DEATHS

Rev. John B. Armstrong, former minister in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, January 10, in Anniston, Ala. He is survived by his wife, one daughter, and two sons.

[Source: The Cumberland Presbyterian, February 20, 1968, page 15]

Born November 16, 1881, in Blount County, Alabama, John Bunyan Armstrong was the eldest child of Mary Hendricks and Francis Marion Armstrong, a minister and school teacher. John grew up in Blount County, and attended college at Florence State Normal Teacher College and at Auburn where he graduated.

In January, 1905, he married Rosa McCuen. John and Rosa had one son, Doyle Armstrong, born May 10, 1917. Doyle was married first to Lois Bryant, of Bryant, Alabama. They were divorced. Doyle and his second wife, Gladys Haskew Armstrong, live in Odenville, Alabama.

Following in his father's footsteps, John Armstrong was also a Cumberland Presbyterian minister and a school teacher. He pastored churches and taught in Blount and Jackson counties, Alabama. In Jackson County, he was pastor at Temperance Hill Cumberland Presbyterian Church. When he lived in Jackson County he also pastored a church at Gaylesville in Cherokee County.

The churches and the Bryant community made Mr. Armstrong at least four quilts. During World War II, the Temperance Hill church made a sailboat friendship quilt. There is a name embroidered below each boat. Two friendship quilts from Bryant have embroidered squares with floral motifs and names. The other is of embroidered scenes from Bible stories, but I am not sure whether a church or a community made this quilt.

In 1940, while he was living at Bryant, Mr. Armstrong's wife died. In April 1942, he married Lorene Hawkins Whitten (born Oct. 15, 1921). Lorene was the widow of Jesse Nathan Whitten and had a three-year-old son, Joseph Lee Whitten. John and Lorene had one daughter, Eunice Laurene Armstrong Cleeland, born July 25, 1953. Eunice teaches nursing at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Joseph taught school for 39 years and retired in 2000. She is married to Robert Cleeland.

Bryant school was John's last teaching position. His remaining working years were spent in the ministry.

Toward the end of World War II, he moved from Bryant to Allsboro in Colbert County, Alabama, where he pastored two Cumberland Presbyterian churches, Allsboro and Mt. Hester. In 1946 he moved to Glencoe, Alabama, in Etowah County to minister at Glencoe Cumberland Presbyterian Church. It was here that he had a heart attack which incapacitated him for the rest of his life. He continued his ministry, however, through a little religious paper he mimeographed and mailed out to his subscribers and supporters.

He often heard from his former students at Bryant, Alabama, and their keeping in touch with him brought a great deal of pleasure into his life. Bryant was a community that had been close to his heart, and he spoke fondly of his years there.

He was a man who enjoyed his garden and his chickens. I remember boxes of biddies coming through the mail in the spring when we lived at Bryant. In his later years when he had little strength because of his heart problems, he would tend his garden sitting on a low stool. He would hoe or weed or harvest in the one area and then move his stool down and work another spot. His strawberry patch was always perfect neat rows weeded and mulched and the new runners carefully set for next year's plants.

John Bunyan Armstrong died January 10, 1968, and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Oneonta, Alabama. Lorene Hawkins Whitten Armstrong died May 9, 1983, and is also buried at Oak Hill.

[Post Script: In the last few year of her life, Lorene Armstrong was also an ordained minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. After she was diagnosed with cancer in 1979 and was told she had perhaps 4 or 5 years to live, she bought a new car and did supply preaching at the Eutaw, Alabama, Cumberland Presbyterian Church. She lived in Jacksonville, in north central Alabama, and drove each weekend to Eutaw to preach. Eutaw is in the south western section of Alabama. She lived four productive years from the time of her surgery, then was sick in the hospital for two weeks and went home to be with the Lord at the age of 61.]

[Biographical Sketch written by Joseph L. Whitten]