Column: Nina Simone was special at a young age while growing up in Tryon
Rob Neufeld
Author Rob Neufeld wrote a weekly Visiting Our Past column for the Asheville Citizen Times until his death in 2019. This column originally was published March 1, 2010 in the Citizen Times.
Davan Waymon, an African-American entrepreneur advertised Dry Cleaning and Pressing Called for and Delivered in a March 1929 issue of the Tryon Daily Bulletin. Waymon had just moved to town from the Greenville-Spartanburg area, sensing that Tryon s two grand hotels and four gas stations boded well for business.
When his rented home burned down a couple of years later, he and his wife, Kate, moved with their five children to a small home on East Livingston Street. A piano near the entrance burst with song, mostly sacred because Kate had become a minister in the St. Luke CME church.