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Joseph H. 'Joe' Harpole Union City, TN QCWA # 14986 Chapter 113 |
Dr. Joe Harpole
Dr. Joseph Hunter .Joe. Harpole Sr., 91, of Union City died Dec. 22, 2015, at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Union City.
Services will be 2 p.m. Sunday at Union City Cumberland Presbyterian Church, with the Rev. Chuck McMillen officiating. Burial will follow in East View Cemetery.
Friends may call at White-Ranson Funeral Home 6-8 p.m. Saturday.
Pallbearers will be Dr. Leland Davis, Dr. James Hall, Will Townes, Bill Townes, Hunter Smith, Merle Hazelton and Brooks Dunlap. Honorary pallbearers will be David Critchlow Sr., Dr. Barry Cutright, Dr. Bill Dunlap, Keith Fisher, Dr. David Harpole Sr., Dr. David Harpole Jr., Jack Hudgins, Marion Reithel, Danny Smith, Roy Wehman and members of the Hardee.s Coffee Club.
The family requests that memorials be made to Obion County Hometown Walk of Hope, Union City Cumberland Presbyterian Church or the Union City Schools Foundation.
He was born July 28, 1924, in Obion County, one of six children of the late Albert Hunter and Lillian Ethel (White) Harpole. He married the former Mary Lou Jimerson May 11, 1958. She died July 9, 2011.
Dr. Harpole graduated from Union City High School in May 1942, just after the Pearl Harbor incident marking the beginning of World War II. He was a civilian employee of Embry-Riddle Field near Union City as a parachute rigger. He subsequently entered the U.S. Air Force, where he served in communications on a B-29 crew. All of his service was spent in the states.
After discharge from the U.S. Air Force in 1946, he enrolled at the former University of Tennessee Junior College at Martin (University of Tennessee at Martin). He then attended the former Southwestern at Memphis (Rhodes College) and the University of Tennessee Dental College at Memphis.
After receiving his doctorate in dentistry, he practiced in Tiptonville from 1950-53 and then moved to Union City and opened a dental office, where he practiced until his retirement in 2004.
He was a member of several professional organizations, including the American Dental Association, the Tennessee Dental Association and the Seventh District Dental Association, which he had served as president.
He had served on the board of directors of the Northwest Tennessee Mental Health Center from 1969-78 and was its chairman for two years during the construction and planning of a new, expanded center at Martin. In 1973, he was appointed to the board of trustees of the State Department of Mental Health by Gov. Winfield Dunn.
Having a keen interest in community cultural affairs, he was instrumental in organizing the former Union City Civic Chorus in 1966 and was a longtime member of that group, with his wife. He later helped organize the first Union City Arts Council and served as its first chairman.
He was subsequently commissioned by Gov. Dunn to serve on the Tennessee Arts Commission, where he was active for five years.
He also served on the boards of the West Kentucky and West Tennessee Boy Scout councils during the 1950s and .60s and had been chairman of the Three Rivers Boy Scout District.
He was a lifetime member of Union City First Cumberland Presbyterian Church and had been a member of the board of elders and had been active in the church choir.
He had served on the board of the Obion County Chamber of Commerce and various committees in that organization and had also been on the board of directors of real estate development enterprises such as the former Union City Land Development Co. and the former Eastside Development Enterprises.
He was the founder of the first analogical and digital TV station in Tennessee and, in the 1980s, he was the founder of the second wireless cable company in the United States . WUWT, Channel 26.
He is survived by two sons and his daughter-in-law, Dr. Joe Hunter .Jody. Harpole of Richmond, Va., and Dr. Steven Jimerson and Barbara Harpole of Union City; four grandchildren, Allison Harpole and Mary Kate Harpole, both of Paducah, Ky., and Mary Elizabeth Harpole and John Harpole, both of Union City; his sister, Mary Creasy of Martinsville, Va.; and his brother, Dr. David Harpole Sr. of Richmond.
He was also preceded in death by his son, Thomas William Harpole; two sisters, Elizabeth Dunlap and Vera Wehman; and his brother, Frank Harpole.