Page 15 - Tattnall County

Glennville, with a cook, dishwasher, waiter, butler, and a maid. Mother had good meals, three meals a day,” said Betty, whose family had moved from Ludowici to Glennville to manage the hotel. Betty recalls the cook was Redelia Kennedy Jones, a black lady who became very close to Betty’s family.

“She whipped me more times than I had fngers and toes for getting into things and especially in her kitchen,” said Betty. “I remember those fresh pork hams Redelia would cook. She’d score the meat and put cloves in it - so pretty. I’d go slip in the kitchen and break off a crisp piece of meat, and she’d grab me and put one on me,” said Betty.

Redelia later came to work for Betty after she married Curtis Burns and helped Betty care for her three young daughters. Betty related that the two “were good for each other.” Betty still has Redelia’s funeral program from her 1981 death. “Johnny Tippins, a small black man, was our waiter. He wore dark pants and a white coat. Robert Tippins was our ‘butler.’ He took the guests’ bags into the hotel and would often ‘retrieve a bottle’ for some of those visiting,” said Betty. Robert later worked at Johnny Harris’ Restaurant in Savannah and was known as “Country.” Betty recalls seeing him there when she was 16 or 17.

Betty can recall that the guest rooms were furnished

with metal furniture (beds, night stands, desks, dresser with mirror), gray in color with a pretty stripe on it. “There was a lavatory,” Betty said, “in every room, with hot and cold running water. There was also a writing room for the salesmen to sit, and the lobby had beautiful wicker furniture in it.”

“We had a laundry room upstairs where we would wash and dry the sheets and towels for the guests (over the downstairs dining room). In later years, when Mama ran the hotel again in the 1940s, we would go onto the rooftop, spread out our towels, and sun ourselves out there,” added Betty.

She has a pleasant memory of the President’s Ball that was held there. “We had these all across the country, named for President Roosevelt who had polio. Those balls were fundraisers for polio research. I recall on one occasion that the hotel was flled with orange blossoms brought from Florida. The hotel smelled so sweet,” she said.

Betty can still recall some of their regular boarders, such as Louis Kennedy, who was single then and worked for a local business. He married Bess Oliver from Lyons, and he owned and operated a Chevrolet dealership in Glennville for many years. Joe Sikes, who married Grace Poston, stayed at the hotel. Grace was a receptionist for Dr. Drake for many years. Cecil Avant

ABOVE Barnard Street in Glennville facing west circa 1929. The Glennwanis Hotel is in the left foreground. The hotel was then run by Ola Beasley Trapnell, whose daughter, Betty, is shown in the left foreground on the corner. The home of Zena Collins, mother of Rufus Kea and Fred Collins, is located second from right. The two-story building in the right foreground, next to the Collins’s home, was at one time occupied by Cordie Faircloth.