Last Stop on Vacation: Tulsa Town

June 12-15--We finished our vacation trip in Tulsa, visiting with cousins Mike and Debi, hanging out with some members of the Will Rogers High School class of 1961, and seeing a special exhibit at our favorite museum, Gilcrease. The sculpture above at the main entrance to the museum is "Sacred Rain Arrow" by the Apache artist Allan Houser. It is now featured on Oklahoma license plates as well.

We went to Gilcrease on the closing day of an exhibit I had long wanted to see of sculpture in wood by the late Cherokee artist Willard Stone. It was a wonderful retrospective of works from many collections including Gilcrease's own; unfortunately no photos are allowed in special exhibits. However, you can see some examples of Stone's work (mostly bronze reproductions of the original wood pieces) and read about his life at the Willard Stone Museum site, maintained by his son Jason, a rising sculptor in his own right.

Another highlight of the trip was a three-hour lunch gathering of some 30 members of the Class of 1961. Our high school, Will Rogers, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007. It opened in 1939, being constructed by the WPA. It is an outstanding example of Tulsa's Art Deco heritage, and the inside has beautiful murals and granite floors. Starting in September, the building will be open for public tours on the second Monday night of each month at 6:30 p.m.

The school complex occupies several square blocks, from 4th to 5th place and from Pittsburg to Knoxville streets in East Tulsa. All of the additions have been in the same buff brick, and a new athletic complex has decor that echoes the original design as well.

One of our most determined class members, Mary Ann Caldwell Hargrove, has set up a web site for our class at ClassReport.Org and she convened a series of pre-reunion planning meetings. This one, on June 14, was at the Promenade Mall at 41st and Yale. Our reunion will be held in 2011, the last weekend of September.

It helps that we wear name tags, because after almost 50 years, some changes have taken place. Charles Schwabe has retired from careers in the military and from ranching, and is writing books. Those junior English classes come in handy. His latest book, Cedar Box Memories, is a work of fiction based on the pioneer life of his grandparents. As we talked, we discovered that we have Sayre in common. His great-grandparents are buried there, too.

Frank Marcum and Margaret Rule Farris have also volunteered to help organize our reunion, as they have the previous ones. Turns out my cousin's sister knows Frank, from his years of teaching at our old high school after he "retired" from teaching at another one. Frank was a finalist for the Teacher in Space program a few years back. Margaret and I lived one block from each other and attended the same grade school and belonged to the same Brownie Scout Troop.

Molly Lambert and Jim Clark (left) are two classmates who married each other. Molly keeps up our class data base and has placed all of our yearbook pictures on the web site. This gathering was a tantalizing sample of the kinds of stories we will all be able to recall and relive when the reunion comes around. Norm was waiting for me in the food court outside the room and kept wondering what we were all doing in there!


Another highlight, as we drove around some of my old neighbor- hoods and the high school taking pictures, was this view of the church I grew up attending, Rogers Heights. I wrote about its closing two years ago, a service that I got to attend almost by accident. At the time, there was a lot of uncertainty about the building. Would it be sold? Who would buy it? I was happy to see that a new church has been started by the Oklahoma Region and it is using the building. I think that In the Spirit Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) was begun in the fall of 2008. May these folks grow and prosper according to their motto from Second Corinthians: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

After the Heat Wave

After 11 days of high 90s, we are relishing a cool 73 degrees this morning! It apparently rained over 3/4 of inch last night, but we barely remember hearing a little thunder!

I have lots of catch up blogging to do. But I wanted to show you how gorgeous our coneflowers have been this past week, complete with a busy bee.

Last night I added some material about my four Great Grandmothers, and visits to two of their grave sites made on our vacation, to my Thursday's Child Blog. More soon.

Tracing My Mother's Childhood: Snyder & Sayre

Wednesday, June 10--After a full day yesterday of exploring the country around Fort Sill, we set out in search of two other places where my mother spent part of her childhood. More red granite mountains rose above grasslands as we drove west to what remains of the tiny town of Snyder.

