Eugene Lewis Sumner -- Farmer, Carpenter and Electrician

 

Eugene Lewis Sumner

Eugene Lewis Sumner was born on November 10, 1927 in the Oak Grove community of Trigg County, Kentucky.  He was the youngest of five children born to Durwood Floyd Sumner and Lillie Jane Thomas Sumner.  Floyd was a farmer and Lillie was noted as an excellent seamstress. Both were natives of Trigg County.  Floyd was a descendant of Drewry Bridges and Lillie was a descendant of Starkie Thomas.

Gene’s siblings were Ernest Raymond Sumner, born in 1908 and married Mayme Piercy; Mary Louise Sumner, born in 1911 and married John Alex Thomas; Thomas Howell Sumner, born in 1917; and Nella Agnes Sumner, born in 1920, and married Louis P. Conner and later married Roy Edward Wilburn. 

Gene was born in the same house built in 1899 by his grandfather on the same site that his great-grandfather Starkie Thomas had built the original family home. He lived nearly his entire life, except for a five-year period, on the family farm. He was the fourth generation to live there and his children and grandchildren were the fifth and sixth generation to live on the same farm.  Gene spent his elementary school years at the one-room Oak Grove School and graduated from Trigg County High School in Cadiz in 1946.

Gene was inducted into the U.S. Army on November 2, 1950 and was sent to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky where he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division.  He was discharged from the army on March 5, 1951 after he was injured in an accident when jumping from an airplane during a parachute jump training exercise.

On May 25, 1951, Gene married Frieda Nell Bridges in Corinth. Mississippi.  They had traveled to Mississippi to get married as Mississippi had no waiting period and was a popular place for couples to get married.  Frieda was born on May 25, 1933 in Trigg County, the daughter of  Ira Clifton Bridges and Flo Templeton Bridges Bridges.  Ira worked primarily in construction of large river projects and Flo was a homemaker.  Both were natives of Trigg County.  Ira was a descendant of Drewry Bridges and Flo was a descendant of Cullen Bridges.

After they were married Gene worked on the farm and he and Frieda lived in a small house on his mother’s farm which had been built for his grandparents in the early 1920s.  Just after five years later they moved into the family house where Gene had been born.  Gene worked as a farmer, carpenter, plumber and was a self-taught electrician.  In 1952 he left the farm to work at Fort Campbell, Kentucky as a carpenter. He later returned to farming and then worked at Central Tool and Die and Phelps-Dodge Company in Hopkinsville. He subsequently worked in electrical maintenance at Reed Crushed Stone in Lake City, Kentucky.  Around 1974, he opened his own electrical business, Sumner’s Electric and in 1978 moved the business to Lake City and established it as Twin Lake Electric, Inc.

Gene and Frieda were the parents of three children, Elizabeth Janie Sumner, born in 1953 and married Dale Woodson Harper and later married Robert Lacy Wall; Ernest Lewis Sumner, born in 1956 and married Suzanne Rachael Kovary and later married Kathleen Futrell Haney; and Eugene Christopher Sumner, born in 1959 and married Danita Dawn Williams.

Gene died on January 8, 1985 at the age of 57 of cancer at the Jennie Stuart Medical Center in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.  He was buried in the Starkie Thomas Cemetery in Trigg County.  Frieda died on September 18, 2017 at the age of 84 at the Lourdes Hospital in Paducah, Kentucky.  She was buried in the Starkie Thomas Cemetery next to her husband.

 Gene Sumner

 

 

Frieda and Gene Sumner

 

Gene and Frieda tombstone

LINEAGE: (Eugene Lewis Sumner was the son of Durwood Floyd and Lille Jane Thomas Sumner and the grandson of Benjamin Miles and Henrietta Gabrella Bridges Sumner and Starkie Armstead and Inez Miller Thomas.  Henrietta was the first child of Drewry and Peachie Ann Tart Bridges.  Drewry was the fourth child of William and Mary Thomas Bridges. William was the fourth child of Drury and Charity Cohoon Bridges.  Starkie Armstead was the tenth child of Starkie and Mary Bridges Thomas.  Starkie was the fourth child of James and Mary Standley Thomas.)