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The Shady Side A new tree ordinance could take Winston-Salem back to its roots
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Published: March 30, 2008
Here's a suggestion for a new slogan for Winston-Salem: the City of Trees.
Actually, the suggestion was made nearly 83 years ago, but the current debate over whether the city should adopt a tree ordinance prompted Betsy L. Hendrix to unearth it.
Hendrix, who, fittingly, lives on Woods Road, loves trees, and she loves history. A genealogist, she's spent time poring over back issues of the Journal, researching the decade of the 1920s in Winston-Salem for a book she has in mind. This headline from June 9, 1925, piqued her interest: "Judge Says Twin City Has Shady Reputation."
When the Journal ran a story recently about efforts to come up with an ordinance that would deal with protecting trees during construction and with planting new trees, Hendrix sent me a copy of the old clipping. "I love trees and hate to see them being cut down right and left," she wrote in an e-mail.
Hendrix was intrigued by what the article revealed about how lushly endowed Winston-Salem was with trees in 1925. She also had a question about a figure in the story. Once I read the clipping, I had a number of questions of my own. I'm afraid I haven't been able to answer hers or some of mine conclusively.
My first questions were prompted by the byline on the story, which says that it was written "By the Rambling Reporter." Who was this "Rambling Reporter," and why was he anonymous? I asked Frank Tursi, a former reporter who wrote a book about the Journal's history, and Jim Laughrun, a former managing editor who knows just about everything, but they couldn't help.
In the clipping, the Rambling Reporter says that having just written a story complimentary of the city's thriving industries, he decided to "vary my routine and see what I could find out about the shady side of Winston-Salem. His quest took him to the Hotel Robert E. Lee, where, he said, he talked to "Mr. Tenille, the manager," who was "popular and always obliging." It didn't take me long to figure out that he meant William G. "Frosty" Tennille (double "n"), a prominent man about town who did manage the hotel. The Robert E. Lee was the city's showplace, in the heart of downtown, on West Fifth Street across Marshall Street from the Journal offices. It had been built four years earlier, in 1921, and, at 12 stories, was the closest thing Winston-Salem had to a skyscraper, until the Nissen Building went up in 1926. The Nissen Building was topped by the Reynolds Building in 1929. The Robert E. Lee eventually fell on hard times and was imploded in March 1972.
Tennille, according to the story, sent the Rambling Reporter upstairs to talk to an out-of-state judge who had been in town for a while. The Rambling Reporter asked the judge to be frank and not hesitate to talk about "the shady side of the community."
The judge, ordering the reporter to take down his words verbatim, proceeded to talk about the great "asset in the magnificent trees you have all over your city."
As I read, I guessed that the "judge" was a literary device. But I'm not sure. Journalism has evolved a lot since 1925.
The "judge," as dutifully recorded by the reporter, waxed eloquent about how he had expected to find "huge smokestacks belching smoke and a very dingy atmosphere" as he had seen in other industrial cities. Instead, he said, he had been delighted to see an abundance of trees, even in the downtown area.
"These trees indicate that although you have grown rapidly in many ways you have had the foresight to preserve the works of nature to your benefit," he said.
"One of your biggest assets are your trees, and if anyone accuses the community of having a shady reputation, stick out your chest with pride and admit it." And "the judge" suggested, in the story's last paragraph: "If you want a slogan that is highly significant of your greatest assets, adopt the expression ‘Winston-Salem, the City of Trees.' "
Also in the last paragraph is that figure that Hendrix wanted help with. In the clipping she sent, the judge says, "I would guess that there are -- 0,000 shade trees in your corporate limits," but there is a "blob," as Hendrix described it, obscuring the first number. She guessed either a "2" or a "7." The Journal's library staff checked the microfilm of that day's paper, but, alas, the blob is in that version, too.
So we may never know how many trees graced Winston-Salem in 1925. We may never know who the Rambling Reporter was or whether this piece was a flight of his imagination. What we do know is that trees really do make a city more beautiful, and they make the environment healthier and more sustainable. Now in 2008, city leaders once again could demonstrate foresight by protecting and nurturing trees. And as slogans go, "City of Trees" isn't bad at all.
n Linda Brinson is the Journal's editorial-page editor. She can be reached at lbrinson@wsjournal.com.
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