Is it safe to say we know about asbestos and that it poses a hazard to health? Anyone who has asked a contractor to fix cracks in the popcorn ceiling of an older house knows that, for sure.
If you don't, you won't feel the enjoyable effect of reading the antique advertisement we're publishing with today's Old News. You will miss out.
Can't have that, so here's a shortcut to a (faintly reassuring) facts page about asbestos provided by the National Cancer Institute: arkansasonline.com/1210asbestos.
If you need a bit of background, take a minute to scan that page. We'll wait.
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While they're reading up on asbestos, Favorite Reader, let's appreciate the risks I take in the name of humor and public education. I have provided a link that carries eyes away from my column, possibly never to return. Are newspaper people idealistic or what?
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All back? Good. Behold (on this page) the advertisement from the Dec. 1, 1918, Arkansas Gazette: "Warning to Roof Owners!"
The smaller type says, in part:
Rain, snow and sleet will soon hit your roofs. Are you prepared? You surely have not forgotten the snows of last winter and the damage done by leaking roofs. Get busy now and put your roofs in good condition. This can be done easily and at a small expense if you will use our New Roof Asbestos Fibre Coating which can be applied by anyone in any kind of weather.
This was no joke in 1918. The Co-Operative Oil & Paint Co. of 504 E. Markham St. in Little Rock sold asbestos gunk confidently, based upon contemporary science.
Asbestos was but one not-yet-appreciated hazard of modernity 100 years ago. Another was airplanes.
During the war, Arkansas newspapers reported aviators' mishaps, catastrophes, epic combats and heroic deaths nearly daily. The public appreciated the risks taken by the daring pilots and cheered innovations. Even after this happened:
Little Rock, Ark., Dec. 4 — A local insurance firm today was notified of the burning of a residence at Marked Tree, Ark., as the result of an airplane accident. The report said that an aviator from Park Field, Memphis, lost control of his plane while flying over Marked Tree yesterday evening and with his machine, fell on the roof of the residence of E.L. Pierce. The plane's gasoline tank exploded, setting fire to the house which was destroyed with a loss estimated at $3,500. The report said the aviator escaped with minor injuries but did not give his name.
That was an Associated Press report carried by The Pine Bluff Daily Graphic on Dec. 5, 1918. The same day, an article twice as long and about half as informed appeared on page one of the Gazette. Noting that phone lines were down at Marked Tree, the reporter focused on what else the accident might cause to happen:
The first specific case forerunning a brand new set of conditions which [are destined] to cause lawing and lawmaking in Arkansas occurred at Marked Tree Tuesday, according to a report received yesterday by the L.B. Leigh insurance company ... The destruction of Mr. Pierce's home is the first of its kind which has happened in the United States, so far as any records to the contrary can be found, but it may be the first case of a general epidemic.
The reporter vamped:
The freeholder who has always considered that his fee simple deed entitled him to dominion of his land from the center of the earth to the edge of the atmosphere, may be put to it to test the guaranty of the latter clause. A man might not want his air all cluttered up with airships but the latest revised statutes are not going to help him any.
J.G. Leigh of the insurance company told the Gazette the company's policies "had taken cognizance of airplanes, but that they specify 'hostile' craft."
If the aviator had hostile intentions on Mr. Pierce, or if he had simply crashed through the house, wrecking it totally, but not causing fire, the liabilities of the company might be materially reduced. At any rate the fire is going to cause a careful reading of policies throughout the country to see what they do say in all that fine print.
I couldn't find out whether the insurer paid the $3,500, although one report makes it seem Leigh did. But I have learned a bit about E.L. Pierce — enough to suggest he actually did want his air cluttered up with airships.
From items in national insurance journals that winter, we know Edwin Leo Pierce (1877-1938) was a wealthy lumberman. The Eastern Underwriter reported that he had "interested himself very much in the securing and preparing of a landing field at Marked Tree" for student pilots at Memphis.
He had also kept open house for the aviators who came there, and had issued an open invitation for them to be his guests whenever in the city.
The journal adds that the two aviators driving the ship had been visiting his house and were trying to return to Memphis when the ship "through accident became unmanageable" and crashed into the house.
The Underwriter notes that the insurer's liability was uncertain. All the agents could do was put in a claim against the U.S. government for reimbursement, "as the Government cannot be sued."
In newspaper accounts and timber journals, we see Pierce arrive in Jonesboro in 1911, a recent initiate of the Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo, representing the Pierce-Williams Basket Co. with home offices in South Haven, Mich. The factory made packages and wooden baskets for fruit, vegetables and grain.
For the next 20 years, items in the Gazette and Arkansas Democrat track his membership in the Knights Templar of Marked Tree and Jonesboro, from grand warden in 1914 to his ascension in 1921 to a title styled by the Democrat as "Right Eminent Grand Commander Right Eminent Sir" — which feels like too many rights. He led that commandery in Arkansas, and inspected chapters. He organized a chapter at Conway in 1920.
In 1916 he was president of a company formed to build a municipal swimming pool at Marked Tree.
From his draft registration card dated Sept. 12, 1918, we know that at age 41 he was of medium height and build with dark eyes and dark hair, married and the father of three.
In 1921 he was listed among delinquents who owed taxes for the drainage of homestead land in eastern Arkansas that had not been taxed before the war. His holdings amounted to about 125 acres. He sued, contesting the legality of the levy. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal, which effectively upheld earlier rulings that the drainage district was legit.
After the great flood of 1927, he led Red Cross efforts in Poinsett County and petitioned the state for support to fight pellagra.
His wife, Bessie, a native of Texas, was also active. She co-founded a Woman's Progressive Club at Marked Tree in 1928, led the Parent-Teacher Association, served on the school board, was a Daughter of the American Revolution and vice president of the Arkansas Spanish-American War Veterans Auxiliary.
Elizabeth Gladdis Pierce was 32 when Edwin died. She did not remarry. One son became a Naval aviator and in 1943 won the Navy's Distinguished Flying Cross.
Bessie and Edwin Pierce are buried in Oaklawn Cemetery at Jonesboro.
They sound like real forward-thinkers, so I bet they slathered asbestos all over their new house.
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Style on 12/10/2018