Keepsakes

I was "on the hunt" this weekend, as my grandmother used to call it. As a kid, my family was always looking for a piece of paper, a piece of clothing, somebody's car keys. This weekend it was something I knew I had had in my hand within the past couple of years, but there were several places I could have put it. The object was a small paperback book, almost a pamphlet, of responsive readings from the I AM meetings that my great-grandmother used to attend. (See my last post, "Big Mom.") I had planned to write a post about the I AM movement, and I really needed that little book. However, now I'm going to hold off on that for a bit, while I describe some of the other treasures I found this weekend.

Keepsakes are like mitochondrial DNA, passed down from mother to daughter. In my grandmother's case, she inherited her mother's keepsakes, collected a mighty number of them herself, and kindly preserved a few of my mother's. When, in her last few years she began a project to create scrapbooks for her sisters, her remaining brother, nieces and nephews, and her grandchildren, I remember being confused about why I was angry with her over this magnanimous gesture. I still don't know if I was mad that she was giving our family history away or if I knew that she was disposing of an excess of memorabilia because she was nearing the end of her life. I shouldn't have worried about all the stuff she gave away. Lord knows there were plenty of photos, clippings, and keepsakes to go around, with plenty left over for me. In fact, they have been in two big storage bins that I have lugged around with me to the 7 or 8 houses I have lived in since my grandmother died in 1992.

I kept thinking I would go through them, but I just never got around to it. This weekend was it. It started out as a hunt for Big Mom's little I AM book, but it became a whole afternoon of laughter and tears. 

I found:

• The original clipping from the Tulsa World that declared my dad and his brother as the first twins born in Tulsa in 1928
• My grandmother's original application for teacher's retirement when it went into effect in 1942. It listed every teaching job she had had up until then, including how much she was paid. Her first teaching job in 1915-16 was in Owasso, and she was paid $250 for 5 months of work.
• A short sketch she had written, describing what she and grandpa wore at their wedding and what their first years together were like.
• Newspaper and magazine articles about her innovative teaching techniques, including having her class measure 1 acre on the school grounds and re-enact the Land Run
• A map she had drawn from memory of West Liberty, KY, and the surrounding area, including the names of residents that she remembered from her childhood. On a few sheets of old stationery she had listed all the residents of Red Fork that she could remember from the years when the Castle family first lived there.
• Postcards, letters, and greeting cards from as far back as the 1930s. Letters from her aunts Emma and Retta Lee in California backed up what I thought to be true--that they were the original I AM members and had encouraged their sister Florida to join the group.
• A list of my grandfather's kind gestures and funny sayings that my grandmother had written down after he passed away. I had forgotten that he was always looking for his "goood hat."
• The tag from my brother's hospital crib that read "Smith boy"
• A note that my mother wrote to her mother when she was still in the hospital after giving birth to me. I don't know why my dad's mother had this little note, but it meant a lot to me to get this glimpse of my early days with my mother. I was breast feeding just fine, thank you very much, and was gaining weight every day. Story of my life.

I could go on and on. It was amazing how much I found that would have enhanced the blog posts I've written this year, not to mention my vacation to West Liberty. I knew there was a clipping from the paper about the twins' birth but I hadn't seen it in years. When my brother worked at the Tulsa Public Schools' Service Center, I asked him to look up Mom's teaching records but they don't keep them. In my own garage I had the information I was looking for, and I didn't know it. Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote that I didn't know what my grandmother wore at her wedding, and I possessed a description of her dress in her own handwriting! It just goes to show that the suggestion from veteran genealogists about searching for records in your own home is true. I don't think I found any new genealogical information, but if I didn't know anything, these two bins of memorabilia would be a gold mine. 

The Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a keepsake as "something that you keep to help you remember a person, place, or event." My grandmother's keepsakes certainly were meant to do that.

Birthdays

In about a week I will celebrate my 60th birthday.  It puts me in mind of birthdays, my own and others', that I have celebrated in 60 years of living.

I was almost my mother's birthday present.  Her birthday was October 10, and my birth came four days later on the 14th.  My dad, followed by his parents, got my mother to the hospital at 7:00 p.m.  He checked her in, went downstairs to tell my grandparents, walked back up to the maternity ward, and the nurses introduced me to him.  It was 7:30.  In my baby book my mother wrote, "Close shave!"

