Obituary of Samuel T Price

AIKEN, SC - Samuel T. Price, Sr. passed away July 8, 2020, 5 weeks shy of his 100th birthday in Aiken, SC. He was born in Indiana, one of 16 children. He joined the Merchant Marines in 1941, which supported the US Military in several armed conflicts (WWII, Korea, Viet Nam & Suez Canal). He retired as Chief Engineer in 1982. He raised his family in Florida, moving to Colorado for retirement and later to Delaware. He was recognized in 2012 by the State of Delaware for his valor in rescuing the crew of the Tug Menoninee off the cast of Delaware during WWII.

Mr. Price was preceded in death by his first wife (Atha Virginia Price; died in 1982) and by his second wife (Eva Wintarlik Price; died in 2011), as well as his parents and 14 of his siblings and one great grandson.

He is survived by his three sons: Sam Price Jr (Anita) of Midlothian, VA, Geoffrey Price (Levonne) of Perry, FL and L. Stephen Price (Cherri DeFigh-Price) of Aiken, SC, his sister Milta Earnestine in FL, four grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. He is also survived by three step-daughters Mary Anna Lewis (Bill), Eva Sleeger, and Jean McCormick (Wayne.

He will be interred in Bloomingdale Cemetery, Valrico, FL. Arrangements are by Southern Funeral Home (Riverview, FL) and George Funeral Home (Aiken, SC). There will be a family-only graveside service due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Donations may be given to any charity of your choice (no flowers please).  His favorite charities were Boys Town, Disabled Veterans Association, and groups providing food/care to children. The Price family wishes to extend our sincere thanks to the staff at Cumberland Hills and Encompass Health Hospice of Aiken.

The Historic George Funeral Home & Cremation Center, 211 Park Ave., SW, Aiken, SC 29801 (803.649.6234), has charge of arrangements.

Expressions of sympathy for the family may be left by visiting www.georgefuneralhomes.com

 

The following are life stories about Mr. Price: 

 

 

Personal life history, hand written

down on July 25, 2019 (and updated

August 4^th) at the request of

the Hills of Cumberland Facility

 

To start to say that I am a normal person. I was born in the State of Indiana. My mother was visiting her sister in Indiana. I am the only child born outside the state of Kentucky.  The rest of the family was born in Kentucky. Except my father who was born in Ohio.  Dad was an Engineer on the I&N Railroad, but lost his job because of the Depression. Dad said that we would go to Florida where it is warm.  We arrived in the town of Plant City, where there were many farms around there.  I was working on a farm when I was eleven years old.

At the age of twenty-one, I found an advertisement for men who would want to join the Merchant Marine. I joined. We went on a training ship. I wanted to work in the engine room, down in the bottom of the ship.  We arrived in Baltimore after about four weeks.  They sent us up to New York to wait for a job. We got a job on the Northern Sun ship, owned by the Sun Oil Company.  We were sent to New Hampshire, where we worked in a shop where we learned about all the engines. After four months, we received a 3^rd Engineers and certificates.  

When I came home I married a girl 18 years old. Her name was Atha Virginia Olive.  I was twenty-three years old and I worked on the ships. Our first born was a boy named Samuel T. Price, Jr.  He was born March 4^th, 1946. The second boy was named Geoffrey Edwin Price, born September 12^th, 1948. The third boy was named Larry Stephen Price.  He was born March 8, 1951. My Dad died in 1953.  I went to work in a large clothing store in Tampa and worked for them until 1967. Then I went back to the ships because the job made plenty of money. When the boys were grown up, Sam Jr. went to Denver for undergraduate studies and changed to Washington State University (Pullman, WA) for his doctorate degree, and his brother Steve went there also.  Geof went to another job in Tampa, FL.

My wife wanted to move from Florida to Colorado, up in the mountains.  We arrived in 1973 in September. My wife died in 1982.She was 56 years old. She knew she was going to die and asked me what I was going to do with her. I said that I was taking her to Florida and to the cemetery where her father, mother, sister and her brother were all in the cemetery of the family. We have a double tomb stone. I told the boys that when I die, to lay me down beside your mother, and visit us if you can spare the time to visit, and someone will bring her flowers.

