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     Ira Hunt Slade Jr. was born on January 19, 1930 in Griffin, Spalding County, Georgia.^2,3 He was the son of Ira Hunt Slade and Mary Dunlap.¹
     Ira married first Dorothy Leah Holmes, daughter of Joseph Janarl Holmes and Elise Evelyn Rodenbery.⁴
     Ira married second Linda Fry.⁴ Ira died on October 30, 2013 at age 83.² His obituary read as follows:

      Dr. Ira Hunt “Dutch” Slade, Jr., a man who practiced medicine and exhibited God’s love, went to his heavenly home October 30, 2013.
He was born in Griffin, GA., January 19, 1930, to Ira Hunt Slade, Sr., and Mary Dunlap Slade. He attended Griffin schools and graduated from Griffin High in 1948. His senior year, he was the recipient of The Walker Cup for outstanding scholarship, leadership, athleticism, and citizenry—an award named for its original 1943 recipient, J. Henry Walker, III.
Dutch Slade attended First Baptist Church as a child and in his youth. He was an Eagle Scout and one of three original members of the Order of the Arrow. As a teenager, he worked at Camp Thunder on the Flint River, teaching new skills to young scouts and serving as water front director. He loved being outdoors and enjoyed every aspect of God’s creation.
He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Emory University, where he was a member of the track team, Naval Reserve Officers Training Corp and Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. To help earn his way through college, he trapped animals in the woods around Emory to sell to the biology department and worked as an orderly at Grady Hospital, along with many other odd jobs. He graduated from the Emory School of Medicine in 1956 and moved his young family to Pensacola, FL, then to Agana, Guam, where he was a doctor at the U.S. Naval Hospital. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant, Medical Corp. After his military service, he returned to Griffin and began his private practice in the second story rooms of a home overlooking Poplar Street. He built a new office on Graefe Street, which now houses Internal Medicine of Griffin, and as the practice grew, he brought in a partner, Dr. Kenneth Reynolds. He served as Chief of Staff at the Griffin-Spalding County Hospital and was instrumental in forming the first Coronary Care Unit.
In 1966, Dr. Slade and his family moved to American Samoa, where he was a staff doctor and taught practical nursing at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Pago Pago and also worked with a native Samoan doctor to eradicate leprosy from the island. While in Samoa, he developed a keen interest in plants and the local village healers’ methods of using them to care for people.
Upon his return to Griffin, Dr. Slade moved his practice from town to a mobile office at his land on Newnan Highway. He and the late Frank Ingram, a scientist and his close friend, developed an early angioplasty tool that was successful in trials in Atlanta and helped serve as a basis for future advancements in life-saving surgeries. He worked with Mr. Ingram in his Meadowlark Laboratory to develop the first artificial heart valve, which they donated outright to Emory University.
Dr. Slade began growing plants in greenhouses he built on his farm, where he also helped his children raise cows and chickens for 4-H projects, taught them how to garden, hunt and fish and fostered their interests in nature.
He was a prolific plant photographer and expert on cacti, succulents, and miniature crepe myrtle and created new breeds by meticulously transporting pollen from one plant to another. His work was featured on the covers of national plant and gardening magazines along with his articles. He and his wife, Linda, founded Greenlife Gardens and sold plants at their home for a time and through a thriving mail-order business.
Dr. Slade eventually left his private medical practice and formed a corporation to provide the first dedicated emergency room physicians to the Griffin-Spalding County Hospital. Later he joined the medical staff at the Diagnostic and Classification Center in Jackson, GA., providing medical care to inmates in the Georgia Correction System. He retired from the center in 2000 after 20 years of service.
While working in Jackson, Dr. Slade opened a mission clinic in his home where he and his wife treated patients since 1985.
Dr. Slade was pastor emeritus of the In Christ Fellowship Church. His ministry is on-going through the In Christ Mission Clinic and the mentoring and scriptural discipleship ministry of ICM - Safehouse Coffee.
Dr. Slade is survived by his wife and partner of nearly 40 years, Linda Fry Slade of Griffin; children and their spouses: Scott and Debbie Slade, of Suwanee; Ann and J. Henry Walker, III, of Griffin; Cathy and James Roth, of Enterprise, AL; Joan and Collier Sanders, Jr., of Carrollton; Jonathan and Carol Slade, of Charleston, SC; David and Alyson Slade, of Mt. Berry, GA; and Hunt and Amanda Slade, of Griffin.
He is also survived by his 21 grandchildren, their spouses and eight great grandchildren: Laura and John Mealor and their daughters Erin and Robyn, of Bethlehem, GA; Kathryn Slade, of Atlanta; Jessica Slade Whatley and her fiancé Michael O’Connor, of Griffin; Stuart Whatley, of Keystone, CO; Rebecca and Blake Conley and their son Cooper, of Eastman, GA; Chandler Dunlap Whatley, of Nashville, TN; Daniel Roth, of Birmingham, AL; Jennifer and Steve Dignazio and their children Sam and Molly, of Camp Casey, South Korea; Travis and Sarah Roth of Temecula, CA; Matthew and Celia Roth, of Moscow, ID; Elizabeth Roth, of Auburn, AL; US Army Captains Bryan and Jenna Sanders, of Fort Riley, KS; Mark and Elizabeth Sanders, Leah Sanders and her children Riley and Paxton, Collier Sanders, III, and Jacob Sanders of Carrollton; Jonathan (Nate) and Michelle Slade, Jr., and their daughter Anjali, of Stoney Brook, NY; Thomas Slade, of Charleston, SC; Dylan Slade, of Mt. Shasta, CA; Ira Hunt Slade, IV, of Griffin; and Asa Slade, of Mt. Berry, GA.
In addition, Dr. Slade is survived by his brothers and their spouses, Dick and Anne Slade and Dan and Kathy Slade, of Griffin, and his sister and her husband, Mary and Wallace Lail of Duluth; his sisters-in-law and their spouses, Don and Gracie Noblin of Cardwell, MO, and Russell and Karen McFarren, of Salem, AK, and brother-in-law Dr. Warren Ross, of Austin, TX; many nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents and his brothers, David and Dunlap Slade.
A celebration service for Dr. Slade will be November 10th, 3:00 p.m., in the sanctuary of First Baptist Church, Griffin, GA.² His obituary read as follows:

