By Michael Butler
The red brick structure that has housed the Tallassee Recreation Department for nearly five decades will be coming down next week.
Originally, the facility was home to the Alabama National Guard in Tallassee.
“I want to say it was built before 1953,” said Charles Blalock. “We played our high school basketball there in ’54.”
Blalock attended R.R. Moton.
“I left in 1955. We played on the ground and started playing at the armory. It was a cement floor. We were glad to be playing inside.”
The armory was named for Ransom Dewey Piper, a local who was killed in action in the Korean War while serving in the U.S. Army in 1951. His name is still on the current National Guard Armory facility in Tallassee.
“I remember him,” Blalock added. “We had two guys from Tallassee killed in Korea, Dewey Piper and (Billy) Causey, who lived in Friendship.”
Numerous community events have been held at the former armory and rec center over the years including dances and concerts. The Tallassee Recreation Center relocated to the Gilmer Avenue location from East Tallassee in the late 1970s.
After the building is gone, the same footprint will be used for the new community center which is slated as a 428-day project.
Tallassee Times 
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One response to “Rec Center/Old Armory Coming Down Next Week”
Michael… My uncle, my mother‘s baby brother, Floyd Dale Cameron, was also killed in Korea, two hours before the cease fire. They lived at Herren crossroads and the stretch of highway from the crossroads up to the Macon County line was named the Floyd Dale Cameron Highway. Someone has since removed the two road signs that were erected by the state highway department.
In high school, I was a “bookie” and I booked bands all across the southeast. I probably booked 10 bands at the National Guard armory, and I would work the gate collecting the money for admission. Sometimes buddy Emfinger would sit with me. I rented the armory for $25 for each engagement. The biggest band I booked was the zombies, but I booked them at the Original recreation center in East Tallassee, The facility where Mrs. counts worked. I can still visualize the long line of people waiting to get into that concert and it stretched down the street and bent and headed toward the mill.
The biggest band I booked at the armory was Bobbie Moore and the rhythm aces. They were an all black band, which I hired for the prom in May 1968 for the graduating seniors. Many, many parents would not allow the 11th and 12th grade children to attend prom that year because of Bobby Moore. My parents received over a dozen phone calls expressing Great disgust at what I did and I was even called into the office by principal Benny Little to discuss it. But the school had nothing to do with it so I pushed forward and it was, in my opinion, one of the most significant concerts ever played in Tallassee. May, 1968! Someone somewhere has pictures I’m sure.
In the year 2000 I ran into Bobbie Moore at a wedding in Auburn. He actually lived in friendship although his band was based out of Montgomery. We talked about that prom, in 1968, and reminisced a lot about the breakthrough moments his band had. They had one big hit: search searching for my baby. It’s still an awesome song.
Great memories! You have an awesome “newspaper.“ Craig
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