Chriss Doss - East Lake

Published on June 14, 2017

"There was talk of moving it to several places but finally they settled on East Lake, right here where we are, and East Lake was a separate city. A little town."

Chapters

Elton B Stephens Expressway

Chriss Doss describes the Old Lakeshore Highway, the history of the area and its significance to the old campus. He also discusses the founding of Prattville and the Elton B. Stephens Expressway.

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Street Cars and Steam Engines

Doss talks about experiencing Sloss Furnace during his time at Howard, as well as the scrap yards for railroad steam engines. He also discusses the old electric street cars and segregation.

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Cascade Plunge

Doss discusses Cascade Plunge, a popular swimming location in East Lake.

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Woodlawn City Hall

Doss points out the city hall of the city of Woodlawn, the site of a 1910 legislature concerning contaminating water.

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The Campus Barbecue

Doss describes some of the buildings near the East Lake Campus, such as the campus barbecue stand, the library, movie theater and the Church of Christ.

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The Bookstore and the Soup Kitchen

Doss talks about the campus bookstore and soup kitchen, the boarding house for female students, and the local dry cleaners.

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The Rose Manor

Doss shows the location of the old Rose Manor, and talks about a member of that family who graduated from Howard and became the first female city council member.

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Berry Field

Doss describes what used to be Berry Field, and talks about Howard College involvement in World War II.

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Crawford Johnson

Doss talks about Crawford Johnson, one of the board members of Howard College at the East Lake Campus.

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Risk of Foreclosure and the move to East Lake

Doss discusses the near foreclosure of the Marion campus of Howard College, and the decision to move the college to East Lake.

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More on Berry Field, Housing, and the Bookstore

Doss talks more on Berry Field. He also describes some of the uses of the field, as well as some of the student residents near the field.

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Renfroe Hall

Doss talks about Renfroe Hall, one of the principle residence halls at the East Lake Campus, and its uses.

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The Gym, and the Howard-Birmingham Southern Rivalry

Doss talks about the Howard College Gym and the various ways that it was used. He also talks about the heated rivalry between Howard College and Birmingham Southern.

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Howard vs Birmingham Southern Basket Ball Game

Doss relates the tale of one particularly heated incident that occurred at the Howard-Birmingham Southern basketball game, which resulted in a brawl and the Sherman Oak catching fire.

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Old Main

Doss talks a bit about Old Main and how car parking was accommodated at the East Lake campus.

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William Pratt Dale

Doss discusses William Pratt Dale, who was Dean of the school during his time at Howard.

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The Post Office and the Baptist Student Union

Doss describes the location of the campus post office and the Baptist Student Union. He also talks about some of the other religious communities around the East Lake campus at the time.

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Dr. Thomas V. Neal

Doss talks about the tenure of Dr. Neal, Howard College's only alumni president.

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Old Sherman and Montague Hall

Doss describes the locations of the Sherman Oak, Montague Hall, and the East Lake campus Library. He also relates a tale of his time back at Howard to set up a law study, and the removal of the Sherman Oak.

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More on the East Lake Campus Buildings

Doss describes more of the campus layout, particularly the location of Riley Hall, the library, the campus shop, Renfroe Hall, and other residents halls.

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Last Graduation Location

Doss talks more about where some of the building at East Lake were, such as the maintenance shop, and shows where the last graduation at the East Lake campus was help, Ruhama Baptist Church.

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Faculty and Faculty Housing

Doss discusses more about faculty housing, as well as a story about Dr. Sam Ezell, the vice-president of Howard at the time.

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Break ins at the Girl's Dorm

Doss discusses an incident where there was a break in in the girl's dorm, and one of the students fought the burglar off.

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Old Dinning Hall and Pharmacy School

Doss describes the location of the East Lake campus dining hall and the pharmacy school, as well some of the surrounding locations.

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Music Department Dwellings

Doss talks about the housing used by the music department.

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More on Cascade Plunge

Doss describes Cascade Plunge, the local public pool in East Lake. He also points out some of the other landmarks in the area, such as Crestwood Hospital, the first mental hospital in Birmingham.

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East Lake Locations

Doss talks about his time working for a local men's department store during his time at Howard. He also mentions the book he is writing on his time with Major Davis, as well as other locations in East Lake.

