I was born just after midnight during a thunderstorm on 6 Oct 1937, in our 3 room shotgun house on the edge of a cotton field near Halley, Arkansas.
My sisters told the story of that night and said the storm was so strong that pecans from the tree next to the house rained down on the tin roof so hard it sounded like a flock of woodpeckers.

My mother soon was back in the cotton field pulling a heavy sack of cotton behind her - when I was about age one I often would ride on that sack as she labored in the hot sun. My brothers and sisters also worked in the fields making a few cents a pound for their pickings to help support the family and keep food on the table. My father was 65 when I was born and could no longer work the 12-14 hours a day he had done since he was born in 1872 in the Town of Sands in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia into a family that grew to 16 brothers and sisters. He left that life at age 12 and went to SW Missouri be with his half-brother James and to work on the new railroad system being built there. He also tried his hand at portrait photography, traveling from town to town, and that's how he met my mother living in Drew County, Arkansas. Needless to say there was a spark kindled that soon became a flame, and the Turner family was created - my mother once said that I was "the last dribblings from the coffee pot", and that makes me the baby of the family. Sadly, today, in 2018, at age 80+, I am the last surviving member of that original family.

I was born just after midnight during a thunderstorm on 6 Oct 1937, in our 3 room shotgun house on the edge of a cotton field near Halley, Arkansas.
My sisters told the story of that night and said the storm was so strong that pecans from the tree next to the house rained down on the tin roof so hard it sounded like a flock of woodpeckers.

My mother soon was back in the cotton field pulling a heavy sack of cotton behind her - when I was about age one I often would ride on that sack as she labored in the hot sun. My brothers and sisters also worked in the fields making a few cents a pound for their pickings to help support the family and keep food on the table. My father was 65 when I was born and could no longer work the 12-14 hours a day he had done since he was born in 1872 in the Town of Sands in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia into a family that grew to 16 brothers and sisters. He left that life at age 12 and went to SW Missouri be with his half-brother James and to work on the new railroad system being built there. He also tried his hand at portrait photography, traveling from town to town, and that's how he met my mother living in Drew County, Arkansas. Needless to say there was a spark kindled that soon became a flame, and the Turner family was created - my mother once said that I was "the last dribblings from the coffee pot", and that makes me the baby of the family. Sadly, today, in 2018, at age 80+, I am the last surviving member of that original family.