# Lerkas Way Interview Transcript

**Date recorded:** June 1, 2024  
**Context:** Interview after Fred's 90th birthday celebration  
**Speakers:** Fred; John, his son; Mikayla, his granddaughter  
**Subject:** Charles Leo McGarvey, Hercules factory work in Wellston, Ohio, Rio Grande, and family memories  

> Note: This is a cleaned machine transcript. Speaker labels are inferred from the conversation and may need a final family review.

## Transcript

**Fred:** But over a period of time, you get promotions, and it can be more money in different places to work. But still, in that type of business, they didn't make that lot of money. But, you know, he's one of the people. He just worked his way up.

**John:** Yeah. So, from I guess probably his forties or so, when he got his first real job.

**Fred:** Managing the factory.

**John:** Managing the factory.

**Fred:** Yeah. And then he worked different factories down south, all over. St. Louis, St. Louis area, Little Rock.

**John:** Arkansas.

**Fred:** Arkansas.

**John:** Because I saw an article that said that Hercules, that they closed one of the Hercules factories in Wellston because they opened one in Arkansas. And I thought, well, I know Grandpa went to Arkansas, so I was wondering if that was the same time that he did that, and if he got that job.

**Fred:** I don't think so. But, you know, some places he would go to work and he'd run two factories.

**John:** Yeah.

**Fred:** And it would be one. And then the last place was in Alabama. He'd run two factories there. And then when he was in Alabama, he was probably fifty-seven, fifty-eight, something like that. Back in Ohio, where he started as a supervisor, they had six factories. They hired him to run all six factories.

**Mikayla:** Wow.

**Fred:** So over his lifetime, he was a supervisor. Coming back, he's over, what, 1,200 people.

**Mikayla:** Wow. That's amazing. He really worked his way up.

**Fred:** Yeah. He did.

**John:** That was amazing. In school, two years, he went to Rio Grande College. And my cousin Lois, his daughter, got her doctor's degree there, nursing. And they were able to get his grades and his records for me.

**Mikayla:** Oh my gosh.

**John:** And basically, it looked like he went one year for...

**Fred:** One semester.

**John:** One semester. For football. That worked. He came back, and it showed one semester.

**Fred:** Yeah. That was the end of it.

**John:** So he basically would go in the fall and play football.

**Mikayla:** I see.

**John:** And take classes and then...

**Fred:** Just to play football.

**John:** Apparently pass classes or not pass them.

**Fred:** Yeah.

**John:** And then he would go work, and then he'd come back the next fall and go play football. He did a couple years.

**Fred:** Yeah.

**Mikayla:** How many siblings did he have?

**Fred:** How many what?

**Mikayla:** Siblings. How big was his family? How many brothers and sisters?

**John:** How many aunts and uncles did you have from his side?

**Fred:** He had three sisters. He had a brother. Let's see what he was... And then he had two brothers that died.

**Mikayla:** When they were young?

**Fred:** Young. I think one was awful. Somehow he got on fire, his body.

**Mikayla:** Oh. That is awful.

**John:** Like a freak accident.

**Fred:** Yeah. I can't remember how the other died.

**John:** It's like your grandpa's, some of his siblings died really tragically.

**Fred:** That was it.

**John:** Four, seven. Seven total.

**Mikayla:** So their names were... do you remember their names?

**Fred:** Beezer. I don't know the young kids who died. The rest was Tom, [Chow Mommie / Charles's Mommie], Margaret, and Sue.

**Family clarification:** The brothers Fred could not name were Clarence McGarvey, 1890-1899, who died in a cricket bat accident, and Daniel McGarvey, 1893-1914, who died in a fire. “Chow Mommie” or “Charles's Mommie” refers to a family name for Charles's mother.

**Mikayla:** Did you grow up having lots of cousins?

**Fred:** Yeah.

**Mikayla:** Do you still talk to any of your cousins? Are they around?

**Fred:** Oh, yeah. I've always talked with them. I go back to visit. But my cousins, I guess about maybe three years ago, one died. And then the one that was the oldest died maybe four or five years before that. Then my last cousin that was my age just died like the last year, year and a half. But I had my cousins, you know, one had a couple brothers, and they're still alive.

**John:** Did you meet... oh, yeah. The one that had that farm where...

**Fred:** Yeah.

**John:** Was that your second cousin or was that your...

**Fred:** That's my first cousin.

**John:** First cousin, yeah. And his name was Bob?

**Fred:** Yeah.

**Fred:** And what was interesting there is way back, I don't know, 1800s or somewhere, Hughes was their name, had lots of land in Jackson. And I don't know how many acres. A hundred thousand acres or a hundred thousand, I don't know what it was. But he gave each of his kids...

**John:** So my grandpa...

**Fred:** He got those acres. But that was Grandma's side.

**John:** Yeah, we got one of them.

**Fred:** That's right. Didn't want to... I guess he didn't like it. So he worked for the railroad. But anyway, so my cousin Bud, who was related through his grandfather...

**John:** So Cousin Bud was on Grandma's side?

**Fred:** Grandma Hughes, yeah.

**John:** Grandma Marianne, yeah.

**Fred:** So he owned his own. He worked for the post office, the truck. So he did go from city to city and dropped off mail, and somebody delivered to the house. And he owned his own, but I don't know how many acres. You know how many acres it was?

**John:** Yeah, it was a lot, yeah.

**Fred:** Yeah, a lot of acres of land. Wow. You know, he had like all sorts of trees. I mean, was it a hickory tree? I don't know. He said he cut it down. He got $3,000 for the tree, of wood. And he had, I don't know, five, ten thousand acres, whatever. I guess the city or the county paid him to cut the weeds and everything in that area, even though it was his land. I don't know why he got that.

**John:** Oh, interesting.

**Fred:** And when we visited his house the first time, his house was probably, you know, maybe not quite as big as this house. But he had a garage. It was twice that size. He had all sorts of, you know, tractors and equipment in the garage. And he had that thing we rode all night.

**John:** Yeah, it was kind of like Randy's four-wheeler, yeah. I don't think it seemed street legal, but it's four-wheel drive, and it was kind of a, it was almost like a mini truck, kind of.

**Fred:** And then in his yard there, that house, I think he had, I can't remember, six or eight different fruit trees. I don't know if they produced. They produced some fruit.

**John:** Yeah.

**Fred:** But I noticed, well, last time I was back was about, I don't know, ten years ago. He went and bought a house and land in Jackson, in the city. Lived there because it was too much work for him just to take care of all the big land.

**John:** Because he's gotten older, yeah.

**Fred:** Someone has that land finally.

**John:** Yeah. So what year did we go back and see him? That would have been, was that after your mom died, right? Is that when we went? 2007? 2008? I don't know. I have no idea right now. Because I'm trying to think. We went to Alabama, and then we went to Wellston, right? So that must have been the trip we did, because it was just you and me.

**Fred:** Yeah.

**John:** And we went to Alabama to Grandma's, ashes on Grandpa's grave. And then we went to Wellston and visited. And then we just flew back. Was that all we did that trip?

**Fred:** That must have been, yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Well, then we met, but we...

**Fred:** Yeah.

**John:** And then also we went, in Wellston we met a bunch of people.

**Fred:** That was like a house party. There was a bunch of, yeah, yeah. That's all my kids had been in high school with.

**John:** Yeah.

**Fred:** Every time I went back there was like six or eight we'd get together. That was probably one or two.

**Mikayla:** Wow. That's really cool. Did Grandma have a big family? Did she come from a big family too?

**Fred:** My mom...