John C. Small, 93, of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky (formerly of Warfield, KY) passed away on February 9, 2021. Born December 9, 1927 in Lovely, Kentucky, John was the son of the late Boy and Maudie (Hale) Small, the sixth of their eight children. Though John dropped out of school to work full-time and help support his family after his father’s death, he later earned his G.E.D. in 1948. John served in the Navy for three years, first aboard the USS Bexar (APA 237) from 1946-47 and then aboard the USS New Jersey during the Korean War from 1953-54. In between and after his years in the Navy, John worked for 30 years for C&P Telephone Company of West Virginia, retiring in 1980. On August 16, 1947, John married Delores “Jean” (Booth) Small, and they were married for over 65 years until her death in 2013. Following John’s retirement in 1980, he and Jean operated the Warfield Laundromat and the Warfield Telephone Store for several years. John’s grandchildren have fond memories of their first paid jobs working in the laundromat during the summer and of helping assemble a phone store float (with an antique phone operator station) one year for the Warfield Liberty Festival parade. Never one to be still, when not working at the laundromat or the phone store, John could be found deep in his beloved holler at Buck Branch where he was born, tending to his cows and chickens or moving earth around with his bulldozer. John’s grandchildren, particularly “Dave-Dave” and Mark, spent countless hours exploring the holler with Poppaw. Anyone who spent any time at all around John will remember how he loved to tell a good story and how most all his stories included the infamous moment in which he would grin and say, “I said to myself, ‘Self . . . .’”
Services for John will be held at the Mullins Family Funeral Home in Warfield, KY. A walk through visitation will be held on Saturday, February 13, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The funeral service (for immediate family only) will begin at 2 p.m.
Burial will follow in the Warfield Cemetery.
Obituary Courtesy of Mullins Family Funeral Home.