Birthday parties in elementary school were always a big deal and required dressing up, hanging crepe paper, playing games, opening presents, and eating cake.  In later elementary and junior high school the party sometimes took place at the Glider Roller Rink.  One of my friends had a birthday near mine and always included me in the special birthday skate and the extra-large Hershey bar that the Glider gave as a present.  My best friend threw me a surprise party for my 16th birthday that included lots of record playing and Limbo dancing.

My birthday party, age 11, 1964

Surprise party, age 16, 1969

Ten years ago (wow, has it been that long?) I had two wonderful birthday parties for my 50th birthday.  One I gave to myself.  I thought I might as well celebrate instead of mourn.  At the time I was an enthusiastic country dancer, so I threw my party at the Caravan Cattle Company and bought my own "boot-scootin'"-themed cake.  Then one of my best friends took me out to eat at the Olive Garden, where she had assembled all my family and friends for a surprise party.  I was really surprised.

My grandmother was really surprised on January 8, 1928, when she gave birth to twin boys. Through the chloroform haze, she was extremely irritated to hear the nurse say, "Are we going to need a basket?" like my dad and his brother were the first two in a litter of puppies. The boys were written up in the Tulsa World as the first twins born in Tulsa in 1928. 

My dad always liked the idea that he shared a birthday with Elvis, who was born on January 8, 1935, and was also a twin. Daddy would be thrilled to know that our Smith family may have a connection with Elvis's family through the Mansells. My great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Simmons was married to John Mansell. They lived in Pike County, AL, and my Mansell cousins theorize that our Mansells may have visited Elvis's ancestors in Marion County, AL, when they moved to Lauderdale County, AL, in the 1870s. 

I think there might be a little resemblance--at least in the hair.




























My grandmother's twin brothers, Warner and Wardy Castle, were also born in January in 1900. It was always easy to remember how old they were because they were the same age as the year.

I was pretty surprised myself to give birth to my son on February 29, 1976, since his due date was March 10.  He has taken in stride the fact that he only has a birthday every 4 years.  My middle school students have always been fascinated by the idea that there are some people who don't have a "real" birthday every year.

If my son had been born in a non-Leap year, he would have been born on my grandmother's birthday.  Fannie Castle was born on March 1, 1897, in Morgan County, Kentucky.  In 1946 she applied for a "Special Certificate of Birth" from the Commonwealth of Kentucky since birth certificates were not issued in Kentucky until 1911.  The certificate contains a wealth of information, including names and birth information for her parents, and the verifying signature of J.D. Haney, father of Geneva Haney, a lifelong friend of the Castles whose family also moved from Morgan Co. to Oklahoma.  In 1987 on my grandmother's 90th birthday, we threw a surprise party for her at a restaurant in Tulsa.  All the Castle relatives were there, and she was really surprised.

After my son's birthday in February and his wife's birthday in March, there isn't much to celebrate until July, when my niece celebrates her birthday.  When she was adopted, we were delighted to discover that her birth took place on the same date as our mother and dad's wedding.

August brings to mind my Aunt Georgia Castle's birthday on August 4th. One of my best memories of childhood (and of our house at 2717 W. 42nd St.) was the time my grandmother sent me to Crystal City Shopping Center--a very short walk across the railroad tracks from our house--to buy lunch ingredients at Safeway and a cake at Marilou's Bakery for Aunt Georgia's birthday.  I was also tasked with buying Aunt Georgia's present--which turned out to be a big plaster squirrel for her patio.  We moved from 42nd St. the summer before I turned 10, so I couldn't have been more than 9 when my grandmother trusted me with this birthday expedition.

The last quarter of the year brings several family birthdays: mine in October and my brother's in November.  My other Castle aunt, Aunt Jessie, had a November birthday which was usually so close to Thanksgiving that we always celebrated it then.  I was practically grown before I realized that the date of Thanksgiving didn't always fall on Aunt Jessie's birthday!  My Grandpa Smith's birthday was in December, as is my cousin Debbie's.  My Aunt Marie, my mother's sister, and my sister-in-law Tracy shared the same birthday, December 26.

