Ira Lee Armstrong Jr
Position Held:
Dining Car Head Waiter & Waiter
Railroad Line Illinois Central
Trains:
City of Miami, City of New Orleans Panama Limited
Routes:
Fulton to Chicago, Chicago to Miami, New Orleans
Years Worked: 1940s-1971
Lived in : Fulton KY & Paducah, KY
Home Town: Fulton KY
We have so many fond memories and hardships of our father and the things we did as a family that it’s too many to put pen to paper, but will always be in our hearts and mind. Here are just a few to share.
We remember Daddy . . .
Scroll to below photos for full story.
We remember Daddy . . .
Scroll to below photos for full story.
How We Remember our Father
Ira Lee Armstrong, Jr.
We have so many fond memories and hardships of our father and the things we did as a family that it’s too many to put pen to paper, but will always be in our hearts and mind. Here are just a few to share.
We remember Daddy . . .
for his ability to support his family as a whole and to support each of us in everything we wanted to do. He would be the role model father that men today should be for their children. Even though he was away on the train days at a time or weeks at a time, when he was home he did what he was suppose to do as a father and as a husband.
oh, how happy we would be when he was home. Even though our mother could cook, it wasn’t like daddy’s cooking. Breakfast was a big production in our house. With 4 kids and a wife, we thought we were in a 5 star restaurant. He would prepare individual breakfast orders, especially our eggs, from scramble, hard boil, sunny side up to easy over; 4 different jellies, pancakes to order and let’s not forget about the country ham, sausage and bacon, apple juice, orange juice to milk. Beside breakfast, he was a great cook on the grill too, with his homemade barbeque pit, his own receipe for BBQ sauce – you could not top this man when it came to cooking.
being the head waiter-in-charge of the dining cars for the City of New Orleans and City of Miami, making sure all food orders were correct, beautiful presentations and ensuring food supplies were in order before pulling out of each geographic areas.
We remember Daddy . . .
for stepping up and being the mother and father when our mother was ill. When we got older, the girls Beverly, Gwen and Irhonda would laugh about the time that our father had to comb our hair and even took the pressing comb, now and then, to make sure our hair looked nice before going to school or to church. He even took us to Weak’s Apparel Store and asked us if we needed any new panties, slips or brazills as he called them.
as a deacon and the treasurer at Anticoh Baptist Church, we were always attending church services, Sunday school and not just attending, but the entire family was very active in the church.
We remember Daddy . . .
since we all attended school with our mother, a teacher, at Weakley County High School in Martin, Tennessee, we were so excited on the days that the ICRR train would pass by the school. All of the kids in the school, including us and our mother would either be hanging out of the school house windows or outside on the playground waiting for the train to pass by so we good wave at our father, who would be standing at one of the doors of the cars waving at us with his white handerchief.
that was the highlight of the week when his train would come through. It was hard for everyone to go back to their classes from the excitement.
We remember Daddy . . .
who loved being an outdoors person. When he was home from work and after doing honeydo’s around the house and yard, he loved to hunt and fish. With Lee, then known as Henry Lee, his only son, daddy would take him hunting with him, but he would take the girls fishing when we got older and when we didn’t want to just stay at home and do girly things. Except for Beverly, she and Lee would go fishing with daddy all the time. Beverly was the second son he didn’t have. When daddy was ready to packup and leave the fishing area, Lee and Beverly wasn’t ready because they were always in competition with each other trying to catch more fish than the other one. You know that they would be on the fishing banks for hours if daddy didn’t stop them.
when they came home from their fishing trips, the fish had to go somewhere prior to cleaning them, and somewhere big enough to hold them. Well, the best place we thought of would be the bath tub, and there they swim back and forward as we pulled on their tails to make them mad.
And of course, that did not set well with our mother either.
then it was time to prepare them for the hot skillet and that was Beverly and Dad’s job. As I stated earlier, Beverly was his other son. She loved being in the kitchen so she learned how to clean the fish and Oh, yes, how to skin rabbits
We remember Daddy . . .
during the time that the ICRR train derailed near Mt. Vernon, IL., hundreds of people were injured and our father was sent to a hospital in Mt. Vernon and then was release and was able to come home. That was the hardest time in our family, beside when our mother took ill, and then he had to be hospitalize later from complications from the train wreck.
the only thing that we, as children, can remember about racism that our father experience as a pullman on the ICRR was a little white girl, who was a passenger, called him the N …. Word and the parents screamed at their daughter and made her cry. Daddy told the little girl that it was okay, because if your parents used the word you go ahead and use that word too. Daddy told us that the parents were in shock, their faces turned red and they were so embarrassed.
being an active member of the NAACP, he worked hard to make sure everyone would be treated fairly and equal opportunity in the workplace and in the school systems.