My son, Ross Parman, posted this photo of his grandfather, Jolly Snowden, a resident of Arch Street in the 1980s. Described accurately at his funeral as a larger-than-life figure, Jolly was the namesake of his parents, sharing their first and last names. His father, Crumpton Snowden, was the scion of a Revolutionary War land grant family, gentry, in Andalusia, Alabama. His mother, Effie May Leonard, was the daughter of dirt farmers in the same community. She turned the family around. Like the minor aristocracy in France, the Snowdens were in steep decline by the time Crum was born, although he reportedly retained an aristocrat's disdain for ordinary work. Selling the farm, he moved the family to rural Miami, where Jolly and his 14 siblings were raised. George, the oldest of the Snowden cohort, was independent enough by the time he was 10 that a bank in Andalusia made him the cosigner for his daddy's loan. (George went on to run a country store outside Miami that made him a small fortune.) These were self-made men: Jolly and his brother Charles were both All-Americans for the Miami Hurricanes, playing football to get an education. Their high-school paper routes provided the family with cash. Charles became a Florida state senator and judge, while Jolly built Ryder Trucks into a national force, first in Florida and New York, and then in California. In the early 1940s, he worked for Pan Am in the Congo. In those days, the Brazil-to-Congo route via Ascension Island was the fastest route by plane across the Atlantic. In 1941, Jolly was made an officer in the Army and put in charge of the liquor, which was constantly slipping on to the Black Market. "If you sent me to the Congo, I bet I could still find some of the Scotch I hid," he once told me. It was there that he met his wife, Betty O'Rourke, who was broadcasting in French to expat Belgians and French in Africa. She still lives on Arch Street in the building that she and Jolly bought for their daughters, Kathy and Laurie Snowden, when they couldn't find an apartment while attending UC Berkeley. Jolly had cancer in the late 1960s, for which he was treated with radiation. It bought him 20 years. A heart attack in the hospital in 1988 stopped his heart, but his doctors revived him, condemning him to six months on a respirator, a terrible ordeal. They thought they could save him, but his immune system was shot. A cautionary tale.
Interesting reading. I could fill in a few cracks and create a few. I am the Grandson of G. Crumpton Snowden by Effie Mae’s fifteenth child. Doris Jean Snowden. I never knew My Grandma Snowden as she passed before I was born. I met Grandpa one time I remember a tall gaunt man in a rocker in the back room of Aunt Anna Merle’s House ( she and Aunt Queenie both had frame cracker houses on bricks where the Pinecrest fitness center is now located Anyway I made the mistake of looking in Crum’s coffee can where the product of his snuff resided. Bad nightmares were the result
George Crumpton (Uncle George) or GC accomplished a bit more than was documented. He had so many Nephews ( didn’t have much truck with the nieces-nothing bad just from a different age) I was lucky in that he and I got on well and I spent time talking with him. I also had barrelproof bourbon that we both enjoyed 107proof He was not a heavy drinker any longer and I had not hit my stride yet 😆 he told me how he bought candy and parked across from Edison high to sell to kids Always an entrepreneur!:
GC also owned the filling station and the tire store in Coconut Grove. He was the Grand Master of the Coconut Grove Mason’s Lodge this was before he bought the Country Store on Old Cutler. It was more a bar and restaurant Also on Bear Cut where Biscayne Bay comes into the sweetwater it was a swimming hole and for many decades just “Snowden’s” The Indian word for sweetwater, which is where the saltwater meets the freshwater is a “miami” or Miamuh if you’re indigenous 😁 The swimming hole is in facebook last I looked
Interesting reading.
ReplyDeleteI could fill in a few cracks and create a few.
I am the Grandson of G. Crumpton Snowden by Effie Mae’s fifteenth child. Doris Jean Snowden. I never knew My Grandma Snowden as she passed before I was born. I met Grandpa one time I remember a tall gaunt man in a rocker in the back room of Aunt Anna Merle’s House ( she and Aunt Queenie both had frame cracker houses on bricks where the Pinecrest fitness center is now located
Anyway I made the mistake of looking in Crum’s coffee can where the product of his snuff resided. Bad nightmares were the result
George Crumpton (Uncle George) or GC accomplished a bit more than was documented. He had so many Nephews ( didn’t have much truck with the nieces-nothing bad just from a different age)
I was lucky in that he and I got on well and I spent time talking with him.
I also had barrelproof bourbon that we both enjoyed 107proof
He was not a heavy drinker any longer and I had not hit my stride yet 😆 he told me how he bought candy and parked across from Edison high to sell to kids
Always an entrepreneur!:
GC also owned the filling station and the tire store in Coconut Grove. He was the Grand Master of the Coconut Grove Mason’s Lodge this was before he bought the Country Store on Old Cutler. It was more a bar and restaurant
Also on Bear Cut where Biscayne Bay comes into the sweetwater it was a swimming hole and for many decades just “Snowden’s”
The Indian word for sweetwater, which is where the saltwater meets the freshwater is a “miami” or Miamuh if you’re indigenous 😁 The swimming hole is in facebook last I looked