Better known by his family as ‘Uncle Brodie‘, was born to the late Jasper, Sr. and Mary Reid in May 1944 in a little town in North Carolina called Mooresville.
Oscar accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, as a very young child having been reared in a family of Believers, under the ‘walk of faith’ of his parents.
After graduating from Unity High School in 1963, he and his longtime buddy, Fred Frazier, decided they would leave their small town to see if they could take on the big city. So they hopped on a Greyhound bus and traveled to Washington, DC, where they took up permanent residence. Upon arriving in DC, he became employed as a parking attendant at the PMI Garage Services, along with his brother, Bobby Reid. Sometime later, he was employed at Western Electric, where he discovered how much he loved to run a printing press machine. This became his niche in life and he continued to work as a printer for the next 40 years at different companies. He retired as a printer in February 2012. On weekends, he enjoyed working a side job moving people in his favorite Ford pick-up truck. He knew how to make extra money and loved staying busy.
Family and friends meant the world to him. He would spend hours on the phone talking to his sisters and anyone else who had the time. He never turned down a phone call unless you called during his favorite TV show, “Gunsmoke”. You can be sure he was not talking to anyone during this hour. He loved westerns. Another passion of his was his love for sweets. A meal was never complete until he had dessert. If you didn’t have dessert, he did not tarry, he would leave so he could stop by a store to pick up some Black Cherry ice cream or anything else that had sugar in it! In his spare time, you would have to sneak up on him at “Maryland Live”, where he was always trying his hand at the quarter machines. He really enjoyed the environment and all the people trying their luck. He was known to most as the perfect gentleman, soft spoken, kind and compassionate to all, never a dispute with anyone.
Following a short battle with cancer beginning in 2017, he passed away peacefully at UMC Medical Center, surrounded by family and friends. He was preceded in death by a brother, Jasper Reid Jr., and two sisters, Kathleen Reid Lewis and Hattie Reid Curry.
He is survived by two sons, Steven Eric Reid (Michelle) and Mark Oscar Reid; a daughter, April Plater (James); 15 grandchildren; 11 great-grandchildren; a brother, Bobby Reid; five sisters, Mary Lee Campbell, Almeater Graham, Carol Wright, Janice Gaither and Betty Bynum (Otis); and a host of nieces and nephews.
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. II Corinthians 5:1.
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