Clayton - Person Sheet
Clayton - Person Sheet
NameCAWTHORNE, Barbara Ann 
Birth Dateabt 1931 Age: 92
Birth PlaceLynchburg, Virginia
FlagsClarke Lineage
Spouses
Birth Date10 Jul 1927
Birth PlaceDraper, Rockingham County, North Carolina
OccupationTelevision Broadcaster
Death Date8 Jan 2012 Age: 84
Death PlaceBryn Mawr, Delaware County, Pennsylvania
FlagsClarke Lineage, Interesting
FatherCLARKE, William Merritt Sr. (1874-1951)
MotherPATTILLO, Adele (1884-1965)
Misc. Notes
Herbert Spencer Clarke, American television broadcaster. Named Person of Year United Service Organizations, Philadelphia, 1988, Associate Services for Blind, Philadelphia, 1990; recipient Polk award Community Health Services, Ardmore, Pennsylvania, 1991; named to Philadelphia Broadcast Hall of Fame.
Announcer Station WLOE Radio, Eden, 1948-1949. Announcer, producer Station WRVA Radio, Richmond, Virginia, 1952-1956. News director Sta WRVA-television, 1956-1958. Weather and newscaster Station WCAU-television, Philadelphia, from 1958.
The following is an excerp from the program on May 20, 2015, celebrating fifty years of broadcasting of Channel 29 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Broadcast Pioneers member Herb Clarke was a vital part of Broadcast Pioneers. A little while before he passed away, Herb wrote a book. It was self-published and only meant for family and friends. He called it, "The Times That Made Me Me." (no, that's not a typo). Fortunately for us, Herb donated both an electronic copy and a hard copy for our archives. We thought that you might enjoy this little excerpt from the book. This chapter is called, "My Parents."
At the turn of the century in 1903 my father, William Merritt Clarke worked as an electrician in the town of Burlington, NC, and served to rig its street lighting. When that job was completed he moved to Eden to help install wiring the new textile mills. He saved his pay and when the mills were glowing with light bulbs, he rented a large frame building and established general store, donned a gray suit and black bow and became a businessman. For the rest of his life his wardrobe never changed.
A few years after opening the store, there was a murder on a rainy night far out in the county. As a great story spinner, Daddy enjoyed telling us about it. "The sheriff had no clues as to who the killer was because the rain had washed away the muddy horse tracks but he managed to get one clue that could possibly prove the killer on horseback had been across the bridge.
There were several fresh chips cut from bridge planks which indicated a loose or broken horseshoe close to where the body was found." Daddy continued. "Of course, the Sheriff couldn't arrest every man in the county who owned a horse with a loose shoe. I thought the case would have to be closed for lack of evidence." A week or so later, an old blind man from Ruffin suggested to the sheriff that he could identify the rider if the horse and rider would ride over the bridge so he could hear the hooves of the horse.
About fifty men on horseback were summoned to the bridge. One at a time, they rode at a fast pace across the bridge. After most of the riders had gone across and were getting discouraged about finding the guilty person, finally the old man, with his hand cupped to his ear, turned and told the Sheriff, "That's your man."
The officer asked him how he knew. "Well, for one thing that rider was nervous and the horse ran with a crippled left hind foot with a loose shoe. That has to be the same horse that ran over the bridge the night of the murder," he said "It's the horse I heard from my house that night." A confession wasn't hard to get with the evidence against him. The man was given a fair trial at the courthouse in Wentworth and was hanged before more than six thousand people. Some traveled many miles to get there. The blind man was put on the county payroll for the remainder of his life.
Near that time, my father bought land and built a house for himself and his mother. Across the sandy road, he bought more land and with help from several volunteer carpenters constructed a small Methodist Church complete with a bronze bell to summon people to services with the tug of a rope. The church congregation first met in May 1907.
The new church led Daddy to “Miss Addie" about 1912. As a deaconess in fledgling mill towns, Mama worked diligently to keep the new churches active by arranging for occasional visiting pastors, seeking new members, training choirs and serving as pianist.
She also organized Wednesday night prayer meetings and the Sunday Schools for adults and children. While she did all these jobs, Daddy rode his horse five miles to the town of Spray to ask her to help with his little church. She agreed and accepted the challenge of a third church. A hundred years later, in May 2007, the congregation celebrated the 100th anniversary of the now much larger First Methodist Church of Eden, which still has the stained glass window earlier dedicated to my father.
