WWW arkcity.net

By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer

The Arkansas City home of Elizabeth Taylor's paternal grandparents is getting a facelift.

Its current owners, Eddie and Mary Turner, are renovating the brick house at 310 N. A St. When the work is done, they plan to put it on the market, Mary Turner said Thursday.

It's a house that is remembered fondly by Elizabeth Asbell Hentrich, a 94-year-old former Arkansas City woman who now lives in Wichita.

As a young, unmarried woman, Hentrich -- then called by her maiden name, Asbell -- worked as a housekeeper for Elizabeth Taylor's paternal grandparents. That was sometime in the 1930s, said Hentrich's daughter, Janice Whitaker.

Her mother did housework, cooking and tending to the Taylors' needs at their house on A Street, said Whitaker, also an Arkansas City native who now lives in Wichita.

She interviewed her ailing mother for The Traveler.

Her mother never met Elizabeth Taylor or her older brother, Howard, Whitaker said. The Taylors' grandchildren lived in England at that time.

"Mom said Francis and Sara (Elizabeth Taylor's parents) never lived in Ark City during the 1929 - 1941 years," Whitaker said. "They would come from London for a visit, but never to live."

But her mother did meet Elizabeth Taylors' father, Francis, when he would visit his grandparents in Ark City.

"He never brought his family," Whitaker said. "She couldn't remember the years he visited. She said he was a very nice man."

The famed actress' grandparents, Francis M. Taylor and Elizabeth M. Taylor, were generous people, according to Whitaker's mother. They bought their housekeeper gifts and were "exceptionally kind," she said.

The Taylors were members of Central Christian Church before transferring their membership to the Presbyterian Church, she said. Their interests included listening to the radio and playing cards with friends.

"I did housework and cooking," Hentrich said. "I took care of their household needs. I was allowed to sit with them to eat their meals. I was treated very well."

Hentrich said that she worked for the Taylors for three or four years. During that time Francis Taylor worked in insurance and his wife stayed at home.

"I know my mother quit school in her junior year in high school so she could help her family during the Depression," Whitaker said. "I also know she worked for them when (President Franklin D.) Roosevelt closed the banks."

Hentrich probably was no longer working for the Taylors when their grandchildren visited in the late 1930s, her daughter said.

Elizabeth Taylor and her brother, Howard, made a couple of visits that have been written about.

Sara Sothern, Elizabeth's mother, wrote that her daughter spent her first Christmas, when she was 10 months old, "with Mother and Daddy Taylor in Kansas."

Another more lengthy visit by the grandchildren occurred late in the winter of 1937, according to C. David Heymann, who wrote a biography of Elizabeth Taylor. That may have been the period during which Elizabeth and Howard attended Roosevelt Elementary School.

Reached by phone recently in Taos, N.M., Howard's wife, Mara Taylor confirmed that her husband and Elizabeth attended school for a brief time in Arkansas City.

Elizabeth Taylor, who was born in 1932, went to kindergarten here. Her older brother, Howard, attended third grade, said Mara Taylor.

"I doubt if Elizabeth would even remember," Mara Taylor said.

She said Howard doesn't remember much of those days in Ark City, either.

"He just said that he and his family traveled there from England to visit the Taylors, and that Mrs. Taylor wasn't well," she said. "He thought it was really nifty that he got to wear the kind of kidney-colored long pants that boys wore then to school."