Frances Stebbins
Correspondent
A paper in the trash
{This is a selection from a memoir of the more than 60 years the author has written of faith communities for daily, weekly and monthly publications covering Western Virginia.}
When my late husband Charles Stebbins and I had moved to Petersburg, Virginia, in July 1951 following our marriage, we had told ourselves we’d stay there two years. Both recent graduates of Richmond Professional Institute (RPI) in its first years real journalistic training was offered, we remained only 18 months. During that time, he reported on government and various city events for the daily “Petersburg Progress-Index.”
I, a woman, younger and with no experience other than serving as editor of the college weekly, felt fortunate to secure a job as News Editor – the only one who wrote news – on the venerable “Southside Virginia News.” There I learned a bit about setting type and wrote all the headlines, edited “country correspondence” – personal items sent in longhand by both white and “colored” reporters for the tiny rural communities in the tobacco and peanut-growing counties south of the historic city.
Growing up as an only child in a one-parent family with a mother who supported us on a three-acre poultry farm, I did not know the common luxury of a car. Ruth Lichliter Stringfellow, born in the 19th Century and for a decade was a teacher in primitive Buchanan County, Virginia, could not drive one. We walked everywhere or used the then-reliable train or bus service.
Though in my early ‘twenties, I had never driven a vehicle on a public street. Charlie, a World War II veteran, knew more about cars than I, but he had yet to get a license. After a few months in Petersburg, he remedied our deficiency when we purchased a 1950 used Ford sedan. This gave us Sunday afternoons to drive to see his mother and a sister in Richmond. We explored some of the historic spots including Jamestown, Williamsburg and Norfolk.
Using the famous Civil War military park surrounding Petersburg, my husband tried to teach me to drive. With the pre-automatic gears, I lacked confidence, and we abandoned the effort. In our first years in the challenging traffic of Roanoke, I relied on him and photographers like the late Betty Masters of Salem to drive me to assignments.
Nine months into my training job at the weekly paper, the publication was bought by the father of one of my journalism colleagues at RPI. It soon became apparent that he intended my job for his daughter.
Again, a higher power moved me to the daily paper. I worked there alongside my husband covering everything from a cattle sale to overflowing garbage cans on public streets and the dedication of a new hospital. The most exciting event occurred when Republican candidate for president General Dwight D. Eisenhower came for a whistle stop, and Charlie and I shook his hand.
I did no religion writing in Petersburg. On the daily paper, that job was accomplished by an elderly woman, a devout Methodist, who composed a weekly column of events in the city’s churches. Naturally, in those mid-century days, the paper carried news of the white congregations although Petersburg’s African-American citizens numbered about 70 percent. They lived in a large enclave on Halifax Street. They did have a correspondent whose listing was headlined “Colored Dots.”
That’s just the way it was. Despite recent controversies over race, those of my generation have come a long way in understanding what is now seen as demeaning.
And so, we began seeking jobs again. Today, I believe that if the choice had been left entirely to Charlie, he would have chosen the ocean rather than the mountains for our permanent home. That would have meant the Norfolk area with which he was more familiar than I; he had worked for a year in the Newport News warehouse which served the beer distributing business owned by one of his paternal uncles.
About that period in 1948, he always liked to tell a story about how he learned of Richmond Professional Institute and how he met me.
Following his World War II Navy service, Charlie had held three short-term newspaper jobs in Smithfield, Lynchburg and Altavista. He was encouraged to enroll in college, applied to the University of North Carolina and was – supposedly – accepted.
But with thousands like himself using the G.I. Bill for free tuition and books, at the last-minute no housing was available for incoming first-year students. He was left high and dry.
His uncle came through with the warehouse job. One noon, getting a drink by a water fountain, Charlie spied a discarded copy of “The Richmond Times-Dispatch” in the wastebasket. Why did he pick it up and read that the journalism class from RPI was going to Washington to meet President Harry F. Truman at the White House?
He learned there of the “new” journalism school. Enrolling in August, he moved into a Fan District apartment with his mother; they could both walk to work and classes.
And there on the memorable November day in 1948, when it was not certain until Wednesday, the day after the national election, that Democrat Truman had prevailed over Thomas E. Dewey, Charlie Stebbins became aware of Frances Stringfellow. A collaboration of 60 years began.
We became engaged the summer of 1949 but did not marry for two more years following my RPI graduation a year later in 1950 and his, the next summer. To hasten it, Charlie took classes year-round, worked a small evening job at the Richmond daily and courted me.
And now, two years into the second half of the 20th Century, we were moving up in our careers.