After my first wife died, I was told of a girl I once knew when I was single and when I would come into Delaware on the ship. Her name was Eva. I would go to the Drug Store where she worked and pick her up and go to a movie.  I got married Atha Virginia; Eva got married (to someone else).  After I was eating I noticed her coming. I guessed she was with child.  So it was nice to have children. So it was many years since I heard of her. One of her friends told me that she was a widow. So I thought about, and then asked her if she would marry me, and she said yes.  So we were married. We first lived in Colorado for 5 years. She wanted to move back to Delaware so that she could be near her family. We were with them (in Delaware) for 21 years before she died. We had been married for 26 years. She was a nice wife.

After Eva died, I sold my house and went to Florida, and spent (with Eva’s daughter and son-in-law) for 9 months, and then moved to (North Florida to be with my middle) son and his wife.   I stayed there for about two years, and the boys wanted me to move to where I am now [the Hills of Cumberland, Aiken, SC].

I have been here about 4 months. I have been treated so well. The food is so good that I want to stay here. I have a nice room as long as I live. It’s wonderful.

I only have one sister still alive; she is 95 years old.

I want to say something that is the Truth. I cannot remember anything about lying; if I did it must have been when I was a small child:

• I smoked no cigarettes or cigars.
• Also I have never been drunk.
• I have never drank anything that is liquor, beer, or other things that would make me drunk.
• I never cursed or talk ugly.
• I don’t remember any lies that I told.

I went from 3^rd Engineer to the 2^nd Engineer onto the 1^st Engineer to become Chief Engineer on his ships. I left the ships and pensioned off the ship in September of 1982.

 

That’s all, this time for sure.        

 

 

Samuel T. Price

Written while in Middletown, DE around 2010

 

Our trip West in 1931

 

As I remember it at the age of ten and eleven years old, I changed age during the trip.  I just celebrated my 90^th Birthday on August 15^th 2010.

 

I will start this before we left Kentucky in 1931.  We lived in a very nice house and we had nice furniture. Dad had a good job with the L&N Railroad then the failure of the stocks in 1929 brought us into the GREAT DEPRESSION. Dad lost his job and there were no jobs or any work to be found anywhere. All at once people found themselves poor really poor.  Dad and Mom decided to take the family and move to Florida; at least it was warm down there. 

 

Dad had an Oldsmobile, a big open car; we loaded up and started for Florida.  We arrived in a small place called St. Andrews a city close to Panama City in the Florida panhandle. We were close to the beach.

 

They had little money so Dad rented a house there. Dad looked for work but there were no jobs. Food was cheap but we had very little money. Gas was about 10 cents a gallon so Dad decided we would walk along the beach to Apalachicola, a distance between 50 to 60 miles.  He left the Oldsmobile in the yard of the rented house in Saint Andrews. We had a little pull wagon.  Fannie and Mary were 3 years old, Milta was 6 years old (big girl) walked and we pulled Mary and Fannie in the wagon. It was a very long slow trip.  We finally arrive in Apalachicola.

 

After arriving my sister Freda and her husband came down with their children.  Dad and Lovie got a job working at a honey processing plant. When the job was finished we needed to move along.

 

Dad and Lovie took the rear section of Lovies model T ford and built a truck body on the ford.  We all loaded up on that Ford and headed for Plant City all 18 of us. It was the fall of 1931.  It was planting time for the strawberry season. Farmers were always looking for big families to work for them.  We went to work for a farmer named Olin Drawdy.  We worked until picking time was over, around early March.

 

 Dad decided that we would go west looking for work. We all were loaded up on that Ford all 18 of us and headed out.  Our first trouble came in Georgia, the motor in the Ford quit.  Dad and Lovie went to a junk yard and traded a Mantle Clock that Lovie had for a motor. They were able to find a little work along the way but not much.

 

There were offices in most of the Towns called the Travelers Aid Society. I think it was a government thing set up to help people who were traveling and looking for work.  Anyway if you came into a town without any money you could go to the Travelers Aid Society office and they would give you some money to buy gas and food to help you get on down the road.  Some point in Georgia we turned west (I have circled some of the towns that I remember motoring through in this sections of the county). 

