BY SAM HENDRIX,
AUBURN HERITAGE ASSOCIATION
Seventy-five years ago this January, Auburn resident Marianne Jackson Cashatt (1933-2011) was on top of the world: a popular senior at Lee County High School with abundant school and church activities and plans for college. She had no idea the extent a ride to and from Opelika after a school club meeting would change her world. Marianne’s story of faith, determination and perseverance remains monumentally inspiring several years after her death. Today we present the second of three installments of her story.
With her world turned upside down by her January 1950 accident, which severed her spine, Marianne Jackson had many things to consider. But after spending several weeks in initial rehabilitation at the Woodrow Wilson Rehab Center in Fishersville, Virginia, she returned to Auburn with a priority. Despite being bedridden, she would find a way to complete her high school studies alongside her classmates.
“Our Aunt Judy, mother’s sister, worked for the phone company,” said Kay Lohmiller, Marianne’s sister. “She may have had a role in” the phone company’s setting up a phone and an intercom box at Marianne’s bedside on Thomas Street to connect to the Lee County High School’s intercom system. She thus became the first Alabama high school student to attend class by phone. The Montgomery Advertiser on April 9, 1950, ran a feature on this “ingenious home-to-school hookup” which enabled Marianne to “listen in on every class and they can hear her.” She told the reporter she could, by increasing the volume, even hear the jokes cracked by boys in the back row.
Marianne and Fitzhugh Bush — her classmate who broke his leg in the accident and who was also home-bound for a time — each listened to the production of their senior class play that spring, when Marianne called Bush and held her phone up to the intercom box in her room. She said it “sounded like a radio play.” She also used the intercom setup to give one final performance as head cheerleader, leading classmates in “a rousing, triple-plated W-A-A-R-R-R Eagle,” as The Advertiser described it.
Wheelchair bound, but wearing a blue cap and gown, Marianne graduated with her classmates the day after she turned 17. She received the DAR Citizenship Award at commencement and was one of five seniors selected to address her classmates.
After graduation, she returned to Woodrow Wilson for most of the summer of 1950, as she would for the summer of 1951. She was outfitted with braces and attempted to re-learn to walk. She swam and exercised in the Center’s pool and even took a few steps with the aid of braces, as reported in an Aug. 1, 1950, story in The Birmingham Post-Herald. But as surgeons had told her and her parents in January, as a paraplegic she would never really walk again.
The following winter quarter 1951, Marianne enrolled in API. She went to class with the help of her fellow students — some she had known for years from Lee County High, such as Margaret Ann Harbor and others from among the 7,000 enrolled whom she had not known before, who regularly stopped what they were doing to lend a hand. Students would pick up her wheelchair and take her up the steps into Samford Hall, even up Samford’s stairwell to the third floor classrooms if that was needed, or up the steps and into Langdon Hall and other campus buildings.
Most of her professors throughout her time at API, when they learned of her special need, arranged to relocate their classes to rooms that were more convenient for her to enter — most, though not all, however, as Margaret Ann Harbor Mathews remembered.
Marianne went through rush, pledging and being initiated into Kappa Delta sorority. She and fellow KD Anne Collins represented the chapter in campus intramural debate competition, edging a duo from Phi Mu for the sorority title that first year, as they debated “That All Young Men Upon Reaching the Age of 18 Should Serve Two Years in the Military Service.”
Her college time was interrupted on occasion by her injury. For example, The Montgomery Advertiser reported in its March 18, 1951 issue that Marianne would be leaving the following week for Roanoke, Virginia, to undergo surgery at the Memorial and Crippled Children’s Hospital and from there to pursue rehabilitation at Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center for several months. She planned to take leave from her API studies for the spring quarter and re-enroll in fall 1951. She may have had multiple surgeries, as the story called this one “another spinal operation.”
By fall 1952, Marianne was not only fully engaged in her studies, but she was serving as moderator (president) of the statewide Westminster Fellowship of the Synod of Alabama, the Presbyterian college student organization for Alabama.
The point must be made: Marianne never allowed her injury to affect her scholarship. As she had done during high school, she performed at API at a high level as a psychology major in the School of Education. As a freshman, she was inducted into the Oracles and Alpha Lambda Delta freshman honorary societies. The Montgomery Advertiser on Dec. 21, 1952, carried a group photo of 13 API sophomore women who had been tapped for membership in Owls sophomore honorary for women. Marianne served as treasurer for that group.
As a sophomore, she was named president of Westminster Sunday School and served as president of the State of Alabama Westminster Fellowship. She held a spot on the 100-member API Student Council on Religious Activities, the group which planned the annual Religious Emphasis Week. Into her junior year, she held a 3.5 overall GPA.
She would make the dean’s list all four years at API. And all the while — always in her wheelchair — Marianne summoned and continued to develop the “can-do” spirit that made the difference in her life. Everyone on campus noticed. By April 1953, reported The Plainsman, “Pretty, blonde Marianne Jackson of Auburn has been selected as Auburn’s first ‘Miss Hey Day.’” This meant Marianne Jackson, who would never walk again, was deemed by her fellow students as Auburn’s friendliest student. One of 10 candidates nominated by members of Squires, sophomore men’s honorary, Marianne was presented at a dance held in the Student Activities Building on Saturday, April 11, 1953. Announcement of the winner of “Miss Hey Day” was made by Denison Ray, chair of the Village Fair program. Jack Appleton, Squires president, presented Marianne with a loving cup and dance chair Howard Skelton presented her a bouquet of roses.
