The Story of The Book Club of Roswell
Imagine it’s 2010.
Martha Wayt is hosting the monthly meeting of the 50-year-old Book Club of Roswell. She has been a member for most of the last four decades. At 10:30 on this morning of the second Friday of the month, cars begin to pull into Martha’s driveway. The small house sits with the elegance of its owner off the side of a bustling road amid a busy commercial section. A path of native flowers leads to a charming rural entrance. Inside, one is instantly greeted with the warm essence of a book lover. Shelves and tables are adorned with the personal library of a lifetime reader. Beyond a row of windows, out back, are the beautiful rewards of a lifetime gardener.
The women arrive in groups with warm hellos and hugs. In 2010 only a few of the original members remain. They are joined by a scattering of legacy daughters. The other members are women who have been invited and approved over time. Today, after attending a few months of meetings as guests when each one reviewed a book, two new members are voted in. One is the daughter of a recently deceased OG; the other is her friend. Once they are officially inducted, the membership limit established in the 1960s is met again: No more than 18.
As always, on this day the dining fare is light and the reading fare is deep.
Each month a different host prepares a table with wine, sweet tea, coffee, and small bites. A designated reviewer leads a discussion on that month’s selection. While socializing for an hour or so, the members wander about catching up with each other’s lives. At some of the homes, there are horses to love on. At other’s there are garden walkways that astound the senses. At Martha’s, there is a meditation labyrinth behind the house in a field of wildflowers, beautiful trees, and stables.
Generally, Martha calls everyone to order and all assume seats in a circle. Minutes from the previous meeting are read, announcements are made, and a calendar is set for future months of hosts, books, and reviewers. Recent
reading selections have included: Patti Smith’s Just Us, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and Jill Taylor’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Today, one of the original members, Anne Gowen Spalding, is reviewing Leaving Mother Lake by Yang Erche Namu and Christine Mathieu. A thoughtful discussion of the general rebelliousness of girls toward their mothers intertwines with the story of a Himalayan girl who must leave her mother’s house.
The meeting follows the traditions set forth early on when The Book Club of Roswell first took shape, casually, among literary friends at the dawn of the 1960s. It formed with a group of people interested not just in reading, but with literature’s influence on culture. The rules were simple: Read the book, think about it, and prepare to discuss your thoughts. The fact that the book club is still around in the 21st century is a tribute to those who gave it birth. Its history matters even further because the current members stand on the shoulders of a curious group of Atlanta intellectuals who contributed to the growth of the city during turbulent times.
This is the story of the early members, how the original four came together more than a half century ago to discuss the ideas within “The Great Books of the Western World,” and how those ideas gave growth to the development of Atlanta into the 21st century.
An accepted fact is that Atlanta arose from her Civil War ashes to find she bore the aesthetic of her past: little more than a railroad stop on the way to bigger cities. In 1920, H.L. Mencken dubbed Atlanta “a cultural Sahara.” Four decades later in 1960, Atlanta had a fine arts home at the High Museum but lacked a home for her symphony, ballet, and theatre arts. Also, the city’s social construct was reeling from the unsolved bombing of the Jewish Temple two years earlier and future Georgia Governor Lester Maddox’s ongoing, racist rants against Blacks.
In the Spring of 1960, peaceful sit-ins with black students inspired by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. disrupted Rich’s lunch counter. Later that year two students who were black challenged the racial admissions’ policies at UGA. The flaws of the city became open wounds. However, there were whispered signs of healing. A young, vibrant John F. Kennedy, as President, promised to
ensure equal opportunities for all Americans, and the segregationist signs that separated Atlanta’s population by race in elevators, at water fountains, in waiting rooms, in restrooms and on buses came down.
However, Atlanta needed revitalization in body as well as soul. Delivering an address on the topic “The Mess We Live in,” Atlanta architect James “Bill” Finch said, “Atlanta is ugly....Ugly in a structural way. And it’s getting uglier all the time.”
Finch wasn’t alone in his thoughts. His friend Leo Lanman, a co-founder of the Georgia Conservancy and an urban environmentalist, agreed. Lanman believed a city chain of green mini-parks and walking trails would soften the urban environment and prevent the destructive push toward suburbia.
