Juanita Conner Barnett Talks about Her Life
August 4, 2022 article by Steve Crain
Juanita Barnett is pictured. Ms. JUANITA CONNER BARNETT, a Faith Temple member, was one of 9 children raised in a family at “Frog Level” on Milford Church Road, Route 2, Taylors, SC.
“We lived almost two miles from Double Springs Baptist Church,” she says. “Dad was sickly a lot.”
Her parents, Mrs. Irene Forrester Conner and Mr. John D. Conner, attended Double Springs Baptist. They did not own their house but lived in a farmhouse located on about 10 acres her father share-cropped. The family plowed with a mule and mainly raised cotton. The father was 6’4” and weighed 140; the mother was 5’5” and weighed about 160. The two oldest sons did much of the farming.
Juanita’s father worked a few years at Victor Mill dye house until getting “dye poisoning” when she was about 10 years old. “He broke out from head to toe in a rash and had a skin condition on his feet. He got over most of it,” she says. Having no indoor plumbing, they drew water from a well. A cattle watering trough was brought in, and Juanita’s mother heated water for her husband’s trough bath to treat his rash. That sickness worried him so much that he spent two months in the SC State Hospital and was largely disabled for the rest of his life. When Juanita’s father suffered sicknesses, her athletic mother would run a quarter of a mile to the neighbor’s to call a doctor. Her mom continued attending church, but her father became too nervous to go.
“My
mom was a strong woman,” Juanita says. “She was one of 4 girls. Her
mother died when she was 5. Mother’s great-aunt helped a lot. Mother was
valedictorian at Jordan High and worked, before she married, as a nanny
for a Spartanburg doctor’s children.” Each week her father put Irene on
the train to Spartanburg to reside 5 days at the doctor’s house. The
doctor also taught her things about medicine.
JUANITA
Born on Aug. 31, 1945, Juanita was the third child (she had 2 older
brothers) of 4 girls and 5 boys. She helped mind the children. She
attended Double Springs Elementary for 1-4 grades and then on to
Mountain View. At age 13, she was out of school for 3 weeks to cook and
care for the family while her mother was sick.
“I liked school,” she said. “At home, I had to work with Mother or in the field. She taught us canning and quilting. The house we lived in was clapboard; you could see through the floors. We had two wood-burning stoves (one was a cookstove).”
Ten percent of the time Juanita walked to church on Sunday mornings with Mr. Belt Paige, an older neighbor. She accepted Christ at age 12, after one of Mrs. Mary Dill’s Sunday school classes.
“I felt like I needed to do it that day,” she says. “The Spirit was moving, and I said, ‘Yes.’ I was baptized at Double Springs. My mama taught us the Bible. Mama said, ‘I’m not raising any heathens!’ and she knew how to use a hickory stick, too.”
During spring of 1961, Juanita, a 10th-grader, met Jay Barnett, 5 years older than she, at a tent revival “in a field on Darby Road,” not far from her house. Pastor Jimmy Thompson was one of the speakers. Jay hailed from a family of 5 girls and 5 boys, had a 7th-grade education, and worked as a school bus mechanic. She was with a girlfriend, and Jay brought them home and asked Juanita for a date. She told him to see her dad. Jay asked a week later, and her father told him there’d be “no monkey business, no mistreatment, or he’d ‘whup’ him!”
Juanita told Jay, “God comes first in my life. If you can’t live with that, then you might as well not come back anymore.”
Her mom told her to be home by 11 p.m. on Saturdays, and if they dated on Sunday nights, they had to go to church. Her mom had said to her daughters, “If you think about marrying just to get away from home, you need to think about it very hard.” Juanita finished 10th grade at Blue Ridge High and decided to quit school. She told her mom, “We’re in love and we want to get married.” She told her mother that if she wouldn’t sign for her to marry, she knew someone who would.
Tears
rolled down her mother’s face as she said, “I’d rather sign and know
where you are than for you to run off somewhere to get married.”
MARRIED
ON OCT. 7, 1961, Juanita Conner, 16, and Jay Barnett, 21, married at
Double Springs Baptist Church’s parsonage. Pastor Huford C. Cash
performed the ceremony; his wife was there. During the ceremony, the
Cashes put their kids in their car to avoid interruptions.
Juanita and her family attended Double Springs, Taylors, SC, but she began going to her husband’s church, Faith Temple (FT), in 1962. “It was loud, at first — the music and some shouting and speaking in tongues. It was interesting, and I wanted to know more about it,” she says.
They rented a small house in O’Neal. Jay left mechanic work for Southern Worsted Mill in 1963. In 1964, Juanita hired on at Maxon Shirt Co., founded by Max Heller, former Greenville mayor. She sorted, boxed, and sent out shirts in the finishing department. About 125 people worked at Maxon.
Pastor
James H. “Jimmy” Thompson appointed Juanita as Faith Temple (FT) Sunday
School secretary. She often attended the Willing Workers class, taught
by Emily Reynolds and Jack Barnett (Jay’s brother). Pastor Jimmy asked
Juanita to work at Faith Printing (FP), a company he founded. Two months
later, when Juanita witnessed verbal abuse by Maxon’s plant manager,
she defended the abused lady. Words were exchanged, and Juanita “quit on
the spot” after 5 years at Maxon. The plant manager told her, “You’ll
be back.” (The plant closed 4 years later.)
A NEW JOB
Juanita interviewed with Pastor Jimmy and began working at FP in Aug.
1969. He asked her to finish high school. At Greer High night-school,
while working days at FP with Dolly Lynn (pasting up pages to be
printed), she earned a diploma in 1.5 years. She often talked with FP
customers about layouts and design. She helped supervise and later gave
pricing quotes on jobs. She referred to Pastor Jimmy as “Mr. Thompson”
in the FP office and worked with him on starting the “Temple Times” and
Channel 16 (WGGS-TV) newsletters.
