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"BACK THEN"
- The Ground Observer Corps -

By Ron Roberts

You may not remember the Goldman Hotel, but long time Fort Smith residents certainly will.

The Goldman Hotel used to dominate the East end of Garrison Avenue. It occupied the corner of Garrison Avenue and North 13th Street, with it's main entrance on North 13th Street, just across from Immaculate Conception Church. The Goldman opened in 1911 and until the late 1950's it was the Elegant Center for Fort Smith. If you ate in the Dining Room, you would be served by waiters dressed in tuxedo's!

According to records, many celebrities stayed at the Goldman while passing through Fort Smith, (Remember, the Interstate Highway System didn't exist back then) including baseball greats Dizzy Dean and Mickey Mantle, along with movie stars Susan Hayward, Will Rogers and Rosalind Russell.

By the way -- Do you remember Buster Brown and his dog Tige, "who lived in a shoe"?   Well ... They stayed at the Goldman, too!   In fact while here Tige died and is buried in the front yard of a home on Dodson Avenue!

In 1930, Fort Smith's first radio station, KFPW, was opened, with studios in the Goldman, by John England, the manager of the Goldman.   And, believe it or not, the Goldman had "Cigar Girls" that roamed the public access areas of the Goldman selling tobacco products, and had a known "gambling operation" going where their customers could roll dice "double or nothing" for purchases.   It is believed that these same young women also ran "baseball pools" and other forms of gambling in the hotel up until the late '50's.

I have said all of the above to acquaint you with the Goldman Hotel and it's atmosphere, because in 1955 I, as well as a number of others, was given complete access to the roof of the Goldman! You see, I was a member of the "Ground Observer Corps" and the owners and management of the Goldman Hotel had erected a fifteen foot square glass enclosed structure (similar to the one shown at right) on the roof to be one of over 16,000 observation posts across the United States, wherein we "GOC" members constantly scanned the sky for hostile aircraft!

Yes, HOSTILE AIRCRAFT!   You must remember that in the early to mid ninteen-fifties the "Cold War" was at it's peak. We had "Atomic Fallout" classes in schools all across America. Fallout Shelters were built and Air Raid sirens were installed right here in Fort Smith! The threat was there, real and universal.  B-52 bombers, armed with nuclear weapons, were in the air near enough to strike the Soviet Union at all times. And what protected the United States? The Ground Observer Corps!

Bruce D. Callander writes:

"Before electronic sensors guarded the approaches to North America, before satellite warning systems peered down from space, before air defense aircraft carried identification equipment, the US had the Ground Observer Corps.   In World War II, and during the early years of the Cold War, the nation’s air warning system lay largely in the hands of the corps, a US military adjunct composed almost entirely of volunteers, intently studying wall charts and model airplanes to memorize the characteristics of “ours” and “theirs.”   They were teenagers and housewives, manning search towers and bare rooftops, equipped only with binoculars. The observers worked from any site that offered a clear and unobstructed view of the sky.   When an observer saw an airplane, he logged it onto a clipboard and reported it by telephone to the region’s Air Force-operated filter center."