What did you do in the War, Daddy?

When the First World War was going on in Germany, my father, Reuben Lee, believed that he was about to be drafted and on the 15th of August, 1918, he and Mother married. I think they married to keep him from going to the War.

The Lees and the Brownings lived about two blocks away from each other in Murchison. I think Reuben’s father, Will Lee, bought and sold cattle and ran some cattle himself. He and his wife had two sons, Reuben, and Royal, called “Lank,” who was nine years younger than my father.

My grandson Steve met Lank and his wife here at the farm once along with my half-sister, Nelda (Reuben’s daughter by a second marriage). I have a picture of us out by the fig trees.

Lank was a rancher, and Nelda started out as a bank-teller. Later they ran the local Athens Stock Sales Barn. Neither of them is living now.

Lank and my husband John were both born in July of 1911.

My father and mother’s marriage was successful in that it kept my father from having to join the army, but it was not successful in other ways. War-time brings on lots of marriages too fast, I think.