W.P. “BILL” ALLEN
TURNING 100
On May 18, 2025, local businessman and early Murfreesboro community builder, Bill Allen, turned 100. In 1925, the year he was born, the world was a different place. He has seen much change during his lifetime, and he lived through some landmark events in the history of the world, the history of Tennessee and the development of the City of Murfreesboro. Through it all he has remained a simple family man with a wry wit, a sharp memory and a love for his community.
“When I was small, we played all over Murfreesboro,” said Bill. “You could throw a baseball from one side of town to the other. My mother would holler for me, and I’d hear her all over town.”
MURFREESBORO IN THE 1920s
The country was in the middle of the Jazz Age in 1925, a time of economic prosperity after the end of World War I. Calvin Coolidge was President of the United States and in Dayton, Tennessee, the famous Scopes “Monkey Trial” took place after schoolteacher John T. Scopes was charged with violating state law for teaching the theory of evolution to his students. The country was under prohibition, making the manufacture and sale of liquor illegal; however, Tennessee bootleggers were finding ways to sell the product from their back hills stills, including selling to the notorious Al Capone, who spent time in Murfreesboro on his way from Chicago to his home in Florida.
In the sleepy town of Murfreesboro with a population of about 7.500, one of the main changes during the 1920’s was the development of a public health system with the help of the Red Cross and the building of Rutherford Hospital, thanks to a grant from the Commonwealth Fund of New York. It was the precursor to the current Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital. By 1927, the Stones River Battlefield had been established as a National Park and Carnation built a milk plant on the edge of town. The city was also known for having a good education system. It was still primarily an agricultural community, with farmers coming into town on the weekends to buy supplies and sell their goods.
On May 18, 1943, Bill had three important events happen. He turned 18 years old, he registered for the draft and he graduated as a member of the last graduating class of the old Central High School (at the same location where Murfreesboro Housing Authority is currently located) before it burned to the ground the following year. As she watched the Old Central High School burn, one of his high school teachers was having a conversation about how she had graded the boys in the last graduating class. Bill was one of them. “I didn’t even check their papers,” she said. “Every one of these boys are going to be in the service and might get killed. What difference does it make? Every one of them can get an ‘A’ as far as I am concerned.”
The ‘Day of Infamy’ which occurred on December 7,1941, at Pearl Harbor, a place Bill had never heard of, would profoundly change his life. It was the middle of World War II. He was drafted into the service a few weeks after his 18th birthday. He was assigned to the Navy. After boot camp in Bainbridge, Maryland, he was sent for training at hospital apprentice school. Initially placed at the base hospital in Millington, Tennessee, he was eventually sent overseas.
WORLD WAR II
Bill was shipped out on LST (Landing Ship Tanker) 523, of which he has a replica in his apartment at AdamsPlace Assisted Living. He was now a corpsman. Once he arrived in Plymouth, England, in the chilly North Atlantic, he was assigned to Kilgour Warfare School for a few weeks. He then helped with prepping for the war making bandages and getting ready for the Invasion of Normandy, also known as D-Day.
“We loaded up one day at just about dark and took off from England headed for Normandy,” explained Bill. “We arrived the next afternoon. The beach had not been secured so we had to anchor in three or four feet of water before we could open the doors, let the ramp down and start unloading. I saw some of the foot soldiers with their heavy packs drown as they went off the end of the ramp. Others made it to the beach…maybe six, eight, a dozen steps and stepped on a land mine. Life was over.”
Bill and friend from home, Ed Phillips, would take care of the dead. They would clean them up. Most of them were bloody and muddy. They would look for their dog tags to identify them, wrap them in a blanket and put them in a cooling unit until they got back to England. “That was my job, taking care of the dead,” said Bill. As the battle intensified, things took a turn.
LST 523 made three trips back and forth bringing soldiers and supplies to Normandy and taking wounded and dead back to England. Everything went fine until the fourth trip in. The ship was about five miles out in the English Channel. Due to a storm, the waters were extremely rough, creating deep swells. LSTs were made to sit on top of the water, but due to the extreme swells, the ship was raised and dropped on a mine. The ship exploded, breaking into two pieces. Bill had been sitting in a truck talking to two soldiers who asked him to join them shortly before this happened. Being in the truck saved Bill from being hit by debris, which had killed many others before the ship started going under water. Some were jumping overboard, but Bill knew he couldn’t swim to the beach. It was too far with the giant swells. “I knew if I tried, I would drown. I knew if I stayed on the ship, I would drown. Going through my head was ‘which way do I want to drown?’ In what I thought were my last seconds, another corpsman, Jack Hamblen, called to me, ‘Bill! Bill!’ “Hamblen was able to get Bill and four other soldiers who were in the water into his life raft, avoiding the ship that was slowly sinking and pulling everything under the water with it.
“I do not know how long we were on that life raft,” said Bill. “The swells were trying to throw us off. We had to hold on to the two that were hurt. It seemed like half a day. Then, finally a small boat, not much bigger than the life raft, came and picked us up. The coxswain tried to get to the first aid station on the beach, but the swells were just too high. We would go 20 yards, and the swells would throw us back 30 yards. We fought the sea for I do not know how long. The coxswain decided to try to get us to a ship.
