Person:Leroy Cunningham (1)

Guy was born and lived on Piney most of his life. He worked at Timken Bearing Co., Canton, Ohio for a short time. He had a sawmill (Pine Fork Lumber Co.) and farmed for a living. I can remember as a child we would start at the head of Piney putting up hay and work our way down. By the time we got down to the home place and put the hay up there, it would be time to start the second cutting, so back up Piney we would go. We use to put in two barns full of hay each summer. I was probably the only kid in school glad to see it start again in the fall as this would mean hay season was about over for another year. When summer holidays came around or we knew some of the family was coming in, Dad always managed to have hay down and ready to put up. They would always jump in and help though and never seemed to get angry. He always told me that was just good planning. He bought a new Farmall Super C tractor in 1953 after he sold his sawmill. He needed a corn planter for it but didn't have the money to buy a new one, so off to the junk yard he went. When he come back he had bought an old horse drawn one.He spent all winter in the garage tinkering with it, but when spring came, he had a corn planter that would mount on the tractor with hydraulic lift and all. He would hire the neighbors to help cut the corn in the fall and put it in shocks. He would shuck the ears out during the winter months. The next winter project was making a wagon. He bought an old truck, put it in the garage for the winter and when spring came, he had a wagon made out of it that he could pull behind the tractor. He did buy a corn picker though so we were in business. Little did I know at the time that it was still a job shoveling it out of the wagon into the corn crib that he had built. He would never throw anything away. I remember one time working with him on an old sawmill. The motor wouldn't start so off to the garage he went and brought back a bucket-full of old spark plugs. We tried different spark plugs for about an hour before he found a good one and the motor finally started. He took the bad spark plug and into the bucket it went for use maybe another time in the future. Guy loved to fight with the Hope Gas Company. He could quote you chapter and verse of every word said when they got into it. After I had left home he told me about one time the lawyers for the Hope were down about something. They were all setting in the living room and one of the lawyers made a comment about his family. He had all of our graduation pictures lined up on a shelf in the living room. Guy told him that he had to raise them all with just one hand. One of the lawyers asked him why that was.He replied that he had to hold off the Hope lawyers with the other hand or they would have taken the whole farm. The lawyers left soon after that. Guy had a stroke in 1970 and was bed ridden the remainder of his life. He died in the New Martinsville Health Care Center, New Martinsville, WV at the age of 8