In the auspicious year of 1998, our great patriarch James Robert Herren (Jim, or Jimmy, to his friends) and his wife Jeanette welcomed their children and grandchildren for what would be the first in a series of annual family gatherings to take place on the old Herren homestead. We camped on the banks of the Sipsey, where generations of Herren children have swam, fished, skipped rocks, and gone down into the river to be baptized into Christ. Over the years our family has grown, and so has this great tradition of family and fellowship.