Garland Macy at the Century Mark

by Pa Rock

Proud Son

My father, Garland Eugene Macy, was born one hundred years ago today in rural Newton County, Missouri, to Charles Eugene and Hazel Josephine (Nutt) Macy.  He was the second of five children, only four of whom survived to adulthood.  The family lived in a two-room shack on a forty-acre hard-scrabble farm that was either sold or gifted to them by Charles' father, William S. Macy.  At some point as the family increased in size, Hazel's father, Thomas "Tom" Franklin Nutt, who was a carpenter and cement mason, added another much-needed room to their house.

The family never had a car and when they needed to go into town (Seneca or Neosho - each eight miles away) either rode in on their horse-drawn wagon or stood along the side of the road and hitchhiked.  Dad's father made a meager income with a few head of dairy cows whose milk he sold to a local dairy, and my dad, as a very young child, began making his own income by trapping and selling wild rabbits (25 cents each) and selling "the Grit."  Dad's mother gardened and then canned her produce, much of which was stored under the parents' bed, and made the clothes for everyone in the family.

Plenty of Americans were experiencing the good times of the "Roaring Twenties" when my father was born in 1924, and they had no clue about the hardships of the "Great Depression" that would befall them five years later.  But rural Missouri was already depressed and the jolt of Wall Street collapsing in 1929 was not as impactful to the people who lived there as it was to most of the nation.  By the time the Great Depression kicked into gear, my dad was already hustling and beginning to make his way in the world.

My father was a child of the Great Depression, but he came of age during World War II.  After moving to Neosho on his own to complete high school (his rural school had only gone through grade ten), Dad went to St. Louis where he enlisted in the newly formed Army Air Corps in the winter of 1942.  He trained and served in several locations in the United States before being sent to England to be a part of the preparations for the Allied Invasion of Europe (D-Day).  His work centered around aircraft maintenance, and he eventually was promoted staff sergeant, the highest rank achieved by any of the Macy cousins who were serving in the war.  Dad was seriously wounded in a training exercise in France and was returned home to a convalescent hospital shortly before the end of the war.

After the war Dad met and married a waitress, Ruby Florine Sreaves (my mother), who had worked in an Army Post Exchange (PX) and a munitions plant during the war.  They both worked for wages for a couple of years after the war before deciding that their talents were more attuned to the field of business.  Together they formed a business partnership with Mom's sister and her husband, Christine and Bob Dobbs, and opened a new truck stop on busy Highway 71 which ran from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico.  A few years later my parents sold their interest in that business to the Dobbs' family and moved 20 miles on south to the tourist town of Noel, Missouri, where they bought a small cabin court on the Elk River.   My parents remained in Noel the rest of their lives and successfully navigated their way through the ownership and management of several businesses, as well as quite a few rental properties.  

It was as business people that both of my parents really shined.   They successfully rode the post-war wave of entrepreneurship as it swept across America and managed to raise two children (me and my younger sister, Abigail) along the way.   My parents each met all seven of their grandchildren, and Dad, who outlived Mom by 23 years, was around long enough to see all of his grandchildren grown - and to have met a few of his great-grandchildren. 

Dad passed away on Christmas Day in 2009.  He was a well-loved figure in his community who had excelled in business, served on the school board, been a member of the local bank's board of directors, served multiple terms on the city council, and was even the Grand Marshal of the "Christmas City" Christmas parade the year before his death.

Happy one hundred, Dad.  We are thinking of you on this very special day!