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Black Sunday Pampa to recall Dust Bowl Saturday PAMPA — April 14, 1935, was Black Sunday. A dust storm so devastating it blocked out the sun as it rolled across the Texas Panhandle that day. The Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center in Pampa will mark the 73rd anniversary of the height of the Dust Bowl, Saturday afternoon. The legendary American folk singer lived in Pampa at that time. His sister, Mary Jo Edgmon, then 12 years old, remembers playing ball on Black Sunday. She was with her big brother in the backyard of her home at 417 Hill St. when they saw the big black cloud roll in from the north. Woody by then had married Mary Jennings of Pampa, his best friend's sister, and lived near U.S. Highway 60, the highway that would take him a year later to Amarillo, Clovis and across New Mexico and Arizona to California. Guthrie wrote his first collection of songs in 1935. Loralee Cooley, spokeswoman for the center, said that at 3 p.m. Saturday, students from Lamar Elementary School will perform a few of Guthrie's songs and there will be readings from Frank Stallings' book "Black Sunday." Stallings is a native of Pampa. There will be a short reader's theater written by Cynthia Hauck, a Lamar Elementary teacher, and displays of photos of the Dust Bowl, she said. On Thursday and Friday ahead of Saturday's program, the center will be open from 1 to 4 p.m. for an exhibition of photos courtesy of: Rochelle Smith Lacy from her parents' photo studio, Smith Studio; Jo Sikes, children's librarian at Lovett Library in Pampa; and Velma and Kenneth Lard, Harriet Smiley, and Anne Davidson of the White Deer Museum. The program at the Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center, 320 S. Cuyler, is free. E-mail
comments about this story Posted: April 10, 2008
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