Born 1752
Died 1837
I found this photo at http://www.joycetice.com/cemb/wolfsetc.htm
I am pretty sure this is our ancestor, Michael Wolf, but there are a few dates that differ, so I need to check all that out before anyone starts scrapbooking this.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The Blog is now Public
Because the blog is public now we need to be careful not to put any information up that could be potentially harmful to living people. Leave off living people's:
Birthdays
Ages
Addresses or any info on where they live
Last names when it isn't necessary
Anyone who is writing on the blog or commenting, just be careful, and think about what you are posting before you put it online. Thanks.
Birthdays
Ages
Addresses or any info on where they live
Last names when it isn't necessary
Anyone who is writing on the blog or commenting, just be careful, and think about what you are posting before you put it online. Thanks.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Walton and Evelyn Wolfe
I love this picture, I think it was taken in the 1990's, apparently a time for big eye glass lenses and polka dots!
Evelyn Wolfe Life Sketch
Cindy Nelson's notes for her talk to give Evelyn Armstrong Wolfe's Funeral:
Life Sketch for Evelyn Wolfe
Proverbs 31:10-11, 28-29
Evelyn Wolfe was born March 12, 1923 to Price Jackson Armstrong and Rebecca Henderson Ellis Armstrong in Robin, Idaho. She was the third child and only daughter of Price and Rebecca. Verl Ellis was the oldest son followed by Dale Ellis, then Evelyn, and Ray Ellis, and Cecil Ellis.
Ellis was named after her grandmother Virginia Evelina. She was always very proud of her name for this reason.
She had a good childhood. They had no water or electricity in the home when they were growing up. Being the only girl she was given her own bedroom. She said that it was sometimes so cold there would be frost on the quilts when you woke up in the morning. They had to carry water from the bottom of the hill and on Saturday night they would heat water on the stove, so they could each bath in the tin tub. They also had the privilege of using an outhouse.
As children they played Annie I Over and hide and seek. Evelyn and some of the neighbor girls would sometimes get together and make corn husk dolls.
Some of the jobs she had as a young girl were:
Cooking for the haymen
Running dairy cows
Pulling weeds
Scraping pigs
Picking the feather off chickens and getting them ready to cook
Washing eggs for delivery
Washing the cream separator, because her father sold cream. She said this was a particularly hard job because it had so many pieces.
Her dad would make them hoe weeds in the 80 by the McGaughy place and they couldn't have a drink until they had hoed all around the field. She said they were mighty thirsty.
Her dad would take them to Lava on Saturday night if he wasn't playing for a dance. He played drums in a band.
Her mother, Becky, was stricken with Rheumatoid Arthritis when Evelyn was a young girl. She taught her how to cook from her hospital bed in the kitchen. Evelyn took really good care of her mother for many years.
Her brother, Dale, who was 2 years older than her, was born with a crippling disease. Evelyn took very good care of him also. They would go to town and some of the kids would make fun of him, but Evelyn would not stand for that. She always stuck up for him. He was not able to walk until he was 5 years old.
Her and Dale would go to their grandmother's house. She would give them the cake mold to lick. She had a large family-15 children, so I was surprised there was anything to lick.
Evelyn quit school in her Junior year to stay home and take care of her mother. She said she would do it again if she could. She loved her mother very much.
She was introduced to a handsome young man, who was on leave from the military, by a girlfriend at a dance. This was in the fall of 1942. They only went on 3 dates before he asked her to marry him. Walton knew a good thing when he say it. He had to return, but he sent her a one way ticket to travel to Texas to get married. Her dad probably wasn't to excited, but he let her go with a round trip ticket just in case things didn't work out. They were married Dec. 19, 1942, in Corpus Christy, Texas, by Elder Mackintosh. They were later sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. Walton joined the church April 6, 1943, before he left to go overseas. She came back to Robin to care for her family. Walton sent her to meet his parents in Kansas. She said it was very scary, but she survived.
Their first son, Richard, was born July X, 19XX. Rhea followed on Feb. X, 19XX, Mike, March X, 19XX, Marsha Aug. X, 19XX, Peggy March X, 19XX, and Jeff June X, 19XX. Evelyn expressed what a wonderful family they had and how proud they were of them.
I have left the exact birthdays off of this because these people are still living and need privacy if you need to know the dates contact me.
She had many callings in the church, but her most important calling was service.
Evelyn had heart surgery in 1995. Before the surgery she made some notes I guess in case she didn't make it. She remembered Cecil pushing her in her wheelchair and telling her she reminded him of Grandma Becky, Marsha calling her from Hawaii, and Randy's visit to the hospital. She expressed gratitude to each of her nieces and nephews for all the respect they had shown her. She also said how much she loved Norma and Omalee, her two sisters-in-law who were the sisters she never had. She was sure that Grandma and Grandpa were looking down with pride on their posterity.
In 1996, Evelyn had a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair. The good thing was that she had done a good job of teaching service to her children that they accepted the responsibility for her care. Walton did his best to care for her until he was diagnosed with cancer and could no longer care for her. in 1998 Evelyn and Walton moved to Pingree to live with Mike and Deanne. We all wish to express our thanks to Mike and Deanne for the excellent care they gave her. It was a challenge I'm sure, but what a reward.
Evelyn and Walton were married for 61 years before he passed away in 2003. She said they had had a few arguments, but nothing serious.
We all have so many special memories of Aunt Evelyn. When I think back to my childhood every memory I have revolved around Evelyn and Walton and their family. Last week when I went to visit her in the hospital she reminded me of a memory that she had had. She couldn't drive at that time, so she would call OmaLee and they would meet at the underpass. We lived on Buchanan and Evelyn lived on 6th Street. They would walk back to Evelyn's house and mom would drive their car and we would go on an adventure. This day we went to Ross Park. When we were ready to go home they stopped to get ice cream for all of us kids. They ordered 10 ice creams, but only had 9 kids with them. That's when they realized they had left Robert at the park. We drove right back to find him, and he was sitting their crying his little eyes out. Evelyn had remembered it clearly.
Some of the memories are:
Her love of garage sales. She always made sure that if she had any grandkids with her they would have 50 cents or $1.00 to spend.
She loved to go to Jackpot and play the nickel machines.
We always got together to watch Bonanza on Sunday night.
The raw potatoes and ice cubes.
She never said an unkind word or complained.
She would buy fabric and ask Omalee to make dresses for her girls. The strangest thing was she always bought extra, so mom would have plenty to make us something.
The old shuffleboard table in the basement that we all sat on to watch T.V.
Eating Arctic Circle hamburgers that Dale bought.
Her love of David Hasslehoff.
Folding the papers, so the kids could get them delivered on time.
When she finally learned to drive she would drive with both feet, one on the gas and one on the brake. She told Shane she would never be able to drive a stick shift because she didn't have three feet.
Camping in the big white teepee tent.
Drive-in movies on dollar a car night, with big bags of popcorn and kook-aid.
There was always something warming on the stove.
The leftovers from the school cafeteria.
She loved to go to town shopping.
She would never stay on the phone too long because she was afraid that lightning would get her through her phone.
The first question she always asked when you went to visit. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty?
She never went to bed without naming each of her children and grandchildre and probably great-grandchildren and asking a special blessing for each and every one.
Peggy wrote a special poem for her mom
Evelyn requested this letter be read at her funeral.
Someone once told me that I was just like my aunt Evelyn. I think that was the greatest compliment I have ever received.
Last memory that was remembered by all:
The video of Evelyn singing "Three little fishies"
Life Sketch for Evelyn Wolfe
Proverbs 31:10-11, 28-29
Evelyn Wolfe was born March 12, 1923 to Price Jackson Armstrong and Rebecca Henderson Ellis Armstrong in Robin, Idaho. She was the third child and only daughter of Price and Rebecca. Verl Ellis was the oldest son followed by Dale Ellis, then Evelyn, and Ray Ellis, and Cecil Ellis.
Ellis was named after her grandmother Virginia Evelina. She was always very proud of her name for this reason.
She had a good childhood. They had no water or electricity in the home when they were growing up. Being the only girl she was given her own bedroom. She said that it was sometimes so cold there would be frost on the quilts when you woke up in the morning. They had to carry water from the bottom of the hill and on Saturday night they would heat water on the stove, so they could each bath in the tin tub. They also had the privilege of using an outhouse.
As children they played Annie I Over and hide and seek. Evelyn and some of the neighbor girls would sometimes get together and make corn husk dolls.
Some of the jobs she had as a young girl were:
Cooking for the haymen
Running dairy cows
Pulling weeds
Scraping pigs
Picking the feather off chickens and getting them ready to cook
Washing eggs for delivery
Washing the cream separator, because her father sold cream. She said this was a particularly hard job because it had so many pieces.
Her dad would make them hoe weeds in the 80 by the McGaughy place and they couldn't have a drink until they had hoed all around the field. She said they were mighty thirsty.
Her dad would take them to Lava on Saturday night if he wasn't playing for a dance. He played drums in a band.
Her mother, Becky, was stricken with Rheumatoid Arthritis when Evelyn was a young girl. She taught her how to cook from her hospital bed in the kitchen. Evelyn took really good care of her mother for many years.
Her brother, Dale, who was 2 years older than her, was born with a crippling disease. Evelyn took very good care of him also. They would go to town and some of the kids would make fun of him, but Evelyn would not stand for that. She always stuck up for him. He was not able to walk until he was 5 years old.
Her and Dale would go to their grandmother's house. She would give them the cake mold to lick. She had a large family-15 children, so I was surprised there was anything to lick.
Evelyn quit school in her Junior year to stay home and take care of her mother. She said she would do it again if she could. She loved her mother very much.
She was introduced to a handsome young man, who was on leave from the military, by a girlfriend at a dance. This was in the fall of 1942. They only went on 3 dates before he asked her to marry him. Walton knew a good thing when he say it. He had to return, but he sent her a one way ticket to travel to Texas to get married. Her dad probably wasn't to excited, but he let her go with a round trip ticket just in case things didn't work out. They were married Dec. 19, 1942, in Corpus Christy, Texas, by Elder Mackintosh. They were later sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. Walton joined the church April 6, 1943, before he left to go overseas. She came back to Robin to care for her family. Walton sent her to meet his parents in Kansas. She said it was very scary, but she survived.
Their first son, Richard, was born July X, 19XX. Rhea followed on Feb. X, 19XX, Mike, March X, 19XX, Marsha Aug. X, 19XX, Peggy March X, 19XX, and Jeff June X, 19XX. Evelyn expressed what a wonderful family they had and how proud they were of them.
I have left the exact birthdays off of this because these people are still living and need privacy if you need to know the dates contact me.
She had many callings in the church, but her most important calling was service.
Evelyn had heart surgery in 1995. Before the surgery she made some notes I guess in case she didn't make it. She remembered Cecil pushing her in her wheelchair and telling her she reminded him of Grandma Becky, Marsha calling her from Hawaii, and Randy's visit to the hospital. She expressed gratitude to each of her nieces and nephews for all the respect they had shown her. She also said how much she loved Norma and Omalee, her two sisters-in-law who were the sisters she never had. She was sure that Grandma and Grandpa were looking down with pride on their posterity.
In 1996, Evelyn had a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair. The good thing was that she had done a good job of teaching service to her children that they accepted the responsibility for her care. Walton did his best to care for her until he was diagnosed with cancer and could no longer care for her. in 1998 Evelyn and Walton moved to Pingree to live with Mike and Deanne. We all wish to express our thanks to Mike and Deanne for the excellent care they gave her. It was a challenge I'm sure, but what a reward.
Evelyn and Walton were married for 61 years before he passed away in 2003. She said they had had a few arguments, but nothing serious.
We all have so many special memories of Aunt Evelyn. When I think back to my childhood every memory I have revolved around Evelyn and Walton and their family. Last week when I went to visit her in the hospital she reminded me of a memory that she had had. She couldn't drive at that time, so she would call OmaLee and they would meet at the underpass. We lived on Buchanan and Evelyn lived on 6th Street. They would walk back to Evelyn's house and mom would drive their car and we would go on an adventure. This day we went to Ross Park. When we were ready to go home they stopped to get ice cream for all of us kids. They ordered 10 ice creams, but only had 9 kids with them. That's when they realized they had left Robert at the park. We drove right back to find him, and he was sitting their crying his little eyes out. Evelyn had remembered it clearly.
