Ira Lawson Ayers was born in 1913 and raised on Walnut Mountain in Campbell County, TN, in an area called Stinking Creek which later came under the Pioneer, TN post office. He was the oldest son of Martin Ayers and Hannah Depew. His middle name supposedly came from the doctor who delivered him. This is probably true since there was a Dr. Alonzo Lawson living in that same district in the 1920 census.  Where his given name came from is a mystery since Ira was not a common name in the South.  Perhaps it was a mistake of some kind since all his folks called him “Arie”. No original birth certificate was ever recorded.

As expected, Ira grew up working on the farm and attending school, but after his mother died of TB when he was 12 years old, he had to quit school to help take care of his two sisters and brother. Even after his father remarried and had still more children, Ira was heavily depended on for help with the younger ones. He developed a stern temperament like his father. His youngest sister, Geneva, likes to tell the story about the time their father went to town and left Ira in charge of the others.  The children had a pet chicken named “Dooty Hicks” which they took into the house and put in the room where Ira was napping.  The chicken jumped on the bed waking him which made Ira very angry, much to the amusement of the children.

Ira had brown hair and brown eyes. He eventually grew to be 5 ft. 10 in. tall and was very slender as a young man weighing about 155 Lbs.  Strangely, his friends in the area nicknamed him “Hoss”, perhaps because he was such a hard worker.

In the 1930s, America was in the grip of the Great Depression with over 25 percent unemployment.  As one of President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCCs) was established in 1933 to give employment to young men and to help develop and preserve natural resources. So, in June 1935 when he was 21, Ira left home for the first time and joined, along with two and a half  million other young men, the CCCs which some called “Roosevelt’s Tree Army”. In the CCCs he earned $30 per month plus room and board. The government sent $25 of his pay home to the parents, but his father saved half for Ira to have when he returned. After the first issue of free clothing, he had to buy any replacements needed.  It was a military style life with barracks, mess halls, exercise and work.

Back on the farm, Ira had cut down many trees and split a lot of logs.  As a result, he had become skillful wielding an ax. This despite an accident one time in which his swing got misdirected by a tree branch, causing him to cut into his left calf muscle rather deeply.  So in the “Tree Army” he was naturally put to work using an ax.  His first nine months were spent in the Smoky Mountains National Park near Seiverville, TN where he helped clear land for roads and tourist areas. He then got transferred closer to home to the CCC camp at Lake City, TN near the Norris Dam which had just been completed in the previous year.  There he spent seven months clearing land for campgrounds around the Dam. However, once again he fell victim to a similar accident with the ax as before, and severely chopped his left foot.  He was sent to the Army hospital at Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia (near Chattanooga, TN) for recovery which took about three months. He then returned to the camp at Norris Dam for the last eight months of his tour and was honorably discharged from the CCCs in Sept 1937.

Looking back, Ira always said he enjoyed his time in the Tree Army. The thing he remembered most……. “they always had plenty of food to eat”.

Later after coming back home, he and his brother Addison worked for a time in the coal mines at “Charlie Hollow”.  Aileen remembers Ira onetime getting frost bite on his ears walking to the mines early in the morning in the winter. They paid some board to their father and saved most of the rest of their pay. Their brother Tom remembered them counting their savings on the kitchen table.