Friday, April 14, 2017
Beverly Jean Beard
My mother had a little sister, Jean and they lived in Lucy, TN a small little town outside of Memphis, TN.
Lucy, TN was a small community between Memphis and Millington just off of the Millington Rd.
The children attended the school that was located in the community of Lucy. They would walk to school everyday and it was over a mile to get there. Lucy had a little store in the community that had a Post Office in it for the Community and it also acted as a railroad station for the Lucy and Millington area for travelers and goods for the area. There was a set of double tracks there so that the one train could stop so that another train could pass on it's way into Memphis.
One evening on the way home from school all of the children were on there way home from school and they were all excited that school was out. When they got to the railroad crossing they looked both ways before crossing but there was one train stopped unloading goods and mail. It was hard to see around the train and her little sister started running across the double tracks and didn't hear the train coming and it hit her and knocked her into the air and when she landed on the ground it was over three hundred yards down the tracks. After the train was able to stop, they all ran to check on Jean.
She was all mangled up, and the locals told the children to run home and get their parents. They ran all the way home to get their mother, and then ran back to the accident site.
They had already loaded her up for the trip to Memphis, to the Hospital. Once at the Hospital she was pronounced dead and then sent on to the Memphis Funeral Home.
They didn't have a burial location picked out, but since she was in Memphis at the Funeral Home, their mom and dad purchased a lot for their daughter in Elmwood Cemetery. She was buried here in the children's section.
Over the years every time we would visit our grand parents in Memphis our parents would go to her grave and visit. As children we never went along.
After my mother died, I often wondered where she had been buried. My Grand Parents were buried in Memorial Gardens on Popular Avenue in Memphis. We could not find the grave of my aunt Jean, because we had never asked when we could. After many years of searching I finally found her grave in Elmwood Cemetery In Memphis.