had two girls and seven boys. Two of her children died in infancy: Eugene and Iola. Dean died at twelve from Leukemia. Left were one girl, Clarice, and five boys, Howard, Horace, Arnold, Jerry, and Marion. All were in the military except for Howard/Bub. He worked on the Wickliffe to Cairo Toll Bridge. Uncle Bub farmed in later years. We lived across from his apple orchard. In the Spring there was no prettier sight than that orchard in bloom!
Bub was a bachelor and lived with Ma Gill who had a severe stroke about 1952. She was left bedfast and unable to care for herself. She was given a toddy every afternoon, and I remember my little sister, Nancy Jane, said she always managed to be there at toddy time. We just lived about 150 yards from Ma Gill’s place.
After WWII my dad went to barber school in Memphis in about 1950. After he did his internship in Paducah he had a barber shop in our yard on Hwy 286. In 1966 he bought property in Future City, KY, and barbered there until he was stricken with Toxic Goiter in 1970. He had Rheumatic Fever about the time, before or after, he went to barber school. It was from a strep infection, and it left him with a bad heart. Dad also became an electronic technician and worked at that for many years as his health would allow.
I don’t know a whole lot about Dad’s siblings but I’ll try to elaborate on what I know. Clarice married Artell Jones, and was a caregiver for her mother for many years. After Ma Gill passed away in 1962 I’m not sure what Clarice did but I know she had other jobs besides being a mother of three children. Artell was an abusive husband and she suffered at his hands for many years. Story was that she had loved another guy, Boyd Wheatley, who was a distant cousin but her mother forbade her to marry him. Said she’d sooner her marry a black person than her cousin. That’s just the way it was in those days regarding people of different races.
Arnold worked at General Tire in Mayfield until he retired. I think he was able to retire before that went out of business. He married a girl, Doris Hollenback, from New Jersey when he was stationed there in the army. Arnold always seemed to be a cheerful guy, and did woodworking.
Jerry worked at farming and had land in the river bottoms somewhere. He married in later years, but never really seemed very happy to me. I think he believed his wife to be much younger than she actually was at the time of their marriage. She was a very peculiar person! He and his wife adopted a son, Bobby.
Marion worked at Union Carbide for many years and he retired from there. He had a longtime affair with his high school sweetheart, and after he divorced his first wife, he married her. It was a bitter divorce, and from what I gathered a bitter second marriage.