By Tom Kohler
Aug. 10, 2025 – I call myself a born and stayed Savannahian, having lived here for 71 of my 73 years. These days I mostly get invited to talk about how things ‘usta’ be. And let’s be honest, usta is a great Savannah word. Here’s how things usta be out here around Eisenhower Drive and Waters Avenue.
Ever wonder why something is the way it is? Who decides what and who gets to be where, and for what reasons? I’ve heard it said that ‘a lot of the civil rights movement was about who decides who gets to be where? Separate but equal? Redlining? Three bathrooms? Who gets to be where??
Flight paths … When I was 13 years old my friends Donny Cogdell and Stevie Bryan and I went to see James Brown and the Fabulous Flames at the National Guard Armory, a couple of hundred yards east of Waters Avenue on what we usta call Intermediate Road. Today we call it Eisenhower Drive. It was quite a night for the three of us. The place was packed and not air-conditioned. As three white boys we were definitely in the minority. Stevie was invited back to The Godfather of Soul’s dressing room by Ervin Gardner, aka Rock the Jock, who was a disk jockey and music promoter back in the day.
Stevie still has the pair of cufflinks that James Brown gave him that night. Stevie’s connection to Rock the Jock was geographical. When Steve was a kid he delivered groceries for his family’s business, Bryan’s Grocery, which was right around the corner from WSOK AM radio, both of which were on the other end of Waters Ave, where it dead ends into Wheaton Street. “The broadcasting studio was lower than the street, so you could walk past and look down and see the jocks broadcasting”. By the time Stevie was 11 he was part of a local band called The Checkmates. Ervin Gardner took them under wing, had them open for visiting acts, such as Sam and Dave, and recorded their music under his label Thunderbolt Records. Stevie’s musical path took flight after that including touring Europe with bands like The Coasters and Little Anthony’s Imperials.
Over the years I wound up spending a lot of time on Eisenhower Drive. After graduating from Jenkins High School in 1970, I went to Armstrong College for a couple of years, then stopped out and went to work full time as a teacher at Chatham Association for Retarded Children (to use the language of the day). The ‘Center,’ as we called it, was right across from the National Guard Armory and consisted of a pre-school building, a school building, a workshop building and a lunchroom building that was right at the corner of Eisenhower and Seawright Drive. That building had been the white juvenile hall, or juvie as we called it, prior to the Center taking it over. The black juvie was in a similar building next door which was later taken over by the Psycho-Ed Center (again to use the language of the day).
There was a farm with a couple of out buildings on the northeast corner of Waters and Eisenhower Drive. One of the out buildings had what looked like a little apartment up top. I was looking to move out of my mother’s house and I drove my VW bus onto the property, got out, introduced myself to the landowner, got a little small talk going about how things were changing out this way, and then, as a set up to asking about renting the little place above the barn, I said: “Well, I guess your property taxes are going up now that they have started developing the gas station across the street?”.
“Not really”, he replied, as he pointed his finger up into the air and said two words “flight path”.
Turns out he didn’t pay property taxes, as the land was deemed valueless because of the roar of the SAC (Strategic Air Command) bombers flying low taking off and landing at Hunter Air Force Base which was less than a mile away straight down Eisenhower.
Several years later I would begin to see this as part of a much larger pattern based on a set of ideas called the normalization principles, which were embraced and promoted by Wolf Wolfensberger. Developed in Scandinavia in the mid 1960’s and introduced into the United States in the mid 1970’s, this set of ideas challenged commonly held assumptions, policies and practices, rooted in the ideology of eugenics, that had gone unquestioned for decades.
Turns out that it’s common for land that is considered to be of ‘no or low value’ to be where you find all sorts of services for people who are deemed the same by society. Back in that day you could call Eisenhower Drive, from Waters to Skidaway ‘social services row’ – or deviancy row – Georgia Regional Hospital, Chatham Association for Retarded Children, the Juvenile Detention Centers and the Psyco Educational Center, to name a few.
I didn’t get the apartment, though I did continue to work at ‘the Center’ for the next few years, as a teacher, then as a program director. I remember getting a phone call one day (before cell phones) from someone who simply said: “One of yours is loose.” I checked my shoelaces; they were both tied. I went outside and there was a gentleman walking down Eisenhower. The assumption of course was that he’d escaped and was ‘one of ours’.
Ever wonder why something is the way it is? Who decides what, and who gets to be where, and for what reasons? Flight Path.
About the author
Tom Kohler has lived in Savannah for 71 of his 73 years. He attended our local public schools, Armstrong and the University of Georgia. He was educated at Jim Collins Bar. The founder and longtime coordinator of Chatham Savannah Citizen Advocacy has been involved in creating a variety of civic organizations thru the years including the Jim Collins Bar Alumni Association, Savannah Rocks!, and Emergent Savannah.
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