When I start formally on my genealogy project, I will have to figure out when mother's family lived in all of these places. I think the order is Sayre, Snyder and Ft. Sill, but I have few clues as to mother's age at any time in them. Not much remains of Snyder, which was once a thriving railroad town, but the water tower looms on one of the hills that ring the town. I remember mother talking about this geography, and also Snyder's famous tornado warning signal, the "whistle" (one long, two shorts) that went off any time day or night when threatening weather was sighted. She talked about running home from school one day to take refuge in a cellar with a neighbor boy. They consumed at least one jar of home canned cherries before the all clear was sounded. Today, only one business was open at the crossroads in the center of town: a gas station with a non functioning rest room. Because the weather looked threatening, we didn't linger. I wanted to look for signs of a church, school, or former plants where my grandfather might have worked, but I was feeling a little sick (maybe a touch of what Walt had earlier in the week?) and we went on toward Altus, and a restroom.


Our next goal was Sayre, a town on I-40 not far from the Texas panhandle. It's also on Old US 66. We stopped for lunch (just iced tea for me, thank you) at a Mexican restaurant, the only place open in Mangum, so we could out wait a nasty looking storm. We arrived in the afternoon, checked into our motel and then drove around town, looking for landmarks that might have been there in 1913, when my mother was born, or even earlier, when my great grandparents Jesse and Emma McElyea moved there, I think around 1910. The water tower is probably newer than those dates, but it is distinctive against the Southwest Oklahoma sky.

One famous Sayre landmark is the Beckham County Courthouse, dedicated in 1911. It cost $69,000 to build. The first settlers arrived in Sayre in 1891, and railroad promoters brought people from the east who wanted to buy lots that had been first claimed in the land runs. Oklahoma became a state in 1907. And of course, the courthouse with its distinctive dome had a cameo role in the 1940 movie, The Grapes of Wrath.

Sayre blossomed up in the valley of the North Fork of the Red River beginning with a tent city in 1901. One of the first permanent buildings was this one at the corner of 4th and Main. It housed the first drug store, Owl Drug. Sometime in the '20s, the First National Bank moved in and the drug store moved across the street.

Some restoration on this block is evident, but other buildings are still rather dilapidated. This building now houses Sayre City Hall.





When I saw this historic looking train depot I got excited, because I knew that my grandfather had worked off and on for railroads as a station agent or time keeper. But the plaque says this depot was erected in 1927, after all of the McElyeas had moved on. However, it houses a nice local museum and I was able to get a lot of information about the schools in early days, as well as churches and social conditions. It will be useful when I write the genealogy.

Across the street at the public library I found some new information about my great grand parents in the newspaper obituary files. I had always wondered what Jesse did, or what business he was in, that would account for the line in Emma's obituary that when she died suddenly of peritonitis in 1914, "almost all places of business closed during her funeral out of respect." I still have no idea, but Jesse's obituary from 1950 says he was a retired insurance and real estate man. Not a lot to go on. I tried looking at microfilm of newspapers from those years, but it was like finding a needle in a whole pile of haystacks. Indexing these papers is a time consuming and expensive task and it hasn't been done. I got my neck out of whack after two hours and had to give up.


One final stop in my hunt for information was the Methodist Church. The pastor was in and turns out he, like Norm, is a graduate of Iliff School of Theology in Denver. Small world. This building was built in 1931. The church had some records going back to its earliest years, but although Emma's obit said she was active in the women's organization, there was no mention of her name on rosters. But then most records dated from the 1930s.

The docent we talked with at the museum confirmed our growing suspicion that Sayre hadn't done much with its earliest history. The buildings, newspapers, and records were quite ephemeral and not much was saved. All of the old time settlers have passed on, and so have many of their children. One or two families have donated items to the museum from those early days--records of farming, or medical practices. It's a start and I hope they can preserve more of their history. I think my expectations of such have been raised by my experience in my husband's family, with Dad Linville writing and researching both family stories and western Kansas history, and museums like the one in Colby.

Soon I'll post more information about Emma and Jesse on my other blog, Thursday's Child. I found their burial place, and thus completed my quest to see the graves of all four of my Great Grandmothers. Give me a couple of days: the update will appear in the blog list at right.

Home Sweet Home

Dear Family,

We arrived home about 6:15 p.m. today after a 7-1/2 hour drive from Tulsa. MIssed the rain all around, for which we were thankful. Apparently there was a deluge here this morning that accounts for the 3+ inches in our rain gauge. All seems well, and we are unpacking, going through mail and e-mail, enjoying the dinner friends left in our 'fridge, and generally relaxing. I'll resume our travelog as soon as I get some shut eye!

