Life
Bobby Frank Cherry was born on June 20, 1930 in Mineral Springs, Alabama. He joined the United States Marine Corps as a youth, where he gained expertise in demolitions and working with explosives. After his time with the Marines, Cherry worked a series of low-paying jobs, including a long stint as a truck driver.
Cherry had a wife, Virginia, at the time of the bombing. He and Virginia Cherry had seven children together. Their marriage was tumultuous and at times violent. Bobby Cherry expected deference from his wife and children and used beatings to enforce his authority. Virginia Cherry died of cancer in 1968. After her death, Bobby Cherry placed the children in the Gateway Mercy Home Orphanage and with relatives. He eventually remarried four times, including to Jean Casey and Willadean Brogdon; Brogdon would later testify at Cherry's trial that he had bragged about his role in the church bombing.
Cherry left Birmingham in the early 1970s and moved to the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. He found work as a welder and owned a carpet cleaner business in Grand Prairie. In 1988, Cherry suffered a heart attack and moved again, this time to small-town Henderson County, Texas with fifth wife Myrtle.
During his trial, the prosecution presented evidence that Cherry, a white man, had assaulted black minister Fred Shuttlesworth in 1957 using a set of brass knuckles. The minister had been working to integrate a school in Birmingham, Alabama. The prosecution also discussed an incident in which Cherry had allegedly pistol-whipped a black man in a restaurant after the man insulted Cherry. On the morning of the bombing, Cherry was with his son Tom at the Modern Sign Company a few blocks away from the church. The two were silkscreening Confederate rebel flags. Tom Cherry later said that he could clearly hear the sound of an explosion happening nearby and knew that something bad had happened.
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