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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.  

BEHIND THE NAMES ON THE TEXOLA STONE: Part One

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

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.

The Texola jail.

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 5th 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 704th Training Group Air Corps in Atlantic City, but he only served six months.

Agnes Rudd

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.

Hugh ‘Junior’ Hass in 1938.

But Junior had an urge to fly. In 1941 he completed a primary flight course at the Texhoma CPT School and gained his pilot’s license, going to Amarillo the following January to join the civil pilot training course there.

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.

DEATH AT A SAPULPA CAFE

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Eudell Walter Whitmire.

Many Route 66 travellers visiting Sapulpa stop at Michael Jones’ Gasoline Alley Classics, at 24 North Main, and some might even casually wonder the block on which the old Ford Model T dealership stands is book-ended at the southern end by the 1904 Young Building with nothing in between. But, until their demolition in 1981, that now empty space was home to two of the town’s oldest buildings; it was in one of those buildings that murder came to visit.

It was December 1960. The town was still recovering from an F5 tornado that had landed in May, killing three people and destroying over 100 homes and the Booker T. Washington High School, but now the town was looking forward to Christmas. Making a new start too was Eudell Walter Whitmire, a 40-year-old Oklahoman of Cherokee descent, who had just moved to Sapulpa from Angleton, Texas. The main reason for the move was the break-up of his marriage to Vivian Lee Brown who would remain in Angleton with their three children.

Eudell already had two sons who lived with their mother, Syble Ludy Stewart, in California. In around 1940, Eudell and his brother Gordon had moved from their home in Adair County, Oklahoma, to the west coast where Eudell found work as a fry cook at the Arches Café in Newport Beach while Gordon worked at White’s Coffee Shop on Balboa Island.

The Arches Cafe in Newport Beach where Eudell worked. It moved in 2007 and finally closed in 2011.

Both brothers enlisted in the military, Eudell in 1941 and Gordon the following July. Eudell served four years and was wounded in the line of duty in 1944, finally returning to Los Angeles in 1945 where Gordon joined him. But during his service Eudell had managed to meet a young waitress called Syble Ludy Stewart who he married in Yuma, Arizona, on February 15, 1943. Just over the border from California, Yuma was a popular destination for ‘quickie’ marriages as between 1926 and 1958 Arizona had no waiting period or blood test requirement for marriage licenses.

The couple had two sons, Stanley born on August 28, 1944, and Dennis, almost exactly two years later, on August 30, 1946. However, both Eudell and Gordon were, it seems fond of a drink. Eudell was arrested twice in 1947 for driving under the influence and on the first occasion his brother was also fined $25 for drunkenness. On March 1, 1949, they split up and Syble filed for divorce, stating that Eudell was “addicted to excessive use of alcohol” and had threatened to take the boys away from her. She was granted a divorce of grounds of extreme cruelty in November 1949 and given custody of Stanley and Dennis.

Eudell returned to Oklahoma, finding work as a cook at a café in Sapulpa which is where he may have met Vivian, who was then Mrs Vivian Tavel although she had been divorced from James Tavel on September 3, 1948. Clearly love blossomed quickly and she and Eudell were married in March 1950. The newly-weds managed the impressive feat of having two children born in the same year – Michael Gordon in January of 1952 and Diedra Dell in December. Randall followed in April 1954 by which time the family were settled in Angleton, south of Houston on the Gulf of Mexico.

Eudell and Vivian’s wedding.

But all was not well. Although the Whitmires were running the Taco House Café together, the marriage broke down and on February 11, 1960, Vivian was granted a divorce, custody of the children and $125 per month support. The Taco House Café was put up for sale.

When Eudell moved to Sapulpa, Vivian and the children stayed at their home in Angleton, Texas.

Eudell moved back to Sapulpa where a new venture was waiting. At the beginning of November, Ray Anderson had bought the Chieftain Café at 12 North Main, just across the road from the Sapulpa Trading Post that he had opened the previous September. Ray was married to Juanita Cates, the sister of Eudell’s mother, and so he invited Juanita’s nephew Eudell to be the chef and operator and, perhaps in memory of his last café or simply to needle Vivian, Eudell planned to call it the Villa Tacos Restaurant. Ray and Juanita Anderson shared their house in Tulsa with Juanita’s nephew – perhaps this intended as a temporary arrangement, but it turned out to be briefer than anyone had imagined.

