Description:
Gwenda Cooper talks about her childhood in the depression and her career as a teacher in small town Oklahoma.
Transcript:
Interviewee: Gwenda Ann Cooper (with Virgil Cooper)
Interviewer: Jeanne Fields
Interview Date: 10/27/2007
Interview Location: The Village Library
Transcribed: 01/06/2020--1/30/2020, 51 minutes, 19 seconds
This transcription omits some crutch words such as “or something,” some connectives between sentences such as “and” and false starts.
Abstract:
Oklahoman Gwenda Ann Burch Cooper and her family were thrown into desperate circumstances by the Great Depression and the death of her father. About 1931, her mother, Carrie Burch, sought refuge for herself and her five children, all under the age of ten, at Mooseheart, Illinois. Mooseheart, located 38 miles west of Chicago, a home for children operated by the Loyal Order of Moose, was founded to care for widows and orphans of members of the fraternal organization. Gwenda Ann and her four younger brothers all eventually graduated from Mooseheart School. She returned to Oklahoma to attend college and married fellow student and WW II soldier Virgil Cooper. Ann, as she is commonly known, and her husband were career educators principally at Drumright, Oklahoma, where they also raised their three children.
Jeanne Fields: This is October 27, 2007. I’m Jeanne Fields, the daughter of Virgil and Ann Cooper and we are here today at The Village Library and I’m interviewing them. My mother is going to go first.
Gwenda Ann Cooper: Well, I was born in Mead, Oklahoma [June 16, 1921] and I think Mead is now under Lake Texoma. I don’t know if they’ve built anything else around there or not. My dad [John C. Burch] worked in the oil fields. He was from Montana, but he worked in the oil fields in Oklahoma. One of the places he worked was Smackover, Arkansas. Which I don’t know if it’s still there or not. I have a Halloween card that he sent me when I was one year old from there.
Later we moved to Holdenville [Oklahoma] where I went to a one room school. I can’t remember much about the school. The only thing I do remember was my mother [Carrie Burch] made some kind of a corn dish with fresh corn. She put it in a snuff glass with a lid on it. People in those days, this was the Depression [little laugh], people used snuff glasses for water glasses. That was really good. I remembered it all this time, but I don’t know how to make it. I’ve never been able to duplicate it.
JF: So you took it to school with you for your lunch?
GC: Yeah. Took it for my lunch to the one room school. My grandmother dipped snuff [laughs] so we got plenty of glasses. My father—
JF: Oh, can I ask a question? Did your grandmother live right around there where you all lived?
GC: They lived around Mead, yes.
My father lost all of his savings in the stock market crash. I think this hastened his death. My mother was determined to take him to the Scott White Clinic. We started out, we had a model T Ford. She put us in that and took us, started to take us to the clinic.
JF: Where was the clinic?
GC: I think it was in Temple.
JF: Texas?
GC: Yeah, Temple, Texas. She got as far as Durant [Oklahoma]. She had an eccentric uncle that lived out in a cabin. I think it was a very primitive type cabin. He had built up a wooden bedstead and he gave my dad the bed. He died there at my Uncle Bruce’s home.
JF: Now had he gotten ill suddenly?
GC: He had heart trouble and kidney trouble. So I don’t know how long it had gone on.
JF: How old were you at this time?
GC: I was nine or ten.
JF: Were your brothers—?
GC: Brothers were two years younger, four of them. [Frank, J. C. Jr., Leonard and Alton]
JF: Were they all on the trip also?
GC: I’m sure they were. She wouldn’t a thought of leaving them, I don’t think.
He’s buried in Durant at the old cemetery. I don’t remember anything about any funeral or anything like that. It’s just that I know that’s where he was. For long years we didn’t go there, you know, we were in Illinois. We didn’t see his cemetery. But since Virgil and I have gotten older and maybe have a little bit more money for things, we have gone down there and put flowers on his grave. A couple of years ago, not just us, but some of my brothers and I put a new tombstone there. The old one was about to wear out.
After that we lived in Holdenville for a while. I went to school at the old Central School. But that school’s been razed. They have a new school. We drove by there not too long ago just to see what was still there and we found it wasn’t there anymore.
