Recollections concerning New Light Community of Richland Parish Louisiana from an interview of Lula and Leo Cheek conducted by Johnile Johnson .This artice was printed in the Richland Beacon News in 1982. Submitted by Dot Golliher ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** NEW LIGHT Community becomes a parish cornerstone……. Interview with Lula and Leo Cheek by Beacon Feature Writer Johnile Johnson Copied from the Richland Beacon-News, Monday, August 30, 1982 Numerous Richland Parish families have their backgrounds rooted in the New Light Community located just below Mangham in Ward V. Lula Cheek’s neighbors and many friends all over the parish will enjoy reliving some of their own personal experiences as they share her memories of growing up in that very special place. “Our love for New Light was instilled in us at an early age by Daddy,” she explains. “He always called it the ‘Cornerstone of Richland Parish’ and really bragged about it.” One does not go too far into a conversation on the subject before he learns that the name of the community is symbolic and that it has a scriptural connotation. To those privileged to live there, it represents the highest human good; all the most joyous emotions of the mind and body,and the happy hours of domestic life are described in imagery derived from the term, New Light. A visitor soon gets a deeper sense of the name’s influence on its citizens when he realizes that it typifies true religion and the happiness it imparts. Indeed, New Light Baptist Church is still a beacon, offering area citizens the comforts of divine guidance. As Cheek reminisces about the past, she covers several aspects of idyllic rural community life which continually threaten to disappear.As she was growing up, there seemed to be plenty of that precious commodity--time. There was always time to nurture the love of family and community and to form emotional attachments among neighbors.“We grew up thinking that the people in our community were the most wonderful people on earth. And they were, and they still are,” she says. Speaking of her life-time friends and neighbors, she rolls their family names off as if they were the vocabulary of a litany or a poem--“Banks, Buies, and Browns; Cheeks and Crawfords; Deers, Ellingtons, Gandys; Klines, Knights, Ratcliffs, Thames, Weems and, oh, don’t forget Odis Fuller,” and she catches her breath in sheer pleasure at listing the names that have meant so much to her since early childhood. Asked where her people came from, she answers, “They have always been right here. My mama’s folks came here from Alabama, but my daddy’s folks have just always been here,” she insists with a great smile. No. She has not delved into genealogy, but she hastens to clarify her origins. “Oh, Papa’s n ame was W. O. Jones, Sr. Mama was Gertrude Brown,” and she identifies her mother as sister of Emmett, Archie Brown’s father. Gertrude Brown Jones was also the sister of Ernest Brown’s father; Oliver Boughton’s mother; Billy Chaney’s father; Jennie B. McKay and Mrs. Lula Stokes.“Papa just had one sister, Lula Thompson, mother of all the Snake Ridge’ Thompsons….a number of half-sisters and brothers as Grandpa was married four times.” At this point it is clear where she got her own name—from an aunt on both sides of the family. Another fact is also very clear at this point. Lula was a very special child, one of eleven children. The richness of her childhood was produced in part by all those older brothers and sisters, some of which were already gone and had established families of their own when she made her appearance. “My close friends turned out to be my sister’s children. In fact, Susie Mock obliged by furnishing Mildred for me and one for Ed and even one for Traylor’,”she adds.According to her recollections, Ruby Lord was Maybelle’s (her sister’s) best friend. She hurriedly explains that her non-relative best friend was Ella Mae Thames. Satisfied that she has enough names on the right pegs for remembering, she pictures scenes forever in her mind: “We had this store on the corner where there was a big gin. We didn’t have many things to play with back then, but we had a favorite place--the seed house.” One knew right away that the seed house was going to be a recreation center of sort. Continuing, she says, “Susie would come over on Sunday and we would play in the seed house. We would climb slowly and carefully up what seemed to be a mountain of seed and then slide down in an avalanche, throwing seed in all directions.” Recalling that the youngsters also had a skating rink of a sort, she explains: “The first New Light Church was across the road in front of where the present one stands now. It was just a big building…no Sunday School rooms, and the land was given by Grandpa Kline for as long as it was to be used for a church. However, when it ceased to be a church, the kids turned it into a skating rink. So, we didn’t have sidewalks to skate on like those town kids, but we finally had a place to skate. The land finally went back to the Klines, of course,” she ends. Still dwelling on the church skating rink, she adds, “Three families lived in that church during the ’27 Flood, and that was also the year that Brother Arender came to New Light. I think, he preached until 1951. He could really preach, and we loved him, “ she says. A momentous time in any child’s life is beginning school, and for her it was exciting. She tells how thrilling it was when she, Ella Mae Coats and A. B. Ratcliff started school in a three-room schoolhouse. Maud Mulhearn, her adult sister, was the principal, who also taught Ed and Maybelle and later Lula when she was in the sixth grade. “Maud was a great teacher, but she didn’t want people to think that she would be partial to her younger brothers and sisters. And believe you me, she wasn’t,” she states. One certain little boy she remembers vividly. She can still see him sitting up on top of the woodpile where the principal couldn’t possibly reach him.“The boy’s mama would be on our front porch, it seemed, every other morning to see Maud about her young son’s progress or lack of progress,” she says. Cheek says that the New Light School was wonderful and that it had three grades. “I had Mrs. Betty Coats the first year and Harriet Ellington, who was dating brother W. O., the second year.