They were married in 1917, when he was 47 and she was 36. The slogan of Daddy's general store was "If you can't find it here, you can't find it anywhere.” That was almost true. There was salt mackerel in a barrel for eating or using as catfish bait in cone-shaped net traps in the river. Aged cheddar from a 30-pound block of cheese on a revolving platform could be cut by an attached mounted blade.
There were medical remedies such as Lydia Pinkham's for Women and Black Draught Laxative, ready-made clothing or bolts of cloth fabrics for the make-your-own ladies' dresses, Weyenberg's men's dress shoes for church, women's shoes with sensible heels, high-top work shoes made of rough leather in the state prison and Red Ball rubber boots.
Bags, aluminum cans, wax paper, nylons, frozen food and cigarette lighters had not been invented. White bread made by the Merita Bakery cost eight cents a loaf and was called "sweet bread" as opposed to home-baked kind. Only a few folks in early Eden could afford sweet bread. In a rear storeroom were bags of crushed corn for chickens, food for cows and pigs, horse feed and cured country hams hanging from the rafters.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Daddy delivered bushel baskets of food and clothing to families on credit. Food for a family of six or eight for a week could be bought for about five dollars. When he learned of poor people in distress, he filled his pickup truck with food, shoes and clothing for adults and children, all given for free, and often delivered an envelope of cash so they could buy a ton of coal. When employment in the mills began to perk up as WWII neared and military supplies were needed, many families with store debts and bills simply forgot them.
In 1940 at Daddy's request, Bill, Gordon and I spent an entire day tallying the full register of long overdue accounts. After noting the creditor and the amounts, we tied each set of rolled, unpaid bills with twine and tossed them in bushel baskets. After Bill finished pulling the handle on the Victor Adding Machine to add the charges, the long printed strip of paper had recorded only ten years' overdue bills totaling more than $73.000. In 1940, that would have been a sizeable fortune.
At the end of the day, without looking at the figures or the bills, Daddy took them out the back door of the store to the smoldering trash pile and burned them. Perhaps because he was forty-five when he and Adele Pattillo were married and she was thirty-five and they were very close, he never said "Dear," "Honey" or "Darling." He always spoke of her as "Miss Addie."
For many years, riding in the passenger side of Daddy's 1932 Ford pickup with his head out in the wind was his mixed breed shaggy white dog, Jack. At age 77, one week after he went in a hospital for the first time, my father died of pneumonia in 1951. Jack died a few hours later the same day and was deeply buried in a box behind the garage.
Announcer Station WLOE Radio, Eden, 1948-1949. Announcer, producer Station WRVA Radio, Richmond, Virginia, 1952-1956. News director Sta WRVA-television, 1956-1958. Weather and newscaster Station WCAU-television, Philadelphia, from 1958.
The following is an excerp from the program on May 20, 2015, celebrating fifty years of broadcasting of Channel 29 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Broadcast Pioneers member Herb Clarke was a vital part of Broadcast Pioneers. A little while before he passed away, Herb wrote a book. It was self-published and only meant for family and friends. He called it, "The Times That Made Me Me." (no, that's not a typo). Fortunately for us, Herb donated both an electronic copy and a hard copy for our archives. We thought that you might enjoy this little excerpt from the book. This chapter is called, "My Parents."
At the turn of the century in 1903 my father, William Merritt Clarke worked as an electrician in the town of Burlington, NC, and served to rig its street lighting. When that job was completed he moved to Eden to help install wiring the new textile mills. He saved his pay and when the mills were glowing with light bulbs, he rented a large frame building and established general store, donned a gray suit and black bow and became a businessman. For the rest of his life his wardrobe never changed.
A few years after opening the store, there was a murder on a rainy night far out in the county. As a great story spinner, Daddy enjoyed telling us about it. "The sheriff had no clues as to who the killer was because the rain had washed away the muddy horse tracks but he managed to get one clue that could possibly prove the killer on horseback had been across the bridge.
There were several fresh chips cut from bridge planks which indicated a loose or broken horseshoe close to where the body was found." Daddy continued. "Of course, the Sheriff couldn't arrest every man in the county who owned a horse with a loose shoe. I thought the case would have to be closed for lack of evidence." A week or so later, an old blind man from Ruffin suggested to the sheriff that he could identify the rider if the horse and rider would ride over the bridge so he could hear the hooves of the horse.
