By Rita McInerney

Chroniclers of Atlanta history write that the people who pioneered in the city’s growth and culture usually came from someplace else.

One 1859 arrival was Laurent deGive, a Catholic lawyer from Belgium. In the next decades he made a lively contribution to a town rebounding from the Civil War. He was Atlanta’s version of the Shuberts, New York brothers whose name is synonymous with the popular American theater.

Two generations later, Henry deGiven, 86, contributes in another way. A Catholic lawyer like his grandfather, he quietly melds his concern for justice and his legal skills to help bring a fairer world to people trapped by poverty and prejudice.

Laurent came to mid-19th century Atlanta excited by what he saw as an opportunity to introduce manufacturing products to agricultural South. His idea was to hold a world trade fair, his grandson says, “with mostly Belgian products.” He carried the approval of his native government and credentials as the first Belgian consul in the area.

A theatrical venture hadn’t figured in Laurent’s plans. After the war he had loaned $2,000 in gold to a man who later was unable to repay the money and finally gave him two lots at Marietta and Forsyth streets. In the late 1860s, deGive sold the lots to the Masons who started to erect a large hall. Financial panic struck the city and the country and he found himself with the shell of building on his hands when the Masons could no longer fund the construction.

A friend advised deGive, a novice in stage business, to build a theater. “Give shows and make money,” he was told. He took this suggestion and opened the first structure designed for theatrical purposes in Atlanta.

It opened in 1870 and was a showplace, according to Atlanta and Environs, A Chronicle of Its People and Events, and many of the bustling railroad city’s 28,000 inhabitants were entertained by such headliners as Sara Bernhardt, Edwin Booth and Julia Marlowe. Laurent deGive traveled to New York by rail regularly to book his entertainers.

Henry deGive likes to tell the story about a lion and his tamer appearing in a melodrama at the “old deGive” theater. Somehow, after one performance, the lion was not herded back into his cage. The jungle king slipped out the stage door and stalked over to Five Points. An ice cream parlor at that busy intersection was tempting. When he entered, “everyone reached for the chandelier,” deGive recounts with a smile. Fortunately, his keeper caught up with him before anyone was mauled.

The theater was used for church services, governors’ inaugurals, strawberry festivals and school recitals. Van Buren Colley, in his history of The Diocesan Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, quotes from the Atlanta Daily New Era of July 3, 1871, reporting on an exhibition at the theater by students of the Sisters of Mercy.

“The evening’s entertainment amply showed that the education imparted by the sisters was intellectual and substantial…” Prizes were distributed by Father Thomas O’Reilly, the famed Immaculate Conception pastor.

Laurent deGive and his Belgian-born wife Pauline were mentioned by Colley as among the early families of that first Catholic church in Atlanta and Laurent is listed among the honorary pallbearers at the funeral of Father Thomas Francis Cleary, pastor who died of tuberculosis in 1884.

Quiet Charity

The first deGive in Atlanta was charitable in a quiet way. Atlanta and Environs mentions that “many stories could be told of his generosity to stranded actors but he won’t discuss them.”

Although his real estate investments were more profitable, he considered his theatrical enterprise important. “Anything that contributes to the intellectual enjoyment or innocent amusement is good for the public when not indulged in to excess or beyond one’s means. I do not believe in plays with an immoral tendency or suggestive plays. I believe in temperance in all things.”

For two decades, deGive’s Opera House was the city’s most popular theater. Then in 1893, Laurent deGive opened the opulent Grand Theater. It had 2,700 seats, tiers of boxes, and was decorated with carved and gilded woodwork.

The Grand’s location, at the intersection of Peachtree and Pryor streets, was too far from the center of town, then around Alabama Street, naysayers replied when deGive announced his plans.

“Everyone thought he would lose his shirt,” according to his grandson.

The formal opening was termed “one of the most brilliant events of a flamboyant decade,” by the Constitution. The play, “Men and Women,” was written by David Belasco and Henry deMille, Cecil’s father. The stage was illuminated with electric lights instead of gas.

