Huntsville Photo: Whitesburg Drive-In Screen Burns in 1980

I stumbled across this photo recently on the state archives web site. Since I grew up in Huntsville [you can read about that here and here], it naturally captured my interest. The Whitesburg Drive-In Theater was an iconic place in Huntsville for many years; so what's going on here?

The Whitesburg opened on June 16, 1949 with room for 400 cars. Admission was 40 cents for adults and 10 cents for children over five. The first film shown was the 1947 release The Senator Was Indiscreet, a comedy also known as Mr. Ashton Was Indiscreet. The film starred William Powell and Ella Raines and was the only one directed by playwright George Kaufman. 

On September 30, 1979, the drive-in closed. By the next summer the owner asked the city to burn the 60-foot screen, fearful that deterioration made the structure unsafe. Thus in June 1980 the fire department did just that in front of about 100 onlookers, including the boys seen in the photo. 

My brother Richard and I remember going with our parents to this drive-in during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Mom would get us dressed in our pajamas so we would be ready for bed when we got home. 

The location remained an open field on Whitesburg Drive for many years. A row of cedar trees along that road identified the spot. The last time I was by there earlier this year something was being built on the property. 

Also included below are some other photos of the Whitesburg Drive-In. 

Source: Cinema Treasures

Source: Cinema Treasures

Source: Cinema Treasures

Source: Wikipedia

Capitol Park and Old Tavern in Tuscaloosa (2)

This post is the second one of a pair devoted to photographs I took on a trip in January 2023 to Tuscaloosa with son Amos. Here's the intro from part one:

In October 2014 I posted an item on this blog about a trip my wife Dianne, daughter Becca and I made to Capitol Park in Tuscaloosa, the site of Alabama's state government from 1826 until 1846. Naturally I included many photographs taken on that bright sunny day in late August. 

In January 2023 my son Amos and I made a trip to T-town primarily to visit the Paul W. Bryant Museum. I'll be writing about that experience in a future post. In this two-part post I wanted to share some of the Capitol Park photographs; the overcast skies made it seem like a different place.

Alabama has had a series of capitals beginning with St. Stephens in 1817 during the territorial period. Since then Huntsville, Cahaba, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery have been state capitals. 

The Encyclopedia of Alabama gives a succinct history of the Tuscaloosa structure:

"The ruins of one of Alabama's former state houses can be explored in Capitol Park near downtown Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County. The city was Alabama's seat of government from 1826 until 1846; the capitol was completed in 1829. After the state capital moved to Montgomery, Montgomery County, in 1846, the building was used by the Alabama Central Female College. The structure was destroyed by a fire in August 1923, leaving only broken columns, some areas of the foundation, and a section of wall."

Capitol Park is located on Childress Hill on the bluff above the Black Warrior River. Efforts to restore the site did not begin until until the late 1980s. The Old Tavern was built in 1827 and after use as a tavern and stagecoach inn served for many years as a private residence. In 1966 the structure was in danger of demolition but money was raised to move it to its current location. The Alabama Central Female College was a Baptist institution that began operation in the old capitol building in 1857. So far I have been unable to determine if it reopened after the 1923 fire. You can read an account of the fire in the August 23, 1923, Birmingham Age-Herald here.

Capitol Park and Old Tavern in Tuscaloosa (1)

In October 2014 I posted an item on this blog about a trip my wife Dianne, daughter Becca and I made to Capitol Park in Tuscaloosa, the site of Alabama's state government from 1826 until 1846. Naturally I included many photographs taken on that bright sunny day. 

In January 2023 my son Amos and I made a trip to T-town primarily to visit the Paul W. Bryant Museum. I'll be writing about that experience in a future piece. We also visited Capitol Park, so in this two-part post I wanted to share some of those photographs. The overcast skies almost made it seem like a different place.

Alabama has had a series of capitals beginning with St. Stephens in 1817 during the territorial period. Since then Huntsville, Cahaba, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery have been state capitals. 

The Encyclopedia of Alabama gives a succinct history of the Tuscaloosa structure:

"The ruins of one of Alabama's former state houses can be explored in Capitol Park near downtown Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County. The city was Alabama's seat of government from 1826 until 1846; the capitol was completed in 1829. After the state capital moved to Montgomery, Montgomery County, in 1846, the building was used by the Alabama Central Female College. The structure was destroyed by a fire in August 1923, leaving only broken columns, some areas of the foundation, and a section of wall."