So...happy birthday to all.  Celebrate your special day.  Dress up, do the Limbo, eat some cake, enjoy the surprises that life brings!

Pleasant Porter Elementary School

The first school I attended was Porter Elementary School.  I started kindergarten there, at the age of 4, in 1958.  In those days the cutoff for enrollment in kindergarten was November 1, so I barely made it since my birthday was in October.  Consequently, I was nearly the youngest student in my class all the way through high school.

My kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Mary Gold.  Nearly 40 years later I met her granddaughter Jill who became, and still is, one of my best friends.  She never attended Porter, but we think she once visited her grandmother’s classroom when I was a student there.  I remember a big room with lots of light from tall windows, radiators along the outside wall, and easels set up for painting.  I remember little else from that year, except once I spilled paint on my dress.  Mrs. Gold dressed me in a paint smock, washed out my dress, and dried it on the radiator.

She might not have done that for just any student.  My grandmother, her friend, taught 6^th grade at the other end of the building.  My grandmother taught 6^th grade at Porter for 30 years, all in the same room, I think.  She must have begun teaching there in 1929, the year Porter opened for the first time.  She was her twin sons’ 6^th grade teacher.  She quit in March of 1960 when she reached 62 and could retire.  She didn’t want to, but she had the responsibility of a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old after my mother died, and my dad moved us home with her and Grandpa.  For more about my grandmother’s teaching career, see my post, “Teachers and Postmen.”

My grandmother, Fannie C. Smith, monitoring
the hall at Porter Elementary

In first grade my teacher was Mrs. Smith.  Three things stick out in my mind about that year.  Mrs. Smith was teaching reading and used my name, “Rebecca,” to teach the schwa sound.  The mother of one of my classmates, Patty Post, made everyone in the class a stocking for Christmas, with felt cutouts and sequins and our names at the top.  I still have mine and put it up every Christmas.  Mrs. Smith’s favorite expression was “Pretty is as pretty does,” and she held up Patty Post, who always smiled, as a role model to the rest of the class.

Second grade was a bad year for me.  Looking back on it now, I must have been having some abandonment issues, and there were just too many changes that year for me to adjust to.  My grandmother had retired the year before and was no longer in the building.  Mrs. Lucille Swyden, my teacher, caught mumps or measles or some other childhood disease.  As an adult, of course, these diseases were much more serious, and she was out for an extended time.  Our substitute was a nice lady, but this was all just too much for a 7-year-old whose mother had died just a few years earlier.  I freaked. 

My grandmother had to come and sit in the back of the room, stamping books and grading papers, so that I would stay in class.  (Once she thought I might be getting over it and quietly got up to go home.  I found her outside before she ever made it to her car.)  My grandmother’s best friend, Mrs. Hostetter, told her later that the other teachers criticized her methods, but Mrs. Hostetter just said, “Fannie will handle it.” 

My grandmother and her friend, Roberta Hostetter 

And she did, or else I might not be a teacher myself.  I finally got over it, and 3^rd and 4^th grade proceeded normally, although I don’t remember much about those two years.  My 3^rd grade teacher was Edra Beall, and my 4^th grade teacher was Helga Bailey.  I remember loving poetry around that time but don’t remember which of those teachers helped inspire that love in me.  Fourth grade was my last year at Porter.  Our house at 2717 W. 42^nd St. was being demolished to make way for the Red Fork Expressway.  About that time, my great-grandmother died, and we moved into her house, just across the street from Park Elementary where I completed 5^th and 6^th grades.

Porter was a beautiful building, inside and out.  It had two wings that stretched on either side from a columned front porch.  It sat in a grove of trees adjacent to wooded Reed Park.  There were large grassy areas on the east and south sides of the building for recess.  I remember playing Red Rover on the southeast side of the building, and seeing the older boys playing marbles just outside the north entrance near the music room.

Pleasant Porter Elementary School

This is what I remember about the inside of the building.  (Corrections and comments greatly appreciated; it’s been 50 years, after all.)  Just inside the front door on the left was the principal’s office.  Since my grandmother taught there, I felt comfortable in the office and liked both of her principals, Mr. Lee Arnold and Mr. Ben Wiehe, but especially Mr. Arnold. 

