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| Both Photos from the John Holly Williams Collection/LLF Library |
The photos are undoubtedly copies of snapshots taken of Dr. J. R. Markette, white bucks and all, during the full bloom of a Mississippi summer in the mid 1950s.
Yesterday's posting of Dr. Markette and his family brought a lot of fond recollections of the good doctor, and much debate as to the correct spelling of his name, which has been variously recorded as Markett, Markette and Marquette. The consensus landed on Markette, in part because that is what is reported on FindaGrave, which shows him to have been born Oct. 18, 1899, and to have died Oct. 1, 1978. He is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Brookhaven.
One such fond recollection came from Brookhaven-born author Jimmie Meese Moomaw:
"When I broke my arm, Mama said, "It's okay, darlin'. Everything's gonna be all right. And it worked. She held me close and it really didn't hurt any more.
Instead of telling Nell to take me to the hospital, she told her to take me over to Dr. Marquette's house.
Dr. Marquette had delivered me, and every pill and shot I'd ever had had been administered by Doc Marquette and he lived on the same street we did, but on past the elementary school where the houses were big and nice.
Nell tore into his driveway honking her horn and jumped out and ran up to his door almost before the car stopped. Mama just kept hugging me. Dr. Marquette came out, looked at my arm and told Nell to follow him to the hospital.
In the emergency room, he took my arm and my hand and pulled them in opposite directions and the bones snapped back down where they belonged and he put a cast on my arm and Nell drove us home." -- From the story, "Danger Zones: DDT, Stick Shifts, and Fire" in Southern Fried Child.
He was only a name to me since my family went to Bob Massengill, and when he died at a football game, his brother Frank.
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