5 July 1998

I am Francis Marion Eddings Jr. presently living in Greenville, NC. I grew up in Wheatcroft and graduated from high school there in 1940. My parents moved to Detroit that year and I later joined the U.S. Marine Corps ending up retired in Greenville, N.C.

Even though I moved away from Wheatcroft after graduation in 1940 there still is something that pulls me back in memory. I have gone back there from time to time to visit and see some of the ones that I went to school with, but they are getting to be just a few left. One of my best friends when we were in school passed away early in the year. She was Margaret Freeman Brown that lived in Providence.

My father, Francis M. Eddings Sr., lived with me for several years before he died. He was born February 21, 1896 and died January 14, 1987 in Pitt County Memorial Hospital, Greenville, N.C. My mother was Annis Lee Gilbert Eddings. She was born December 13, 1899 and died January 21, 1965 in Dearborn, Mi. They are buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery at Clay. I am the oldest; I have a brother Dana Presley Eddings of Okemah, OK and a sister Elenora Boncek of Elizabeth City, NC.

I have lived a lot of places over the last 58 years having been a career Marine and finding a wonderful wife in North Carolina. I have a cousin Mary Agnes Caudill that lives in Providence and two cousins that live in Hopkinsville, Dottie Lane and Jessie Ruth McConnell that is the extent of family that I have left in Kentucky.

Francis M. Eddings
feddings@suddenlink.net
Greenville, nc