The Plainsman in its April 28, 1954, issue reported that Marianne was among 14 junior and senior API women tapped for the Sphinx honor society, which was based on leadership, scholarship, service and character. Marianne was elected historian for the group.
The Plainsman on May 12, 1954, listed 105 seniors in the College of Education who were then wrapping up their required student teaching assignments prior to graduation. Marianne was listed as having been teaching English. But she was not finished with academic honors. The Plainsman on July 21, 1954, noted that Marianne had earned membership in Auburn’s Phi Kappa Phi honor society, based on her excellence in scholarship and character. Membership was limited to the top 5% in a graduating class of undergraduates.
Marianne Jackson received her Bachelor of Science in education at summer quarter graduation exercises on Aug. 27, 1954, in Cliff Hare Stadium. She was one of 355 graduates that day. Commencement came four-and-a-half years after her spine had been severed. She then returned to Woodrow Wilson for additional therapy and, as it turned out, her life’s work. Having gained teaching experience, Marianne applied for a job teaching special education at Woodrow Wilson.
“I wanted somehow to pay back what was given to me,” she said years later. She would work for the Center for 30 years, first as an instructor, then as a case manager, program director and later as the Center’s primary public relations person.
“Woodrow Wilson decided they needed a PR person and they asked Marianne to do that,” remembered Kay. “She turned out to be a hum-dinger in that role. She ended up serving on all these committees, state committees and even some national in scope, which worked on behalf of the disabled. She’d go to Washington. She even went to one of the presidential inaugural balls.”
Marianne became, for all practical purposes, the face of Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center as well as the face of Virginia’s disabled population. And she would become their leading advocate if not their hero.
Not long into her tenure at Woodrow Wilson, she rolled into the chapel one Sunday morning for services, which that day featured a sermon by a young guy visiting from the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. Bill Cashatt, at 27, was five years older than Marianne. He was already graduated from Randolph-Macon College, but was battling multiple sclerosis. Sometimes — but not always — he used a wheelchair. He was handsome, smart and well-spoken. He and Marianne met that day, spent time together in the ensuing weeks and months, fell in love and — a year to the day from that first sermon Marianne heard Bill preach — they were married.
“It was a sweet wedding,” remembered Margaret Ann Mathews, who kept the Bride’s Book that day in the Auburn Presbyterian Church. And while Bill could have gotten through the ceremony and the reception with a cane or crutches, he chose to use a wheelchair to roll alongside his new bride.
The newlyweds traveled by air from Atlanta to Richmond for their honeymoon and then returned to Staunton, near Fishersville, where both were employed at Woodrow Wilson, Marianne as a teacher and Bill as a chaplain and counselor for the mentally ill. They lived in an apartment within the Woodrow Wilson complex, with an interior that was later outfitted so most everything was at a level reachable by someone in a wheelchair.
According to Kay, doctors had told Marianne she didn’t need to try having children. But she and Bill wanted a family. They wanted to be as normal as possible. Kay was 12 years old in spring 1956 when her sister was expecting. She remembered that season and the family’s traveling to be with Marianne and Bill when their child was soon to arrive.
“The doctors had put her on bed rest because of high blood pressure,” Kay said. “Marianne had a doctor appointment that afternoon. We were all there. At one point, Mom pulled the covers back and saw the baby coming. Dad and I were outside and Mom hollered out the window for Daddy to ‘go get help… Marianne is having the baby.’
“I ran for the infirmary — it was in the same complex, some distance down the hall, maybe 200 yards — and found a nurse, who was heavily pregnant herself. I got her to come with me. She tied the umbilical cord. Bill was at work at the Center that day, but somebody sent for him. When Baby Drew arrived, he was really small — only three pounds, six ounces. The nurse told Bill, ‘You need to christen this baby’ in the event he did not survive.
“Because of his size, Drew remained in the hospital for a month. But he was a big help to them as he grew up.”
A feature in The Staunton News Leader published on Nov. 13, 1960, told of the couple’s interactions with then-four-year-old Drew, noting “Drew is dressed, washed, fed, hugged and spanked from a wheelchair. He often listens to bedtime stories as he sits on his mother’s lap.”
After Drew arrived, Marianne stayed home with him for eight years, keeping house, cooking, doing the shopping and keeping the place clean before returning to work at Woodrow Wilson in 1964 as an English teacher. By this time she was halfway through a master’s degree program in counselor education at the University of Virginia’s School of Education, 34 miles from Fishersville. (She drove her adapted vehicle back and forth to classes, as was required. And in the same way she was “all in” for her hometown Auburn Tigers, Marianne became a huge University of Virginia basketball fan, holding season tickets and attending most every home game in Charlottesville for several years.)
The Cashatt home was not only the place where Drew grew up, but a place where many sought assistance. A story in The News-Virginian from Jan. 30, 1978, when Marianne had received the DIANA Award from the Blue Ridge District Council of Epsilon Sigma Alpha, offered this insight into Marianne’s and Bill’s generosity:
“Her home is always open to young people for food, housing, counseling, or whatever they may require. You will always find a gathering of young people sharing the home and Christian experiences of the Cashatt family. As an example, a 25-year-old physically handicapped young woman who was unable to adjust to her disability came to Marianne. She also had a severe drinking problem, but because of Marianne’s friendship, counseling and confidence in her, she was able to give it up. Marianne has also housed young people and adults in her home for extended periods. She is always willing to help. She has a ready smile and a word of encouragement for everyone.”
Next Week: Marianne becomes a leading activist on behalf of the disabled.
