VIRGIL ROY REEVES

 The following bio was taken from page 357 of the book entitled “Rusk County History” compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

 Transcribed by Claudia Schuster

 Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

 From early childhood I heard stories about my Rusk County background.  My great-grandparents, Martha and Jonas Memory Waller, Sr., sold their land in Pittsylvania County, Virginia in 1845 and left the state of their ancestors to settle in a new Texas town called Millville.  The Baptist Church and graves behind it are all that remain of the town.  Their son, John Burl, and his wife, Elizabeth, were living at Millville when my mother was born, September 23, 1895.

 I, Lillie Ruth, was born September 15, 1919 in Kilgore, Texas to Lottie Mae Waller and Early Quinton Hammond, a native of Wood County, Texas.  I was born again in Rusk County in the Forest Home Baptist Church on Wednesday, July 13, 1938.  On Wednesday, July 12, 1944, in the same chuch, I became Mrs. Virgil Roy Reeves.  The war kept us apart most of the time for forty-two months.  Virgil went to Guam in the Air Force.  I went to college and worked.

My husband, the first of five children, was born on October 23, 1917 on a farm belonging to his great grandmother, Elizabeth Kindrick.  His parents were Paul and Rosa Bell, the daughter of Lavenia Arnold and Littleton Berry Faircloth, Jr.

 The next year Paul moved his family to Oak Hill where he had grown up after his parents, Nancy Ann Dearing and Calvin Reeves, moved from their native Polk County, Georgia in 1893 when he was six weeks old.

 Littleton Faircloth died February 12, 1945.  The Reeves family moved to Pitner’s Junction to be with with Lavenia in the house where Rosa was born August 4, 1897.  My mother died December 27, 1945.  The Reeves family and home became my family and home.  I was there every Christmas Day and many days in between from 1946 until Paul and Rosa moved into a nursing home in 1979.

 January 5, 1946 was a happy day.  Virgil was discharged at Camp Fannin.  He went to work for a gas company and remained with that company until his death October 6, 1969.  He was a deacon, Sunday school superintendent, farmer, and a good cook.

 Our three sons, Billy Roy, Paul Quinton and Robert Allen, were born in Longview, Texas, and each one born again in Forest Home Baptist Church.  They attended New London School, graduated from Spring Hill High School, and attended several colleges.

 The happiest days of my life were those when our sons were teenagers.  The saddest days were shortly after Virgil’s death when Billy was away in college and Paul and Bob were in Vietnam being bombed.

I’m busy now keeping home fires burning for Billy Roy and Cathy Sue, Paul Quinton and Nongnuch, and Robert Allen, and my only grandson, Jimmy Roy, a native of Thailand, and his sisters Shirley Ann, a native of Thailand, and Dorothy Ruth, born at Hill Air Force Base, Utah.

 I teach in the Longview schools and Spring Hill Baptist Church.  I enjoy travel, sewing, making pictures, searching for roots of ancestors, and identifying with our farm roots by working in my yard and with my flowers, writing letters and visiting when time permits.

 Submitted by Lillie Ruth Reeves