1944
1944 W HILE Atlanta's sons in early 1944 were giving their blood in battle in the Pacific and in Europe, Atlantans at home were establishing here one of the biggest and most efficient blood donor services in the country. For her work in organizing and directing this center which was awarded the Army and Navy E for its performance, Mrs. Francis Abreu was named the city's principal Woman of the Year as well as being named Woman of the Year in the War Effort. A native of Atlanta, Abreu was by profession an interior decorator. Mayor Hartsfield, as in years gone by, found occasion to point with pride to the management of the city's finances. There was more than $1 million in the city surplus fund, he told City Council in his annual message on January 4, and he urged the council to support a government that would conserve and increase this surplus so that it could be used for postwar development. Hartsfield's report on the city's financial condition was supported in some detail by the little booklet, "Facts and Figures about Atlanta," issued annually by the Chamber of Commerce's Industrial Bureau. Here Atlanta was listed as having the lowest bonded debt, at $8,294,000, of any of the ten leading cities of the Southeast. (New Orleans was highest at over $66 million and neighboring Birmingham had a debt of over $20 million.) Atlanta's bank resources as 1944 began also led the South at $721,143,637, with Houston next at $680,277,000. Bank clearings in Atlanta were also strong at $6,560,573,000, with Dallas trailing at $5,377,914,845. The city had spent $12,157,367.99 in general disbursements in 1943— with the bulk of it, $4,331,063 going to the schools, $1,880,534.46 to Public Safety (police, etc.), $1,084,586.54 to hospitals, and $1,116,363 to serve the public debt. In one area the figures in Atlanta, as in every other city, were dropping because of wartime restrictions. Building permits in 1940 had been $14,558,861, highest since the great upsurge of 1928, when the figures stood at $27,580,541. By 1943 they had fallen to $1,827,219, but permits picked up strongly in 1944 to a total of $3,958,296.l For sports lovers in Atlanta 1944 began most auspiciously indeed. In the Sugar Bowl at New Orleans, Georgia Tech beat Tulsa 20-18 when a dazzling performance by Eddie Prokop, Tech halfback, proved too much for the Oklahomans. Atlanta lovers of America's Sweetheart got their own kind of thrill when Mary Pickford came into town on January 9 to support a fund drive of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. She spoke to an audience viewing the Russian Ballet at the City Auditorium, and visited the Scottish Rite Hospital . "I am thrilled to be even a small part of such a great movement," she told reporter Jane Malone before moving on to Warm Springs. The new cruiser Atlanta was set to go into service on February 6, with ATLANTA AND ENVIRONS, 1944 103 Margaret Mitchell doing the honors again. On February 3 Ralph McGill announced that a Liberty Ship would be named for the late Clark Howell, Sr., editor of the Atlanta Constitution, who had died in 1936. McGill observed that those who knew "Papa" Howell knew how fitting it was that a Liberty Ship, constructed in a Georgia shipyard, should be named for him. Matters of local politics and forms of local government were much in the minds of Atlantans in this year of 1944. Constitution political reporter Herman Hancock reported that First Ward Councilman James E. Jackson, Jr., was urging the creation of ajoint city and Fulton County committee of representative citizens to study a plan for the consolidation of the governments and to create the "City and County of Atlanta, Georgia." Hancock indicated that there was much agitation for the merger of specific government functions, which of course, as the years passed, did take place by the process of annexation favored by Mayor Hartsfield. Several Atlantans, distinguished in their service to the city over a period of many years, chose to retire in 1944. Among them was John A. Boykin, solicitor general of the Atlanta Judicial Circuit for more than a quarter-century and one of the best known prosecuting officers in the South. He announced in February that...
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