FIFTH GENERATION


My Great Grandparents

(Picture- Ethel Hoots at 65 years of age)

William Thomas (Willie) and Lulu Ethel (Ethel) Hoots Phillips had aspirations of success. Willie was an attorney, who ran for County Judge in Clinton County in 1933 (according to vote count on file by the Clinton County Board of Commissioners dated Aug. 7, 1933,) and he and his wife ran a family cafe and hotel in Albany located where McWhorters now stands around that same time. Prior to that time they owned a grocery in Burkesville and had moved to Missouri and then back again. They also owned the a in New Castle, IN across from the auto plant there. When he passed away from prostate cancer in 1938 Ethel built and ran a boarding house for a time that apparently had a waiting list for boarders (I understand it was because she was such a wonderful cook, not to mention the fact that Wolf Creek Dam was being built).

She lived to be in her nineties and I remember well seeing her house high up on the hill across from the Methodist Church in Albany and wondering how she managed at her age to still walk downtown for groceries and cart them all the way up that hill. Until the last couple of years of her life, she cared for herself. Her housekeeping was immaculate.

The last time I saw her, she made my grandfather's favorite peppermint cake on that old wood stove of hers. She could have had an electric or gas stove, the house was equipped, but she didn't like the taste of food cooked that way.

So there she was at her age, feeding the firebox with the pieces of wood that she had chopped earlier for the purpose. Her house had a certain aroma, a cross between wood burning, peppermint and age that I have only occasioned to smell one other time at a small general store in Marrowbone, Ky., where I had stopped to buy some of Granddaddy's favorite soft peppermint sticks.

She was a spry lady, somewhat stooped, standing about 5'4" or so in height. My mother told me that she had been a "large lady" when she was younger, but I never remember her any larger than the fragile size she was in her nineties. Her hair was silver-white and she wore it twisted in a bun at the top of her head. She hadn't cut it ever, until her much later years, and at one time that silver mane fell down past her feet to the floor. She always seemed to me to wear a blue flowered dress, leaving me to believe that blue was her favorite color, but it set off her ocean blue eyes well. She was stern, she had to be to raise four boys into excellent men, and commanded your attention and respect immediately. She loved to sing and was a shape-note choir member in the days when her children were young. It was gift of music that was passed down to five generations now and was inherited from the Hoots side of her family.

Her house burned down in the early 1970's and she went to live with Uncle Otis and Aunt Jeanette, with whom she lived until she was no longer able to function well. She died in a nursing home in 1972 at the age of 91, having never drawn a penny of Social Security income. She wouldn't have heard of it, to her that would be accepting charity.

Having known great-grandmother makes me wish that I had the opportunity to have known Willie, my great-grandfather.

WILLIAM THOMAS PHILLIPS m. Lulu Ethel HOOTS Children:
1. Earnest Otis (Uncle Otis) 2. MARION LOWRY PHILLIPS 3. Howard Ensor (Uncle Moke, Moko) 4.(Uncle Kenny, KC)