 

During the whole trip we sometimes had shelter to sleep under but a lot of the time we slept out in the open. Back then there were not Motels, they had what they called Tourist Cabins.  Cabins had no running water. There would be 6 or 8 run down cabins located behind an office building were stinking disgusting out houses.  Cabins were $1.00 per night.  Once in while we were able to find a little work.  It was mostly the same routine every evening.  Once the truck stopped it was we boys who jumped off the truck and started gathering wood for the evening fire on which the ladies cooked.  In the prairies’ of Texas there were few trees so we gathered piles of dried cow manure and used that for fuel for the fire it made a hot clean fire

 

Coming back east through Texas we were staying in a house close to the River. People came by and told us we had to move to higher ground as the river was flooding.  So they put us in a house further away from the River. A little later on some people brought us some Government issued food.  There were several kinds of vegetables and meat, it was canned food.  It was good. I really liked the canned beef.  I can still smell that beef today.  I was in hog heaven! 

 

More trouble, the rear end of that ford broke right in half. Dad and Lovie got a ride to the nearest town and after a while some man came back with them driving a truck with a rear end in the back. We were on our way again.  Coming back through we came through the Petrified Forrest and of course everyone wanted some of the petrified wood to take back to Florida, more weight for that little old Ford to carry. Sometimes in the evening we would come to where a good many families were camped.  Usually by a river with trees around.  Families were all friendly, if someone had car trouble it seemed there were always a couple of oak tree mechanics in the bunch who would help fix the car or cars. If some of the families did not have enough food the other families who had more would divide their food with them.  Most of the time in those camps there seemed to always have some people who had a musical instrument and they would play music each night. Good music not this CRAZY STUFF they call music today.

 

We hit the jackpot in Midland Texas.  We arrived at Cotton picking time. WORK for all of us boys.  We got so rich that one Saturday Dad went into town and bought a 1929 Essex Sedan for $25.00.

 

 After cotton picking time was over we started back East.  On the first day out the Essex quit running.  Lovie tied a rope to it and pulled it into the next town.  Dad traded for another Model T Ford truck now we had 2 Ford Trucks to go back to Florida in.

 

I can tell you this about the trip, it was an experience.  I think that Milta and I are the only survivors of it today.  I think the trip lasted about 6 months.

 

I want to say that when we left Kentucky we were living in Covington, Kentucky just across form the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio.  It was a vigorous trip for the grown up.  I don’t see how they managed to feed all of us. For the ladies it was work, work and more work. We headed back to Florida and arrived in Turkey Creek at the Strawberry planting season and stayed there until the planting season was over. Then we moved to Coleman, Florida. 

 

Dad got a job working for the Russ Crate Co.  We stayed there until 1935.  We boys worked as farmers while we were in Coleman.

 

WHILE WE WERE IN COLEMAN

 

Fannie Price & Georgia Shockley died

Leolah married Wesley A. Hawkins

Rose   married   Raymond Knighten

Ellen married Dick Colemam

 

LIST OF THE PEOPLE ON THE TRIP

 

John E. Price                                                  Dad

Mary J Price                                                   Mom

Lovie Schockley

 

My Sister’s and Brothers

 

Violah Alice Price                                           Sister                           Born 1907

 

Leolah Mary Price-Marcum                           Sister                          Born 1908

Robert & Mary Marcum (Jim)                        Sisters Children

 

Elphredah Francis Price (Freda)                   Sister                          Born 1909

Violet, Georgia and Glen                               Sister’s Children

 

Edwin Sheppard Price                                    Brother                        Born 1911

 

Mildred Elizabeth Price                                  Sister                           Born 1913

 

Lillian Rose Price                                           Sister                           Born 1915

 

Ellen Mae Price                                              Sister                           Born 1917

 

John Edwin Price (Bill)                                  Brother                        Born 1919

 

Samuel Thomas Price (Sam)                          Self                              Born 1920

 

Charles Albert Price                                       Brother                        Born 1922

 

William Richard Price (Dick)                         Brother                        Born 1924

 

Milta Ernestine Price                                      Sister                           Born 1925

 

James Robert Price                                         Brother                        Born 1926

 

Fannie Lula Price                                           Sister                           Born 1927

 

Carl Oscar Price                                             Brother                        Born 1929

 

Mabel Virginia Price                                      Sister                           Born 1930