About fifty men on horseback were summoned to the bridge. One at a time, they rode at a fast pace across the bridge. After most of the riders had gone across and were getting discouraged about finding the guilty person, finally the old man, with his hand cupped to his ear, turned and told the Sheriff, "That's your man."
The officer asked him how he knew. "Well, for one thing that rider was nervous and the horse ran with a crippled left hind foot with a loose shoe. That has to be the same horse that ran over the bridge the night of the murder," he said "It's the horse I heard from my house that night." A confession wasn't hard to get with the evidence against him. The man was given a fair trial at the courthouse in Wentworth and was hanged before more than six thousand people. Some traveled many miles to get there. The blind man was put on the county payroll for the remainder of his life.
Near that time, my father bought land and built a house for himself and his mother. Across the sandy road, he bought more land and with help from several volunteer carpenters constructed a small Methodist Church complete with a bronze bell to summon people to services with the tug of a rope. The church congregation first met in May 1907.
The new church led Daddy to “Miss Addie" about 1912. As a deaconess in fledgling mill towns, Mama worked diligently to keep the new churches active by arranging for occasional visiting pastors, seeking new members, training choirs and serving as pianist.
She also organized Wednesday night prayer meetings and the Sunday Schools for adults and children. While she did all these jobs, Daddy rode his horse five miles to the town of Spray to ask her to help with his little church. She agreed and accepted the challenge of a third church. A hundred years later, in May 2007, the congregation celebrated the 100th anniversary of the now much larger First Methodist Church of Eden, which still has the stained glass window earlier dedicated to my father.
They were married in 1917, when he was 47 and she was 36. The slogan of Daddy's general store was "If you can't find it here, you can't find it anywhere.” That was almost true. There was salt mackerel in a barrel for eating or using as catfish bait in cone-shaped net traps in the river. Aged cheddar from a 30-pound block of cheese on a revolving platform could be cut by an attached mounted blade.
There were medical remedies such as Lydia Pinkham's for Women and Black Draught Laxative, ready-made clothing or bolts of cloth fabrics for the make-your-own ladies' dresses, Weyenberg's men's dress shoes for church, women's shoes with sensible heels, high-top work shoes made of rough leather in the state prison and Red Ball rubber boots.
Bags, aluminum cans, wax paper, nylons, frozen food and cigarette lighters had not been invented. White bread made by the Merita Bakery cost eight cents a loaf and was called "sweet bread" as opposed to home-baked kind. Only a few folks in early Eden could afford sweet bread. In a rear storeroom were bags of crushed corn for chickens, food for cows and pigs, horse feed and cured country hams hanging from the rafters.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Daddy delivered bushel baskets of food and clothing to families on credit. Food for a family of six or eight for a week could be bought for about five dollars. When he learned of poor people in distress, he filled his pickup truck with food, shoes and clothing for adults and children, all given for free, and often delivered an envelope of cash so they could buy a ton of coal. When employment in the mills began to perk up as WWII neared and military supplies were needed, many families with store debts and bills simply forgot them.
In 1940 at Daddy's request, Bill, Gordon and I spent an entire day tallying the full register of long overdue accounts. After noting the creditor and the amounts, we tied each set of rolled, unpaid bills with twine and tossed them in bushel baskets. After Bill finished pulling the handle on the Victor Adding Machine to add the charges, the long printed strip of paper had recorded only ten years' overdue bills totaling more than $73.000. In 1940, that would have been a sizeable fortune.
At the end of the day, without looking at the figures or the bills, Daddy took them out the back door of the store to the smoldering trash pile and burned them. Perhaps because he was forty-five when he and Adele Pattillo were married and she was thirty-five and they were very close, he never said "Dear," "Honey" or "Darling." He always spoke of her as "Miss Addie."
For many years, riding in the passenger side of Daddy's 1932 Ford pickup with his head out in the wind was his mixed breed shaggy white dog, Jack. At age 77, one week after he went in a hospital for the first time, my father died of pneumonia in 1951. Jack died a few hours later the same day and was deeply buried in a box behind the garage.
Marr Date15 Oct 1955
Marr PlaceLynchburg, Virginia