yesterday's tennessee

Lee Stanfill

By Lillye Younger, Sun Correspondent

There's Lots To Do In Parsons At 72'

PARSONS, Tenn. - "There's lots to do at 72," says Mrs. Lee Stanfill, one of the most active women in Parsons. Until recently she walked to town and back, a distance of three miles, with "the greatest of ease."

Mrs. Stanfill is a member of Bunches Chapel Baptist Church, the order of the Eastern Star, Woodmen's Circle and the Southside Garden Club.

"I have been a member of the Woodmen's Circle since 1913 and joined the Eastern Star in 1914," she said.

I attribute these years, "on the sunny side of 73" to watching my diet.

"I have never weighed over 115 pounds in my life," she added.

"I believe in not eating to excess and keeping regular hours. I retire early and arise at 5 a.m. every morning. I got in this habit in early life when I was employed. My diet is chiefly vegetables," she said.

Mrs. Stanfill is known as "Lee" by her many friends in the town that has been her home for so many active and interesting years.

"I believe work is the best medicine for contentment and happiness. In 1910 I worked as a telephone operator for the W. C. Cole Telephone Company in Parsons. My hours were from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and my first salary was $5 a month. In 1913 J. M. Bateman bought the Telephone Company and I continued to work for him. My salary had been raised to $30 a month by that time.

Mrs. Stanfill traveled and worked at different places in her younger years. In 1923 she secured a position at the Baptist Hospital in Memphis as PBX operator and worked there for 25 years. Her first salary was $2.50 a day.

She was horn Dec. 9. 1892, in the Bunches Chapel Community, five miles north of Pal-sons. She is the (laughter of the late MDL. and Liza Bussell Pearcy.

I attended the first school in Parsons, a one-room f r a m e building at the corner of Tennessee Avenue and Fifth Street, where Glennie Colwick's home now stands," she says.

"My first teacher was Mrs. Sophie Terry. We were taught reading, writing, arithmetic and spelling. Our school terms were quite short, around 6 months.

"I carried my lunch in a tin pail. We lined them up around the wall in the school room, she said. Loaf bread was unheard of in those days. We carried sausage and biscuits, cookies and sweet potatoes in our lunch pail.

Mrs. Stanfill was married to Arlie Stanfill in 1944 and moved to Sardis to live. In 1946 they moved back to Parsons, where he died in 1959, but she maintained her home at 1039 Tennessee Ave. South, where she now resides.

"Recreation in the old days was quite different from today," she says. "We had box suppers and square dances. For the box suppers we would decorate candy boxes and fill them with good food and take them to the school for the box supper. The boxes were sold to the highest bidder. Of course my favorite beau was high bidder regardless of the price," she said with a chuckle.

When approached on the scientific subject Mrs. Stanfill stated, "I wonder if we will ever plant a man on the moon? She reads a lot but says, "I don't worry because there is nothing I can do