Some of the memories are:
Her love of garage sales. She always made sure that if she had any grandkids with her they would have 50 cents or $1.00 to spend.
She loved to go to Jackpot and play the nickel machines.
We always got together to watch Bonanza on Sunday night.
The raw potatoes and ice cubes.
She never said an unkind word or complained.
She would buy fabric and ask Omalee to make dresses for her girls. The strangest thing was she always bought extra, so mom would have plenty to make us something.
The old shuffleboard table in the basement that we all sat on to watch T.V.
Eating Arctic Circle hamburgers that Dale bought.
Her love of David Hasslehoff.
Folding the papers, so the kids could get them delivered on time.
When she finally learned to drive she would drive with both feet, one on the gas and one on the brake. She told Shane she would never be able to drive a stick shift because she didn't have three feet.
Camping in the big white teepee tent.
Drive-in movies on dollar a car night, with big bags of popcorn and kook-aid.
There was always something warming on the stove.
The leftovers from the school cafeteria.
She loved to go to town shopping.
She would never stay on the phone too long because she was afraid that lightning would get her through her phone.
The first question she always asked when you went to visit. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty?
She never went to bed without naming each of her children and grandchildre and probably great-grandchildren and asking a special blessing for each and every one.
Peggy wrote a special poem for her mom
Evelyn requested this letter be read at her funeral.
Someone once told me that I was just like my aunt Evelyn. I think that was the greatest compliment I have ever received.
Last memory that was remembered by all:
The video of Evelyn singing "Three little fishies"
Quote about getting started with Family History
"Get a cardboard box. Any kind of a box will do. Put it someplace where it is in the way, ...anywhere where it cannot go unnoticed. Then, over a period of a few weeks, collect and put into the box every record of your life, such as your birth certificate, your certificate of blessing, your certificate of baptism, your certificate of ordination, and your certificate of graduation. Collect diplomas, all of the photographs, honors, or awards, a diary if you have kept one, everything that you can find pertaining to your life; anything that is written, or registered, or recorded that testifies that you are alive and what you have done." Boyd K. Packer
Once you do this for yourself, you can use the same process to gather information about you ancestors.
I like this quote it makes family history seem less overwhelming. I am kind of doing what Brother Packer said to already, but instead of a box I have this blog.
Once you do this for yourself, you can use the same process to gather information about you ancestors.
I like this quote it makes family history seem less overwhelming. I am kind of doing what Brother Packer said to already, but instead of a box I have this blog.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
A Poem
If you could meet your ancestors,
all standing a row,
Would you be proud of them or not
or don't you really know?
Some strange discoveries are made
in climbing family trees,
And some of these you know
do not particularly please.
If you could meet your ancestors
all standing in a row,
There might be some of them perhaps
you would not care to know.
But there is another question
which presents a different view,
If you could meet your ancestors
would they be proud of you?
Author Unknown
I found this little poem in the preface of a book entitled "A Geneology and History of Robert Bradish in America." I have been reading the book to find out if my mom's biological line will lead to Robert Bradish. I have a big hunch that it does, but I am still waiting for the little puzzle piece that will make me positive. Anyways I liked the poem.
all standing a row,
Would you be proud of them or not
or don't you really know?
Some strange discoveries are made
in climbing family trees,
And some of these you know
do not particularly please.
If you could meet your ancestors
all standing in a row,
There might be some of them perhaps
you would not care to know.
But there is another question
which presents a different view,
If you could meet your ancestors
would they be proud of you?
Author Unknown
I found this little poem in the preface of a book entitled "A Geneology and History of Robert Bradish in America." I have been reading the book to find out if my mom's biological line will lead to Robert Bradish. I have a big hunch that it does, but I am still waiting for the little puzzle piece that will make me positive. Anyways I liked the poem.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Grandpa's Journal Volume 1
Grandpa wrote a page for every day for the first 6 months in 2002. He answered a question out of a jar each day. They are so fun to read. I have just finished typing up all of his January entries. If anyone happens to read through this, let me know if you see any typos or spelling and punctuation errors. I haven't had time to proof read yet, but I would like to make it nice for when I put in a book. January 19th entry is about his wedding day and that one is really fun to read if you don't have time to read them all right now.
The Memories of Walton William Wolfe
January 1, 2002
Where did your grandparents live? What was their home like?
My grandpa and grandma Wolfe had their last home in Phillipsburg, Kansas. Grandpa William Wolfe was a farmer and a businessman who bought and sold farms and horses. They formally lived in and around Atlanta, Nebraska, and at one time ran the Wolfe Hotel in Atlanta.
When they grew older they moved to Phillipsburg and bought one of the largest and finest homes there. As the years passed he sold and bought continually smaller and smaller homes until perhaps they lived in the smallest home in town. In this manner he financed his retirement. He died on the Fourth of July about five years before I was born. I have the honored distinction of having been born in Grandmother’s house in 1917 on March 16th.
When grandpa was younger the Republican River flooded over its banks and a family going to California in a covered wagon attempted to cross it. The horses and wagon were lost, and fortunately the people were saved by men riding down the bank and throwing them lasso ropes.
The entire neighborhood was grieved at this family’s tragic loss. My grandfather rode up and said I hear everyone say how sorry they are for this family. How sorry are you? I am sorry one hundred dollars! How sorry are you Reverend Smith? How sorry are you Brother Johnson? He soon raised $1500 and the family was in short order supplied with new provisions. After the river went down they were again on their way to a new home and the hope of finding the American Dream. This says all I need to know about my grandpa, William Wolfe.
January 2, 2002
What personality trait do you admire most about yourself?
Since childhood I have been challenged to get the inside of people that were considered difficult to understand or work with. Always I have found that these people were misunderstood by other people, and that they sincerely appreciated anyone that would spend some time with them to let them know their needs were important. If they came to know that I am indeed their friend they then became my friend. Such friendships have been very rewarding to myself over the years.
January 3, 2002
Have you ever seen a prophet in person?
Yes, I was introduced to President David O Mckay at the temple lot front gate by a young missionary, and we shook hands. I was of course impressed not only with his winning personality, but also the feel of great strength in his right arm. I was introduced to Ruben J. Clark by apostle Matthew Cowley. Brother Cowley ordained me a priest in New Zealand and said he would have ordained me an elder except he could not obtain permission of my bishop in Robin, Idaho because of the mail restrictions during World War 2. This illustrates the rather strict observance the LDS Church follows for the line of authority. God’s house is a house of order.
Apostle Wirthlin ordained me a Seventy when he was an assistant to the Twelve. I once spoke at the same meeting of stake conference that Apostle Eldon Tanner spoke. In Vero Beach, Florida I served under Elder Tanner’s nephew, a commander in the Navy. He was a wonderful officer and my good friend.
January 4, 2002
What do you think about movies? What is your favorite movie?
I do like motion pictures and I have the greatest respect for Thomas Alva Edison who first made the technique possible. When I was a child I almost worshipped him, and I wanted to grow up to be an inventor like him. He was alive when I was in grade school, and I have heard him talk over the radio.
I think that my favorite movie has been, Moses, but I have liked many other films. Gone With the Wind is also a favorite film.
Movies have a great place in our entertainment, and as well, they serve as a great learning medium. Television has come to augment the motion picture industry, but it has not replaced it. When radio was well established it was predicted that it would replace the new paper, but we see that it has not happened.
I myself am not a movie addict; I do enjoy seeing a good film production when and if I am persuaded. The opportunity since my growing older has lessened.
January 5, 2002
Describe your first paying job. What was the salary?
When I was seventeen I went to work for The West End Pharmacy in Webb City, Missouri. It was owned by the Burris Brothers. They also had a store in Joplin, Missouri. I started after school at four o’clock and worked to midnight, but it was more often until two in the morning. They would not even close as long as there were people in the store, even if they were just visiting among themselves. For this I received a nice round silver half dollar for my pay.
After a year the lead clerk went to work for the Joplin store and I took his place full time, about twelve or fourteen hours a day for fourteen dollars a week.
I had to quit school and did not get back to school until I was twenty years old. Then by taking the junior and senior years in one year I graduated when I was twenty-one.
January 6, 2002
Did your family pass down any superstitions?
Yes, I was taught never to summersault because it would turn my liver over and that could have serious consequences. I was taught that tomatoes were once called love apples and were poison, but that our family learned they were safe to eat. However, cucumbers were deadly poison unless they were soaked in salt water over night.
I was twenty-two years old when I saw a small boy in Carl Junction, Missouri with a salt shaker eating cucumbers out in the middle of a large patch. I stopped my car and ran over to him and ask him how many he had eaten. He said five or six. I said, “Son they are poison. How do you feel?” He said that he felt very good and that he had eaten a thousand cucumbers in his life and that I was some kind of loon and for me to get away from him!
I then knew that I had been the victim of a family superstition and I left before he might call for help. My Grandma Wolfe said always to close all windows at night because night air was poison. Who knows?
January 7, 2002
Did the Great Depression affect your family?
Yes indeed we were greatly affected! Before the stock market collapsed in 1929 times had been very good and people had saved money in banks and had invested heavily in stocks. The market crash came on very fast, and this put millions of people out of work. Then too banks everywhere failed and the public lost its savings. There was no help from anywhere.
Prices fell, corn from five dollars a bushel to five cents, cattle from two hundred dollars a head to ten dollars. People who were well paid were forced to work for one dollar a day.
We lost our farm and we moved to southern Missouri from the north part of the state where it was warmer and cheaper to live at the time. My father was forced to sell all that he had and was allowed only three hundred dollars by Missouri law to keep for himself. He was unable to pay many of his debts.
Franklin Roosevelt was elected President of the United States and he resorted to every effort to get the congress to help the poor people. He was a great kind man and although many local authorities were guilty of cheating and graph in implementing the Government programs he instigated, I will forever honor his name!
I with many hundreds of young people were able to attend college with the aid of the National Youth Administration which he set up into law.
January 8, 2002
Tell about your favorite uncle.
There were seven sons in the Wolfe family, John, Oscar, Elmer, Ebor, Robert, Ray, and Ira. My father was Ray. Oscar and Robert died early in life of typhoid fever. I never knew John and Eber until I was grown. I lived with my uncle Elmer for a short time when I was three years old, and I became very fond of him then and later when attending college in Haze, Kansas I used to hitch hike up to Almena, Kansas occasionally to visit him. Those times were and are favorably remembered.
It would be very hard for me to single out an uncle that was not more than a father to me. My youngest uncle Ira happens to be the one that was always near to me and which contributed more to my needs than the others. Also his wife, my aunt Naomi, filled the stead of my mother who died when I was nineteen months old. She was a very dear Irish lady that helped to endear me to my own Irish ancestors.
All the Wolfe boys were strong physically and were distinctly hansom young men as proven to me by the pictures I have of them. My uncle Ira was a very tender guardian to a small brown eyed little boy, and most respectfully helpful to a struggling young college student with moral support and monetary contribution at a time of need.
January 9, 2002
Were you ever in a drama, speech, sport, pep club, etc?
I was in a etc. club and not in any of the others. I belonged at the invitation of the English Department to the American Quill Club while I was a student at Fort Haze Kansas State College. I won the award of best creative writing in my school for that year, 1941.
My teachers presented to their convention for that year two of my poems as follows:
BEYOND THE GREAT AND GHOST-LIKE HILLS
When it is night and all is white with snow
My fancies lightly tread on air and go
Beyond the great and ghost-like hills.
Each icy drop, a crystal vapor star,
A tiny mirror for moon beams far
That dance through haunted woods
A glowing, radiant, star lit night to make
My fancies lightly tread on air and lake
Beyond the great and Ghost-like hills.
—Walton Wm. Wolfe.
BUFFALO IN THE SKY
Blue-gray heavens come up abrest
On either side of the sun,
The wild calls of a black northwest
Roll and bellow one by one.
A colloidal and mist-like perception
Of panorama spread
Is like a thousand-fold redemption
Of ages old and dead.
We see them shifting, ever shifting,
In the molten sky
Like leaden shadows drifting
As they pass on by.
—Walton Wm. Wolfe
January 10, 2002
Describe how your family Dressed. Any Special Clothing?