My mother then determined that we would go to Mooseheart, Illinois, [about 1931]. My dad was a member of the Moose. They maintained a school for children of the Moose members who have died or couldn’t work and mothers. It’s called Mooseheart. My youngest brother [Alton Burch] was about two years old and he went to what was called Baby Village.
JF: Now how did you get up there?
GC: We went in this Model T Ford. My mom drove us up there.
JF: How long did you think you lived in Holdenville after your father died?
GC: Probably about a year, I would say.
JF: So she basically didn’t have any income, I assume.
GC: Well, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know what she did. But I know we didn’t have very much.
When we got to Mooseheart, we were placed in different halls, they called ‘em up there, they were like buildings. Like second grade boys would be here, third grade boys here, fourth grade girls at another place. My brothers didn’t live together. They lived in different places.
I remember my last two years before I graduated from high school, I lived in a sort of cottage. There were about twelve or fifteen girls in that cottage. We had a matron and a cook. She was an Irish lady and when she wanted me, she’d call, “Ahnee Cooper!” (Oh, I’m Burch. I got mixed up and forgot I wasn’t married then.) “Ahnee Burch!” [laughs] She’d call up the stairs if she thought we were doing something we shouldn’t have.
We got a good education there. We were allowed to take music lessons. I played in the symphony orchestra. My brothers played in the band. I think later, my brother Frank played the oboe in the symphony orchestra. We had art appreciation. I thought we had a very good education.
JF: Now let me ask you a couple of questions. People think of orphanages at that time back then— Did you have good food?
GC: It wasn’t like an orphanage. It was more like just you had a certain home and our mother was with us. She lived in another building. She worked there at Mooseheart.
JF: How often did you get to see each other as a family?
GC: Quite often. Oh, about every week I think. There’re so many things about Mooseheart that I could tell, so many stories, but I think I’ll not tell them. I just couldn’t get ‘em all in. It would take too much time.
JF: Could you tell one or so?
GC: Well, I’ll tell one about me. I popped off in school to one of the teachers and she grabbed me up and jerked a handful of my hair out. For doing that, I got to go down to the administration building and wash the stairs all the way down. That was my punishment.
My brothers probably got into more trouble than I did. In fact, just a few years ago they were together and they were talking about things that happened at Mooseheart. They told me some wild stories of the escapades they’d had. I didn’t know it. If I had, I would have worried myself sick.
JF: So did all of you graduate from high school there?
GC: All of us graduated from high school there, as we got to that point. About that time, before I graduated [from high school], my mother began to have some mental problems and they took her to Manteno [Illinois] to the hospital. She stayed there for a long time. They took us down to see her every so often. But all of us eventually graduated.
I was the first one of course. I was the oldest and had four younger brothers. I went down to my Aunt Mabel Hyde’s down at Ardmore, Oklahoma, Lone Grove.
JF: During the time you were at Mooseheart, how much contact had you kept with them? Just like writing letters?
GC: Just letters.
JF: You never did go to see them?
GC: We never left there [Mooseheart] or my mother didn’t. One time, one of our uncles came to see us, I think. Other than that we had just letter communication.
When I got to my aunt’s, she knew a Mr. Fowler. He sometimes helped kids get into school or something, so my aunt talked to him and he helped me get into East Central State College in Ada.
I worked in the library for the… I think it was the NRA, wasn’t it, Virgil?
JF: What is the NRA?
Virgil Cooper: National Recovery Administration. NYA was the National Youth Administration. [Note: Gwenda Ann’s library employment was probably funded by the NYA.]
JF: This was during the Depression.
GC: So I worked in the library then for some money and I stayed with some people named Gump. I babysat their little girl and I did house cleaning for them. That was how I got through school.
JF: Did you work for some other people too?
GC: I did. The Gumps were from Kansas and they decided to go back to Kansas. He was a veterinarian. They decided to go back to Kansas and when they did, then I got another position with another family.
The first family [after the Gumps] didn’t work out very well, so then I went to the Harwells. The Harwells were wonderful people. Mrs. Harwell was a widow. They had a great big house. Her daughter and son-in-law lived in one corner of the house and she lived in the other corner of the house. I had a room across the hall. Mrs. Christian was Mrs. Harwell’s mother and she lived there too. She was real old.
JF: What were your duties with their family?
