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Obituary for Sammie Garrett Jr.
Mr. Sammie Garrett Jr., died of natural causes on Feb. 22, 2018, in Fairfield, California, at the age of 89. He was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas on Aug. 4, 1928, the son of Sammie Garrett and Rosie Jones. He was born on the eve of the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and lasted until 1945. He lived in segregated Pine Bluff until he turned 17 in 1945. During his time in Pine Bluff as a boy and teenager, he worked carrying large blocks of ice on his back to homes for their ice boxes, chopped cotton in the local cotton fields, worked as a houseboy in a local family’s home and worked in a slaughter house. He left school in the 7th grade and ultimately joined the Army-Air Force, where he was assigned to a segregated unit. Thereafter, he was shipped to postwar Germany where he drove a truck, worked with German refugee citizens and was taken with others on a tour of an emptied German concentration camp. He also was able to sit in a War Crimes Tribunal and watch some Germans accused of war crimes while they were in court. After a tour of duty in Germany, he returned to the United States, married and began his family. He and his family lived in multiple states and foreign countries until his retirement in 1966 when he was honorably discharged from the United States Air Force at Travis Air Force Base, California. The family chose to make Fairfield, California their home. Staff Sergeant Garrett worked in the parachute shop at Travis Air Force Base as a civil service employee, until 1969 when he began working as a taxi driver for Commercial Taxi of Fairfield. He supported his family, consisting of a wife and six children, by driving a taxi for the next 30 years. Mr. Sammie Garrett, Jr. was the stern patriarch of a very large and loving family, and he will be greatly missed. He is survived by his wife, Margie Garrett; five children, LoRain Garrett Smith and husband, Anthony Smith, Ramona Garrett-Shortridge, Sammie Garrett III and wife, Rev. Alpha Banks, Bruce and wife, Petra Garrett and Nancy Garrett; six grandchildren, Londa Anderson, Nichelle Garrett, Jermaine Odom, Franklin Garrett, Cheyenne Garrett and Connilyn and husband, Mike Holloway; and numerous great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his mother, Rosie; his sister, Helen Jackson; and his son, Frank Garrett.
