Imagine 10 siblings traveling the state with their parents as the father had to keep them moving to support his family.

Those five sisters and five brothers now meet twice a year in April and October just down the road from where their Mom was born and raised in the rural area southeast of Hainesville. They are the children of Lois White Pennington and Jack Pennington. They range from the youngest, Lynn (65) to the oldest, Dewere (85), and the family semiannual meetings keep the siblings close.

The Pennington girls are Dewere Thompson, Yvonne Ross, Elaine Gillis, Brenda Coley and Ann Cooper. The male Penningtons are Lynn, Donald, Jerry, Charles and Jackie. Seven of the siblings live in Texas while brothers Charles and Donald live in Alabama and Yvonne lives in Tennessee.

Jack Pennington was a truck driver and had also worked for the railroad. He also found jobs wherever and whenever he could to support the clan. The family had traveled throughout Texas following the jobs the father could find. At one time Jack was injured in an accident and had to stay out of work for a while.

The Pennington saga began with Jack and Lois.

“My mother and daddy were both raised in this part of the country,” Gillis said. “They lived here for a while, but after they got married Daddy started moving around to all different places in Texas. We moved around quite a bit when we were growing up. Daddy could do anything so he went from job to job, wherever he could find work, but we always survived.”

Gillis gave a brief view of growing up with a big family. “Well, we were dirt poor and didn’t know it. There were times we had watermelons for supper,” Gillis noted. “We barely got by and most of us didn’t have shoes sometimes. We went to school barefooted sometimes.”

She added, “Daddy worked but he was gone for long periods of time and Momma wasn’t sure when he would get home. Back then when we were kids we thought we were doing all right. I don’t remember having a lot to eat, but Momma made sure we were never hungry. Now, the two oldest girls when they went to school, they didn’t have money for lunch and they would just go outside and play.” 

At one time they had to split up.

“My mother was a very good woman and she did what she could to keep us together,” Gillis said. “At one time in the early 1950s we went to foster homes. The three eldest went with relatives but the rest to foster homes. We weren’t there for a whole year. My Daddy had a wreck that almost killed him when he was driving a truck. It was then my mother went to work for Frito-Lay in Dallas.”

Mother Lois not only raised her 10 kids, but at a time when they needed it the most, she found the work at Frito-Lay where she worked many years. Lois fought hard against tremendous odds and got all her children back when she started working.

When in Dallas, the family lived in what was then North Dallas.

“It was what we called the projects somewhere over on Maple Avenue in Dallas, but we were all able to be with the family. She got all of us back. Our mother never stopped working hard to keep us all together,” Gillis added. 

Despite the tough times raising a family of 10, Gillis sees only the positive.

“We have had a memorable life,” she said. “I don’t know how we slept in one bed, but we were all together. I can’t figure out today how we did it, but we did. Mother and Daddy had a bed and always had a baby with them. And the rest of us slept in the bed and wherever we could. I can remember seeing the stars at night through the roof in some of the shacks where we lived. But through it all, we all grew up to be pretty good people. None of us have been bad people, we all ended up being pretty good people.”

Gillis added, “We do love each other a lot and we stick by each other. I have to credit my mother for most of our success. She went to work and got us all back, but my Daddy worked hard and did everything he could for us, but my mother was the backbone of our family. When she went to work at Frito-Lay and we went to live in that government apartment, it was the first time we ever had running water. When we lived out in the country we usually had one light in the whole house.”

The twice a year reunions for the Pennington family are always special. There is good food, great conversation and a lot of wonderful memories of days gone by. The Pennington family is an American legacy, a mother and father who did all they could for their constantly growing clan to make their lives better.