THE MAN WHO DANCED ACROSS ROUTE 66

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The dapper Mr Walker.

Travellers on Route 66 in the early 1960s might have been surprised to see a middle-aged man in a white suit and broad-brimmed hat bobbing and weaving along the road. That man was Lewis Larrimore Walker and, despite the incongruity of his surname, he was dancing across the United States.

Lewis Walker and his twin Lois were born in Childress, Texas, in 1909, to cotton farmers Lee and Lillie Walker. Yes, Lewis and Lois. The Walkers had an interesting approach to names; the twins had an older brother by the unusual name of Akard, another brother called Bernice and a younger sister who was christened Billy…

Lillie Pearl and Lee Walker. Larry said he learned to dance in his father’s cotton fields.

By early 1930 Lewis was working in the oilfields, along with another brother, Rudolph, but it was not a profession that suited him and a few months later he was working in Kitty O’Connor’s Dance Studio (‘above Panhandle Paint and Wallpaper Co’). That didn’t last long and in October 1930 he opened the Lewis Walker Dancing School at the Hilton Hotel in Lubbock, Texas. He would later say that he learned to dance from the black workers in his father’s cotton fields.

There was little scope for men to take dancing classes at Lubbock High School, so Lewis turned to sports. Here he is part of the Bi-District Basketball Championship team in 1928.

Lewis ran a tight ship. In early 1931 he took out newspaper adverts which listed the ten rules to observed in his dancing school that included ‘This is a dancing school, not a loafing school. There are other places more suited to loafing.’ (#4) and ‘Don’t talk crude. This doesn’t help you or anyone else’ (#6).

This was the Great Depression and dancing lessons might have seemed very low on many people’s priorities, but Lewis would trade cakes and pies for classes and often offered free lessons. In 1935 he changed the name to the Larrymore School of the Dance and then the Larrymore School of Fine Arts. He had hated his middle name as a child but adopted it for his business, although, with typical Walker disregard for convention he spelled it with a ‘Y’ rather than as the ‘Larrimore’ with which he and Lois had been born.

That dance studio would move around a bit – Lewis once said that it had had an address “on every street [in Lubbock] from 8th to 25th” – and he also opened studios in Ruidoso and Carlsbad, New Mexico. However, business was paused when Lewis went off to serve his country in 1943. He flew as a glider pilot and then as a gunner on a B-17 in the 8th Air Force, flying 35 missions and being awarded the Air Medal with five clusters. He spent his last months of service at South Plains Army Airfield as a non-commissioned officer in charge of special services on the airfield.

Lewis was discharged on September 30, 1945, after serving 3 years and 9 months; he immediately returned to Lubbock to build a new dance studio. That would grow to three locations in Lubbock in the 1950s with some of his pupils the children of those he had originally taught. (Lewis liked teaching children and teenagers because they were more difficult to train and he liked the challenge.) He never married, although he had been engaged to Nancy Faver, one of his students, in 1933, but that came to an end when she married someone else.

Then in January 1962, he announced the closure of the Larrymore Dance Studio. He moved to Hollywood but then came his next venture – he would dance across America. (He claimed it was to settle a bet made 31 years previously with his friend Harold Gore.)

His penchant for long distance dancing had began early. In 1931 he danced from Lubbock to Slaton, Texas, and back again in a day, a distance of around 35 miles, accompanied by a piano and a phonograph on a decorated truck.

Lewis being partnered in July 1962 by Elaine Dunn who was then starring in ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ at the Hotel Riviera in Las Vegas.

It appears that the cross-country dance started with the intention of a continuous trip, but – probably to the relief of his feet – he soon decided it would be completed in stages. (He had thought he would manage 35 miles a day but the terrain and his age quickly caught up with him and across California he averaged little more than 10 miles a day.) So, on May 2, 1962, he dipped a toe in the Pacific Ocean in California and, with a foam dummy as a dancing partner, headed east. At first he was accompanied by a transistor radio to supply music to which he would do a tango or a waltz, along with a driver and car, although during school holidays his teacher nephew, Robert Vaughn, would join him, driving a motor home.

By July he had danced across the Mojave (getting lost on occasion) and was approaching Las Vegas but it appears that the trip stalled at that point. It resumed at the beginning of the following year: he danced through Seligman, Arizona, spotting a mountain lion, and then had a close encounter with a Hereford bull in Ash Fork. In January 1963, Lewis danced into Two Guns, Arizona, where he was greeted by Fern Rawlinson, the then owner of the trading post, to whom he gave a dancing lesson before moving onto the Hopi House and then to Winslow.

Fern Rawlinson greets Lewis at Two Guns, Arizona, in January 1963.

And so he danced on, through Grants and Albuquerque and across the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles By July he was in Kansas with plans to reach New York by the fall. Did he? Alas, I can’t tell you that. I could find no further reports of the ‘Dancing Texan’ after Kansas and if he did complete the trip, then it seems to have gone unreported. However, Lewis’s mother, Lillie, died in August 1963 and it could be that that brought a premature end to the challenge, but I would like to think that Lewis did indeed dance all the way to the east coast!

In a posed publicity shot.

A SENSELESS MURDER IN CANUTE

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It was a warm day in Washita County, Oklahoma, and, in a field just east of the Canute cemetery, a 13-year-old boy called Clifford Kirk was picking cotton on the Xavier Meiers farm, along with his father and brother, Martin. Between the stalks Clifford made the odd discovery of a shoe and a Continental Oil Company hat and told his brother to take a look around. Minutes later, Clifford made a discovery that would haunt him for years; it was the decomposing body of a badly beaten man. By the time that the police arrived, the teenager was so hysterical that he had to be taken to hospital in Elk City.

The man had clearly been dead for a little while; he had a broken leg and had suffered cuts and blows to his head. Thanks to a chauffeur’s badge on him he was quickly identified as George Thomas Goodwin, the son of WH Goodwin who lived in Cement, around a hundred miles south-east of Canute. But what also swiftly came to light was horrifying for there had been several missed chances to save George’s life.