A Refuge for Wildlife

The Wichita Mountains arise from the flat grasslands in Southwest Oklahoma north of Lawton. A wildlife preserve of 59,020 acres is home to bison, elk, longhorn cattle and white- tailed deer. These bison were grazing peacefully not far from the entrance, but they were the only ones we saw on Tuesday, June 9 when we visited the refuge.

Mt. Scott, at the eastern end of the mountain chain, is 2,464 feet above sea level. A two- lane road allows you to drive to the top, which we did. The area was sacred to the Wichita Indians and other plains tribes. One legend says that when the buffalo were about to be exterminated from the plains by over hunting, the last remaining animals walked single file into a cavern in Mt. Scott, where their spirits remain today.

...straight to Mount Scott the leader of the herd walked. Behind came the cows and their calves, and the few young males who had survived. As the woman watched, the face of the mountain opened. Inside Mount Scott the world was green and fresh, as it had been when she was a small girl. The rivers ran clear, not red. The wild plums were in blossom, chasing the red buds up the inside slopes. Into this world of beauty the buffalo walked, never to be seen again. (Kiowa legend.

I took the photo above from the parking lot next to the lake in this photo, one of many lakes on the plains outside the refuge. The area gets about 31 inches of rainfall a year on average, and thus is much greener than one might expect, for SW Oklahoma.

Once at the top of Mt. Scott, you can enjoy a 360 degree view of lakes, canyons, and more mountains. You can also see part of the Ft. Sill firing range in the far distance. We had heard explosions all day and I swear there was a scent of gunpowder in the air when we arrived at the top, but it quickly dissipated in the stiff wind that was blowing.

All of the lakes are human- made, but the Wichita Mountains were born about 550 million years ago, according to geologists. Lava bubbled up through sedimentary beds and cooled to form the distinctive pink and red granite backbone of the range.

This view to the west is toward the special use area, where most of the 500 bison, 280 longhorn cattle, and 500 elk can range without much contact with humans. A large part of the remaining range is open to the public for rock climbing, bird watching, hiking, and other activities.

Norm said he could imagine a young Wichita, Kiowa, Comanche or Apache warrior climbing Mt. Scott on foot as part of a vision quest and to prove his manhood. We were thankful for the auto route!

"To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at our back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where creation was begun." N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain.

Large granite boulders, located outside the visitor center on Highway 49 through the refuge, show the gradations of color from pink to red to gray. The center has fabulous interpretive exhibits about the flora, fauna, and habitats in the refuge. The refuge began in 1901 when President McKinley set aside part of the area as a Forest Preserve. In 1905, Congress established a tract of nearly 60,000 acres to be managed by the Forest Service. Later the area was managed by the Department of Agriculture and in 1939 went to the Department of the Interior, where it is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It has about 1.5 million visitors a year. It is one of 500 wildlife refuges in the 50 states, refuges that protect 44 endangered species. Our tax dollars at work in a very good way!

The buffalo herd that lives in these grasslands was begun in 1907, when 15 bison from a zoo in New York (some of the few remaining bison anywhere) were shipped in special box cars by rail to nearby Cache, Okla. Among the people there to greet them was the old Comanche chief Quanah Parker, who had been a scout for the Army and who still lived in the area. The elk were brought from Jackson Hole, Wyo., in 1912. The refuge is also home to coyotes, raccoons, prairie dogs, eagles, and many small songbirds such as the endangered black capped vireo. (We didn't see one, though.)

One Oklahoma feature I had not heard about was Cross Timbers, a name given to the very thick stands of oak and brush that cross the state from north to south. The timber is almost impenetrable on foot or by horseback. It marks a division between eastern and western habitats for species such as wrens, bluebirds, and hummingbirds. Washington Irving, exploring the area in 1832, said "it was like struggling through forests of cast iron." One of the remaining relict stands of Cross Timbers can be seen near the refuge visitor center.