Straight in from the front door was the combination gymnasium/auditorium and stage.  On the wing to the right was my grandmother’s room, the library, and at the far end, the music room.  I loved the library and the librarian.  I remember reading a number of biographies and a series of books about twins from different countries of the world.  Mrs. Roberta Hostetter was the librarian and, of all things, gym teacher!  I remember her wearing black dresses, sturdy shoes, and a whistle around her neck.  Mrs. Phelps was the very elegant music teacher who wore her hair in a French twist.  

Just next to the entrance to the gymnasium was a door that led downstairs to the cafeteria.  Lord, the food was good in those days!  My favorites were macaroni and cheese and bean chowder.  I remember making Pilgrim collars and cuffs and wearing them for the Thanksgiving meal.  Down the left wing were, I think, the 3^rd and 4^th grade rooms, and at the end was the kindergarten room.  Then you made another right to the 1^st and 2^nd grade rooms.

Pleasant Porter opened in 1929 and closed as a regular elementary school in 1980.  It was named for the last elected chief of the Creeks who had been very involved in education for the Creek Nation. Pleasant Porter died in 1907 and is buried near Leonard in Tulsa County.  I remember visiting his grave once with my grandmother and some of her students. (Photos courtesy of findagrave.com.)

Since closing in 1980, Porter has been used as offices for Head Start and the Native American Coalition and has recently been remodeled as additional classrooms for 4-year-olds in the Tulsa Public Schools.  One of my goals this summer is to get over there for a tour and see if anything looks the same as it did in 1963, the last time I was inside the building.  It’s kindof neat to know that 4-year-olds again occupy the building where I started my education as a 4-year-old!

Teachers and Postmen

It’s interesting to me that out of the wide range of occupations available to us in the modern world many of us choose the occupation of our parents or grandparents.  I guess it’s what you grow up knowing and what captures your imagination when you are young. 

I knew from about 3^rd grade that I wanted to be a teacher.  I suspect it had something to do with visiting my grandmother’s room at Pleasant Porter Elementary School or meeting her many former students who would stop us in the grocery store to say, “Your grandmother was the best teacher I ever had.”  My grandmother retired in 1960 but just the other day I saw a posting on Facebook reminiscing about Pleasant Porter Elementary to which one of her former students had replied, “Mrs. Smith was my favorite teacher at Porter.” 

Pleasant Porter Elementary School
from insite.com

My grandmother taught her twin sons and several of her brothers.  She transmitted her love of poetry to her students; my dad’s favorite when he was in her 6^th grade class was “Horatio at the Bridge.”  She had beautiful penmanship (which she called Spencerian script) that was admired by anyone who saw it.  She helped direct the annual operettas and once said, “Give me a package of Denison crepe paper and I can make anything!”  She taught the concept of an acre by having her students lay one out on the school grounds.  She was written up in the Tulsa Public Schools newsletter for re-creating the Oklahoma Land Run with her students. Every year her 6^th grade girls were chosen to wind the Maypole at the front of the school.  That was my biggest disappointment in moving from Porter to Park Elementary just before 5^th grade; I wanted to wind that Maypole as a Porter 6^th grader!

My grandmother monitoring the hall at Porter 

My grandmother became a teacher because her Aunt Emma was a teacher.  On the 1910 census in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, she is enumerated with her husband, Mr. Allen (William, but my grandmother always called him “Mr. Allen”) who was 31 years older than she, and her son Willie.  Her husband was listed as a farmer, and she was listed as a teacher at a “common school.”  She also taught at Paul Revere Elementary in Tulsa, which is no longer there but was located close to 51^st & Lewis.

Aunt Emma Allen--Teacher on 1910 census 

My grandmother started out teaching at a one-room school near Collinsville, Oklahoma.  She taught at Dawson and at Lynn Lane.  She taught at McBirney Elementary in Garden City, on the west side of Tulsa.  She got her first job in the Red Fork schools by walking out in a field to ask Mr. Brooks, the school board president, for a position. He said that any teacher that would walk out in a field for an interview could handle a classroom and gave her the job. She taught for 30 years at Porter, mostly 6^th grade, and ended up retiring with 43 years of teaching experience.

