Oral history interview with Belle Banks [electronic resource] 2002 January 25.

ArchivalResource

Banks, Margaret Belle Pierce, 1918-. Oral history interview with Belle Banks [electronic resource] 2002 January 25.

Oral history interview with Belle Banks [electronic resource] 2002 January 25.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/686766406

Mrs. Banks describes her life as the wife of Richard T. Banks as they worked together to restore Cedar Grove to its former beauty. Early in her interview, Mrs. Banks describes her job of waiting on tables at a high priced hotel in Florida. She remembers seeing many Jewish people who she claims were from the European concentration camps and recalls many of them wearing large diamond rings. She thinks they were "very unattractive ... assertive and big-mouthed.". After World War II began, Mrs. Banks recalls becoming a shipyard coordinator in Wilmington, Del. She describes the job as one that required her to make sure all aspects of building the ships were done in the correct sequence. She says that she took the job because it paid well and, although most of the employees were men, they were helpful and treated her with respect. Mrs. Banks continues that, when she lost her job because the need for ships was diminishing, she took a job as service captain in the dining room at the DuPont Hotel. She tells of meeting a soldier, Richard T. Banks, at a bar in the Hotel and of marrying him about a month later. She describes her move to Charlotte, N.C. after her husband returned home after the war. She continues that her husband, Dick, resumed his old job at the Charlotte Observer and relates the difficulty they had in finding a place to live with the influx of all the returning veterans. Mrs. Banks describes their four room home in a reconstructed housing development made from converted barracks at Morris Field. She speaks of the friendships she developed with the other young women that lived there. Mrs. Banks explains that her husband was committed to living at Cedar Grove, the home he inherited from his mother. Mrs. Banks describes her first impression of the house as something out of the novel, Gone With the Wind, and recalls a filthy building overrun with bugs, mice and spiders. She shares that she and her husband did not have money to invest in the house and sold timber in order to raise enough money to begin repairs. Mrs. Banks recalls moving into Cedar Grove in 1948, after they had added plumbing and electricity, the latter of which she credits Governor Kerr Scott for his interest in the rural electrification project. She remembers Dick Banks's friend and co-worker, LeGette Blythe, welcoming them to Huntersville. Mrs. Banks credits a home economist with teaching her to sew clothes and curtains. She adds that after her son became school, she took a job at a newspaper to help pay for renovations. When asked about Torrance Store, Mrs. Banks replies that they could not afford to repair it as well, but that the Mecklenburg Historical Association was interested and took the lead, including acquiring the services of the architect Jack Boyte. Mrs. Banks admits they worked as a Board to deal with individual members of the state legislature to raise money for a restoration project. When the interviewer asked about Mrs. Banks being assimilated into the Southern culture, she admits that because her new husband was quiet and unassuming, she had no idea that he was from an "elegant aristocratic family." She remembers that the women were kind and welcoming but that she still felt intimidated by her new family. Mrs. Banks adds her description of the Southern woman as "gentle steel hand in a velvet glove." She describes redesigning herself to become more Southern noting two of the biggest differences she found: more formal dress and Southern cooking. She claims her rice was so bad that Mrs. Ernest Hunter, wife of the Charlotte Observer editor, taught her the correct method to prepare it. Mrs. Banks weaves many anecdotes into her interview, including haunted house stories, how her mother-in-law came to inherit the house through a lottery, and how she was forced to seek emergency help in the early years when she had no telephone and no car. She remembers several stories around the time of the early remodeling, including Peggy Sea's, the wife of Dr. Ellis Sea, trying to climb in a window to see the house, their efforts to discourage curious passers-by, and how she retrieved some antique guns stolen from the house. Mrs. Banks ends by noting the progress in the northern area of Mecklenburg County, especially Winfield and Cedarfield, where her son and his family live, but claims that this has not effected Cedar Grove and Torrance Store since they have historical property designations.

University of North Carolina, Charlotte, J. Murrey Atkins Library