Harry Boyd Lassiter and Ruth Elizabeth Herd

Harry Boyd Lassiter	Ruth Elizabeth Herd
Born 28 May 1916 in McKee, KY. Died 3 Jun 1998 in Valdosta, GA. "Boyd" after the doctor who delivered him.	Born 24 Nov 1919. Died 10 May 1993 in Valdosta,GA
They were married 11 Jun 1944 in Knoxville, TN.

Once when Harry and Joe were in Middlesboro, Harry noticed a picture on a wall in John Herd's house and asked, "Who's that?", to which John replied, "That's my daughter Ruth. She's away at school".

About 1991, one overcast day, we were in Valdosta for a visit. Ruth and I were the only ones in the house; everyone else was gone off ["gone off"? Ah writes like ah talks!] to the mall or to town or somewhere. We were sitting at the kitchen table, talking about nothing in particular, when Ruth said, "You know your daddy and I were married for two years before anyone knew about it?"

Well, no, I didn't know that.

"I packed an overnight bag and told Mama and Daddy I was going to Knoxville to visit a friend. Early the next morning I took the train from Middlesboro to Knoxville, and Harry met me at the station.

"We went to a Justice of the Peace but didn't actually go to his door. I was crying and found something wrong with the place. Well, Harry drove me all over the county to first one judge or Justice of the Peace, then another. Every time we got to another place, I would get upset and find something wrong with it. [Doesn't this sound like our mother?!]

"Finally Harry said, 'Ruth, I don't think you're going to be satisfied with any place we find. Why don't I take you back to the station and put you on the train to Middlesboro?'. I said, 'No, Harry, I'll be all right. Let's go back to that first place where we were this morning.'

"We went back to that first Justice of the Peace, and got married. We got a pint of ice cream and ate it at the lake, on the end of the dock. Your daddy took me back to the depot and I went home to Middlesboro.

"Harry continued traveling with Joe. Every time they got near Middlesboro we would see each other. This went on for two years. Then, one day, Daddy was at a party and someone asked him, 'John, how do you like your new son-in-law?' He said, 'You must be mistaken. I only have one daughter, and she's not married.'" [To quote Mark Twain, "Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene".]

"Your daddy went to Live Oak and found work and I came down. I had trouble adjusting, to the point that Harry said, "Ruth, I don't think you'll ever be happy here. Why don't I send you back to Middlesboro?"

"Well, we were in the car, on our way from Live Oak to Lake City for me to catch the train. Your daddy was driving, looking straight ahead. I looked over at him and saw a big tear roll down his cheek, and, suddenly, I didn't want to go back to Middlesboro. I said, 'Harry, I'll be OK here. Let's go back home.' Since we were so close to Lake City, we decided to go on and get a bite to eat there. Then we went back home, and I never had any trouble with home sickness after that."

December 22, 2007
Nancy writes:
I was just visiting your geneology page and I read the history you recorded of Ruth and Dad. I remember most of it as it was told to me also. She told me she packed her suitcases and hid them in her closet. Then Dad put her on the bus and went back to break the news and get her things. I was told Uncle John didn't speak for a week after he learned about the elopement. Ruth said she had always told him she would never leave. She said after they married they went to the river, hung their feet in the water and ate ice cream.
I have been lately thinking of two things Ruth said to me......... The other was that he and she sat across the beds and she hung her head bemoaning her appearance in her old age. He said, "I still see peaches and cream and cornsilk."
Dad once said to me, "I don't believe a man should ask his wife to do something he isn't willing to do himself." One favorite Amanda and I spoke of just today was, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

When I was born in March of 1947, they were living in a small 'box-and-strip' cabin on the bank of the Suwanee river. They used a dresser drawer as a bed for me. They pointed the cabin out to me when we drove from Valdosta to Live Oak. Unaccountably, there is no monument at the site.

Dad liked to tell about the time Ruth got mad at him and told him to leave. He asked, no doubt meekly and with a straight face, if she minded him stopping by to drop off his paycheck. Naturally she got tickled and couldn't stay mad.

With their only child in Florida, Mom and Uncle John had little choice but to pack up and follow. They bought a hundred-acre farm outside Live Oak. We all lived there until 1953, when Dad got a job with the new paper mill at Clyattville. My parents and sibling(s?) moved to 748 East Ann Street in Valdosta, leaving me in Live Oak to finish the first grade.

While in Live Oak, they had a dog named 'Ginger'. Dad told of the time he came in from work and found Ruth crying. He asked her what the matter was and she wailed, "Oh Harry, Daddy called Ginger a son-of-a-bitch."

I don't know how he responded at the time, but he told the story with considerable glee and said that he couldn't fault John's description of the dog except in the matter of gender.

Becky was born in 1950. Her nickname was 'Boo', short for 'Caboose'. She was to be the last child.

Years later, perhaps after the birth of Mary, the seventh child and the real 'Caboose', Dad was heard to explain the large number of children this way, " Every time the youngest child would get out of diapers, Ruth would begin to get depressed and teary and to bemoan the fact that she didn't have a little one any more."

Two signs Dad told of seeing during his travels in Appalachia around 1940.
The first was at a filling station.
"We don't want the ass end of your business."
The second.
"Reglor Baptis Church"

Dad said that, during a rugged winter, someone placed on Cheat Mountain a road sign which read, "Choose your ruts carefully. You'll be in them for the next forty miles."

He told of participating in an information march at Madison Square Garden. He was carrying a sign which read on one side, "Religion is a snare and a racket", and on the other, "Serve God and Christ the King". As the marchers walked, they turned their signs so that watchers could read both sides. Dad said that a man watched him, seeing first, "Religion is a snare and a racket", then, "Serve God and Christ the King". Finally the man said, "Say! Whose side are you on anyway ?".

He was once asked, by a person who apparently believed predestination, "Do you believe that what is to be, will be ?" He began his response, "Well, I couldn't very well say that what is to be won't be......"

[Backto the Genealogy page]

1 Actually, I think Dad was the one I heard tell about Uncle John at the party.

2 Dad worked at least one summer packing watermelons in boxcars. He described both the hot, hard nature of the work as well as the luxury of dropping a big Garrison or Cannon Ball and eating just the heart out of it. He knew what hard work was. After he graduated from Marlinton High, before he went pioneering, he spent a year driving spikes on the Western-Maryland railroad.

He worked for a while as a salesman for Suwanee Paper Co. He sold Electrolux vacuum cleaners until 1953 when he got a job at National Container Corporation's new Kraft liner-board (paper) mill at Clyattville, Georgia. I think that he sold Electrolux part time even after he began work at the paper mill.