‘Raised by characters’
When DeAnn Golden drove her mother, Brenda Sailors Blanton, around Ellijay recently, she was surprised at how much her mom remembered about growing up here in the 1940s-50s.
“We drove around about two hours, and she could point out where everybody lived and what used to be there and who owned all the apple orchards,” Golden said. “My mother’s funniest comment was, ‘Goodness gracious, I never thought I’d see this many cars in Ellijay!’”
However, mother and daughter were both surprised when they returned to the local Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties real estate office (where Golden is president and CEO of the firm) and found an unexpected guest at a planned luncheon — Blanton’s childhood friend, Mary Lou Hipp, whom she hadn’t seen in around six decades. Immediately, the two began to reminisce.
The reunion was sparked through Golden and her office’s relationship with their pre-closing paralegal, Amanda Wigington of Weisman Law, the firm next door to the real estate office. Wigington is Hipp’s daughter.
“Our senior vice president and regional manager Kaylin Pound hosted me at an office sales meeting recently to talk about the history I knew of Ellijay, my connections and my deep roots here, and we made wonderful connections,” said Golden of Wigington. “It’s true, they also surprised me by having Mary Lou at the luncheon.”
Brenda Blanton (affectionately known as “BB”) and Hipp both sat down for an interview at the real estate office after the lunch and shared their memories of a bygone era in Gilmer County.
Blanton, a Jackson County native, arrived in Ellijay when she was 10 weeks old in 1941.
“My daddy had an offer to buy the Ford dealership and my mother became the owner of a dry-cleaning business,” she said of her parents, William and Ruth Sailors. “They rented a little house in town.”
Following in her folks’ entrepreneurial footsteps, Brenda Sailors’ first job was collecting the clothes hangers that had gone out of her mother’s business.
“To make money, I would collect the clothes hangers because they needed the metal during the war,” Blanton recalled. “People would save their clothes hangers, and I would pick them up and sell them back to my momma. I would deliver statements or what we called ‘dones’ for the completed dry-cleaning orders as my momma referred to them — up on Corbin Hill. I saved the first $500 I ever made, and used it when I went off to college.”
‘Nobody bothered you’
Still, there was plenty of playtime when not working as a young entrepreneur. The friends were asked about their earliest memories of growing up in what would become Georgia’s Apple Capital.
“Everything about it was special — it was a wonderful place to grow up!” replied Blanton. “We didn’t have to lock the doors, and you knew everybody. Every Saturday, I could go to the theater, and I saw all the old good movies. This was our version of Hallmark movies back in the day!”
“There were westerns on Saturdays with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry,” added Hipp.
“And Hopalong Cassidy,” Blanton chimed in.
“We didn’t live far from each other, and we went to school together, but I was a grade or two higher than Brenda,” Hipp said. “We haven’t seen each other in 60 or 65 years! We roamed the streets, didn’t we, Brenda? We went to the skating rink, and skated and rode bicycles on the street, right in town! Yes, back then we did! We had no qualms about being out and about, nobody bothered you.”
“The movie theater on the square became somewhat of a ‘baby-sitter,’ and later I would walk down to the Ford dealership Daddy had bought,” said Blanton.
“My father passed away when I was a baby, and mother worked at J & C Bedspread,” said Hipp. “I was born and raised in Ellijay, but spent 18 years in Dalton. Then we moved back here. My grandfather was Jule Logan, and he owned a bunch of houses in town, so we lived in one of his houses when I was a kid.”
“Christine McCutchen was my best friend growing up,” said Blanton of Joe and Christine McCutchen, who owned the bedspread business.
“We slid down the hill behind our house on cardboard boxes, and we also had a flyin’ Jenny,” Hipp said of the device made of a long board nailed onto a tree stump that could be rotated at a fast pace with a child on each end.
“My mother wouldn’t let me do that, she was a strong disciplinarian,” Blanton noted. “One of the most memorable individuals I recall from growing up was Mr. (William Annis) Watkins, (former mayor) Letch Watkins’ daddy. He would come down Corbin Hill whistling, and you knew he was coming. It could be 30 degrees outside, and he always wore overalls. He helped out with many jobs and handy work at the Brendana Motel, which my parents opened and operated to provide a safe night’s stay and meal for guests. Mr. Watkins would do handy work and anything to help make the 12-room motel and meals ready for guests. After a supper prepared by Ruth, which was open to any guests at the motel, he would go back up the hill whistling.”
“Now if you ever saw a woman without an apron on in Ellijay, that was not my momma. She always had her apron on and was ready to help someone,” Blanton said. “Also, Daddy was on the city council. There is a street named after him (Sailors Drive across from the old train depot on River Street). They had traveling salesmen come through here, and they had no place to stay so Daddy decided to build that motel right there in town.”
Blanton also remembered a festival where “they dressed up in western outfits.”
“That was when the wagon train used to come over from Murray County, and they always had a big to-do about it, with a square dance on the square and people dressed up in old-timey dress,” said Hipp.
Raising rabbits
“I was raised by characters,” Blanton shared. “We had a place 4 miles out of Ellijay going toward Blue Ridge. Momma and Daddy were able to buy some land, and we called it the Rabbit Farm. There was a lake and two cabins. My claim to fame was as a breeder of thoroughbred rabbits, and I ‘showed’ rabbits and won lots of ribbons.”
But there was a problem when Blanton prepared to go off to college.
“My parents came to me and said, ‘You’re going to have to do something — we’re not going to get up at 4 o’clock to feed them,’” she remembered. “We had a preacher that moved to town, and he wanted two rabbits every two weeks. Now I thought that was strange, so I said, ‘What do you want my rabbits for?’ He said, ‘We’re going to eat them.’ I said, ‘Like h---!’ It’s true, so he did not get my rabbits.”
A few years ago, Blanton decided to return to Ellijay to visit.
“I went to the square and asked someone where the movie house used to be and he said, ‘Ma’am, you’re sitting in it!’ (today’s Cantaberry Restaurant),” she said with a laugh.
Blanton matriculated at Western Carolina University “because my mother wouldn’t let me go to the University of Georgia — she’d heard bad things about it,” she said. “That’s where I met my husband to be (Dr. Charles DeWitt Blanton), and we were married 65 years. I transferred to the University of Mississippi, and that’s where I got my degree in library science.”
Golden, who sat in on the interview, interjected.
“You had to be quiet as a librarian, so that didn’t really work out!” she said. “So she ended up in real estate. My father, Dr. Blanton, taught pharmacology and medicinal chemistry for decades at UGA.”
“As an entrepreneur, it’s true, my mother sold hangers back to her mother and then raised the rabbits,” Golden continued. “And when she was in Athens, she was so involved in the community and organizations and giving back. She learned hospitality from this beautiful city of Ellijay and watching her parents welcoming and serving people into the community at the motel and other businesses.
My observation was that my grandparents always had open doors to people in the community, and that’s what really led my mom into getting into real estate in 1978. She sold real estate in Athens when my father was a professor, but I spent my summers up here in Ellijay and fell in love with the community here too. My mother didn’t stop selling real estate until the pandemic hit after four decades of also welcoming people home.”
“And oh, by the way, I hate retirement!” added Blanton, 82. “But I love the communities I have been a part of and the people I have met over the years. It was wonderful to come home to Ellijay, even if just to visit.”
“Just hearing Mom and Mary Lou talk today is a reminder to me that it is all about the power of relationships and community and making a difference in the lives of others, and that’s a beautiful thing,” noted Golden.