The first had been around midnight on Thursday, October 7, 1939. It was then that a Canute farmer called Henry Spieker had spotted a truck, laden with peaches, parked on the side of the road. When it was still there the next day he reported it to the police who towed it away on Sunday. It appears they didn’t investigate further or they might have found the badly injured George some 30 cotton rows into the field beside the truck. According to evidence at the scene and a later post-mortem, it seems that George lived for as long as three or four days in the cotton field, unable to get to the road or to summon help. Later, someone happened to mention that they’d seen a man sitting in the cotton field on Sunday afternoon but had done nothing…

That George had been the victim of foul play was beyond doubt. Afte having supper with his father and family he had left Cement at 8pm on Thursday night with $46 in his pocket; all but a couple of dollars was now missing. His brother-in-law, Claude Underwood, who travelled from Cement to identify the body surmised that George might have picked up a hitchhiker – being a kind-hearted man, he said, that was just the sort of thing he did. George was driving back to San Jon, New Mexico, where he had lived for five years with his second wife Lilly and their three children, William Thomas (13), Pauline Fay (11) and Kathryn (8), and would have appreciated the company.

Eunice Earl Daniel posing for a mug shot.

But despite a couple of initial arrests, the trail went cold. Then in April of the following year three young men were arrested in a stolen car after a short chase in Altus, south of Canute. Driving was Eunice Earl Daniel, 20, and with him were his 16-year-old brother Jesse and 17-year-old Albert Jackson ‘Jack’ Ray. The police believed that they were part of a hijacking ring responsible for both automobile thefts and robbing motorists and they were right on that count. Jesse Daniels and Jack Ray admitted to six recent car thefts in Oklahoma and were imprisoned in the Granite state reformatory for those, but, somewhat to the surprise of officers, Daniel then confessed to murdering George Goodwin. He quickly changed this to the murder having been done by an accomplice called Monroe Sprawling – it seems that police didn’t put any credence in this story and no Monroe Sprawling was ever traced – before dropping hints that Jack Ray was involved. Finally, he decided to recant and, when charged, pleaded not guilty.

Daniel looks a little less certain after his arrest.

 Under questioning, Jack Ray admitted to the murder too. Having stolen a car in Dallas and then robbed a pawn shop of a gun, the three found themselves in El Reno. Unfortunately for George, the truck driver was at a filling station at the same time. Seeing George pay from a wad of bills, Jack Ray persuaded George to give him a lift when the Daniels brothers followed in the stolen car. A few miles later, Daniel’s car forced George off the highway and the trio demanded that he give them his money. When George refused, Daniel shot him and Ray hit him over the head before taking the gun and also shooting him. They then carried the wounded George into the cotton field where they left him, driving on to Elk City.

Although badly hurt from being shot in the leg and beaten over the head with the gun (part of the handle was found near him) and a wrench, it’s likely that George Goodwin might well have survived had he been found in time. Instead, he spent his final days alone in a cotton field, just yards from rescue.

Jack Ray pled guilty to the charge of murder and was sentenced to life in prison in McAlester Penitentiary to where he was transferred after completing his term for auto theft. In 1958 he was granted parole but while on parole he committed a bank robbery for which he served a term of imprisonment in the United States Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. Because of violation of his parole he was ultimately returned to the custody of the State of Oklahoma where he remained until 1977. He died on January 9, 1988, and was buried in an unmarked grave.

During his imprisonment Jack Ray confessed to four other murders, but all the confessions were hoaxes.

Eunice Daniel changed his plea to guilty before his trial began and, despite his lawyer claiming all the usual excuses of a terrible childhood (the Daniel family were no strangers to the law; by now his older brother Parnell was serving a ten-year sentence), he too received a life term. Curiously, although he was certainly inside McAlester in 1950, Daniel doesn’t feature in the historical Oklahoma prison records. It’s likely he was released around the same time as Jack Ray and he died in 1978. He too lies in an unmarked grave in the Union Cemetery in Bakersfield, California. As this is where unclaimed prisoners and inmates from local jails and state prisons are buried, it seems that he may have continued on a path of crime.

The little Goodwin family was destroyed by the tragedy. Unable to cope, Lilly Goodwin surrendered her three children to the Masonic Children’s Home, an orphanage in Guthrie, Oklahoma. It was a senseless crime with so many ramifications.                                                                                                                                       

The Masonic Children’s Home where George Goodwin’s children would grow up,

A THRILL KILLING ON ROUTE 66

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Ed Marso

It was midnight on Route 66 on February 5, 1952, and a slow night for state policeman Nash Garcia who was patrolling the road in Grants. Then a dark green 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan barrelled towards him at a rapid rate of knots. Patrolman Garcia stopped the car and the driver identified himself as Edward Marso, a 31-year-old Iowan who was returning to Le Mars, Iowa, after visiting friends in California. Having telephoned his employer to say he was driving straight through to get back to Iowa where his father Nick, was seriously ill, he was a hurry, as he explained. Garcia gave him a warning, told him to slow down and let him go.

Edward Marso never made it to Iowa.

Around 18 hours later his Lincoln was found on fire just south of Tijeras but there was no sign of Marso, nor of his luggage, tools or the $300 and travellers cheques he had been carrying when he left California.  

Born on October 10, 1930, to Elizabeth and Nick Marso, Edward Marso lost his mother when he was just 17. Shortly after he became engaged to Dorothy Luschen, a pretty young woman from Brunsville, Iowa. Two weeks before Christmas 1942, he, Dorothy, Dorothy’s brother Leonard and a 16-year-old girl called Clara Sawin were riding in a car driven by CJ Noonan. It seems that Noonan failed to see a railroad crossing just as a train was coming. The car struck the centre of the train and was dragged along, catching fire. Dorothy and Ed were in the rear seat and the back doors jammed. While Ed broke a window and escaped, he was unable to rescue Dorothy. She and her brother both died in the blaze, Clara suffered terrible burns to which she would succumb three days later while both Noonan and Ed escaped with minor injuries. Friends reported that he never really recovered from not being able to save Dorothy and he would remain single for the rest of his life.

Ed’s fiancee Dorothy Luschen who perished in a blazing car

Because of this tragedy, some surmised that he had either chosen to disappear in New Mexico or was suffering from amnesia. An Albuquerque insurance agent claimed he had seen the 6ft, 180lb black-haired Marso days after the car was found at a Salvation Army service. But by now both the police and Ed’s older brother Paul suspected foul play, a theory given weight when police discovered a bullet hole in the front bumper of the Lincoln.

