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Note: "Pete" was the firstborn of Sarah E. and E. E. Willis, and was named after his father. Elliott was a name given to many of the males in the Willis family. He was very athletic, and was a great golfer and baseball player. He also loved to hunt and go to the beach. He married Bonnie Dacus on August 23, 1945 and waited one year before telling anyone. Their first "child" was a monkey named Penelope. Next came Kathy, Judy, Debbie, Janelle and then finally a son, Mike. Mike never really knew his father because Pete and Bonnie divorced when he was an infant. He went to a Billy Graham Crusade when he was in his 20's and felt the call to become a preacher, so he went to seminary in Louisville, KY and then into the Baptist ministry. In 1965, he left the ministry due to falling into adultery. He married Donna Irvine Adams and they had a child, Angie. Growing up with a father in the furniture business gave him a background to fall on when he left the ministry. He and Donna moved to Holly Hill, FL, which is just north of Daytona Beach. They later moved back to Memphis and he worked for Zenith hearing aids in Goldsmith's department store in downtown Memphis. They divorced in 1972 and Pete moved back in with his mother temporarily. Goldsmith's is where he met his last wife, Rosie Grinstead. She was a widow with 4 children: Grady, Danny, Andee and Cindy. They married and moved into her house. He went to work for Levitz Furniture Co. and transferred to New Orleans. They also transferred outside Washington, D.C. in the mid-1970's. Their final move was back to Memphis, and Pete had been to Baptist Hospital MANY times for heart problems, but in 1984 he went in for some minor surgery to correct a twitch in his right eye. For some unknown reason, the doctor decided to do a more complicated surgery and Pete developed a bad infection in his brain and died a few weeks later. No autopsy was performed, but should have been.
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