“Stories are less about facts and more about meanings...a great deal of emotional suffering stem from our failures to make sense of our lives through stories.”
-Dan McAdams
Generational Patterns
To be part of a family means more than sharing a last name or a handful of similarities. Bound in the roots of every family tree runs an invisible current, carrying dreams, losses, loyalties, fears, and quiet acts of courage that have allowed life to continue from one generation to the next.
After the tragic loss of my immediate family, I watched my entire world disintegrate right in front of me. Desperate to make sense of what happened, I began looking back through my own family history.
I was struck not only by the events themselves, but by the themes that reappeared. Lives separated by several decades seemed to echo one another. Similar crossroads appeared in different eras. Love arrived in familiar disguises. Hardships resurfaced in unexpected ways. Even as the world changed, certain threads seemed determined to find their way forward.
That’s when it occurred to me. We do not simply inherit our ancestors' features; we also inherit the landscapes they walked through, the burdens they carried, and the adaptations that helped them survive. History may not repeat itself exactly, but if we look close enough, we see that it is often reshaped through us.
Through the stories of my own family, I hope to shed some light on the intricate ways personal history and collective history intertwine, where individual lives become part of a much larger narrative.
Some stories reveal remarkable resilience. Others expose old wounds still searching for resolution. Together, they ask a question that has stayed with me from the beginning: What do we carry forward without realizing it—and what becomes possible when we finally see the pattern?
The 1920s-1950s: The Great Depression & World War II
John L. Gray, Jr.
Grand-father, Randy’s father
Barbara Ann Carter
Grand-mother, Randy’s mother
Charles L. Massey
Grand-father, Susan’s father
Worked as an engineer for the TVA for over 30 years; came from a highly respected family of educators and missionaries; his father was a 33rd degree Mason and his mother’s birthday is still honored in Harriman, TN as a day of remembrance
Bobbie Jean Crass
Grand-mother, Susan’s mother
grew up in Appalachian poverty after her mother Lola Mae Davis broke marriage codes and married Elmer Crass; first woman in her family to go to college; education was her ticket out of poverty
The 1900s-1920s: The Turn of the Century & World War I
John L. Gray, Sr.
Great Grand-father, married Mabel Stringfield; father of John L. Gray, Jr.
After his father squandered the family money, he left home and worked his way up from a machinist to the superintendent of the welding department for Navy warships at the Newport News shipyard. He was one of the wealthiest men in town.
Mary Mack Bagley
Great Grand-mother, married R. Earl Carter; mother of Barbara Ann Carter
The suspicious deaths of her parents brought on intense emotional outbursts, which led her to undergo electric shock therapy.
Elmer Crass
Great Grand-father, married Lola Mae Davis; father of Bobbie Jean Crass; son of Cordie Coker and James Crass
A poor laborer who loved whiskey, he was accused of coming from “bad blood.” He would go on to work for the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, TN.
Lola Mae Davis
Great Grand-mother, married Elmer Crass; mother of Bobbie Jean Crass; daughter of William Davis & Martha Brummett
Raised in a southern culture where parents demanded complete obedience from their daughters, Lola was rejected by her mother for breaking social code and marrying Elmer.
The 1850s-1870s: Civil War & Reconstruction
Roanna Catherine Dews
2nd Great-Grandmother; married George W. Gray; mother of John L. Gray, Sr.; daughter of William Dews
She was an orphan and domestic servant by age of 12. Because of her husband’s erratic drinking and gambling, she had to revert to doing whatever she could to keep food on the table.
George W. Gray
2nd Great Grand-father; married Roany Catherine Dews; father of John L. Gray, Sr.; son of George T. Gray
His father died in the Civil War when he was 3 years old. As an adult, he got pulled into the darkness of gambling and squandered the family money.
Temperance Cordelia “Cordie” Coker
2nd Great-Grandmother; pregnant by James Crass with Elmer Crass before marriage; daughter of Lydia Winters Coker
Her mother, Lydia, was a controversial woman of low social standing, who became the source of ridicule after she married into an upper class family.
James Levi Crass
2nd Great Grand-father, married Cordie Coker; father of Elmer Crass; son of Elizabeth “McKamey” & Daniel Crass
There was suspicion that his mother (a full-blooded Cherokee, based on ancestors’ accounts) had been enslaved during the Civil War, and was guilty of changing her identity in order to marry a white man.