A further check of the ashes in the car found what was thought to be human remains. Was it a simple case of Ed failing asleep and running off the road and then, like his fiancée, burning to death in the car? Results were delayed by the scientist responsible for testing the ashes having broken his leg but finally he concluded that they were not human. By the end of February little more could be done until the snow in the area melted.

Jess Mann of the Oden Motor Co which recovered the Lincoln points to a bullet hole in the front bumper

Then, on April 13, 1952, two 12-year-old boys found a body hidden under brush in an arroyo five miles from where the car had burned. It was Ed Marso; he had been beaten, strangled, shot and robbed. All his possessions, with the exception of two cigarette lighters and a pack of cigarettes, were missing. (Tragically the day after Ed’s body was found, Nash Garcia, the last witness to see him alive, was found shot dead in similar circumstances, but that’s a story for a future post.)

State Police Sergeant Lonnie Dennis theorised that, feeling sleepy, Ed had stopped by the side of the road where he had been robbed and killed, but the truth was even more terrifying.

Within two weeks of the discovery of Ed’s body, three men had been arrested, Francisco ‘Frank’ Francia, 22, Nasareno Paz, 17, and his cousin Juanito ‘Johnny’ who was also 17. The arrests followed a report by tourists from Oklahoma of being fired upon while driving through Tijeras Canyon on Route 66, They managed to get a description and the license plate of the gunmen’s car and it tracked straight back to one of the Paz boys. Nasareno and Johnny confessed immediately and when police searched Nasareno Paz’s house they found tools and a wristwatch belonging to Ed Marso.

Chief Deputy Sheriff Ed Jackson interviewing Francisco Francia

The trio soon gave up another name and 16-year-old Antonio ‘Tony’ Riboni was extradited from Washington where he had fled. All four pled guilty. They had lain in wait in a car along Route 66 in Tijeras Canyon, close to their homes, and ambushed Ed’s car by shooting out his tyres. When Ed stopped, the quartet beat him and then shot him, before putting his body in the Lincoln and driving to where they dumped the body and set fire to the car five miles away. They’d done it for the money and for the thrill and if the Oklahoma tourists hadn’t had the presence of mind to note their license plate they would probably have killed again – right on their doorstep. But they were allowed to plead guilty to second degree murder; Tony Riboni and Nazareno Paz received a sentence of 50-70 years, Johnny Paz got 60-70 and Frank Francia who had admitted firing three bullets into Ed Marso was sentenced to 90-99 years.

Juanito Paz
Nasareno Paz
The oldest at 22, Francisco Francia confessed to shooting Ed Marso

Effectively this should have meant life in prison. It was nowhere near that. Tony Riboni was paroled in 1961 having served less than nine years (he and the Paz pair had actually appeared before a parole board less than two years after starting their sentences). The Paz cousins were incarcerated a little longer but were still free by 1964. At the time they were released three were still younger than Ed Marso had been when they killed him. Francisco Francia served 17 years of his 90 to 99-sentence and was paroled in August 1969.

The youngest of the four, Antonio Riboni served less than 10 years and died in 1992
Ed Marso’s grave in Le Mars, Iowa

GOODBYE TO THE HI-LINE

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The Hi-Line Motor Court in Ash Fork, Arizona, was opened in around 1936 by a Mr Moore who sold it three years later to Mr and Mrs JR Edwards. In February 1940 they added five new units, each with a kitchenette. Mr Edwards had, apparently, made a thorough study of the tourist business and concluded that there was “a genuine demand” for the type of cabin he was adding.  

In the middle of the U-shaped court was a Shell station, which disappeared when the road was widened in the 1950s. Jame Alton and Gladys McAbee took over in the late 1940s and ran it until 1964.

The Hi-Line struggled into the 21st century as long term rentals. Unlike many of its contemporaries it still retained its garages. But around 15 years ago it closed for good and fell into increasing disrepair. In November 2022 it was posted as unsafe for human occupancy.

Then, when I stopped by last November, I found that, on October 22, 2025, it had been issued with a Notice to Abate. This raised the stakes for the old motor court. In short, if the owner didn’t make repairs within 40 days, the county had the right to demolish. As the current owner, Glenn Summerfield, had died in August of 2025 it seemed unlikely that would happen, so I stopped to take yet more photos. It was a good call. On December 30, 2025, the oldest motor court in Ash Fork was demolished. The sign has been saved by the excellent Ash Fork Museum. 

MURDER ON ROUTE 66: ALLINE AND WILLIAM B COLE

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Alline Alma Patterson Cole. He first name was spelled several different ways by the press of the day, but Alline appears to be the correct version.

It was the afternoon of September 4, 1945, and an Arizona Highway Department workman was working on Route 66, around 16 miles west of Kingman on the road towards Oatman. The previous day he’d noticed a car stuck in a sand wash the previous morning and thought little of it. But when it was still there the following afternoon he reported it to the Sheriff’s office in Kingman.

Sheriff Frank L Porter drove out on Highway 66 to inspect the car, expecting nothing more than the misadventure of a traveller. But when he spotted a lady’s black patent leather purse on the rear seat of the 1941 DeSoto Club coupe, he was more concerned – what lady leaves her purse behind? The question was answered a few minutes later when, a few feet in front of the DeSoto, officers spotted a mound of sand – with two fingers protruding from the dirt. They were the ring and left middle finger of a woman, complete with gold wedding band and gold ring with a diamond.

The abandoned DeSoto. In front of it is the grave in which Patterson gave his sister a “Christian burial”.

The makeshift grave was revealed to contain a woman of around 30 years of age, about 5 feet six inches in height and around 125lbs in weight. She was wearing blue ladies’ overalls and bobbie socks and had brown hair. Wrapped around her head was a man’s maroon and yellow checkered sports shirt; it was bloodstained, as was the powder blue ladies’ coat that partially covered her and the rear seat and interior of the car. A pair of man’s shoes was also found in the car, the soles covered in oil.

