Page 13 - Gary's Book - Final Copy 7.9.2017_Active

• Dad’s mother’s mother was a real Irish lady, who stood about 5’10”and
weighed about 130 pounds. She was a well-educated and very beautiful

person. Her husband was the postmaster in Walnut, North Carolina, around
1939 or 1940.
• Ida Lee Dalton, Dad’s mom, was born in North Carolina in 1886 and died in

1946 in Georgia. She had two brothers: James Dalton was a carpenter and
contractor and John Dalton was a businessman. Both lived in Ashville,
North Carolina. She had three sisters: Clara Nix, in Canton, North Carolina,

Dora, who lived somewhere in North Carolina and Betty, who lived in
Texas.
• Thomas Jefferson Sprouse worked for the Northern Lumber Company,

which transferred him all over North Carolina (Laural, Andrews, Cherokee,
and Murphy) and Tennessee (Copper Hill and Post Tell) and, finally, to
Epworth, Georgia.

• Thomas Jefferson Sprouse left the family in 1932 and was never heard from
again.

Shortly after Dad joined the army, he was sent to the Georgia Artillery Corps in
Jackson, South Carolina. Later he was transferred to the Sanitary Training Medical
Division and then on to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, followed by Jefferson Barracks,

Missouri. This was from May 1922 until June 1928. It is coincidental that he was
eventually buried in Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, his last duty assignment. Dad
was honorably discharged as a sergeant 3 class from Ft. Sheridan in Illinois.
rd
On September 17, 1928, at the age of twenty-five, Dad joined the St. Louis Police
Department as a probation patrolman. He claimed he had matured while in the
Army. Memos show that he visited his mother in 1929 when she was sick, and he
that he also visited his sister, Hilda, in 1934 just before she died.

Records show that Dad was born Grady Leadu Wilson. He did not like his middle
name, so he changed it to Louis one time when he changed schools. He went by
Grady Louis Sprouse, taking his stepdad’s last name. He never stayed at one

school long enough to get a decent education, but he did attend various Sunday
schools at various Methodist and Baptist churches. He received a Bible from a

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