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Meeting Previous Presidents

Doss discusses his experiences meeting several US presidents, including Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, and Harry Truman.

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John Pittman and moving the Campus

Doss talks about John Pittman, and the decision making process that went into moving the campus from East Lake to Homewood.

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East Lake Students' Opinions on the Move to Lakeshore

Doss talks about the opinions that students at the time of the move to Homewood, and some closing remarks.

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Transcript

CHRISS DOSS: Alright!

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Hello, good morning!

CHRISS DOSS: Good morning!

MICHELLE LITTLE: Hi Mr. Doss!

CHRISS DOSS: How’s everybody?

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Good, how are you doing?

CHRISS DOSS: It's getting hot, but I guess y'all are used to it.

MICHELLE LITTLE: At least it's not raining.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Good to see you.

CHRISS DOSS: Good to see all of you.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Had you been waiting there long?

CHRISS DOSS: About 5 minutes. I was going to park up there and there wasn't a park to be bought up there.

MICHELLE LITTLE: It's tight parking with the, they're repaving everything behind our building.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: They have orientation going on.

CHRISS DOSS: They must have 6 or 8 signs down here of what all's going on with the school.

MICHELLE LITTLE: You have your choice.

CHRISS DOSS: And they've got an innovation or something here. This is 15
minutes. Well that won't cut it.

MICHELLE LITTLE: Mr. Doss if it's alright with you we're going to video our trip today.

CHRISS DOSS: Oh, I see.

MICHELLE LITTLE: If that's OK.

CHRISS DOSS: How do you plan to go out to Samford?

MICHELLE LITTLE: We were going to go through Mountain Brook and get on Oporto Madrid. Does that sound alright?

CHRISS DOSS: I would recommend you go downtown, get on 1st Avenue North, and go out to campus that way. That would be the route followed by many of the students on the old campus and you'll see why that's significant.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: That's just a straight shot, right?

CHRISS DOSS: Yeah, almost, but you're going to see some little bitty things that made a lot of difference and this, you've got this wide 4 lane here. Let's see. This was widened like this, I believe in '67. There was just a two-lane road and none of this grass bank and of course even then, the hiking or whatever, walk that you have, that came much later. There was no buildings at all here. You see, this was an old lakebed and when I was head of the county commission, we had no buildings here. There was a boarding house that sat over there near the corner of where that structure is and they wanted to develop it and of course I had to approve it and I caught the devil, because I wasn't agreed to it until they had certain flow charts of the high water marks of the 100 year flood. You see, I had a reason. I wasn't just being obstinate. The problem was that they'd messed up my federal money and I was on good terms with EPA. I went over there lease once a month to regional headquarters just to see the fellas and I had to put a moratorium on anymore buildings that had to have a sewer over here and man, did I catch it, but it wasn't as bad as it appeared. I told the EPA, I got close to those fellas and they decided I reckoned alright and I said if I put--is that your?

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Is your seatbelt on? That's what that beeping is.

CHRISS DOSS: I don't believe it is. Nowadays that's almost a felony. There we go. Somebody a lot smaller than me's been up here.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: It's not too tight is it?

CHRISS DOSS: No, no, no. I'm used to tight places.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: I didn't mean to interrupt you.

CHRISS DOSS: Anyway, they said "Now you're going to have to put a moratorium over there." One of the first groups to just throw a fit was the Baptists because they couldn't extend what then was Montclair Medical Center and so I worked out that if we put, I don’t' remember now if it was 2 or 3 bricks in every water chamber in every restroom, that would save so much water and they thought I was crazy but I said it's that way or nothing. A fella named Johnson was head of that and he was a good fella but they were used to getting their way about everything and then St. Martin's in the Pines was an Episcopal facility and the fella that headed that up was, what was his name? He was the grandson-in-law of Mr. Henry DeBardeleben.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: The lawyer?