GC: I did about the same thing, I helped wash dishes and—
JF: And they became, just for posterity, really dear friends of yours.
GC: They became dear friends of ours. We even visited Jean and Jack many times. After he died, we visited Jean. Jean finally died and we really felt badly about that because they had been so good to us. They were a good influence in my life.
I met Virgil [laughs], my husband of 64 years [laughs], at Ada. He said he sat behind me in a class we had together. He said he noticed I had blond streaks in my hair. He said he noticed the blond streaks [laughs] I had in my hair, so he finally asked me for a date. Course he didn’t have any money and I didn’t have any money. So, no money for taxicabs, no money for—
JF: You certainly didn’t have a car.
GC: No car. No. So walking was the style at that time. We walked about two miles, I think, to the rodeo. I imagine it was free or we wouldn’t have been able to go to it [laughs].
JF: You told me the story not too long ago, I think, didn’t somebody go with you on your date?
VC: Buddy [Frank], her brother.
GC: Oh, yeah, my brother Frank. I’d forgotten about that.
I walked ten blocks to school and back from the Gump’s house to school and back for several years until I went to the Harwells.
JF: Did they live closer?
GC: They lived closer.
I did well in most of my classes.
JF: Did you know from the beginning when you started college that you wanted to be a teacher?
GC: I think I did, but I’m not sure. My memory is not as good as Virgil’s about little things like that.
This was war time remember, Virgil and I had dated and knew each other better, but this was war time and he was drafted. He went to O’Reilly General Hospital in Springfield, Missouri. That was where he was stationed. He was being trained to be a medic in the army.
In the meantime, we had decided to get married. So in June, I rode the train up to Springfield where we were going to be married. There was a woman named Iyla Cook from the First Baptist Church in Springfield. She had evidently made it her mission to help the soldiers in any way she could. So she arranged our wedding. We were married in front of the altar. They had it decorated with flowers for the Sunday so it felt…
JF: …kind’a fancy.
GC. …fancy. The minister of that church, I think his name was Dr. Brother George Miller, he was the pastor and he officiated at our wedding [June 5, 1943].
JF: Do you all have a picture of you standing there? Seems to me I had seen one.
GC: I don’t think so.
VC: A wedding picture? No.
JF: You don’t? Okay. Seems like I had seen one of you in a suit or something.
GC: Well, the Harwells had helped me get my stuff together, my clothes for the wedding. I wore a navy blue crepe suit and the skirt was so small, years later I tried that on and it came up to my knees nearly or past my knees [laughs]. But anyway, it was pretty then. I wore a little white hat that had navy blue trimming on it.
Then Virgil was soon transferred to Camp Swift, Texas. Do you want to tell about that, Virgil?
JF: Well, how long did you get to spend together after you got married? Did he have any leave?
GC: No, I went back on the train that weekend, ‘cause I was still in school.
JF: Did you at least get to have a little honeymoon that night somewhere?
VC: She spent the weekend up there.
JF: Okay.
GC: Do you want to say anything [about getting married]?
VC: Well, I will tell you what I was dressed in….
JF: A soldier’s uniform?
VC: …a soldier’s uniform [laughs].
GC: And his two buddies and him were waiting on me at the train and they got wet. It rained and they got wet.
JF: Oh, gosh! And you were going straight to the church?
GC: Yeah, we were going straight to the church.
VC: Got off the train and went to the church. I’ve always been pleased with the fact that she didn’t cost me anything [laughs]. One of my buddies paid the preacher [laughs].
GC: I wanted to go down to Camp Swift then, but I lacked one summer semester of getting my degree and my teaching certificate. So Harvey Faust who was the registrar at the college talked me into staying and finishing up my degree, which I did.
JF: Which was probably a wise decision looking back.
GC: It was a very wise decision, because I might have never finished if I hadn’t.
Then after I graduated, I went down to Elgin, Texas…. Virgil had gotten a one room apartment. I remember somebody had left a sweet potato vine in a jar on top of the ice box. I don’t know whether that was to welcome the next customer [laughs] or just didn’t know what to do with it. But anyway, it was kind of pretty and I kept it on the icebox. It was a very old ice box. The stove was something really to talk about. It was a hot plate and there was a big box about this big and you put that on the hot plate and that was supposed to be your oven. So I don’t remember if I made any success out of cooking or not, but it was very primitive.