The maroon DeSoto with its tan top was registered to a WM Cole of 1515 East 87th Street in Los Angeles but there was no sign of Mr Cole. The car was filled with cardboard boxes and personal belongings and, from their contents, officers found they belonged to mother of two, Alline Alma Cole, 27. At first, her missing husband came under suspicion – until police found there had been a third person in the car.

Emmett Edwin Patterson, ex-Marine and murderer.

A small suitcase in the car contained the personal effects – which included divorce papers and letters to a waitress in San Jose, California – of one Emmett Edwin Patterson. Better-known as Ted, Patterson was Mrs Cole’s brother. The Coles had been living in Los Angeles, but had moved in May 1945 to Paris, Texas, where Alline’s family lived and where William Cole owned a dairy farm. In August of that year he had sold the farm and was preparing to move back to California. Patterson hitched a ride with the couple, most likely to see the waitress with whom he had been corresponding.

On the way the trio stopped in Amarillo, Texas, to visit Aline and Ted’s older sister. There William Cole had a new engine fitted in the DeSoto, paying $305.97 in cash for the work. Cole was in the habit of carrying large sums of cash and it was known that he had left Texas with some $7000 (that would be around $126,000 today). One of those who knew this was, it seems, Ted Patterson.

At 1pm on September 1, 1945, the trio left Amarillo, Cole keeping to the instruction of his mechanic to drive not more than 35mph for the first 300 miles and then to keep to under 45mph for the next 300 because of the new motor. With them went their mongrel dog; both the Coles adored the dog and spoiled it – during their stay in Amarillo the dog had refused to eat anything by cooked hamburgers.

At 9.50am on Sunday September 2, 1945, the DeSoto passed through the Agricultural Checking Station on Route 66 in Holbrook, Arizona with William Cole driving, Patterson beside him and Aline and the dog in the rear seat. But after that there was little trace of them.

The police considered the prospect that they had picked up a hitchhiker who had then killed all three of them (a 22-year-old called John Hanson was briefly questioned) but Sheriff Porter was soon convinced that Patterson was responsible for the death of his sister, and possibly for that of his brother-in-law. He and his deputies spent days slowly driving along Highway 66, looking for oil and also for a peculiar type of dark-coloured sand known as ‘Job’s Tears’ which had been thrown on the floor of the DeSoto to absorb Alline’s blood.

Sheriff Porter then worked out that the DeSoto had covered some 303 miles since Holbrook and surmised that would be 150 to a point and back, making it likely the murder had taken place in California. His men searched Route 66 from the point where the DeSoto was abandoned, westwards into California, only returning to Kingman when darkness fell.

It was not the sheriff’s deputies who found William Cole’s body, but some tourists who, on September 29, had stopped at the side of the highway near Siberia for the night. They let their dog out of their car, only for Fido to return a few minutes later with a man’s legbone. The clothing found on the skeleton matched the last known description of William Cole and, proving Sheriff Cole’s distance theory, he was found 140 miles from where his wife had been buried (and some 15 miles from where the deputies had had to curtail their search).

Near the body was a large bloodstained rock which had been used to crush Cole’s skull. Also found were matches with a green head and red tip, identical to those found in the DeSoto. Just $6.48 was found on William Cole. All that was missing now was Ted Patterson – and the $7000.

Ted Patterson was two years older than his sister and, like her, had grown up on a farm in Paris, Texas. At the age of 21 he had joined the Marines but, by 1940, he was back in Paris Texas, working as a machine operator and married to Laura Jones who he had wed in February 1938. The union would produce two children but end in divorce – papers found in the car showed that Emmett was desperately short of money, now an itinerant taxi driver, and had not been providing for his kids.

On October 13, 1945, came the news that Patterson had been arrested by a Union Pacific railroad officer near Kelso, California, after having been found sleeping in a sand bed near the tracks. Kelso is only a few miles from Siberia, but around 120 miles from where the DeSoto had been abandoned. Why would he have retraced his steps to where he killed William Cole? The simple answer is, he didn’t. The man in the sand bed wasn’t Emmett Edwin Patterson.

Ted Patterson might well have gone undiscovered had it not been for his temper and his weaknesses for waitresses. It turned out that he had travelled to Hot Springs, Arkansas (how is unknown) where he had taken a job on a dairy farm under the name of Tom Morton. While delivering milk to a café in Hot Springs, he met a waitress and took her to a party on New Year’s Eve, 1945. They both got drunk, had a row, Patterson hit the girl and broke her jaw. She had him arrested the following day, but his luck held. He wasn’t fingerprinted and so his real identity wasn’t revealed. It was only in February 1946 that a sharp-eyed Hot Springs policemen looked through the wanted circulars and spotted the photo of a man wanted by the Sheriffs of Mohave and San Bernadino counties. On March 1, 1946, Emmett Patterson was arrested and taken to California to be tried.

When his trial began on July 16, 1946, in San Bernadino, Patterson had a story. He claimed that the trio had stopped by the side of the road in Siberia (although it was known by relatives that the Coles were afraid of sleeping by the roadside). He had been asleep when he had heard the dog barking and woke to find Cole, gun in hand, beating his wife. Despite claiming he was scared of his brother-in-law, Patterson leapt to his sister’s defence, picking up a rock and beating Cole to death with it, as well as throttling him. However, the trial testimony brought out the fact that Cole was a small man, 20 years older than the ex-Marine, and had suffered from tuberculosis. Moreover, relatives said that Cole not only didn’t like Patterson, but was indeed scared of him.

Patterson stuck to his story, insisting that he then had put his sister in Cole’s DeSoto, planning to take her to hospital in Kingman but, just eight miles later, had found she was dead. So, letting the dog off its leash (the dog was never seen again) he said, he intended to take Alline back home to Paris, Texas, until he realised that having a dead body in the car would invite awkward questions at the Kingman inspection station. Instead, he stopped at Ed’s Camp between Oatman and Kingman, being careful to park the car a hundred yards east of the entrance and spent the day there. After dark he headed east but then stopped at 17 Mile Wash where he buried Alline, saying he had given her a “Christian burial”.

Perhaps it was this last element that helped him escape the death penalty for which the prosecution had asked. But the jury took just minutes to declare him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and recommend life imprisonment.