Lanman and Finch were friends with Jack Spalding and Jim Childers of the Atlanta Journal; two journalists who felt compelled to improve the lives of all Atlantans. Spalding often declared that one of his “compulsions in life [was] a desire for change.” In 1952, he had won awards for an expose of the horrendous conditions at the mental hospital in Milledgeville, Ga. Spalding’s friend James Saxon Childers, a Rhodes Scholar and former Atlanta Journal Editor, had disclaimed a racist editor from Alabama while receiving applause from the audience at the 1956 American Society of Newspaper Editors convention. Childers was fired from the Journal for his progressive views later that year, and though Jack Spalding replaced him as the Editor of the newspaper, they remained steadfast friends, a tribute to each man’s character.
Jack Spalding, a UGA grad known as “a walking encyclopedia,” had an insatiable thirst for finding out ‘why’ things happened, according to Pat LaHatte Langley of the Journal. His brother, Hughes Spalding, once said, “[Jack] wants to be stimulated by people with different ideas.” During his reign as Editor-in-Chief, Spalding educated Journal readers about ecology, race relations, rezoning, and the power of people working in groups. His editorial pages were written with a theme of “community betterment” and underscored his philosophy to, “Make haste slowly” which guided his editorial leadership amid Atlanta’s chaotic years.
Spalding’s friendship with Lanman and Finch was rooted in a firm commitment to bring art and beauty to their city, and with Childers, each had
long believed racial integration was the key to unlocking Atlanta’s greatest potential. In1960 Spalding’s editorial pages gave strong support to a bond approving the construction of a cultural arts center. Ironically, when the issue got mixed up with the many racial travails of the times, the bond was defeated at the polls.
Jack Spalding opined in the Journal: “Atlanta lost big that day.”
The four friends discussed the static growth of their city often enough for Leo Lanman to suggest they find a new approach. Improving civilizations and environments was a challenge for the ages. Lanman proposed that the friends begin to study the cumulative ideas of Western Civilization through Encyclopedia Britannica’s “The Great Books of the Western World.” Research into the history of ideas could expand their own visions for Atlanta.
In that moment one of Atlanta’s oldest, continuous book clubs was born. *****
In 1960 door to door sales of the 54-book Encyclopedia Britannica series had gained traction. The series came with the optional purchase of appropriate bookshelves, and stately-bound books lined the walls of living rooms and dens throughout America.
Lanman suggested their discussions follow the outline of the series’ creator, Mortimer J. Adler, who believed “philosophy is everybody’s business” and learning is a life-long practice.
The four men met twice a month over “whiskey and peanuts,” the standard cocktail fare at the Spaldings' home off Riverside Drive. They began with Volume 1: The Great Conversation and used Volume 2: The Great Ideas as a springboard for their discussions about social construct, civic duty, and community enrichment.
The readers moved on to explore the works of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes. They unraveled the quandaries of morals and values in Homer, grappled with Sophocles’ ideas about democracy, and waxed on about the women’s sex strike in Aristophones’ Lysistrata. It was apparent
quickly that the enlightenment of a “salon” began to pulse with a powerful fervency in a living room in Atlanta.
Anne Spalding provided the cocktail peanuts and often sat in. Jack and Anne Spalding had met in 1954 when Charles Gowen, Anne’s father, was running for Georgia governor and Jack Spalding was covering the campaign. Before that, Anne had been a poli-sci major, a Phi Beta Kappa grad at UNC Chapel Hill, and an Atlanta Constitution reporter with a courthouse and politics’ beat. An avid reader of the classics, Anne provided her insights at the literary meetings with ease.
“At some point,” Anne said, “the other wives got wind of it” and decided to join their husband’s philosophical pursuits. These new members included Maude Lanman, a Columbia University graduate and member of the Georgia Board of Elections and Bess Finch, an Agnes Scott grad and member of the Ruth Mitchell Dance Company.
Following them came Doris Hinckley Lockerman, the first female associate editor of a US newspaper (the Atlanta Constitution, 1948). In the 1930s, Doris was secretary to Chicago’s famous FBI chief, Mervin Purvis, who took down the infamous with his machine gun squad (of which Doris’ future husband, Allen Lockerman Jr, was a member). Doris was known for reading one book every day. In 1960, renowned Constitution editor Ralph McGill praised her “brilliant, decisive mind.” Doris and Allen were also avid devotees of enriching the cultural life of Atlanta and eagerly joined into the illumination of great reading with a group of friends. The ten of them still covered two books a month, but with a different format. Now, one member led each discussion and others alternated hosting in their homes.
