100th Birthday of Robert Nathaniel Ragan
Robert Nathaniel Ragan was born 100 years ago to the day at the time of this
posting, February 19, 1914 near the small town of Toone in Hardeman County,
Tennessee. He was the first born of
nine children to Jacob William Ragan and Lizzie Ann Jackson Ragan. They in turn were descendants of Ragan and
Jackson clans that had been in Hardeman County on lands near present day
Chickasaw State Park since before 1830.
His Grandfather, Nathaniel “Thannie” Francis Ragan was a well-known
farmer, rancher, timber man, livestock dealer and grocery and meat market owner
in nearby Jackson, Tennessee and the Bolivar and immediate communities in
Hardeman County.
He was named for both grandfathers, Robert David Jackson and Nathaniel Francis Ragan. He was called Thannie, as was his Grandfather, Nathaniel, before him, by family and schoolmates. His high school diploma from Ridgely High school in Lake County, Tennessee lists him as Thannie Ragan ,but his birth certificate lists his full name of Robert Nathaniel Ragan in honor of the long line of Nathans and Nathaniels in the family tree. He went by "Bob" all of his adult life. He loved his family history and kept many of the family stories alive in his repeated renditions to his sons, and many are permanently recorded today in the Ancestry family tree.
His earliest recollections of life in Hardeman recalled living in one-room
log houses with slab kitchen add-ons on or near the 2200 acres owned by his grandfather,
Nathaniel. His father was a farmer, to
include fruit trees and orchards at the early homesteads. Dad recalls traveling the countryside to
find “wild grapes” (muscadines) berries, and the assorted bounties of various
wild and indigenous nut and fruit trees. His love of fruit was insatiable until
his dying day.
His earliest memories include as a
toddler being fascinated with a wild rose while walking with his mother to the
Silerton store and being so fascinated he did not want to leave. They lived two miles southwest of Silerton
on the Silerton/Bolivar Road at the time.
Another story involved being in a
hollow some distance from his house with his mother and baby sister, Lockie and
getting caught in a “cloud burst”. This was the description used to describe a
deluge from an approaching tornado. His
mother realized the predicament they were in immediately and grabbed up both he
and his sister and made a made a dash back towards the cabin. The rain was called a “strangler” in those times,
and his mother kept their faces and noses covered on her mad race to get to the
creek before rising waters would leave them stranded. It did not totally prevent their misery, as they coughed and
choked on the torrents of water all the way.
The creek was indeed up to his mother's waist and she just was able to navigate
safely through the waters and enter the house.
Fearing the worst was still to come, his mother threw the feather
mattress over her and the children, and another mattress as well, and they huddled
though the storm, shivering together in each others arms until the danger was
past
.
As a little boy, about six or seven years old, he watched with interest as
his father broke up the clods from plowing with his mule, dragging a heavy sled
of wood with a stump on top for weight.
He begged for a ride, and his father reluctantly relented and placed him
on the sled next to the stump. A while
later the entire assemblage stuck something in the field and dad and the stump
both were thrown underneath the sled, it still forging full speed ahead. When his father got to him, expecting of
course the very worst, dad sat up without a mark. It was one of the few times he remembers his dad trembling with
emotion, thankful for the life of his first-born.
His life would seem unremarkable to some, but to anyone that ever met him,
he was a remarkable man in terms of his affable and genial nature. No one remained a stranger long around
him. He loved people. The gentle and kind nature was probably
taken advantage of or misunderstood by some at first. You would have to see the work ethic, the strength of character,
and the devotion to family and to his Lord on a regular basis to truly know the
man he was. He was to be our father,
and we would be extraordinarily fortunate to have him for a role model.
His heritage was almost exclusively of Scotch-Irish origin, given away
immediately by his blue eyes, fair complexion, and lean frame. But, I believe his soul was at least half
gypsy. He loved to fantasize about finding gold or silver or some lost treasure and was a capable teller of stories, always conveyed with some small measure of embellishment. He loved to travel and it seemed
that the family went at least once a month to visit relatives in St. Louis or
Wayne County, Missouri. Vacations, when
money was in surplus, included trips to Pensacola, Florida, the Southwest, and
even Monterrey, Mexico. After I had
left the household, he traveled parts of the far West and Canada extensively.
