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Archiver > ALDALE > 2000-08 > 0965250085


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Subject: [DALELIST] Lester May Price / Lester Johnson Price
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 17:01:25 EDT


Lester May Price was born 31 May 1885 in Duncans Creek, Rutherford County,
North Carolina. He was the son of George Madison Hunt and Eunice King Price.
He was raised in the home of his grandparents, Wade and Mary Price. He was
listed in the 1900 census as fifteen years old, living in the home of his
grandmother, Mary Ann Price, along with his mother, Eunice King Price, Aunts
Reed and Ellen, and six other grandchildren of Mary Ann Price. The census
indicated that he did attend school and could read and write. Lester May
Price's parents were unwed at his birth, subsequently he grew up utilizing
the surname Price instead of Hunt. His parents did not marry until he was
eighteen years old.

As a young adult, Lester May Price apparently decided to venture out into the
world as he, Leiber McFarland, John McFarland, Thomas Price, Romy Cambell,
and John Crow left Duncans Creek and began a trek that over the next few
years would take them into eastern North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. They
cut timber through these areas and operated gristmills until Lester May Price
arrived in Barbour County, Alabama ca 1920. It is not known at what point he
parted ways with his friends that left Rutherford County with him. Thomas
Price, who was actually Lester May Price's first cousin, but raised in the
same household as brothers, spent some time in Burnt Corn, Alabama, near
Evergreen, before returning to North Carolina and joining the service at the
outbreak of World War I.

Lester May Price married Kate Johnson on 25 June 1925. The wedding took
place at Washington Street Methodist Church, 213 Washington St., in Eufaula
Alabama. The ceremony was conducted by A. N. Williams, Minister of the
Gospel. There marriage license listed "sawmill man" as the occupation for
Lester May Price. He was listed as 5' 10" tall and 165 pounds. The license
was applied for on the 10th of June 1925.

Kate Johnson was born 21 July 1902 in Hurtsboro, (Russell County), Alabama,
the daughter of Lucious Joshua Johnson and Sarah Henrietta McNeal. Although
her given name at birth was Lizzie Kate, (named for her Aunt Lizzie McNeal
Copeland), she adapted the name Kate Elizabeth. She was also called Katie by
some of the family during the early years. To all her grandchildren and
others who knew her and loved her in the last half of this century, she was
known as "Mykate". Lester May Price owned and operated a gristmill and a
store in Lugo through the depression years of the 1920's and 1930's. They
lived in Lugo and Comer until his death on 6 March 1946 at the age of
sixty-one, ten years before I was born. They had one child, Lester Johnson
Price, nicknamed Bud, who was born 30 April 1926 in Comer, Alabama.

Kate Johnson would go on to marry three more times, "all good men" as she
said numerous times. Her second husband was Hester "Heck" Logan from Barbour
County, Alabama. Heck Logan was born 10 January 1894 and died 26 December
1951. He is buried in the Eufaula Cemetery Annex. Kate then married
Marshall Beck of Opelika and finally Carl Hawkins of Opelika. They all
preceded her in death.

Kate died 4 October 1995, at the age of ninety-three years. Her death
occurred less than a week before Hurricane Opal ripped a path of destruction
through southeast Alabama. It downed a pecan tree that fell through the roof
of the mobile home she had lived in just a week earlier. She was living in
Clopton, Alabama in Dale County next to my parents home. She had been in
remarkably good health most all of her life even though the last ten years or
so that she was with us, she was fond of saying that she had one foot in the
grave and the other on a banana peel. She was still driving an automobile,
and quite well I might add, until just before her 93rd birthday. She is
buried along with her first husband, Lester May Price in the Eufaula's
Fairview Cemetery annex. He died 6 March 1946. Her second husband, Hester
Logan is buried about eight plots south of hers.

Issue of Lester May Price and Kate Johnson:
ยท Lester "Bud" Johnson Price - still living - married Jill Gladys Howell, 9
January 1954

======================================================

Lester "Bud" Johnson Price was the only child of Lester May Price and Kate
Elizabeth Johnson. He grew up in the Comer, Batesville, Lugo area of Barbour
County, Alabama. As a child during the depression years, he started to
school first at Old Spring Hill, also known as the Catherine Drewery Comer
School. He then began to attend school in Eufaula, some twenty miles away.
He has a keen dislike for cats today, as he was forced to repeat the fourth
grade because of missing much of the school year due to having contracted
diphtheria from a cat. Other memories he has shared is of riding his bicycle
from Lugo to Eufaula as a teenager to see The Wizard of Oz at the picture
show. His mother Kate always had household help from a black lady named
Laura Hamilton in the Comer area. She was considered part of the family and
was looked after by the family for many years afterwards.

At the age of seventeen, Lester Price enlisted for service during World War
II. He entered the Navy 14 March 1944 and went through basic training at San
Diego, California. He embarked for the Asiatic-Pacific Theatre aboard the
U.S.S. North Carolina on his eighteenth birthday, 30 April 1944. The
Carolina was engaged in Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Philippines, Okinawa, Iwo Jima,
and Tokyo area. In July 1944, Lester Price participated in the infamous
Marianas Turkey Shoot, in which U. S. battleships plucked Japanese fighter
planes out of the sky with all the ease of a turkey shoot. He received eight
battle stars and attained the rank of Seaman 1st Class. After the war ended,
he returned to the U.S., on 18 November 1945, having serving twenty-three
months aboard the Carolina. Lester Price received an Honorable Discharge at
Memphis, Tennessee on 21 January 1946.

After his service ended, Lester Price returned to Barbour County and finished
high school at Eufaula. He then attended Troy State Teachers College where
he played on the football and baseball teams while obtaining a teaching
degree. He said he was nicknamed Satchmo by his teammates because he threw a
lot of junk balls as a baseball pitcher, similar to the great Satchel Paige
from Mobile, Alabama. In 1950 after he finished school, he took a job
teaching in Skipperville and boarded at the home of Mrs. Lucille Reynolds in
Clopton while there.

Lester Price married Jill Gladys Howell, daughter of Bertrum Lee Howell and
Edna Gladys Pugh on 9 January 1954. Lester held various jobs in Eufaula,
Troy, Montgomery, and Mobile, Alabama until he decided to go back to school
to obtain his degree to teach again. By this time, they had three children,
the "doorsteps" as they were referred to because we were all born thirteen
months apart. The Price family returned to Skipperville in 1962 where Lester
resumed teaching at Skipperville. He became the first varsity football coach
at George W. Long High School. By 1964 he had become principal of the
school. The family lived in Morgan community near Skipperville until 1971,
when Lester Price purchased the old Dr. N.W. Weems home and nineteen acres in
Clopton. This two front rooms of this home were over 150 years old. Five
doctors had lived in the home.

In 1972, Lester Price accepted the job of Headmaster of Abbeville Christian
Academy in Henry County. After a few years there, he returned to the public
school system in Barbour County, serving as principal of Clio, and Clayton,
before retiring as principal of Baker Hill School in 1988. He had been
utilized primarily as an administration troubleshooter in the troubled
Barbour County School system, moving to different schools as his expertise
was needed. After he was relocated from Clayton to Clio, the students and
parents of Clayton were very upset, even boycotting school in an attempt to
have him returned to their school. It required a Federal Judge to issue a
court order forcing the kids back to school. Lester Price had a rare kind of
relationship with his former atheletes and students. Many of them still stay
in touch with him today.

Lester and Jill price had four children, Lester Lee Price, Richard Bruce
Price, Karen Denise Price and Cynthia Jill Price. They have eleven
grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
======================================================
Richard Price
SOS 6-3

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