One time we ran out of money, not very long after that, we ran out of money and groceries. The old couple who rented the apartment, they had taken several buildings around and made apartments out of them. They grew sweet potatoes, yams, so they were giving them away to everybody all the time, so we had some there. I love sweet potatoes, so I ate yams. But Virgil hates sweet potatoes [laughs], so he would go back out to Camp Swift for supper.
JF: How long did that sweet potato incident last?
GC: Well, we went and borrowed five dollars from the Red Cross. His mother sent us five dollars so we were in the money and I guess that lasted until pay day.
But, right here, I’d like to make a comment about the war today. Most people today don’t have any idea what these girls are going through. I never had thought of it even until we were coming up here today. I was thinking, all of these women are probably in sort of the same position that we were in. They didn’t have any money. Well, I mean they do now have more money than we had, but they have all these things to contend with. It’s a really hard thing. Virgil was gone for two years.
While I was there though, I met a lot of the wives of these other soldiers. Some of them had children and some of them didn’t. I often wondered what happened to them after they went back home, if their husbands lived and so forth.
After a while, it became known that they were going to be leaving in the next few days, so all of the wives by grapevine we knew they were leaving, so we went down to the train track to wave them off. At least I thought I saw Virgil [laughs] looking out the window. So we waved and enjoyed it.
I went back that same night to Ardmore. I was fortunate enough to get a job teaching the fourth grade. And this is an interesting fact, I made a hundred and fifteen dollars a month in my first teaching contract. I was there two years.
JF: Was it in Ardmore schools?
GC: It was at Lone Grove. My aunt lived out there.
JF: Did you live with your aunt?
GC: No. There was a Mrs. Baker there, a real old lady. She was really nice, she went to the Baptist church. She had a room that she rented out and kitchen privileges. So I stayed with her and she was really nice and good to me too.
Then my friend Bea Trammel, you remember me talking about her. She was from Prague [Oklahoma] or around there. She got a job at Centerview [Oklahoma]. She wanted me to come up there and get a job, so we could be—
JF: Where did you know her from?
GC: From college. So I went up there and got a job teaching third grade. She was teaching English in high school. Virgil came home in about six months after that. So we went back to Ada so he could finish school.
VC: I wanted to add that I knew Bea Trammel before I knew her.
JF: Oh, really. Did you ever date her?
VC: Well no, I went to school with her at Centerview [before college]. That was why I knew her.
JF: Did you introduce her to mother?
VC: No. They just met in class, I guess.
JF: That’s interesting. Can you tell a story something about your first teaching experiences?
GC: I don’t really remember that. I can tell you one thing that happened to me at Lone Grove. One of the little schools around Ardmore went into the Ardmore system that’s how come I got a job. Then, they put us in a building out in the back. It had double doors in the middle. So I was piddling around opening the door to see what was going on in the other room or something and I hit my fingers on the door and I had to go down to the blacksmith and get my rings cut off ‘cause my fingers swelled up.
JF: Oh, heavens!
Were kids in your first teaching job, did they behave better than kids when you finished teaching?
GC: Well, the first year, I can’t remember. I also taught the seventh and eighth grade there that second year. My cousin Melba Glee was in my class and that wasn’t a very good situation. There were two big ole boys that probably should have been in high school in my class and they were always causing trouble. It was kind of an uncomfortable situation.
JF: How old were you when you were teaching there?
GC: I was probably 22 maybe or 23. I was small. I wasn’t as heavy as I am now. After that, we went back to Ada [for Virgil] to finish [college].
While I was there, I got a job and the job was these veterans came back and a lot of ‘em hadn’t finished high school. They were able to take a course to finish high school so then they could go on to college. I got a job teaching those guys. I know they thought I was a horrible teacher because I did a terrible job of teaching English to them. Anyway, I got through it.
JF: Why do you say that?
GC: Well, I don’t think I knew what I was doing [laughs].
JF: I can understand that because that one semester I taught as a graduate assistant up at OU, I felt the same way.
GC: I figured they may know as much or more than I did.
JF: How long did you do that?
GC: You mean taught? I didn’t teach very long because I got pregnant with Ray after that. I don’t know and the job may have played out too.
