James Etheridge

Gresham Park throughout the Sixties and into the early Seventies was a community that was an entity all within itself. Everything you could possibly want was pretty much available within a half-mile radius. Downtown Atlanta was a ten-minute drive away, seven miles west on I-20. There was a barber shop, a beauty shop, two drug stores, three cleaners, a hardware store, a shoe repair shop, a dime store, a 7-Eleven store and two grocery stores, an A&P and a Big Apple. Being a community as opposed to a township, there was no sheriff, no city council, no deputy with only one bullet in the sheriff’s pocket. But there was a mayor. I always used to say that he was the unofficial mayor of Gresham Park but as the years have gone by, I’ve come to realize that he was the mayor of Gresham Park. His name was John Ware.

“Big John”, as he was called, was the manager of the Big Apple store. I went through elementary and high school with his daughters Jane and Gale. Jane and I were in the same class, Gale was a few years ahead. I knew who Mr. Ware was because he was active in the PTA and would approve my mother’s checks when we went to the grocery store. But I really met him one afternoon while at the Big Apple with my mother. We were going through the checkout line and I reached into the box with Bazooka bubble gum, grabbed about five packets and stuck them in my pocket. On the way home, I reached into my pocket, pulled out one of the packets, unwrapped it, stuck the gum in my mouth, opened the comic and started to read. “Where did you get that bubble gum?” my mother asked. “At the store,” I said. She slammed on the brakes of our turquoise and white ’59 Ford, turned it around, drove back to Big Apple and drug me into the store by the ear. Mr. Ware’s office was an elevated cubicle amongst the cash registers, from which he could see the entire store. Momma knocked on the door to his office, hauled me up the stairs, plopped me in a chair across from his desk and said, “Well, show Mr. Ware what you did.” By then I was a blubbering mess. I pulled the packets out of my pocket and put them on his desk. “I took these,” I squalled. I was certain he was going to call the cops and have me arrested. He asked my mother if he could speak to me alone and she left his office. Mr. Ware was stern but kind. He told me how thievery was wrong, about how if I stole bubble gum at my age now and got away with it, I would think it was okay as I got older and continue taking bigger things until I got caught and found myself in real trouble. I slowly calmed down and he motioned for my mother to come on back up. “I think he’s learned his lesson,” Mr. Ware said to my mother. “Leave the other pieces here and we’ll put them back on the shelf.” “He’s going to pay for all of them no matter what, out of his own money,” said my mother. When we got home I opened up my Baba Louie bank, took out a nickel and rode my bike up to the Big Apple store. I walked in, knocked on the door to Mr. Ware’s office, went up the stairs and put the nickel on his desk. “Thank you, Jimmy,” he said. As I turned to walk down the stairs, Mr. Ware said, “Jimmy.” “Yessir?” I asked, turning around.
“Don’t ever do this again.”
“Yessir.”
I kept my word. I never stole anything again.

A natural leader, Mr. Ware was deeply involved in the community. He was president of the Gresham Park Civic Association, which I suppose was the closest thing we had to a city council. He was also deeply involved with the Optimist Club, starting and presiding over the South DeKalb chapter. The Optimist Club supported, among other things, the local Boy Scout troop. Mr. Ware rose through the ranks of the club, becoming Vice-President of Optimist International and Governor of Georgia Optimist Club. Beginning in 1994, the “Big John” Ware Optimist of the Year award, recognizing excellence in Optimist Service and leadership, is given to a recipient.

He and Mrs. Ware were members of the Baptist Tabernacle Church in downtown Atlanta for years. Gale told me that he loved young people, which looking back was certainly the case when we were growing up. Mr. Ware worked with the youth at the church and also taught a Young Marrieds Sunday School class.

Several years back, I went into a printing company in Conyers on business. The owners’ name was Skip Thompson. I don’t remember how the subject was broached, but Skip told me he had graduated from Gordon High School in 1965. He pulled out a 1965 Sabre, the Gordon yearbook, and we discovered we had a number of mutual friends, including my cousin Jerry. Then he told me he worked at the Big Apple store and naturally, the conversation turned to Mr. Ware. According to Skip, Mr. Ware was obsessed with cleanliness, which is understandable when managing a grocery store. Skip said that every Saturday night after the store closed they would have to clean it from top to bottom. He told me about another Gordon boy that worked there, whose name long escapes me, who had a speech impediment. This particular young man was cleaning the bathroom one night. Mr. Ware, from up in his cubicle, called to him over the microphone. “Can you eat off the floor in there yet?” asked Mr. Ware. The young man stuck his head out the door and hollered, “That depenth on whut y’havin’ fer thupper!”

Sometime in the mid-Sixties, a McDonald’s opened up on Gresham Road, followed a few years later by a Dairy Queen three doors down. The owner of the Dairy Queen was none other than Mr. Ware. Several of my friends worked there over the years and apparently Mr. Ware’s obsession with cleanliness moved with him from the Big Apple to the DQ. “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean,” was a favorite saying of his. I do remember that the DQ was spotless every time I went in there, which was quite often. The same couldn’t be said for McDonald’s and certainly not for a Dairy Queen today. I really wouldn’t know, I haven’t been in a Dairy Queen in years.

The Wares lived on Rockcliff Road in Gresham Park and moved from there to Clifton Springs Manor. The house in Clifton Springs was one of the first I had seen with a swimming pool in the back yard. The flight from the metro Atlanta suburbs began in the early Seventies and Gresham Park splintered. The Wares moved to Conyers, but Mr. Ware remained a lifelong member of the South DeKalb Optimist Club. In researching this blog, I also found out that he was also quite the singer, performing with the Atlanta Peachtree Chorus Barber Shop Quartet. Mr. Ware was quite a guy. He passed away in 2014, followed almost four years to the day by his wife of sixty-three years, Betty. Big John was definitely one of a kind, a special man and a good man. Gresham Park was indeed fortunate to have him for a mayor those many years ago. The memories are there. They always will be.