WRITEON FOR
FEBRUARY 12, 2020
sister alies.
I was with a friend recently who told me about, and showed me a picture of, her great-grandfather, who was born into slavery and died in the early seventies @ 127yrs. YUP! Mr.Potts from around French Camp.
Then, of course, we miss Kirk Douglas who passed @ 103 years the other day.
But, the top of my list this week is not someone who has died, but a special someone who had their 100th b-day on Feb 7, 2020 and celebrated it very well @ Ackerman Baptist on the 6th @ XYZ. That special guy, here with his wife (LIBBY), is AL OWEN. He was asked to write up a few things about himself and so I will quote from what he has written.
“I was born February 7, 1920 the fifth of seven children to Henry Wallace Owen and Maude Demarest Owen, in Draper, N. Carolina near the Va. Line. My mother died when I was 8, leaving my father, me and six siblings: Wally, Ralph, Frank, Evelyn (‘sis’), Howard (‘Rip’), and Margaret. Several years later, my dad married Annie Walker who became a wonderful stepmother to us all. When I was 14, my father enrolled Rip, Margaret and me in a Christian boarding school in Buffalo Ridge, Va., in the Blue Ridge Mts…
I graduated in 1937 and returned home to Spray, N. Carolina where I managed a dry cleaning business. Then in 1941 during the draft, I enlisted in the navy and served for 6 years. In 1958, I began serving as a factory representative for Queen Cutlery Company. This job brought me to Mississippi where I met Libby Hamric, a medical records administrator at UMMMC. We married in 1961 and were blessed with 2 children, Allison and Jim.
In 1965 we moved to Ackerman and joined Ackerman Baptist Church, and lived there for 50 years. I continued to sell cutlery for about 30 years throughout the South. After I retired, we travelled and rode our bikes. In 2015, we move to the Orchard Retirement Home in Ridgeland, MS, near Allison and her family.
We are deeply thankful for God’s continued blessings, especially our long and healthy life together, our loving family, and wonderful friends.”
I was so blessed to be their neighbor for several years, when I lived in the little yellow house on East Sides. The XYZ @ Ackerman Baptist was a full house and Al and Libby were rightly the center of attention, hugging and laughing with members and old friends.
I didn’t stand and speak but had I here’s what I might have said: Al and Libby you were the greatest of neighbors. And more, you are both role models of people who grow and change and who find delight in the Lord. Thank you for all the many ways you enriched my life and the lives of those around you.
BLESSINGS.
