Staying busy is Polly Easterwood’s goal. For the people of Holly Pond, Polly and Felton Easterwood are a staple at basketball games and other sporting events. Polly has become well-known for crocheting throughout the games and each year at the area basketball tournaments at Wallace State, where the Easterwoods have their own seats. Polly’s supportive nature is far reaching and not limited to basketball.
She was born Polly Calvert in Crane Hill. Her father passed away when she was a young child after his appendix ruptured.
“My daddy,” she said, “they said he was a wonderful tenor singer.”
Polly started to school in Cullman and when she was a preteen, her mother remarried.
The family moved to Mobile where, Polly said gleefully, “I skipped the ninth grade! I finished school when I was 15, but we had moved back to Hanceville.”
She graduated from Hanceville in 1949.
Polly began singing in a quartet in high school and continued to sing with the group after she finished school. One day the quartet was scheduled to perform at Emeus Baptist Church.
“I was sitting in the car with a boy and another boy walked across the yard. This was before the singing started,” she recalled. “I asked, ‘Who is that?’ He said, ‘That’s Felton Easterwood.’ I said, just stupid silly, ‘That’s the man I am going to marry.’”
She continued, “When I got in the church and it was our time to sing, I looked for him and there he was and he winked at me! Well, that’s what did it you know! When it was over, I went back with Doyle to sit in the car and here came Felton back. I stuck my head out and said, ‘Bye’ and he thought I said, ‘Hi!’”
Felton knew Doyle and was able to talk to him and eventually set up a date with Polly.
“We dated for two weeks before he left for Korea,” she said. “We wrote for 11 months and dated one month after he came back and then we married. So, we actually went together for six weeks.”
The Easterwoods married in 1951 and will celebrate their 69th anniversary this year.
She smiled, “If anybody’s going to kill him, it’s going to be me! No, seriously, he’s been good.”
Felton and Polly went to Jacksonville State and he was offered a job at DAR coaching basketball. The problem was that DAR didn’t have a music program. That is what Polly went to school to learn to teach.
“That’s all I ever did was music,” she said. “The superintendent from Cullman knew us and knew Holly Pond wanted those two things, those two teachers. This little po-dunk town? Why, they didn’t even have paved streets and certainly didn’t have a red light. I told Felton, ‘I’m not staying here! I’m not about to live here!’”
Felton convinced Polly to give Holly Pond a chance for one year and she agreed. So, in 1954 the Easterwoods began at Holly Pond. He coached basketball and she taught music.
When Felton asked about a second year, Polly said, “Well, I’ve been thinking about starting a little elementary chorus. Let’s wait another year.”
That’s how it all began.
Polly taught for 35 years at Holly Pond and for 33 years she had a radio program on WFMH Wednesday mornings.
“The county put it out in every school system,” she remembered. “Every school listened to it over the intercom. I sang with them and I pretended I was in the room with them. I talked and they talked back and of course I couldn’t hear them.”
While Polly was teaching, she also served as church pianist and organist at Holly Pond First Baptist Church. She served as the choir director and still plays the piano at church today.
She added, “I had junior high school and high school chorus. We did high school productions, but elementary, I loved it! I just loved it.”
Polly isn’t sure if her way of teaching would be acceptable today.
She describes herself as a “hugger” and said, “I have heard there is a rule that you can’t even touch a student now.”
She said students at school and in her Sunday school class enjoyed her class and wanted to stay in her class rather than moving up.
“I like empathy,” she said. “I like to get down on the level of the child. I never put a child down. In all my 35 years of teaching, I only paddled one child.”
Many things have changed over the years.
She recalled, “One year, Felton needed a teacher for eighth-grade boys. EIGHTH-GRADE BOYS! For ENGLISH! We didn’t even have air conditioning and one day, someone called me outside the room. I only had about 10 students. When I came back in, there wasn’t a kid in that room. In the back of the room, they had these long sliding door closets. Well, I knew where they were. They were in that closet. I went back and sat down at my desk. About five minutes before the bell was going to ring and I started seeing the door sliding open. I said, ‘Wait a minute, y’all are having so much fun. Just close the door and wait until the bell rings.’ Lord, they did and when they came out, they were wet from stem to stern from sweating.”
She continued, “You know, I would be put under the jail now for doing that. One was a commissioner at one time. He was one of them. Every time I see them, they will laugh, ‘Do you remember locking me in that closet?’ You can’t do things like that. But it was in fun and they enjoyed it.”
Polly began going to Holly Pond basketball games when Felton was the coach.
She explained, “He retired from coaching then decided he would be principal and he was the principal of Holly Pond School for 15 years.”
After the Easterwoods retired from Holly Pond in 1988, Felton decided to run for Cullman County Schools superintendent. He was elected.
The Easterwoods had three sons: Tim, Tam and Tom. Polly described her sons as the farmer, the musician and the athlete. When Felton was in his fourth year as superintendent, Tam was diagnosed with a brain tumor and passed away exactly one month later.
In part two, Polly will share about losing Tam, as well as his amazing legacy. She will also discuss family, faith, retirement and, of course, basketball.
Copyright 2020 Humble Roots, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