When we got back, we got an apartment a block up the hill from where the Harwells lived.
What was the story about Dimple and me telling her not to come in there anymore? Was it a centipede we saw? One time it rained real hard—
VC: Oh, yeah. There was a large centipede. She was scared to death.
JF: Who was scared to death?
VC: Your mother was scared to death of that thing. She was probably nervous and Dimple came up and put her hand on her.
JF: Who was Dimple?
GC: She worked for the telephone company. She lived across the hall in another apartment. She came up behind me and just touched me. I jumped a mile and I said, “Get out of here!” or something. I’m sure I made her mad.
The Harwells, as I said before, had become dear friends of ours. That lasted as long as they lived. [Virgil and Ann named their daughter Jeanne after their friend Jean Harwell.]
We used to play cards with Jack and Jean. Virgil and Jack always won. Jack had been in the army too in the 45th Division. He had come home too. We always thought they were cheating [Ann and Virgil laugh] because Virgil told me that he played cards all the way back on the boat. So we thought they were cheating. I got kind of upset about it.
JF: What card game did you play mostly?
VC: We played pitch.
GC: We played cribbage too. I never could remember all the—
VC: We didn’t play cribbage with Jack and Jean. We played pitch.
GC: We played cribbage with somebody. Maybe just the two of us.
VC: Leonard and Buddy [Gwenda Ann’s brothers.]
GC: Virgil can remember every card that’s been played, the whole deck. I couldn’t remember the first one.
JF: I must take after you then.
GC: Go ahead Virgil and tell some of your’s, unless you want me to finish.
JF: [To Ann:] Why don’t you go ahead.
GC: Okay. I got pregnant with Ray while we were there in that apartment close to the Harwells. He was born in Valley View Hospital in Ada. When he was about eighteen months old, Virgil had graduated in the meantime, we got jobs at Mason [Oklahoma]. It’s down close to Okemah, Mason School. Virgil taught the fifth grade and he coached basketball. I remember he had one girl, I can’t remember her name. She was really good. She had really long arms and long legs. What was her name Virgil, do you remember?
VC: Well, I can’t think of her name.
GC: They did very well, won a lot of games. I think you played in the county tournament.
VC: Yeah.
GC: I taught third grade in that same school, but we didn’t stay there but one year…. Mr. Able hired us.
VC: Clifford Able.
GC: He hired us and the next year the school board got mad at him and they fired everybody that he’d hired. So we went to Sapulpa and we just told him what happened. Mr. Prince was the principal or the superintendent and he hired us right off the bat.
JF: [To Virgil:] You want to add something here?
VC: They had a three man school board at this school [at Mason]. They had a disagreement in the community. You had a three member school board and every year, they’d have a school board election. The school board would divide two to one. At the next school board election, it would be two to one the other side. They would be in control, so it came to the end of the year and they fired us and offered to give us a good recommendation [laughs].But they didn’t really have anything against us. It’s that they took control, they hired their people.
GC: We lived in an apartment [in Sapulpa] made from an Indian school. There was a Euchee mission school there and they had a lot of big buildings. We got an apartment there. Ours was the hospital and it was just a small building. We lived in one half and another woman lived in the other half. She had a little girl and every night she’d come and knock on that door between the two. “Ann, can Ray play?”
JF: The little girl did?
GC: Yeah. When I’d say “Well I guess so,” why she’d come in our house and play, never go in their’s. So anyway, we had quite a time. She was a good friend too.
VC: The strange thing about that was this was Nelda Underkircher and she was from Mason. That’s where she had lived and had graduated. She was a home economics teacher.
JF: And you had just come from teaching there.
VC: Yes. It’s strange how things work out.
GC: In Sapulpa, I taught at Forest Park which was sort of a wing school. They had three small schools around. There I taught third grade and music. I wasn’t a very good music teacher either because I didn’t know too much about it. But, we had operettas every year. They turned out pretty good.
My principal was a woman that had lived in Sapulpa and taught school I guess all of her life. She wasn’t too old, but she was gettin’ there [laughs].
Housing was scarce in Sapulpa after the war so that’s why they made these buildings into apartments. I guess they bought it from the Indian Affairs or something. There were a number of teachers lived in apartments out there.
