Fifth Generation

8. Irby Overton Lee was born on February 2, 1901 in Whitewater Township, Oconee County, South Carolina. His parents are John James Lee and Mattie Emaline Sheppard. He died on December 11, 1984 in Chattanooga, Hamilton, Tennessee. He married Ruth Hester Fowler in June 5, 1930 in Bolton, Fulton, Georgia. He later adopted Ruth’s son, Charles Henry Keith. He is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery, Chattanooga, Hamilton, Tennessee. He had three brothers and two sisters.
He grew up in rural South Caroline but his family moved to close to a school for they felt education was important. I don’t know much else about his childhood. He went to college in South Carolina and later moved to the Atlanta, Georgia area. There he met Ruth Hester Fowler Keith. They married in the Atlanta area and soon moved because of the depression. They moved at one point to Texas and then to Chattanooga where he started Lee Furniture Company. He was given a key to the city, but I think the key was to East Ridge, TN. He traveled a lot because of his business and we still have the old postcards. They built a home in Chattanooga in the 1950’s and never moved. It was out in the country when they built it, but now it is down the street from Hamilton Place Mall. Irby Lee was active in a Presbetyrian Church for most of his life. He and Ruth had a beautiful and loving relationship and every picture of them together shows them having fun. I don’t remember much about him, as I was only 6 when he died. I remember him giving me candy from a ceramic bowl of strawberries and that he was bald. He seemed nice to me. He died at the age of 83.

9. Ruth Hester Fowler was born on July 30, 1901 in Mooresville, Iredell, North Carolina and is the daughter of William Henry Fowler and Theadora Mae Deaton. She has two brothers and three sisters.

Her father worked for the railroads and that is probably what brought them to Atlanta, GA. According to the census they were in Atlanta, Ward 5, Fulton County, Georgia by 1910. She was very fashionable and wore the best clothes and make-up. She met Julian Keith while she was in High School. She described him as very handsome and an extremely charming man. I can see that from the few photos I have found of him. She told me they would meet behind the school and kiss. She married him at the age of 17 and had her darling son, Charles Henry Keith in January of 1920. I have heard that there were complications and that is why she could have no more children, but right now that is rumor. She divorced him before my grandfather turned 10, I think he was 8. I have heard two reasons why. My grandfather said his grandmother told him that his father had an affair or tried to have an affair with the maid. Ruth Lee told me it was because he drank and gambled too much. She was senile when she told me this though. It could be a combination of the two. Long too long afterwards she married Irby Lee. She worked most of her life as a saleswoman and woked in the Personality Shop in Chattanooga, TN. She never liked her daugher-in-law Frances Tucker. I have seen then fight myself. We called her Meemaw. I lived with her the last year of her life. It was stressful because she was senile and in poor health, but sometimes Meemaw could be a lot of fun and I enjoyed talking to her. She would give me fashion advice and hated the way modern girls dressed. She once tried to fix my hair like a flapper girl. In her mind, it was still 1930. We never got to know her age because she always lied about it. Her house was like a museum from the 1950’s. She even kept the same make-up! When she passed away, I missed her a lot. She was definitely a woman ahead of her time.

They only had one child

Charles Henry (Keith) Lee 1920-2005