The group continued to expand. Author and noted raconteur, Alex Bealer began to attend with his wife, Helen, a singer and WWII WAVE. Alex was a man famed Atlanta author Celestine Sibley called “the most interesting man in the world because he is the most interested man in the world.” Bealer had lived, played, and hunted with Cherokee Indian friends as a youth. He was a blacksmith and a woodworker. Sibley said “ [Bealer’s] curiosity and enthusiasm were so infectious a lot of us found ourselves looking at things... with interest we never knew we possessed.”
Alex and Helen were active participants in the enlightened conversations that ranged from art and aristocracy to citizenship and government. All were threaded with applications to the future of Atlanta, including the Bealers’ keen interest in preserving Georgia’s Indian mounds, and Maude Lanman’s determination to register all eligible voters in Roswell and beyond.
***
The community groups in which the members participated “made haste slowly.” But there were signs Atlanta was awakening. In August of 1961, Atlanta integrated its public schools peacefully while other Southern cities roiled in racial turmoil. A new slogan was born: “Atlanta: The city too busy to hate.”
Sights were set on the future. Alex Bealer told the book group that a cultural arts’ center was back on the table following the bond defeat. To that end in the summer of 1962, his sister and sister-in-law were joining more than 100 Atlanta cultural and cvic leaders on a month long tour of the art treasures of Europe, ending with an AirFrance flight from Paris’ Orly airport.
Word got around the close-knit community of Atlanta journalists, thinkers, and artists about a stimulating group of movers and shakers who were taking on the works of the world’s great philosophers. As a result, more people asked to attend the bi-monthly gatherings. James Barker and his wife, Arletta Peck, attended with friends. Jim Barker, an architect, had a hand in designing some of the most stunning churches in Atlanta. He was also the architect and owner of the famed “Barker House,” a flying-saucer-shaped house erected on top of Forsyth’s Sawnee Mountain in the 60s.
The original members set the limit at 18 to facilitate ease of discussion. They chose to book a meeting room in the library of the Atlanta History Center for every other Friday night. New members included two pyschiatrists, Dr. Tom Malone (on the founding board of the Galloway School) and his wife, Dr. Virginia Grotheer. The Malones were a couple known for their interest in community wellness who were eager to discuss the importance of a liberal arts’ education.
*****
The addition of women to the book club, coupled with the racial conditions of the times, brought the group to the realization that gender and equality were topics Mortimer Adler had left off his list of great ideas.
In 1962, Martha Wayt joined during the reading of Plato. Martha, who worked with Leo Lanman as the first Chair of the Georgia Conservancy Education Committee, was a graduate of Vassar. She proudly claimed the influence of her grandfather, John Huston Finley, the Editor-in-Chief of the New York Times in the 1930s, and later, a Professor at Princeton and President of City College of New York. Martha was known to always have a book in her hands with a pen at the ready to take notes. Her greatest interests were people, ideals, and ideas. Discussing Plato’s thoughts on equality, justice, and humanity brought her back to the lively discussions she had experienced as a child in a highly-educated family. Martha, who founded the Atlanta Steeplechase with her husband, John Wayt, made copious notes about her decades’ long, book club membership. Those notes have aided the recording of its history.
Early in 1962, as they reviewed Aristotle’s theory that people needed each other to survive, the group watched their beloved city devolve into further chaos. In an ongoing saga Lester Maddox, the segregationist owner of Atlanta’s Pickrick Restaurant, ( and soon-to be Georgia Governor’67-’71), refused to seat staff members of the Atlanta Journal and the AtlantaConstitution saying they were “trying to cram integration down the throats of [Atlanta] merchants....”
On the other hand at a meeting of the American Society of Newspapers that February, Felix R. McKnight of the Dallas Times-Herald said the U.S. wondered “what happened to just plain Americans...those people who could sanely and soundly debate...without endangering the precious unity of this land?”
The members’ reading continued to sustain them. Repeated cautions to persevere in the face of calamity and to seek truth in the midst of beauty were woven in the next book club volumes with Virgil, Ptolemy, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.The readers explored the dimensions of God within the natural order of civilizations. They labored over Dante’s hell, Chaucer’s
journey, and the power trips of Machiavelli. And when they got to the great British bard, Martha Wayt noted: “Shakespeare is an insightful joy.”
