13: Interview with Karen Graham, Gaylene Graham Fuller and Connie Graham

• Forward
• Interview with Bill and JoAnne Fitzgerald
• Interview with Norman Bloom and Geraldyne Langhofer Bloom
• Interview with Beulah Gleeson Ratzlaff
• Interview with Bob Keating
• Interview with Gladys Ridenour Schmitt
• Memoir by Dr. Oscar Kappler
• Remembrance of Bill Bartlett
• Interview with Lanora Webb
• Interview with Esther Swan
• Interview with Clifton Browne and his wife Nancy Browne
• Interview with Hugh Harnden
• Interview with Karen Graham, Gaylene Graham Fuller and Connie Graham
• Interview with Connie Parr Graham
• Interview with Dale Kapp
• Interview with Dorothy Fraim Brown
• Interview with Joe Brown
• Interview with Allen Kingman and Peggy Klingman

Date: April 22, 2008

Interviewer: Donita Priefert Payne

DP: Tell us who you are, who your parents were, who your siblings are, the years of your births.

KG: I am Karen Graham. I was born April 22, 1938. So today is my 70th birthday. Grandpa Graham, his first name was Wilbert, lived in Peabody, Kansas. He married Etta Corkins. The Corkins family lived in Peabody, so they were married there. About 1917 Grandpa Graham, and I don’t know how he heard about this land that was for sale out here north of Liberal, Kansas. He rode the train out here. I am not sure whether my daddy came with him or not, I think Daddy was about six when Grandpa bought the land here. He came out on the train, took a horse and buggy and went out five miles north of Liberal, three-quarters of a mile east, at that time it was a dirt road, and purchased this land. He was fortunate enough that he could buy, I think a whole section of land, at least three quarters. So, he brought the family out here.

At that time there was a four-room house and he had five children. He had Hattie, Hazel, Clifford – my daddy, Nola and Nada. Four girls and the one boy. They lived in that four-room house. Sometime, in the course of time, they decided to build on to the house. Grandpa chose to have the house built on, the upstairs, and I think possibly the kitchen and the bathroom at the same time during harvest. Grandma
was cooking for the harvesters and the carpenters at that time. It ended up a two-story house. Counting all the rooms, about 11 rooms in that house. That is where they really started out.

They all went to Liberty School, which was right at the corner of the five-mile line off of Highway 83. All my immediate family went to school there.

Grandpa lived to be 42 years old. He wanted to be an auctioneer so bad so he took the train to Kansas City and went to auctioneer school. It was cold and rainy I understand at the time and he took cold. Came home on the train and in a matter of weeks, it is my understanding, he came down with pneumonia. I think he lived about two weeks and passed away there at the farmhouse at 42 years old. Grandma Graham, she was pregnant with another child at the time. For some reason she didn’t want anybody to know that. Daddy was sleeping in the storeroom, as we called it – the next room from their bedroom. He could hear his daddy breathing and all at once it stopped. They realized he was gone. Grandma cried, “Oh Wilbert, oh Wilbert, I ‘can’t live without you.” Eventually they moved to Liberal. So that is their background.

Hattie married Vern Harnden. They lived over there northeast of us. She got pregnant and had twin sons. I think she was about 22 when she had the sons or when she got married to Vern. Something was wrong in the birth, I think, and they weren’t very old, and the twin boys and she passed away. They are buried out here at the Liberal Cemetery, they buried the twin boys with her. As time went on Aunt Hazel married Francis Harnden. Aunt Nola married Granville Crawford, from California. [He owned and ran the Crawford Machine Shop in Liberal for many years.] Aunt Nada married Dillard Hamilton. At that time, he was here in Liberal. He was a very good-looking man. He looked like Clark Gabel to us kids. He was very good looking, very ambitious. Daddy had met Mother on a double date. That is when the Koppischs lived
down here in the Liberal area, on a farm west on the five-mile line. They got married November 14, 1928.

DP: Talk about your Grandmother Graham.

KG: Grandmother Graham was a precious person. Her name was Ettamae. She was a little small lady, very active in church. ‘Course they were all raised Methodist and they all went to the Methodist Church. She had a lot of friends. After Aunt Nola and Uncle Granville got married, they took her in their home. They had a gorgeous house there on West Fourth Street, just before you get to Sherman. She lived there with them and cared for the home while they were both working as he had established Crawford Machine Works. It was right behind the old Post Office which was on the corner of Kansas and Fourth Street. She had a lot of friends that lived around that area. I can remember that she talked about Mrs. Kennedy and several friends. She was a cook from the word “go”. Oh, could she ever cook. We’d have Thanksgiving dinners there, Christmas dinners there. All the relatives would come, all the cousins. We had many, many pictures
taken there on that front step of that home which is still there. She was a person that believed that you ought to be true to the Lord. She didn’t believe in anybody swearing, she would have a fit. She had a sense of humor that to me wouldn’t stop. She could imitate anybody you wanted heard imitated. It was just something else. We had more fun with her. So that is where she resided. Like I say I remember the
meals.