      Dr. Ira “Dutch” Slade was a physician, horticulturist and preacher. It wasn’t that he couldn’t choose one career, but he felt it necessary to do all three, his children said.

“More than anything, he wanted to be a healer,” said son Scott Slade, morning host on AM 750 and 95.5 FM News/Talk WSB. “And, yes, there is a theme of life, sustaining life, cultivating life, between them all, and I think that was a very important part of him.”

Dutch Slade, a Griffin native, ran a medical practice, a greenhouse and pastored In Christ Fellowship Church. He often found ways to blend his interests, such as the clinic he opened in 1985 at his home. The doctor believed that if he listened long enough, people would tell him what he needed to know to reach a correct diagnosis, his son said. This clinic gave him and his patients the time and space to work through a range of issues.

“He would bring people into his home who’d been struggling with a diagnosis or an elusive disease that was crippling their lives,” said Scott Slade, who lives in Suwanee. “And he would have people come stay with him and his wife; talking, listening and living with them, as they worked out the problem, be it medical, spiritual, or what have you.”

The elder Slade did not see anything noteworthy about his approach; it was simply what needed to be done, said son David Slade of Mount Berry. “For Dad, there were no boundaries between his work life and his faith life; it was all mixed together and part of the same thing,” he said. “At the end of the day, he wanted to live for the glory of God.”

Ira Hunt Slade Jr. of Griffin died Oct. 30 at his home after a brief decline in his health. He was 83.

“His body was just worn out,” said daughter Ann Walker of Griffin. “That’s all it was.”

A memorial service is planned for 3 p.m. Sunday at First Baptist Church of Griffin. Heritage Funeral Home, Griffin, was in charge of cremation arrangements.

Slade did a lot to advance medical care in his hometown and across the globe, his children said. He graduated from Emory University twice, once as an undergraduate and the second time in 1956 when he completed medical school. He worked in naval hospitals in Guam and American Samoa, before permanently returning to Griffin in the 1970s.

He left his private practice in Griffin to form a dedicated group of emergency room doctors for the Griffin-Spalding County Hospital, Walker said.

He went on to work as a physician at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. He retired in 2000 but his vocation as a healer never ended, she said.

Slade and his second wife, the former Linda Fry, also established Greenlife Gardens, where they sold a variety of plants, including some unique hybrids. The business functioned for the better part of a decade in the 1980s and early ’90s.

Slade managed to bring his love of horticulture into his ministry and medicine, Scott Slade said.

“He used everything at his disposal to reach people,” he said. “He just wanted to heal people.”

Additional survivors include daughters Cathy Roth of Enterprise, Ala., and Joan Sanders of Carrollton; sons Jonathan Slade of Charleston, S.C., and Hunt Slade of Griffin; brothers, Dick Slade and Dan Slade, both of Griffin; sister Mary Lail of Duluth; 21 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.⁵

     Wilbur Travis Miller was always known as Dick. He was born on August 26, 1911.¹
     Wilbur married Willie Gertrude Slade, daughter of Bill Ernest Slade and Callie Loucine Atkins, on June 15, 1935 in Monroe, Ouachita Parish, Louisiana.¹ Dick was a new car dealer, logging contractor and school bus driver among other occupations at various times. Wilbur died on April 7, 1990 at age 78.² His obituary read as follows:

      Marion, LA - Services for Mr. W. T. "Dick" Miller, 78, Marion, LA. will be at 2:30 P.M. Monday, April 9, 1990 at Kilpatrick Funeral Home Chapel in Farmerville with Rev. Doyle House officiating. Burial will be in Roark Cemetery in Marion, LA. under the direction of Kilpatrick Funeral Home in Farmerville. Mr. Miller died Saturday, April 7, 1990 at St. Francis Medical Center in Monroe after a lengthy illness. Mr. Miller was born in Marion, LA. He was a self-employed Logging Contractor; Cattle Farmer and a retired school bus driver. Mr. Miller served on the Marion Town Council for 8 years. He was also a member of the Quigley Holliness Church. Survivors include: Wife: Gertrude Slade Miller of Marion, LA; Three sons: Jimmy L. Miller of Orange, TX; Dickey Miller and Mikey Miller both of Marion, LA; Three grandsons: Mark Miller, Wade Miller, and Matt Miller all of Marion, LA; Mother: Gordie Lee Miller of Marion, LA; One sister and brother-in-law: Florene and Buck Woffard of Lockney, TX; One brother: John Miller of Marion, LA. Pallbearers will be Robert Spencer Allen, Tommy Baker, J. W. Peek, Richard Thomas, T. C. Hembree, and Louie White. Memorials may be made to the American Cancer Society.²