My Life Story By Sue Blevins Kovack

I was born in Rocks Springs, Wyoming on March 12,1944 as my father, Jim Blevins was a coal miner and he took us there so he could work as they were on strike here in West Virginia, Carbondale area. My mother, Ruby Blevins was a school teacher and she could get a job anywhere, my dad made great money but my mother wanted to teach and teach, she did for over forty some odd years. She loved her job as a teacher and the kids loved her more! There were more kids at her funeral than adults!

I grew up and was told that I was suppose to be a Nash. Theodore Burleson told us that Wick Nash was the father of Melvina three sons, John, Wick and William Lawrence or Bill as we called him. I actually look a lot alike my Great Uncle Bill Blevins in the facial area. Theodore was one of the Grandsons to Minnie Blevins that lived with my Great Uncle John Blevins until she died. They were married but we c have not located a marriage license for them anywhere, John was a brother to my biological Grandpa Wick Henry Blevins and I grew up knowing John Blevins quite well. John was married three times, Betty Ramey, Minnie Slaughter Blevins and Nancy Treadway. We have a military record that states that John Blevins cannot father any children. John Blevins fought on San Juan hill with Teddy Roosevelt.

Wick Henry was my grandfather and when my Grandma Evalena died, Wick farmed out all his kids by Evalena James Blevins. He married Ethel Nora Early nine months later and had another set of kids! I was never allowed to visit him or call him Grandpa as my Dad was so angry at his father for giving up all his kids and he appointed himself "The Father Figure" for his brothers and sisters.

My father, Jim Blevins looked after all of them and managed to get married and have children of his own too! They were Lenora Ann Blevins, Patricia Sue Blevins, Jimmy Darryl Blevins and Jenny Lou Blevins. My mother was a Blevins and married a Blevins in Bristol, Virginia. My dad carried my mom across the street in Bristol, Va. and then, he told her, now woman, you are in Tennessee! I have some of my father's letters that he wrote to my mother and he was quite a romantic person!

Kemper Blevins and Justin Howard Blevins was raised in a boarding home and mistreated until my father was old enough to go get them out of there and helped them get a job and took Justin Howard to Kentucky with him and put him to work in a coal mines as most did during that time period and the pay was great and the medical was free too! The boarding home was owned by a sister to Ethel Nora Early. Kemper and Justin Howard wore those golfing hats as they worked on a golf course when they were in that boarding room. Kemper married Katherine Ashby.

My father was the most protective father anyone could have due to the way he was treated by his father, Wick Blevins. My dad, Jim Blevins would put up a six foot fence and kept us in that backyard so we could be safe! We had two Collie dogs until someone fed them some kind of poison. No one and I mean no one could talk about HIS KIDS! He was on you like flies on honey! That included my mother too!

We went on family picnics and ate watermelon that my dad had put in a cold running creek and secured with rocks. I so remember eating those cold cold watermelons. We would make ice cream on the Fourth of July too! I remember seeing my Dad watch us even when he was talking to another person, he knew where his kids were and what we were doing too!

My father would not let my mother spank us either and he even trained our family dog, a bulldog to attack my mother when she would try to spank US! My father, Jim Blevins was six feet and four inches tall and weighed 225 pounds so few men would mess with him. I have seen him take three men at one time and throw them out of our restaurant in The wildcat area of southern Virginia.

It seemed as if everywhere we moved that Kemper Blevins would go there too. So I grew up with Mike, Patsy, Jim, Joe, Jerry, Danny and Barbara Kay Blevins and we were real close and have always been that way to this date today of June 24,2005. It is funny as Mike was the oldest and he was named Charles Edward Blevins and Uncle Kemp wanted him to be named Mike so he said from this day forward, he shall be known as Mike and all of us called him that. We went on most holiday picnics together and we were together on the other holidays as well.

My Uncle Justin was called Tots and Uncle Preacher to me?????Do not know the reason for that either! Its no wonder we are having extreme difficulties locating our family records now. the Blevins's did not leave a paper trail so they are very hard to document.

Justin Howard once was in a bar drinking beer and talking to some of his buddies and my father went to visit them and his wife said that he was not home and told him where he could find Justin and that she was unhappy that he spent his free time there and not at home. My dad, Jim Blevins went to that bar and took that beer and told his brother that you are a married man and you are suppose to be home with your wife and made him leave that bar and to this day, we do not know what Jim Blevins told his brother Justin Howard Blevins but he never went to any bars after that!

My dad drank all the time and whiskey too! We once drove over The Golden Gate Bridge and my parents were having an argument about his drinking and he took that whiskey bottle out and threw it over the bridge into the water and he never drank after that. I have been in numerous states and lived in most of them as my father, Jim Blevins was Jack of all Trades! He was w worker and a great one too. he ran a motor car in the mines and when he came down the tracks, the men would scatter as they knew he was not stopping for any of them and often, the lunch buckets would go flying off the tracks as Jim Blevins was paid by the loads he did in a day and he was the fastest and made the most money! The men would yell down the tracks that Jim Blevins or Big Jim was coming! My father never took lunch and ate on that motor car everyday.

