Chamber's first secretary remembers bustling Jasper
By SHARON KERR Staff Writer

PHENOMENAL AT 99, (left) Florena Byerly will soon be 100 and has lived in the same little white house in Curtis for most of her adult years. Newsboy photo/ Sharon Kerr

Florena Byerly turns 100 on Jan. 28, but she still lives on her own and easily recalls a lifetime of Jasper history.

She hasn't lived here quite her whole life. Born Florena Collins, her parents moved to Jasper from Shelby County when she was three, and for a few years during World War II, she and her husband moved to Orange. But for most of her adult years she has lived in the same little white house in Curtis community.

"Daddy was a deputy sheriff and then he went to work for the Santa Fe (railroad) buying ties, and then he became a contractor. He built my house in 1931," she said.

She recalls her daddy was a strict disciplinarian, but it was her mother that taught her an indelible lesson in honesty.

"I well remember when I learned not to steal. I was not over five when I went to a neighbor's house to play with their children and picked up a pretty button.

Above: Byerly at 14 with a friend on the running board of a Ford. Courtesy photo

"We played in the yard and when I went home I was still playing with the pretty button. My mother noticed and asked, 'did Mrs. Childress tell you that you could have it?' and when I said no, she gave me a spanking and sent me to take it back and tell her I was sorry," Byerly said.

"When I was 12, I was baptized in a mill pond near Pineland," Byerly recalled. "There were about 20 people baptized then, and I remember the water was warm. They used to have big tent revivals up there."

Byerly's father held several jobs in Jasper and surrounding counties. She graduated from Geneva High School near Hemphill; schools back then only had 11 grades.

After high school, in 1925, she took a business course to learn shorthand. One of her first jobs was as secretary to the first Chamber of Commerce in Jasper.

She grew up at a time when cars were outnumbered by horses and wagons, but Jasper had big ambitions and the chamber was very busy. She was taking dictation from Ed Burris, the first chamber president, when he used the word "phenomenal."

Courtesy photo JOHN ABE HENDERSON JR. stands behind the picture of Henry Ford in the Henderson dealership showroom. Florena Byerly stands with a salesmen with shiny new Fords to the right.The skylight was necessary because electricity was just reaching Jasper.

"I guess he could tell I didn't know what it meant," Byerely said, "because he stopped to explain it to me. As an example, he said 'if I went down a highway and saw a cow sitting on a limb in a tree, now that would be phenomenal'."

One day at the chamber, Tommy Byerly came in.

"I wasn't that enthusiastic about him at first," Byerly said. "He wore glasses, but I finally decided after several months that I liked him." She married him in 1930, and her father began construction on the house in Curtis. She moved into the house in 1931.

"When I first came out here, I had never lived out in the country. Tommy's mother lived up the hill and was a widow, so we stayed with her while the house was being built. I remember wagons on the road to town (what is now Hwy 63)," she said.

She only worked a short time at the chamber before taking a higher paying job as secretary at the Henderson Ford dealership, located next to the Belle Jim Hotel. It paid $85 a month and offered Byerly a chance to learn new skills.

When the bookkeeper wanted to retire, she became a bookkeeper, "but I really wanted to be a legal secretary," Byerly said.

Byerly said it was years before they had a child. The young couple occupied themselves by going to church gatherings and singings, or to a dance in someone's home.

"I loved to dance but Tommy didn't," she said.

"The baby was born in 1935. We got electricity in 1936. We were one of the first," Byerly said.

The baby

The baby is now Mary Quick, mother to coach Ty Quick and a retired greatgrandmother herself.

Quick said it was unusual for a woman to have a career outside the home, but "Mother always enjoyed working with the public, always loved people."

"I did quit work when I got pregnant- they did that back then," Byerly said. "And I stayed home for quite awhile after that, the first year anyway."

But it was the depression and times were tough, so when she was offered a job Byerly went back to work. Baby Mary was cared for by a maid and relatives. Later, in the 1950's, Mary was old enough to ride the bus home and stay alone after school, or go to downtown Jasper, "where everything was happening."

In between the depression and the booming 50's, World War II intervened. Like many from Jasper, the Byerlys moved to Orange for the shipbuilding boom.

When they returned to Jasper, Byerly worked as a bookkeeper for Winton Sims Propane Company for 25 years. The Winton Sims building is still located on the corner near the P.N. Ashy store on Houston Street and is used as storage for Mary Ashy's overflowing inventory.

Byerly remembers that the Mary Ashy's parents bought the business from "old man Fish," and Mary Ashy was a small girl who was always at the store with them.

Jasper c. 1950

Mary Quick remembers the Jasper courthouse square as the center of her teenage universe. In between the Winton Sims building and the Ashy store was The Wedge Inn, a hot dog and chili place favored by the Byerlys.

"It was such a treat to eat one of Mr. Wedgeworth's hot dogs with my daddy on a Saturday afternoon, and watch all the people on the square," Quick said. "Everyone came to Jasper, and you had to come early to get a parking spot."

She said stores stayed open until 5 p.m. or later because Saturday was the big day to come to town and shop. Back then, there were dress shops, restaurants and grocery stores all around the square (there was no Highway 190 yet).

For a special treat, her parents would give her 15 cents.

"It was nine cents for the movie (The Texan Theater), a penny to weigh and get your fortune on the scales in front of the drugstore, and five cents for an ice cream," Mary Quick said.

"There was a furniture store where the museum is now. Then there was Mr. Pickles, who had a two-story place with the telephone office upstairs," Quick recalled, "and there was a donut shop on the other corner where you could watch Zeke fry the donuts. And a hamburger costs five cents."

Mary Byerly grew up to marry dental student Tom C. Quick. When he graduated, they returned to Jasper where Dr. "T.C." practiced dentistry until he retired in 1995.

Florena Byerly finally retired from the propane company in 1973, but she was not really ready. Tommy Byerly had died in 1968, so for a while she lived with one of her sisters who was in the propane business in Lufkin. Byerly had a younger sister and brother who have died, and an older sister, Maggie Warner, who lived to be more than 100.

The two sisters eventually both retired and enjoyed a number of tours. Byerly said her favorite, a trip she took several times, was to go to the Ozarks and stop in Branson, Missouri, where they could indulge their love of dancing.

Mary Quick recalled that it took some persuasion to get her mother to take the first trip, a bus tour of the east coast to see the fall colors. Quick said a friend told her that Byerly said, "It was what I thought, a bunch of old people."

Byerly has survived cancer, a broken hip, and arthritis. She was born the year Henry Ford produced his first Model T. It was also the first year a long-distance radio message was sent from the top of the Eiffel Tower, and the first year women competed in the modern Olympics.

She has seen two World Wars, the stock market crash followed by the Great Depression, innumerable conflicts, and one hurricane that was never supposed to reach Jasper.

She has a daughter, two grandsons, four greatgrandchildren and a greatgreat granddaughter. She still doesn't want people to think she's old.