They had read up to the middle of the 54 volumes when crushing news came to the city of Atlanta. Sunday morning June 3, 1962 the AirFrance jet carrying 106 Atlantans home from Orly in France crashed, killing all of them and many others. The list of dead included Alex Bealer’s sister, Mary Louise Humphreys, a young mother and aspiring artist traveling with her sister-in- law, Elizabeth Gloning Bealer, an artist who taught French at The Lovett School.
Nothing the book club read had prepared them or their city for this. The Atlanta Constitution editorial on June 4, 1962 reminded readers: “The select cultural leadership of the whole city has been decimated.” It emphasized that the lives lost left a gap in Atlanta’s “advance toward the goal of greatness.” In the same issue, columnist Eugene Patterson wrote: “...they held in common that divine spark of which Plato wrote and without which there is no art.”
Racial unrest was put aside respectfully, but temporarily, when Martin Luther King Jr. and Harry Belafonte cancelled a planned sit-in protest; and though MalcolmX created a stir, little could penetrate the communal grief of a city plunged into mourning.
In the darkest of times, Atlantans found a way to make the loss a catalyst for funding a memorial arts’ center as an endless stream of funerals took place across the city. And then, just over a year later, President John F. Kennedy was killed and a new communal grief swept the entire country.
*****
As time went on, the club continued to accept new members. Roy “Splinter” Wood was in the Kennedy administration’s Interior Department in the US wildlife Service until 1967 when he and his family returned to their Roswell residence from DC. Roy and his wife, Tillie King, were a welcome addition to the book club. “Splinter” was a known storyteller and a persuasive speaker. Tillie held a Masters in Biology, coupled with a fierce love for education. They had contributed to the establishment of the Chattahoochee Nature Center and Tillie had started the first public kindergarten in Roswell. The
Woods were part of the group when the members celebrated the completion of all 54 volumes of the series.
What became known as the couples’ group “went on so long that everybody knew everybody’s opinion about everything, so it folded,” according to Anne Spalding who spoke to the Atlanta Journal in a 1984 article about area book clubs. Noting that 22 years had passed since the club’s first days, Anne went on to say, “The ladies decided to keep on meeting - we grew up when we didn’t work and it was something to do on a Friday morning. We chose to read great books by trivial authors and trivial books by great authors.”
As the women’s group formed, early members were those who had connections to the Atlanta newspapers. Scarlett Blanton Rickenbaker, a former Fashion Editor at the Atlanta Constitution, earned a spot. Scarlett was a St. Simon’s native who had won attendance to NYC’s famed Art Students' League as an oil and watercolors’ artist and sculptor. Her lively, line drawings added flavor to the Constitution’s women’s section. In the future, Scarlett’s artwork would be held by private collections in the US and Europe. She would also be the illustrator beloved author Celestine Sibley chose for her books. However in the 60s, upon entering the book club, Scarlett was a young, housebound mom of three who loved to read and wanted to enjoy time with like-minded women.
Scarlett introduced her friend and fellow artist, Barbara “Candy” Morrow to the group. In addition to her established reading habits, Candy was a well- respected portrait artist, supporter of the Atlanta Symphony, and avid Scrabble player. She fit right in. So Scarlett and Candy introduced another artist, Jo Rudolph, an instructor at the Dunwoody Arts Center and member of the Roswell Arts Alliance. Jo was thrilled to be a “reader among readers” and spoke of the group often throughout her life. Another member brought along Carolyn Crompton, a former Roswell High School English teacher, a renowned grower of day lilies, and a well-appreciated Roswell Library volunteer.
In the 70s one new member, Evelyn Sommerville, began hosting meetings at her historic home in Roswell, “Holly Hill.” Evelyn Hanna Sommerville was an Agnes Scot grad, a WWII journalist in Britain, and a self-professed “book freak.” When she and her husband, Robert, (the President of Atlanta Transit)
bought Holly Hill, the Greek Revival mansion was inhabited by six families, one of which operated a hamburger stand in the front yard. Today their magnificent restoration is a protected “Landmark of Southern Heritage.” But Evelyn was a legend as well. She was the author of the acclaimed novel Blackberry Winter (1938), a contender for the Pulitzer prize which, according to the the AJC in 1971, Sommerville lost by one vote to Marjorie Kennan Rawlings’ The Yearling.