My father had nicknames for all of us, Big Ann, Little Sue, Pedro and My Cowgirl was Jenny. My father loved to hunt and fish too! We were in Colorado for that reason so he could hunt and fish! My mother was a great woman and put herself through college without any help from her parents as they did not think that a woman should get a college education.

My mother spent her weekends with Sarah Mullins Blevins and she would talk about the family and if my mother started to close her eyes, she would be pinched anywhere that hand would land and my Great Grandma Sarah Mullins Blevins would tell her, I am not done with you yet! That is how my mother knew so much about her family. Mother finished college and had her degree and went to teach her first class in Hellier, Kentucky and there is where she met my father, Jim Blevins. Jim Blevins was friends with Clifford Eugene Blevins and he was dating Irene Blevins, my mother's sister in Kentucky and she was fifteen at that time and Irene married Clifford Blevins and had her first son, Dean Blevins at age sixteen.

I went to High School in West Virginia and also Virginia, Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia , and then to Maryland to North Caroline High School where I graduated. I left the next day and got on a bus and came to my sister apartment in Arlington as she had a job and was working at General Electric. I had a babysitting job for the summer and I went to work for the Hecht Company on Glebe Road and took a bus to work or walked if it was daytime. I went to work for Sears in the customer service department then. I rented a room and finally got an apartment with a friend and she was never at the apartment but paid her half of the rent. so I was happy.

I met Dennis William Kovack at this time and we were getting serious. He was a automobile mechanic next door to the Hecht Company. I walked down to his shop one day and drove myself to the Glebe Road DMV and took my drivers license test and drove his suped up Mercury back to his shop and walked to my room as I had the day off and I was determined to get my license.

Dennis came and picked me up after work and we would eat together and spend the evening together too. We were married on January 23,1966 and my oldest son, Skylar David Kovack was born on July 10,1967. He was a big baby at eight pounds and eight and one half ounces and actually gained an ounce before we left the Columbia Hospital For women in Washington, D.C. as that is where my doctors wanted me to go to have this baby. as we lived in Arlington, Va. So, I took a nine pound newborn son home.

My son Sky had asthma and bad tonsils and he was too young to have them taken out and I had started working for Safeway Grocery Stores in 1964 when my brother Jimmy Darryl was hit by a train and killed in Manassas, Va. Jimmy worked for Safeway and I went to work in the same store as he was employed. My husband and I decided that we needed to go to a drier climate for our son Sky so we sold some things and packed up and went to Phoenix, Arizona and I went to work for Safeway Stores there also and my son Christopher James Kovack was born on March 18, 1971.

The hospital was across the street from our apartment building and I walked to my doctor's office and to Christown Hospital where he was born. Chris had hair down his neck and it was very black and his skin was so much darker that my other son, Sky. Chris looked like an Indian baby! He was the sweetest baby. I was awaken at the crack of dawn as the sun comes up early in Arizona like 4:00 A. M. My son, Chris would get up when the sun did so I took aluminum foil and covered his entire window and he slept until at least eight in the mornings! My mother was laughing at me but, hey, it worked for me! My Sky was three and very very active and a handful during the daytime and I needed my sleep to handle him and a newborn too!

My husband wanted out of Phoenix as it was unbearable to work in that heat! We moved to Douglas, Arizona and he went to work in the Copper smelter there. My mother and my sister, Debbie Toney lived there also and so did my sister, Jenny and her first husband, Bob George. Jenny and Robert George built their home from the ground up and they did all the work themselves and went to Tucson and bought the supplies that they needed.

I moved to Arizona in May of 1969 and we came back to Pennsylvania in May of 1978. My husband was from this area, Somerset, Pa. He could not get a good paying job and we left in 1979 to come to Virginia and I have been here since that time period and I had over forty years with Safeway Grocery Stores too and I just retired from Safeway in 2004.

My husband developed a neurological disease called Dystonia and he became a man that I did not know and we were both unhappy so we divorced in 1990 and he lives in Somerset, Pa, now. I have six Grand children now from ages 17 to seven. Megan Marie Kovack, Rebecca Ann Kovack, Sky David Jr., Joseph David Kovack, and a set of twins, Amanda Marie Kovack and Kristin Lynn Kovack. I now have a part time job as I do not like retirement as of now!

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I am proud of my daughter too! I love her to pieces too! Its hard sometimes to give her her needed space as I want to see her all the time but I try to respect her wishes and give her some freedom too. But I wish!

Happy Happy Birthday Baby!

Mom's Baby!

Love you,

Mom

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