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Military: Colonel McDaniel graduated from The University of Tennessee as a Distinguished Military Graduate with a Bachelor of Science Degree in July 1976 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Armor. Following completion of the Armor Officers Basic Course, he was assigned in August 1977 to the Tennessee Army National Guard with duty at 30th Separate Armored Brigade (SAB). He served as a tank platoon leader, cavalry platoon leader, troop executive officer, and battalion adjutant. After graduating from the Armor Officers Advance Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in July 1983, he returned to the 30th SAB to serve as a tank company commander Following his command tour in the Tennessee National Guard, he was reassigned to the 2-68 Armor Regiment in Germany. He served for 30 months as a primary and special staff officer. After successful completion of this assignment, he served as an Assistant Professor of Military Science (APMS) at his alma mater, the University of Tennessee. Concurrently serving as an APMS, he completed the Combined Arms and Services Staff School, Command and General Staff College, and a Master of Science Degree. Following his APMS assignment, he reported to National Guard Bureau in 1989 and served as Manpower Management Officer. In August 1991, he was reassigned to United States Army Europe in Heidelberg, Federal Republic of Germany, to serve as the Deputy Army National Guard Adviser. In August 1994, he returned to National Guard Bureau to serve as the Branch Chief, Standards Branch, Full Time Support Division. After two years, he was reassigned to Headquarters, United States European Command (USEUCOM). While at USEUCOM, his assignments included serving as the Army National Guard LNO to the George C. Marshall Center in Garmisch, NATO Partnership for Peace Joint Chiefs of Staff Exercise Officer in EUCOM ECJ37, Executive Officer in EUCOM Directorate of Mobilization and Reserve Components Operations Division, and National Guard Bureau LNO to the Director, ECJ4. Colonel McDaniel departed EUCOM in March 2001 and is assigned as the Senior Reserve Component Adviser to the Commander, 7th Army Training Command. Colonel McDaniel's awards and decorations include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal/with one Oak Leaf Cluster, Army Meritorious Service Medal/with one Oak Leaf Cluster, Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army Reserve Components Achievement Medal with Silver Oak Leaf, Joint Meritorious Unit Award (2nd Oak leaf Cluster), National Defense Service Medal, Armed Forces Reserve medal with Hour Glass, Army Service Ribbon, and Overseas Service Ribbon (Num 4). Colonel McDaniel is a graduate of the Air War College. On 2 Jun 1972 when Jerry Thomas was 19, he first married Diana Gail ROBERTS, daughter of Bobby Ray ROBERTS (1934-1997) & Peggy Ruth TATE (1933-1988), in Wildersville, Henderson County, Tennessee. Born on 20 Mar 1954 in Huntingdon, Carroll County, Tennessee. Resided in Henderson County, Tennessee in 1999. Occupation: School teacher, Clarksburg, 13th District, Carroll County, Tennessee. They were divorced on 22 Mar 1983 in Huntingdon, Carroll County, Tennessee. They had one child:
On 25 Feb 1992 when Jerry Thomas was 39, he second married Laura Fay JONES, daughter of Henry Webb JONES (1921-1986) & Billie Vivian CHASTAIN (1922-2008), in Basel, Switzerland. Born on 19 Feb 1955. Resided in Grafenwoehr, Germany in Oct 2001. Occupation: Webmistress, Merchandising. Education: Trezevant High School, Trezevant, Carroll County, Tennessee. Religion: Church of Christ. They had one child:
Published in The McKenzie Banner, 21 May 2003. When Jerry McDaniel purchased the old store property from his grandfather's estate in 1990, saving the old building was his overriding concern. How to go about that was less certain. The building was full of memories for Jerry, who had grown up in the footsteps of his grandfather, the late Jessie Pendergrass, who was the proprietor of "Pendergrass' Grocery" from about a month before Jerry was born on January 25, 1953 until the older gentleman passed away on December 2, 1989. "Pa-Jess", as Clarksburg Mayor Jeff Reed recalls Mr. Pendergrass' moniker, was the longest running of 12 storekeepers and an even longer list of owners for the building, which has an uncertain history. Two legends dominate speculation concerning the origin of the historic building that sits alongside Highway 22 in Clarksburg at the intersection of Jackson Drive (Highway 424). Mr. James Therrell, who "was a lifelong member of the community and retired high school vocational-agricultural teacher" told Jerry he knew Mr. Emerson Clark (known as Mr. Em) who was the grandson of John Kelly Clark, founder of Clarksburg. Mr. Em had told Mr. Therrell that he had clerked in the store for 42 years and that the store was built prior to the Civil War, an assertion bolstered by his claim that his father had held him in his arms in the front door of the store in December 1862 as he watched soldiers march to the battle that was about to take place at Parker's Crossroads. But Mr. Hugh Crider, who Jerry says was "a master of the Scottish Art of memorizing and story telling," told Jerry, when he was still a boy, that the store was built in the year of his birth, 1877, by a couple of brothers who had also built three other stores that were once located across the road from the one Jerry grew up to rescue from otherwise uncertain fate. Mr. Crider said, as well, that the lumber for the store was sawed from poplar logs on site in the Poplar Springs area by a steam sawmill. The old country store building features Italianate architecture, seen in its gambrel roof and the scroll brackets along the frieze beneath the roof. The fact that the store is indeed constructed of the finest yellow poplar is no real clue in the puzzle of the store's origins, anymore than is the Italianate architecture, which