Singleton and Related Genealogy Pages
A history of many families.
1923 - 2014 (90 years)| Name | Rubin Wade WATFORD [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] | |
| Suffix | Sr. | |
| Birth | 30 Nov 1923 | Clarendon County, South Carolina  [11] |
| Gender | Male | |
| HIST | of Turbeville, South Carolina By Sandi Chaney- Item Staff Writer- Turbeville, South Carolina- Novemeber 2003 was a very special month for Rubin Watford Sr. of Turbeville. ¶ On Nov. 30 he reached his 80th birthday. And the week before, on Nov. 22, more than 30 people helped him celebrate it at a birthday party at Eddie’s Barbecue Restaurant. ¶ It was also a time to reflect on the history of the surviving World War II veteran. ¶ Posted on the restaurant walls were old pictures of Watford that Rubin Watford, his son whom he calls “Ruke,” had found and mounted on posterboard. There was a photograph of Watford and his first grade class - “and they didn’t make many pictures back in those days,” said Ruke - and a few pictures of Watford in a high school play. There were pictures of Watford and his wife JoAnn, who died in 1999, and photographs of Watford with his children, Ruke and Bonnie. ¶ “That one’s where he took me to the fair,” Ruke explained. “And that’s Daddy holding my sister when she was first born. She passed away at 42 of cancer.” ¶ Ruke also found photographs and other memorabilia of his father’s military service, some of which Watford had forgotten about until Ruke uncovered them. ¶ One such item was a May 5, 1945, copy of “The Thunderbolt,” the official newspaper of Watford’s division, the 83rd Infantry “Thunderbolt” Division. The front page carries a picture of Watford meeting and shaking hands with a group of Russsian soldiers near Berlin. Berlin surrendered to the Russians on May 8, 1945, so the picture was taken just as the fighting was drawing to a close. ¶ “We never did get to Berlin,” Watford said. “We crossed the Elbe River and there was a sign up there - Gateway to Berlin - about 50 miles away, I believe. And Eisenhower met with the Russian general, and the Russians told him, we want to take Berlin. We had about three armies ready to go in, but Eisenhower told us to hold up, and we just stopped right there.” ¶ That might be the only time the 83rd Infantry missed a battle. The Thunderbolt Division had a long and illustrious battle record. ¶ After training in England, the men of the 83rd entered action in Normandy shortly after D-Day, and from Omaha Beach they fought their way all across Europe. They fought in the hedgerows of Normandy and the cities of Brittany. They guarded Gen. Patton’s exposed right flank in the Loire Valley as he raced across France before moving on to liberate Luxembourg. They fought in the little-known battle of Huertgen Forest and then in the Ardennes. The 83rd was the first division to reach the Rhine River and, after crossing it, they raced across Germany, covering 280 miles in 13 days, until they were stopped 50 miles from Berlin. ¶ “Wherever the fight’s going on, that’s where the 83rd’s going to be,” said Watford. “You better believe it! And whenever it got good and tight, here come the 83rd in. And I was with them everywhere they went. I was gunner on an 81mm mortar.” ¶ The winter of 1944-45 is well known for being one of Europe’s coldest, and the men of the 83rd spent their days and nights in the open, exposed to mud, snow and bitter cold. ¶ “We jumped up and down - anything to keep warm,” said Watford. “Sometimes the ground was too frozen to dig holes to sleep in. My feet like to froze. And when we started in July 1944, it was not. Any way the weather come, anything the good Lord sent, that’s what you lived in.” ¶ Watford has nothing but praise for the mess sergeant and cooks, who got hot food to the troops if it was at all possible. Sometimes he had to eat K-rations and C-rations, but he remembers getting hot meals most of the time. ¶ “I don’t know how in the world the United States kept all that army going - that was something big, you know it? And they kept getting that food to us, I’m telling you. They brought it up to the dead front. ¶ “I call it the dead front,” he explained, “because you was going to get shot if you wasn’t careful. Anything can happen on the front. You couldn’t make too many errors, you had to try to do everything just right. And I was just lucky I never did get hit.” ¶ Although the war in Europe was over in May 1945, the war with Japan raged on, and the 83rd was selected as one of the divisions for the invasion of Japan. Watford and his fellow soldiers were preparing to go to Japan when the atomic bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrendered. ¶ “I’m never sorry I went in the Army,” said Watford. “I had to go. It was just something we had to do. And