Anselm Clyde Griffin Jr's Obituary
Anselm Clyde Griffin Jr. was born on February 7, 1919, in Clarksdale, Mississippi to Anselm Clyde Griffin and Ethel Toler Griffin. He graduated from Bobo High School in Clarksdale and entered Mississippi College, Clinton, MS, in 1937 where he joined the Mississippi National Guard as a member of the Mississippi National Guard / 155th Infantry Band. He graduated with a B.S. degree in Physics, having served on active duty in the U.S. Army Signal Corps from 1940 to 1946. His overseas military service was in Europe from 1943-1945 where he was a Signal Corps Depot Company Commander at Delta Base Section at Marseilles, France, before the surrender of Germany in 1945. Prior to the surrender of Germany in 1945 he was assigned as Signal Liaison Staff Officer to the French Army of the West at Cognac, France, where he participated in the planning to capture French Atlantic port towns fortified by the Germans when the main body of German Troops was driven back toward Germany in the spring of 1945. As a result of this work he was recommended for the Croix de Guerre by the French Commander to whom he was assigned.
After graduating from Mississippi College in 1946 he worked with a Royal Dutch Shell Oil surveying team producing subsurface geological maps of deep rock structures in a search for petroleum in the Mississippi Delta. Mr. Griffin taught in Leland High School for two years. In 1949 he accepted the position of staff physicist at the U.S. Cotton Ginning Laboratory at Stoneville, Mississippi, where he worked with design engineers in the development of cotton ginning machinery and processes to give economic plausibility to the emerging practice of harvesting cotton with picking machines. This work led to optimizing the type and quantity of drying and cleaning devices consistent with cotton lint grades acceptable to cotton producers and cotton fiber properties acceptable to cotton spinning mills. In addition to this pioneering research he also conceived the idea of imparting lateral motion in addition to the normal rotation of cotton as the ginning saws pulled cotton fibers from the seeds. The addition of the lateral motion to the fiber-seed separation process increased the ginning production rate more than 300% of the then conventional ginning rate. He was also a major player in the work that led to the recommended fiber moisture content of 6 to 7 percent as a means of preventing excessive fiber breakage during ginning.
Mr. Griffin was active in American Red Cross relief work and served one term as Chapter President. He organized an Amateur Radio network plan to provide emergency communications in a perceived mid-South earthquake event and provided mobile communications for Red Cross survey teams during the 1991 Mississippi Delta flood. He was also active in the Leland Lions Club, serving two terms as Club President, and was active in Leland Masonic Lodge No. 490 F&AM. He was a 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason. For many years he taught the Senior Men’s Bible Class at First Baptist Church in Leland.
Mr. Griffin was preceded in death by his first wife, Doris Graves Griffin, who died in 1992, and by his second wife, Lois Hall Oakman Griffin, who died in 2005, also by a brother, Barry Toler Griffin. He is survived by a sister, Mary E. McKee of Madison, MS, a son, Anselm Clyde Griffin III (Carol) of Mableton, GA, and a daughter, Adelia Elizabeth Griffin Walker of Dahlonega, GA. Other survivors include grand-daughters Jessica Griffin Tullis (Stuart) of Dothan, AL; Julie Griffin Speer (Ryan) of Blacksburg, VA; and Jane Griffin Dussouy (Michael) of Madison, MS, and seven great-grandchildren.
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