Irma Henderson Smathers was born in Madison County in 1910 to Carlene “Jenny”and Logan Henderson. Growing up in Marshall, “Irma painted her dolls with Mercurochrome and did surgery and suturing on their sawdust bodies. She told everyone she was going to be a doctor. They said, “No, dear, you mean you are going to be a
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Swannanoa native Wade Martin, who was known nationally for his woodcarving abilities. Click here if you haven’t read it. While I was writing about Wade Martin, I was surprised to read that he was also known of as a great baseball player. Because I was staying focused on Wade’s
Wade “Gob” Hampton Martin was born in 1920, the son of Marcus Lafayette and Callie Holloway Martin. He had four brothers, Edsel, Wayne, Fred and Quintin and one sister, Zenobia. All of them carved. In the early 1930s the family moved from Andrews, N.C. to Swannanoa, N.C. Wade was nine at the time and grew
Our fearless leader, Laura Gaskin, is retiring from Pack Memorial Library after 24 years of dedicated service. Laura has been the Head Librarian here for most of that time, but she cut her teeth as the first Special Collections Librarian at Pack. It’s staggering to think about the work and dedication it must have taken to process, organize, and
A friend and loyal supporter of our HeardTell blog sent last week’s post on the Pack Square weather kiosk to Frank Quinlan, a retired professor from UNCA’s Atmospheric Sciences Department. Mr. Quinlan, who was one of several people writing us back saying that the kiosk was new information to them, also sent us back one of our photographs in the
One day recently, a traveler from Switzerland came into Pack Memorial Library to talk about Asheville’s weather kiosk. Weather kiosk? Sure enough, the gentleman pulled out several photos of Pack Square that he’d printed from the library’s web site and there it was. As familiar as those photos were, I had never noticed the blocky
Can you identify the locations of these architectural details? They can be found adorning some of Asheville’s best loved historic buildings. The buildings will be identified at the bottom of this post. We’ll begin with some that should be easy to identify. All of these photos, plus THOUSANDS! and THOUSANDS! more were donated to the NC Collection by our
The Friends of the North Carolina Room sponsored a presentation, “Let’s Talk About Anthony Lord” on Thursday, August 28, 2014. Seventy-five people attended the event and got to know more about Lord’s life, profession, his many avocations and the effect his life had on Asheville. It is a hard task to recount what five close