Cherokee Heights Evolved into Neighborhood Organized for Play

   “Who was Bo Read?”

    The question sent Jim Morris on a search through the history of a small, quirky neighborhood called Cherokee Heights, four square blocks near Kennestone Hospital.

     Just 80 lots and less than 70 houses, Cherokee Heights has been home to eight of the last 10 Marietta mayors. “It’s a peculiarly vibrant political community,” Morris said.

    The actress Joanne Woodward lived in Cherokee Heights, as did the city’s first veterinarian, the city’s first public health nurse, and Mattie Lyon, often called “the Mother of Marietta” and the force behind the marking of all the graves in the Confederate Cemetery.

     The neighborhood has been home to so many talented artists, jewelry designers and other craftspeople that it now hosts a popular arts festival each fall.

     But the question is, “Who was Bo Read?”

     “He lived [most of his] life in this neighborhood,” said Morris, retired chief judge of the Juvenile Court of Cobb County. “He’d been a city councilman, been an important guy in the community.

     “It just got me concerned that somebody [could be forgotten] who was as important to us as Bo Read was when we moved into this neighborhood, and he was younger, vital and a great partier. We developed so many memorable stories around Bo as he got older.

   “So I started collecting information about the neighborhood, to kind of catalog some of the stories. I’ve been three years at this, and it’s just driving me nuts because it’s such a big project. And I don’t have any idea or any inkling that anyone will have any interest in it.”

     Before you decide, you should know that Morris was asked the question about Bo Read by a youngster new to Cherokee Heights. He asked because he was about to compete in the Bo Read Open, an annual golf tournament played with Wiffle balls on makeshift holes through neighborhood yards.

     When they’re done putting, they close down a street and have a barbecue.

      This spring will be the 20th annual tournament celebrating a neighbor long dead.

      That’s the kind of history that interests Jim Morris, the kind that might focus on the friendship and good partying aspects of Bo Read’s life as much as his civic accomplishments.

      “One of the magics of this neighborhood–and it probably applies to lots of neighborhoods–is that it has benefited from having people who like to play and organize play,” said Morris, who moved to Cherokee Heights in the 1970s with his wife, Jo-Evelyn.

       “We’ve always benefited from people who organize fun. That’s what makes a community, gives you an aura.”

          Take, for example, Alan and Cecelia, a couple who once lived across the street from the Morrises.

      “When they married, Cecelia was a pretty serious person, the hard-working person, and Alan was the big man on campus in college and he worked at restaurants and in the bar business and things like that,” Jim Morris said. “They had this pact that Cecelia would be in charge of work and Alan would be in charge of play. In fact, it probably became a detriment in some way because they lived that pact and Cecelia probably got upset about it.

    “But in the meantime, in their play, they one day invited us over to judge a mantel-decorating contest at Christmas.”

     The house has three fireplaces, Morris said. Cecelia’s mother, who was staying with them, had decorated one; Cecelia had decorated one; and Alan had decorated one.

“So Jo-E and I went over there, we had dinner, we drank some wine and we judged the three mantels.

     “Cecelia’s mom had done this magnificent mantel. It featured our house–the view from their place–with us and our dog in there. Of course instantly we both declared her the winner of the mantel contest and went back and drank some more wine.”

       Then, Morris said, they decided to go door to door and challenge people to a neighborhood mantel decorating contest.

         “The rules were you had to decorate your mantel using nothing other than what was on your property then,” Morris said. “We didn’t want anybody spending any money on this. And two weeks later we had a home-to-home Christmas party and voted on mantels.

      The winner was adorned with a velvet Elvis painting.

      “It was like a Southwestern-themed, Mexican, Elvis Christmas mantel,” Morris said. “Elvis was singing ‘Blue Christmas’ when you walked in the door. It was just crazy.”

      End of story? Not quite.

      “We’ve done it every year for 20 years now,” Morris said. “It just stuck.” 

       “And the velvet Elvis was donated as the kind of floating prize,” he added. “If you win the velvet Elvis then you’ve got to leave him on your mantel all year long. Anybody who took part in the party has a right to come knock on your door to make sure he’s up there in a place of honor.”

        If you head north on Cherokee Street from the Marietta Square, Cherokee Heights comes up on your right just before the Cherokee/Canton Road split near the hospital. Freyer Drive, Seminole Drive and Chickapee Drive are the cross streets off Cherokee. Etowah Drive runs parallel to Cherokee through the middle of the subdivision, and the far border a block over is Chickasaw Drive.

     The neighborhood, part of the Church/Cherokee National Historic District, was first developed in 1924. At that time, Morris said, it might have been the city’s most modern subdivision, with electric, water and telephone service all included.

      “When we moved in here a lot of the houses were still occupied by the people who had built them,” Morris said. “They were the old folks and we were the young folks.”

     It was instantly an interactive neighborhood. “Old folks gave cooking suggestions to some of the young brides,” Morris remembered, “and the young folks might mow the grass for the older folks. It was that kind of neighborhood.

    “It’s an intown neighborhood with porches out front–right on the sidewalk. People walk the sidewalks every night. You’ve got to work at not being interactive.”

     There is a Facebook page dedicated to Cherokee Heights, where Morris, his neighbors and past residents of the area are chronicling some of the history they have discovered.

     “I don’t know where to stop,” Morris said. “My goal was to have a story for every family. I’m not going to be able to do that. There are lots of folks that nobody seems to know any story about. Then there are just magnificent stories that have totally been lost, and it’s fun to uncover those.”