Dad first met my mother, Iva Delores (Dee) Wilson Ragan in St. Louis,
Missouri. She worked in the cafeteria
of the YMCA where Dad sometimes came for meals. They were married in St.
Charles County on December 23, 1939. They were devoted to each other
during the entirety of their time together. Throughout their lives where you
found one, you found the other. There
was nothing in Dad’s life worth enjoying, unless he could share it with Mother.
Bob and Dee Ragan, about 1940
World War II came quickly, in 1941, and added hardship and strife to the early years of the union of our Father and
Mother. Dad did not serve due to an
inoperable hernia he had suffered doing the heavy work with cement and lumber
in the years prior to coming to St. Louis.
He would wear a truss, a mechanical device, until the technology was
available to do the repair in the 1960’s.
The early years of their marriage (during WWII) saw them struggle
economically. Ken Ragan, their first and born in November of 1941 and my
only sibling, at about age 4 or 5 remembers standing in line with mother to get
rations. Ken remembers most of the family clothes were purchased at
Goodwill Stores. When Dad went to work at ACF (American Car &
Foundry- the railroad), the family’s lives began to improve. He cut stencils in
the paint shop there on the second floor.
While working for the railroad and living at 2621 South 4th Street, Dad
registered two patents that he believed would improve work in the stencil
shop. On December 21st, 1944 he registered #83017, a patent for
a stapler using a 1 1/2 inch wide by 1/4 inch deep staple to secure the
stencils before painting. It specified the staples be made of a
non-corrosive metal. On January 3, 1945 by registration #83130 he
registered a patent by way of a detailed diagram of a compressor based on a
working model he had built himself. Dad was always a master of innovation
and solved many everyday problems by use of common materials and his ingenuity.
Dad was a "jack of all trades" and could do almost anything that
needed to be done whether it was carpentry, masonry, or anything mechanical. He
tried his hand at many jobs always looking to improve his family's lot in
life. He ran an ice route when he was very young and starting out. He was
at various times in the lumber business as a procurer and transporter of
lumber, helped build one of the first paved roads in Anguilla, Sharkey County, Mississippi with Forcum
James Lumber CO., was an engineer on a river boat and resided for a short while with
my mother in West Virginia while serving in that capacity, and he began the building of the LUX theater in Greenville,
Missouri with his brother Lacy.
Bob Ragan with Forcum James Lumber Company; 1938
After selling his interests in the theater to Lacy, he began a long career
in the rental uniform business, first as a driver and later as a route
supervisor for Charles Todd in Jackson, Tennessee, St Louis, Missouri, and
Paducah, Kentucky. In that capacity he was up before daylight to enjoy one of
Mother’s always hot breakfasts complete with her famous homemade biscuits. He would return long after dark. A hot
supper was always waiting.
He sold check writers and vacuum cleaners for his lifelong friend and
brother-in-law, Chet Bazzell in Springfield, MO. He laid adobe brick for
new homes with his brother Otha in Benson, Arizona. He bought into the
auto parts business and sold parts from the back of a Ford Econoline van.
He re-entered the rental uniform business with Paducah Laundry and Cleaners.
He began his own business, Ragan Enterprises, also in Paducah,
Kentucky.
Dad with his two boys; Ken and Keith about 1952. Dad was a heavy smoker until about age 40. Hardly able to breath, the doctor told him his lungs were so scarred from emphysema, that his only chance to live was to quit immediately. He quit on the spot. I obviously had recently been the victim of one of Dad's haircuts in this photo.
One of the testaments to his faith and character, as well as a demonstration
of his love for me, occurred upon my return from Vietnam in March of 1969. One year earlier, upon my departure, he had
fallen on his knees before I left to catch my ride to that far off war, and
prayed as earnestly and sincerely as a man could possibly do it, and asked for
my safe return. As I exited the car
upon my return, he came slowly across the yard from where he was trimming a
rose bush. He put his strong arms
around me and gave me the hug of a lifetime.
