Sam and Sarah Lemarr Young were my great grandparents. Sam Young died 9 years before I was born so I only know him through pictures and stories my Grandmother Barley and her sisters told to me. Granny Young died when I was 13 and I am thankful that I had the opportunity to know her. On one of the yearly trips to Lafollette, Tennessee to place flowers on the graves of her parents, grandfather and other family members buried in the Lemarr family cemetery, my MaMow Barley asked me who would bring flowers when she was gone? Would there come a time when no one would place flowers on their graves leaving them bare and forgotten? I promised her that I would as long as as I was physically able.
As the generations come and go the past slips further away. The grandparents that held the family together pass on, leaving their legacy behind, sometimes scattered by distance and time. Those cousins you grew up with grow up, have families of their own and eventually you lose touch as your lives travel down different roads. And they all become … Names carved in stones! Gone but not forgotten! ….. They were loved and they loved someone who eventually loved someone who loved me.
