Jerry Ronald Reed

Jerry was pre-deceased by his daughter Vicki McCall, parents Elma Elizabeth and Jesse Rea “Pop” Reed, sister Cora Lee Johnson, half-brother Leslie Reed, and half-sister Beatrice Fisher. He is survived by wife LaDonna Reed, daughter Kathi Dyson, sons Neal Reed (Max), Dane Reed (Donniella), and Jay Reed (Christie), 8 grandchildren, 13 great grandchildren, 1 great-great grandchild, sister Velda Hendricks, and many nieces and nephews.

In Jerry’s own words:

I was born in Watonga, Oklahoma, but moved to Shattuck, Oklahoma when I was only two years old. I was raised in that small town where everyone knew everyone else - it was a very different time and place then. We played baseball in the street, and we played hide-and-seek down at the park by the depot on the lush green grass and among the shady trees. It was a time when people would go two or three times a week down to the train station just to see the eastbound and westbound passenger trains go through, and to see who got on and off. My mother ran Reed’s Cream Station, where we bought cream from the farmers and shipped 10 gallon cans to Wichita, Kansas to the creamery there. My dad was an interior and exterior decorator I guess you could say - he painted outside and painted and wallpapered inside for the whole town. He was the best sign painter in the country, and he could paint with either hand. But I am sure Pop was more widely known as a baseball person. He played and managed a traveling Native American baseball team at one time, and he taught me everything I ever knew about baseball from the time I was six until I left Shattuck for the big city.

I met LaDonna Loomis from Gage, Oklahoma in the summer of 1955 after I graduated from Shattuck High School. We traveled in the back of a grain truck all the way to Falls Creek Baptist Assembly Church Camp, combining the Shattuck and Gage kids from the Baptist churches. I never looked back, as she was and still is the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. We had to date and wait for two years while she finished high school in 1957, and we were finally married on July 21, 1957.

Later in that year, we moved to Panhandle, TX, where I went to work for the Santa Fe Railroad as an apprentice operator. We had our twins Vicki and Kathi in 1958 while living in Pampa, TX and working in Skellytown TX. Neal was born in 1960 and we moved back to Shattuck, where Dane was born in 1962. I finished my railroad career there before moving to Oklahoma City, where I worked for Transcon Truck Lines as a road dispatcher before moving to Arkansas in 1963, where Jay was born 2 years later. I went to work for Strickland Transportation Company as a dispatcher until Wilson Freight took it over and they went out of business in 1985. Then it was on to Arkansas Best Freight until my retirement in 1996.

We joined 47th Street Baptist Church in 1963, and I was involved with the youth department for several years and Sunday School Superintendent for a few years. Through the church, I played both slow and fast pitch softball, and coached men and women (mostly girls) softball teams for many years. I also coached all of my five children at one time or another.

Never was there a greater group of people than those of that church, and where I found my life-long friends. In the early years, our families spent time together playing cards, camping, or picnicking at Burns Park. After retirement, I played golf with Sonny Wooldridge, Hubert Cloud, Jimmy Brown, Otis Rambo, and Bill Cureton for years. We were not great golfers, but we sure enjoyed each other.

When I was 8, I trusted the Lord as my Savior and, thanks to that decision, I truly will be headed on Home to see family and friends and to await the coming of the rest of them. I sure look forward to seeing each of them there, but I know there will be some disappointments as the Lord said “Narrow is the gate.”

If I wronged anyone, I am so sorry and ask forgiveness. I just hoped I made a little brighter journey for some. Come on Home, will you? It’s just beyond the sunset and in that new and bright day with my Lord and the Home he prepared for me.

Well, I guess is the old saying goes, “Better sack up the bats and head on Home now.”