The home was the last stop in life for scores of elderly too infirm and poor to care for themselves, as well as a stopover for those of all ages who were down on their luck.
Mrs. G.T. Dugger and seven children entered the home on Dec. 11, 1918, and stayed for more than five months before moving to Copperas Cove, according to Bell County archive records.
A 10-year-old blind orphan boy named Howard Smith stayed at the home for more than nine months beginning in December 1919. He eventually was taken to a “blind asylum” in Austin.
These people were among the younger tenants - they were officially called inmates - at the home during Christmastime. If the early years of the home were like the latter years, these folks were treated to carolers from local churches busy spreading Christmas cheer.
The wives of the last two superintendents wrote down their recollections of their time at the home. Both made brief mention of Christmastime and the generosity of Bell County people.
Thelma Foster, who worked at the home alongside her husband, J.C. Foster, from 1960 until 1965, could not remember the name of a kind woman when she recalled the generosity she had witnessed from her some 25 to 30 years earlier.
“There was a young lady from Temple who came and took the inmates to Temple to see the Christmas lights,” she wrote. “I’ll never forget how a special bed was made for Mary Jane to fit in the back of the ladies (sic) station wagon so she could go as well. She was a young woman but truly had feeling for the elderly.”
Ruth Whitmire, wife of the last superintendent, L.O. Whitmire, recalled a woman donating enough material that she was able to make a new dress for all the women inmates.
Homemade food items were also commonplace around the holidays. While Mrs. Dugger and her children and Smith - the orphan boy - almost certainly would have appreciated and benefited from such a gesture, by the time the home closed such kindness may not have had such a great impact.
That’s because most of the inmates were missing all their teeth and ate only a diet of mush and soft-boiled eggs, according to a newspaper report from May 1967. Perhaps the home cooked meals provided an aroma that reminded the infirm of happier times.
In that same newspaper report, county judge at the time, William C. Black, said, “Visitors, particularly on holidays, bring candy and chicken and other food. It’s such a waste. The solid foods are thrown away, because most of the old folks can’t eat anything too solid.”
Black turned out to be the Grinch that was the driving force in closing the home. While he may have taken away a few opportunities for charitable people to serve the less fortunate, Black’s decision was anything but Grinch-like.
By the late 1960s the home was in deplorable shape and those who lived there could be served better elsewhere.
Black said the home needed to be closed because it was a remnant from another era. It was not necessary “in a new era of pensions, Social Security, welfare, Medicare and other forms of public assistance,” he said.
The newspaper article called the home a “skeleton in the county’s closet.” The article ran with a photo of Black standing near a Potters Field for the home where as many as 40 former inmates lay in unmarked graves.
Relying on accounts of the home’s final days or how it sprang to life around the holidays brings an incomplete picture, but that is somehow fitting when you consider the incomplete pictures the home’s registry now provides those who dare take a look back.
In March 1925, two Mexicans were hurt in a car accident on Salado Road. They stayed at the home for more than a month, but there is not a record of where they went after they regained their health.
Several names are followed by (col.). In a year where America voted for a black man to lead the nation, this is further evidence that as Black said “the home was a remnant of another era.” The (col.) stood for colored inmate.
In February 1932, four children ranging in ages from 10 to 16 and all with the last name Dobbs, checked into the home. They came from Prairie Dell and checked out in late July but why they were there and where they went are mysteries.
One of the last children to ever stay at the home was 15-year-old Johnny Fisher of Belton. He stayed for 11 days in late 1968.
Fisher may be the only former inmate alive who could give a first hand account of what it was like in the home, although his stay was brief.
In case you’re wondering, it’s not the same John Fisher now serving as a Bell County commissioner in Precinct 4.
For many of the inmates, only their names remain. Their stories, like them, are gone. Those who spread Christmas cheer at the home are in an entirely different situation. Their stories remain but their names are anonymous.
They are the ghosts of Christmas past.