flourished roughly between 1850 through 1900. Jeffery L. Durbin, Historic Preservation Specialist for the Tennessee Department of Transportation, in October 1990 proposed the building may have been constructed around 1890, a hypothesis colored by "local sources" who advised him the store was built "about a century ago," but which also takes the building's architecture into consideration. The curiosity of the old building gradually takes on the thrill of a treasure hunt as one discovers the edifice is virtually unchanged from its original grandeur, save the wear and tear of the years and a few "improvements", some of which will be restored to authenticity as time goes by. Outside, the gambrel roof - its twice-pitched roof ensuring maximum area in the upstairs quarters - is the first clue of the building's architectural age. Then there are the triangular-shaped hoods above the doors and windows and the Italianate scroll brackets that accentuate each angle made by the roof. Inside, the building's original 66 feet by 34 feet dimensions are divided into the main business area and two adjoining storage rooms, each of which once had separate entrance-ways, the front-most room long serving as the livestock feed room. The rear storage room now sports windows rather than the door Durbin feels once occupied that space, an enhancement he figures was made at the same time the "mother-in-law" apartment was added onto the northern side of the building, a change the McDaniels know took place around 1941. The mother-in-law quarters add a quaint and lovely appeal to the otherwise stolidly rectangular building. Built low and set back from the main building's façade, the kitchen and living room are enhanced by front and back porches offering morning and evening respites from blazing hot summer days. Sue wonders at the December 29, 1898 German newspaper that is pasted inside one of a room full of old trunks. Spring air conditioning in the main business area is achieved by the welcome breeze afforded by opening the double doors at the front and back of the long room. Near the back door, one can see where a pot-bellied coal stove once warmed farmers whose reduced winter workload made time for ample visiting, a pastime so prolific that Mr. Jessie was occasionally forced to take one of two measures to thin the crowd that hampered customers' access to the store. "My grandfather told me there were two ways to get them out of the way," Jerry reveals, "to make the stove intensely hot or to get to 'talking in the spirit'. He said talking in the spirit will move men at any time." Visitors to the store, eventually looking beyond the marvelous goods that fill the place with both the splendor and drudgery of by-gone days, will see original shelving and countertops, both hardily and ornately constructed. So heavy are the counters that when Mr. Jessie had a new floor installed, it was simply fitted around them. Square nails protrude alongside more modern spikes on high walls where once hung country hams and who-knows-what. The curved ceiling is one of the many architectural highlights of the old store building, seen here in a room full of primitive items. Just when one thinks it couldn't get better, a narrow stairway leads to a fantasy world of yesteryear, where windows built at floor level brought breezes into hot rooms, where curved ceilings increased usable space while providing a uniquely picturesque view, where plywood-thin walls separated the four rooms (there being no need for wall-run electricity when the building was constructed) and where chimneys once served smaller coal stoves that kept the family quarters warm in winter. A small door off one room leads to an attic where, still strung from girder to girder, wire clotheslines run where clothes were hung to dry on winter or inclement-weather days. The upstairs windows are built flush with the floor, where fresh breezes are more readily felt during hot summer days. The uniqueness of the old building - coupled with a lifetime of memories and many more lifetimes of experiences over the building's one hundred-plus years - was in Jerry's heart as he and then-girlfriend Fay Jones of Trezevant sought to sweep the cobwebs from the rooms in the summer of 1990. Jerry was home on leave from his duty station at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. He had worked as a field analyst for the Tennessee Farm Bureau after graduating from college and had also joined the Tennessee National Guard where he served as an M-Day soldier from 1977 until 1984, the year he was selected to participate in the National Guard Captains to Europe Program which took him to Baumholder, Germany. Back in the States, he readied America's military leaders as the National Guard Professor of Military Science at the University of Tennessee at Martin from 1986 until 1988, from there moving to duty at the Proving Ground. Jerry and Fay were resting from their chores when Linda Reed - who had lived in the store when her father, Homer Williamson, was the store's keeper between 1951 and 1952 (and is, incidentally, Mayor Jeff Reed's mother) - stopped by and asked what Jerry intended to do with the building. "Fay thinks it would be a good idea if you started an antique store," Jerry replied. With little prompting Linda and her sister, Alberta Stewart, set up "The Old Country Store" where they sold antiques from 1990 though 1994. In the meantime Jerry's full-time National Guard career continued to flourish as he moved in 1991 to Heidelberg, Germany, then became a branch chief at National Bureau in Arlington, Virginia in 1994. He and Fay had married on February 25, 1992 in Basel, Switzerland. In 1996, the couple moved together to Europe where Jerry worked at the George C. Marshall Center, in Garmisch, Germany, and worked as a branch chief in executing the Partnership for Peace Exercise Program in Eastern Europe. In 2001, he was promoted to colonel and became the Reserve Component Liaison to the Commander of the 