East Texas Family Records, Volume 10, Number 4, Winter 1986 Page: 2
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EAST TEXAS FAMILY RECORDS VOL. 10, , .4 WINTER 1986
SPEECAL-FEATURE - "RARE WOMAN GETS COLLECTOR'S ITEM"
LEILA BELLE LAGRONE HONORED!
We are always pteazed when ouw member ane in the Apottight. This
detight4ut ztoty appeared in the August 24, 1986, issue od THE
PANOLA COUNTY POST. A 4peciat "thank you" to Mt. Loyd Gisasom,
Publishet, The Panota County Po4t and Doaothy Nevitte oa. gtivng
ETFR permins4ion to ue this story, and to Robbie Suttive i4o making
this 4peciat event happen. Wishez -- teatty do come taue.!!!
On Friday morning at a ceremony in the Anderson Park gazebo in Carthage,
there were two heroines: the honoree and the woman who spearheaded the whole
thing.
Leila Belle LaGrone was the honoree and Robbie Sutlive was the spearheader.
The occasion was the formal presentation to Mrs. LaGrone of a copy of the Text
Almanac for the Texas Centennial year 1936 -- one of a handful of copies kept
under lock and key in the protective vault of THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, which has
published the Almanac annually for more than a century.
For the publisher to part with one of the volumes involved a decision sufficiently
momentous to bring out a contingent of NeWs and ARmanac staffers on
Friday, a group that included Afmanac editor Mike Kingston and sales manager Bill
Lalla, along with the newspaper's East Texas bureau chief Steve Blow.
When Kingston, standing in the shade of the gazebo, turned over the book to
Mrs. LaGrone, the act represented the culmination of some six months of determined
effort, mostly on the part of Mrs. Sutlive. The Ne.ws does not part lightly
with valuable historic documents.
Both Mrs. Sutlive and Mrs. LaGrone have long histories of dedication to
historical research and preservation in Panola County. Presently, Mrs, LaGrone
is a director of the Panola County Heritage Society, while Mrs. Sutlive is
secretary of the Panola County Historical Commission.
No doubt it was only natural that the two ladies should have fallen into
conversation about their private "wish lists" in the realm of area history. What
Mrs. LaGrone longed for was a copy of the 1936 Texat Almanac.
Easy, thought Mrs. Sutlive, and promply called the TeQxa Amanac in Dallas.
The answer was "No way." While a copy of the small cache of remaining books was
sometimes given to an appropriate organization, individuals did not qualify for
the honor, she was told.
Mrs. Sutlive turned to rare book dealers, but a copy never materialized.
In time, the search took on the nature of a mission for Mrs. Sutlive, and she
once more tackled the ALmanatc people with reams of information about Mrs. LaGrone
-- about her work for the East Texas and Texas Genealogical Societies; about the
many offices she has held in Panola County historical groups; about the 1I books
on East Texas history she has written; about her writing for the Tex tf Handbook.,
2
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East Texas Genealogical Society. East Texas Family Records, Volume 10, Number 4, Winter 1986, periodical, Winter 1986; Tyler, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth38031/m1/4/: accessed March 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting East Texas Genealogical Society.