Eighth Generation

(Continued)

10544. John Samuel MCCLARRAN (George Thomas MCCLARRAN , Anna Elizabeth BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald).

John married June SMAIL.

They had the following children.

10545. Thomas Milton MCCLARRAN (George Thomas MCCLARRAN , Anna Elizabeth BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald).

Thomas married Louise O'SHEA.

They had the following children.

10546. Viva Jane MCCLARRAN (George Thomas MCCLARRAN , Anna Elizabeth BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald).

Viva married Glenn NOEL.

They had the following children.

10547. Sara Jean "Sally" KNEPPER (Ira Clark KNEPPER , Mary Alice BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald).

Sally married Alexander TUDYMAN.

They had the following children.

10548. Albert William "William" KNEPPER (Ira Clark KNEPPER , Mary Alice BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald) was born on 27 Feb 1918 in Pennsylvania. He died on 3 Aug 1983.

[Knepper-65] has Albert born in 1919, [Knepper-95] has him born in 1918.

By the 1930 census he is already going by William A. Knepper.

William married Jewel M. MARLOW "Judy" on 8 Nov 1943.

They had the following children.

10549. Robert Curtis KNEPPER (Curtis Barnhart KNEPPER , Mary Alice BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald).

Robert married Susan Adele HARMON.

They had the following children.

10550. Jo Ann KNEPPER (Benjamin Charles KNEPPER , Mary Alice BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald).

Jo married John SHAYMAN.

They had the following children.

10552. Alice Ann COPELAND ◊ (Ruth Leona KNEPPER , Mary Alice BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald) was born on 23 Dec 1932 in Greensburg, Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania. She died on 14 Oct 2004 in Omaha, Douglas Co., Nebraska from complications of cancer.

She graduated from Baldwin Academy in 1950 and from Duke University in 1954.

Ann married Glenn Arthur DEFFLER ◊, son of William Charles DEFFLER ◊ "Bill" and Florence Alberta POWERS ◊, on 20 Apr 1956 in Hagerstown, Washington Co., Maryland. Glenn was born on 8 Jun 1930 in Latrobe, Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania. He was baptized on 27 Nov 1938 in Evangelical United Brethren Church, Derry, Pennsylvania. He died on 26 Aug 1982 in Denville, Morris Co., New Jersey from lung cancer. He was buried in St. Clair Cemetery, Greensburg, Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania.

Glenn was issued a social security number of 185-22-9905 in Pennsylvania.

His birth certificate lists the town as Derry, which is where his family was living.  However, his mother said he was born in Latrobe Hospital.

Glenn graduated third in his class from Derry High School.  He enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh in 1948 but, after a few weeks, decided that he would rather be in the military.  He joined the U.S. Army in the autumn of that same year.  He was originally in the Signal Corps and served a tour in Korea during the war.  Later, he became a warrant officer and transferred to the Army Security Agency, the military equivalent of the NSA and a branch of Military Intelligence.  He worked as a traffic analyst on Soviet and Chinese code transmissions.  He served two tours in the Viet Nam War.

He met Ann while stationed at Ft. Meade in Maryland, where she worked for the NSA, and they married in 1956.  Glenn's pride and joy at the time was an Austin Healey 100.  He didn't have much experience driving, but walked into a dealership and said, "You get it to the curb and I'll figure out how to get it home."  He says he spent the next half an hour sitting there reading the manual and trying to learn to get the car going.  Ann says that, for all that he wouldn't hear a word against it, the car had a few quirks.  Probably the most significant was that the bolts holding the folding windshield were weak.  She said that twice they were rounding corners at the speeds Glenn preferred when the windshield simply parted ways with the car and headed off into the bushes.

