Search Results for: Al Kirby
Oral History Interviews
Susan and Rob Burneson conducted oral history interviews between 2007 and 2011 for the film A Community Mosaic and the Voices of the Violet Crown project. They also interviewed Friends of Brentwood Park Leadership Team members and honorees and donors of dedicated trees in 2010 and 2011 for the film We Planted 115 Trees. Original residents, noted below, moved to Brentwood or Crestview in the early 1950s or before. Dates in parentheses indicate year of … Read more
A Salute to Violet Crown Veterans, Part 1
Updated 2022 In honor of Veterans Day, the next two blog posts feature military veterans who were among the first neighbors in Brentwood and Crestview more than 60 years ago. Most of them remained here for the rest of their lives. Here are a few stories of their service. BILL WILLIAMSON, AL KIRBY, AND JOHN CARLSON You can read more about Bill here, Al here, and John here. We interviewed Bill on October 7, 2007; … Read more
WABAC Machine, Part 11
Copyright 2022 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Kindly talk with us before reproducing any website content. (What’s a WABAC Machine? Find out here.) 2022 • HISTORY OF BRENTWOOD, CRESTVIEW, AND MORE . . . JANUARY January 29 • A unique Brentwood/Crestview map (left) was given to a neighbor, its fourth owner, through Crestview’s Buy Nothing group. Ryan Eberly made the map and gave it to a neighbor. It’s been passed on twice through the group. MARCH … Read more
Neighbors-in-History, Part 3
Updated September 25, 2023 Copyright 2012-2023 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Kindly talk with us before reproducing any website content. Final blog post in this series, in which we introduce a few special neighbors-in-history who have contributed to our sense of place here. (See links for more info.) KOENIG • McCULLOUGH By 1946, Dr. Joseph Samuel Koenig (1885-1951) and Clarence McCullough (1898-1992) developed Section 1 of Violet Crown Heights, between Payne and Ruth in the … Read more
Neighbors-in-History, Part 2
Updated October 1, 2023 Copyright 2012-2023 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Kindly talk with us before reproducing any website content. The second in a three-part series, in which we introduce a few neighbors-in-history. (See links for more information.) HANCOCK • WICKS Rubin Hancock (about 1835-1916) was an enslaved person (and possibly a half-brother, according to at least one source) of Austin Judge John Hancock (more about him here). Rubin—and possibly other members of his family, … Read more
“Sherman, Set the WABAC Machine!,” Part 1
Copyright 2012-2023 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Kindly talk with us before reproducing any website content. In the 1960s, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, cartoon characters on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, traveled back in time to visit famous historical events through Mr. Peabody’s WABAC (“wayback”) machine. This week’s blog is an intro to our local WABAC trip, beginning next time. We include excerpts from our history exhibit and booklet, with new info, too. You might … Read more
A Voice of the Violet Crown
Updated September 19, 2023 I had a friend, Coleen Grant Hardin, who was fascinated with genealogy, just as I am. She once told me the story of her great-grandmother, Dr. Elizabeth Durbin Irby Crow Smith, one of the first woman physicians in Northern Louisiana. As Elizabeth passed away at age 73, she said to those around her: It’s a shame for me to die and take all this knowledge with me. Few of us will … Read more
More Voices of the Violet Crown
In late 2009, we took video clips from some of our later oral history interviews and put them together into five different themes. We screened the clips inside BriteLites Studio at the Crestview Shopping Center in November 2009, during a fall Violet Crown Arts Festival. (To learn more about many of the people we’ve interviewed, you can type their names into the search box at the top of the page.) We interviewed Carmen Canann in September … Read more