CHRISS DOSS: DeBardeleben owned the Southern Gin Company. The original Mr. DeBardeleben and that's what I'm talking about, was the son-in-law of Mr. Pratt that owned Continental Gins and he was one of the first Alabama industrialists, Pratt, and they had a gin company that's still operating today, but they came to Jefferson County before the Civil War but not very long, that is, they bought interest up here and then they moved much of their operation up here but the old Continental Gin that Mr. Pratt started is still functioning in Prattville, Alabama. Some of the old buildings are still there and he's buried way up in the woods on a mole (?) overlooking the whole thing.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: I didn't realize that. I have an uncle down in Prattville.

CHRISS DOSS: Now this is the Elton B. Stephens Expressway and they had it finished, getting ready for the dedication and it was on a Sunday afternoon
before the dedication was going to occur the following week. Well Mr. Stephens, he was a pretty good friend of mine and he helped me a whole lot with the business community when I was in the commission. So anyway, he decided to "Go out and look at what they named for me." Well they had it barricaded off but he went around that and got on it and started down through here and the police pulled him over and he said, the policeman said "Hey mister, you realize that this is barricaded and no traffic's allowed yet?" He said "Yes sir, but you see my license?" "Yeah." He said "See that name? It says Elton B. Stephens. That's the same name as this parkway." And the policeman said "Well it sure is, isn't that a coincidence?" He used to tell that and laugh. Now when you get out here take First Avenue North.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: OK. So was he able to get off of that?

CHRISS DOSS: I think that finally he convinced the policeman that he was the real person.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: It's not just a coincidence.

CHRISS DOSS: Now in those days, talking about, I graduated with the last class, the August graduation, because I went through in 3 years and I had to go up a couple of summers. Now back in those days, that area out there was a great big field and they had hundreds of steam engines, train steam engines, that had been partly cannibalized, but they brought them here as scrap and smelted them here in...

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Sloss?

CHRISS DOSS: Yeah, in Sloss Furnace and when you'd come through here in the evening or at night and they would  be doing a run of iron and they'd be
spraying water on it as it got into the forms and that stuff, you could smell
the sulfur. It was fogged up but the trolleys, there were copper wires on each
side and the trolleys ran by electricity. Very quiet and in those days you had a
front door and a back door and most people got on the front door and got off on the back door but about the back door was a sign but you could put it anywhere you wanted to on the back of the seats because the little sign that would say "Whites Only" "Blacks Only" or "Colored" that was the word, they could move it back and forth depending on how the load was and if the load got to be greater than the seat capacity, you would see the blacks having to stand. I witnessed that and that always bothered me, but that's the way it was.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: So would the trolleys go up and down this street here?

CHRISS DOSS: Yeah but when we get on up here, I can't remember, it's
70-something, every other trolley peeled off to the right and we'll do that and
you'll see and then it got on the same avenue as Howard and Major Davis, the president, used to say it was wonderful that that link-up of having the car,
having every other car coming over and getting on South Avenue, whatever it was, and then you went straight out to Howard. You will also see a little history when we get to where we're going to turn. There'll be a drug store. I think it' still there.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: You said we'll go off to the right?

CHRISS DOSS: Yeah, but we're going to go a ways but we're going to go through or by one of the most play outdoors places in those days for swimming and it was called Cascade Plunge. It was a big spring that fed the swimming pool and anyway, remember, I was there, in fact, I was in Montgomery at the Alabama Historical Association in April of '56. I think it, yeah, '56. That was a big Methodist church. They turned it into a wedding chapel but I think some minority now has it but anyway Ace Carter had his cleaning establishment up, I have to look a little before I can determine where it was, but anyway, they would have the White Citizen Council meetings over there at night and you've never seen such a group of, such a group of pickups and cars in your life at those meetings.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Packed house?

CHRISS DOSS: Oh, yeah. That was the redneck element.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: No shortage of that.

CHRISS DOSS: And of course, see, folks don’t' understand all of that. You had a lot of bonafide rednecks and then you had a number of sophisticated rednecks and they would never be at a meeting like this. Nooo, but they're feeding the rednecks, you know, what to say and all of that stuff and giving them money to carry on their foolishness. Now right here, this was the city hall of Woodlawn.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Oh really?

