Charlotte and Louise, to be Loved

By Charnell Collins Beel

This is a true story about my mother and aunt (Charlotte and Louise) and their journey through youth being neglected and mistreated by their mothers during the Great Depression, their relationships, and parenthood. Charlotte and Louise struggle with love in their home life and in their love life, feeling like they have never really experienced true love. They leave home and become burlesque dancers. One becomes a burlesque super star, while the other chooses love and marriage with children only to find disappointment and heartache. Their lives intertwine and they grow old together after all their ups and downs. They find love in the families they created and with each other as best friends for life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098331030

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HOW IT BEGAN

In 1885, John Gideon Whitehead was born in Macon, Georgia. His family was believed to be bankers in Georgia. Five years later, Lillian Louise Lofley was born there, too. Her family were loggers in Georgia until there was a terrible accident, and one of them was killed. Because of this, Lillian’s family came to Tampa in a wagon, to the Palmetto Beach area, and settled there, to work in the shipyard. John and Lillian met and married when she was only thirteen years old. The couple moved to Tampa, Florida shortly after to start their married life together.

Why did they all move to Tampa, other than the fact that it was not that far from Macon, Georgia? Tampa had better and safer job opportunities.

In the 1880’s, the construction of the first railroad links laid by Henry B. Plant came to Tampa in 1883-84 from Sanford via Plant City. This brought the development of thriving Cigar and phosphate industries. The founding of the cigar-centered neighborhood of Ybor City in 1885 brought an influx of Cubans, Spaniards, Italians, and other immigrants. Tampa’s population jumped from less than 800 residents in 1880 to over 15,000 in 1900, making it one of the largest cities in Florida.

By the 20th century, Tampa emerged as a modern financial, trade, and commercial hub. It saw the start of the Gasparilla Pirate Festival and pioneering aviator Tony Jannus captaining the inaugural flight of the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line, the world’s first commercial passenger airline. It also saw the rise of organized crime. The land area of Tampa grew, most notably when the city annexed the neighboring communities of West Tampa in 1925, Sulphur Springs and Palma Ceia in 1953, and Port Tampa in 1961.

Figure 1 Shipbuilding in Tampa, Florida

Figure 2 Cigar factories in Ybor City

John and Lillian had three daughters after they moved to Tampa. John was offered a job by some of his relatives back in Georgia, but Lillian was not having it. She and John had settled nicely in Tampa, and she wanted to be close to her relatives that had moved to Tampa before her.

So, they stayed in Tampa where he got a job working at the shipyard. Lillian, along with some of her relatives worked in the cigar factories. John and Lillian were poor. One day when she had no money, she sold a little ring she had for only a nickel and walked to the store to try to get some food for her children because they were hungry.

Their two younger daughters, Johnnie, and Thelma, were very close and competitive with one another. The oldest sister, Ethel, was different. She was more reserved and proper. She walked with a limp because she had polio when she was young. Because she was the oldest, she had the responsibility of looking after the two younger ones while their parents worked. Thelma gave Ethel a hard time, as she liked to hang out the windows while Ethel was in charge.

John was a womanizer right from the start and frequented the local juke joints and honky-tonks where he drank and played the piano and his harmonica. Lillian was so young and inexperienced when she met John and didn’t realize what life would be like with him. As she grew older, she and John had terrible physical fights with each other through the years about his womanizing ways. She was a stout woman who could throw a punch, and she didn’t hesitate to inflict verbal pain, as well, telling John that his family were horse thieves from Georgia. She and her daughter, Johnnie, often drug him out of the juke joints and beat up the women he was with.

The two younger sisters, Johnnie and Thelma, were so competitive that when one got married, the other one married his brother. When Johnnie got pregnant, Thelma got pregnant right away, too. They both gave birth to daughters that were only nine months apart, Charlotte and Louise.

CHARLOTTE–THE EARLY YEARS

Charlotte Orient (named after one of the ships in the shipyard in Tampa, during the Great Depression when money was scarce, and times were tough) was only three pounds when she was born. Her mother, Thelma, divorced after her birth. Thelma was a rough woman with a bad temper who would hold grudges against people for years, even her own relatives. If you crossed her there would be hell to pay. She was known to throw dishes at you, curse you, slap you across the face, or even lock you out of the house. Charlotte never had a relationship with her father growing up. Thelma married Ray at the Clearwater Court House when Charlotte was three years old.

Charlotte was a tiny little girl, so she was given the nickname, Shorty. All her relatives called her Shorty except, Louise, her cousin who hated that name and refused to call her that.

Charlotte never heard the words I love you from her mother or stepfather her whole life. She was mistreated, beaten, neglected, and sometimes her mother chained her to the bed and left her alone while she went out. Charlotte sat on the bed as her eyes filled with tears. No, no please no, mama! cried Charlotte, as her mother fastened the chain to her. She struggled and struggled to remove the chain