“We had an outdoor pump, everyone had a tricky little fold-up drinking cup that turned into a small round aluminum circle when pressed. I didn’t have to take my lunch because I lived near enough to run home for it,” she explains. There were two grades in each room, a fact that did not appear to bother the teacher. The school bell was simply wonderful. It was a big old plantation bell with a rope tied to it. The rope came inside the window where the teacher pulled it back and forth, its tones calling the pupils into the classroom. The school sat where the church is now. New Light Baptist used the building for a church after consolidation with Mangham.Although the distance was about four miles, the emotional change for the New Light pupils was more like a hundred. Going to Mangham was thought to be greater than going away to LSU. The whole school went with her when she finished the sixth grade. At Mangham there were three seventh grades and three teachers. “It was town kids and country kids,” she smiles. “Today’s children are always involved in entertainment. We had a different kind, but there was no lack of it. We even had a picture show. The films were silent movies shown in the pastures. When the show was in the Thames pasture, the Jones had to pay to get in and vise versa. The price was a nickel or a dime. It probably didn’t matter too much that the films were silent, for the projector was set up in a tent which could not have provided prime acoustical conditions. There was taffy candy – the kind with a prize in it. Most of the time it would contain those little popping instruments. Scotty Greenhagen ran the films, and later he ran the real picture show in Mangham and played Santa Claus. These things went on for a long time, continuing as far as Cheek’s own son’s time. The community boasted of two syrup mills, two dipping vats and three general stores at the same time. The stores belonged to the Jones, Ellingtons and Thames. H. P. Deer and Neal Thames owned the syrup mills, which sent a delicious odor wafting over the county side in the later fall. Leo Cheek, Lula’s husband says he well remembers driving the herds up to the Buies and having to be very careful because other herds would be returning. Each driver had to be sure to keep his kept going in the right direction, or they would get mixed up. Leo is the son of Mr. Ben Cheek and Mrs. Rozella Kline Cheek whose folks are scattered all over the parish. Because of the stores, school, church, gin, syrup mills, dipping vats, the rich cropland and the people’s character, New Light was a self-contained community.In the hot summer time the young people went to McMurphy Ford for swimming. How did they get there? They walked, and naturally they had to have some supervision sister Maybelle and her husband, R. B. Boughton, furnished. Leo says, “Big Creek ran into Gillis Lake, and you could go fishing any time of year. When they dredged it out, they did away with the fish. At that time the creek was fed by natural springs in the banks. They ruined these, too. We knew where all the springs were, and when we went fishing, we’d scoop up the sand and the cool bubbling water would come up. It was the same as Norris Springs is today.” Lula says that she had graduated before she got into high school -- from the seventh grade. “ I had the measles and didn’t have to take the finals,” she admits.“You would probably be surprised to learn that one of my seventh grade teachers was Miss Ola Cooper. I also had Miss Margaret Morris who married Mitchell McConnell, kin to Massey Kenner. Could he be his brother? And I also had Miss Kate Talbert, who was supposed to be really tough. Most of us learned differently, I guess. That is why I mentioned not having to take the finals.” She remembers being scared in high school because it was so big, and then came the summer of 1936. Beryl Stark, Marjorie Wooten, Lula, and David Eubanks--a girl named for her father--went off to school. “I wore a hat,” she says and laughs. “You wore hats then,” she emphasizes.” Maude took me down to LSU. I took a trunk, I guess, because it was the thing to do. The others were taking one. I really didn’t have that many clothes.” Communications with home is what seemed most important.“What I remember most are the letters I got from Mama. It was wonderful when I got to come home. Sometimes I rode with Herman Meador. One trip home really stands out. I had a job working in a beauty shop on Saturday afternoon, answering the telephone for one dollar. I had an opportunity to come home, but I was afraid I would lose my job. Finally I got up nerve enough to talk to the owner of the shop, and she told me to go on home.”She admits that she really did not want to lose that lucrative job. After a year and a summer at LSU, she came home and was greeted by her brother Ed in this way: “Let’s go to Bowling Green.” Soon off the two went o Bowling Green Business College in Kentucky.The older brother wanted his younger sister to go with him, but she says that he refused to room at the same boarding house. He roomed across the street.“We were just a few blocks up the hill from the college. The instructor of business law reminded me very much of Mr. Warren Hunt. When I got into speech, I had the worst stage fright. Secretarial Science was not easy. It was hard work. What surprised me the most about the Kentuckians was that they thought we were from big plantations down south. I never told them any better.” After Bowling Green, Cheek got a job with the welfare department in Rayville when Mrs. Emma Hanna was there. In April, 1940 she married Noble E. Ellington, registrar of voters. When he went into military service in February , 1944, he asked the Police Jury to let her work in his place. When Ellington did not return, the part time registrar worked two days a week while their son, Noble was growing up. Soon after she and Leo Cheek were married in 1953, the registrar’s job became fulltime. Since that time she has seen the office progress from a two-day work week and no telephone. When she needed to use the telephone, she went down to the Police Jury office and used theirs. “We didn’t even order supplies back then,” she says. “When we needed something, I just told Richard Downes. There was only one old decrepit desk. George B. Franklin, Sr., came in one day and noticed the situation and said, ‘She needs a desk’”. And I got a desk. In 1952 Maybell Boughton, her sister, joined her as deputy registrar and continued to work in the office until both sisters resigned. ***Mrs. Lula Jones Cheek died Feb. 7, 1998 in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Her husband, Leo Cheek is still living. Her son, Noble Ellington, Jr. was a La. State Representative from 1988-95 and a La. State Senator since 1996 to present in 2002.