CHRISS DOSS: Yes. In 1910, they had the legislature, they were having health problems. The water was contaminated and, now that little Episcopal church is some kind of service to the homeless or something like that, but anyway, you had a lot of people who wanted, they were hell-bent on having, continuing to have segregation. A lot of that was in the churches. Folks, the leaders would talk about the Supreme Court but in the privacy they were just praying the Supreme Court would be doing what it was doing. Then they had a good excuse. (phone rings) I wonder who this is. Hello? Who is this please? I'm fine, how are you? I'm sorry? Yeah. Yes sir and I'm already fixed with what you're talking about. Alright. Thank you. Trying to sell me something. I already got it. Go slow here so I know what we're doing.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Somebody dropped a chair.

CHRISS DOSS: They've torn so much of this up. Barbecue place, let's see.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: You just let me know if I need to turn somewhere.

CHRISS DOSS: Alright. We may have to go up here and drive back down there. If we do, we do. They've torn down, let's see. I want to show you, I don’t' even know if it, yeah, slow down, OK. This right here was the campus barbecue stand and it was called Andrew's and Mr., there were two. They were brothers and their wives ran it and they would have maybe two or three service, but that was Andrew's and Andrew's was a buddy with all of the college students because they made up a whole lot of his trade.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: It was a barbecue joint?

CHRISS DOSS: Oh yeah. It was good stuff. The old, I think that's an adult movie now, but that was the movie place when we had to go (?). Now take a right right here. This, there were a number of fairly good stores here, department stores that you can see. Now they're not much. This was the library. They've added a great deal to it. This was the Barrett School. Many important people graduated from that school. This was the Church of Christ and we were, we'd go by here singing on the bus. "Gimme That Old Time Religion" and stop here. What is this?

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: 2nd Avenue South.

CHRISS DOSS: It's what?

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: 2nd Avenue South.

CHRISS DOSS: Now we've got to go a little further. They've torn a lot of this
down. There was a cleaner, there were two cleaners. Get your shirts cleaned for 20 cents.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: 20 cents.

CHRISS DOSS: Yep.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Wow.

CHRISS DOSS: I spent, those days, you wore... we would sing... up here at the light we're going to turn and we'll go back to Cascade Plunge. Alright you want to turn right right up here. Where the light is. Turn left, I mean.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Oh OK.

CHRISS DOSS: This is Rugby Avenue. Alright, now this was not college property but this was a private boarding house and they would serve breakfast to a lot of students. There was a small girls' dorm right there. Alright, now let's see. Pull up here and stop. Right here.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Was that the Hash House back there?

CHRISS DOSS: No, well, they may have called it that, but we normally referred to it as the bookstore and the soup kitchen and it was run by a lady, Ms. Bookman. I thought that was always convenient that Ms. Bookman ran the bookstore and this used to be the Rose Manor and the Rose family were Italians and they were big Catholics but they had a daughter named Marie that went to school here and she was a great singer and then she married a fella who taught music at Samford. Well he taught, I guess 4 years. He died about 3 or 4 years ago and I'm trying to remember his name. He came just about the time I graduated but Marie got her hooks in him and they married wound up I think having 7 children. Anyway, she's still very proud that she's a Samford or Howard graduate. Y'all don't know who Ms. Miglionico was. She was the first woman city council member. She was very powerful. She was one of the, get this straight. She was about the fourth or fifth graduate from the law school at Alabama, but she did her undergraduate work and she was very powerful in the campus community. She graduated out here and put herself through Howard College teaching piano. We can get out and I can
give you a lot of...

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Should I park somewhere over here?

CHRISS DOSS: Pull over there and park anywhere you find a space and if they say
anything we'll talk to them.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: So this used to be run by a family?

CHRISS DOSS: This was Berry Field folks.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: This was Berry Field?

CHRISS DOSS: This is Berry Field. Drive on down that way and let's see. Now that house, I think, I'll tell you when we go by. Look here, right out here. Now, the field went on back to where you see those bumper blocks yonder and just where you see those apartments, back there, there were three barracks. When World War II, when America became involved in World War II, they had a V-8 or V-7 or V-6 program where they would take soldiers, sailors, that were going to be officers and they would come here and stay for their training and education and they had it all set u

Audio Information
Attribute	Value
Interviewer	Chase Trautwein
Interviewee	Chriss Doss
Repository	Samford University Oral History Collection
Collection	STORI Collection
Accession	SUHist/SamfordHistory/003