On July 22, 2014 starting at 9:43 p.m., native Brookhavenites located near and far who grew up in the 50s and 60s shared  memories of places, people and  years past on Facebook, causing the inception of the Facebook group “Memories of Ole Brook.” The group is a place for people to share memories of the Brookhaven of the past and rekindle friendships.

“Like everything else good, it just happened,” Debbie Adams Keene said.

It began on Keene’s Facebook profile, where she made a post saying she could remember when there was a grass median in front of Brookhaven High School. The response was unprecedented: the thread of comments on the post reached nearly 900.

After such a response, Leta Batson Branch, a Brookhaven native who now lives in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, approached Keene about creating a Facebook group for people to share memories of our town, and the rest was history.

“We had 500 members overnight, Branch said. “It hasn’t been a year yet, and we now have 2,355 members.”

Branch and Keene were joined by Karen Gates Nettles and Susan Lea Laird as volunteer moderators for the group. Molly Carruth Mandel, a Brookhaven native that now lives in Madison, joined them as the resident history buff.

The most popular posts in the group include discussing the member’s first jobs, teachers that made the biggest impact, sayings they remember from when they were a child, where members are currently living, a tribute to those lost, where members were when JFK was shot and who was born at King’s Daughters Hospital.

Hangouts for teenagers are frequently discussed: hamburger joints where teenagers would spend time after school with their friends. Monty’s, Hammond’s, Higginbotham’s, Teen Tavern, a bowling alley and the Jungle were a few of the restaurants and hangouts that fostered a close knit community of teenagers that are now returning to Memories of Ole Brook to reminisce about the old days.

“It’s not just the place,” Mandel said. “It’s the time we grew up in. World War II was over, there was a time of prosperity that bled into the 60s that we are a part of. My parents knew what it was like to starve in the Depression.  The community was not just about who belongs to this church, that church, or which school you went to— with the girl scouts, boy scouts, we found ways to have friends that went to other schools, with encouragement of our parents.”

Two mansions in Brookhaven are frequently the subject of posts in the group: the Hardy House on Natchez Avenue and Edgewood on Storm Avenue. Mendel is the author of the blog “Sippiana Succotash,” which brings life to historical photographs and stories. Mendel has written extensively about the two homes.

According to Mandel, the Hardy home was built in the 1860-70s and the family of the original owner Capt. Jack C. Hardy, a former ship captain, lived in the home for decades. Hardy was one of the wealthiest men in Mississippi at the time.

Hardy’s neice Zula’s wedding to Charles Frances Malone of Atlanta was held in Brookhaven and brought in prominent citizens of Atlanta, including Margaret Mitchell, future author of the novel “Gone with the Wind.”

“Having heard a story how a Hardy daughter during the hard times of Reconstruction had used parlor drapes to make a costume for a ball, Margaret Mitchell, remembering that tale, had Scarlett O’Hara do the same in ‘Gone with the Wind,’” says Mendel in a blog post.

Mendel describes Edgewood as “perhaps Brookhaven’s most storied mansion.”

The home was completed in the early 1910s for wealthy lumber baron Charles S. Butterfield and his wife, Vivienne, at the cost of $75,000 (today that would have the buying power of approximately $1.8 million). Once completed it was the largest private residence within Brookhaven. Per Mandel’s blog, the mansion had 19 rooms, inlaid mahogany floors, a leather-walled library, curly pine wainscoting, marble statues from Italy, crystal chandeliers from England, a lawn tennis court, a grand stair case styled after one found in a stately ocean liner and an immense front porch.

“We took [history of homes] for granted when we were younger,” Keene said. “ They have bulks of history that we did not realize. Everything so much looks the same. It’s like you get to step back in time, which is reassuring in a way.”

The administrators hope to draw younger and older generations to the group to share their memories of their time growing up in Brookhaven.

“For a lot of people that have moved out of the area, this is the way they can keep a piece of home,” Branch said. “They have rekindled friendships through this.”