We had also hoped to visit the Quartz Mountains, another range between Lawton and Sayre, on Wednesday, but bad weather forced us to change our route. Areas like this are very educational and helped broaden my understanding of my own native state, with its varied forests, mountains, lakes, rivers and grasslands. One final item I'd like to add is this quote from the Native American writer Louise Erdrich, which is included in one of the visitor center displays:

"I would be converted to a religion of grass. Sleep the winter away and rise headlong each spring. Sink deep roots. Conserve water: Respect and nourish your neighbors and never let trees get the upper hand. .. Bow beneath the arm of fire. Connect underground. Provide. Provide. Be lovely and do no harm."

Back on Tulsa Time

Just a short update for family who are checking our vacation progress: We arrived in Tulsa last night, once again after the thunderstorms. We are comfortable at a Candlewood Suites. Cousin Debi got home from her trip to Europe last night, too. Today I'm going to have lunch with some Will Rogers Class of 61 classmates and then we will visit with Debi and Mike. I know I'm behind on blogging but life seems to be going faster than my fingers can type. Eventually I'll catch up. We hope Roy and Walt are still doing well. Thanks to Sandy and Mike in St. Louis for looking after our (too) many plants. Doug, glad to see you are back in Ft. Myers. More later, or soon, or sometime.

Medicine Park: 100-year-old playground

Tuesday, June 9--After our tour of Ft. Sill, we drove up toward the Wichita Mountains and stopped at the old, old resort village called Medicine Park. It opened on July 4, 1904, the brainchild of a developer who hoped to attract the rich and famous to this playground near the fort and the Wichita Game Preserve that was started the same year (it later became the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge.) On a hot June afternoon, nothing looks more inviting than the cold waters of the natural swimming pool ($2 per person) in Medicine Creek. The Medicine refers to the belief of the Native Americans that the mountains (one of them, Mt. Scott, is in the background) are sacred and that a visit to them confers special powers, or medicine.

As a resort, Medicine Park flourished through the 1920s, but after the Depression began to fall into disrepair. My mother's parents used to talk about spending time here in their early married life, dancing at the pavilion (now a restaurant) by the creek and enjoying themselves. By the early 1950s, my grandmother lamented that everything was "just falling down." Recently some people have started to revive and renovate some of the unique cobblestone studded cottages into small businesses and even vacation cabins. And there is a village government, fire truck, and police officer to keep law and order and make sure folks pay that daily user fee. We had left our swim suits at the hotel, so we just walked and gawked.

Norm and I sat on a stone wall in the shade and ate the lunch we had packed. Then we took a stroll down the creek, looking at buildings, people and some bird life. We think this abandoned structure was once a bath house. We know the resort was promoted as a spa. There is a large concrete oblong trough in the middle of it, and pipes leading in and out.

A one lane bridge connects the east and west sides of the village along the creek. Currently there is a fund raising drive to repair it. We didn't drive over it but saw many other vehicles do so.

The creek reminds anyone from Eastern Missouri a little bit of Johnson's shut-ins. The water tumbles along pink granite boulders that still retain some of their sharp edges although this layer of granite was lifted up by volcanic activity some 500 million years ago.

Medicine Creek appears to be fed by some natural springs as well. This part of Oklahoma is surprisingly wet, getting around 30 inches of rainfall a year, and this year has been wetter than usual.

As we walked along the creek, we were honked at by some domestic white geese standing on a rock in the middle of the stream. We saw several families of Canada geese, including some half-grown goslings. Walking downstream, we saw this pair of ducks swimming. Walking back, we found them perched on this rock, one of them already fast asleep. We should have taken a nap, too, probably, but we hopped into Gracie and headed up toward the Wildlife Refuge, with a goal of driving to the top of Mt. Scott. But that's the next story.

Catching Up

I'm a little behind in posting, mostly because of lack of Internet on Tuesday night and being busy looking up ancestry in SW Oklahoma yesterday and today. It's good to hear that Roy did well with Monday's knee surgery and went home today. Better still to hear that Walt checked out OK when he visited his heart doctor today. And it's great that our brother (in law) Don is willing to share photos with us that he took at the reunion. Here I have posted the full, time-release shot Don took on that hot Sunday afternoon in Irving, with all present.

