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Spencer Eakin, their great-great-grandfather, was the first of five brothers who arrived here from Ireland. Their grandfather, James Deery Sr., along with their father, James Deery Jr., were born in the historic home on Main Street beside Legends Steakhouse. Although their grandfather worked for the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railroad, he was fascinated by nature and weather patterns. He noted these in his diary, along with detailed lists of every animal on the farm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This love of learning was passed down through generations of Eakins, and each sibling, like their parents, graduated from college. Kathy and Missy became educators like their parents. Until she retired in 2009, Kathy worked for a publishing company in Birmingham, Alabama, and had previously been a vocational home economics teacher. Missy\u2019s career in special education spanned 42 years. Since her retirement in May 2025, she has worked in the ticket office at The Celebration alongside Margaret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Margaret worked at The Fly Manufacturing Company until it closed. Then she spent 22 years in the banking industry. Their big brother, Jim, pursued a career in the Air Force before transitioning to a career with a major airline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several streets in Bedford County bear the names of their ancestors, and a local school was renamed in honor of their father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kathy said, \u201cOur dad never forgot the faces or the names of his students. He knew who your parents were.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Missy playfully added, \u201cHe knew who your grandparents were.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEakin Elementary School was originally named Central Elementary School when it was located where the Bedford Learning Academy is now. Shelbyville Central High School (SCHS) absorbed the buildings that had been the elementary school into its campus. When the new Central Elementary School was built over by the Shelbyville Recreation Center around 1966, our dad was the principal. Immediately upon his retirement on Feb. 26, 1979, they renamed the building after him,\u201d Missy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe listened to what people had to say,\u201d Kathy continued. \u201cDad\u2019s philosophy was that he wouldn\u2019t believe everything the child said went on at home, if the parents wouldn\u2019t believe everything the child said happened at school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jim recalled, \u201cDad found out that children were missing school because they didn\u2019t have the appropriate clothes to wear. He not only made sure they had what they needed, but he insisted they had clothing that matched the styles of what other students wore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou really can\u2019t talk about Daddy without also including Mama,\u201d Margaret said. \u201cShe spent 30 years teaching junior English and American History, and she is the one who started the marching band at SCHS. She was a violinist and a vocalist, and she also played the clarinet. Her maiden name was Ruth Tittsworth. She came from a family of 11 children. All but three attended college, and several were teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though their parents grew up in Shelbyville, they met after Deery returned from serving in World War II. Missy recalled, \u201cDaddy attended one year at Austin Peay State University, then he enlisted. When he returned, he taught at SCHS for a year. That\u2019s when he met Mama. Several of their students credited themselves with setting them up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Missy rose from the table and returned with a wooden rolling pin. \u201cSome of the boys made this for them in their woodshop class. It was a wedding present.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth died in 1982, and Deery died in 1999. Both are buried in the Cowan-Eakin family cemetery behind the First Baptist Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll four of us smile when we hear a child refer to themselves as an \u2018Eakin Einstein,\u2019\u201d Missy said. \u201cDaddy\u2019s picture hangs in the hallway, and students call him the \u2018granddaddy of the school.\u2019 Their eyes always get bigger when I tell them he was my daddy.\u201d GN<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TOWERING TREES hugged both sides of the narrow driveway as gravel crunched beneath the tires of my minivan. Each time I traveled Old Nashville Dirt Road, I had admired this two-story farmhouse with its wraparound porch and brick chimney poking through the center of its shingled roof. Three dormer windows \u2014 with the center one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":25222,"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":[6,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-shelbyville"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/goodnewsmags.com\/shelbyville\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2026\/06\/2-5-1024x683.jpg\")
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