It wasn’t long before Charles Wycuff, a local resident who, many years later, would become one of the south’s best known gospel songwriters, introduced him to a young piano player he would marry a few years later when she was almost 16 years old.īennie Guthrie - now 92, going on 93 years old - remembers the day of their marriage. He was 15 when he and his family moved to Alabama City where two older brothers and a sister worked at the huge Dwight Cotton Mill. Truman was born on April 25, 1928, and early raised in the Grant community of Marshall County. And that is another part of our tale, odd that it is. Several weeks before, he had been drafted into Army basic training, gone home on leave, gotten married (the main topic of today’s story), returned to his camp, then was shipped overseas to join our fighting forces.Ī few days after arriving in a major combat area, he was shot in the hip. Truman Guthrie missed being a part of the D-Day invasion by a few days. The major headline: “FRANCE INVADED! Allied troops launch Mighty Offensive 5th Army chases shattered Nazis North of Rome … .” and its allies making a huge move against their German enemy. The major news of the month told of the U.S. June 1944: World War II was raging and the United States was fighting on two fronts – against Japan on one side of the world and in Europe on the other.
