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For 65 years, Moseley Seed and Produce was a fixture in McKenzie. The business was synonymous with John H. Moseley, but the story of the feed store begins with his father, George Leonard Moseley (1887-1962).
About 1920, Leonard with his brother-in-law, Robert Phillips, opened a country store west of Gleason at the Hill Top community. In 1925, they sold the business. Leonard and his wife, Ella Lee (1893-1983), moved the family to McKenzie. He began farming on rented land and worked Saturdays for The Farmers’ Store, a grocery, seed and feed store in McKenzie.
Two years later, he managed the McKenzie location of the Bridges Produce Company on Cedar Street. The group was headquartered out of Henderson, Tennessee. As the Great Depression set in, the company was bankrupt, and the McKenzie branch was given to Leonard as long as he could keep it running.
The Moseley Produce Company was then established and fought hard to survive. Leonard bought and sold live poultry, eggs, hides, wild game, vegetables, feed and fruit. According to family records, “the business survived a serious blow when a bank holiday was declared by President Roosevelt and the McKenzie Bank did not reopen. He lost all but the money he kept out of the day’s deposit to make the change.”
Leonard’s second son, John, was familiar with the family business as he worked for his father while he was in high school. He was expected to work after school and on non-school days. “Daddy knew when the teachers had meetings on Fridays, he’d holler bright and early to get up and go,” John recalled of his father.
Before graduating high school, John played high school football for the Yellow Jackets, McKenzie’s mascot before becoming the Rebels. His work for Leonard consisted of running a route to Gleason and the Tumbling Creek community.
In John’s senior year of high school, he was drafted by the United States Army. His induction was delayed for two months so he could finish high school. After graduation, he was sent to Camp Wheeling, Georgia for basic training and then shipped to the European Theatre to join the Third Infantry Division.
He saw action on the bloody beach at Anzio as Allied forces invaded Italy in September 1943. From Italy, they took part in an amphibious assault on the French coast. On Christmas Eve, 1944, John was nearly killed following a mortar assault. “Both my legs were broken and I had 144 holes in my body,” John said of the shrapnel attack.
Sent to recuperate in England, a doctor noticed how slowly he was healing and decided to send him back stateside. The war was over several months before he was allowed to return home. After returning home, John wasn’t too sure of what he wanted to do. He went to Bethel College for a year and then worked in Memphis before returning to McKenzie.