John Shearer: Random Thoughts About Betty Probasco, Nellie Kenyon, Ketanji And Lost Friend

For some reason my mind has been on certain women of achievement recently.

One came to the forefront Monday night when I was checking my email, and one or two people were informing me that champion woman golfer of yesteryear Betty Probasco had died at age 95.

Having been in the same Bright School and later Baylor School class with her and well-known local banker Scotty’s youngest child, Ben, I had become familiar with her golfing exploits at an early age.

Paul Payne wrote a very interesting and detailed story on her whole life in the sports section of Chattanoogan.com, and I encourage people to read it. But as a brief summary, she won eight Tennessee Women’s Amateurs, four Kentucky Women’s Amateurs, a Southern Women’s Amateur, and what became the NCAA women’s championship in 1950 while at Rollins College.

Yes, back in those days, few colleges in the South had women’s golf teams.

Ben would have an occasional sleepover at their mid-century Riverview home for several of us Bright boys back in the early 1970s, and I remember seeing her come home one Friday afternoon from some tournament. There sitting in a chair in their house was some kind of newly collected trophy cup. I don’t think she even mentioned she had just won a tournament but instead kindly greeted us.

I believe I actually just got to see her play once, and that was about 1977 or so when I was in high school and the Chattanooga Women’s City tournament was being played at Valleybrook near my house by what was then No. 11 green (now No. 2).

She might have even been playing a golfer I knew and liked like Debbie Walker. But perhaps due to my early connections, I found myself pulling for Mrs. Probasco. I remember following her the last few holes with my mother, Velma Shearer, and she hung on for the win. I also recall greeting her afterward and was pleased she remembered me. Her older son, Scott III, was caddying for her or helping her that day, I think.

My memory might be a little foggy, but it seems like she might not have had the most perfect-looking swing like many young women golfers of today who start off with professional instruction. But it was clear that she knew what she was doing and had an obvious confidence as she stepped over each ball. She was in her late 40s then and still playing great golf.

In 2003, I had the delightful opportunity to interview her for a story on her golf career and have linked it at the bottom of this story. During that roughly one-hour interview, I also found out she had a winsome manner to go along with her winning golf accomplishments. As I inferred at the time, she had such a modest manner when discussing her golfing career that one would have thought her top accomplishment had just been winning a single women’s club championship.

But as I remember her son, Ben, once saying when giving his standard reply after often being asked if he could beat his mother in golf, “No, and you can’t, either.”

If she had come along about a generation or so later, she might have been able to play on the LPGA Tour and enjoyed national recognition.

Her Christian faith was also obvious and important to her, and I thought it was neat she had even been apparently involved with a Christian-related scholarship at independent Baylor. It is something I would like to know more about.

I only saw Mrs. Probasco once in recent years and spoke to her briefly. She was nice, but it seemed obvious to me that she missed her more gregarious companion, Scotty, who had died in 2015. She was blessed in her later years, however, with many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

While I have known about Mrs. Probasco for decades, this week I heard for the first time about another Chattanooga woman who also distinguished herself in a pioneering way. I happened to be listening to radio station WUTC 88.1, and an official of the Rhea Heritage Preservation Foundation was saying its popular “Scopes Trial Play” uses some trial transcripts from the reporting of former Chattanooga News reporter Nellie Kenyon.

While I had heard of other pioneering women journalists with Chattanooga connections like Drue Smith, and I knew a lot of women worked as local newspaper reporters during World War II because so many men were serving in the military, I had never heard of her.

This is all significant, of course, because this month marks the 100^th anniversary of the Dayton Scopes Trial regarding the debate over the teaching of evolution vs. creationism.

I went to the Chattanooga Public Library and looked in some old Chattanooga News articles on microfilm from 1925 and did find her byline stories along with those of maybe someone from the owning Milton family.

She also uniquely had one story as the trial was underway on possible plans to build a college in Dayton, in part because Columbia University said it would not accept Tennessee students if the law preventing the teaching of evolution was upheld. I had always thought that plans for what became Bryan College did not start until after trial attorney William Jennings Bryan’s death right after the trial, but evidently they started beforehand.

Fellow Chattanoogan.com contributor Jerry Summers wrote a detailed story about Ms. Kenyon in 2015 for the Times Free Press, and she had a unique career that also included interviewing gangster Al Capone and Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa. She also had an audience with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt after being honored for uniquely helping solve a Highland Park bank robbery case in 1931.

I would love to look at and write about in more detail in the future some of these interesting moments in her career, but I did see one funny story regarding the persistent-and-diminutive reporter, who in 1940 moved to Nashville to work for the Tennessean. She had run into Mr. Hoffa in a Cincinnati hotel after he was already acquainted with her, and he said, “Hello, Nellie, dear!” Her reply was, “Hello, Jimmy, dear.”

