Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
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| to the collaboration behind PAA's new community-directed display |
Shirley Millner loves to wear hats nad has quite a collection. Some of her hats, along with hats belonging to several local women, will be on display at Piedmont Arts Association starting Jan. 9 in conjunction with the exhibit "Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats." (Bulletin photo by Mike Wray) |
Sunday, December 28, 2008
By HOLLY KOZELSKY - Bulletin Accent Editor
Local people really put their heads together to supplement one of Piedmont Arts Association’s upcoming exhibits, “Crowns.”
The exhibit is about hats, and women all around town are bringing the theme to life by sharing their own for the display.
The mood in Piedmont Arts during a recent planning session was light and playful, interspersed with poignant memories and stories of women, not only those together in the room but also several fondly remembered, famous for their hats. Hats in all colors, shapes and styles, festooned with all types of feathers, flowers, ribbons and sequins, were displayed on the tables.
“I like that one,” said Gloria Hylton, looking at a small, close-to-the-head curved brown hat with a conservative band of feathers.
“Oh, yeah!” exclaimed Ethel Johnson. She reached for it and put it on.
“It looks like a chicken on her head,” laughed Shirley Millner.
“I see the feathers already flying over here,” Johnson laughed back, as assessments on the hat flew around the room.
Laughter aside, the women looked with awe at the hat and began reminiscing on its owner, who died two years ago at the age of 98.
That brown hat belonged to Claudia Boydon Caldwell, who taught school for 50 years. She was principal at West End Primary School and Albert Harris Elementary School for several years before teaching at Druid Hills Elementary School.
She taught Johnson 60 years ago in first grade.
Johnson recalled, “When Miss Caldwell retired, she wanted all her students to have something to remember her by. She told each one of us to come by her home and get something, and of course, I got a hat.” Later, Johnson bought six or seven more of Caldwell’s hats at her estate sale to add to her own collection.
For Millner, hats are more than just fashion: They are a link to the family before her.
“I lost my mother (Georgia Hairston), and she was a hat wearer. The closest thing I had left when she passed was to wear hats. It’s like having her around.”
For the women of her family, “their tradition every Sunday was to wear a hat, or you just weren’t dressed.”
Wearing hats comes in handy, too, she said: “If your hair’s not good, you just grab a hat and no one will no,” she said, chuckling.
A hat also gives a feeling of presence. “You feel very much different carrying something heavy on your head,” which makes you walk taller and straighter, she said.
Hats also can be lots of fun. She traded her stately gold hat for a lively orange and pink striped hat. “It seems like you don’t have a care in the world when you’re wearing something like this!”
Mary Cahill’s favorite hat is a purple rounded pillbox with a soaring purple swirl of feathers and sequins in front. “I always enjoy wearing it with a purple suit,” she said, smiling.
She chooses a hat that adds to her stature. “I always wanted to be a taller girl, so I always wore hats to have more height.” She said that she is careful in the style of hat she wears, so that it would add height to her figure, not make her look shorter.
Johnson, who is quite tall, said she is glad she doesn’t have to worry about that, and Cahill agreed that she is fortunate.
“Somebody tall with my height can wear any type of hat,” she said, trying on one and then another.
Hats aren’t just about looks, either, the women said. They are proper to wear: “Traditionally my mother always told me that a lady wears a hat to church,” Cahill added.
Now Cahill laments that “the tradition has lost its popularity, and ladies just don’t wear hats like they used to.”
She has been wearing hats since she got married in 1962, and only recently has begun going to church sometimes without one. She won’t miss a chance to wear a hat to a special occasion or funeral, though.
A few hats from Phyllis Belcher also will be on display, including a short, wide-brim, feather-trimmed hat with gauzy ruffle she wore to a winter wedding, and a fabulous, colorful feather-covered red and leopard print wide-brim hat she wore to a fashion show. Belcher also wears hats, of course, to Fayette Street Christian Church.
Leaner Pritchett’s hats also will be on display. One is a hat her grandson, John Mitchell, bought three years ago as a gift for her 95th birthday. She is one of the oldest members of High Street Baptist Church.
Lucille Poteat and Elsie Foster, also from High Street Baptist, have lent hats for the display.
Three of Connie Lewis’s more than 100 hats will be on display.
“My mother loved pillbox hats,” she recalled, and “I’m a wide brim hat person,” she said. “However, any hat is a hat for me. I love hats.”
She also was inspired by her aunt. “I was always told as an only child I was always to wear a hat to church and to any dress affair. You feel like you’re always supposed to go out with a hat on your head.
“Of course I’m a member of the Red Hat Society!” she added. She is the Queen Mother of the Sizzling Divas Red Hats.
Odean Shelton of Cascade said, “I buy them everywhere. I like the odd ones.” She has received many from her friend Thelma at Abundant Life Rural Outreach Church in Danville.
Lewis said she is looking forward to the hat display and a related book discussion. “Crowns,” by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry, the book that inspired the display, is on sale at Waldenbooks. A discussion, led by Imogene Draper, will be held Jan. 8 at 1 p.m. at Piedmont Arts. Refreshments will be served. Anyone interested in attending should call PAA at 632-3221 by Jan. 5.
The display is coordinated by a committee comprised of co-chairs Imogene Draper and the Rev. Thurman Echols and including Connie Lewis, Curtis Millner, Angela Logan, Gloria Hylton Hodge, Mary Richardson Mason and Madie Rountree.
They raised funds for this locally based addition to the traveling “Crowns” exhibit through a direct mailing campaign to Martinsville residents and Martinsville natives who live around the country, and appeals to local businesses and churches.
The “Crown” exhibit will have photographs from the books and a few of the actual hats shown in the book. |
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