Emmett Edwin Patterson served 17 years in San Quentin. He was paroled in April 1963 to Humboldt County where he died in September 1988. Alline never got back to Paris, Texas; she and her husband are buried in the Mountain View Cemetery in Kingman where, as a last insult, the gravestone lists her wrong year of birth.

THE OATMAN HONEYMOON THAT NEVER WAS

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The Oatman Hotel.

The Oatman Hotel.

One of the most enduring stories on Route 66 is that film stars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their honeymoon at the Oatman Hotel in Oatman, Arizona. Mention Oatman and this so-called fact will be trotted out. There’s just one problem.

It never happened.

Despite the hotel still having the ‘Gable and Lombard honeymoon suite’ on display, despite town even having produced commemorative postcards in the past, despite hundreds of tourists insisting the story is true, it isn’t. It seems that it was a novel piece of flummery on the part of a past hotelier to bring in more business to his establishment and his town, although it’s uncertain when the story was concocted.

On March 28, 1939, Clark Gable was filming scenes for ‘Gone With The Wind’ when he discovered he wouldn’t be needed on set the next day. Rather than a relaxing day at the ranch he and Carole Lombard had bought in Encino, California, he telephoned Carole and suggested they elope. The pair had been seeing each other for three years, but the relationship had only been made public in 1938 when Gable’s divorce to his previous wife, Houston socialite Maria Langham, was finalised.

They drove through the night with Otto Winkler, an MGM publicist, whose main contribution to the trip was that he had a new car without license plates, allowing the trio to travel without being spotted by press and fans.

St John’s Methodist Church in Kingman, now the Public Defender’s Office.

The afternoon of March 29, 1939, was a typically uneventful afternoon for Kingman court clerk Viola Olsen – until two of the most famous stars in the world appeared in her office. “I’d like to get a marriage license,” Viola reported Gable as saying. Then he asked who could marry them. A breathless Viola recommended the Reverend Kenneth Engle, the pastor of Saint John’s Methodist Episcopal Church on North 5th Street. The pastor recruited his wife and his neighbour, Howard Cate, the high school principal, as witnesses and half an hour later Gable and Lombard were man and wife. Clark wore a blue suit with a white shirt and a patterned tie, while Lombard was dressed in a dove-grey flannel suit made by the designer Irene, along with a polka dot blouse.

Sources vary as to what time the pair were married. Newspapers reported that it was ‘dusk’ when the pair walked into Viola Olsen’s office, others that it was ‘just after 4pm’, while Gable himself later said it was 3.30pm (although bear in mind that the clocks would only just have changed in California) and Lombard’s mother said that newly-weds telephoned her from Reverend Engle’s study at 6.15pm. Regardless of these various times, it’s clear that Lombard and Gable were married in the late afternoon in Kingman.

So, was it straight off to Oatman for their honeymoon? No. Howard Cate would say that the couple were heading for Boulder City, Nevada, but it seems that this was a ploy to throw off any press on their trail. The pair and Otto Winkler set off for Carole’s home on St Cloud Road in Bel Air and arrived there at 3am. That trip today would take you at least five hours but this was 1939; the I-40 interstate was years in the future and it would be the often rough and slow Route 66 all the way. It seems that the Gables set off almost immediately after the wedding and stopped only for gas at Daggett along the way (and possibly food in Needles).

The happy newly-weds.

The next morning they woke at 9am to find reporters and photographers camped outside the house and a press conference was held on the lawn of Carole’s house at around midday. However much you would like the story of the Oatman honeymoon to be true, it would simply be impossible. The pair left Kingman and were home in Los Angeles, some 315 miles of rough road away, ten hours later. No stop in Oatman, no honeymoon.

But that hasn’t stopped the legend rumbling on – and despite that both the Oatman Hotel and an ‘anniversary’ postcard of 1989 cite the date of the marriage as March 18, 1939, some eleven days before it actually took place.

The ‘honeymoon suite’ in the hotel is just hokum. On one chair is, supposedly, Lombard’s wedding gown, a flouncy white affair rather than the tailored grey suit she wore. On the other chair is ‘Lombard’s night gown’. Except it’s pink and, according to Lombard expert Carole Sampeck of the Carole Lombard Archive, ‘Carole never wore pink around Clark (much less a nightgown!) – he loathed that color’.

A board which hangs in the Oatman Motel – note the incorrect date of the marriage.
The pink nightgown that Lombard would never have worn.

The dream marriage was all too short. Travelling back from a war bond rally in Indiana, Lombard decided to fly (rumour has it she felt Gable had a wandering eye when she was away). She, her mother and Otto Winkler took TWA Flight 3. Just after 7am the airplane crashed into Double Up Peak southwest of Las Vegas. Everyone aboard was killed.

The so-called honeymoon suite.

But the myth of the Oatman honeymoon still continues, romance triumphing over truth.

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in Los Angeles, just hours after their marriage.

BEHIND THE NAMES ON THE TEXOLA STONE: Part Five

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HERBERT COPELAND

Although Herbert Wayne Copeland’s name appears on the Texola stone, he never graduated.

Herbert was born on January 9, 1921, to Herbert and Zetta Louise Copeland. The middle child of three. His sister Billie Frances was just over two years old and his little brother, Bobby Gene, was born in February 1930. Until the age of 7 he grew up in Thomas, Oklahoma, and then the family moved to Texola when he enrolled in school. A good student, he had a near-perfect attendance record and scored As in Oklahoma history, algebra and general science. In his first two years at Texola High he received the silver cups offered as rewards for highest scholarship and was elected class vice-president.

One June Saturday night in 1937, Herbert and his cousin Lonnie joined two girls from Sayre, Opal Hammons and Laverne Avant, in a trip to a midnight movie in Sayre, Oklahoma. Ernie Bartlett – Ruby’s brother – was driving a 1936 Ford V-8 as the five young people travelled along Route 66.

Opal Hammons and Laverne Avant who were killed alongside Herbert Copeland.

At about 10.10pm, six miles east of Erick, their car collided head on with another driven by 24-year-old Alfred Eugene ‘Gene’ Still Harmon, the new assistant manager of Harrell’s Variety store in Sayre, who’d been married just four months. It was believed both cars were travelling at high speed, both in the middle of the road. The impact was colossal, destroying both automobiles. Harmon, Herbert and the girls were killed instantly. A passing motorist found Ernie and Lonnie still alive, but they died a few hours later in hospital.

