Walter Floy Farr has always lived in the county where he was born and reared. The son of Walter D. and Mattie Ola Trammell Farr he was born May 20, 1912 in the community of Stop, which is just a stone’s throw north of Tyrone.

After moving to Tyrone, his dad ran a store with Ed Jackson, and his mother and Mrs. Jackson made hats and dresses on the top floor. The store sold items ranging from groceries to caskets and farm tools.

Stores sold on credit and when the boll weevil hit about 1920, wiping out the farmer’s cash crop, those creditors were unable to pay their bills. Consequently, the store had to close.

Floy’s father then farmed again, and his mother ran a small store in town.

Floy attended a two-room school in Tyrone through the 6th grade. To get to Fayetteville, several went together and bought a sort of a bus. In the 10th grade, he had a T-model Ford to drive the 10 miles.

In the winter months of December, January and February, the dirt roads were impossible, and he had to board in Fayetteville with the Jenkins family. He came home on the weekends.

He is a graduate of Fayette County High School, class of 1930. He was only the second young man from the western side of the county to graduate from the school. As far as is known, the only other men in that class still living includes Wilson Burch and Cecil Travis.

He had hope of attending the University of Georgia to become an extension agent but the depression declared otherwise. He worked at the bank/fertilizer/cotton plant in his hometown. Realizing that $15 a month was not going to advance him far in life, he enrolled at Draughon School of Commerce in Atlanta. This meant working during the day and catching a ride into Atlanta with a man who worked at the Terminal Train Station. He had a healthy walk from the train station to the college. Class was over at 10:30 p.m. He then walked back to the station and took a train home. His monthly salary barely covered this expense. To help in this venture, his dad would grow sweet potatoes. They would sell them on Whitehall Street in Atlanta on the weekends, adding a little money for gas.

After a few years, he was running the fertilizer plant, managing the cotton gin and was cashier of the bank. The facility was owned by the Redwine Brothers in Fayetteville. Southern Bell would not run service from Fayetteville so Floy persuaded the farmers to cut tall pine poles, and he would haul them to Tyrone. There the farmers would skin the bark from the logs, and then Floy took them to be treated at a creosote plant in East Point. The year was 1935.

They had to dig holes by hand, putting the poles up all the way to Fayetteville. Floy personally bought the glass insulators, each pole required two, and the Redwine Brothers bought the wire. The line was tied into the Fayetteville exchange, run by Miss Beauty Griggs. Her home was at the corner of Lanier and Lee Street, which is now occupied by the Fayetteville United Methodist Church.

It was a four-party line. One ring meant that the Tyrone bank was to answer, two rings meant someone at Floy’s house was to answer, three rings meant his cousin, Loy, next door, was to answer, and the fourth line went into the home of Eugene McElwaney. This arrangement lasted for 12 years.

Floy was one of the principal organizers of the Coweta-Fayette Electric Membership Corp. That first year they had 600 members sign up to receive electricity at their home, now the company has 70,000 members. He has served this organization for 61 years.

By 1941 he became quite knowledgeable about the cotton industry. He learned to class cotton, and along with others and the University of Georgia, developed a hearty strand of cotton, call Empire.

He learned to analyze fertilizer and came up with the idea of selling it in 5 pound bags in the local stores, a successful venture. He called the product “Dream World.”

Along with Brooks Pennington, Monroe and Jimmy Carter, of Plains, he served on a Certified Seed committee in conjunction with UGA. They represented small seeds, peanuts, and cotton seeds respectively.

Though he was drafted in World War II, he never got further than Fort McPherson. The army decided he was more important to them as a cotton expert.

In 1946 he built the building in downtown Tyrone now owned by Chip Young. Young has spiffed up the facility and it is available for rent for meetings or social occasions. From this building, Floy served his cotton and fertilizer customers, and the front part served as a bank. The vault room is still there and Floy was pleased to see the old vault inside is still intact.

Floy married a fellow Tyronian, Hilda Bruce Loyd, in 1937. They had two sons, Dr. W. F. “Sonny” Farr Jr., 65, and Thomas Emery Farr, who died quite unexpectedly four years ago. He was 60 years old. Sonny is a medical psychiatrist on an Indian reservation in Arizona.

Bruce has been a resident of Ashley Glen Assisted Living for the past eight years. She is a graduate of Bessie Tift College and taught in Senoia and Tyrone. She also worked for Standard Oil for a number of years in Tyrone.

They were active members of the Hopewell United Methodist Church in Tyrone until moving to Peachtree City in 1966, and have been active in the Peachtree City Presbyterian Church ever since.

Floy enjoys working in his yard, golfing, and commented on a 94th birthday, “you know your life span is getting shorter. I’ve had quite a diversified life and I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever done.”

This article covers the first half of Floy’s life, and the second half, along with Joel Cowan, is the story of Peachtree City. That story will appear in a future edition of The Citizen.