Now, my ambition of becoming a teacher never wavered, but as I traveled through the grades, sometimes the specific goal changed.  For example, in 4^th grade I wanted to be a 4^th grade teacher, in 5^th grade I wanted to be a 5^th grade teacher, in junior high I flirted with being a librarian, in high school I decided on speech and drama (with a side order of English.)  After 5 years teaching speech, drama, and English, I went back to school and got a librarian’s certificate, and that is where I have been ever since—36 years total.

Teachers from the Castle family include: my grandmother, me, and my cousin Cathy, granddaughter of Jessie Castle.  Cathy’s mother Ann is a retired librarian, and her sister Jayne is a school librarian.  My grandmother’s brother Warner was married to Ona Brooks, an elementary teacher and daughter of that school board president that gave my grandmother a job. Their daughter Linda retired from a career as an elementary and middle school teacher.

Postal jobs also run in our family.  Goldman Davidson Castle was the postmaster of Castle, Kentucky.  My grandmother remembered seeing the post office at the end of the long porch outside her grandparents’ home in Kentucky.  Later, G.D. Castle turned the postmaster position over to his son, George Turner Castle. 

When the family moved to Red Fork, my grandmother took the Civil Service exam and was named Postmistress.  At the time she was teaching near Collinsville and turned the post office over to her mother.  Florida Castle is listed in the 1919 Tulsa city directory as the clerk of the Red Fork post office; Fannie Castle is listed as postmistress.

Appointment of Fannie Castle as Red Fork Postmistress

1919 Tulsa City Directory showing
Fannie Castle as Red Fork postmistress and
Florida Castle as postal clerk 

My brother retired from 25 years as a postal carrier.  While working for the post office, he received his bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma.  He now works for the Tulsa Public Schools!  His daughter is doing her student teaching in the fall.

Grandpa and Grandma Day

Now seems a good time to talk about my other set of great-great-grandparents on the Castle side of my family: Grandpa and Grandma Day.  I feel like I know them even better than my Castle great-great-grandparents--even though they were gone long before I was born--because they lived and died in Oklahoma. I have photographs of them; I’ve been to the places where they lived. 

My great-grandmother Sarah Florida Day’s parents were James Thomas--sometimes called “Jim Tom” or J.T.--Day and Nancy Emily Reed. James was born 1 December 1856 in Morgan County, Kentucky, son of Andrew Jackson Day and Sarah Jane Oney.  Nancy Emily Reed, daughter of Lewis Reed and Sarah Patrick, was born 26 September 1853 (according to her headstone.) They married on 13 April 1876 in Salyersville, Magoffin County. Their marriage license says that they were married in the home of Nancy’s father, Lewis Reed.

On the 1880 and 1900 censuses they were living in Johnson Fork, Magoffin County. The 1880 census says that Nancy Emily was born in January 1858.  (I can see fudging on the year a little since her other birth date makes her 3 years older than her husband, but changing the whole month?) By 1894 they had had all their children—seven girls! and one little boy, Cassa, who died at age 4. Kelly Day, age 3, listed as a son on the 1900 census, was really their grandson.

Sometime in early 1907 or before, they moved to Indian Territory, and settled near the town of Davenport in Lincoln County. 

They brought all the girls to live with them in Oklahoma: Ida, Zedda, Emma, Margaret, Minta, Retta Lee, and Florida who came with her husband, George Castle.  On the 1920 census James T. and Nancy were living on S. Olympia Avenue in Tulsa. In 1930 the Days were living in Claremore where they ran a boarding house for visitors who came to Claremore to take mineral water baths.

The house in Claremore in which the Days lived in the 1930s
Photo taken in the early 1980s

On their golden wedding anniversary the Days were written up in the Tulsa World.  You get the impression of a devoted couple, loving to each other and generous to others.

According to my grandmother, Grandma Day sometimes let her generosity get the better of her common sense.  “She would invite everybody at church over for Sunday dinner but she wouldn’t have wrung the chicken’s neck yet!” Grandpa Day was dearly beloved by his wife, his daughters, and his grandchildren.

