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tallings House. For dozens of couples, this century-old house with the signature front porch and second floor balcony and lawn out to the edge of the Neuse was where they exchanged vows. For sailing groups, church organizations and families, it was a place to spend a week or a weekend. Almost half a century ago, during the early days of sailing in Oriental, it was one of the central hubs of activity.

Over the decades, it became known in town as the Stallings House, but Jackie Stallings had other names for it. She called it the “River House” or “The Light House,” a reference to her religious views. Her children have yet another word for it. They say that since her family bought the house in 1962, it was Jackie Stallings’ “passion.” Her favorite room, says her daughter Lisa Durham, was “that front porch,” and she adds, sharing it, one of her favorite things to do.

Jackie Stallings passed away on Saturday, December 11, two days after suffering a heart attack. Her husband, Lacy Stallings, had died just four months earlier, a month before what would have been their 60th anniversary. For the past 22 years, after his retirement from being a surgeon in Raleigh, they lived in Oriental, across town from the riverfront house.

“Mom Was Smitten.”

Jackie Stallings and her family first visited Oriental in 1962 to see an acquaintance from Raleigh. She was immediately taken by the idea of a weekend and vacation house by the water. Her daughter LIsa Stallings Durham says the family tried to buy another house on South Avenue first, but that deal fell through. The white house at 500 South Avenue was the one they bought instead. The family has spent part of every summer at the house ever since.

In those early years, the Stallings were part of the small but steady wave of Raleigh, Durham and Greensboro area residents who came to Oriental for vacation and for the newly-discovered sailing waters. The Stallings House — and at times tents on the front lawn in front of it — offered shelter to sailors during the Oriental Regatta, the only big organized race of the year.

Jackie and Lacy Stallings

When Lacy Stallings’ died in August, a report of his life mentioned his love of the house. A few days after her mother’s passing, Lisa Durham laughed as she offered a gentle correction, “Dad was not smitten with the house. Mom was smitten,” she says. “The house was very rundown. Dad saw hours and hours and weeks of work.”

Kathy Bland, the youngest of Jackie Stallings three children, concurs. “My dad would come on weekends and fix things. He rewired the house. While my dad was building the house in a material sense, my mom was busy building relationships.” Those relationships centered on the house. Her mother welcomed her Scout troops from Raleigh, church groups, and in time, couples who wanted to marry in the house, on the porch or out on the lawn.

“She loved that house. It was her passion. And she loved to share it.” Especially, Kathy Bland says, with young people. Her children say that their mother became a “second mother” to their friends and others who came by the house during the summers the family spent there.

Inland Roots

Jacquelyn Word Stallings was born in Richmond on September 29, 1929 and was the only child of Lewis and Frances Word. She grew up in Louisburg, North Carolina, where her father was a tobacco buyer for British Imperial. Her mother’s family was from Richmond and spent some time in Nantucket, which may have planted the seed for Jackie later wanting a place on the water, says Lisa Durham.

At left Jackie as a child, on the right at Lesall College in Boston

Jackie Word graduated high school in 1946 and then attended LeSall College in Boston. Her daughters believe their mother was on a pre-med track. When she was a young woman, her children say, one of her legs was amputated below the knee.

That, says Lisa Durham, is something not everyone knew about their mother. She says that her grandmother was injured in a car accident when she was pregnant and Jackie, not yet born, was hurt. Through childhood, she wore a leg brace with a tall corrective heel and underwent multiple surgeries. Jackie was active, nonetheless, but sustained more injuries —- there was another car accident and a fall from a tree. When she was about 20, a doctor found the leg was getting more diseased and recommended amputation. A month before she was to become introduced in to society as a debutante, she had the operation.

Traumatic as that may have been, Lisa Durham says that in her mother’s eyes, “the amputation gave her a freedom.” Her family was not as quick to accept that. At the time, the late 1940’s, the idea of amputation “horrified” Jackie’s mother, according to Lisa Durham. She says that her grandparents “worried that… as an amputee… she would never meet someone” to marry.

