Father of Mary Ann, David, Debora, Tennie and Mark.

Daddy grew up on a farm in Whites Creek Tennessee, the youngest of thirteen children. He met my mother, Martha Still, in Joelton and they married December 31, 1951. They had their first child nine months and seven days later. They bought a small cottage on Stones River in Antioch.
In search of work, they moved to Hammond Indiana where their second and third children were born in 1957 and 1959. Daddy would find work and as soon as they got caught up on bills and felt comfortable, daddy would get laid off. After this happened several times, momma got fed up and wanted to go home. She didn't like living in Indiana anyway. So she told me that one day while daddy was at work, she went to a local truck stop and found a driver with an empty truck heading back to Tennessee. The driver came to the house, helped her load up furniture, clothes, kids and everything else and they left for home-back to the cottage on Stones River. I guess when daddy came home to an empty house, he decided to follow along. A good thing too since I was born a year or so later. The last child born five years after me.
Somewhere about 1965, they were forced off their property on Stones River to make way for Percy Priest Lake. They bought 77 acres in Mt Juliet, Wilson County, Tennessee. My grandfather, Emmett Still, was widowed and he bought a small, one bedroom, Air Stream trailer and put on the property where we all lived for a time. Daddy had never built anything but a dog house when he started building our house on the new property. He gently disassembled the cottage on the river to use as much of the materials he could in the building of the house. With the help of my Uncle Leon and other family and friends, they managed to build a 2100 sq. foot house that still stands strong today. When we first moved in, there was only two outside walls and a roof-everything else was just studs. Daddy had found full-time work so finishing the house was a nights and week-ends thing. We didn't have a bathroom until about 1970 and I remember there still being tar paper on the outside when I was a teenager.
Then there were farm animals, a barn to build, hay to be hauled and a garden to tend. It was your typical farm and we all worked very hard at times. The best place ever to grow up and I wouldn't change a thing.
Daddy worked and retired from The United Methodist Publishing House in Nashville. He then started a small business building steel carports that kept him occupied and out of mom's hair. He was a member of Center Chapel Church of Christ in Mt Juliet.
They usually went to Florida on vacation every summer. One year daddy got sick while down there and the doctor's found some masses in his lungs. Cancer. Five months later, he and momma celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Six months later, he was gone.
For a man that never really had anything of great value, he was the richest person I will ever know. He was rich in family, he was rich in friends and he was rich in his faith to God. He was well loved by everyone that knew him. About six hundred people went to the funeral home when he died. Until that day, I was a little blind to just how many lives he touched. He really was a good guy.