Dot in front of Broadmeadow United Methodist Church

On April 1, 1946, recently returned World War II naval officer Truman Ellis took Doris “Dot” Brown on their first date. “We went to a movie on Capitol Street,” Dot remembers. “The street was full of theaters then,” she says.

The pair were married November 23 of the same year and, with a housing shortage, managed to find refuge at 3805 Northview Drive, a large Colonial subdivided to accommodate multiple families, in the top of Fondren. For $35 a month, the Ellises had a large room and access to a small kitchen (with no plumbing) and a bathroom. Ms. Day owned the home, Dot remembers.

Dot and Truman both worked for Commercial Bank (she before him) and rode the bus home from work everyday. On Saturdays, after they got off work at noon, they would get off the bus at the corner of Duling Avenue and State Street and walk to the Jitney Jungle grocery store in Woodland Hills Shopping Center. There, they enjoyed a cup of coffee or even a meal at the store’s lunch counter.

They lived on Northview for three years before the G.I. subdivision and the lottery came about just north of them in an area once known as Tripp’s Crossing (now Broadmoor). “Our lot was more expensive at $1,000 because it had a sweet gum tree out front,” Dot says. There, the Ellises built a three bedroom, one bath home on Meadow Ridge Drive.

Shortly after moving in, Dot and Truman were invited to attend a bible study that later became Broadmeadow United Methodist Church. “We were charter members,” she says of the 1950 formed church that originally met in a shopping center at the corner of Northview and Meadowbrook. Dot says “It was a wonderful time to raise families.”