The 1920’s was a time of extravagant dress among young ladies. They wore their dresses very high and left their overshoes unbuckled so they would flap when they walked. Lip stick was popular and used to exaggeration. The older people thought that the younger generation was going to the dogs.
Our pastor at church in order to stay in the middle of things read a bit of Chinese history written two-thousand years before Christ that disclosed that the folks of their time thought the same thing. Very high heels were the thing in the twenties too.
Bow ties were in fashion for men and boys; boys were expected to wear a short knee pants buckled at the knee.
We knew a family one time named Bear who had a very big boy eighteen years old still in knee pants. He asked my father to talk to his dad and try to persuade him to let him graduate from high school in long pants. Mister Bear said, “No he is just a boy and will not be a man until he is twenty-one years old.” My father said, “Look Mister Bear he is a man and a football star. How will your son feel in front of all the other men who will be graduating in long pants?”
Mister Bear finally consented but told the son to not get a big head because dad is still the boss. The young man said he was one Bear thankful to a Wolf.
January 11, 2002
Were you ever in a flood, tornado, snow storm, earthquake, or other natural disaster?
No to most of these, but I did have a harrowing experience due to bad weather. When I was stationed at the Naval Night Fighter station in Vero Beach, Florida in 1945 and 6 the Marine Corps sent two other Master sergeants and a Warrant Officer and myself to Macon, Georgia at an Army Bomber Base to study a certain radar installation used on Black Widow Night Fighter Planes we had recently received on our base.
When our training was completed our Colonel came after us in a small two engine transport plane. His mother and father lived near Macon and that way he had an opportunity to visit them.
The Colonel checked with the weather bureau before we left Macon and got our clearance. We headed for Vero Beach, and not long in flight we ran into the worst storm that had ever hit the East Coast. All flights were cancelled and we were the only plane flying in the area. The plane was buffeted around so violently that he could not use the radio. There was another radio above his head and he ask us to call on that, but with three of us holding up one man we were all thrown down several times and could not get a message through nor intercept any of the military bases on the East Coast.
It rained so hard the Colonel could not see, so he opened the window on his side and lowered the plane so he could see the tops of the pine trees. He followed the West coast of Florida by the Gulf of Mexico with his wheels down so they would slightly touch the pine trees. Then, he turned left and crossed Florida to the Atlantic Ocean; he knew how many bridges crossed the Banana River at Vero Beach and could identify the locality of the air base in this way. He turned ninety degrees at the bridges and brought the plane down on the runway in a down pour of rain.
Our Colonel had joined the Marine Corps when he was seventeen years old and he had been flying most of that time since. Due to his expertise and good judgment we owe our lives and of course due to the kind intercession of a Merciful God who is sometimes not thanked by his careless children!
This was one of the many times my life has been at risk, and has up to now preserved for some cause known perhaps only to the angels of Heaven.
January 12, 2002
Did you have a bicycle? What was it like?
I did not have a bicycle until we moved to Webb City, Missouri where a neighbor boy got me a job at the West End Pharmacy where he worked and was leaving. He had an old hard tired bicycle that he sold to me for five dollars.
I had to have a bicycle to work at the drug store because I was a delivery boy. I had never been on a bicycle before in my life and the first delivery I made I was off the cycle more that I was on it.
Coming back to the store I had at last somewhat mastered the thing, but riding in the dark down the old street car tract a bailing wire got tangled in the front wheel and finally froze it up which dumped me over the handle bars and got my white jacket all torn and dirty.
I thought for sure that I would be fired when I got back to the store! The management was, however, very understanding and gave me a scrubbing down in the back sink and then they fitted me for a new jacket.
Later I bought a new bicycle called a Silver King that had balloon tires. It was very nice and I wore it out in a little more than a year. I then bought another new bicycle that had a two speed rear axel and a speedometer.
I would guess that I have ridden a bicycle at least half way around the world. Webb City was spread out and covered considerable territory. I sometimes rode more than a hundred miles a day delivering medicine and soft drinks to the store’s customers. The endurance and physic that I developed has been for me a needed life achievement.
January 13, 2002
Did you and your father share any interests? Tell about your relationship.
My father, Ray Albert Wolfe, was very intellectual. He was awarded at age fourteen a life certificate to teach school in the State of Kansas. At age seventeen he suffered sun stroke while working in a broom corn field in August of that year. It took a long time for a doctor to arrive by horse and buggy, and had he been treated properly soon enough he probably would have recovered. The old doctor gave him a large dose of grain alcohol and then ask if he might lie down as he was exhausted by the long trip.
The result was that my father nearly died and he had poor health. All of his younger life he was very sick and could not go to high school or college or get married until he was past thirty years old.
He then went out to Burlington, Colorado and worked as a cowboy on Senator Burt Ragon’s ranch. He thus regained much of his health.
All these years my father read widely and gained a storehouse of knowledge. There was hardly anything he did not know. My mother died in 1918 and this left my father especially to be my mentor.
I myself was a very precocious child and did take every advantage of my father’s learning throughout our life time together. My dad had a basic foundation in the three R’s that I have never been able to acquire. He was also a master of History and Geography and Political Science.
January 14, 2002
What magazines did your parents have around? Did you read them?
As a boy on the farm near Cameron, Missouri my father subscribed to The Capper’s weekly published by Senator Arthur Capper. It was a weekly newspaper appealing to most farmers. The Senator represented the State of Kansas. It was a very interesting publication for the whole family, and I did read it front to back. It had a very humorous comic strip named Ben and the Boss. Once Ben asked the Boss where he wanted a new fence. The Boss said that he wanted it from here to that cow way over there. Ben made a very crooked fence as the cow kept moving.
My father also took Successful Farming, a monthly periodical, that had several editorials stating that they would absolutely not advertise women smoking tobacco, but later it was one of the first to do so.
I took psychology classes in college and learned from them that at the same time that I am referring to in the above paragraph there was a psychology professor in one of our leading institutions that lost his job because he taught that if you tell people anything often enough and in enough ways they will believe it.
He said he would prove his point by getting thousands of women to smoke cigarettes. He went to work for the tobacco industry and got them to advertise in the leading magazines and proved his belief.
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, proved the same tentative with the German people in World War 2.
Satan tells his angels the same thing, put one temptation often enough and in enough ways and all people will sin and my kingdom will win a victory! But, Jesus Christ proved him wrong by his example and commanded the devil to get behind Him. We can also do the same for our Father in Heaven has given all His children a free will choice: pray often that yea inter not into temptation.
There were many magazines available to farm communities, as young college students came out into the country during each summer selling them to put themselves through school. We at different times subscribed to some of the following magazines: The Woman’s Home Journal, Reader’s Digest, Illustrated Mechanics, Popular Science, The Saturday Evening Post, and others. Norman Rockwell was famous for his paintings on the front cover of the Post, and I think he contributed much to the growing up of all my generation.
January 15, 2002
Describe your first “crush” and what she was like.
The first girl I was really serious about was Marian Jones. She was two years older than I. We were engaged to be married, but the depression was at its highest level and I could not find a good job.
Finally she met a young man who was much wealthier than I and she sent my ring back and later married him. We were perhaps both better off to have this happen as it was some years later that I got my feet on the ground.
I had an opportunity to go Out West to go to college at Fort Haze State College. After three years there I obtained several recommendations from good people and took them to Senator Burt Ragon at Burlington, Colorado to see if he would finance me through a medical education.
The Senator was a good friend of my father and treated me very cordially. He said, “Walton our nation is at war. My two sons have volunteered for the army. I think that any able bodied young man will be better off to do that. We need to win this war or else none of us will have any hope of a free life in America. Fill this obligation and if we are both alive and you still want to be a doctor come back to see me.”
I returned to Haze and my Youth Administration supervisor told me that he knew the Marine Corps recruiting Sergeant in Dodge City. He took me there and I joined the Marine Corps. They sent me to Logan Utah to go to college. There I met your mother, a life long sweetheart!
January 16, 2002
Describe a perfect spring day.
The first of April all the years I attended The Mount Pleasant one room, one teacher, grade school; as I remember, they were perfect Spring days. The first of April was always the last day of school.
The first of April was always a sun bursting warm day. The corn had been planted and was probably by this time reaching six inches high. The cornfields were ready for us boys to help our fathers take a small hand held corn planter and go along and replant where ever the first planting had failed to come up.
On the first of April all our parents would meet at the school house. The school would put on a program for them. Then, we would play baseball. In the country we played with regulation hard ball. Only the city sissies at that time used and played with the then new larger softball.
We had no protection pads used by professional ball players. If some of us got hit by the hard ball it reminded us that country kids don’t cry. We were ready for the Summer of hard work.
In town school did not get out until the first of May. When our eight graders started high school in the fall they always made better grades than most of the city kids. The town students did have a better curriculum than we did and profited from their activity in music and sports. In the country it was reading, writing and arithmetic and other basic forms of learning.
The first of April is a perfect spring day for everyone!
January 17, 2002
What musical instrument do you wish you could play?
It has happened that I never had the opportunity to develop any musical talent. I do appreciate music and musical talent in other people.
I never have felt that any music was in itself bad or of evil intent. I like variation in most things. It is true that some musical forms are associated with Satan and his “sermons in stones and good in everything.” The new musical forms sound good in my ears if they are not played too loudly. It is a shame to damage the ears which after all is the chief organ that for us separates noise from music.
I do wish that I could play the piano. Better still is the violin. It has a human soul in the hands of a master musician. Some artists can make the violin speak human words, and they produce the sound of a train and other objects.
Voice also is a great musical instrument. The singer contributes to the joy of our lives and song is the gift of God!
January 18, 2002
What is a special smell you remember from your childhood?
When I was four years old and living with my grandmother and my uncle Ira and my aunt Naomi and little cousin, Evelyne, in my grandma’s house in Phillipsburg, Kansas; I remember waking up in the early morning darkness. From the kitchen I could hear the noise of dishes and breakfast talking. And, the smell of biscuits and gravy with bacon.
My father and uncle were in the copper metal weather stripping business and had a crew of men working for them. I remember especially Brownie and Billy Clifton. The weather stripping was applied with small braid nails about three quarters inches long. The Clifton brothers were both nail drivers for the company. Billy could drive more than sixty braids a minute and Brownie more than eighty. They had their mouths full of the tacks and their hands would go so fast you could hardly see them.
In the winter months the crew would return to Philipsburg every weekend, and on Monday mornings my aunt would feed the whole crew early morning breakfast.
In the summertime my aunt Naomi and we children traveled with the crew. We all lived in Ford house trucks that were fitted for eating and sleeping. There were four trucks. One carried only tools and materials.
My uncle made a folding house out of screen doors that were hinged together in accordion fashion so they could be stored and carried in one of the trucks. It also had a wood floor made of light half inch material that also folded. A canvas cover was fitted on the frame with metal framed button holes that fitted into special snaps that turned crossways to lock besides screen wire on the doors to keep out flies and mosquitoes there was also chicken wire to protect us from cats and dogs or other intruders.
My uncle and aunt and we children lived in the movable house in any town the company might be working in Kansas or Nebraska that it was set up.
My dear aunt not only cooked for the whole crew, but she washed their clothes in a tub with a washboard. Only a young Irish girl would know about this hard labor and keep an Irish smile.
During these summer months I well remember the smell of Aunt Gemmy pancakes and Log Cabin maple syrup. My aunt was a good cook, and sometimes my uncle Ira would lend his hand at cooking. He liked to buy and cook up a big mackerel fish. Was it good! I have a good nose for good food.
Traveling in this way when I was so very young gave me the opportunity to see and play with so many children and this I am sure had a great bearing in forming my lifelong personality. I remember well the first smells of childhood.
January 19, 2002
Tell about your wedding.
It seems that the fate of all people hangs in the balance of destiny, but there is a the Hand of God that intervenes and reaches out to direct our course. Victor Hugo said, “Many a man has prayed to Buda and to Allah and the Lord God heard him and answered his prayer.”
I met your mother at a dance in Logan, Utah, and I was very impressed with her. She was a beautiful young lady nineteen years old, and she had a winning personality.
Two days later I received a nice letter from her. She invited me to Arimo, Idaho to see the country and meet her folks. But, that night I was seriously injured in a wrestling match at a Navy entertainment at the college I attended. My left elbow was completely dislocated. The doctor said that a dislocation was much more painful than a break.