Ida, Florida, Zedda, Emma, Margaret, Minta, Retta Lee
Grandma and Grandpa Castle

J.T. Day died in 1931 and Nancy in 1938.  They are buried in Davenport, Oklahoma, within sight of land that still belongs to Day descendants. Last summer I met some Day cousins at the Senior Citizen Center in Davenport, where we ate ham and beans with cornbread and homegrown sliced tomatoes, told family stories, traded photographs, then visited the cemetery together. We had never met but we came together to remember James Thomas and Nancy Emily Day.

Grandma Daisy

I’m interrupting my series of posts on the Smith family to remember my son’s great-great-grandmother who was born on February 1, 1892.

Grandma Daisy with her great-great-grandson

Grandma Daisy lived in a farmhouse at S. 33^rd W. Ave. and 111th St. near Jenks, Oklahoma, when I started dating her great-grandson.  She had the greatest house and 20 acres with a pond.  It was so peaceful out in the country, and we often sat on her back porch to snap string beans for dinner or while her daughter, Grandma Dod, taught me to crochet.  Her dark wood Victorian furniture was beautiful, and the first thing anybody noticed in her house—and coveted—was her gorgeous carved wood and curved glass-front china cabinet.  She had the coolest old gas stove in the kitchen that even had a built-in well in it in which she would boil her homemade noodles for Sunday dinners.  She was a wonderful cook. 

As her great-grandson and I became more serious, she and my grandmother became phone friends.  They had a lot in common and enjoyed talking to each other.  My grandmother said once that she was almost afraid to meet her in person because she was afraid she wouldn’t like her as much in person as she did on the phone.  Eventually, of course, they did meet, and they continued to be great friends.  After my son’s birth, my grandmother, ever the keeper of family history, asked Grandma Daisy the names of her parents and siblings.

After I started doing genealogy, I was so glad that I had the clues of Grandma Daisy’s family names.  According to the note my grandmother kept, Grandma Daisy’s mother’s name was Kathryn (married name Leo); her brothers were Charley, William, John, and Conrad; and her sisters were Anne (Klein), Kathryn (Buchannon), Rose (Houseman), and Lena (Kleburger). 

Eventually, I found the family (enumerated twice at the same address) in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1880 with father Charles Leo, age 32; mother Catharina, age 31; and children Charles, 6; Katie, 5, and William, 2.  Charles the father was a teamster, and he had emigrated from Prussia (or Wurttemburg).  In 1900 the family lived in Union Center, Elk County, Kansas with mother Katie, age 50; Rosie, 16; John, 13; Lena, 12; Daisy, 7; and Conrad, 6.  In Cathrine’s obituary I found her maiden name, Drier.  It said that she had come to America from Germany with an uncle when she was “quite young.”  On the 1900 census Cathrine stated that she came to America in 1863 at age 14.

Daisy Leo married William Ensley and had four children: Carmen, Wilber (Bud), Delpha (Dod), and Doyle.  She was married later in life to Burt Lavelle.  She died in Los Angeles, California, in 1984 at age 92, while visiting her daughter Carmen.  She is buried near Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Mama: The Wheat * / Bell ** Side of the Family

Ida Belle Wheat

My mother died when I was 3.  I’ve said those words a hundred times in my life. 

She was the youngest of four children of John William Wheat and Cora Lee (Bell) Wheat, born on October 10, 1925 in Hanna, Oklahoma. Her siblings were Leona (born 1918), William Powell (born 1920), and Iona Marie (born 1922). Her father died while working at an oil camp in Seminole, Oklahoma, when she was only 2.  Here she is with her brother and sisters at the oil camp.  She's the unhappy one.

L to R (back row): Powell, Leona
L to R (front row): Ida, Marie

Even before her father’s death, her mother had moved the family home to live with her father, Thomas Jefferson Bell, in Dustin, Oklahoma. Here she is about 1937 with her sisters, Leona on the left and Marie on the right. This is one of my favorite photographs.

Ida graduated from Dustin High School in 1944.  There were only five students in her graduating class, mostly because all the boys were away fighting World War II.  In October 1944 she married a classmate, Ben Chaney. Ben was stationed in Florida, and she went there to live for a while. She and Ben divorced not long after.

