Charles Otis Reed
Charles Otis Reed was born on 15 April 1935 at Jenkins, in Letcher County, Kentucky, the eleventh or twelfth of the thirteen children of Meredith Calvin Reed and Margaret Baker. Jenkins was a coal town built by the Consolidation Coal Company, and the family had lived at Burdine, the camp next door, since before 1920. His mother's family came from Clintwood, over Pine Mountain in Virginia, and his father's from the same county.
He grew up in the coal camps through the Depression and the war. His brothers Winston and Coy were born at Burdine in 1921 and 1922, and his sister Lillie May, the eldest, married Edgar Charles and stayed at Payne Gap. His father died in February 1956 at Virgie, in Pike County, when Charles was twenty.
He served in the United States Army during the Korean War. He married Rosa Irene Mullins, a Jenkins girl eight years younger, on 20 June 1959 at Clintwood, Virginia, her mother's home town, on a licence from the Dickenson County clerk. Their first daughter Cheryl was born in Kentucky. Their son Charles Wayne was born on 20 January 1960. In 1961 the family left Letcher County for Lorain, on Lake Erie, where Rosa's brother Lonnie Mullins went the same year and where both men went to work for the Ford Motor Company. Charles spent forty-four years in the maintenance department of the Ford plant at Lorain before he retired. A second son, Christopher, was born in 1966 at Bay Village, and a daughter Lisa followed.
Charles was a Baptist. For many years he and Rosa attended West Ridge Baptist Church in Amherst. Rosa's health failed early; she had a heart transplant in 1992, and Charles cared for her through her illness and after the transplant, for seventeen more years. He lived forty-one years in Lorain, then moved to South Amherst, where he spent his last seven years. His son Charles Wayne died in August 1997 at thirty-seven. Rosa died on 21 May 2009 after fifty years of marriage.
He was known as a man who loved carpentry, was mechanically inclined and could fix anything. He died at his home in South Amherst on Sunday, 9 December 2018, aged 83, after a long illness. His funeral was at the Hempel Funeral Home in Amherst on 14 December, the Rev. Kurby Perrigan of Green Pastures Baptist Church officiating, and he was buried beside Rosa at Resthaven Memory Gardens in Avon under their bronze companion marker, which reads "Together Forever". He left his son Christopher of South Amherst, his daughters Cheryl Willard of South Amherst and Lisa Myers of Lorain, five grandchildren, William Brand, Greg Willard, Wesley Myers, Nathan Myers and Grace Myers, and his sister Paula Hodges of Payne Gap, Kentucky, the last of the thirteen. Four brothers and six sisters had died before him.
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Cite: Heirology, "Charles Otis Reed (1935-2018)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/charles-otis-reed-1935-2018-37277c.