7th Army Training Command based in Grafenwoehr, Germany, where the couple makes their residence today. While living in Europe, Fay began collecting antiques, including quaint little "magic lantern slides." "That's one of the little things that got me," Fay confesses, demonstrating how the tiny pictures, embossed on glass that slides through a metal frame, are projected onto a wall's surface when held before a lantern's flame. "I started off collecting myself; that's how people get started in the antique business, as collectors, and they just love it so much..." The couple filled the store with European antiques, but despite their best intentions, eventually the roof developed a leak while their own thriving Internet sales competed with store sales until the shop's keeper, Sue Jordan (who is Fay's sister) could not keep up with both. For several years, the store was closed to the public while Sue busily wrapped good for shipment to Internet customers. An exciting new era for the store and its owners began as Jerry and Fay made plans to retire and moved home to Clarksburg. Originally slated for retirement in March, current events worked to extend his active duty obligation until September 2004. Plans already underway continued, and Fay flew home where she and Sue have been working hard - with the assistance of friends and family - to whip the store into shape. Fay and Jerry plan to use monies earned from the sale of their antiques to restore the old store building as near as possible to its original form and to ensure it remains strong enough to weather another century and a half, perhaps. A new floor is next on the McDaniel's renovation work list; later, the exterior of the building will be restored to its original deep green color, a fact disclosed by boards that still bear traces of the original paint. The leaking roof repaired, the store was ready when a freight container of antiques made its long way from Germany to Charleston, South Carolina and then by rail to Memphis, where an Olive Branch, Mississippi trucking company picked up the container for its final haul to Clarksburg. "We had to unload in two hours or pay extra," Fay announced, with the memory of exhaustion pouring over her face as sweat had on the day she, Sue and every hand they could find pitched in to unload the treasure trove of antiques. Family friend and Wildersville Postmaster Tom Burke showed up just in time to help, however, laugh Sue and Fay, "He got up in that container and we lost him for two hours." Beautifully refurbished 1800's European pine furniture from buffets to cupboards to chests of drawers and more are available at Oma's. Tom admits he was enthralled with the items that range from primitive items like wooden butter churns and wooden buckets to late 1800s pine furniture from Europe, already stripped, restored, and refinished. And unlike Tom, who declares his adventure left him with European dust in his sinuses for days afterward, visitors to Oma's Antik Haus - German for Grandma's Antique House - will find a place for everything and everything in its place. There is one room just for trunks of all sizes, and several of wonderful folklore-inspiring pieces like German dough bowls, bread boards, baking paddles, hay rakes & forks, spinning boxes, flax combs, cookie sugar molds, and farm carts. Find shelf upon shelf of German Westerwald stoneware, antique French and Romanian pottery and French oil lamps. Goebel and Hummel figurines are beautifully displayed in furniture from their own home country, and brightly colored enamelware & early kitchen collectibles dazzle onlookers; it is truly a shop one could spend hours in only to leave floating on clouds of mystery and intrigue... if only the walls could talk, if only each delightful piece of European linen could tell the story of the hands that wove it and then intricately embroidered its design. While the European tales may remain untold, save that of women rocking sleeping babies in the big, carved wooden dough bowls with their feet as their hands busily prepared a meal, stories of the store's past owners and experiences may come to light as Jerry works hard at his own obsession, that of compiling a history of South Carroll County and Northern Henderson County from its earliest settlers to the present day. He plans to set up shop in one room of the mother-in-law quarters, envisioning a haven where visitors can come to seek and share information about relatives and times lost and found. He has already amassed an amazing wealth of information which locals and others can view at www.the-watchers.com. Oma's Antik Haus website is also making a comeback after the store's recent grand reopening. Far away antique lovers can find it at www.omas-antik-haus.com, but if you are nearby, make plans for a trip to Oma's in Clarksburg. Located on Highway 22, it's impossible to miss. Oma's is open 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and on Sunday from 1:00 'til 5:00 p.m. For more information, call Fay or Sue at 731-986-3018. 386. Donna Gail McDANIEL. Born on 17 Jan 1962 in Lexington, Henderson County, Tennessee. Resided in Smyrna, Tennessee in Jul 2002. 1999 - Special Education Teacher at Lexington High School in 1999. July 2002 - Serves as a military technician in the Tennessee Army National Guard, Nashville, Tennessee. April 2007 - Serves as a military technician in the Tennessee Army National Guard. On 21 Nov 1980 when Donna Gail was 18, she first married Stanley Ray LAWS, son of Wilburn Ray LAWS (1941-) & Frances Orene GURLEY (1943-), in Clarksburg, Tennessee. Born on 17 Nov 1962 in Carroll County, Tennessee. Resided in Clarksburg, 13th District, Carroll County, Tennessee in 1999. They were divorced on 30 Jan 1985. They had one child:
Donna Gail second married Timothy BURNINE, son of V. Paul BURNINE & Helen Louise CONWAY. Occupation: Operator/Manager of trucking service (1999). They were divorced in Feb 2003.
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