Her brother, Harold Wayne Conner, spent 18 months in the Army in Germany and then worked at Homelite. In 1970, he died in an auto accident. His Homelite insurance helped buy a house with 6 acres in the O’Neal area for his parents. (Her father died on April 1, 1980 at age 70. Her mother died from a blood clot in 2013 at age 94.)
Juanita
says that FT’s Associate Pastor Fred Bachman began FT’s bus ministry in
1976 and it lasted at least 10 years. The late Pete Lunny worked as bus
director. Children and a few adults rode the buses. That ministry
phased out due to increased insurance costs, original-building
deterioration, fire inspections, etc., she says. FT began refurbishing
the original building. Children still attended, but no buses ran.
Juanita has served FT as a Sun. school teacher and superintendent,
children’s worker, bus ministry helper, and ladies’ group member.
LIFE CHANGES
In the 1980s, Jay began work as a machinist. In 1998, Juanita’s mother
suffered a stroke while holding boiling water that spilled, leaving her
foot with third-degree burns. Juanita missed church for 3 weeks to nurse
her mother. During his second Sunday of going alone to church,
something occurred at church that caused Jay to quit.
“What happened?” Juanita asked. He said, “That’s between me and God. I’m not telling anyone.” A relative suggested talking and working it out, Jay said, “There’s no working it out.” He had gone to church with Juanita for years, but their attending together was over.
Jay retired at 62 in 2008. In 2012, he contracted leukemia. At the hospital, Juanita asked, “Are you ready to meet God?” “I’m not sure,” Jay said. “Can we pray?” she said. He prayed the sinner’s prayer with her. “Everything’s all right,” he said. The next day, he wanted to be baptized.
After 2 weeks of Jay's hospital stay, Pastor Burrows and some men baptized Jay, pouring water over his head into a bath container. “I’m ready to go. I just don’t want to leave you,” he told Juanita. She told him she had family and friends. Jay spent 30 days at the hospital and 30 in rehab before going home for 2 months of remission. The disease returned powerfully on May 15, 2013. He spent 5 days at the McCall Hospice House, Simpsonville, SC, and died at 2:00 a.m., Sat., June 1, 2013.
Juanita worked until Feb. 2015; FP closed a few months later. She helped Ms. Dot Campbell until she passed (Nov. 20, 2021) and Ms. Evelyn Henson until she passed (July 2, 2022). Her closest relatives include: Nephew Billy Edward Daniels, Niece Ashley Fitzgerald, Sister Jeanette (husband, Lindy) Fitzgerald, and Brothers James and Dean (wife, Valerie) Conner and family members.
“God has really blessed me,” Juanita says.
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Obituary for Jay Barnett
Dateline: Taylors
Jay Barnett, 73, of 30 Paris View Drive, died June 1, 2013 at McCall Hospice House.
He was a native of Greenville County, son of the late Walter and Callie Williams Barnett.
Surviving are his wife, Juanita Conner Barnett of the home; one brother, Jack Barnett of Greer and two sisters Ruth Ann Wooten of Taylors and Margie Campbell of Greer.
Mr. Barnett was predeceased by three brothers, Herman, Homer and Clyde Barnett and three sisters, Katherine Walls, Mae Griffin and Grace Painter.
Funeral service will be held 2:00 p.m. Monday at Wood Mortuary conducted by Rev. Raymond D. Burrows. Burial will follow in Faith Temple Church cemetery.
Visitation will be held 4:00-6:00 p.m. Sunday at Wood Mortuary.
The family is at the home
Memorials may be made to McCall Hospice House, 1836 West Georgia Road, Simpsonville, S.C. 29680.
Online condolences may be made at www.thewoodmortuary.com.
Born August 31, 1945, in Taylors, South Carolina, Juanita was the daughter of the late John David Conner and Irene Forrester Conner. Juanita was married to the late Jay Barnett for fifty-one years until his death in 2013.
Juanita’s first job was with the Mac Shore Shirt Company and then she found her “career calling” as a customer service manager at Faith Printing Company in Taylors, South Carolina where she was a valued and faithful employee for forty-six years before her retirement in 2016.
Juanita had an unwavering faith in God and was a servant of Christ through teaching adult and children’s Sunday School, Bible School, and serving in many different roles at Faith Temple Church where she was a member for almost sixty years.
Juanita is survived by her sister, Janette Fitzgerald of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and brothers, James Conner of Taylors, South Carolina, Dean Conner (Valarie) of Mauldin, South Carolina; sisters-in-law Margie Campbell of Greer, South Carolina, Frances Barnett of Greer, South Carolina and brother-in-law, A. J. Painter of Greer, South Carolina. Surviving also are numerous treasured nieces, nephews, great- nieces, great-nephews, great-great nieces, great-great nephews; and her loving church family at Faith Temple. In addition to her husband and parents, Juanita is preceded in death by five siblings, infant Thalia Irene Conner, Hazel Conner Daniels, Harold Conner, Jesse Conner, and Olin Conner.
The family will receive friends on Monday, July 10, 2023, from 3 until 3:45 PM at Faith Temple Church, Taylors, South Carolina. A funeral service will follow at 4 PM in the church sanctuary led by her beloved friend and pastor, Rev. Raymond Burrows. Burial will follow at the church cemetery.
The family will be at their respective homes.
In lieu of flowers, please make memorial contributions to Faith Temple Church, 5058 Sandy Flat Road, Taylors, SC 29687.
Online condolences may be made at www.thewoodmortuary.com.
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