A joint funeral was held for the cousins, Herbert and Lonnie. Among the pall bearers were Wintha Doss, his brother Basil, Austin Rose, Junior Hass and Jack Loftis. That Herbert’s name appears on the stone is surely an indication of the affection in which he was held by his schoolmates. The following December, Billie Frances Copeland married Basil Doss.

JOHNNIE McSPADDEN

Johnnie McSpadden at the time of her graduation.

Johnnie McSpadden was born in Arkansas on December 5, 1918, the second daughter of Aaron and Flossie McSpadden. The McSpadden children were well-spaced out; Johnnie’s sister Janice was five years her senior while her brother Roe Owen was six years younger. When the McSpaddens moved to Oklahoma they rented farmland some five miles out of Texola with Aaron’s brother. This meant Johnnie and her cousins, Nona and Mirl, had a ten-mile round walk each day to get to school; they rarely missed a day. (Incidentally, Nona would marry Hugh Manuel Hass in 1939 and become Junior Hass’s stepmother.)

Johnnie with her first husband, Bernard Burford, who was killed when his Liberator crashed in New Mexico. Johnnie was widowed at 25 with a one-year-old son.

After graduation Johnnie married flying cadet Bernard Phillip Burford on April 26, 1942 and they had a son, Garon, in September 1943. In September 1944, Staff Sergeant Burford had been on furlough to see his parents in Clovis and was on his way back to camp in Tucson where Johnnie and Garon were waiting. His Liberator bomber crashed while trying to land at an army airbase at Alamogordo, New Mexico. He was just 26; his son had just turned a year old four days earlier.

Johnnie and baby Garon moved back with her parents until 1950 when she married again in May of that year, this time to Horace Hodnett who had served in the Pacific but was now a dairy salesman. They had a son, Kenneth, born on February 22, 1952. Then, three days before Christmas 1952, 43-year-old Horace died

Johnnie’s second husband Horace, with whom she had a son, Kenneth. Horace died suddenly when Kenneth was two years old.

suddenly of a heart attack, leaving Johnnie widowed for the second time and with two small boys, one less than a year old.

In October 1962, Johnnie married for the third time, this time to Sam Davis Moore, and their daughter Janita Gaye was born in 1964. Sadly, Johnnie was widowed again in 1972, and there was still more sadness when her son Kenneth died in 1982, just one day short of exactly 30 years from his father’s death. But between her family and that of Sam’s, she got to meet 20 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren before she passed away on January 16, 1996.

Johnnie with her sons, Garon on the right and Kenneth on the left.

GROVER S THOMAS

Although the Superintendent was listed as Grover S Thomas, his full name was actually Solon Grover Thomas. He was born in Collin, Texas, on February 16, 1885 and moved to Sentinel, Oklahoma, in 1899. At the age of 24 he began teaching school and, in May 1914 married his sweetheart, Montie Roland, who was also from Collin. In 1919 he was appointed as County Superintendent, a post he served in until 1925 when he stood for election to the state senator. He would serve as the senator representing Custer, Kiowa and Washita counties for three consecutive terms while also owning a grocery store in Cordell.

Grover Thomas, a man who named his twin sons Okla and Homa!

Grover and Montie had four sons, beginning with twins born on March 21, 1915. Perhaps Grover was inordinately proud of his adopted state, or maybe he had a refined sense of humour, because he named the boys Okla and Homa. Their younger siblings, Travis Spurgeon and Solon Grover got off a little lighter (although one has to wonder if he hated his first name so much that he went through life using his middle name, why he saddled his youngest son with the name Solon).

After he failed to be elected for a fourth term in November 1936, Grover Thomas returned to teaching and became the Superintendent of Texola High School. He and Montie rented a house – possibly one tied to the school as it cost them just $8 a month, hardly anything of his $1800 a year salary. In 1941 he moved to take the same position (as well as teaching Mathematics) at Highway School near Elk City.

Grover and Montie would then move back to Oklahoma City, to a house on NE 23rd Street within sight of the state capitol. There Grover suffered a paralysing stroke and passed away on December 12, 1944, just short of his 60th birthday.

Several mysteries remain. I couldn’t track down who Charles C Vaughn, the ‘Sponsor’ of the Class of 38 was, nor do I know why a couple of names appears who were no in the graduating class that year. But the biggest mystery is just who created this stone and when. If I had to guess, I’d say George Blair, but the truth is, I just don’t know.

The Seniors of 1938.

BEHIND THE NAMES ON THE TEXOLA STONE: Part Four

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The ‘Seniors 38’ stone outside the one-room jail in Texola.

LOIS WIGLEY

Lois Wigley was born on June 23, 1919, to Thadeus Park and Ollie Wigley, two years after her brother Robert. She was known as ‘Kitten’ from a young age and was active in school activities, especially those involving performing. Before enrolling at Texola High School, she was educated at Erick High School where, in 1935, she was Point Secretary of X-Mu, a society for students with a B average; Parliamentarian of the Rainbow Club; President of the Dinner Bell Club; founder of the Coo Coo Club and a member of the Glee Club. Texola might have seems a little dull after that!

Lois Wigley

Just days after graduating she married Gerald Bibb on October 18, 1938. Gerald had been at school in Sayre and been as active as his bride – he’d been the President of his senior class and a schout master. After graduation he had intended to attend the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science and become an undertaker. But the couple stayed in Sayre after their marriage with Gerald first managing a gas station and then owning and operating Bibb Ditching and Constriction Company. They had two children, Bobby Gerald, born on August 27, 1940, and Kenneth ‘Kenney’ Thad on July 11, 1943. Gerald enlisted in the US Army in February 1944 and served for two years. An accomplished pilot, he was instrumental in developing the Sayre Municipal airport and had served as a Trustee of the Airport Commission. ‘Kitten’ died on August 28, 1992.