In that, Jackie Word quickly proved her parents wrong. A medical student came to Louisburg to visit family one day. Nine months later, in September of 1950, they married. As Lacy Stallings completed his studies at Duke, Jackie supported them by working in a hematology lab. They had three children, made a move to Philadelphia for his residency and then settled in Raleigh where he worked as a surgeon.

The Stallings family in 1960s

By the early 1960’s they were making their way to Oriental and helping build the critical mass to make the fishing village a sailing town as well. She sailed — they started out with a Flying Scot — and swam. Her family — including a future son-in-law —- and others remember her walking to the water’s edge and matter-of-factly taking the wooden leg off to go out on the water.

Her children say that her amputation didn’t deter their mother. Lisa Durham remembers that in those days before the higher tech prosthetics available now, her mother had not one but two “heavy old wooden legs” — one for when she wore flat shoes, one for when she dressed up in high heels. Jackie snow-skied, roller skated, and skated on ice. She was an active Girl Scout leader, leading hiking and camping trips.

“She was determined, as an amputee, never to be handicapped,” says Lisa. Twenty years ago, her family tried to persuade Jackie to apply for a handicapped tag for her car so she could park closer to the doors of stores. She refused and held out until 8 years ago, when, her daughter says, Jackie was diagnosed with a heart condition. (It was that, her mother said, and not the prosthetic that made her get the handicapped tag.)

Jackie in a 1964 Raleigh News & Observer story

Jackie Stallings’ determination also came through in her religious life and political work. Her family says that some difficulties during the birth of her third child, Kathy and questions of whether she would be ambulatory (she was) led to “a life-changing commitment to Jesus Christ.” She led Bible studies, Sunday school and church activities in Raleigh and Oriental. She was also active in political campaigns for many conservative candidates in both places where she lived. In Raleigh, as a news clipping from the 60’s notes, she was part of an emerging GOP.

Jackie and Lacy Stallings came to Oriental as vacation and weekend visitors for 25 years. In the early days, she spent the summers at the River House with their three children while Lacy worked in Raleigh, bringing at times a menagerie that included gerbils, cats, and horses. When Lacy retired, they moved here permanently to a home on Pineview on a creek off of Whittaker Creek and sailed in the Neuse and Pamlico Sound on a 36 foot ketch.

Their children plan to continue spending parts of their summers at the River House. Jackie Stallings will not be far. In accordance with her wishes, all of her ashes will be spread out on the river she loved to watch from the front porch.

Hanging at the corner of the porch, is a cabin lamp, of bronze and red-colored glass. Lisa Durham says Jackie Stallings came back from Morehead City with it about 40 years ago. As a teen, she says she asked her mother why she’d want a red light — and all it conveyed — on the porch. Later, she came to appreciate that it was was in keeping with a plaque Jackie Stallings kept inside her house on Pineview Drive, which suggests that if you “Keep smiling… you keep people wondering what you’re up to.”

Jackie Stallings leaves three children and their families: David Stallings and his wife, Adelaide of Raleigh; Lisa Durham and her husband, Randy of Raleigh; and Kathryn Bland and her husband, Bart of Melrose, Florida. Her five grandchildren are Caleb, Joshua, and Jessica Durham and Trey and Autumn Bland.

A memorial service for Jackie Stallings in planned for Wednesday December 22. The date was chosen, says Kathy Bland, because four of Jackie’s five grandchildren had final exams until then. A fifth grandchild, Joshua Durham, had been in Marine bootcamp in August and was unable to attend his grandfather’s service. He will be able to attend this one on the 22nd.

The service will be at 2p at Oriental United Methodist Church with Reverend Keith Sexton officiating. The family will receive friends immediately following the service in the fellowship hall of the church. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Oriental United Methodist Church for their outreach ministries.

December 2009 at the Stallings House

Posted Wednesday December 15, 2010 by Melinda Penkava