Bertha Phillips Vanlandingham, age 98, passed away on the morning of April 27 at Briarcliff Health Care Center in Oak Ridge.

She was born February 8, 1916, in Pocahontas, Arkansas, and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in the early 1930s, working as a baby sitter for a local doctor. In Memphis, she met and, in 1939, married her husband Alvin Otis Vanlandingham, an employee of the Illinois Central Railroad, beginning a 33-year marriage.

During the early 1940s, she began working at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company plant in Memphis, a job she held until retiring after 36 years. In 1987, Bertha moved to Knoxville to be near her two sons and her grandchildren. [Read more…]