VENICE SLOSS

Venice Sloss was born on January 9, 1917, to George Benson ‘GB’ and Laura Sloss in Shamrock, Texas. She married a mechanic called Robert Lee Wright on July 27, 1940, and they had four children, three daughters and a son. But the marriage ended in divorce in October 1969. Robert Lee remarried, this time to Ruth Henry, but died of stomach cancer in 1977. Venice moved to Amarillo where her youngest daughter Ethel Elizabeth lived, and spent her later years quilting, crocheting, gardening and being a grandmother and great grandmother. She died on February 22, 2008 having outlived two of her children, Rovena who died in 2004 and Doiel Wayne who passed away in 2005.

Venice Sloss

JIMMIE POWERS

Jimmie Arnold Powers was born to James Andrew and Minnie Belle Powers in Heavener, Oklahoma, on October 7, 1919, the youngest of ten. His father was a farmer and several of his older brothers worked on the farm.

Jimmie’s parents, James and Minnie Powers.

When Jimmie was just seven, the family was devastated by an appalling tragedy; Jimmie’s oldest brother William Walter ‘Bud’ had gone off to be a fireman on the railroad. On September 18, 1927, while he was acting as fireman on a Kansas City Southern freight train, the boiler of engine number 710 exploded near Marble City, Oklahoma. Bud suffered terrible injuries and died the following morning while the locomotive’s engineer lingered another week; both men were from Heavener. 27-year-old Bud left a wife and a seven-year-old son, LD Eugene. (In a horrible twist of fate, LD was killed while acting as tailgunner on the B-29 ‘Devil May Care’ which was shot down over Siam in 1944. He had just turned 25.

Jimmie Powers

Jimmie actually graduated in 1939, a year after most of the others on the stone, which seems to indicate that this was a group of friends rather than the actual class.

Like his nephew, Jimmie too would enlist and served in the army for over four years, finally being demobbed on August 29, 1945. He married Katherine McManamon and they lived in Ohio where he worked as a wire salesman before moving to California. He would marry again in 1979 and died on May 12, 1985.

RUBY BARTLETT

Ruby Ellen Bartlett was born on May 4, 1920, in Texola to Luther and Stella Bartlett.  

In 1935 she was a member of the nearly formed Texola High School girls’ Glee Club, along with fellow class members, Johnnie McSpadden and Doris Nelms. The same year, she was one of 15 Texola freshmen who made a two-day trip to Oklahoma City (others included Doris Nelms, George Blair, Wintha Doss and Herbert Copeland). It seems that only the star pupils of the school were selected for the trip in which they stayed at the Skirvin Hotel and visited some of Oklahoma’s important institutions and industries. Later that year she was picked to be one of the school’s librarians and, along with Jack Loftis and Lois Wigley, was in the Senior class play (it was called ‘George in a Jam’ and was billed as ‘a three-act comedy that will keep the audience in an uproar from the rising of the curtain’).

The youngest of Stella and Luther’s four children, she had three older brothers, but was closest in age to Ernest. He was just three years her senior and it must have been devastating when Ernest was killed in a car crash when Ruby was 17.

Ruby Bartlett at the time of her graduation.

In 1939 Ruby went to the Southwestern College of Diversified Occupations, but in November her father Luther died suddenly from a single shot from a .22 calibre rifle. The coroner adjusted that it had been an accident, Luther having grabbed his rifle by the barrel from his wagon and the trigger catching on something.

On August 30, 1941, in a dress of royal blue velvet with a bouquet of pink rosebuds and to the accompaniment of violin and accordion music, she married George Benson ‘GB’ Sloss Jr of Shamrock, Texas. If that name sounds familiar it’s because GB was the brother of Ruby’s classmate, Venice Sloss.

Ruby and her husband GB Sloss who graduated from Texola High School in 1939.

Wedded life was put on hold when GB joined the 313th Engineers Combat Battalion in 1943 and went off to Italy as part of the 5th Army. He would not return to Texola until November 1945. GB and Ruby settled down to a life ranching, raising pigs and growing alfalfa and peaches, although she continued to be an active member of the community, helping in the First Baptist church of Texola and being a member of the Bulo Home Demonstration Club. Their first child, David, was born on October 25, 1946, followed by a daughter, Martha.

Ruby Bartlett

Stella had signed the farm over to her daughter shortly after Ruby was married, living with the newlyweds but, on December 19, 1953, GB sold off everything on the farm, from the livestock to machinery to a lot of canned goods. Just a month before, the family had moved to Modesto, California, where GB had taken up a job with a food processing company. Whatever the reasons, the move didn’t work out and GB, Ruby and children were back in Texola less than a year later. They then moved to Shamrock, although Stella stayed in Texola.

In 1966 David joined the US Air Force and went on to train as a munitions specialist. He was assigned to an airbase in Okinawa, Japan, where he spent his career, married and continues to live.

Then, at 3pm on August 31, 1981, weeks before their 40th wedding anniversary, GB put a gun to his head and shot himself dead. Ruby’s mother, Stella, lived to the age of 101, dying in 1990 after which Ruby moved to Pampa, Texas, where her daughter and son-in-law lived. She passed away in 2014 at the age of 93.

BEHIND THE NAMES ON THE TEXOLA STONE: Part Three

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The ‘Seniors 38’ stone outside the one-room jail in Texola.

JACK LOFTIS

Abner James ‘Jack’ Loftis was born in Texola on December 4, 1919, to Uriah Bee and Brooks Bernice Loftis, one of three children – Jack had two sisters, Helen and Tommie.

Jack graduated as the valedictorian of his class at Texola High School in 1937. Not yet 20, He married Lottie Belle Ingle in a quiet ceremony on January 3, 1939 – she wore a wine velvet afternoon gown with black accessories. At the time Jack was attending the Centra State Teachers College in Edmond.

Jack at his graduation

In December 1940, after divorcing Bee, Jack’s mother Brooks moved to Los Angeles where, a year later on December 5, 1941, she was killed after being hit by a car while crossing the street.

It being wartime, Jack went away to fight in the US Navy and served in the Pacific. In fact, he was at Iwo Jima to witness the historic raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi. When he returned to Oklahoma, it was not to teach. By now he had a young son (James, born in 1943) and a new two-bedroom house in the Venice suburb of Oklahoma City, and so he went into retail. For the next 34 years, until he retired in 1979, he worked for Safeway, becoming a manager.