I was in dreadful pain and had my final examinations to take before graduation. I thought how nice of Evelyn to write to me, but there was no way I could go to Idaho.
The following day I went to the bus depot to buy a ticket to my Uncle Ira’s in Columbus, Nebraska where I hoped to see a doctor about my arm.
The clerk said, “Where do you want to go?” I told her to Nebraska. She said that two other customers were ahead of me and went to wait on them. When she came back she asked again where I was going. I said out of a painful daydream, Arimo, Idaho!
Thus the balance of fate tipped to a new direction In my life and of course the ordained course of all my family. All of you children might not be the same persons, but you would not be a Wolfe nor howl the same tune.
On with the story! When I arrived at Corpus Christi, Texas the location of my new base I told many friends in the corps that I had met the girl I was going to marry. One fellow said, “Wolfe, you have the biggest mouth of any one in the Marine Corps. I have one hundred-dollars that says she will never come down here. No American father will think of letting his daughter in, war time, marry a Marine she doesn’t even know.”
Against the exasperated advice of a close neighbor the father did let his daughter come down and we did get married. We had a military wedding with a dozen of my buddies raising their swords above us through which we marched under. A navel officer married us that also happened to be the branch president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at Corpus Christi, Texas.
In a few days when I was mustering with my Platoon I was called forward and the man who had made the bet with me handed me the one-hundred dollars. I had never intended him to pay. So my dear children keep loving your dear mother!
January 20, 2002
What was your favorite Saturday activity as a child?
Before I was six years or so old I do not remember that I placed much stress on the calendar. My father took me to church on Sundays anywhere it was available. It did not matter what denomination particularly. He traveled a lot visiting relatives, and his business required moving about.
When I was seven years old I was of course by that time in school and the days of the week were becoming meaningful.
We moved to Cameron, Missouri to a farm my father and uncle Ira collectively bought to provide a means for taking care of my Grandma Wolfe who was having some of the problems of getting older and could no longer stay by herself.
The brothers hired a nurse and housekeeper named Matilda who went with us to help care for grandma. She had a son name Harold that was two years older than myself. My father later married her and then I had a very proficient step mother who was some what hard for me to get used to. She was from Denmark, and had a difficult time in the United States. I was born in the United States and had a very peaceful existence up to this time.
As I grew older we boys were constantly left at home on Saturdays while the folks went to town to do shopping. My father always brought a car full of chicken feed in the back seat and there was not room for kids to ride. Also, by this time there was a little boy and two little girls to care for that Harold and I had to mind. One time he and I made a rhubarb pie and fed it to the children hot. It gave them a bad case of the runs. We were severely reprimanded and punished.
Later when I was fifteen and Harold left home to return to Nebraska I used to prefer to stay home on Saturdays to get into some kind of mischief. I liked taking my dad’s railroad pocket watch all apart and putting it back together. I had a mechanical talent for this sort of thing. I worked hard all my life and do not remember that I ever had an opportunity to do anything in particular on Saturdays. I did learn to work and to enjoy work for work’s sake. Blessed is he that expects nothing for he will not be disappointed! Someone please hand me a crying towel!
January 21, 2002
Do you have a favorite brother or sister? What makes them special?
I no longer have any brothers. Both my sisters are special, and I have a deep love for both of them. I am much older, and was there when they were growing up.
It hurts me to remember that the older sister, Laura, contracted polio when she was three years old. There was an epidemic of it at the time. She was such a strong joyful little child and to see her fall down and cry time after time tore my heart out. I have a strong heart that beats regularly, but I know that unavoidably it remains scared.
Our mother who was the most capable nurse gave her hot baths many hours each day. On the farm at that early time we had no modern plumbing. The little child had to sit in a cold tin tub and the water would soon lose temperature.
My father and I had cut many large oak trees and had taken them to the saw mill to sawed into large two by twelve planks. I persuaded him to build a bath tub about three feet long out of them. He thought that it would leek. I had seen in a magazine that a number nine galvanized wire could be put between the boards before nailing them and this would seal the joint against water. It worked wonderfully!
The bath tub would keep water warm for hours and it was not too cold to a child’s skin. When the youngest sister was about two she developed rickets. It was sad to see Irene waste away to skin and bones. Dad took her to a lady Osteopath doctor and she said to give her plenty of milk you have that on the farm. It made my father very angry!
“I mean warm milk right from the cow in the cow barn. Get her a tin cup and let her know that it is hers alone.” She will drink all that her stomach will hold and that will bring her out of this condition. The doctor said that as soon as you bring milk into the house after milking it loses it’s medical properties. Well, what do you know! The doctor was right! She got better very soon.
I love my sisters very much. We live a long ways apart, but home is where the heart is. You can depend on that!
January 22, 2002
Tell about any important or interesting visitors to your home.
When we still lived on the farm one day my father went to a barber shop to get his hair cut. During the usual barber client conversation dad mention that he had worked on the ranch for Senator Bert Ragon of Burlington, Colorado. Dad said that he had gathered much wisdom from the Senator while he was young exposed to the influence of a very wise man.
Now this is coincidence the barber said. The Senator is my father-in-law, and a greater coincidence that he is here now visiting me. I’ll tell him that you live here and send him out to see you.
Mister Ragon did come out to see us with his wife and a son and was very glad to recall old memories. Dad mentioned that he was struggling and having difficulty. “Ray,” said the Senator, “I would pay you ten-thousand dollars to have that oak tree there in my front yard. Everyone is a great deal richer than they know.”
After we had moved to South-West Missouri to Carterville one afternoon a well dressed young man bounded into our yard as my father and I were watering the grass. He ate supper with us and told us that he was Floyd after my father scolded him for telling some rather loose stories about other criminals escaping the law. He thanked us for our hospitality and apologized for his behavior. He said that he would not hurt us and that his life had become very dangerous and out of hand.
Afterward my father told the town banker of the incident. The banker said there was a million dollars on Floyd’s head. Why did not he call the police. Dad said he would rather be a live pauper than a dead millionaire; besides, “I rather liked the young man!”
January 23, 2002
Tell about your teenage social life.
I did not have a social life as one could call it. From the age seven to seventeen I was out on the farm. My father lost the farm due to the depression, and we moved to the vicinity of Webb City, Missouri when I was seventeen years old.
I soon got a job with the West End Pharmacy and was then restricted to a seven day work schedule until I was twenty.
When I was able to get back in school I graduated from high school at age twenty-one. I missed the social functions as I was a man and the other students seemed to me to be little children.
Life in the Drug Store did expose me to the sociality of the community. I knew most people in Webb City and they knew me. Drug stores were the social center of every neighborhood in those days.
All the doctors in town came in on a daily basis and they were kind enough to spend some time with me and to be my friend. The new superintendant of schools encouraged me to take my noon hour time and enroll in a chemistry class each day. He knew that my head was more hungry than my stomach.
I did not have the time nor the money to date girls when I was a teenager. My folks were so poor and needed my help. I am glad that I was able to help them. My little brother and sisters were worth any sacrifice I was able to make.
January 24, 2002
Did you look forward to retirement?
No! I liked my job at the railroad and I was in good physical condition up to age seventy-five. The politicians in Washington were debating turning the railroad retirement fund over to social security and that would have cost me a lot of money. We railroaders paid twice the money into our pensions as did social security.
I quit the railroad when I was sixty-four hoping to come under the grandfather clause and not lose much of my savings. The never did combine the two funds, but there is still talk of it.
I was able to go right to work at The American Micro Systems for seven years at much lower pay, and the government took much of my money back that I made over a limit of eleven hundred a month.
When I became seventy years old I could not have kept what I earned, but then they let me go because of my age. I had to pay taxes on the full amount that I earned and this put me in a higher tax bracket.
The whole thing was very unfair and since then the law has been repealed and it will be better now for older people that feel the need to work. It would have been so much better for me if I could have stayed with the railroad.
The last seven years that I worked for the Union Pacific I worked in the wheel room and was able to help the company become automated in their production with computer control of all machinery. I had the opportunity to design many electrical control circuits for them.
January 25, 2002
Tell about home cures or old wives tales such as hiccups, warts, toothaches, colds, etc.
An old widow lady owned the farm adjoining ours to the North. Her name was Fulton. Her husband was renowned through the extended neighborhood for having built many old barns still standing that had a log frame work that had been put together with mortise and tenon. The logs had been squared with broad ax, a testimony of pioneer engineering and physical strength and natural acumen.
Also there were dozens of hand dug wells for water that he had left for perpetuity. One on our own place ten feet across and lined with hand laid lime stone twenty-four feet deep to solid lime stone which he blasted with black powder a pocket ten feet deep.
There was a small spring, with an opening the size of ones little finger, letting water into the well. Because of this slow flow he made the well that large in breadth. At the top he covered it with huge a flat lime stone a foot thick leaving an opening at the center three feet by four feet. His daughter said that he used a team of many oxen to drag the stones up from our creek.
Misses Fulton in her own right was a skilled herbalist. I often went down the hill to her house to get a pail of soft water from her cistern that her husband had also made the rain water from the roof of the house was first run through a brick enclosure filled with charcoal that he himself had made to filter it. He also made the charcoal by standing up logs in a teepee fashion so a fire started inside could not get much air and the low temperature fire would burn for days and leave a pile of the charcoal.
During these occasions or on some more urgent matter she would tell us what herb to use and where to find it. Once our whole family was in bed except myself and could not get up. She told me that they have the flu; go out into your back yard and you will see a great mass of weed growing thick about two feet high. It is wormwood; pick a bunch four inches thick and put it in a large kettle filled with water and boil it for a few minutes. Then give it to everyone including yourself and keep drinking it as much as you can.
In an hour everyone was up and my dad went out and finished helping me milk the cows. You could put milkweed juice on a wart, prick a sty with gooseberry thorn, hold your breath for hiccups, put your head between your knees if feeling faint. She knew the common name of every plant and flower in the woods, and on her back porch was hung many herbs from her garden and from the wild. Once when she was not home I tasted a red pepper. I almost drank her cistern dry and could not cool the smart!
Emerson ounce said that the new found knowledge of each succeeding generation and clan was a trade off of what we know now for what we have forgotten then. The American Indian saw every bent blade and broken twig and knew what and when had passed.
And so it is told that every island native can read the wave of the sea and know what echo reaches him from there and guide him to where his small craft will take him.
Never underestimate the stranger, nor the small child of any nation for the wisdom of empires and of trailing memories of heaven are at hand. The imbecile and the idiot has each his/hers own experience and knows from it a unique something that wiser ones may not have read!
January 26, 2002
How, when, and where did you learn to drive?
When we left the farm and went to Southern Missouri we had been referred to a family named Gailbreath and we stayed at their place for a few days until we could find a place in Carterville to rent. Mr. Gailbreath had an old T model truck that he used to haul wood from the Ozarks.
He said that the firewood business there was very good as everyone burned wood for fuel. He persuaded my dad to go in with him and we did cut wood all summer. Dad and I cut it and he hauled several loads home each day.
My father had never let me drive, but Mr. Gailbreth often let me do so out in the woods when we were loading the truck. And, after we moved to Carterville he quite often let me take the truck to drive home.
Some years later I hitch-hiked most places I wanted to go. One day when going to Pittsburg, Kansas to see my girlfriend a man picked me up in a little Chrysler 1926 Coupe. I told him that it sure was a nice car. He said he would sell it to me for twenty-five dollars. He was a farmer and business man that sold cars and machinery. I could not believe the price! I had twenty-five dollars in my pocket so I bought it. When we got to his farm he made out the papers and I drove the rest of the way to Pittsburg.
When I did go home my dad was more than surprised. He had no way but to ride the street car. He did not think he could drive a gear shift car so I drove him where he wanted to go.
1926 was the first year that Chrysler came out with hydraulic brakes. The Chrysler Company agreed to share their patents on brakes with the Ford Company for the right to use the Ford Soybean enamel paint.
I had a good car, good brakes and good paint and a tickled girlfriend. We went for many happy rides.
January 27, 2002
Were there any events, world or local that changed your life?
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.” --Francis Bacon
Opportunities flow down the river of time and may be caught only by the person that has baited his hook. One must have the requisite qualifications to claim any opportunity. Sometimes it is money that has been acquired. Some time a certain training or experience. Or because of these one has been chosen. (“Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you.” --Jesus Christ)
So it is that because I was, through great struggle, able to complete three years of college training in science and chemistry that the Marine Corps of the United States chose me to go to Logan Utah to study electronics.