A passing ship eventually dropped a cargo net over the side for Bill and Hamblen to climb up. They had to wait until a swell came up so they could get close enough to catch the cargo net. Hamblen waited for a swell. The wind was blowing. The boat got closer and closer to the cargo net and his friend jumped, grabbing the net about a foot away. It was then Bill’s turn. He felt his heart pounding as he watched a swell building…and building. “I jumped and grabbed the bottom of that net,” said Bill. “I climbed up those ropes like a squirrel.” The skipper of the ship told them to go down to the galley and get a cup of coffee. “I turned it up but couldn’t swallow.” Neither he nor his friend could swallow. They couldn’t eat. When offered a place to sleep, they couldn’t sleep. They kept reliving what had just happened to them. Bill told Hamblen, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep again, but I know tomorrow has to be a better day than today.”
The next day sitting on the bridge of the ship watching the battle, Bill questioned God. He wondered why God had allowed the war to happen and why his life had been spared when others he knew who had wives and children back home had perished. Only 28 out of 177 Navy personnel assigned to his ship had survived. He had what he calls the greatest argument he ever had with himself. In the end he came to the belief that it was not luck that had carried him so far. It had been God who had saved him. “I’ve been a follower ever since.”
AFTER THE WAR
Upon returning from the war, Bill worked at the Post Office for a short while and then went to work with his good friend, Ed Phillips, at Woodfin’s Funeral Home, a Murfreesboro institution. Now called Woodfin Funeral Chapels, it was founded in 1893 and is a six- generation business that began on the Murfreesboro City Square selling funerals and furniture. “I’ve worked for Woodfin’s off and on all my life, part time, full time and on call,” said Bill.
When Bill proposed to his future wife, Idalee Allen, John Woodfin encouraged him to get a job with better hours for starting a family. Idalee was working for Murfreesboro Electric Department and gladly gave up her job for him to work there as husbands and wives could not both work there together at that time. He and Idalee married on August 27,1955, at Woodfin Chapel. They had two daughters, Patti and Linda. Bill put his efforts into his job and rearing his family. He worked at Murfreesboro Electric for 32 years before retiring at the age of 65.
He was involved in starting the golf course at Old Fort Park. He eventually became the Chairman of the Golf Commission under Joe B. Jackson. He fought taking on the job, not wanting to deprive his family of their time together. One day his boss, Larry Kirk, told him that he received a call from the mayor asking if Kirk would encourage Bill to take the job. Bill explained why he had turned down the mayor’s offer. Kirk gave him time away from work to take the chairmanship. Bill was Chairman of the Golf Commission for 35 years from 1984 until 2019. Additionally, he was on the Parks and Recreation Commission for 20 years.
“After I retired from Murfreesboro Electric Department, when I was 65 years old, Bubba Woodfin tried to get me to come back and help him. I said, ‘Bubba, I’ve worked for you, I’ve worked for the Electric Department and have been called out at all hours of the night with each. I have a wife and two children. Idalee has never complained, but we have never been able to enjoy married life like I want to. We are going to spend some time together. And we did. We went to Hawaii, Alaska…visited every state except for three: South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska. I held him off for 10 years. Then one day, Bubba called again.” It was Easter Sunday. Woodfin’s was opening at their new location following a fire which had destroyed their long-standing building. Bubba said he didn’t have enough help. Understanding that Woodfin was desperate, Bill relented, feeling he would be a poor person if he didn’t come to his friend’s aid. “He said, ‘just work two nights a week,’” Bill shared. Soon he was wrangled back into the job full time. “I told Jerry Loughry, ‘You don’t know what part time is!’” But I stayed out there for 15 years. I worked a funeral on my 91st birthday. There are no finer people I have ever known.”
HIS LOVE OF SPORTS
Bill says he wasn’t a great student, but he loved sports. He was a friend of Middle Tennessee State University baseball coach Steve “Pete” Peterson and is a friend of women’s basketball coach Rick Insell. “I belonged to the Blue Raider Athletic Association for over 30 years,” said Bill. “I had season tickets for football and basketball.”
RECENT YEARS
In 2013, Bill was invited to Normandy to be part of a PBS Documentary celebrating the 70th anniversary of D-Day. While there he went to the bottom of the English Channel in a small submarine to see the remains of his ship whereupon he almost died. “I thought that would be right interesting,” said Bill. Bill has been celebrating his 100 years for a while including being a special guest of the Nashville Sounds last year on the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Being a big baseball fan, this was quite an honor. At 99 years old he was the guest of honor of the Grand Old Opry helping to commemorate their 99th anniversary and receiving an award inside the circle on stage. He was awarded the MTSU Joe Nunley award at the Homecoming ceremonies last fall, where he got to visit with one of his favorite new friends, General Keith Huber. Most recently, he had only one birthday wish, which was to meet Governor Bill Lee. With the help of State Senator Shane Reeves, a visit was made to the state Capital, and the two Bills had a wonderful conversation. Leaving AdamsPlace that day to meet the governor, Bill told the other residents that Governor Lee needed his help on some issues and then gave his usual belly laugh when he says something that is laughter worthy.