I think the story he most liked to tell was the time the passenger became more important than the driver.  It was winter and they were traveling with two of Glenn's service friends, who also owned sports cars.  The three cars were several hundred yards apart, with Glenn in the middle in the left lane.  He says he saw the tail of the first car swerve at the top of hill he was approaching, so he hit the brakes.  The third car didn't react so quickly, and they both crested the hill at the same time and saw a long sheet of glare ice in front of them.  Both drivers were too afraid to touch the steering wheels or brakes at that point and the just started skidding down the hill...and slowly skidding closer and closer to each other.  Ann rolled down her window, leaned her body out, Glenn held onto her belt and she braced her arms against the other car and held it off until they could slide to a stop.

Months after their first child, Glenn was transferred to Clark Air Base in the Philippines.  They were there for two years and then back stateside.  Then he was  transferred to Frankfurt, Germany, where they remained for several years.  Glenn would save up his leave and, each summer, the family would pack up and go camping for a month to a different part of Europe.

Despite the many things that could go wrong on these trips, Glenn was usually pretty unflappable, including the time the entire family got food poisoning from bad shellfish in Portugal.  However, one evening the family hadn't made as much progress as anticipated and they just weren't going to reach the destination campsite.  It had gotten dark, a storm was brewing up, Glenn was exhausted from driving and they decided to make camp in a large, flat area they saw beside the road.  The tent went up in short order, a hasty dinner was made and eaten, and everyone settled into their sleeping bags just as the storm hit.  What they hadn't realized was that the large, flat area was a dry river bed...one that wasn't dry when storms came through.  Ann recalls waking up a half an hour later to Glenn, half-asleep, running around with a flashlight saying, "It's pouring in here, and here, and here," but not doing much else.  She got the kids and (now wet) sleeping bags into the car, the perishables up on the table and the family had a rather uncomfortable, and slightly soggy, night.

Returning to the States, they lived for a while in Laurel, Maryland before buying the first house the family owned in Bowie, Maryland.  Bowie was one of the Levitt communities going up during the late sixties:  hundreds of homes in five styles and six colors.  Glenn had inherited his father's love of working with his hands; prior to this he made cabinets for his stereo and slides and learned to tool leather into intricate belts and packs.  However, with a house to work with, he really had some scope.  Over the years he built fences, a patio, cement walkways, a huge barbecue, finished the attic above the garage and landscaped the entire yard, all by hand and the 'indentured' labor of his children.  About the only job he wouldn't tackle was cleaning the gutters; he was deathly afraid of heights and bribed the neighbor, a fireman, to do the job every fall with a case of beer.

He retired from the military on 30 Sep 1969.  He took a job as a programmer with Control Data Corporation for a couple of years, then took a job with Citibank in New York City.  The family moved up to Mountain Lakes, NJ and lived there until his death.  He continued to find working on the house his favorite form of relaxation and built a workshop in the basement for his projects.  One year, his father came out and two of them took apart the intricate wainscotting that filled the dining room, moved the doorway into the kitchen, and then re-cut and fit the pieces of the wainscotting and put it all back up so that no one could tell it had been disturbed.

Glenn had started smoking as a teenager and, though he tried many times that I can remember, he was never able to break the addiction.  He developed emphysema and lung cancer.  By the time they caught it, the cancer had completely taken over one lung.  He went into surgery within the week to remove that lung and part of the other.  However, he slipped into a coma due to complications from the operation and died a short while later.

They had the following children.

10553. Mary NMI COPELAND (Ruth Leona KNEPPER , Mary Alice BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald).

Mary married James Nettleton BAKER.

They had the following children.

10554. Kenneth Brockett EARNHARDT (Mary Alice KNEPPER , Mary Alice BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald).

Kenneth married Carol Teresa KOKOSKO.

They had the following children.

10555. Barbara Jean HUMBLE (Cora Louise KNEPPER , Mary Alice BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald).

Barbara married John Eugene HILL.

They had the following children.

10556. Brenda Louise HUMBLE (Cora Louise KNEPPER , Mary Alice BARNHART , Jemima THOMAS , John THOMAS , Anna Maria MECHLING , John Theobald , Theobald).

Brenda married William F. PANK.

They had the following children.