There I was privileged to learn about the LDS church and to meet my Sweetheart, Evelyn Armstrong. She and I together have been given a wonderful growing family.
The training that the United States Navy provided us members or the Corps qualified me for electrical work with the Union Pacific Railroad where from I obtained money to provide for our family of three sweet darling little girls and three handsome young men over a period of twenty-seven years.
January 28, 2002
What did your father do for a living? How did he get to work? Did he get any special training?
First of all my father was a very good farmer who I am sure learned what he knew from his father and perhaps older brothers. When he was seventeen years old his farming days came to an end because he was in his early thirties that he went to Burlington, Colorado to work on a cattle ranch that he perhaps learned a great deal about the care of animals.
Sometime along in his life he acquired the trade of installing weather stripping on doors and windows; he did this type of work after he married my mother. When she was teaching grade school in Hinsdale, Montana I remember reading a letter she had written that because of the extreme cold weather my father could not perform his weather stripping work.
Shortly after this my uncle, Ira Wolfe, arrived in Hinsdale. He was an excellent barber who had held down a chair in that trade since he was twelve years old. He and my father who also had mastered the barber trade then set up a barber shop together next to the Bucket of Blood Saloon.
I have heard many wild story’s from them about this wild west Montana cattle town that perhaps I may be able to relate as this writing course develops further through the days ahead.
Father went back to farming when I was seven years old. My father and Ira bought a farm four miles north of Cameron, Missouri as a plan they had to provide care for their mother, my grandmother, Phoebe Wolfe.
I learned what a good farmer he was during the ten years we ran the farm together. He improvised many soil conservative measures that also conserved moisture. And this won for him the admiration and deserved respect of his neighbors.
January 29, 2002
How did your mother or father wake you up in the morning?
My brother Harold and I slept upstairs where there were two bedrooms. Our hired man, John Drown, slept in the East bedroom and we slept in the West room. Our room was near the stairs, and there was no safety rail. For once I woke the whole house when during the night I got up in my sleep and fell head first down the stairs at its greatest depth.
Dad always hollered up the stairs every morning. He had a powerful resonate voice and he needed not to call only once. He always said Harold first then Walton. Everyone referred to the both of us as Harold and Walton; I suppose because he was older. But, I remember that Harold so early in the morning thought I should have been preferred over him because I was younger.
Actually we were being called at the same time only Harold’s name was always mentioned first. Such is always the burden placed on the small shoulders of the younger son. He gets blamed for being the baby!
January 30, 2002
What was your favorite store?
When I was young a shoe store sold shoes, a clothing store sold clothing, a hardware store sold hardware, and drug store sold drugs. There were no department stores; no chain stores. There were no malls!
I liked our grocery store. They had everything high up on shelves on one side of the store. There were several grocery clerks that would take your order and go get whatever you ordered. There was a tall ladder that moved on rollers so the clerk could place it where ever and climb up and get the item.
When the phone rang they would say, “Supply store,” and take your order over the telephone which they later would deliver to any house in town.
David Gammet owned the store and he went to the church where we went and was as friendly at church as he was at his store.
Really I liked the mail order stores, Montgomery, Wards and Sears and Roebucks. They sent us catalogs every season and the folks did buy many things from them. I could look at the catalogs and see a picture of everything they had listed and wish and wish I could buy all they had.
I never saw any toilet paper until I was a good sized boy. Not many even in town had modern plumbing. We all used the catalogs after we got new ones for toilet paper. I think that I learned to read while doing what in the outside private toilet.
January 31, 2002
Did you serve in the military? Where and when? What do you most remember about your experiences?
I did serve in the Marine Corps of The United States and did serve for two years out in the Pacific Islands from New Caledonia to Guadalcanal to the Solomon Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago during 1943 and 1944.
I did get a three month vacation rest period in New Zealand North Island at Auckland. I enjoyed going to church and meeting the Matthew Cowley family and becoming very well acquainted with them.
On the Island of Ondonga I was once exploring the jungle by myself and suddenly came face to face with a giant lizard that stood as high as a horse. It ran its tongue out at me and waved it around as snakes and lizards do except the tongue was all of three feet long. I was frozen stiff as they say. Then after eyeing me up for several seconds it turn and fled. The ground shook under its foot steps as it galloped away.
I have since learned that the lizard is called a dragon of some sort I will print a picture on the next page. While at Ondonga after things were settled down as the war I went with some others in a Captain’s Gig to Wanawana Island and there met one of their men who had chopped of the head of a Japanese fighter pilot who was sitting with his back to a tree after he swam ashore from his plane that we had shot down on Ondonga. The Japanese pilot had two guns on them and ordered everyone around. Finally the island people gave him herbs in his food that put him to sleep. They could not trust him that he might harm or kill some of them so as bad as the man felt about killing a human being he saw that the pilot had gone to sleep with his head against a tree. So he chopped off his head with one fell blow of the chopping ax.
We all shook his hand and told him he was a hero and a brave island warrior and a good Christian man to feel badly over the whole thing. But, like all of us he had his duty to his own people to perform.
When we first ran across him hi was hewing a canoe out of a log with a small hand ax and doing the most remarkable job. These islanders are very gifted. They can make a fine house out of bamboo and tall grass. They had made a church on the island for the Methodist Minister. The Minister had been called back to New Zealand with his family they said because of the danger of the war.
The Memories of Walton William Wolfe
January 1, 2002
Where did your grandparents live? What was their home like?
My grandpa and grandma Wolfe had their last home in Phillipsburg, Kansas. Grandpa William Wolfe was a farmer and a businessman who bought and sold farms and horses. They formally lived in and around Atlanta, Nebraska, and at one time ran the Wolfe Hotel in Atlanta.
When they grew older they moved to Phillipsburg and bought one of the largest and finest homes there. As the years passed he sold and bought continually smaller and smaller homes until perhaps they lived in the smallest home in town. In this manner he financed his retirement. He died on the Fourth of July about five years before I was born. I have the honored distinction of having been born in Grandmother’s house in 1917 on March 16th.
When grandpa was younger the Republican River flooded over its banks and a family going to California in a covered wagon attempted to cross it. The horses and wagon were lost, and fortunately the people were saved by men riding down the bank and throwing them lasso ropes.
The entire neighborhood was grieved at this family’s tragic loss. My grandfather rode up and said I hear everyone say how sorry they are for this family. How sorry are you? I am sorry one hundred dollars! How sorry are you Reverend Smith? How sorry are you Brother Johnson? He soon raised $1500 and the family was in short order supplied with new provisions. After the river went down they were again on their way to a new home and the hope of finding the American Dream. This says all I need to know about my grandpa, William Wolfe.
January 2, 2002
What personality trait do you admire most about yourself?
Since childhood I have been challenged to get the inside of people that were considered difficult to understand or work with. Always I have found that these people were misunderstood by other people, and that they sincerely appreciated anyone that would spend some time with them to let them know their needs were important. If they came to know that I am indeed their friend they then became my friend. Such friendships have been very rewarding to myself over the years.
January 3, 2002
Have you ever seen a prophet in person?
Yes, I was introduced to President David O Mckay at the temple lot front gate by a young missionary, and we shook hands. I was of course impressed not only with his winning personality, but also the feel of great strength in his right arm. I was introduced to Ruben J. Clark by apostle Matthew Cowley. Brother Cowley ordained me a priest in New Zealand and said he would have ordained me an elder except he could not obtain permission of my bishop in Robin, Idaho because of the mail restrictions during World War 2. This illustrates the rather strict observance the LDS Church follows for the line of authority. God’s house is a house of order.
Apostle Wirthlin ordained me a Seventy when he was an assistant to the Twelve. I once spoke at the same meeting of stake conference that Apostle Eldon Tanner spoke. In Vero Beach, Florida I served under Elder Tanner’s nephew, a commander in the Navy. He was a wonderful officer and my good friend.
January 4, 2002
What do you think about movies? What is your favorite movie?
I do like motion pictures and I have the greatest respect for Thomas Alva Edison who first made the technique possible. When I was a child I almost worshipped him, and I wanted to grow up to be an inventor like him. He was alive when I was in grade school, and I have heard him talk over the radio.
I think that my favorite movie has been, Moses, but I have liked many other films. Gone With the Wind is also a favorite film.
Movies have a great place in our entertainment, and as well, they serve as a great learning medium. Television has come to augment the motion picture industry, but it has not replaced it. When radio was well established it was predicted that it would replace the new paper, but we see that it has not happened.
I myself am not a movie addict; I do enjoy seeing a good film production when and if I am persuaded. The opportunity since my growing older has lessened.
January 5, 2002
Describe your first paying job. What was the salary?
When I was seventeen I went to work for The West End Pharmacy in Webb City, Missouri. It was owned by the Burris Brothers. They also had a store in Joplin, Missouri. I started after school at four o’clock and worked to midnight, but it was more often until two in the morning. They would not even close as long as there were people in the store, even if they were just visiting among themselves. For this I received a nice round silver half dollar for my pay.
After a year the lead clerk went to work for the Joplin store and I took his place full time, about twelve or fourteen hours a day for fourteen dollars a week.
I had to quit school and did not get back to school until I was twenty years old. Then by taking the junior and senior years in one year I graduated when I was twenty-one.
January 6, 2002
Did your family pass down any superstitions?
Yes, I was taught never to summersault because it would turn my liver over and that could have serious consequences. I was taught that tomatoes were once called love apples and were poison, but that our family learned they were safe to eat. However, cucumbers were deadly poison unless they were soaked in salt water over night.
I was twenty-two years old when I saw a small boy in Carl Junction, Missouri with a salt shaker eating cucumbers out in the middle of a large patch. I stopped my car and ran over to him and ask him how many he had eaten. He said five or six. I said, “Son they are poison. How do you feel?” He said that he felt very good and that he had eaten a thousand cucumbers in his life and that I was some kind of loon and for me to get away from him!
I then knew that I had been the victim of a family superstition and I left before he might call for help. My Grandma Wolfe said always to close all windows at night because night air was poison. Who knows?
January 7, 2002
Did the Great Depression affect your family?
Yes indeed we were greatly affected! Before the stock market collapsed in 1929 times had been very good and people had saved money in banks and had invested heavily in stocks. The market crash came on very fast, and this put millions of people out of work. Then too banks everywhere failed and the public lost its savings. There was no help from anywhere.
Prices fell, corn from five dollars a bushel to five cents, cattle from two hundred dollars a head to ten dollars. People who were well paid were forced to work for one dollar a day.
We lost our farm and we moved to southern Missouri from the north part of the state where it was warmer and cheaper to live at the time. My father was forced to sell all that he had and was allowed only three hundred dollars by Missouri law to keep for himself. He was unable to pay many of his debts.
Franklin Roosevelt was elected President of the United States and he resorted to every effort to get the congress to help the poor people. He was a great kind man and although many local authorities were guilty of cheating and graph in implementing the Government programs he instigated, I will forever honor his name!
I with many hundreds of young people were able to attend college with the aid of the National Youth Administration which he set up into law.
January 8, 2002
Tell about your favorite uncle.
There were seven sons in the Wolfe family, John, Oscar, Elmer, Ebor, Robert, Ray, and Ira. My father was Ray. Oscar and Robert died early in life of typhoid fever. I never knew John and Eber until I was grown. I lived with my uncle Elmer for a short time when I was three years old, and I became very fond of him then and later when attending college in Haze, Kansas I used to hitch hike up to Almena, Kansas occasionally to visit him. Those times were and are favorably remembered.
It would be very hard for me to single out an uncle that was not more than a father to me. My youngest uncle Ira happens to be the one that was always near to me and which contributed more to my needs than the others. Also his wife, my aunt Naomi, filled the stead of my mother who died when I was nineteen months old. She was a very dear Irish lady that helped to endear me to my own Irish ancestors.
All the Wolfe boys were strong physically and were distinctly hansom young men as proven to me by the pictures I have of them. My uncle Ira was a very tender guardian to a small brown eyed little boy, and most respectfully helpful to a struggling young college student with moral support and monetary contribution at a time of need.
January 9, 2002
Were you ever in a drama, speech, sport, pep club, etc?
