“She’s just an incredible woman and a true cheerleader for FMCA,” said Jerry Yeatts, FMCA’s director of conventions and commercial services.

Beverly Spurgeon, director of FMCA’s Membership Services department, first met Genny in 1967. “Genny is someone you like immediately," she said. "I can’t even begin to imagine the number of friends she has made over the years."

Zest for conventions

Jennings Luckey has attended most of FMCA’s 78 conventions, including the first gathering in 1964. If it weren’t for school, she might have achieved perfect attendance.

“I think I’m the only one who has been to every summer convention,” said Genny, one of FMCA’s 185 charter members. “I’ve only missed eight winter conventions, because during that time the kids were in school, of course.”

She also held various FMCA national office positions for nearly 20 years in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

FMCA has been the biggest part of her life outside of her family, said her oldest son, Ralph Jennings, 59. “There are basically two organizations she has been really active in throughout most of her life. One is the Women Marines Association and the other is FMCA. And FMCA is far and away the most significant to her and that’s where she generated the most friends and the most experiences.”

Aside from her proclivity for conventions and volunteer service to FMCA, Genny is known for another feat — motorhoming in the 1960s and ‘70s with her first husband, Howard Jennings, and their kids — five boys and four girls.

Matched in the Marines

Genny met and wed Howard while stationed in the U.S. Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, N.C., where he was serving as a Pharmacist’s Mate.

At age 20 she had enlisted in the Marines in St. Louis, Mo., with the signed consent of her mother. A brother already had joined up, and Genny figured it was the right thing to do at the time.

So she went down to Camp Lejeune for basic training, and then served for two years there as a clerk at an officer’s club. “They had a little canteen, like a store, and I was in charge of that.”

In November 1945 the Jennings settled in Howard’s central Michigan hometown of Owosso, about 25 miles west of Flint. (They would be married 43 years, until Howard’s death in 1988.)

The green bus

In 1959, 14 years and nine children later — Marie, Ralph, Charles, Rae Ann, Paul, Alvin, Wells, Martha and Laura — the Jennings bought their first motorhome. Actually, it was a 1949 55-passenger Ford school bus before Genny and Howard applied their handiwork.

“It was in a parking lot where they had all these old, yellow school buses,” Genny said. “My husband happened to see it and we went in and bought it, for $200. That was a lot of money back then when you had nine kids. But you can’t get nine kids in a car very comfortably.”

Ralph, the second-oldest child, was 11 when his parents bought the Ford bus. “I can’t remember where they bought it … maybe out West somewhere," he said. "But it was a big event when Dad brought it home. And it took a while to convert it because it was all done pretty much homegrown, or handmade.”

The Jennings tore out the interior and started rebuilding it from scratch. “We actually used some of the school bus seats for the conversion,” Ralph said. “In the front we had a removable table and two of those bus seats facing each other. That was our card table and our eating table and it turned into a sleeping area, so it was kind of an all-purpose thing.”

Their biggest consideration: ensuring sleeping accommodations for 11 people. “We made three three-tiered bunks in the back and then there was the fold-down table that slept two more,” Genny said.

They painted the bus in pastel green, with dark-green trim.

All told, it took them about four years to convert the bus to a “house car,” as coaches of that era were called. Still, a few challenges remained …

‘Real difficult to drive’

The Ford bus was different from the coaches of today because it did not have an automatic transmission. And it had a two-speed rear end, which meant the driver had to double clutch to get into some gears.

“It was real difficult to drive at first,” Genny said, “but I learned because I had driven tractors and trucks for my stepfather.” Genny, who is the oldest of nine children, grew up in St. Louis, where her step dad had a farm and owned a grocery store. (Her biological father died when she was very young.)

The bus was also a cumbersome vehicle for a time when two-lane roads were prevalent, Ralph said. “It wasn’t like now where you just get on the interstate and go. Back in the ‘60s that was when the interstates were just being built, so we spent a lot of times on two-lane roads.”

The house car also lacked one prominent amenity: a bathroom.

“We obviously tried to stop at parks with bathroom facilities,” Ralph said. “But at that time there weren’t any KOA campgrounds and that kind of thing. It was all state parks or parking by the side of the road, or a turnoff somewhere or a parking lot.”

The lack of a bathroom and driving challenges never deterred the Jennings from traveling far and wide.

Happier campers

Even before they purchased the Ford bus, the Jennings family was no stranger to camping in the state of Michigan. Myers Lake in Byron and Higgins Lake in Roscommon County were favorite places to camp in the summertime.

“Those trips were fun times, too,” Ralph said. “I think that’s what led us into buying the first bus. My dad found that everybody liked doing that stuff and it was a way to keep everybody together.”

With the bus conversion complete, they were ready to expand their range.

But it wasn’t always easy to find time to travel. Howard owned the Jennings-Lyons Funeral Home in Owosso, a business started by his grandfather in 1896.

“My husband was funeral director, so he didn’t have much time off,” Genny said. “But we usually had a two-week period in July and would do a lot of traveling during that time.”

Early travels

Their first big trip was to FMCA’s first national “gathering” at Fort Ticonderoga, New York, in summer 1964 with all the children.

“It’s funny,” Ralph said, “I remember the area where we were, it was kind of a small area. It was almost like the coaches were circled up like an old wagon train. That’s kind of the way I picture it now.”

A year or two after the Fort Ticonderoga trip, they traveled around Lake Superior, up into Canada and back down into the United States.

On another occasion, they journeyed through the Black Hills in South Dakota to Yellowstone National Park and up to Little Big Horn in eastern Montana.

They traveled to St. Louis, Mo., a couple of times to see Genny’s parents. They ventured to California and Washington, D.C., and to Florida’s Disney World.

“We just tried to pick things that would be interesting to the children so they could learn about the country more than anything else, which they did,” Genny said.

Growing up

During her children’s formative years Genny kept up a mother’s breakneck pace. “Oh, man, she did everything,” Ralph said. “You name it, she did it.”

She took on the roles of den mother and troop leader. She was a parent advisor to DeMolay International, which prepares young men to lead successful, happy and productive lives. She was active in the Order of the Eastern Star, a fraternal organization for men and women.

“I think she attended every school event that any one of us was ever in, which was quite a challenge,” Ralph said.

Marie, the oldest, went off to college in 1964, and Ralph joined the Air Force in ’66. Genny and Howard still traveled with seven kids for a couple of years after that.

“Once we had started the college routine,” Ralph said, “there was less participating [in motorhoming] by the kids. But maybe even more participation by my mother and dad because they had less child care to do.”

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