Nina Maria Korth Cole

Spoke May 5, 2003

At a recent River Oaks Area Historical Society meeting, President Mary Earwood welcomed the crowd and called the meeting to order.  Program Chairman Linda Claridge introduced the main speaker, Nina Maria Korth Cole, who began by telling us what a wonderful childhood she had, growing up in the huge house that her great-grandfather, Marion Sansom built in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.  The estate was known as Sansom Ranch. Often called Azleway and consisted of around 7,000 acres, which covered the Marine Creek Valley, the Sansom Park area, the Inspiration Point area, a largepart of the land surrounding Boat Club Road, and the area where the Northwest Campus of Tarrant County College sits.  The huge house was about one-half mile off what we now know as Azle Avenue. It was home to four generations of Sansoms and their descendants.        

Nina Maria’s mother, who had grown up on the property, married Fred Korth and they made their residence there.  They had three children, Nina Maria and Fritz Allen being the two who were closest in age, and a sister, Vera, who was ten years younger.  Nina said she and Fritz had marvelous times there in the days when life was much simpler than today’s hurried times.  She said they lay on their backs on the grass and watched the clouds, played in the barns, climbed on the roofs, wandered all over the acreage, fished in Marine Creek, and had wonderful parties for children at the ranch.  There were also great “grown-up” barbecues and parties thrown at the ranch during that era.

She told us of having a wonderful black nanny they called “Mammy”, who loved the family and also was greatly loved by them.  She cooked for them, took care of the  children when their parents were out of town, and even taught Nina Maria how to drive.  Nina got her drivers license at age 13 because they lived so far from town, She attended school in the Arlington Heights area.  She also remembered the kindness of her mother to another black employee.  The man’s horse fell on him while he was in the Stockyards area one day and his leg had to be amputated.  The family let him live in a small room behind their home until he died.

Nina’s father, Fred Korth, was Assistant Secretary of the Army under President Harry Truman, so the family, including their nanny, moved to Washington, D.C. for awhile.  Nina attended Mount Vernon High School there, but when the family came back home, she graduated from Arlington Heights High School.  Her father was president of the Continental Bank during the late 1950s and then served as Secretary of the Navy under President John Kennedy during the time of the assassination.  Nina’s husband Gary was a young Assistant U.S. Attorney during that time.

Nina was asking Gary to take part in the conversation at this point since he knew much about Azleway.  He had spent a lot of time there when he and Nina were dating.  Gary said when she left for Washington with her family, it broke his heart and he didn’t know if he would ever get her back.  He entered SMU and after Nina returned, she entered SMU just one year behind him.  They married when he was 21 and she was 20.  Nina went to work for a bank in Dallas to help put Gary through law school, something her family didn’t quite understand.  Nina laughed as she told that story, because the women in her family had never  worked.  She said they often made trips from Dallas back home to Azleway with barely enough gas in the tank to get there.  Mammy would slip groceries into the trunk of their car so they wouldn’t starve to death.  An even funnier part of their presentation was Gary telling about Nina not knowing how to cook.  He said her mother thought the kitchen was a room you went through to get to the car, and her grandmother had no concept of what a kitchen was.    The first dish Nina cooked for Gary was a disaster, but later she went to a cooking school sponsored by Leonard Brothers Department Store.  He said that today she is a fabulous cook.

Gary also told a story of an incident that happened before they married.  He asked if any of us remembered when the Wilfong Fireworks Company on Jacksboro Highway blew up and of course, most of did.  He told us that the wind blew a lot of embers over to the Sansom Ranch land and started fires in hundreds of places on the pasture.  He went out with several men from the family and they strapped back-pack sprayers on their backs and were trying to put out the fire.  Nina’s father ‘wacked’ a tree to get some burning embers out of it and the embers fell into Gary’s shirt.  He said he came out of his clothes rather quickly.  Nina chimed in that amazingly, he still married her after that. To which Gary responded, “It was the best thing I ever did!”  (They have just celebrated their 48th wedding anniversary.)