The Sommervilles acquired Holly Hill from the Wing family whose relative, Lucile Wing Hockenhull, became a book club member. Lucile was seven generations removed from the original settlers of Roswell. In the 1830s, they owned the first ferry across the Chattahoochee River and commissioned Roswell King’s firm to build Holly Hill in 1845. Like Sommerville, Lucile was an Agnes Scot grad (1915) and according to member Janet Tiller, Lucile had two loves: “the book club and the Braves.” Hockenhull’s praise for The Book Club of Roswell appeared in a 1979 article in the Roswell Neighbor. “Club meetings,” she said “were a place of such bright and brainy discussions” that to be a member was “very desirable.”
Anne Spalding brought Janet Tiller into the group in the early 80s. Janet Pearson Tiller’s family owns the “Mitchell-Tiller House” in Sandy Springs. Sometimes book club meetings were held in the 19th century, restored cottage where Janet provided stimulating conversations and an elegant spread. Today, as a member-emeritus in her late 90s, Janet recalls, “Anne Spalding and I lived in the same neighborhood and played bridge together. We talked about books. So Anne invited me to join.” Janet added, “I was so blessed to have my life enriched by these women.”
There are several other names listed in the membership records over the years, and each of the women made an important contribution to the staying- power of the book club. Some considered their affiliation so meaningful that their obituaries noted it:
In the late 1980s, the remembrances of Clyde La Fitte and Dorothy Lyons of Roswell mention their memberships, as does the 2013 obit of Norma Lou (Dove) Cannon who was a “30 year member of The Book Club of Roswell.” Imogen Banks Caudell died in 2006 and her obit notes that she was a “founding member of The [women’s] Book Club of Rowell.”
Members in the 1980s and 1990s included Barbara Whittier, Mabel Ritter, Hazel Fields, Pauline Dwiggins, Jaunita Mitchell, Shirley Steele, Jane Wilcox Smith, and Mary Bugge. They are all remembered as highly active members through the years by Darlene Walsh and Cindy Etheridge who came along during that era. Darlene is a member-emeritus who still keeps in touch and helped with this history - as did Cindy, a current member who brings her elegance, (following a career in fashion), to a strong commitment to the women of the book club.
At the dawn of the 21st century, legacy members began to appear at the meetings. Following Tillie Wood’s death, her daughter Mary Jo was inducted with a vote, as members continued the original tradition. Soon Anne and Jack Spalding’s daughters, Elizabeth and Maysie, (a “book club baby” born in 1967), joined their mother at the meetings. In 2010, two years after the death of her mother Scarlett, Ginger Rickenbaker Hamby and Scarlett’s daughter- in-law Jeanne Rickenbaker became a members, followed in the next decade by Rebecca Wayt Buck, daughter of Martha Wayt, an active member until her death in 2021.
The current membership is a reflection of the evolution of thought throughout the length of the book club’s reign. It is still a group of seekers, as it was when couples got together over whiskey and peanuts in the Spaldings' living room. That morphed into a group of women who were educated, employed, and empowered in a way their own mother’s had never been. Those traditions have been passed on to their daughters and the women who read with them today.
Legacy member Mary Jo Wood remembers “the long rows of white leather books with the same spines and different titles in gold” that lined the shelves of her parents’ home. “The Great Books of the Western World” adorned living rooms throughout the US then, and college classes about philosophy and logic were required for a degree. Mortimer J. Adler, editor of the series, called it “a sharpening stone for the mind.” Hence, it is logical to wonder about the book club’s influence on the outcome of the original members’ dreams. The first four were the cultural influencers of their day.
Here are a few facts that may contribute to an answer.
Jim Childers published 19 novels and documentaries, many with themes about racial equality, before his death in 1965. Leo Lanman’s dream of a city chain of walking trails has manifested itself in Atlanta’s “Beltline” today, and Bill Finch’s disdain for the “ugly structures” of Atlanta has given way to a beautiful skyline and softer urban environment which he lived long enough to admire. As for Jack Spalding, he has remained a legend for his brilliant mind and sharp wit as the ultimate “Newsman,” and, most importantly, for his stance on the ecological preservation of the Chattahoochee which earned him the title of “First Friend of the River.”
Overall, Kay Powell summed their influence up in the 2008 AJC obituary for book club member Scarlett Blanton Rickenbaker:
[Rickenbaker] “was a member of what is regarded as the last of a post-war literary and artistic coterie that was a factor in Atlanta’s emergence as the premier Southern city after WWII.”
Those words define the legacy of The Book Club of Roswell.
2023 - Suzanne McLain Rosenwasser
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