Juanita Anderson, Eudell’s aunt and co-owner of the cafe.

Also newly arrived in Sapulpa were young couple Lawrence and Lola Aldridge who had moved to the Oklahoma town from Winfield, Kansas, in the summer. Lawrence Everett Aldridge had been born in Leon, Kansas, in 1932 and served some time in the military; the US Veterans Gravesites department lists him as serving for just two months in 1952. Why such a short period of time is a matter of conjecture. He was certainly fit enough to work in the oil fields, so perhaps the Army decided that it and Private Aldridge were just not suited?

Lawrence Aldridge photographed at his call up. He lasted just two months in the Army.


In May 1953 he married 18-year-old Lola Imagene Green and, after first living in Stroud, Oklahoma, they moved to California. But it seems Lawrence couldn’t keep a job – he was also convicted of drink driving in Orange County. Why they ended up in Sapulpa in 1960 is unknown, but what is known is the marriage was unhappy. Lola left Aldridge and moved into the Gibson Hotel (which burned down in January 1972); on December 5, 1960, she asked an attorney to prepare divorce papers. As Lawrence had also threatened her several times since the separation she also requested a restraining order. Attorney David Young would later say that he had drawn up the papers but hadn’t had time to file them before being overtaken by events.

Lola had found herself a job as a waitress as the Chieftain Café shortly after the Aldridges had landed in Sapulpa and when the previous owners John and Alice Alexander sold it to the Andersons she was kept on by the new owners and operator. She probably didn’t know many people in Sapulpa while Eudell hadn’t lived in the town for years; she was estranged from her husband and Eudell was divorced. Although 15 years her senior, the 6’2” café owner was a good-looking man and so it seemed only natural they would share the occasional beer. Although it probably went no further, this was too far for Lawrence Aldridge.

On the morning of December 6, 1960, he followed his wife to work, carrying a 16-gauge shotgun. She would say that he appeared to have been drinking and that he “seemed wild and I told him to come to his senses.” He cornered her in the café’s kitchen and threatened to shoot her when she refused to quit her job. He then walked to the front of the café where Eudell was preparing to open up for the day and shot him once. Eudell Whitmire died instantly.

Lawrence Aldridge at the time of his arrest for the murder of Eudell Whitmire.

Aldridge then returned to the kitchen and once more tried to persuade Lola to leave with him, but the terrified woman fled to a nearby bakery where the police were called. When officers arrived, Aldridge had locked himself in the café’s restroom but was persuaded to give himself up. He was charged with murder and it seemed like it would be an open and shut case.

But Aldridge entered an innocent plea and by the time the case came to trial in March he had a story that Eudell had lunged at him and he thought the café operator had a gun. This contradicted the evidence which shown Eudell had several half-dollars clutched in each hand, ready to open the café for the day, and was behind the cash register counter. Delsa Holmes Wright testified that Eudell had kept a pistol at the café (she only worked there for two weeks before being let go, so she may not have been a fan) but Juanita Anderson said she’d never seen such a gun when she had worked there. Unfortunately, the only other witness to the shooting wasn’t allowed to testify after the defence objected – because she was married to the defendant. The jury of six men and six women retired but were hopelessly deadlocked. A mistrial was declared.

In May, a second trial began. By now Aldridge added a few more details, such as Whitmire had threatened him on three previous occasions and had been drinking with his wife. He had only had the shotgun with him because he was cleaning out his apartment before moving away from Sapulpa. It was just a case of self-defence.

The second trial lasted less than two days and the jury’s deliberations were swift. They found him guilty, but only of manslaughter and recommended a sentence of just four years. Lola was granted a divorce in November 1961.

A half-smirk on his face, Lawrence goes to trial with his self-defence story.

Just a year later he applied for parole. It was denied and he served close to his full term, such as it was. By 1966 he was back in Winfield and applying for a marriage license with Donella C Carson, although the fact that Mrs Carson was already married put an end to any wedding plans. He died in Onalaska, Texas, in 1997.

