier, the younger of six sons of Mrs. George R. Odom,  were supposed to be in school that day.  Maybe they were playing hooky and maybe they had a break from the school work.   The boys were playing close to the boiler, against the stern and wise advice of one of the mill hands.  

Linton Hutcheson, a former Johnson County School Superintendent, was standing nearby, talking to Remer Hatcher.  Clarence Pool, Lawton Smith, and Grover Watkins were close by, going about their business just before high noon.

Grover Watkins’ fifteen-year-old son, A.J., was firing the boiler when he noticed steam coming out of a crack.  Mill owner Hutcheson was summoned and ordered his men to allow continue operating the boiler until all the steam ran out after which they were instructed to shut down the operation, according to a report published in the Swainsboro Forest Blade.

All of a sudden and without a hint of any warning, a massive explosion blasted the mill into kingdom come.   

Lamar and Lanier Odom, ages 15 and 8, were instantly killed as they were hurled nearly a hundred feet away in an imperceptible instant, their heads partially ripped from their bodies.   Hutcheson was unharmed, though the cant hook in his hand was split into several pieces.   Remer Hatcher, just 10 days removed from his 51st birthday, was not so fortunate.  

“It was the most horrible thing I ever saw,” sobbed Grover Watkins.  

His son’s body, badly mangled and severely scalded was retrieved from a fence forty yards from where he was standing at the time of the blast. 

“Mr. Hutcheson and I were standing within a few feet of Remus Hatcher at the time of the explosion.  I could have reached out and touched him.  He was killed, but neither Mr. Hutcheson nor myself was even scratched,” concluded Watkins, who jumped into a sawdust pit and escape injury from enfilading bricks as they rained down for hundreds of yards in all directions.   

Those who witnessed the explosion felt the concussions from hundreds of yards away.  The report of the blast, which completed obliterated the mill,  was heard as far as four miles away.  Those who knew the power they saw unleashed, estimated that the detonation was the equivalent of the  explosive power of a ton of dynamite. 

To understand the massive power of the blast, the 4000- pound boiler, equivalent in weight to two Volkswagen Beetles,  was found 200 feet away.  Whole and broken bricks, as swell as splintered shards of timbers were found 500 yards from where they once formed the sawmill.  Edsel Flanders, climbed on top of the bursted boiler, waiving a handkerchief  for a Courier Herald photographer.  Five hundred feet away, a self-appointed investigator found a 200-pound section of the smoke stack which flew in the opposite direction from the boiler.   

After he gathered his wits, Hutcheson surmised that the explosion was the result of  an onrush of cold water into the boiling hot boiler.  When the water level inside of the boiler was below a critical level, the influx of cold water, resulted in the massive blast.

Curious onlookers rushed to the scene from all parts of the surrounding countryside.  To some, it looked like a war zone.  A deafening silence fell over those who gathered around when a reporter picked up a shining object. Among the bits, pieces and smithereens was what  turned out to be the lunch pail of young Watkins.   In the wake of the calamity which had rocked the town, a pair of shoes belonging to one of the Odom boys was found lying against a pillar of a nearby cotton warehouse.

Watkins and Hatcher were taken by vehicle toward a hospital in Dublin.  The less seriously injured workers, like Jonah Mathews who was hit by a flying brick,  were taken to Wrightsville for treatment.    Hatcher, a lifelong, prominent resident of Meeks, died along the way in the vicinity of Carter’s Chapel Church in eastern Laurens County.  

Young Watkins made it to Claxton Hospital in Dublin alive, but just barely.  Not soon after his arrival, he was pronounced dead by Dr. John A. Bell, who reported the horrible affair to the Dublin Courier Herald, which immediately spread the news around the state in its Wednesday afternoon edition.

Four funerals followed.

The Odom boys were buried in the Gumlog Baptist Church Cemetery in nearby Kite, Georgia.  Interestingly, their grave markers do not appear on a list of persons buried there.  Hatcher was buried, also nearby in the cemetery at Sardis Baptist Church.   Watkins was laid to rest at the cemetery of Poplar Springs Methodist Church, between Adrian and Scott.

And today, some seventy five years later, when there are few people alive who remembered that fateful February day, there are still those who have heard the stories and those who still tell the stories,  stories of the day that the Kingdom came down from the heavens to take four of their men and boys home.

WILLIAM ROUNTREE

Emissary from Emanuel

William Rountree made his life as he  traveled around the world seeking peaceful relations with the United States.  This native of Swainsboro served for more than a quarter of a century as one of our country's diplomats and  ambassadors to countries in the Middle East, Africa and South America in a time when the Earth was a ticking political, social and military time bomb.  This is his story.

William M. Rountree was born in the capital of Emanuel County on March 28, 1917 - a son of Clerk of County Court William M. Rountree, Sr. and his bride, Clyde Brannan. 

William's father died when he was still a toddler. The Rountrees remained in Swainsboro until 1923, when they moved to Atlanta, where William graduated from high school.  