We had a full day on Wednesday, driving from Lawton/Ft. Sill out west through Snyder to Sayre, where my mother was born in 1913. It's also where my great grandparents on the McElyea side lived for a while between 1910 and 1917, when the state of Oklahoma was very new, and where my great-grandmother Emma died and is buried along with my great grandfather. Today I've spent a kind of frustrating day searching for traces of them in records of the Methodist Church (none) the courthouse (none) a museum (none) and the library (limited success.) I did find copies of different obituaries for both of them and I learned a little more. I also found their graves in the cemetery here. Most of this family lore will go onto Thursday's Child blog in the future, along with other stories of the 4 Great Grandmothers. But next, I need to post the rest of what we did on Tuesday back in the area of Ft. Sill.

Visit to Historic Ft. Sill

Tuesday morning we set out on a three- goal trip: to visit historic old Ft. Sill, see Medicine Park, and experience some of the Wichita Wildlife Refuge. All within some 30 miles of each other just outside Lawton. We started at the Old Post at Ft. Sill, built in 1869-1870 by Buffalo Soldiers, freed slaves who had fought in the Union Army in the Civil War.






The parade ground was reminiscent of another frontier fort we visited two years ago, Ft. Larned in SW Kansas. But here the trees are taller and the flag pole a little shorter. (For comparison to that fort, click here.)

Two sides of the old quadrangle had barracks for enlisted soldiers, and two sides had housing for officers. Ft. Sill is the only military base from the era of the Indian Wars that has been continuously occupied and is still in use today.
(The italicized section above corrects an earlier version of this post. Corrected on 6/11/09)

The com- mand- er's quarters is still occupied today. It was at this head- quarters that General Sherman received a party of Comanche Indians and wound up having them arrested.

The guard house at Ft. Sill was used for local law enforce- ment and it also housed the Apache medicine chief Geronimo for a while. Keeping civil order was a mission of the Army in the late 19th century; the mission in Iraq is not as unique as some folks think.

Inside the basement of the guard house is a row of cells. Norm stands in the one that supposedly held Geronimo when he got a little unruly on weekends. Geronimo surrendered in 1886 and spent time in prison in Florida before returning to Oklahoma. Contrary to legend, the old Chief did not spend his last years in jail. He and his wife lived peaceably on a small farm near the fort, along with other Ft. Sill Apaches under the protection of the government. Geronimo died in 1909 and is buried in an Apache cemetery near the sacred Medicine Bluffs.


On another part of the post is the old post chapel, constructed in 1872-73. It was the first sight that settlers coming west glimpsed as they approached the fort.

The stone for all the buildings was quarried nearby. This chapel is still in use. A plaque explains that in early days, there were benches, not pews, and often the benches would be pushed aside after services so a party could be held. School also was held in the chapel, with enlisted officers making a little extra money teaching the children who lived in the officers' homes on the post.

Episcopal services are held in the chapel on Sunday mornings, and weddings also take place here.












The chapel stained glass window depicts St. Barbara. She is the patron- ess of artillery men, according to legend. This page from the Ft. Sill web site explains the legend.

Another museum at Ft. Sill depicts the history of artillery, since training Field Artillery Soldiers and Marines is the fort's modern mission. The museum depicts the development of cannons, guns , tanks and missiles from ancient times through prototypes for future systems. This row of cassions is part of the extensive display.

Leave it to me to be fascinated by the oddity in the museum, though. This is Wind River, one of the last army mules, who died and was stuffed around 1930. Wind River stands beside an experimental cannon that was designed to be fired from the back of a mule!

This plaque tells what happened. It is said that no one anticipated the reaction of the mule when this thing was created. When it comes to weapons systems, it seems man can design anything, but not everything will work as expected.

Home of the Prairie Dogs

Monday we drove through north Texas to Wichita Falls and then into Oklahoma. We stopped at the Welcome Center to get some maps and brochures before we arrived at Lawton/Ft. Sill. For miles we had been admiring a blanket of yellow flowers that seemed to glow in the sun. So I took advantage of the stop to take some photos of a field behind the welcome center.


At first I thought I heard some kind of bird scolding me, the way killdeers often do. Then I realized the field was actually a prairie dog town, with dozens of the creatures sitting atop their burrows, calling back and forth. Later I saw a sign that said, "please don't feed the prairie dogs." It also noted that these rodents that were so prominent in tales of the West now occupy about 1% of their former habitat. Of course, ranchers are glad about that, but I'm glad spots like this remain.