I was in a etc. club and not in any of the others. I belonged at the invitation of the English Department to the American Quill Club while I was a student at Fort Haze Kansas State College. I won the award of best creative writing in my school for that year, 1941.
My teachers presented to their convention for that year two of my poems as follows:
BEYOND THE GREAT AND GHOST-LIKE HILLS
When it is night and all is white with snow
My fancies lightly tread on air and go
Beyond the great and ghost-like hills.
Each icy drop, a crystal vapor star,
A tiny mirror for moon beams far
That dance through haunted woods
A glowing, radiant, star lit night to make
My fancies lightly tread on air and lake
Beyond the great and Ghost-like hills.
—Walton Wm. Wolfe.
BUFFALO IN THE SKY
Blue-gray heavens come up abrest
On either side of the sun,
The wild calls of a black northwest
Roll and bellow one by one.
A colloidal and mist-like perception
Of panorama spread
Is like a thousand-fold redemption
Of ages old and dead.
We see them shifting, ever shifting,
In the molten sky
Like leaden shadows drifting
As they pass on by.
—Walton Wm. Wolfe
January 10, 2002
Describe how your family Dressed. Any Special Clothing?
The 1920’s was a time of extravagant dress among young ladies. They wore their dresses very high and left their overshoes unbuckled so they would flap when they walked. Lip stick was popular and used to exaggeration. The older people thought that the younger generation was going to the dogs.
Our pastor at church in order to stay in the middle of things read a bit of Chinese history written two-thousand years before Christ that disclosed that the folks of their time thought the same thing. Very high heels were the thing in the twenties too.
Bow ties were in fashion for men and boys; boys were expected to wear a short knee pants buckled at the knee.
We knew a family one time named Bear who had a very big boy eighteen years old still in knee pants. He asked my father to talk to his dad and try to persuade him to let him graduate from high school in long pants. Mister Bear said, “No he is just a boy and will not be a man until he is twenty-one years old.” My father said, “Look Mister Bear he is a man and a football star. How will your son feel in front of all the other men who will be graduating in long pants?”
Mister Bear finally consented but told the son to not get a big head because dad is still the boss. The young man said he was one Bear thankful to a Wolf.
January 11, 2002
Were you ever in a flood, tornado, snow storm, earthquake, or other natural disaster?
No to most of these, but I did have a harrowing experience due to bad weather. When I was stationed at the Naval Night Fighter station in Vero Beach, Florida in 1945 and 6 the Marine Corps sent two other Master sergeants and a Warrant Officer and myself to Macon, Georgia at an Army Bomber Base to study a certain radar installation used on Black Widow Night Fighter Planes we had recently received on our base.
When our training was completed our Colonel came after us in a small two engine transport plane. His mother and father lived near Macon and that way he had an opportunity to visit them.
The Colonel checked with the weather bureau before we left Macon and got our clearance. We headed for Vero Beach, and not long in flight we ran into the worst storm that had ever hit the East Coast. All flights were cancelled and we were the only plane flying in the area. The plane was buffeted around so violently that he could not use the radio. There was another radio above his head and he ask us to call on that, but with three of us holding up one man we were all thrown down several times and could not get a message through nor intercept any of the military bases on the East Coast.
It rained so hard the Colonel could not see, so he opened the window on his side and lowered the plane so he could see the tops of the pine trees. He followed the West coast of Florida by the Gulf of Mexico with his wheels down so they would slightly touch the pine trees. Then, he turned left and crossed Florida to the Atlantic Ocean; he knew how many bridges crossed the Banana River at Vero Beach and could identify the locality of the air base in this way. He turned ninety degrees at the bridges and brought the plane down on the runway in a down pour of rain.
Our Colonel had joined the Marine Corps when he was seventeen years old and he had been flying most of that time since. Due to his expertise and good judgment we owe our lives and of course due to the kind intercession of a Merciful God who is sometimes not thanked by his careless children!
This was one of the many times my life has been at risk, and has up to now preserved for some cause known perhaps only to the angels of Heaven.
January 12, 2002
Did you have a bicycle? What was it like?
I did not have a bicycle until we moved to Webb City, Missouri where a neighbor boy got me a job at the West End Pharmacy where he worked and was leaving. He had an old hard tired bicycle that he sold to me for five dollars.
I had to have a bicycle to work at the drug store because I was a delivery boy. I had never been on a bicycle before in my life and the first delivery I made I was off the cycle more that I was on it.
Coming back to the store I had at last somewhat mastered the thing, but riding in the dark down the old street car tract a bailing wire got tangled in the front wheel and finally froze it up which dumped me over the handle bars and got my white jacket all torn and dirty.
I thought for sure that I would be fired when I got back to the store! The management was, however, very understanding and gave me a scrubbing down in the back sink and then they fitted me for a new jacket.
Later I bought a new bicycle called a Silver King that had balloon tires. It was very nice and I wore it out in a little more than a year. I then bought another new bicycle that had a two speed rear axel and a speedometer.
I would guess that I have ridden a bicycle at least half way around the world. Webb City was spread out and covered considerable territory. I sometimes rode more than a hundred miles a day delivering medicine and soft drinks to the store’s customers. The endurance and physic that I developed has been for me a needed life achievement.
January 13, 2002
Did you and your father share any interests? Tell about your relationship.
My father, Ray Albert Wolfe, was very intellectual. He was awarded at age fourteen a life certificate to teach school in the State of Kansas. At age seventeen he suffered sun stroke while working in a broom corn field in August of that year. It took a long time for a doctor to arrive by horse and buggy, and had he been treated properly soon enough he probably would have recovered. The old doctor gave him a large dose of grain alcohol and then ask if he might lie down as he was exhausted by the long trip.
The result was that my father nearly died and he had poor health. All of his younger life he was very sick and could not go to high school or college or get married until he was past thirty years old.
He then went out to Burlington, Colorado and worked as a cowboy on Senator Burt Ragon’s ranch. He thus regained much of his health.
All these years my father read widely and gained a storehouse of knowledge. There was hardly anything he did not know. My mother died in 1918 and this left my father especially to be my mentor.
I myself was a very precocious child and did take every advantage of my father’s learning throughout our life time together. My dad had a basic foundation in the three R’s that I have never been able to acquire. He was also a master of History and Geography and Political Science.
January 14, 2002
What magazines did your parents have around? Did you read them?
As a boy on the farm near Cameron, Missouri my father subscribed to The Capper’s weekly published by Senator Arthur Capper. It was a weekly newspaper appealing to most farmers. The Senator represented the State of Kansas. It was a very interesting publication for the whole family, and I did read it front to back. It had a very humorous comic strip named Ben and the Boss. Once Ben asked the Boss where he wanted a new fence. The Boss said that he wanted it from here to that cow way over there. Ben made a very crooked fence as the cow kept moving.
My father also took Successful Farming, a monthly periodical, that had several editorials stating that they would absolutely not advertise women smoking tobacco, but later it was one of the first to do so.
I took psychology classes in college and learned from them that at the same time that I am referring to in the above paragraph there was a psychology professor in one of our leading institutions that lost his job because he taught that if you tell people anything often enough and in enough ways they will believe it.
He said he would prove his point by getting thousands of women to smoke cigarettes. He went to work for the tobacco industry and got them to advertise in the leading magazines and proved his belief.
Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, proved the same tentative with the German people in World War 2.
Satan tells his angels the same thing, put one temptation often enough and in enough ways and all people will sin and my kingdom will win a victory! But, Jesus Christ proved him wrong by his example and commanded the devil to get behind Him. We can also do the same for our Father in Heaven has given all His children a free will choice: pray often that yea inter not into temptation.
There were many magazines available to farm communities, as young college students came out into the country during each summer selling them to put themselves through school. We at different times subscribed to some of the following magazines: The Woman’s Home Journal, Reader’s Digest, Illustrated Mechanics, Popular Science, The Saturday Evening Post, and others. Norman Rockwell was famous for his paintings on the front cover of the Post, and I think he contributed much to the growing up of all my generation.
January 15, 2002
Describe your first “crush” and what she was like.
The first girl I was really serious about was Marian Jones. She was two years older than I. We were engaged to be married, but the depression was at its highest level and I could not find a good job.
Finally she met a young man who was much wealthier than I and she sent my ring back and later married him. We were perhaps both better off to have this happen as it was some years later that I got my feet on the ground.
I had an opportunity to go Out West to go to college at Fort Haze State College. After three years there I obtained several recommendations from good people and took them to Senator Burt Ragon at Burlington, Colorado to see if he would finance me through a medical education.
The Senator was a good friend of my father and treated me very cordially. He said, “Walton our nation is at war. My two sons have volunteered for the army. I think that any able bodied young man will be better off to do that. We need to win this war or else none of us will have any hope of a free life in America. Fill this obligation and if we are both alive and you still want to be a doctor come back to see me.”
I returned to Haze and my Youth Administration supervisor told me that he knew the Marine Corps recruiting Sergeant in Dodge City. He took me there and I joined the Marine Corps. They sent me to Logan Utah to go to college. There I met your mother, a life long sweetheart!
January 16, 2002
Describe a perfect spring day.
The first of April all the years I attended The Mount Pleasant one room, one teacher, grade school; as I remember, they were perfect Spring days. The first of April was always the last day of school.
The first of April was always a sun bursting warm day. The corn had been planted and was probably by this time reaching six inches high. The cornfields were ready for us boys to help our fathers take a small hand held corn planter and go along and replant where ever the first planting had failed to come up.
On the first of April all our parents would meet at the school house. The school would put on a program for them. Then, we would play baseball. In the country we played with regulation hard ball. Only the city sissies at that time used and played with the then new larger softball.
We had no protection pads used by professional ball players. If some of us got hit by the hard ball it reminded us that country kids don’t cry. We were ready for the Summer of hard work.
In town school did not get out until the first of May. When our eight graders started high school in the fall they always made better grades than most of the city kids. The town students did have a better curriculum than we did and profited from their activity in music and sports. In the country it was reading, writing and arithmetic and other basic forms of learning.
The first of April is a perfect spring day for everyone!
January 17, 2002
What musical instrument do you wish you could play?
It has happened that I never had the opportunity to develop any musical talent. I do appreciate music and musical talent in other people.
I never have felt that any music was in itself bad or of evil intent. I like variation in most things. It is true that some musical forms are associated with Satan and his “sermons in stones and good in everything.” The new musical forms sound good in my ears if they are not played too loudly. It is a shame to damage the ears which after all is the chief organ that for us separates noise from music.
I do wish that I could play the piano. Better still is the violin. It has a human soul in the hands of a master musician. Some artists can make the violin speak human words, and they produce the sound of a train and other objects.
Voice also is a great musical instrument. The singer contributes to the joy of our lives and song is the gift of God!
January 18, 2002
What is a special smell you remember from your childhood?
When I was four years old and living with my grandmother and my uncle Ira and my aunt Naomi and little cousin, Evelyne, in my grandma’s house in Phillipsburg, Kansas; I remember waking up in the early morning darkness. From the kitchen I could hear the noise of dishes and breakfast talking. And, the smell of biscuits and gravy with bacon.
My father and uncle were in the copper metal weather stripping business and had a crew of men working for them. I remember especially Brownie and Billy Clifton. The weather stripping was applied with small braid nails about three quarters inches long. The Clifton brothers were both nail drivers for the company. Billy could drive more than sixty braids a minute and Brownie more than eighty. They had their mouths full of the tacks and their hands would go so fast you could hardly see them.
In the winter months the crew would return to Philipsburg every weekend, and on Monday mornings my aunt would feed the whole crew early morning breakfast.
In the summertime my aunt Naomi and we children traveled with the crew. We all lived in Ford house trucks that were fitted for eating and sleeping. There were four trucks. One carried only tools and materials.
My uncle made a folding house out of screen doors that were hinged together in accordion fashion so they could be stored and carried in one of the trucks. It also had a wood floor made of light half inch material that also folded. A canvas cover was fitted on the frame with metal framed button holes that fitted into special snaps that turned crossways to lock besides screen wire on the doors to keep out flies and mosquitoes there was also chicken wire to protect us from cats and dogs or other intruders.
My uncle and aunt and we children lived in the movable house in any town the company might be working in Kansas or Nebraska that it was set up.
