Page 61 - Senior Link Magazine Spring 2022 - Online Magazine
P. 61
ARMY AIR CORPS
WORLD WAR II ERA
Texas/Oklahoma Panhandle and one in Kansas.” Ken
retired in 1989.
Sadly, Ernees passed away in January 2019 at the
age of 88. She and Kenneth were married for over 71
years. The 95-year-old farm boy turned cadet turned
mechanic turned salesman turned postal worker
stays busy. His daughter, Laura Skeen, says, “He can
“I went back to Texas Tech for a time and got to try still fix about anything.” Kenneth may have never
freshman English class all over again; I still didn’t “gotten off the
pass. I didn’t have any money to pay for school and ground”, but
have a place to live. I only had a bicycle, so I went it appears the
to work at Godell’s Service Station down on 16th West Texas boy
and Texas. I did everything there from pumping gas figured out that,
and changing tires to mechanic work. With the first really, life is
money I earned, I bought a very used 1929 Model A what happens
Ford coupe with a rumble seat. Ernees and I married when you are
on September 8, 1947. I was almost 21, and she was “grounded”.
just 17. We had two girls and a boy and six grand-
and seven great-grandchildren.”
Ken went to work for Furr’s Grocery in Lubbock
and worked his way up from package boy to store
manager. “For some reason, I decided to buy the
old service station where I used to work on Texas Kincaid Roofing
Ave. We had commercial accounts and car dealers
– we would clean up and re-do trade-ins so the car
dealers could resell them. I never got any time off
and always had lots of cars waiting. Proudly Salutes
“So I went back to work at Furr’s and got good
at selling. After Roy Furr died, I trained his son, our Veterans
Corky. I left Furr’s in 1962 and took the Civil
Service exam. I became a sub letter carrier for 18
months, then went into postal maintenance in
1964. I had over 160 Post Offices to maintain in the
Lubbock Senior Link 61