Ray was about two and there were two little boys right around us there. So he had somebody to play with. The dirt out at Euchee Mission is just black as tar. Those little boys would get out there and they’d dig holes in the ground. Course when it rained, why there was a puddle of water there…. They would stir it around. One day we went out and there was Ray with his little white t-shirt on. He was just dunking himself up and down in that mud. Needless to say, he got into a little difficulty over that [laughs].
After three years working at Sapulpa, we heard, probably from his brother because his brother Lowell lived in Drumright that they were getting paid a hundred dollars a year more [in Drumright] than they were at Sapulpa. A hundred dollars back then was a lot of money.
JF: How much were you getting a month or a year at Sapulpa?
GC: I don’t remember for sure. In Drumright, we got a hundred dollars extra. Virgil coached ball so he got an extra hundred. So that was 300 more dollars.
I was pregnant when we left Sapulpa with you [Jeanne].
JF: Back at that time, did they let you go ahead and teach when you were pregnant?
GC: Well, I don’t think it was exactly the thing to do. Anyway, I didn’t.
JF: So when you went to Drumright you didn’t teach at first?
GC: No. I didn’t teach at first.
I remember one time Nelda Underkircher, the one we lived in that apartment with, went into homemaking business with the county. She came over to see us one day when she was doing her rounds. Ray was acting so awful I put him outside. I hooked the front screen. Before I knew it, he had run around to the back and came on in to raise some more cane. He was so happy to see Nelda that he just went nuts.
Then there is a story about you. When you were about two years old or so, you had just learned to crawl. You would go around the floor with your two little fingers and you’d pick up every little thing there was to pick up. One day, I saw you pick up something and start to put it in your mouth. I went over there and pulled it out. It was a little centipede. I forgot to mention that we found big old centipedes outside, so I made Virgil get some spray and spray them. This little centipede was dead, so I imagine he’d got into some of that spray.
Another thing, when you were about four, our church always had Bible school programs and little things like that. You were all dressed up in your little fancy dress. I think there were maybe about four or five little kids and you were singing a song. You were standing there singing away and all of a sudden you stopped and you said, “I had to cough.” [laughs] And then you just went on singing.
JF: Did I cough?
GC: I guess. I didn’t notice it. You stopped singing a little bit, so you had to cough. Everybody of course laughed at that.
JF: Now, when you guys moved to Drumright, did you start going to the Baptist church right at the beginning when you first moved there?
GC: Not right at the beginning. Well wait, I don’t know, Virgil, did we?
VC: Yeah.
GC: I think so. I remember once, the preacher came out to see us and I had on shorts. I was really embarrassed. I never did wear shorts, hardly ever and still don’t.
Then there was a story about Mike. Mike had his peculiarities. He wouldn’t sit down in the seat in the car. He would stand up between Virgil and I.
JF: Of course, that was before they had car seats and seat belts.
GC: I tried to get him to sit in my lap and he wouldn’t do it. He’d just stand there. He would go to sleep. He’d wake up and go back to sleep. Finally, we just let him stand there and go to sleep.
Another time, we had moved in the meantime to another house up by the ballpark in Drumright, he was always running around you know and we thought he’d get hurt or something. You and the little girl next door Verlyn were always playing and you didn’t want Mike bothering you. So Virgil built him a little playpen outside and he used chicken wire, I think. We put him in there to keep him safe and the first thing we knew, he had crawled up the wire and got out of it [laughs].
JF: I don’t remember that, the playpen outside.
GC: Well, it didn’t stay there very long because when we found out—
JF: It didn’t work, huh.
GC: Yeah.
Another thing about Mike, we decided to send him to private kindergarten.
JF: Because there wasn’t a public kindergarten?
GC: Yeah. There was one there at the Methodist church and we sent him to the kindergarten. He hadn’t been away from home any and just played mostly with you and Verlyn. So we thought him getting ready to go to school he needed to have some contact with other people. We sent him… to private kindergarten. They had a Halloween party, so when Mike went down that day and everybody was dressed [for] the Halloween party, he was scared, real scared. So, we had to go get him.
JF: Well did he have a costume on?
GC: I guess he did. I can’t remember. He thought everybody was scary.
JF: That’s funny.