In its heyday, headliners Ellen Terry, Maude Adams, John Drew and Lillian Russell took curtain calls on the large stage.

GWTW Connection

The venerable Grand, its ornate walls covered over by wallboard and its name changed to promote the lessee, Loew’s Grand was the scene of a celebrated world premier in 1939. The film made from Margaret Mitchell’s best selling novel, “Gone With The Wind,” was cheered by partisan Atlanta audience.

On Jan. 30, 1978, Laurent’s grandson was among stunned spectators watching the movie house burn. This was after the family sold it to developers who later sold the site to Georgia Pacific.

There is another connection between the deGives and “Gone With The Wind.” The present Henry deGive’s mother, Katherine Ransford, had a grandfather in common with Margaret Mitchell’s family.

He was Philip Fitzerald, widely believed to be the model for Gerald O’Hara, Scarletts father in the book. Philip, a native of Ireland, married Eleanor McGann when she was 16 (he was considerably older). Miss McGann was from Locust Grove, the first Catholic settlement in Georgia. An orphan, she had planned to leave the settlement near Washington, Ga., and relocate to Alabama with the Semmes family, but Philip persuaded her to marry him instead. Like Mrs. O’Hara in the book, Eleanor always referred to her husband as Mr. Fitzgerald.

They made their home in Jonesboro, on a 2,000 acre Flint River plantation worked by 60 slaves. They were the only Catholics in Clayton County and were said to have faced religious prejudice.

Katherine Ransford was one of five orphans raised by two maiden aunts on the Fitzgerald homeplace. There the atmosphere was Catholic with the aunts making sure that everyone recited the rosary together each evening. Opportunities for attending Mass were rare’ a priest might come around once a year.

Katherine married Henry Louis deGive, Laurent’s son. The couple had four sons, including Henry, and a daughter.

Young Henry was a pupil at Sacred Heart School in Atlanta through fifth grade. His schoolmates were mostly children of Irish laborers from the steel mill. He went from there to Marist for three years before his mother sent him to a prep school in Aiken, S.C. There he prepared for the competitive exam that gained him entrance to the exclusive St. Paul’s School in Concord, Mass., where his mother felt he would get the best education possible.

When her pastor heard that Mrs. DeGive was sending her boy to a Protestant school he told her that she would go straight to hell!

For Henry the experience at the New England school strengthened his faith. There he was one of about 10 Catholics. Each Sunday the boys would go to Mass in Concord, then return to the school for the morning chapel services. On Sunday there were two chapel services, other days just one.

“I had to defend it (his faith). It was rough, we were a minority. We knew we were different.”

In 1931, with degrees from Princeton and Harvard Law, he came back to Atlanta to find a job with a law firm. There were none for young lawyers in the depressed economy of that time. So he spent the years before World War II working and studying in Paris and polishing his legal skills with smart New York lawyers.

His fluent French gained him a berth in Naval Intelligence with Admiral William Halsey’s staff after Pearl Harbor. He was assigned to Noumea, New Caledonia, a French territory east of Australia. It was an uneventful war for him until the day he happened to be standing on a loading dock when a nearby ammunition shack blew up.

Given Last Rites

He was so badly burned that rescuers though him dead until one sailor noticed signs of life. He was unconscious for over a week and given the last rites three times as he was passed along the military hospital chain. He had skin grafting operations on his badly burned hands; a neurosurgeon tended his serious head injury. A “slow boat” brought him back to the U.S. and a lengthy recuperation.

He met his wife, Elena Ferreyros, a native Lima, Peru, in New York City. She describes herself as the daughter of a “maverick” who tried to improve conditions of the poor in his country, and a suffragette who sought the vote for her countrywomen. They were married in 1946 in Lima and came to Atlanta the following year to look after his ailing father’s interests. When Henry Louis deGive died in 1948 it was up to his son to settle the involved estate.

Henry deGive opened a private practice in the Healey Building and spent a good deal of time working with Catholic groups, usually on a no-fee basis, despite the fact he had a growing family to provide for. As a lawyer in New York he was used to “doing things very carefully,” but found a “sloppiness here. People were too poor to pay” for detailed, painstaking legal services. On the other hand, “New York had a lot of cutthroat lawyers” while he found those in Atlanta “very nice” to work with.

