Kenneth Ray Eddington

Kenneth Ray Eddington was a lifelong resident of the Daysville community near Harriman, Tennessee, who spent much of his working life building the roads that generations of Tennesseans have driven on since. He died on October 24, 2026, at Cumberland Medical Center at the age of 88, with his family by his side. His death was announced through an obituary published by Davis Funeral Home in Harriman, which has been entrusted with his services.

For many years Eddington worked in road construction for Highways Inc., a career that, according to his obituary, helped build many of the highways still used by the public today. It was practical, physical work, the kind that leaves a lasting but often unseen mark on a community, and it defined much of his working life. Away from the job site, he was known for a love of gardening, and he took pleasure not just in growing vegetables and fruit but in giving much of it away to family and neighbors or selling it locally. He was also a familiar face at the annual Highway 127 Yard Sale, the famous multi-state sale that runs along old U.S. Route 127, and he kept a lifelong interest in collecting cast iron.

Eddington's life was anchored in family. He was preceded in death by his wife, Oval Lou Eddington, to whom he was married for 66 years, as well as by his parents, Gaither and Lissie Eddington. He was survived by six children, Vickie Powers, Ken Eddington, Kay Eddington, Ramona Kerns, Sandy Elmore and Angelia Snow, along with numerous grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren who, according to those who knew him, called him Grandpa, Papaw, Pepaw or Paw. In his later years he lived with his grandson Jeremy Lloyd, with whom he shared many outings, a detail that friends and relatives have pointed to as evidence of how close knit the family remained even as Eddington aged.

Eddington was not a public figure in the conventional sense, he did not hold office, perform, or build a public career beyond his trade and his community. His life mattered in the way that so many working lives do, in the roads he helped lay, the garden he tended and shared, and the large family he leaves behind. News of his passing has circulated mainly among family, friends and neighbors in the Daysville and Harriman area, where he was remembered as a steady, generous presence.

No cause of death has been made public. A celebration of life service is being planned, though as of this writing the funeral home has not announced a date, time or location, and further details are expected to follow in the coming days.