Also while at the Chattanooga Public Library, I looked in some old city directories and some other information online and was able to find a little more information on her. She had been born in Kentucky but moved to Chattanooga when her father, David P. Kenyon, came south for engineering work.

He died in 1926 in Atlanta and her mother, Rosa T. Kenyon, had also blazed the journalism trail for her daughter by serving as the society editor of the Chattanooga News after working previously for the Chattanooga Times. Considered a kind woman, she was active in First Baptist Church when it was by Fountain Square.

Nellie Kenyon as far back as before America’s entry into World War I had worked as a stenographer for the Fruit Growers Publishing Co. before working for the News at a time when most news reporters were men. She and her mother lived on Oak Street near O’Neal Street before later residing for several years at 518 Wyatt Place in the same general area.

The News by that time had moved from the Pound Building on 11^th Street to the 100 block of East 10^thStreet.

Rosa Kenyon died in 1938 and the single Nellie moved to Nashville, where she continued her career that resulted in her induction in the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame. She died in 1982 in Nashville at the age of 83 and is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery.

Another woman whose name has come to mind for me recently is Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. After seeing her autobiography, “Lovely One,” on a table at Barnes & Nobles at Hamilton Place back around the Christmas holidays, I bought it and just recently completed reading it.

It is a fascinating look to me at the life of this woman whose parents, particularly her schoolteacher mother, taught her in a positive way to strive for excellence in all that she did. And she became a top student and leader and debate team participant under an encouraging coach at her Miami high school before thriving at Harvard as an undergraduate and law school student.

The engaging way the story was told by her and her writing helper, Rosemarie Robotham, found me cheering along with her as she had the unusual experiences of marrying a white man and future doctor from an established Boston family and raising a child slightly on the autism spectrum. And I got tired just reading how hard she had to work in her various law jobs before ascending to judgeships and the Supreme Court.

The moment when she received the call from President Joe Biden saying he was going to name her to the Supreme Court was also special. Ironically, she also had a high school friend or two with her, and they got to rehearse her getting ready for her nomination process just like they were back in high school prepping for a debate.

I realize in this day and time that we look at all positions and about everything as political. Some claim that examples of reverse discrimination or diversity hires exist over merit, and others feel that regular prejudice also still comes greatly and negatively into play in many situations.

But I came away from reading that book feeling that Justice Brown Jackson, who admitted not always being respected as a young black female attorney, has countless gifts and qualifications and paid her dues. Of course, she generally rules from the progressive perspective.

Reading that book made me also want to read other current Supreme Court justices’ autobiographies from both sides. I would love to read one about Justice Amy Coney Barrett, but apparently the only other one who has written his or her own memoir is Clarence Thomas, who in 2007 wrote “My Grandfather’s Son.”

I have also heard that Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s Puerto Rican mother, Celina, served in the Women’s Army Corps and might have been stationed at Fort Oglethorpe during World War II.

Besides several inspiring women, I also found myself unfortunately remembering recently a sad moment regarding a male acquaintance from long ago. I am always trying to remember events from 50 years ago and write about them when appropriate, and I remember being home for the summer after finishing my ninth-grade year at Baylor and hearing the news that on June 20, 1975, a boarding student who lived in an adjoining county had taken his own life at his home.

I know that in part because it was written up in some detail in the Chattanooga News-Free Press the next day.

I don’t want to mention his name, but he was a young man a grade above me and with whom I had biology class that previous school year. I probably had only minimal contact with him, but I believe it was all pleasant. I also recall that he seemed soft-spoken.

I can remember maybe not taking the impact of his death seriously enough, but in the years since as I have become an adult, it has kind of haunted me. No one was evidently to blame, and his death was one of those unfortunate incidents that we wish could have been prevented.

I had thought about trying to do a story this year and took one or two small steps to try and track down any family members to see if that was OK but was unsuccessful. It might still be worthwhile to write a story, because teen suicide remains a serious issue. And often the issue bothering that young person is not as big a problem as the youngster might think it is at the time. Any highlight on that might be good as a small step to diffuse any future crises.

His short life has also reminded me to make sure none of my brothers in friendship or family members is hurting, and to encourage necessary steps to seek help. We should all do that for ourselves, too.

Because of that, the life of my former schoolmate of long ago was not in vain in my mind.

And on a happier note, I am proud to have learned about the accomplished and positive lives of three women surviving and thriving in a world not always initially stacked in their favor.

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To see a 2003 interview article with Betty Probasco, click here.

https://www.chattanoogan.com/2003/6/8/37456/Betty-Probasco-Still-A-Golfing-Champion.aspx

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Jcshearer2@comcast.net