Willim Jennings
William Leon Jennings was born on 30 January 1937 at Turnertown, a small oil field community in Rusk County, Texas. His family remembered the place as New London, the neighboring town in the same corner of the county. He was called Bill all his life, and his gravestone reads W. L. (Bill) Jennings.
His parents were Ray William Jennings, an oil field worker born in Oklahoma, and Minnie Lou Dowdy, a farmer's daughter from Troup, Texas. Bill was their second son. His older brother Bobby James had been born at Troup in 1935.
Bill was seven weeks old when a natural gas explosion destroyed the London School at New London on 18 March 1937. The blast killed hundreds of students and teachers, and it remains one of the worst disasters in Texas history.
By 1940 the family had followed the oil to Kansas. The census that spring found them in Lone Tree Township, McPherson County: Ray, 26, Minnie, 23, Bobbie, 5, and William, 3. In 1935 they had been living in Smith County, Texas. Three more children were born in McPherson County: Kenneth Dwain in 1941, Danny in 1944 and Jackie in 1948.
On 25 April 1950 the census taker found the Jenningses half a mile south of Canton, in McPherson County. Ray, 35, was a pumper in the oil field. Bill was 13. He had five brothers and sisters at home, the youngest a girl of one.
Bill's uncle Clarence "Buck" Jennings and Buck's wife Pauline lived around Codell in Rooks County, Kansas, the town where Nora Lee Simpson grew up, and they are buried in the Shiloh Cemetery there. Bill married Nora, the daughter of Frank and Louella Simpson of Codell. Their son Raylan was born at Hays in 1960, and a daughter, Laura, followed.
The marriage did not last. Bill went back to East Texas. In April 1975 he was divorced in Rusk County from a wife named Kathie, and on 19 May 1975 he married Peggy Louise Buckelew in Rusk County. That marriage also ended in divorce in Cherokee County. At his death his wife was Laura E. Jennings of New Summerfield.
Bill became a police officer. He had retired by the time he died and had lived in Jacksonville, Cherokee County, for ten years. He was a member of the Christian Community Church.
He died in a Jacksonville hospital after a sudden illness, on a Wednesday, aged 49. His funeral was held at 2 p.m. that Friday at the Renfro Memorial Chapel of the Bronson-Conner Funeral Home, with the Rev. Andy Fannette officiating. He was buried at Gossett's Chapel Cemetery near Jacksonville under a small granite stone carved with a leaping bass.
His obituary listed his wife Laura, his mother Minnie L. Bland and her husband Walter Bland of New Summerfield, his three sons Raylan Charles Jennings, Rodney Ivan Jennings and Ray William Jennings II, and six daughters, among them Laura Ann Jennings of Colorado, Rebecca Ilene Parker of Dallas, Ramona Irene Jennings, Regina Inez Jennings and Starla Annett Jennings. His father Ray had died in 1977. When his brother Kenneth died in 2007, the obituary named William Leon Jennings among those who had gone before him.
Sources
If Willim Jennings is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Willim Jennings (1937-1986)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/willim-jennings-1937-1986-51384b.