- Date Of Birth: June 1, 1919
- Date Of Death: December 13, 2006
- State: Georgia
Joe P. Adkins, 87, of Chattanooga, died Wednesday December 13, 2006, in a local health care facility. Joe has been a Tennessee resident for eighty years. Born to the late Capt. Joseph P. Adkins, Sr. of LaFollette, TN, and Edith Louise McAllester, Lookout Mountain, when his Father was stationed in Washington, D.C. during WWI. At the end of the war the family returned to Chattanooga. Upon the death of his father, his mother married widower L.D. Miller, Sr. , who later served in Hamilton County as a Circuit Court Judge for twenty-four years. Joe grew up savoring summer months on the LaFollette farm and later enjoying various political endeavors with a new family which included a sister, Martha Bell Miller,Chattanooga; step-brother, L.D. Miller, Jr. Lookout Mountain, GA; Rinehart Miller Lackey, Cleveland; Portia Miller Wrenn, Chattanooga, and the late Sylvia Miller Johnson Graham, Copperhill. While attending Chattanooga High School, Joe expressed an enthusiastic interest in music. Always with a sense of humor and a flare for entertaining he became interested in producing and taking part in the schools annual “Stunt Nite” presentation-his singing and dancing antic brought roars from the audiences. The excitement was carried over after graduation as he enrolled at Bob Jones College in Cleveland, TN. It was there through classmate relationships such as Billy Graham, T.W. and Grady Wilson and President Bob Jones that his musical interests began to include more of a religious nature and Joe began setting lyrics to various pieces of sacred music. The following year he enrolled at Tennessee Tech (Cookeville, TN) to extend his musical endeavors. His personality and friendly concern for fellow classmates won him a landslide election as Class Secretary. World War II (1941-1945) found Joe first stationed in the U.S. Army as a medic at Stark General Hospital where he found an opportunity to ‘help ease the pain’ with his musical abilities. In France his good sense of humor, wit and musical performances of his famous ‘Buck’n Wing’ dances filled the camps’ newspapers with stories of his performances. The stories in the Stark Realities and Stars and Stripes even made news. Experiencing the suffering of war, Joe turned his writings to a more gospel-sacred type of music. Music lyrics written by Joe were, “The Key”, “Listen and Obey”, “What A Man”, “My Friend”, “All I Want Is You”, “Door To Heaven”, “Jimmy”, and “America I Love”. Upon his return to the states Joe enrolled at Cumberland Law School, Lebanon, TN and received his LLB in 1947. Again, his popularity was shown by being elected Class Sgt. At Arms. Joe joined his uncle, Williams L. McAllester, as an employee at the McAllester Hosiery Mill following the war. In 1959 he became President of the mill’s subsidiary-Marine Hosiery which marketed the famous Bonny Weans hosiery. He was employed in 1964 by the City of Chattanooga as a field inspector with retirement in 1984.
