George Lamar Gassett, 91, of Dickson, Tennessee, passed away at home on Tuesday, August 26, 2025. Lamar was born at home during the Great Depression on November 2, 1933, in Skipperville, Alabama (two miles north of Ozark), to Marion Grady Gassett and Elberta Dykes Gassett.

The second of eight children, his siblings later began calling him “Dr. Jenkins” or “Doc” because–in imitation of the town doctor–he had the habit as a young boy of collecting little glass medicine bottles and carrying them in his pockets.

He began work for the V. J. Elmore store as a stock boy at the age of sixteen in Ozark, AL, then Brewton, AL, progressing to assistant manager of the store in Bessemer, AL. (Trivia: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird had Jem purchase for Scout a much-desired “bedecked baton” from the

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