After graduation, Rountree moved north to Washington, D.C., where he landed a job with the United States Treasury Department -  thanks to the assistance of Georgia Senator, Walter F. George.

In 1941, Rountree was appointed to a task force by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to formulate plans for the creation of an agency to administer the lend-lease program.  To top off his education, Rountree graduated from Columbia University just before the beginning of World War II. 

Rountree made his first major trip overseas in 1942 to Cairo, Egypt, where he worked with the British for the remainder of World War II.  It was during the war years when Rountree began to travel to most of the counties in the Middle East.

"I came back to Washington as special assistant and economic advisor to the Director of the NEA Bureau," recalled the newly appointed diplomat, who began to receive impressive assignments in Greece and  throughout the countries of the Mediterranean Sea as the United States assumed her role as the leader of the Free World. 

"I had not viewed our role as being the world's policeman, nor do I think President Truman did. But I think the responsibilities that were thrust upon us at the end of World War II required that we do many things in many parts of the world that were new to our philosophy," said Rountree in an interview with Niel M. Johnson of the Harry S. Truman Library.

In 1948, Rountree was directed to return to Washington to serve as  Deputy Director and later as Director of the Office of Greek, Turkish and Iranian Affairs. Later as Director of the Office of Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs, the Emanuel Countian worked with the British and other countries in stabilizing the region militarily, politically and economically.  In particular, he helped to stabilize the Middle Eastern oil industry from political agitation emanating from within and from outside the region. 

The ascent up the chain of command in the State Department  came quite easy to Rountree, who served as Counselor and Deputy Chief of Mission in Tehran from 1953 to '55 and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs from 1955-59. Rountree's region included Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Ceylon.

President Dwight Eisenhower appointed the Georgian as Ambassador to Pakistan in 1959.  After three years, Ambassador Rountree was named by President John F. Kennedy as the new ambassador to the North African country of Sudan.  After another three-year term, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Rountree as our country's ambassador to South Africa, where he served until 1970.  Rountree's last three years of this 15-year tenure as an ambassador were spent closer to home in  South America as United States Ambassador to Brazil. 

As The Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, Mr. Rountree was deeply involved in the 1956 Suez crisis and in the 1958 uncivil tumult in Lebanon. Just before Christmas in 1958, a roguish mob threw eggs, mud balls and rocks at him in effort to force him out of Iraq. Of all of situations which Ambassador Rountree had to deal with, the most difficult was the tense relationship with Iran.  

"We always had influence with the Shah, but not a compelling influence. That is, the Shah always valued his relations with the United States, and enjoyed, during his life, remarkably good relations with every American administration," Rountree recalled. 

"Many people overestimate the extent to which American influence can be effective in any given country. Our advice to the Shah over the years could have been better, but on the other hand, if the Shah had adhered to the advice which he received from us, Iran would have been in a much better position at the time of the his demise. In other words, I do not go along with the idea that his failure was the result of the lack of good advice from the United States," the Ambassador concluded.

While serving as Ambassador to South Africa in the late 1960s,  Rountree had to deal with the bitterly divisive issue of Apartheid.

"The United States has strongly opposed Apartheid, and every administration has voiced that opposition in one form or another. Certainly, when I was there during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, part of my duty and responsibility was to make clear United States objection to Apartheid and the principle of that kind of discrimination. We joined with the international community generally in imposing certain restrictions in relationships, and in refusing to ship military or police equipment to South Africa. Our opposition was reflected in the United Nations, at the International Court, and elsewhere," Rountree asserted in the Truman Library interview.

Rountree had favorable opinion of the way in which the United States instantly recognized the State of Israel in one of the more momentous foreign relations matters of the 20th Century.

"President Truman made some of the most courageous and correct decisions of any President dealing with international relations. I have nothing but admiration for his decisions on Greece and Turkey, which we've discussed here, and also on NATO, the Marshall Plan, Point IV, and Korea," said Rountree in reflecting on his career in the 1950s.

After retiring in 1973, Ambassador Rountree, who became a close and trusted  aide of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, retired to Florida.  He died on November 3, 1995 in a Gainesville hospital.

ORIE BOWER

The Lawyer Poet of the Rockies

Orie Bower had a way with words.  Whether in the courtroom or in the composition of poetry, this Wilkinson County native was known across the country in his latter years as the "The Lawyer Poet of the Rockies."

He grew up in the red clay, pine studded hills of the Georgia's Fall Line and lived his latter and most prolific poetry writing time in the magnificent blue hazed Rocky Mountains of the American west.   

Orie Bower penned poems about the grand and glorious armies of the South and the Lost Cause.  He composed poetry in his youth, but was quick to say that those early rhymes were all too  elementary.

Isaac Oren Bower, Orie for short, was born on May 26, 1850 in Irwinton, Georgia, the county seat of Wilkinson County.  His father, Judge James Cuthbert Bower, was an attorney and Judge of the Court of Ordinary, which then had jurisdiction over Probate matters, marriages and county business affairs. His mother, Martha E. Davis, was a daughter of Oren Davis. 