My dear aunt not only cooked for the whole crew, but she washed their clothes in a tub with a washboard. Only a young Irish girl would know about this hard labor and keep an Irish smile.
During these summer months I well remember the smell of Aunt Gemmy pancakes and Log Cabin maple syrup. My aunt was a good cook, and sometimes my uncle Ira would lend his hand at cooking. He liked to buy and cook up a big mackerel fish. Was it good! I have a good nose for good food.
Traveling in this way when I was so very young gave me the opportunity to see and play with so many children and this I am sure had a great bearing in forming my lifelong personality. I remember well the first smells of childhood.
January 19, 2002
Tell about your wedding.
It seems that the fate of all people hangs in the balance of destiny, but there is a the Hand of God that intervenes and reaches out to direct our course. Victor Hugo said, “Many a man has prayed to Buda and to Allah and the Lord God heard him and answered his prayer.”
I met your mother at a dance in Logan, Utah, and I was very impressed with her. She was a beautiful young lady nineteen years old, and she had a winning personality.
Two days later I received a nice letter from her. She invited me to Arimo, Idaho to see the country and meet her folks. But, that night I was seriously injured in a wrestling match at a Navy entertainment at the college I attended. My left elbow was completely dislocated. The doctor said that a dislocation was much more painful than a break.
I was in dreadful pain and had my final examinations to take before graduation. I thought how nice of Evelyn to write to me, but there was no way I could go to Idaho.
The following day I went to the bus depot to buy a ticket to my Uncle Ira’s in Columbus, Nebraska where I hoped to see a doctor about my arm.
The clerk said, “Where do you want to go?” I told her to Nebraska. She said that two other customers were ahead of me and went to wait on them. When she came back she asked again where I was going. I said out of a painful daydream, Arimo, Idaho!
Thus the balance of fate tipped to a new direction In my life and of course the ordained course of all my family. All of you children might not be the same persons, but you would not be a Wolfe nor howl the same tune.
On with the story! When I arrived at Corpus Christi, Texas the location of my new base I told many friends in the corps that I had met the girl I was going to marry. One fellow said, “Wolfe, you have the biggest mouth of any one in the Marine Corps. I have one hundred-dollars that says she will never come down here. No American father will think of letting his daughter in, war time, marry a Marine she doesn’t even know.”
Against the exasperated advice of a close neighbor the father did let his daughter come down and we did get married. We had a military wedding with a dozen of my buddies raising their swords above us through which we marched under. A navel officer married us that also happened to be the branch president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at Corpus Christi, Texas.
In a few days when I was mustering with my Platoon I was called forward and the man who had made the bet with me handed me the one-hundred dollars. I had never intended him to pay. So my dear children keep loving your dear mother!
January 20, 2002
What was your favorite Saturday activity as a child?
Before I was six years or so old I do not remember that I placed much stress on the calendar. My father took me to church on Sundays anywhere it was available. It did not matter what denomination particularly. He traveled a lot visiting relatives, and his business required moving about.
When I was seven years old I was of course by that time in school and the days of the week were becoming meaningful.
We moved to Cameron, Missouri to a farm my father and uncle Ira collectively bought to provide a means for taking care of my Grandma Wolfe who was having some of the problems of getting older and could no longer stay by herself.
The brothers hired a nurse and housekeeper named Matilda who went with us to help care for grandma. She had a son name Harold that was two years older than myself. My father later married her and then I had a very proficient step mother who was some what hard for me to get used to. She was from Denmark, and had a difficult time in the United States. I was born in the United States and had a very peaceful existence up to this time.
As I grew older we boys were constantly left at home on Saturdays while the folks went to town to do shopping. My father always brought a car full of chicken feed in the back seat and there was not room for kids to ride. Also, by this time there was a little boy and two little girls to care for that Harold and I had to mind. One time he and I made a rhubarb pie and fed it to the children hot. It gave them a bad case of the runs. We were severely reprimanded and punished.
Later when I was fifteen and Harold left home to return to Nebraska I used to prefer to stay home on Saturdays to get into some kind of mischief. I liked taking my dad’s railroad pocket watch all apart and putting it back together. I had a mechanical talent for this sort of thing. I worked hard all my life and do not remember that I ever had an opportunity to do anything in particular on Saturdays. I did learn to work and to enjoy work for work’s sake. Blessed is he that expects nothing for he will not be disappointed! Someone please hand me a crying towel!
January 21, 2002
Do you have a favorite brother or sister? What makes them special?
I no longer have any brothers. Both my sisters are special, and I have a deep love for both of them. I am much older, and was there when they were growing up.
It hurts me to remember that the older sister, Laura, contracted polio when she was three years old. There was an epidemic of it at the time. She was such a strong joyful little child and to see her fall down and cry time after time tore my heart out. I have a strong heart that beats regularly, but I know that unavoidably it remains scared.
Our mother who was the most capable nurse gave her hot baths many hours each day. On the farm at that early time we had no modern plumbing. The little child had to sit in a cold tin tub and the water would soon lose temperature.
My father and I had cut many large oak trees and had taken them to the saw mill to sawed into large two by twelve planks. I persuaded him to build a bath tub about three feet long out of them. He thought that it would leek. I had seen in a magazine that a number nine galvanized wire could be put between the boards before nailing them and this would seal the joint against water. It worked wonderfully!
The bath tub would keep water warm for hours and it was not too cold to a child’s skin. When the youngest sister was about two she developed rickets. It was sad to see Irene waste away to skin and bones. Dad took her to a lady Osteopath doctor and she said to give her plenty of milk you have that on the farm. It made my father very angry!
“I mean warm milk right from the cow in the cow barn. Get her a tin cup and let her know that it is hers alone.” She will drink all that her stomach will hold and that will bring her out of this condition. The doctor said that as soon as you bring milk into the house after milking it loses it’s medical properties. Well, what do you know! The doctor was right! She got better very soon.
I love my sisters very much. We live a long ways apart, but home is where the heart is. You can depend on that!
January 22, 2002
Tell about any important or interesting visitors to your home.
When we still lived on the farm one day my father went to a barber shop to get his hair cut. During the usual barber client conversation dad mention that he had worked on the ranch for Senator Bert Ragon of Burlington, Colorado. Dad said that he had gathered much wisdom from the Senator while he was young exposed to the influence of a very wise man.
Now this is coincidence the barber said. The Senator is my father-in-law, and a greater coincidence that he is here now visiting me. I’ll tell him that you live here and send him out to see you.
Mister Ragon did come out to see us with his wife and a son and was very glad to recall old memories. Dad mentioned that he was struggling and having difficulty. “Ray,” said the Senator, “I would pay you ten-thousand dollars to have that oak tree there in my front yard. Everyone is a great deal richer than they know.”
After we had moved to South-West Missouri to Carterville one afternoon a well dressed young man bounded into our yard as my father and I were watering the grass. He ate supper with us and told us that he was Floyd after my father scolded him for telling some rather loose stories about other criminals escaping the law. He thanked us for our hospitality and apologized for his behavior. He said that he would not hurt us and that his life had become very dangerous and out of hand.
Afterward my father told the town banker of the incident. The banker said there was a million dollars on Floyd’s head. Why did not he call the police. Dad said he would rather be a live pauper than a dead millionaire; besides, “I rather liked the young man!”
January 23, 2002
Tell about your teenage social life.
I did not have a social life as one could call it. From the age seven to seventeen I was out on the farm. My father lost the farm due to the depression, and we moved to the vicinity of Webb City, Missouri when I was seventeen years old.
I soon got a job with the West End Pharmacy and was then restricted to a seven day work schedule until I was twenty.
When I was able to get back in school I graduated from high school at age twenty-one. I missed the social functions as I was a man and the other students seemed to me to be little children.
Life in the Drug Store did expose me to the sociality of the community. I knew most people in Webb City and they knew me. Drug stores were the social center of every neighborhood in those days.
All the doctors in town came in on a daily basis and they were kind enough to spend some time with me and to be my friend. The new superintendant of schools encouraged me to take my noon hour time and enroll in a chemistry class each day. He knew that my head was more hungry than my stomach.
I did not have the time nor the money to date girls when I was a teenager. My folks were so poor and needed my help. I am glad that I was able to help them. My little brother and sisters were worth any sacrifice I was able to make.
January 24, 2002
Did you look forward to retirement?
No! I liked my job at the railroad and I was in good physical condition up to age seventy-five. The politicians in Washington were debating turning the railroad retirement fund over to social security and that would have cost me a lot of money. We railroaders paid twice the money into our pensions as did social security.
I quit the railroad when I was sixty-four hoping to come under the grandfather clause and not lose much of my savings. The never did combine the two funds, but there is still talk of it.
I was able to go right to work at The American Micro Systems for seven years at much lower pay, and the government took much of my money back that I made over a limit of eleven hundred a month.
When I became seventy years old I could not have kept what I earned, but then they let me go because of my age. I had to pay taxes on the full amount that I earned and this put me in a higher tax bracket.
The whole thing was very unfair and since then the law has been repealed and it will be better now for older people that feel the need to work. It would have been so much better for me if I could have stayed with the railroad.
The last seven years that I worked for the Union Pacific I worked in the wheel room and was able to help the company become automated in their production with computer control of all machinery. I had the opportunity to design many electrical control circuits for them.
January 25, 2002
Tell about home cures or old wives tales such as hiccups, warts, toothaches, colds, etc.
An old widow lady owned the farm adjoining ours to the North. Her name was Fulton. Her husband was renowned through the extended neighborhood for having built many old barns still standing that had a log frame work that had been put together with mortise and tenon. The logs had been squared with broad ax, a testimony of pioneer engineering and physical strength and natural acumen.
Also there were dozens of hand dug wells for water that he had left for perpetuity. One on our own place ten feet across and lined with hand laid lime stone twenty-four feet deep to solid lime stone which he blasted with black powder a pocket ten feet deep.
There was a small spring, with an opening the size of ones little finger, letting water into the well. Because of this slow flow he made the well that large in breadth. At the top he covered it with huge a flat lime stone a foot thick leaving an opening at the center three feet by four feet. His daughter said that he used a team of many oxen to drag the stones up from our creek.
Misses Fulton in her own right was a skilled herbalist. I often went down the hill to her house to get a pail of soft water from her cistern that her husband had also made the rain water from the roof of the house was first run through a brick enclosure filled with charcoal that he himself had made to filter it. He also made the charcoal by standing up logs in a teepee fashion so a fire started inside could not get much air and the low temperature fire would burn for days and leave a pile of the charcoal.
During these occasions or on some more urgent matter she would tell us what herb to use and where to find it. Once our whole family was in bed except myself and could not get up. She told me that they have the flu; go out into your back yard and you will see a great mass of weed growing thick about two feet high. It is wormwood; pick a bunch four inches thick and put it in a large kettle filled with water and boil it for a few minutes. Then give it to everyone including yourself and keep drinking it as much as you can.
In an hour everyone was up and my dad went out and finished helping me milk the cows. You could put milkweed juice on a wart, prick a sty with gooseberry thorn, hold your breath for hiccups, put your head between your knees if feeling faint. She knew the common name of every plant and flower in the woods, and on her back porch was hung many herbs from her garden and from the wild. Once when she was not home I tasted a red pepper. I almost drank her cistern dry and could not cool the smart!
Emerson ounce said that the new found knowledge of each succeeding generation and clan was a trade off of what we know now for what we have forgotten then. The American Indian saw every bent blade and broken twig and knew what and when had passed.
And so it is told that every island native can read the wave of the sea and know what echo reaches him from there and guide him to where his small craft will take him.
Never underestimate the stranger, nor the small child of any nation for the wisdom of empires and of trailing memories of heaven are at hand. The imbecile and the idiot has each his/hers own experience and knows from it a unique something that wiser ones may not have read!
January 26, 2002
How, when, and where did you learn to drive?
When we left the farm and went to Southern Missouri we had been referred to a family named Gailbreath and we stayed at their place for a few days until we could find a place in Carterville to rent. Mr. Gailbreath had an old T model truck that he used to haul wood from the Ozarks.
He said that the firewood business there was very good as everyone burned wood for fuel. He persuaded my dad to go in with him and we did cut wood all summer. Dad and I cut it and he hauled several loads home each day.
