Terror At The Carnival Ball

I originally wrote this about twenty years ago and reprinted it because my sister didn't remember it.   I did it pretty quickly, without much research, because for many years, this was just something of a family joke. I have newspapers.com now, and research is easy, so I reworked the entire piece to reflect more and more accurate information.

When I was a kid, my mother was deeply involved in the Jackson Junior League.  I’m not sure who the Senior League was, but the Junior League consisted of women under forty who became involved in civic events.  They did many cool things, including fairy tale theater and puppet shows, which I loved.  In 1970, when I was seven years old, the Jackson Junior League sponsored the Carnival Ball.

The Carnival Ball was the primary fundraising effort for the Jackson Junior League. They sponsored many charities for disadvantaged children and young women in trouble, but the primary goal of the Carnival Ball was to raise money for that year's Arts Festival, which, in turn, raised money to build an arts center downtown.  They’ve had other fundraising efforts through the years, and the current main fundraiser is Mistletoe Marketplace.  In 1970 was the thirty-eighth annual Jackson Junior League Carnival Ball.  Lance Goss directed the entire event, and Frank Hains was the technical director.

My mother wasn't the kind of person to join a volunteer organization like the Junior League without doing any actual volunteer work, so one year, she ended up in charge of all the costumes for the Carnival Ball, and my brother was enlisted as a page boy. I remember racks and racks of costumes filling the living room and the dining room of our house and strangers in and out to try them on. 

That year, the King of the ball was Doctor James Hardy, the famous surgeon who pioneered heart and lung transplants at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.  In 1963, two months before I was born, he performed the first Lung Transplant on a dying inmate from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, the first successful operation of its kind.  The next year, he successfully transplanted the heart of a chimpanzee into a dying man, also the first successful operation of its kind.  Isabel Poteat Lutkin, wife of Donald Lutkin, the new president of Mississippi Power and Light Company, was the queen.

The theme that year was Echo 1890, where the floor of the Mississippi Collesceum was transformed into a facsimile of Jackson, Mississippi, in 1890.  While everyone at the Carnival Ball wore costumes, special attention was paid to local “celebrities.”  Lt. Governor Charlie Sullivan came dressed as Diamond Jim Brady.  Mayor Russell Davis dressed as an 1890 Jackson Policeman.  Al Simmons, head DJ at WSLI (and father of newscaster Scott Simmons), rode in on a balloon as the “observer.”  Governor John Bell Williams dressed as one of his personal heroes, Teddy Rosevelt, with a retinue of young Jacksonians as his Rough Rider soldiers.  Attendants to the "princesses" wore Gibson Girl costumes and wigs, and page boys wore knickerbockers.

While my mother handled all the costumes for the major characters, It was John Bell Williams who made an impression on the seven-year-old version of me.  Williams was a World War II hero and lost one arm in battle when his bomber crashed. Sometimes, he wore a mechanical prosthetic arm that ended in two curved metal prongs, but I didn’t know that. 

Williams was an old-style Democrat and previously served in Congress in Washington. He supported segregation, but, as governor, he didn't fight the court order (Alexander v Holmes County Schools) when it came down to desegregating Mississippi public schools immediately, but others did.  Williams distanced himself from the Citizens Council, but by then, the damage was done.

Arrangements were made for the Governor to come by our house and try on his Teddy Rosevelt costume before the ball. My dad supported Williams' opponent, William Winter, in the governor's race, so this was a slightly delicate moment. 

My mother pulled us kids aside to tell us that a very important man was coming to the house, and we were to be on our best behavior and be very polite and say "yes, sir" and especially not to stare because he had only one arm.  “Only one arm,” she said, and that was all she said.

Determined to be a good boy, I spent the next day and a half preparing myself to meet this important man with one arm. I wasn't going to stare, and I wasn't going to say anything stupid like, "Nice to meet you, we voted for William Winter." or "Hey, mister, where's your arm?".   This man was a hero, and he sacrificed part of his body fighting those rotten nazis.  I was going to be a good boy and a solid scout.

The big day came, and a nicely dressed older man came to the door in a dark suit with a hat. I was seven years old. Now, my mother was wise to warn us about meeting a man with one arm, and I was ready for that, even though I'd never met a man with one arm before. I was prepared for there being no arm.  I wasn’t prepared for what there was.  What she didn't tell us was that he had replaced that arm with what looked to me exactly like the gleaming metal HOOK like Captain Hook had in Peter Pan!   

I’d seen both the animated version of Peter Pan by Walt Disney and the Television version with Mary Martin.  In both versions, Captain Hook was a bad guy who wanted to poke holes in little boys with his sword, so I ran and hid in the many racks of costumes taking up space in our house, not to come out until after the Governor had left.  My mother hadn’t lied to me, but she left out some important pieces of information.

In the years to come, I would have more gentlemanly encounters with Governor Williams when he spoke to my Boy Scout Troop and other functions.  Charlie Sullivan would be a regular visitor at our house during his ill-fated run for governor.  I would buy honey collected by former Mayor Davis in the years ahead.

I think my mother missed being in the Junior League.  Her life was much simpler and much more exciting then.  There was considerable pressure on white moms in Jackson in 1970 to move their kids out of the public schools, and there were other conflicts, but my Mother’s life would become much more challenging in the years to come.