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Juanita Holder: Keeper of Memories
On a wooded ridge in north Stoddard County, a quiet ribbon of highway runs through an out of the way stretch of country where once existed a little town called Tilman. Early settlers seemed to have been drawn to its position because of the tree-covered hills above the swamplands.
Perhaps no one in the area knows more about this region of Crowley's Ridge than life-long resident Juanita (Thompson) Holder. This colorful lady has collected a lifetime of stories and antiques from the past.
Holder's story begins with Martin Tropf, who came from Germany in 1928. Tropf donated the land for Tropf School around 1870. Holder attended the school and sang in the glee club. The school no longer exists, but the site is on the Omar Stoltzfus farm.
According to Holder, Tropf joined the Union Army around 1853. He had two sons, Jacob and Amel Arthur. The latter was her ancestor.
"I think they may have been Quakers who settled in that area around Tilman," Holder continues. "My grandma wore a long dress, and the other ladies in the area wore long black dresses.
"Jim Jenkins had a mill. The three Taylor girls married Jenkins boys. When the railroad came through Advance, they all left Tilman and moved to town, where they started businesses," Holder explains.
As she weaves her stories, the names begin to swirl together, much as the families must have done many years ago. Periodically, this reporter asks for dates, and Juanita rolls her eyes upward, as if she can find the answer somewhere in the air above her head.
"In the 1800's, there used to be a log church at Tilman," she remembers.
Though the later frame church, built in 1910, was Methodist, Holder doesn't remember the earlier church as having a specific denomination, though many of the settlers were of the Nazarene faith,
"Some of the early Tilman settlers spoke Pennsylvania Dutch," Holder says. "Luann Abner's grandma would get mad at her grandpa and fuss at him in Pennsylvania Dutch!"
In Advance, Juanita remembers that everyone had a well and had to pump their water. As late as 1955, her family had a pump on the back porch, along with a combination coal shed, storage shed, and outdoor toilet.
Juanita still lives in the second home which her family built at the address on Poplar Street in 1961.
"Mother didn't even tell me she was doing it!" Holder exclaims. "I just came home, and there it was! She kept my four kids while I was away at Arkansas State, getting my teaching degree."
Holder's teaching career echoes the customs of the times. After her education in Arkansas and Southeast Missouri State, Holder was hired to help the first grade teacher at Bell City. The teacher had 62 students, and there was no room for another classroom.
"The old elementary school was across the creek, where that new gym is now," says Holder. "I taught one year, and then I got pregnant with Fara (her oldest). After that, I taught at odd times, here and there."
Holder had the unique experience of teaching at Randles, Mo. (between Perkins and Delta), the last year the school was in operation. The building was torn down many years ago. Randles' students were subsequently sent to Delta.
Holder followed in the footsteps of her mother, who had taught at Randles, as well.
At Bell City, school administrators "kept finding jobs for me," Holder reports. "I taught English and history. I taught a total of 14 years while I raised my children."
An interview with Juanita Holder is not possible, without asking her for memories of old Advance. She admits that there are fewer and fewer people she can ask to corroborate her memories, but she makes a stab at outlining the layout of Sturdivant Street, as she remembers it, when she was growing up.
Starting on the corner with the old bank, she describes the businesses to the west: Arleen Byrd had an Army surplus store (the building burned sometime after 1943); then there was Byrd's IGA. There was a hotel with a bar on the bottom floor. Kirkpatrick owned the Gamble Store, and there was a shoe and paint store next to Byrd's.
Juanita thinks that Byrd's store used to be in the "Big and Friendly" building (where the Bank of Advance Lending center is now).
Somewhere on the street, she remembers a long store with a theater in it.
Across the street, Cleve Ward sold groceries, and there was a shoe store that had shoes reaching to the ceiling. Juanita remembers a rolling ladder, which was used to reach the shoes.
Richmond Lumber was in the mix, and Raymond Drum's tavern pulled up the end of the business block on Sturdivant.
Holder insists that there was a "cream station" behind Clive Ward's store, where farmers sold the cream from their cows. Advance was a rural community with sand streets and hitching posts. Most families still used horses and wagons. As a young girl, Holder remembers traveling in the wagon with her dad to get flour at the Toga mill.
"The town was full on Saturday night," Holder says.
The old opera house was located on Gabriel Street, between the old Morgan Funeral Home (next to city hall) and the current U.S. Post Office, which was not in that location at the time.
"I have a picture of Mother's class standing in front of the opera house, if I can find it!" she adds. (She didn't!)
She vividly remembers that Billy Rhodes started his gas station on a wooded corner, where Kent Rendleman's Auto Tech station stands today.
"Billy won money at the Advance fair," explains Holder. "He bought the land and built a little station under the trees. It was about 1955, I think."
A popular business in the old Advance of Juanita Holder's memory was Dean's Place, located on Sturdivant Street, where the Gospel Mission was until recently.
"Dean's Place was a great place for kids to dance and eat!" Holder remembers.
Another long-forgotten part of Advance was the airfield on the west side of town.
"We lived out on Goose Pond Hill during the War, and we would stay in town during the weekends," Holder explains. "We would go see the 'shows' (movies) and go out to the air field to watch a little yellow bi-plane that would give rides. One time, we saw a black T-38 out there. Another time, a plane missed the runway and scooted into the swamp south of Vine Street."
It was common during "the War" (WWII) for residents to go to St. Louis to work in the small arms factories.
Listening to Juanita Holder's stories is like taking a trip in a time machine to a world which no longer exists. She describes roads which vanished long ago, buildings which are no longer a part of the landscape, and people whose faces are gone from all but memory.
She can sit down at the piano and play the old songs that she hears in her head, her eyes increasingly unable to see the music on the page. She likes the lively tunes and can jazz up a song in ragtime fashion, until it makes her audience's feet tap!
On Memorial Day, the entire Holder family is often asked to perform World War II songs in Mabery Park. Music fills the air, and that's just the way Juanita Holder, matriarch of the family, likes it!