#52Ancestors
Week 6: Earning a Living
The vast majority of my ancestors were farmers. My father, however, took a slightly different
path. After being raised with farming
and being active in 4-H Club and FFA (Future Farmers of America), he graduated
from Murfreesboro’s Central High School in May 1950, where he was the winner of
the Agriculture medal his senior year.
He attended Middle Tennessee State College
(now MTSU) for two years. In September 1952, he joined the army and went
through basic training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri;
then, in May 1953, he went to Korea
as a carpenter with Company A of the 378th Engineer Combat Battalion,
where he helped to build bridges and an orphanage. He went in as a Private, was promoted to
Corporal and then squad leader, and then was promoted to Sergeant in May 1954. He returned stateside in the fall of 1954 and
was transferred to Fort Riley,
Kansas, early in 1955.
After his discharge in 1956, he and an army buddy named Jack
went to Elk Creek, California, to manage the ranch of his
cousin, Enon Maddux. In the summer of
1957, his cousin Donald McDonald worked with him there.
While back in Tennessee
for a visit, he met his future bride on a blind date, introduced by his cousin
Bobby Hayes and wife Amelia (“Sis”).
They married in February 1959 and returned to California, this time to Willows, where he
worked independently on a ranch there.
His cousin Ernest Burgess worked with him in 1959, and his cousin Gerald
Lee worked with him in 1960.
In the fall of 1960, he returned to Murfreesboro and began driving his own
trailer truck, hauling produce. It was
this career that led to his early death in December 1965. He was overnight at a truck stop in Leesburg, Florida,
when his heater malfunctioned and he died of asphyxiation in his sleep.
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