Gold Star Mother

Staff Writer

LOCKHART - Azilee Barbee Ashe says an acquaintance who knew some of the sorrows she had experienced in her life remarked that Mrs. Ashe must have shoulders of iron because she was still holding up.

“I told her I didn't do it alone,” Mrs. Ashe said. “I had the Lord with me.”

Mrs. Ashe, Union County's last known Gold Star Mother, will be recognized during Veterans Day ceremonies after the parade on Main Street, Union on Nov. 11. Her only son, PFC Franklin Leroy Barbee, was killed on Aug. 28, 1966 in the vicinity of the Phou Tuy Province of Vietnam.

Barbee, who was born on Jan. 25, 1946, was the son of Mrs. Ashe with her first husband, Loomis Franklin Barbee, a World War II veteran. Mrs. Ashe also had two daughters with Barbee - Mary Margaret Yon of Lexington and Carolyn Howard of Mt. Tabor Church Road. With her second husband, Clyde Freeman “C.T.” Ashe, she had two daughters, Karen Elaine Ashe of Las Vegas and Donna Hancock, who died in an automobile accident when she was 25.

Franklin Leroy Barbee had graduated from Lockhart High School and was working with Mrs. Ashe's brother-in-law, James Ashe, a building contractor when he was drafted into the Marines in November 1965.

“He was a good boy,” she said. “He never gave me any trouble whatsoever. He was liked by everybody.”

Mrs. Ashe said her son loved being a Marine. He was a rifleman in Company C, Battalion Landing Team 1/26 when he died from gunshot wounds received in combat during Operation Deckhouse III.

After his death, Barbee and another Marine who was killed in the operation were commemorated with a memorial service aboard the USS Iwo Jima on Aug. 30, 1966. Mrs. Ashe has a copy of the program, which included the music, “My Country Tis of Thee,” “Rock of Ages,” and “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”

For many years, Mrs. Ashe and the other Gold Star Mothers, who at one time included a mother who had lost a son in World War II, were numerous and rode in the parade in a limousine provided by Holcombe Funeral Home. She said she never thought she would be the last one left.

Now 83, Mrs. Ashe is retired from Chester Sportswear. She enjoys her family, including her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She still enjoys getting out and cutting her own grass with her riding lawn mower.

No matter what, she still misses he son. She remembers that he came home on 30-day furlough before being sent to Camp Pendleton, Calif. He was there a few days before going to Vietnam.

“We carried him to Charlotte, my three daughters and me, to get on the plane,” she said.