Considered Traitor

Over several decades he would be instrumental in creating or assisting several fledgling Catholic structures that cared about the poor and minorities. His fervor was such that at one time he was considered by his friends to be a traitor to his class.

He was among a small group starting what is now Catholic Social Services while North Georgia was still a part of the Savannah-Atlanta diocese. A friend, Nan Bryan of Sacred Heart, also the parish of the deGives, had been approached by the United Way about organizing a Catholic charitable agency. She talked to Bishop Francis E. Hyland in Savannah and he consented to address a meeting of leading Catholic laymen about such a possibility. Mrs. Bryan arranged a dinner meeting at the Atlanta Athletic Club and the bishop instructed the group to be “prudent.” At one point he warned that “They may ask you to take the crucifix off the wall.”

“All the clergy used to say ‘be cautious,’” deGive said about joint endeavors with others outside the faith. “Until Archbishop Hallinan came,” he added.

His dedication to Catholic Social Services hasn’t wavered since its beginning. He remains on the board of directors and not long ago was named Lifetime Member, the first person so honored.

He used his legal talents to incorporate the agency, according to the former director, Steve Brazen, who knows him as a consistent advocate for the poor, the homeless and illegal immigrants.

The deGives were living with his mother in Sacred Heart parish in 1949 when he joined the St. Vincent dePaul Conference there. There were three or four hour meetings every Monday night and visitations on Saturday afternoon. He and a cousin, Steve Mitchell, Margaret’s brother, teamed up for the visits to see how SVDP could best help poor families.

After he and Elena bought a home in Brookwood Hills in the 1950s, they became members of Christ the King but he continued his affiliation with the downtown conference. “I felt they needed me more. There was a tremendous need on the visitation side.”

Later, he joined Christ the King conference and served as president for three years. He was one of those arguing for a central office downtown and that came to pass in 1966. He was first president of the Particular Council and served three years in that post.

In the mid-1950s, deGive commenced a volunteer effort for the Medical Mission Sisters, first providing legal services while the sisters operated the Catholic Colored Clinic at 348 Forest Ave., N.E.

This Atlanta mission begun by Catholic laywomen was dedicated by Bishop Gerald P. O’Hara in December, 1941. The Medical Mission Sisters took it over in 1944 after World War II had halted their overseas mission work. In 1958, with permission from Bishop Hyland, the sisters asked Henry deGive to look for land on which to build a hospital for black people refused admission by hospitals for whites only.

Because the congregation sought federal funds under the Hill-Gurton Act, it had to change the plans and open the hospital to all races.

“We found land out on Collier Drive and Simpson Street and persuaded the owner to sell the 60 acres at $400 an acre.” Part of this tract was the site of the new parish of St. Paul of the Cross. “Then the expressway (I-284) came along and cut it in half.” In time another property with about 10 owners became available near Sewell and Fairburn Roads, a “high class white neighborhood.” Residents lost no time in making their opposition known and much of deGive’s time was spent appearing before civic groups explaining the project.

Dual Bigotry

There were “rough times” before the hospital grew from an architect’s model to stone and mortar.

DeGive rode one day in an elevator with a friend who worked in the Fulton County district attorney’s office. He told deGive that he opposed the hospital because “it’s colored and it’s Catholic.” Soon after, when deGive spoke to the Utoy Springs Civic Association to which this friend belonged, his talk made quite an impact. No one spoke against the hospital.

It was finally dedicated in September 1964 by Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan. Once the 150-bed facility was admitting patients of all colors the mother provincial asked Henry deGive to serve as paid legal representative. He was happy to do so. There was his growing family to support.

The Medical Mission Sisters, their mission to make the hospital self-sufficient realized, informed Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan of their intent to withdraw in early 1973. It now operates as Southwest Hospital.

