Jerry Summers
A review of the autobiography of the late Paul B. Carter reads like a roller coaster ride on Coney Island or Lake Winnepesaukah.
The self-written publication released in 1977 titled “Paul B. Carter – His Family, Friends and Great Adventures,” tells the story of ups and down of a charismatic individual who lived up to the words of a poem, “Don’t Quit,” given to him by his father, James Inman Carter, in 1920.
The 191-page book contains many of his successes (and failures) and numerous photographs of his relationships with many of the prominent males and females of that era on Lookout Mountain, the city of Chattanooga, New York City, New Orleans, and other places throughout the world.
Paul B.
Carter was born in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago on February 10, 1888. Although nothing is said about the family’s financial and social status, his father was a member of the Chicago Board of Trade.
When he was two and a half the family moved to Chattanooga and resided on Poplar Street at the foot of Cameron Hill. He had four siblings, Garnet, Mary Lynn, Dorris and Lucile. They afterward moved to Lookout Mountain, but because of a lack of a high school for Garnet and Mary Lynn to attend there the family would move back to Chattanooga and reside on High Street for two years.
Paul’s father had also been a travelling salesman and entered the wholesale produce and premium cigar business (bonus for buying large quantity of products).
Paul B. quit high school at the age of fourteen and a half and never finished his education which he regretted in his biography although he gained an education in the “school of hard knocks,” which his college-educated colleagues did not receive.
He also would travel the country for two years selling cigars to grocers.
As a teenager he got shot in the left hip in Providence, Kentucky, as an innocent bystander in a shootout. At the age of 19 in 1907 he spent two months in the hospital after being transported by train to Evansville, Indiana. His prospects for survival were slim as his father was told to bring a black burial suit and to purchase a casket for his son, which fortunately was not needed.
The family had also lived on Lookout Mountain during the summer where Paul B. would meet many lifelong acquaintances and financial supporters.
Paul B. and his father would acquire large tracts of land on Lookout Mountain and also purchased potentially rich copper mines in Ducktown, Tennessee.
Faced with the decision of whether to form a real estate company to develop Lookout Mountain or form a corporation, sell stock therein, and go into the copper mining business, the duo made the wrong choice.
With rumors of war in Europe circulating there would be a great need for copper, and the decision to go into mining rather than real state was not unfounded but their lack of mining experience would eventually be fatal.
At the age of 29 Paul enlisted in the Signal Corps (the first name used by the Air Corps) on October 7, 1917 in World War I. He graduated from Flight Training School and would be commissioned as a First Lieutenant and serve as a flight instructor through the war.
Although he relates many interesting experiences in his book including several crash landings he does not talk about any actual “dog fights” or contact with the enemy. Several photos of one of those crashes on March 7, 1918 are included.
Upon return to Chattanooga in 1919 he engaged in not only his business interests with his father in mining and real estate but also participated in a busy social life that honored ex-soldiers.
During this time, he and his good friends, Tom and Frank Harrison, decided to take a trip to Havana, Cuba on a cruise from Jacksonville, Florida.
Frank Harrison would initially reside in North Carolina where he owned majority interests in several Coca-Cola plants. He also had bottling plants in Texas and Georgia.
The Carters continued to sell stock in their mining interests in Ducktown although the end of the war had adversely affected the value of copper. After they sold their entire interests to Frank Harrison they were able to pay off all of their indebtedness in the Ocoee Copper Company.
The life-long friendship with Frank Harrison and his family would eventually involve into the wisest decision that Paul B. Carter ever made.
Over the years he would manage the Signal Mountain Hotel (now Alexian Brothers). He would also build the Lookout Mountain Hotel (now Covenant College) that opened on June 23, 1928 and due to the Depression would eventually close with a debt of over a million dollars.
Going into the life insurance business he was able to partially pay off his creditors by selling them policies and “splitting” his premiums with them until this practice was stopped by the State Insurance Commission in Nashville as an illegal practice and he was told that he would have to immediately cease what he was doing.
With the help of friends and considerate bankers Paul would survive his financial problems.
He would marry an attractive young lady from Sweetwater, Tennessee, Mary Craig, in February 1928 in her hometown. In December she contracted the flu while she and Paul B. were spending Christmas with her family. On December 31 she became worse and was transported by ambulance to Chattanooga where she died that night. She was expecting a child and died in childbirth The child also did not survive.
Although his financial problems continued, the wisest upward move of his roller coaster life took place on October 7, 1935 when he married the wealthy widow of Frank Harrison, Anne. She had three children, Presh, Jesse, and Frank, Jr., from her previous marriage to his close friend.
The intended union of Paul and Anne was not at first favored by all of his prospective stepchildren as he candidly admitted in his book that “he was broke as flat as a flounder” but he also claimed “that he believed that they will love me eventually as much as if I were their own father – and the same applies to me.”
Over the years he would be entrusted with much of the responsibility of Anne’s extensive Coca Cola holdings and other interests throughout the United States and they were married for 32 years prior to her death in 1967. Many photographs of their worldwide travels are also included in the book.
When he died in 1979, he was described as “an American businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist in Chattanooga, Tennessee.”
He truly lived a roller coaster life!
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Jerry Summers
(If you have additional information about one of Mr. Summers' articles or have suggestions or ideas about a future Chattanooga area historical piece, please contact Mr. Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com)