After Eudell’s death the café was sold to Eldon and Eva Billey who reopened it as the Chieftain.

Despite the special dinner steak, the Chieftain never recovered.

But within a couple of months it failed and all the fixtures and fittings were auctioned off in April 1961. The building and its neighbour housed many businesses over the years but by 1980 it was in poor repair. When a section of the outside wall gave away and crashed down onto a pickup truck, the owners, the American National Bank, had the building demolished in 1981 to make way for an employees’ parking lot. And that is the space on North Main.

In April 1961, the Chieftain Cafe closed for good.

THE MISSING TREASURE OF TEXOLA

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On the evening of January 18, 1908, assistant cashier CW Jones was working late at the First Bank of Texola in Texola on the Oklahoma-Texas border. It was about 7pm when he was suddenly interrupted by two masked men bursting into the bank and uttering the deathless words, “Hands up”.

Cashier Jones did as he was told but while one bandit was busy dumping loose change into a sack he attacked the other man. His brave ‘have a go’ endeavour quickly came to an end when he was hit in the head with a gun, gagged and bound with handcuffs.

The two robbers escaped with $5008 (around $170,000 in today’s money) and Jones was eventually rescued to tell his tale of bravery to Sheriff JH Richerson and Deputy Lee Anderson. He told the lawmen how he hadn’t been able to see the robbers’ faces, but that one was 5’ 10” with light hair under a black felt hat, while his confederate was a dark-haired 5’ 4” tall man wearing dark clothing and a black derby.

Several men were arrested and then released; the bank offered a reward of $1000, but the trail went cold. Cashier Jones continued to work at the bank and tell his tale to curious customers, but not for long. The robbery hit the First Bank of Texola hard and its owners, the Thurmond brothers who owned several banks in western Oklahoma, were quick to liquidate the bank and sell it off to JE Terrell and Ira Speed who promptly withdrew the reward.

In Texola Cashier Jones was a popular man and the town had been outraged by his treatment. Reports of his heroic attempt in deterring two villains to save the bank’s money was broadcast across the nation from New York to Arizona.

There was just one problem; there wasn’t a word of truth in the story.

For whatever reason, CW Jones was not kept on by the bank’s new owners and he went to work as a local agent for the Rock Island railroad. Around this time he made a deposit of $800 with the Vicksburg National Bank of Vicksburg, Mississippi. (That would equate to around $27,000 today, quite a nest egg for an assistant bank cashier or railroad agent.) He then bought a farm in Mississippi and that was the last Texola heard of Cashier CW Jones…

…Until the summer of 1914 when Jones turned up in Clinton and explained to OH Thurmond, who had been the President of the First Bank of Texola at the time of the robbery, that there had been no masked bandits and that the only bank robber had been CW Jones himself. He repaid $440 but the story was to get even odder.

It seems that Jones had found Christianity and his conscience insisted that he confess to the crime, although it seems that he had written an anonymous letter to Thurmond in 1910 telling him that he could find the proceeds of the robbery buried in a field in Texola. Thurmond attempted to find it but with no luck.

On the night of January 18, 1908, Jones had removed some $500 of silver and the rest in gold and banknotes, left the bank and, keeping $1000 back (presumably to finance the Mississippi farm and bank deposit), buried the rest in a tin can in a grass-covered field. Then he returned to the bank, tied a towel over his mouth and manacled himself with a pair of handcuffs that he had ordered by mail order from Chicago and waited to be discovered and tell his tale.

Unsurprisingly, his next stop after OH Thurmond’s office was the local jail. In August he was sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary at McAllister, a rather short sentence which was passed down after the District Attorney made a case for leniency. After that, CW Jones passes into history.

And what of the loot from the bank? Jones went to retrieve the money after the robbery but discovered that the field had been ploughed over and he couldn’t find where it was buried. OH Thurmond was unsuccessful too, and if the money was ever found, someone kept quiet about it. So, somewhere under Texola, there could lie around $150,000 in gold and ancient bank notes…