Although his father was opposed to secession,  Judge James Cuthbert Bower was an ardent supporter of the Confederacy after the war began.  Orie, only 14 years of age, would often go on recruiting missions with his father to urge local men who were becoming of military age to fight for the South to stem the rising blue tide of the Union Army as it was steam rolling across the state from the North to the sea.  That tide rushed through Irwinton just after Thanksgiving in the fall of 1864.  The war would later have a abiding impact on Orie, especially in his poetry. 

Orie attended school from the age of six until seventeen, when he graduated from Talmadge Institute in Irwinton.  The leading men of the community hired well educated Northern teachers to teach the more elite children of the community with the most modern educational methods.

But, Orie wanted no part of books and mathematical exercises.  He wanted to fish on sunny days and on cools nights, hunt opossums and racoons.

Living somewhat of a "Tom Sawyer" like childhood, Orie became enchanted with a young mulatto slave, "Wash."   "Wash" was a master teller of tales, ghosts stories and Negro folk legends, much in the style of Joel Chandler Harris's "Uncle Remus" stories.  

Orie desperately wanted to engage in the practice of law.  So, after a year to find himself in the paradise of Florida, he began the study of law in his father's Irwinton law office.  At the age of nineteen, Orie Bower was admitted to the bar in the Superior Court of Baldwin County.    Soon the life he had dreamed of, practicing law along side his father, was swept away by the economic tidal waves of Reconstruction and national financial crises which followed.   

Orie decided that he wanted to go to college in Lexington, Virginia at Washington College, where his hero,  General Robert E. Lee, was serving as president. Bower graduated from the illustrious institution, some six months prior to the death of General Lee, one of the most beloved and revered generals in American history. 

Said to have possessed uncanny abilities to perceive character and determine the behavior of human nature, Orie was often called upon to take on cases all around the country.  In his native home, Orie served as a Master of the local Masonic lodge, Justice of the Peace, a member of the school and Mayor of Irwinton, posts he held before the age of thirty.

  

When his health failed him, Bower reluctantly made the fateful decision to move to a healthier, drier climate.  So, it was off to a new life in Texas with his wife Olive, his four oldest children, his worldly possessions and his law books, in tow. 

From Celburne, Texas, where his 5th child, Bertie was born in 1878,  Orie's travels led him to Old Mexico, Arizona and California.  To help pay the bills of his family, Bower took a job in the newspaper business as a traveling correspondent of several daily newspapers of the West.  He even spent a year working with the Law Department of the Abstract and Title Insurance Company of Los Angeles, keeping track of the ever changing ownership of land in the burgeoning West.  All the while, Orie continued to practice law, from the Mexican Border to the silver mad metropolis of Denver.  

As he grew older and his pace slowed down, Orie's thoughts turned back to the rolling hills of home and of his old friend Wash, telling his tales by the dwindling early morning campfires.  He thought of the good fishing holes and hunting wild game.  He recalled the sounds of the mockingbird's song, mourning whip-poor-wills and constantly chirping katydids - all things that were once wonderful when he was young and carefree. 

Orie's poetical inspirations erupted.  Many in his family had written poetry.  Some say as many of six members of the Bower family had penned published verses.  

Although Orie had written many poems, most of which he thought unworthy of consideration in his youth, it was during his sickly, invalid years when Orie began to turn out one poem after another.  His major work, "T'was ‘64 in Dixie," was a compilation of poems about the War Between the States. It was so long, 8,000 words, that Orie broke it down into subtitles, like "Noble Yankee Dead," "Faded Flowers," "Southern Girls," "The Yankee Cat"  and "Who Wave's the Bloody Shirt?"

It didn't take long at all for Orie's epic poem to be noticed by newspaper editors around the West.  Rienzi M. Johnston, who was born across the Oconee River from Wilkinson, County in Washington County  a year before Orie was born, was the prominent editor of the Houston Daily Post.  Johnston, who would later serve a short term as a United States Senator, published the entire poem in eight issues.  It was Johnston who first penned the moniker of "The Dixie Poet" or "The Lawyer Poet of the Rockies" on Bower.

There is no available space in this column, let alone in this entire issue, to republish the poetry of Orie Bower. To read a compilation of the poetry of Orie Bower, go to: http://www.pdftitles.com/book/15458/dixie-poems.

Orie Bower, who died in Nov. 1901, in  Harrison, Arkansas, spent the last three decades of his life, traveling around the West, looking for a cure for the illnesses which plagued his body,  He never found a physical cure for his maladies.  What he did find was something much more mentally fulfilling and of much more lasting consequence.  He observed and experienced a wonderful introspective life peering at the wonders of nature and writing of  the glories and horrors of war.  From time to time, Orie even took time to speak out on issues which he saw as harmful, the  ways of corrupt politicians for one example.  He even took the time to write about the funny things in the world.

So Orie Bower, may you live forever in the blue hazed mountains of the Rockies and the clear creeks of the green Georgia forests.