My father had never let me drive, but Mr. Gailbreth often let me do so out in the woods when we were loading the truck. And, after we moved to Carterville he quite often let me take the truck to drive home.
Some years later I hitch-hiked most places I wanted to go. One day when going to Pittsburg, Kansas to see my girlfriend a man picked me up in a little Chrysler 1926 Coupe. I told him that it sure was a nice car. He said he would sell it to me for twenty-five dollars. He was a farmer and business man that sold cars and machinery. I could not believe the price! I had twenty-five dollars in my pocket so I bought it. When we got to his farm he made out the papers and I drove the rest of the way to Pittsburg.
When I did go home my dad was more than surprised. He had no way but to ride the street car. He did not think he could drive a gear shift car so I drove him where he wanted to go.
1926 was the first year that Chrysler came out with hydraulic brakes. The Chrysler Company agreed to share their patents on brakes with the Ford Company for the right to use the Ford Soybean enamel paint.
I had a good car, good brakes and good paint and a tickled girlfriend. We went for many happy rides.
January 27, 2002
Were there any events, world or local that changed your life?
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.” --Francis Bacon
Opportunities flow down the river of time and may be caught only by the person that has baited his hook. One must have the requisite qualifications to claim any opportunity. Sometimes it is money that has been acquired. Some time a certain training or experience. Or because of these one has been chosen. (“Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you.” --Jesus Christ)
So it is that because I was, through great struggle, able to complete three years of college training in science and chemistry that the Marine Corps of the United States chose me to go to Logan Utah to study electronics.
There I was privileged to learn about the LDS church and to meet my Sweetheart, Evelyn Armstrong. She and I together have been given a wonderful growing family.
The training that the United States Navy provided us members or the Corps qualified me for electrical work with the Union Pacific Railroad where from I obtained money to provide for our family of three sweet darling little girls and three handsome young men over a period of twenty-seven years.
January 28, 2002
What did your father do for a living? How did he get to work? Did he get any special training?
First of all my father was a very good farmer who I am sure learned what he knew from his father and perhaps older brothers. When he was seventeen years old his farming days came to an end because he was in his early thirties that he went to Burlington, Colorado to work on a cattle ranch that he perhaps learned a great deal about the care of animals.
Sometime along in his life he acquired the trade of installing weather stripping on doors and windows; he did this type of work after he married my mother. When she was teaching grade school in Hinsdale, Montana I remember reading a letter she had written that because of the extreme cold weather my father could not perform his weather stripping work.
Shortly after this my uncle, Ira Wolfe, arrived in Hinsdale. He was an excellent barber who had held down a chair in that trade since he was twelve years old. He and my father who also had mastered the barber trade then set up a barber shop together next to the Bucket of Blood Saloon.
I have heard many wild story’s from them about this wild west Montana cattle town that perhaps I may be able to relate as this writing course develops further through the days ahead.
Father went back to farming when I was seven years old. My father and Ira bought a farm four miles north of Cameron, Missouri as a plan they had to provide care for their mother, my grandmother, Phoebe Wolfe.
I learned what a good farmer he was during the ten years we ran the farm together. He improvised many soil conservative measures that also conserved moisture. And this won for him the admiration and deserved respect of his neighbors.
January 29, 2002
How did your mother or father wake you up in the morning?
My brother Harold and I slept upstairs where there were two bedrooms. Our hired man, John Drown, slept in the East bedroom and we slept in the West room. Our room was near the stairs, and there was no safety rail. For once I woke the whole house when during the night I got up in my sleep and fell head first down the stairs at its greatest depth.
Dad always hollered up the stairs every morning. He had a powerful resonate voice and he needed not to call only once. He always said Harold first then Walton. Everyone referred to the both of us as Harold and Walton; I suppose because he was older. But, I remember that Harold so early in the morning thought I should have been preferred over him because I was younger.
Actually we were being called at the same time only Harold’s name was always mentioned first. Such is always the burden placed on the small shoulders of the younger son. He gets blamed for being the baby!
January 30, 2002
What was your favorite store?
When I was young a shoe store sold shoes, a clothing store sold clothing, a hardware store sold hardware, and drug store sold drugs. There were no department stores; no chain stores. There were no malls!
I liked our grocery store. They had everything high up on shelves on one side of the store. There were several grocery clerks that would take your order and go get whatever you ordered. There was a tall ladder that moved on rollers so the clerk could place it where ever and climb up and get the item.
When the phone rang they would say, “Supply store,” and take your order over the telephone which they later would deliver to any house in town.
David Gammet owned the store and he went to the church where we went and was as friendly at church as he was at his store.
Really I liked the mail order stores, Montgomery, Wards and Sears and Roebucks. They sent us catalogs every season and the folks did buy many things from them. I could look at the catalogs and see a picture of everything they had listed and wish and wish I could buy all they had.
I never saw any toilet paper until I was a good sized boy. Not many even in town had modern plumbing. We all used the catalogs after we got new ones for toilet paper. I think that I learned to read while doing what in the outside private toilet.
January 31, 2002
Did you serve in the military? Where and when? What do you most remember about your experiences?
I did serve in the Marine Corps of The United States and did serve for two years out in the Pacific Islands from New Caledonia to Guadalcanal to the Solomon Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago during 1943 and 1944.
I did get a three month vacation rest period in New Zealand North Island at Auckland. I enjoyed going to church and meeting the Matthew Cowley family and becoming very well acquainted with them.
On the Island of Ondonga I was once exploring the jungle by myself and suddenly came face to face with a giant lizard that stood as high as a horse. It ran its tongue out at me and waved it around as snakes and lizards do except the tongue was all of three feet long. I was frozen stiff as they say. Then after eyeing me up for several seconds it turn and fled. The ground shook under its foot steps as it galloped away.
I have since learned that the lizard is called a dragon of some sort I will print a picture on the next page. While at Ondonga after things were settled down as the war I went with some others in a Captain’s Gig to Wanawana Island and there met one of their men who had chopped of the head of a Japanese fighter pilot who was sitting with his back to a tree after he swam ashore from his plane that we had shot down on Ondonga. The Japanese pilot had two guns on them and ordered everyone around. Finally the island people gave him herbs in his food that put him to sleep. They could not trust him that he might harm or kill some of them so as bad as the man felt about killing a human being he saw that the pilot had gone to sleep with his head against a tree. So he chopped off his head with one fell blow of the chopping ax.
We all shook his hand and told him he was a hero and a brave island warrior and a good Christian man to feel badly over the whole thing. But, like all of us he had his duty to his own people to perform.
When we first ran across him hi was hewing a canoe out of a log with a small hand ax and doing the most remarkable job. These islanders are very gifted. They can make a fine house out of bamboo and tall grass. They had made a church on the island for the Methodist Minister. The Minister had been called back to New Zealand with his family they said because of the danger of the war.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
David Armsrtong 1866-1940
I am not sure who wrote this, but I think it must have been a friend or ward member of David Armstrong. Possibly written to share at his funeral or something. David Armstrong is our great great grandfather.FAMILY HISTORY
Bishop David Armstrong was born in Huttonsville, West Virginia, 2 Nov 1866. The son of Zachariah and Willie Anna Amos Armstrong.
When he was five years old his parents moved to the state of Virginia. His father died when the Bishop was nineteen leaving him the oldest of eleven children.
He was married, April 24, 1888, at the age of 21 to Virginia E. Powers, who was sixteen years old at this time and she also had had the responsibility of a large family as her mother had died when she was thirteen.
The young married couple lived with his mother working on the place and turning all the income derived from his work to his mother.
One day while his father was chopping wood, two men came into the yard and explained that they were Elders of the Latter Day Saint Church and would like to explain the Gospel to he and his family.
At this time everyone in that section was quite bitter against the Church and the Bishop’s Father was not very sympathetic to the Elders of their message. But the Bishop in his own words, (which many of you heard a number of times) always said, “I recognized it the first time I heard it. I was in full sympathy with it. It seemed as if I had heard it before.” He read and studied and tried to find something better, but in his own words again he never could find anything that satisfied him as the Gospel did.
He was baptized by Elder John S. Curtiss 4 Oct 1891 and two years later 6 April 1893, his wife was baptized into the church.
In the fall of this same year (1893) the Bishop, his wife and three small children, Joseph, Price, and Curtis, and his wife’s sister Lily (who made her home with them until she was married), left their home and traveled almost 3,000 miles westward, with Elder George A. Smith to Farmington, Utah. Their main desire in making this long journey, with winter almost upon them, was to establish a home in the Valley’s of mountains with the Saints.
They traveled by train and stayed at Brother Smith’s home part of that winter. The following spring (in April) Bishop Armstrong borrowed a wagon and team and left Farmington to find the land, and hills and homes that he had seen in a dream while he was still in Virginia. Seven days they were on the road, part of it desert, sleeping one night on the ground.
Two years ago and one year ago this spring I rode to Salt Lake City with the Bishop and some of his family. He told me about the journey from Farmington to Robin, of the friendly help of scattered settlers. Along the way, I saw some of his camping places. He told me of his recognition of the valley and hills and showed me just the place where he turned north, off the main road to his farm. In fact he made a road over and thru the sage brush and sand hills. It seemed as if he must have known the way for as he said, he recognized the mountains and hills and knew the direction to go from the things he had seen in a dream.
The first house he and his family stayed at, was Seth Glovers. A house that stood on the south side of the road under the hill by Garden Creek Bridge just north of it.
This family arrived in Robin with five dollars in their possession to begin their task of making a home. For a number of years he worked for wages, earning fifty cents a day. He peddled, bought and sold, farm produce between Robin and Pocatello for years and many were the interesting stories, he has told his family of these numerous trips.
The Indians were his friends, many a night they have given up their own nice warm bed made over a bed of coals so that Bishop Armstrong could get warm and rested before starting again in the morning. Many of us know the beautiful home with its modern convenience he made for his wife and family which numbered 15. Three of these children have all ready passed on. His grandson Afton Smith, also made this house his home. He still lives there. Bishop Armstrong and his family have all worked hard to make their home what it is. They hauled water for many years, water for everything even a garden. Before they moved to the place there home is now, he started digging a well. He didn’t tell his family anything about it until a good part of the labor was done. This well is 70 feet deep. Later he piped water for a mile from a spring, to his place for domestic use as well as for the animals and his garden.
From the time of his arrival in Robin he was active in his Church remaining so until his death. He was councilor to Bishop Henry Henderson, a member of the High Council of the Stake, a Home Missionary and Bishop of this Ward for twenty years. At one time our ward was quite heavily in debt. This house had been built and the Ward was small. But Bishop Armstrong with his good management soon had the ward out of debt. He was a good financier with his own and with the property interested to his care by the Church.
He also served as a member of the School Board of Trustees for a number of terms acting as chairman most of these years. I won't even try to tell all the things he has done for this community, but here are a few: He worked for the betterment of the community, was very instrumental in bringing the electricity to our Ward. He carried hot water to the carbite lights when we used them. I always think of him each time I come in sight of this Church yard. To him should go much of the credit of the trees we are so proud of. I have seen him, week after week, hauling water to keep them alive when they were first started. Even this summer, he was worried about them during our dry spells.
Bishop Armstrong was a very sincere man. He loved the Gospel. He wanted everyone to know it and understand it as he did. Never an opportunity did he pass to explain the Gospel to anyone who would listen, his own family, every stranger as well as his friends. He has done a wonderful amount of genealogical work in the Temple and delighted so much in doing it. We will all remember his great faith, his wonderful example that he has set before us. God help us all to benefit by his life. May God bless his family. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Picture at top I found on Ancestry.com, Story I found in the family history papers of Peggy, The newspaper obituaries I scanned also from the family history papers of Peggy.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Ray Albert Wolfe
These are 2 documents that I have found on Ancestry.com. The 1st one is the marriage licence info for Ray and Cline(Scofield) Wolfe and the 2nd is Ray's Registration Card for World War I. I was so excited when I found these. I just love the old documents!! If you click on the image you should be able to see it better! Cilne Marie Scofield
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So on the back of this picture there is a scribble that says "Walton's Mother." And someone has taken the liberty of circling the woman's face in pen not to mention the ripped edges and dried goo that is on this picture. I don't know what they are doing in this picture, but it kind of looks like they are watching a movie or something. What are the cards they are all holding? Tickets, Dance cards? I don't know. Notice the clothing though.
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