An e-mail from MyMy - submitted by John

While reading through some older e-mails on MyMy's old computer, I ran across one that you may wish to include as an entry on the blog. I have copied and pasted her writing from April of 2005 about the relationship between her (Mrs. John Fox Wheatley, Jr.) and her husband (John Fox Wheatley, Jr.) during their engagement period, which involved her agreement to "wait for him" as he went of to war....serving in the U.S. Marines as a machine gunner at Okinawa and other assignments. He was a year and a half older than her, so he was going off to war while she was still a senior in high school, followed by the year she attended Ward-Belmont College in Nashville, TN. He served about two years in the Marines and came home to Shelbyville, TN, where they resumed their engagement and were married the same year. Here is what she wrote.....note that I inserted notes in parentheses to hopefully explain some of her statements, and I edited out some parts of her message that were not "family history"-related.

I (Martha Ann Overall Wheatley....married John Fox Wheatley, Jr.) think of my grandmother Parsons (mother of Anne Parsons Overall who was married to Jesse Robert Overall...lived in Shelbyville, TN, and ran a small grocery store, plus apparently rented out property nearby...was Martha Ann Overall Wheatley's grandmother) who sat at home and made quilts, and collected her rent money, and my other grandmother (Overall) at the hotel (Walking Horse Hotel....originally build by Overall family as the Overall Hotel in Wartrace, TN...now a national historic site a short drive from Shelbyville, TN), who died in her third bout with pneumonia because she worked so hard running the Overall Hotel, even though her brother, Dr.J.Roy Compton of St. Louis, Mo. came and cared for her when I was in the fifth grade; and I didn't realize how life is different when you tire so easily on top of the tiredness you already have. But you don't give in to it ..... you just keep going you hope, forward.

We (John & Martha Ann Wheatley) got to go to church and Sunday school and put things in order this past weekend, so we were invigorated again, and after I went to class and Johnny went to work and last night we got a chance to watch the wonderful videos (original U.S. Marine films on videotape from WWII of Okinawa where John Fox Wheatley, Jr. served as Marine machine gunner on front lines), John had secured and watch them. It wasn't sad for Johnny, he was amazed to finally put all of Okinawa together, and what I had only imagined was clearer and more accurate, then we both became thankful for what God had brought us through, when we didn't know if we would ever even see each other again, or get a chance to marry. To think we have a complete marvelous family, like we would have wished for, was a miracle !

You know the night of our third date, he asked me how many children I wanted someday, and didn't say much else in the evening, so I thought he'd never ask me for a date again, but when he went up to the front door to see me in on the porch , he said will you wait for me until I get home from the service, and I told him I wanted as many as I could afford, he decided to ask me if I would wear an engagement ring. I wanted to put it on after I graduated from high school, and so that's what we did. When we were together in North Carolina at Parris Island area (while he was in Marine training camp), as his parents and Martha Jane and I rode by car up there, his mother helped pick out a ring in Asheville at a jewelry store, and they kept it in a lock box until the next June. Then I didn't date anymore after I put the ring on, til it was him, home again that I dated., He arrived in Shelbyville in August of 1946 (returning from WWII), to find Martha Jane (his sister) seriously ill in Nashville Vanderbilt hospital from constant bleeding from a miscarriage, and some relatives let us ride as they carried the two of us to Nashville and we let Johnny out to see M. J.(his sister, Martha Jane Wheatley who married George Lewis Brinkley of Murfreesboro, TN), because only the immediate family could go in, and I had to wait til later for a real date.

More in a little bit.

Love Mother Wheatley (Martha Ann Overall Wheatley)

>> The above entries are submitted February 22, 2010 by John Fox Wheatley III

The above is my mother's account of her engagement to her husband during the last two years of World War II, which was a time of great struggle and sacrifice for our country and it's citizens. Daddy fought in the bloodiest battles of the war and was very fortunate to survive and return home to marry my mother and start the wonderful family that we now know and love. It is an appropriate honor that they are now buried together with full military honors at Alabama National Cemetery in Montevallo, AL, which was fulfillment of their expressed wishes. Theirs was and continues to be a love story of epic proportions that we all can be proud of.