On 4th and Main Street, a stone’s throw off Route 66 in Texola, Oklahoma, is a single cell jail. But what is even more interesting is the gravestone-shaped marker that has been propped up outside the jail for years. The names of it are, it says, the ‘Class of 38’. But are they? Well, yes and no.

Texola may be a ghost town now, but it once had a thriving high school, complete with baseball, football and basketball teams, Glee Club and even a school newspaper (the ‘Texola Booster’, first published in November 1919). Texola High School had an auditorium which was used for plays and operas and, at its height had over a hundred pupils. By the mid-1930s, the enrolment was around 65, and, as far as I can make out, the last graduation was in 1957.

But it’s that curious stone that has always intrigued me. What happened to the boys and girls whose names appears on that plaque, so I set out to find out. What I soon discovered was that this wasn’t simply the Class of 38. One of the youths – Jimmi Powers – was actually in the Clas of 1939, while Herbert Copeland never had the chance to graduate at all. It soon became clear that this was too long for a single blog post and it will therefore be divided into several parts; so, in the order in which the names appear, this is the Texola stone’s ‘Class of 38’.

AGNES RUDD

Agnes Telitha Rudd was born in Erick, Oklahoma on May 6, 1919, to Thomas and Lela Rudd, the second of their two daughters. It was to be a childhood blighted by tragedy. On April 9, 1928, when Agnes was just eight years old, her sister Clora Viola, older by 18 months, died of measles. Clora left big shoes for her sister to fill; Her parents considered she was a saint – before she fell ill she had been top of her class at school, while her obituary spoke of how she read her Bible each day and after she was too sick to read it, she had her mother read it to her. It was said of Clora, “If she could not say something good about anyone, she did not say anything.”

Almost exactly 19 months later, Agnes’s father died in November 1929; Thomas Rudd was just 34 years old. Agnes and Lela had no option but to move in with her grandparents. At the age of 19 she married Wesley Don Lake who had left school after the 5^th grade in elementary. A year later they were renting a house in Texola; Wesley worked as a gas station attendant while Agnes stayed at home. Wesley was called up on December 26, 1942, to the 704^th Training Group Air Corps in Atlantic City, but he only served six months.

Agnes and Wesley moved to Amarillo where they both took jobs with International Harvester Co, Agnes as a machine operator and Wesley as a parts man. If they wanted children, they never came. And it seems they did, for in 1962, when Agnes was 43, they adopted a baby they called Don Wesley. Wesley was a warehouseman for Sears Roebuck Co But tragedy would strike Agnes again; when little Don was just three years old, Wesley died of a massive heart attack. He was just 50 years old.

Throughout her life, Agnes’ love of poetry sustained her. It might seem a little mawkish by modern standards – after her grandmother’s death she wrote a long poem that started:

Dear loved one we’ve missed you so

We’ve wondered oft times why you had to go

You left a vacancy that can never be filled

For with your presence we were always thrilled.

However, it gave her comfort and she enjoyed gifting poems to family and friends. She never remarried, although she lived to see Don and his wife Shawna give her three grandchildren. Agnes died in Amarillo on July 8, 2002.

JUNIOR HASS

Hugh Harrison Hass was born in Texoma, Oklahoma, to Hugh Manuel Hass and Jamie Clara Lackey-Hass on November 27, 1920, but he was always known as ‘Junior’. By the time he graduated from Texola High School in 1938, his father was a deputy sheriff. Junior went on to attend Panhandle University A&M (Agricultural and Mechanical), now Oklahoma State University. There he excelled in sports, starring in all the major athletic events.

By June 1942 he was employed as an instructor in the Cutter-Car Flying Service in Albuquerque, graduating to assistant flight instructor. When Uncle Sam called, it was inevitable that Junior would take to the air. He served in the United States Navy, training cadet fighter pilots in Norman, Oklahoma, as well as being stationed at the Glenview Air Station in Chicago.

Following his discharge he returned to Cutter Car Flying Service and then working for Texhoma Flying Service and Catlin Aviation in Oklahoma City, flying both charter and crop dusting planes. There was a stint with Standard Airways and as the personal pilot for the Tulsa Oilers hockey team, while he finished his flying career in 1990 after 13 years working for Aerial Photo Service in Tulsa.

Then he took on a second career, owning and managing a bridal shop called Joy’s Klothes Kloset. He was a man who always wanted to be busy and constantly learning; he taught himself Spanish and German and travelled widely to Europe, South America and the Galapagos Islands. When not working or travelling, he raised funds for various causes and was an all-round good guy.
On July 29, 1945, he had wed Leatrice Joy Richerson who hailed from Sayre, Oklahoma, and a few months before his death, they had celebrated 63 years of marriage, a union which had produced a son and three daughters, one who predeceased him. Junior Hass passed away on November 2, 2008.