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The People Who Lived on the Land that is Now Redstone Arsenal, page 152
ROOSEVELT LOVE (Born 1925 or 1926) Interviewed by Skip Vaughn Roosevelt Love was interviewed by Skip Vaughn. The interview was printed in the Redstone Rocket, July 2, 1980. While Roosevelt said his mother was from Mullins Flat, many of the elderly people from both Mullins Flat and Pond Beat who were interviewed remembered him and Jesse Penny, his grandfather. Some said they took their cane to Jesse, and he made molasses for them. Love did not mention his mother's or his grandmother's name in Vaughn's interview. The researcher learned from people she interviewed that his mother's name was Lola. Emma Penny was Jessie Penny's wife “by second marriage.” Since those who knew Jessie were speaking of the same time period Roosevelt was describing in the interview with Vaughn, it is reasonable to assume that it was Emma who was the “grandmom.” Some of the people the researcher interviewed from Mullins Flat said they walked up to Elko to catch the train Roosevelt Love visiting his family cemetery on Redstone Arsenal in 1980. Source: The Redstone Rocket, July 2, 1980. when they wanted to go to Huntsville. Roosevelt Love's interview reveals another location for catching the train (which was called the “Old Joe Wheeler”)??"where the Space and Rocket Center is today, on Highway 20.” The text of the article written by Skip Vaughn is presented verbatim below. “My roots are here, man,” The Redstone Rocket, July 2, 1980. Roosevelt Love pointed out where an old log cabin used to stand on land that his grandfather sharecropped. Across the street near that Martin RoadMills Road intersection is an old graveyard [shown as Fennil Cemetery on the Redstone Arsenal Cemetery Map] where some of his relatives are buried. A boyhood friend who lived nearby, died at an early age. Love, 54, a counselor in the arsenal's drug and alcohol rehabilitation program (Human Resources and Development Services), remembers life as it was before this land became Redstone Arsenal. He was born off what is now four-laned Martin Road. His father died and his mother took him to Tennessee, then sent him back for his grandparents to raise when he was five. They lived and 152 - (4185)