Fifth Generation

6. James William Etheridge was born in 1930 in Trenton, TN. His parents are James Ollie Etheridge and Lena Irene Burns.

I have heard nothing but the best of his parents who raised him to be an honest, hard working man. He ahs a younger sister and a younger brother. He lived in Trenton his entire childhood. I don’t know exactly how he was affected by the Depression. I know he played the clarinet in hsi school’s band and wore glasses from a young age. He had sandy blond hair and big blue eyes. He loved technological type of things. When he was 22 he met a beautiful girl from Dyer, TN. He had never seen her before. She looked like the type of girl you might see in the movies. She had black hair, blue eyes, and smooth ivory skin and was a little taller than average. He fell in love and they dated. He then found out later that she was only 15 years old. They still dated a while, and when she was 16 they eloped. She still finished school, while my grandfather did work with the Tennessee National Guard. My grandfather trained to fix radios and later TVs. They lived together as man and wife and lived in a trailer. When my grandmother was 20 she had my mother. Two years later my grandfather joined the LDS church and worked hard to help the church grow in West Tennessee. He later became Branch President. He traveled to Utah a few times to go to the temple as there were no temples close by at the time. He moved to Jackson, TN where he owned a sound equipment business with his brother Robert, who we call Uncle Bob. He moved his business to Memphis not long after his parents died. He did the sound for many concerts and he does the sound for the Miss Tennessee pageant every year. He worked for the LDS Memphis Stake for many years and did a lot of genealogy work. He later became the first counselor of the Memphis, TN Temple. He is still alive and doing well.

7. Nancy Johnson was born in 1936 in Dyer, TN. She is the daughter of Vilous Wayne Johnson and Nannie Mildred Warren.

She was a pretty girl who hated the farms and hated farm animals. She had an older sister Peggy who was her exact opposite and a younger brother named Billy. They had a rough time during the Depression and moved around a lot. They even had to help pick cotton. My grandmother got appendicitis as a child and nearly died. She loved school and had many friends. Because she was a little tall she played basketball. She was very pretty and looked older for her age. She attracted the handsome 22 year old James Etheridge when she was 15 years old. She skipped school and married him in Mississippi to the shock of her mother. She finished school and everything worked out. Since she has the RH negative factor there was worry that she should not have children. She had four. They were afraid to have more and adopted a son. She joined the LDS church with her husband and was a very faithful and always fulfilled her callings. She moved to Memphis and still lives there. She loves children and babysits children for extra money. She is a lot of fun and has an interesting kind of humor. She is my husband’s favorite relative. He loves her straight talk.