And then, without saying a word, tears streaming down his face, he fell
on his knees again in the red gravel of his driveway and thanked God for
protecting me and bringing me home safely.
If you sat still for five minutes, my Dad would be preaching or teaching the
Word of God. He taught Sunday School
all the days of his adult life, served as a deacon in more than one church, and
was finally rewarded with a few opportunities in his latter years to be a guest
preacher, delivering the Sunday sermon to the congregation.
Dad and Mother; early to mid 1960's.
When my Mother died in a car wreck in 1976, it devastated Dad. He didn’t know what to do with himself and
was lost, seemingly without direction or purpose. When he was hospitalized a year or so after Mother’s death with
kidney stones, he contracted an illness during his recovery there, and it may
have been the only time that he ever gave up on life. Ken and I sat with him during the nights, encouraging the best we
could. He did not want to experience
life any further without our Mother. His
deep faith and belief in what God expected of His servant sustained and
refocused him. And he finally did
recover.
After our mother, Dee, passed away, Dad eventually remarried a very
Christian lady named Dorothy Lindsay. After getting frustrated with the
women he met locally, he ran an ad in a national publication for the type of
woman/relationship he was seeking and Dorothy and he communicated and she
finally flew out from California to meet him. They found the match
favorable, fell in love, and were married. After a short while, Dad
relocated to her home in Corning, California where he lived out the rest of his
life. He continued to work into his seventies as a custodial engineer at
the local high school in Corning, California. After that he remained very
active with his gardening and fruit trees and several days a week he would take
off and sell hats and novelties to local businesses. He was always
active, always building, always gardening, until the day he was called to be
with his precious Lord on May 30, 2003, at age 89.
Robert Nathaniel and Iva Delores share a headstone in Woodlawn Memorial
Gardens in McCracken County, KY. It was his request that he be buried
with the "love of his life". Memorial services and an open
casket funeral were held in Corning, California April 4, 2003, in the Neighborhood
Full Gospel Church. Both Ken and I gave eulogies, and I confess to making a
mess of it. It was the hardest thing I
had ever done. In attendance were his beloved second wife Dorothy, his sons,
his grandson Michael and granddaughter Yvonne, and the children of
Dorothy. His body was flown back to Nashville, TN and transported by
hearse to Paducah, KY for a second viewing and burial. His brother Neil
and sisters Jane and Billie were in attendance, plus his sisters-in-law Mary
Lou Bazzell and Beverly Richmann and brothers-in-law Cecil and Clarence Madison
"Bud" Wilson. Also in attendance were his nephews Gene Guiren
and Jerry Guiren, Roger Bazzell, and Neil Ragan, Jr. and grandsons Kevin
Matthew and Kent Andrew Ragan.
Robert or "Bob" as he was known, was
one of the gentlest men on earth. He had a kind and thoughtful
disposition and was predisposed to love everyone, and was loved in return by
all. As previously stated, he was a Christian and Church and the Bible
were integral parts of his time and studies. He loved God and his Bible
studies, his family, hunting for precious gems, rocks, and minerals, gardening,
and especially fruit trees. He was adept at grafting and it was not
unusual to see four or more varieties of fruit on one tree.
Today Ken and I will go to the cemetery to visit the graves of our parents
to celebrate the life of both, but especially to honor the 100th
Anniversary of Dad’s birth. I will
bring red roses as a tribute to Dad’s first memory of the red rose along side
the road in Hardeman County, Tennessee so many years ago. And because red was Mother’s favorite
color.
We will light a candle and hope that he knows in his eternal peace, that it
is in his honor. Dad was never a
drinker, but confessed to liking the taste.
So Ken is bringing a small flask of Tennessee whiskey and we will each
take a sip in a toast to his life. And
by Ken’s design we will pour just a “taste” onto the grave of our patriarch,
Robert Nathaniel Ragan.
He was my hero. He loved Ken and I unconditionally, and almost always with
understanding, compassion, and a wry sense of humor. He forgave my less
congenial nature, shortcomings, and impatience. Always. Without
hesitation. And I miss him and my mother and cherish the sweet memories
of our precious time together every day, especially the years all of us spent in that little house on
Meacham Lane.
We miss you, Dad.
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