Her sister Marie had visited her in Florida, where Marie met her husband, Don Kerensky, who was also in the service. Ida visited Marie in Ohio and came home to Dustin in 1951, pregnant with her first child, Noel Keith, who died the day after he was born on May 31, 1951. He is buried next to his mother in the Fairview Cemetery in Dustin. After my mother married my father, he put his last name on the little boy’s headstone, so he is buried as Noel Keith Smith, even though my dad was not his father.

My mom and dad met at a dance in downtown Tulsa. My mother was living at the YWCA. Daddy had a headache and asked her if she wanted to take a walk with him to buy some aspirin. They married on July 19, 1952, in Tulsa.

I was born in October 1953. My mother worked for a while as a secretary in the Tulsa office of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. My brother was born in November 1956.  My mother became ill and died from complications of lupus on March 17, 1957, at the age of 31. I have only one clear memory of her—hanging up sheets in our backyard while I chased a butterfly.

My brother Tim and I at my mother's grave
Fairview Cemetery, Dustin, OK

*I knew nothing about the Wheats except for the family tree my mother filled out in my baby book, and one of the entries may have been wrong.  Remember—her dad died when she was just 2, so she didn’t know much either. This has probably been the most fun (and sometimes frustrating) search in my genealogical life! Lots of connections, lots of surprises…

**The Bells have been pretty fun, too, especially the maternal lines like the Powells and the Fowlers.  However, I hit a brick wall with the Roberts family that I’m still trying to climb over.

Daddy: The Smith * / Castle ** Side of the Family

Jack Francis Smith

My father was a fraternal twin.  He and his brother, Mack Weaver, were born on January 8, 1928, at the Oklahoma Osteopathic Hospital in Tulsa. Their parents were Weaver Harris Smith and Fannie (Castle) Smith.

My grandparents didn’t have names picked out and named the boys for the two ambulance drivers that brought my grandmother home from the hospital: Mack and Jack.  Uncle Mack’s middle name was Weaver for my grandfather; Daddy’s was Francis, my grandmother’s first name, although she always went by Fannie.  They must have already had their own distinctive looks, because they were definitely named for the parent they resembled.  

Jack & Mack Smith

Although they grew up during the Depression, Daddy once said that they didn’t know they were poor.  Their doting parents—they were the only children—tried to give them all they could, including Shetland ponies.  Mack’s was named Queenie, and Jack’s was named Don.

Daddy had asthma, which I suspect is why my grandmother was always so protective of him.  She said she remembered standing out at the front gate and hearing him in the house, trying to catch his breath.  In high school he ran track, which helped him finally get over his breathing problems.  He and Uncle Mack were also in the dance club, and that was an activity that he enjoyed until the very end of his life.

Daddy in group on right, facing camera, Uncle Mack to his left

Jack and Mack graduated from Daniel Webster High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1946.

Mack Weaver and Jack Francis Smith

My dad tried college for a while at the University of Tulsa but didn’t finish.  When he and my mother first married in 1952, he worked at Musick Drug at N. Denver & W. Edison, delivering prescriptions. When I was in elementary school, he worked for Cooper Supply Co., which sold plumbing supplies.  Later he was an insurance investigator, working out of a building at 7^th & Houston. He worked for the Department of Human Services for many years at their offices on Houston, just west of the Civic Center.

His family was the most important thing in the world to him. After my mother died, he never remarried, so he spent more time with my brother and me than most dads. He came home for lunch when he worked for Cooper Supply; it hadn’t been long since my mother’s death, and he took me almost every day to Red Fork Drug for ice cream before he went back to work. When he did field work as an insurance investigator, he often took us with him. He attended all of my brother’s ball games and all my spelling bees and plays. He took walks with us. He was the designated driver on hundreds of family eating expeditions.

He died way too young, at age 57, on October 12, 1985.  I still miss him every day.

*One of the first research jobs I tackled was the Smiths. I still haven’t gotten much further. They came to Oklahoma from Alabama.

**On the Castle side of the family, my cousin Fred was the family genealogist. He did all the work, and I have just enjoyed being able to rest when it comes to that ¼ of my heritage. The Castles came to Oklahoma from Kentucky.