GC: He never wanted to go back. So he started kindergarten at Lincoln School and he graduated from the eighth grade there. He got in a little bit of trouble there with Miss Howard. It wasn’t trouble actually. He would always forget to write his name on his penmanship paper and he’d hand it in. When she found out he wasn’t writing his name on it, she’d just throw it in the trash can. He still thinks it’s unfair that she threw his paper in the trash can [laughs].
Virgil, you better tell a little bit, I’m taking up all the time.
JF: You’ve still got time.
GC: Well, I have just a little bit more to tell. Virgil’s other brother Coy-- His brother Lowell lived at Drumright and that’s why we wanted to go there in the first place and the money. Virgil’s other brother Coy bought some land there in Drumright. He had 160 acres up on the corner where we lived. (Where we later lived. Where you [Jeanne] lived.) So we bought that 160 acres from him. We built a small three-bedroom house, small compared to what people build today, but we thought it was alright. We lived there until you three kids had gone to high school and college.
Ray raised chickens out there. They bailed hay. I drove the pick-up one time when we were about to have a tornado. They wouldn’t stop loading the hay. I kept trying to get ‘em to go to the house. I was scared. We finally got through and went to the house.
Ray raised chickens and cows and all kinds of things in the FFA [Future Farmers of America]. He was big in the FFA. One time he ordered all of these exotic chickens. When he put ‘em in the fair, well nobody else had any so he won all the prizes [Jeanne, Ann and Virgil laugh].
JF: That was pretty smart.
GC: Jeanne, you took piano lessons and played. One year you and Mike Gibson played the organ and the piano. You played the piano in church for a year after Mr. Turner, Carl Turner, quit playing. You were also a drum majorette in the band.
Mike was in the band too. He wasn’t interested in raising animals, but both boys played basketball. Ray was pretty good. Ray is tall and Mike is short, so Ray had more success at playing ball than Mike did. He went to Claremore to junior college on basketball scholarship.
JF: He went to Miami [Oklahoma].
GC: Miami. Okay.
VC: Northeastern Oklahoma A & M College.
GC: Mike and Ray were both second ranking boys at graduation time. You were second ranking person, but the scores between you and the other girl were almost identical. I think there was one fourth of a point difference or something. You also had your picture placed in the auditorium at the high school. You were named to the hall of fame. I guess your picture is still hanging down there.
JF: I haven’t been there to look lately.
GC: All three of you kids graduated from high school and then college. All are married. Mike and Nancy have two girls [Rachel and Sarah]. Ray and Betty have two boys [Stephen and Aaron]. You have a boy and a girl [Elizabeth and Andrew]. You lost your first husband [Larry Bishop] to cancer. How many years ago has it been now?
JF: That was 1996.
GC: In 1996. And just last year, you married to Daniel Fields. We also have two great grandsons, Kyler and Leo. They’re a joy to be around too.
JF: For short periods of time, huh [laughs].
GC: It’s one of those stories, grandparents get to send them home [little laugh].
Virgil and I moved into town about fifteen years ago.
JG: I wanted you all to say, do you remember the exact year you moved to town, ‘cause I was trying to tell somebody?
VC: 1990.
GC: We moved to town. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Course we got a chance to sell our farm about that time and house. So we moved to town [in Drumright] and bought a new house and paid cash for it in town. We still live there. We attend church and help in the community. Virgil does a lot more than I do. We feel lucky that God has let us live long lives together. We are blessed with all He has done for us.
JF: That’s very good. Now, let me ask you a couple of questions. Can you just tell me, when you were little living around Mead, tell me something about what kind of things you did, what you played with.
GC: I can’t remember that. We lived on an oil lease. I remember playing with dolls. They bought me a Bye-Lo baby and I thought that was really—
JF: A Bye-Lo baby.
GC: Bye-Lo baby. Little baby dolls with china heads. I had quite a few toys and things.
JF: I don’t suppose you still have that do you?
GC: No, but I’m gonna tell you what happened to it though. After I graduated from high school and went to Ardmore in Lone Grove, my aunt had two girls and I still had that doll and Melba Glee broke it [laughs].
JF: But you were still friends with her after that, I know.
What about when you taught at Lincoln School [in Drumright], ‘cause I remember because I went there too. Do you have any stories about teaching?
