{"id":24231,"date":"2025-10-09T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goodnewsmags.com\/manchester\/?p=24231"},"modified":"2025-10-07T15:40:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T15:40:00","slug":"cora-reed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goodnewsmags.com\/manchester\/cora-reed\/","title":{"rendered":"Cora Reed: Open hearts, open doors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article is dedicated to the precious Mrs. Cora Reed, who went to be with her husband, Herbert, in heaven a week after this interview, on Sept. 2, 2025. She was able to hear her article read to her in the hours before she passed, and it brought her joy. She was a light to all who knew her.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

THE LOVELY 93-year-old Cora Reed sat in her cozy room at Autumn Oaks Assisted Living, surrounded by well-placed photos, trinkets, and memorabilia celebrating the years of her life growing up in Manchester \u2014 a life shaped by war, community service, family, and the belief that everyone should contribute to the greater good of the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up on her family\u2019s farm in the Blanton Chapel area of Manchester, Reed and her younger sister, Jean Pierce, saw firsthand how their parents, Roy and Ludie Toliver, opened their home and hearts to those in need during World War II. When the girls were just children, two different American regiments (known locally as the \u201cReds\u201d and the \u201cBlues\u201d) camped in the woods surrounding their property, with the Blues stationed \u201cright across the road,\u201d according to Reed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had families from North Carolina, Virginia, and all different states,\u201d Reed said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Photography by Ashleigh Newnes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The wives and children of the soldiers came to stay at Reed\u2019s family home while the husbands were stationed at the camps. The farmhouse bustled with activity as families found refuge under her parents\u2019 roof. Reed\u2019s family provided bedrooms, meals, and care for all in need. Reed said one of the funniest stories she recalled stemmed from a preconceived idea about country life in those times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had one lady staying with three little children, and she\u2019d already told the children, \u2018Now this is going to be way out in the country, and we won\u2019t have an indoor bathroom,\u2019\u201d Reed said, chuckling. \u201cWell, honey, we were the first family in the community to ever have a bathroom in our house! Whenever their mama was showing them that room, we heard the little girls say, \u2018Mama! Thank goodness! They have a bathroom!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The presence of the military camps meant certain restrictions for the families, however. During training, when the two regiments would practice battling each other, families were required to keep everything dark in the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe couldn\u2019t have any lights on in our rooms or anything like that,\u201d Reed remembered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reed said the days were busy for everyone on the farm, even the house guests. Her dad\u2019s philosophy was: \u201cYou put your feet under my table, you have to work.\u201d The children helped Reed feed and care for the animals, and the women helped Reed\u2019s mother with anything she needed. Reed\u2019s mother, along with her sister, kindly fed the soldiers stationed nearby whenever possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photography by Ashleigh Newnes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey made fried pies and sent them over, and didn\u2019t charge them anything,\u201d Reed said. \u201cThey loved drinking from our hand-dug well, too. They said it was the best water they ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reed\u2019s father raised 2,700 chickens at one time on their farm. Reed said the chickens were so loud that you could hear them in the post office in town. The family had a two-story barn to house the chickens, complete with running water on both levels, which was rare then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reed\u2019s father also helped the people of Manchester by taking over the Coffee County Farm for 14 years. This facility served as both a working farm and a care facility for anyone in the county who needed a place to stay or receive care for free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnybody that needed a place to stay, live, or be taken care of could come to the Farm,\u201d Reed explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Coffee County Farm took in anyone who needed help, including young, unmarried mothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey had some girls brought up there that were pregnant with no help,\u201d she recalled. \u201cDaddy took some of those girls in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduating from Coffee County High School, Reed attended beauty school in Tullahoma and worked as a hairdresser for 12 years. A mutual friend introduced her to her future husband, Herbert Reed, through the beauty shop. Herbert, nine years her senior, had served in World War II himself, traveling to England on the Queen Mary to work in hospitals caring for wounded soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photography by Ashleigh Newnes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When they began dating, Herbert worked for a man named Al Schimmer in Williamson County, operating tractors and combines, often until 9 p.m. Cora\u2019s father then made him an offer: move to the family farm, help with the dairy cows, and in return, her father would build an addition to his farmhouse for them and offer higher wages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought, ‘Well, if he does that, then one of us would be there if something happened to Mama or Daddy,’\u201d Cora said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the Reeds never had children of their own, they enjoyed being aunt and uncle to Herbert\u2019s siblings\u2019 children. They maintained close family connections while having the freedom to travel. Cora made two trips to Israel with a church group \u2014 once in February 1979 and again in October 1987 \u2014 experiences she described as being spiritually transformative. Her faith in God was strong, and she played the organ for her church over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The farm where she grew up has since been sold, and both Herbert Reed and Jean Pierce\u2019s husband have been gone for several years now. Cora\u2019s sister, Jean, now 88, is still living. Jean asked her sister how she could possibly remember so much of their life\u2019s history in such great detail, and Cora just smiled, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s because I don\u2019t get involved with all those screens.\u201d Her sharp mind was its own computer, with many decades-worth of stories of local and family history, but she said we would need a whole series of articles to retell them all. GN<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article is dedicated to the precious Mrs. Cora Reed, who went to be with her husband, Herbert, in heaven a week after this interview, on Sept. 2, 2025. She was able to hear her article read to her in the hours before she passed, and it brought her joy. She was a light to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":24233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"\nCora Reed: Open hearts, open doors - Manchester, TN Good News Exchange<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/goodnewsmags.com\/manchester\/cora-reed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cora Reed: Open hearts, open doors - Manchester, TN Good News Exchange\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This article is dedicated to the precious Mrs. Cora Reed, who went to be with her husband, Herbert, in heaven a week after this interview, on Sept. 2, 2025. 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