Leila Werlein Stone|At 92, the opinionated scholar is still a student
Published 12:00 am Sunday, August 9, 2009
Vicksburg knows her as Leila.
Had it not been for a quirk of fate — and a determined father — the world might have known her as Scarlett.
She was a senior at Sophie Newcomb in New Orleans when a Hollywood scout, Fred Farrow, came looking for the right girl to play the role of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind.” He chose Leila Werlein.
“And I came home and said, ‘Oh, Papa, I’m going to Hollywood,’” she recalled.
“Hollywood!” Quincy Werlein exclaimed. “You go there and you’ll burn in hell!”
That was the general feeling in the 1930s, Leila said, “and that might not have been wrong.”
So, instead of Hollywood, Leila Werlein Stone returned to Vicksburg where she became known as a scholar and teacher in Latin and the Bible — and occasionally had a role in a Theatre Guild production.
Born in Washington, D.C., Leila moved with her family to St. Louis, when she was a baby, where her father was employed by the federal government.
“I loved St. Louis,” Leila said. “We had snow,” and she had a pair of ice skates.
“I had gotten used to living in a big city and going to great events such as the outdoor opera,” she said, recalling one special concert when “that cute little man, John Philip Sousa, came to St. Louis and my father took me to the concert and — you know, Sousa was only about 5 feet tall — but, oh, that band! It was just magnificent, and I was thrilled.”
A move of the government offices from St. Louis to Vicksburg brought the Werleins here, Leila was about 11 and had just begun to get a little bit proficient on the ice rink, “but I never wore my skates again.”
The move here was on a government boat, the USS Inspector. It was in the middle of a terrible winter with ice on the river that threatened their safety, so the journey was slow. Leila mainly remembers the wonderful food and an officer who let her use his pistol to shoot at things in the river.
Genealogically, the Werleins had been a Vicksburg family for generations, ever since Philip Werlein opened a music store here years before the War Between the States. The name “Werlein’s for Music” eventually would adorn buildings throughout the deep South, including in Gulfport and New Orleans
Perhaps that heritage accounts for her love of music. She took piano from Mrs. Amos, and during the annual recital Leila was to play the first movement of the “Moonlight Sonata — which I kept playing and kept playing and kept playing and then played one more time and quit — and that was the end of my musical career.”
She’s a dedicated Presbyterian, a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church (PCA), but she had two uncles who were Episcopal priests and her father sang at Holy Trinity and he was the son of a Methodist minister. Her mother, though, was descended from Scots Presbyterians “and my father never objected to us going to the Presbyterian Church.”
For years, a Bible study group met in Leila’s home, “but the attendance dwindled.”
She spoke of the musical talent of John Allen, a former pastor at Westminster, “who had the gift of music like I’ve never heard anyone else. All you had to do was go lah, te dah, te dah, and he’d sit down a make a concert.”
For 25 years, Leila taught Latin in local schools and believes “nothing else increases your vocabulary like Latin. At least 70 percent of our words are linked to Latin, making it a rich medium of communication.”
Leila continued to teach the subject after she lost her eyesight, for it was ingrained in her mind so that “I didn’t need to see it.” Her daughter Sheila assisted her with grading papers.
Leila was valedictorian of her high school graduating class and was awarded a four-year scholarship to Sophie Newcomb College, which is now part of Tulane, “which we Newcomb girls hated — we would have no part of Tulane.”
She wanted to major in science and minor in English, but the dean — “who looked like a character out of Dickens. He had a fierce, big nose and enormous feet, and would sit on the edge of his desk — said, ‘But Miss Werlein, those are unrelated subjects.’”
One day at Sophie Newcomb, she was approached by Imogene Stone, a noted scholar, “who walked up to me like one of those Spanish galleons in full sail — she was a marvelous woman. She was wearing a pair of those pince-nez glasses that sit on the end of your nose. She peered over them and asked, ‘Are you Leila Wills Ewing? — the most brilliant English scholar I ever knew?’”
She was speaking of Leila’s grandmother who she remembers as someone who could tell you the time, place and anything pertinent about any quote from English literature.
Leila had a classical education, both at home and at school, and her parents carefully guided her in pronunciation. Education today, she said, “breaks my heart. Students used to be responsible for lessons. I loved debating — it hones your skills. Education needs to be put back on track.” She realizes, she said, that everything “is not as we once knew it. You have to be able to shift, but everything seems to be easy, easy, easy — instant everything. The only thing I like instant is ice cream!”
She has always loved politics, and when she was a child she thought she would be the first woman president — “but then Jimmy Carter got elected, and that ended all my ambitions.”
She’s very conservative, in both politics and religion, she said, and can remember “only one good president, Ronald Reagan, who restored honor. What a beautiful man he was.” She was approached by local citizens years ago to run for mayor, she said, but her husband, the late Dr. Joe Stone, threatened divorce if she did.
“I have vivid opinions,” she said, and she doesn’t mind voicing them. She’s an independent who “leans to the Republicans,” though she doesn’t like what they’re doing now. Her interest goes back to the days, in the 1950s, when Mary D. Cain was the first woman in Mississippi to run for governor — and made an impressive race.
In the last presidential race, Mike Huckabee was her choice. Of President Barack Obama, she says he speaks well, has the intonation and the emphasis, and “he’s impressive if you didn’t really know what is going on.” She’s a regular listener and fan of Rush Limbaugh.
For Leila Werlein Stone, life in the 92 years since she was born Feb. 1, 1917, has had many angles and facets. It hasn’t been dull. She feels that the greatest asset one can possess is kindness.
There’s one thing, though, that her inquisitive mind wants to resolve, and when she gets to heaven, “I’m going to ask God to put me in a class of geometry. I never understood it.”
Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.