Henry deGive isn’t the only member of the team with staying power. Elena deGive has been dedicated to the Notre Dame Book Shop since 1948, when she became part of a small group helping Mrs. William Schroder start the lay-owned Catholic bookstore in a tiny shop on West Paces Ferry Road. Mrs. DeGive has moved with it and managed it in its growing stages, through downtown locations to suburbia and its present roomy quarters in the Pine Tree Shopping Plaza on Buford Highway.

In a Georgia Bulletin articles in May, 1985, when the bookstore moved to its present location, Ann May, the book buyer, said she “has been the guiding spirit. Without that tremendous energy, her visionary thoughts about this store, we probably would have gone under many times. She’s always been there.”

About three years before Archbishop Hallinan arrived in Atlanta in 1962, the deGives joined with other Catholics, about 20 in all and both black and white, in a group they named St. Martin’s Council on Human Relations. Their focus was desegregating the Catholic schools and making the church more receptive to its black Catholics.

The group offered its services to Catholic organizations and would speak at any parish that invited them. Henry deGive’s topic was “The Strange Career of Jim Crow.”

“We got quite a few invitations to speak. The people who came were the ones interested in the subject.”

They Lost Friends

Another area the council tackled was trying to get blacks to move into white neighborhoods. When Elena deGive gave an interview to a city newspaper about the council and mentioned “white ghettoes,” the chilly aftermath would have been devastating to less resolute activists. One good friend no longer invited them to her home and Henry deGive was the target of “razzing” by friends he met on the street. “I was considered a traitor.”

Deacon Leon Allain, of St. Paul of the Cross parish in northwest Atlanta, was a member of the council. An architect who had arrived in Atlanta in 1958, he said, “The problems are still there but not as acute. People don’t recognize or admit them.” For him at that time, the biggest challenge the group faced was to enlighten white Catholics that there were other people in the church. He recalled the response from Catholics that council members spoke to as generally favorable. As far as the effect throughout the parish, “we had no way of knowing. We tried to be as educational as we could without offending folks.”

The need for the council dissipated after Archbishop Hallinan was installed in 1962. He had ordered Catholic schools and institutions integrated while bishop in Charleston and took the same action soon after arriving in Atlanta. While some Catholics left the church in protest, the council joined with the Knights of Columbus and other lay organizations in sending him a letter pledging support for this move.

“We didn’t know if he would get the letter,” deGive said, “but he acknowledged it in his first talk, at Sacred Heart High School.”

In 1966, Henry deGive went to work with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission in Atlanta. He had always practiced as a single lawyer, but “had been doing a lot of free work” and it had reached a point where he had to make the move “to support my family.”

His first assignment was training state workers in human relations. When he retired, at the age of 70 in 1977, he was deputy district director for the agency.

Links To The Past

Today, Henry and Elena deGive live in a home near Chastain Park filled with cherished bits of family history. Two large oils on the wall in the living room are Peruvian religious art centuries old. Medals from the Belgian government in appreciation of the service rendered as honorary consuls by three generations of deGives are framed on another wall.

With six of their seven children living away from Atlanta, there is someone “like a member of the family” with them. Maria Adrian, a refugee from the Dominican Republic, has been with the deGives for 15 years. She is “like a sister” to Elena deGive and a friend to young mothers and children of the neighborhood.

Monks at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers have “two beautiful mementos” of the deGives, according to Father Augustine Moore, a former abbot. Inside, there is a beautiful library table and outside, a huge circular millstone mounted on sundried bricks. “It will be here forever,” Father Augustine believes.

But perhaps more important are gifts of himself that Henry deGive offered. “He was very helpful to me in what could have been delicate situations,” the former abbot recalls.

Father Augustine says his friend was a man who was concerned with home he could maintain this attribute—being a lawyer. Everybody considered him very mild, but when the chips were down he could come through.”

Pam Buskmaster, interim director of Catholic Social Services, views Henry deGive as a “history giver” and a “voice of reason” on the board. She says he brings a sense of continuity and an understanding of the long range picture on how the agency has developed.

This is an appreciation that could be repeated by others who have walked the path of Christian stewardship with him.