The little house at 2541 E Eubank that Jack and Lottie bought when they moved to Oklahoma City.

 

Lottie died in 1984 and Jack remarried to Laverne. He passed away in 1996, still living in the little house he and Lottie had bought.  

 

 

DORIS NELMS

Doris Nelms was the youngest of those names on the plaque, having been born on August 18, 1921, to Otis and Agnes Leon Nelms. Otis had lived all his life on a farm just outside Texola where he and Agnes raised six children, Doris being in the middle. An older sister, Ruth, had died as a baby two years before Doris was born.

The farm where Doris grew up and where her fatherr Otis was born and died.

Then, in 1933, tragedy struck the family again when Doris’s younger brother Henry died of a burst appendix on July 8 at the age of just 9. Otis was so grief-stricken that he himself died of a heart attack just two days later. He was only 49 and he left his wife not only with six children, but five months pregnant with their last son, Eddie. Agnes continued to run the farm into her 60s, long after the children had left.

Doris Nelms

Like several of her classmates, Doris went to Weatherford College after graduating. She married Winford Harold Chick in September 1940 and their first son, Winford Harold Jr was born the following April. (Ten years later, in 1950, the family ties would become even strong when Doris’s little brother Curry married Winford’s half-sister Juanita.)  

They moved to Oklahoma City, Winford working as a gas station attendant and Doris as a waitress at the Edwin Café. A second son, Joe Wayne, followed in 1943.

Winford served in the US Navy at Okinawa during World War II while, in June 1945, Doris took up a job as the bookkeeper at local paper, the Beckham County Democrat. When Winford returned from active service the couple moved to Fort Worth where a daughter, Darla, was born in 1951. Winford worked in construction, becoming the superintendent of Lydick Roofing and then general manager for Chas F Williams Co. He later set up his own company, Chick Specialties Inc, with Doris acting as the Company Secretary. However, she died of a heart attack on February 1, 1974, aged just 52 years.

GEORGE BLAIR

George Allen Blair was born on June 24, 1919, southeast of Texola, to Beveley Hanford and Emma Pearl Blair, the second youngest of five children. Unlike most of those in his graduation class, George never left Texola. He continued to live on the family farm, ranching and taking care of his father in his last years. His parents’ marriage seems somewhat convoluted. In the 1940 census, Emma is listed as head of the house, divorced, and running the farm; George and his sisters Jeffie and Jean. She would also be listed as divorced on her death certificate when she passed away in Shamrock, Texas, in 1949 following a stroke. However, in 1947, she and Beverley were together in San Joaquin, California, looking after their grandchildren, Frances and Richard, the children of their eldest son Hanford.

Beveley and his wife, Ethel, had moved to California in late 1941 and Hanford was working as a farm labourer on the George Berry ranch near Linden. His parents had moved as well and, one April evening in 1942, the whole family were together, sitting on the lawn of the ranch. Around 7pm Hanford went into the house, took a .22 calibre rifle and shot himself in the head. He died two hours later. The official line was that he was despondent over recent ill-health, but the fact that Ethel had filed for divorce twice the previous year may indicate all was far from well in the marriage, and possibly why his parents had moved to California with them.

The stone of the complicated family of George Blair.

Perhaps, unsurprisingly, given all this turmoil, George never married. He looked after his father until Beverley died in 1969. George himself reached the age of 90 before succumbing on August 27, 2009, to injuries he’d sustained in an automobile accident. He was the first last of the plaque’s graduation class.

BEHIND THE NAMES ON THE TEXOLA STONE: Part Two

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Please see Part One for the background to this post.

AUSTIN ROSE

The ‘Seniors 38’ stone outside the one-room jail in Texola.

Born Rual Austin Rose on February 24, 1918, to Dana Elwood and Myrtle Rose, he went by the name Austin. Four years later he was joined by a sister, Anna Mae.

This was a Baptist revival held in Texola under the supervision of Reverend Billy Sunday. Anna Mae Rose is being baptised; behind her looking at their father, Dana Elwood Rose, who is crying, is Austin.

Having graduated from Texola High School in 1938, he married Eloise Moore three days before Christmas 1939; it was her 21st birthday. Eloise, like himself, was from Texola and had been part of the Class of 1939. A few months later Austin was working in Albert Ferguson’s wrecking and salvage yard in Wheeler as he trained to be a mechanic.

Austin Rose at his graduation.

At some point it seems that they moved to California as Austin enlisted in the army in 1943 in Los Angeles. He would serve from December 28, 1943 to April 12, 1944. He would later work as a mechanic for James Chrysler Plymouth in Corona for 35 years and his parents moved to southern California too, Dana running a grocery store and raising chickens and rabbits. He died of a heart attack in 1960 after spending five months in hospital.

Austin in the 1950s.

When Myrtle died in 1983 she left everything to Austin. In a will she had made in May 1969 she wrote, ‘I hate to do this but Anna Mae owes me more than I have now and so far hasn’t paid it. So I want Austin to have what I have left’. Austin inherited her mobile home, quilt tops and checking account at Southwest Bank. At their mother’s funeral, Austin gave his sister $5. Anna Mae paid for the funeral.
In 1972, Austin and Eloise moved to Shasta Lake where he died on February 7, 1997.

Austin’s parents, Myrtle and Dana Rose.

WINTHA DOSS

Norn November 20,1919, to Henry Tanner and Olli Okla Doss, Wintha graduated from Texola High School in 1938 and went on to the Oklahoma A&M College. He then enlisted in the US Army and fought in Europe, including in the Battle of the Bulge where he was wounded and later awarded a Purple Heart. By now he and his older brother Basil were orphans, his mother having died in 1937 and his father in 1943.

Returning to America, he reenlisted as a career soldier and then married Sybil Estilene Reed in Wheeler, Texas, on August 12, 1947. They travelled the world as a family; their only child, Jana, was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1949 where Wintha was working as a criminal investigator.

In 1960 Wintha retired and they moved to Erick, Oklahoma. But a happy retirement was short-lived. Sybil died after a long illness in 1962 aged just 42. Jana never married and stayed with her father until he died in 1994 and followed him to the grave just four years later.