GC: One story, I had one [student], the principal Mr. Riddle’s son, in my class and I took him down to the office. He was quite a pesky little boy [laughs], couldn’t sit still. I took him down to the office to his daddy for punishment. Mr. Riddle gave him a really hard spanking. So after that, I never did take him to his dad.
JF: You just handled it yourself.
GC: We had a really good lunchroom there. We had good cooks. A lot of the kids from high school came over there to eat dinner. I remember Ray, after he got old enough to drive, why he took me to school and he kept the car. At noon, he’d come over there, just stop on a dime and all those boys would jump out of the car and leave the car doors open and everything. I had to really get on to him about that. That’s about all.
JF: What was your favorite thing to teach? I know you taught third and fourth grade mostly, most of your career.
GC: Probably reading. I liked social studies very well too. That was my major in college, history and social studies. I always had nice bulletin boards. I couldn’t draw a thing, but I could cut out and could use posters and things to make good bulletin boards.
JF: Did you enjoy your career as a teacher?
GC: Yes, I did. I was always just really happy to get out of school and be off for the summer. But, then in the fall, I started being anxious to get back. I substituted a little bit after I retired, but after about the second year, the kids were different. They didn’t know me and didn’t know how strict I was and this, that and the other, so I just didn’t do it anymore.
Virgil, it’s your turn.
VC: I thought maybe you would tell about Mike saying that— Mr. Riddle got on to him about the way he was behaving in the lunchroom. Mr. Riddle said, “You boys don’t act that way when you go to a restaurant, do you?” Mike said, “I don’t know, I’ve never eaten in a restaurant.” [Virgil and Ann laugh]
JF: I knew that’s what he was going to say [all laugh]. I think I was in high school, I can’t remember the first time I went out. I think it was in high school before I went [out to eat], because to us a special treat was if on Sunday after church we’d stop at Joe’s maybe and get a hamburger once in a great while. Of course, usually we went home, and mother cooked a big meal like fried chicken or pot roast or something like that. I was telling someone not too long ago, if we were on vacation that lot of times, we’d get sandwich meat and fix it like at a park or in the car. I don’t remember us ever staying at motels either, because mostly we went just to Texas to see Frank and Joyce. We’d stop and get a hamburger maybe, but if it was really special if we got a shake too [laughs]. Once in a while, we’d get a shake or a malt.
GC: Virgil, you can tell it. When we first moved out to the country why it was a little bit new. I told Virgil I’d be glad to move out there, but I was going to live like I lived in town. I did a few things like hauling hay and stuff with driving the truck. Tell about “Jeannie” getting bogged down in the— That was right after we moved out there.
VC: You want me to tell that now?
GC: Yeah, tell it and then you can go on.
VC: Well, we were up there working around the house. You [Jeanne] and I guess Mike went off down through the field there. Mike came running to the house saying that “Jeannie” was stuck in the mud. Course we rushed down there. We were thinking that you’d gotten into quicksand or something. We went down there and you were out there, had your boots on [laughs] and you couldn’t get loose without—
JF: Actually, I was really scared ‘cause, like I said, I think I was laying there with two hands down and my foot sticking up because one of my boots had come off. It was still stuck in there, but I didn’t know how to get out.
VC: And when you came to the house as though you were going to go in and I said, “No, not until you hose yourself off.” Because that red mud wouldn’t work very well in the house.
JF: Just to tell you all, I really enjoyed living out there. It was fun wandering around down in the woods and stuff. I liked that.
GC: It was good for the boys. They had things to do.
JF: Kept us out of town too.
VC: Yes.
You want me to start talking?
JF: Yeah, go ahead.
VC: Well, I thought I’d just start out with when I was born.
JF: Good place to start.
VC: I guess— Do I need to say my name?
JF: Well, yeah. I don’t think you did say your’s at the beginning [Gwenda Ann].
GC: I didn’t say mine.
JF: Before you start, I want you to put this down for the record. You go by “Gwenda Ann Cooper” and your maiden name was “Burch,” but you had a bigger name than that when you were born, didn’t you?
GC: Gwenda Anna Ailene Burch.
JF: Gwenda Anna Ailene Burch.
GC: But, I dropped a little bit of that.
JF: That’s what’s on your birth certificate.
GC: I think so.
END