Gloria June Franklin
Born June 24, 1945
Died July 31, 2024
Gloria June Franklin age 78 of Hendersonville, Tennessee passed away at Skyline Medical Center on Wednesday July 31, 2024.
Born in Old Hickory, Tennessee she was preceeded in death by her father Tamer Herd, her mother Maggie A. Herd, sisters Jean Herd and Carlene Grossman, and brothers Gerald Herd, and Dwight Herd.
She is survived by her two sons, Phillip Ashworth and Paul King, as well as four grandaughters; Heather Nightengale, Melissa Ashworth, Jessica Rodriguez, and Loren Walsh, as well as eleven great-grandchildren.
June was a member of Good Naz church in Goodlettsville, TN and loved her church with passion.
She graduated from DuPont High School where she played clarinet in the band, starting in grammer school all the way through until graduation.
She moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee in the late 1970’s and spent most of the 1980’s working in the Hendersonville High School cafeteria.
After leaving the highschool she went to work at what was then known as HG Hill (now Food Saver) where she spent over 30 years in checkout.
A pillar of the Hendersonville community she was known by thousands of people, and saw many generations grow up in that small town.
She enjoyed activities like Zip Linning, Bowling and most especially, working in the yard and garden. She also loved to travel.
Personal from Paul
First of all I want to say thank you all for outpouring of prayers and thoughts. Everyone that reached out with condolences and those in attendance today, she loved you all and I can say that with certainty.
I can also say this with complete certainty, and there’s a great comfort in knowing this is 100% true:
When someone dies you often hear others say, “They went to be with Jesus.” Or they use the prhase “to be absent from the Earth is to be present with the Lord.”
Not my mom.
My mom ALWAYS WAS with the Lord.
He never left her side, and she never left his.
Now they are together still, just in a different place than here.
(pause)
There are those verses in the Bible that talk about “putting on the full armor of God” – I’m not going into the full thing, I only bring this up to say mom was a walking and talking Amory.
At times, like everyone, her life was a hot mess. She’d bring out another piece of armor and go to battle until she cleaned that mess up.
Like all the Herd girls, she was tough and she battled through a lot of adversity, only to win the greatest prize in the end:
She learned to truly forgive.
“Letting go” was a trait given to her over decades of time – and God gave her the time she needed to truly ‘rest in peace’.
My whole life I heard her say that her greatest dream was to visit the Promised Land. Israel.
Once again I can say with all confidence, mom, you did a little better than that this time.
To close, I’ll leave you with these breif thoughts:
Mom was a lead foot. She drove 1,000 miles an hour. ( 🙂 )
She loved her little Rascal. And prior to him Thomas and McGilicuddy. (note: a dog and 2 cats)
Nothing made her happier than push-mowing and weedeating the yard, working in the flower bed or feeding the stray animals. Even when the doctors said stop, she kept going – and I believe, she was right to get every ounce of happiness out of her life, regardless. In those moments she wasn’t thinking about thinking. She was free.
(pause)
She made up a rhyme for me and my brother that stuck with us our entire lives:
“Moose Goose Ne-mi-quack-no-lo-po-le-lee-pow-lou” (note: mess it up, try again, mess it up, get it right – have fun with this)
Mom was always ‘there’, meaning kid’s camp as a child, she was there.
Parent teacher day, she was there.
Serving us lunch at the high school, she was there.
Checking us out at the grocery store, she was there.
Whether it was needing advice, needing prayer, needing gas money (or some other silly thing like a guitar amp), she was there.
She was always there when you thought you needed her the least and when you knew you needed her the most; and she always came through.
Thank you again. I love you mom.