Capitol Park is located on Childress Hill on the bluff above the Black Warrior River. Efforts to restore the site did not begin until until the late 1980s. The Old Tavern was built in 1827 and after use as a tavern and stagecoach inn served for many years as a private residence. In 1966 the structure was in danger of demolition but money was raised to move it to its current location. 

The Alabama Central Female College was a Baptist institution that began operation in the old capitol building in 1857. So far I have been unable to determine if it reopened after the 1923 fire. You can read an account of the fire in the August 23, 1923, Birmingham Age-Herald here.

Part 2 of this item can be read here. 

"Officers Seeking Two Arms in Calhoun County"

That title is excellent clickbait, isn't it?

Come with me now back to Alabama in the summer of  1959. Our scene is set in Rabbittown, a community five miles northwest of  White Plains, a small unincorporated area in Calhoun County about 15 miles northeast of Anniston. In that place Viola V. Hyatt and her elderly parents lived in an old farmhouse. Two men, Lee Andrew Harper (48) and his brother Emmett Harper (56) occupied a small trailer behind the house. Lee worked at the U.S. Army Depot at Bynum near Anniston; Emmett was unemployed at the time. 

On July 17 after her confession, Viola was arrested and charged with first degree murder of the two men. Now Viola didn't simply murder the pair; she proved herself worthy of joining the company of "mad dog" killers everywhere. First, she used a shotgun and blasted both men in the face in their trailer. State toxicologist Robert Johnston declared those shots as the cause of death. Then she dismembered the bodies with an ax and distributed the pieces around two counties.

The men had not been seen after June 27. On June 28 the first torso was found near an abandoned house in Attalla in Etowah County. The second was discovered the following day 11 miles away in Whitney Junction in northwest St. Clair County where U.S. highways 11 and 231 cross. Despite the facial injuries sketches were made of what the men may have looked like and distributed to Alabama newspapers. After almost a month a tip led investigators to the farm where Viola Hyatt lived. 

Viola, her parents Mr. and Mrs. M.D. Hyatt and a former boyfriend Dewey Carroll were questioned over two days while investigators searched the farm and gathered evidence from the trailer and men's car. At first Viola told a story about taking the men to the bus station in Oxford. Finally she confessed during interrogations by various state investigators and led them through Calhoun and Etowah counties to the locations of two arms and two legs. No effort had been made to conceal them; the limbs were just tossed into fields. She said the second set of legs was thrown into the Tallapoosa River at Bell's Mill in Cleburne County.

The murderess also led officials to a cornfield on the farm where a bloody, double-headed axe was buried in a shallow hole. Viola had committed the murders by herself, she said, and dismembered the bodies to make them easier to move in a wheelbarrow to the car trunk. 

After her arrest Viola spent some months in Bryce Hospital but was determined to be sane and fit for trial. As soon as the trial began, a deal was reached in which Viola could avoid the electric chair and serve two life sentences. She agreed if she did not have to describe the crimes. Despite the sentence, the state parole board unanimously voted to release her in April 1970 after she had served only 10 years.

Hyatt returned to Rabbitttown, her birthplace on February 3, 1929. She remained on the farm for a while, but sold it and moved to the Jacksonville area to be near a small circle of friends and relatives. She never discussed the crimes or motive. Viola died of congestive heart failure on June 12, 2000, age 71, and is buried at the Baptist Church Cemetery in Rabbittown. 

Viola was an only child; a WikiTree entry on her describes her childhood and much else about the case. Donald Brown was a 23 year-old reporter for the Birmingham News when he covered the murders; this article from February 2016 notes he's writing a book about the case, but I could not determine if it was ever published. This item about a podcast on the murders has additional information. And of course Viola rates a chapter in Jeremy W. Gray's Wicked Women of Alabama [History Press, 2021]. 

Alabama has executed very few women. Lynda Lyon Block was put to death in 2002. Before that, Rhonda Bell Martin was executed in 1957, the third woman up to that date. 

The dismemberment map