John Albert Allen

Memorial services for Mr. John Albert Allen will be held at 11:00 a.m., Saturday, August 4, 2018, at the Monticello United Methodist Church. Mr. Allen, 82, passed away Friday, July 27, 2018, at his residence in Silver Creek. Rev. Mike Evans will officiate.
Saulters Moore Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
John Albert Allen was born December 18, 1935, in Silver Creek to Hubert Bryant Allen and Aligene Little Allen.
He was preceded in death by his mother and father; one brother, Burt Allen; and one sister, Annie Gene Dumas.
Mr. John Albert Allen is survived by his wife of 60 years, Kay Allen; two daughters, Robin Kropog and her husband, Scott, of Kenner, Louisiana, and Wren Allen of Silver Creek; one son, John Albert Allen II “Jay” of Silver Creek; three grandchildren, Carrie Grace Jones, Shelbie Danielle Allen, and John Hayes Allen; as well as a host of other relatives and friends.
Visitation will be Saturday, August 4, 2018, from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at Monticello United Methodist Church.
John Albert Allen received his Chemistry degree from the University of Mississippi in 1958. At Ole Miss, he was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity.
Mr. Allen was a chemical engineer in the petroleum industry. He began his career with Baroid Oil Company in Houma, Louisiana, and later joined The Superior Oil Company as a drilling fluids manager, in Lafayette, Louisiana. After Mobil Oil bought Superior, Mr. Allen worked in the New Orleans, Louisiana, and Dallas, Texas, corporate offices. Mr. Allen’s work took him around the world (for example: Norway, Peru, Nigeria), but his heart and soul remained in Silver Creek. He retired with Mobil Oil Company, but after a couple of years’ retirement (in which he kept himself productively occupied helping his children, Wren and Joy, build homes on his “Silver Creek” place), he went to work for Baker Hughes, before retiring again. Mr. Allen also consulted and was an occasional expert witness.
John Allen was a member of the Monticello United Methodist Church, where he sang in the church choir directed by his dear wife, Kay. Mr. Allen was a former member of “For Heaven’s Sake” gospel singing quartet with the Prentiss Methodist Church. He was an avid bluegrass musician as well, being a former member of the “Acadiana Bluegrass” band in Lafayette, Louisiana. Mr. Allen loved all types of music, especially classical, and encouraged his daughters in their classical music studies. Mr. Allen was a songwriter and had a few copyrighted tunes.
Placing a high value on quality education and scholarship, Mr. Allen was a founding board member of Prentiss Christian School. He was an unsung, behind the scenes volunteer with many Lawrence County civic projects, enthusiastically working in partnership with his beloved wife, Kay, helping to build the park at Silver Creek, helping to restore the Longino house and Civic Center in Monticello, and helping the garden club with town beautification projects. In so doing, he was unconsciously following the directive of his late grandmother, Eugenia McDowell Little, who, in a 1922 letter to her children, charged them to: “Be a blessing to this world. Make your community and the world better for having lived in it.”
In addition to being a man of science and music, John Allen was an artist who loved the outdoors. His naturalistic oil paintings adorn the walls of his “camp house”, but his finest work of art was the camp house itself. Mr. Allen and his dear wife, Kay, salvaged materials from tear downs for 30+ years, with the long term vision of creating their own hand made house, conforming to no one’s standards but their own. Overlooking the Williams Mill branch, the camp house is the physical reminder of John Albert Allen’s deep family roots in his Silver Creek home.
Mr. Allen was fortunate to have a long, peaceful and productive retirement on his Silver Creek place. He was able to enjoy his vegetable gardening and to pursue his interest in heirloom seeds. Perhaps the finest role he played in his retirement was in the education, loving and rearing of his grandchildren, who all lived on the Silver Creek place.
John Albert Allen’s character was most like his ancestor, S.C. Dale, whose obituary was printed in the Lawrence County Press in October 1900, of whom it was said, in part: “He was verily a diamond in the rough, and those only who knew him personally and intimately could appreciate his real worth. He was the very soul of honor, and distained the slightest attempt at deception, while every breath that he drew was the essence of honesty….He labored not for sordid gain but because he loved to work and couldn’t help it…He had no patience with the idle and thriftless, and went to the field himself up to the time of his last illness though it was not at all necessary…So great was his love for the old home that he would never give it up and he and his aged wife lived there alone, spending his last days in the way that suited him best.”