things I saw, people I met - I wouldn’t have done that without the Army. I saw all them scenic places all over Washington, D. C., saw the Statue of Liberty when we left New York. And France and Germany, I doubt if I’d ever gotten that far away from home.” ¶ Watford was discharged from the service on his birthday, Nov. 30, 1945, and returned home to live with his mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer. He still becomes emotional as he remembers how glad his mother was to see him return. ¶ Watford farmed for a few years, married and had two children, and worked a succession of jobs in the area before finding employment with “the best place I ever worked in my life, “ the Campbell Soup in 1986; company policy dictated that he retire when he turned 62. ¶ Although he always worked second shift, his father always had time to “do for” his children, says Ruke. ¶ Ruke reminded his father recently about a time when he and a friend, as teenagers, were caught racing their car through Turbeville. ¶ “He said I grabbed him by his hair and jerked him out of the car,” chuckled Watford, several inches shorter than his son. “But I had to stop him. In the snap of a finger he could have been killed.” ¶ A lifelong resident of Turbeville, Watford lives in the house he built for JoAnn and himself when they were married, just across the road from where the home he grew up in used to stand. Despite having both knees replaced several years ago, Watford cuts his own grass and maintains his three-acre woods and yard. ¶ “My knees are stiff now. I can walk very well, but I can’t do much running.” He laughted. “Didn’t do too much jogging before, and don’t do none now. Had to quit running and stand up and fight like a man.” ¶ Ruke is helping enclose his father’s back porch now so he can get the wood for his fireplace without going out in the weather. Watford usually cuts his own wood with a chain saw, but he is grateful to the church for giving him two cords of cut wood this year. ¶ Ruke’s affection for and pride in his father is readily apparent. ¶ “I’m proud of this man, I really am,” he said. “Eighty years old and being in World War II and all, and the other things he’s gone through in his life, he had time to take up with me when I was coming up, too. And that’s important to know. He’s a wonderful parent and a wonderful person.” Rubin W. Watford TURBEVILLE — Rubin W. Watford, age 90, died Friday, Jan. 31, 2014, at National Healthcare in Sumter. Funeral services will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday at Horse Branch Free Will Baptist Church with burial in the church cemetery, directed by Floyd Funeral Home of Olanta. Visitation will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. today at the funeral home. Born in Clarendon County, he was a son of the late William and Irene Sims Watford. He was a veteran of the United States Army during World War II; retired from Campbell Soup Co.; and was a member of Horse Branch Free Will Baptist Church. He was preceded in death by his wife, Joann DuBose Watford; and a daughter, Bohnii W. Moore. Surviving are a son, Rubin Watford Jr. of Turbeville; a sister, Agnes Welch of Turbeville; many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Memorials may be made to Tri-County Hospice, 2560 Tahoe Drive, Sumter, SC 29150 or Horse Branch Free Will Baptist Church, 5037 Turbeville Highway, Turbeville, SC 29162. Online condolences may be accessed at www.floydfuneral.com. Posted in Obituaries on Saturday, February 1, 2014 [4, 6, 10, 11] | |
| MILI | He was a veteran of the United States Army during World War II. [10] | |
| _UID | 0F8ADBC9E752477494EB4C5697F8F7EEC60C | |
| Death | 31 Jan 2014 | National Healthcare, Sumter, Sumter County, South Carolina |
| Burial | 2 Feb 2014 | Horse Branch Free Will Baptist Church Cemetery, Turbeville, South Carolina [10] |
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| Person ID | I73946 | Singleton and Related Families |
| Last Modified | 21 Jun 2016 | |
| Father | William/Willie Presley WATFORD d. Bef 27 Jan 2014 | |
| Mother | Clara Irene “Irene” SIMS d. Bef 27 Jan 2014 | |
| _UID | 86BB17F4170748E38172400AFCD160807FA2 | |
| _UID | 86BB17F4170748E38172400AFCD160807FA2 | |
| Family ID | F111622 | Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Family | Jo Ann DUBOSE, b. 1929, Williamsburg County, South Carolina d. 15 Dec 1999, in A Florence hospital, Florence, South Carolina (Age 70 years) | |||||||||||
| _UID | AECE8740B5E94636B7BAA4DB430BE29D1A30 | |||||||||||
| _UID | AECE8740B5E94636B7BAA4DB430BE29D1A30 | |||||||||||
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| Family ID | F51382 | Group Sheet | Family Chart | ||||||||||
| Last Modified | 11 Feb 2014 | |||||||||||
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