If any of us kids took sick at school, when we were in high school, we could walk over to her house and she would care for us. That’s when I learned the old remedy. I went over there one day. I had a severe headache and she said, “What’s wrong?” She’d sit in her rocker and rock a little bit and finally she said, “What’s wrong?” I said, “Grandma, I have the awfullest headache and I have to give a speech in English
the next hour.” And boy, she got up out of that chair and went in the bathroom and came out and went out in the kitchen. I couldn’t imagine what was going on and pretty quick here she came with a hot cup of coffee. She said, “I want you to take these two aspirins with this hot cup of coffee, you’ll be over that headache.” So, I did, and I shall never forget that to this day, when I need to take medication and I need
it quicker I always take it with a hot cup of coffee. I took that, she visited with me about a half-hour. I said, “Grandma, I think I am feeling fine.” I went back to school and gave that speech. I think I actually made an A+ on it. [Laughing] She was a neat person. She really was. I think Grandpa Graham was a fairly tall man. But she was probably 5 foot 1 or 2 or something like that. She was a sweetheart. She really had
a sense of humor. The Grahams they loved to giggle. We loved all our aunts because they absolutely loved to laugh. They were very jovial. They are all gone now.

Aunt Nada, finally, she and Uncle Jack moved to Salida, Colorado and they ran a restaurant for years and years. Then they moved to Oregon because he wanted to fish. When she passed away at Eugene, Oregon she was still living in that area. They had two sons, Steve and Bob. Aunt Nola never had any children. Aunt Hazel had five children. I just loved her. She was so fun. They all were. Aunt Hazel, now she was a worker! Boy, she went through hard times, I know she did. Of course, Nadine was her oldest, Hugh was the next, Denny the next and then the twins. We’d go over there about every Sunday or they’d come to our house. We have movies of us making homemade ice cream on the front porch. We used to have a blast together. Nadine married a military man that was stationed here at the air base. Hugh married Barbara, I can’t tell you what Barbara’s maiden name was. Denny married Doris Ellis. Loree married Gene Hale and Lola married Dale Sutton. Gaylene was about their age, about a year younger. They used to just have a ball. Denny and Leon would just have a great time together.

DP: Anything else you would like to talk about regarding your grandparents?

KG: I do not know what happened to the baby she was pregnant with when he [Grandpa] died, but she lost the baby right away, I think. I don’t know why Grandmother didn’t want people to know about that.

DP: So much grief and sadness in her life at that time.

KG: When Grandpa Graham passed away, they took him back to Peabody and buried him there. His body was there at the farmhouse, people could come for viewing. Grandma Graham is buried here at the Liberal Cemetery. Also, Aunt Nada had a daughter about Gaylene’s age that passed away. She is buried here at the cemetery. I can’t think what her name was. Gaylene could tell us.

DP: Tell us about your immediate family.

KG: My mother’s maiden name was Koppisch. Lydia Koppisch Graham. She was borr: in 1908. Daddy was born in 1903. At that time, they [the Koppisches] lived in the Liberal area. She had four sisters and ended up with one brother. I guess Grandpa Koppisch would say, “I have five daughters and they each have a brother.” So, they thought he had about ten kids. They were not jokesters as much as Daddy’s side. But
they were all good people. And singers from the word go. When we would get together for family dinners, we wouldn’t offer grace as in a prayer, but we would sing the doxology acapella. It was, not boasting, wonderful. We wished we could just make up a church choir. Grandma Koppisch was a Gentzler before she married Grandpa. All the Gentzler boys, all the Gentzlers could sing like mockingbirds. I mean they had good, good voices. Their names – Sam, George, Pete, Grandma Blanch was her first name, I think. Then she had a sister, Bertha. They loved to sing, and they had gorgeous voices. Some of the Gentzler boys were not destructive but now they believed in having fun. We’d have these Gentzler reunions, and I mean it was a heyday. It was something else. They’d pull tricks on each other and all kinds of things.

DP: Pete Gentzler and his family lived on what became the Metcalf place. Did the Gentzlers live there, was that their place?

KG: They lived, I think, in a house just close to that. I want to think it was a two-story house on the west side of the road, right around where Metcalfs live now. They went to school at Liberty.

DP: When you look at the Liberty roster there are lots of Gentzlers. So those were Pete and his brothers?

KG: Yes, his brothers and sisters. I would assume the sisters went there too. I know for sure Pete did. And there was Doc Gentzler. I can’t remember his real first name.

DP: How did the Gentzlers come to this country?

KG: I really don’t know what brought them to this area. Uncle Irvin was born over there on the five-mile corner west about three miles on the north side of the road. I am not too sure Aunt Opal wasn’t born there too. But I don’t know what brought them to this part of the country. They lived there from the word go, I think, when Mama and Daddy were in this area.

DP: Do you know where the Gentzlers are today? As I recall Pete and his family moved to Colorado from here.

KG: Around Tribune and Springfield. Sam lived just a little way from them, not Sam but George. Sam worked for the railroad here years and years, they ended up moving to Hutchinson, he and his family. Doc ended up in Syracuse, Kansas and was a chiropractor. Aunt Bertha ended up in Cimarron. Of course, Grandma Koppisch, they lived outside Ingalls, Kansas. That is where most of them graduated from high
school, the children. There’s also another one and that was Aunt Cassey, she was another Gentzler and she lived here in town. She married – was it Henry? Yes, it was a Henry.

DP: I remember Pete and his family, they lived here when I was a little girl and they were friends with my folks. My dad and Pete Gentzler used to do these stunts at Grange all the time. I said it was like Saturday Night Live, maybe a little cleaner in the humor. It was very similar to SNL! [Everyone laughs]

KG: He was a neat man. They were full of fun.

DP: As I recall, they were quite poor, and they had a lot of children. I don’t know how they had enough to eat sometimes. Did life get easier for them when they moved to Tribune?

KG: Yes, they were. I don’t know how they had enough to eat either sometimes. I think they lived on a farm. He lost his first wife by some illness. Then he remarried. He had one or two boys by the first wife and then three boys by Jesse.

DP: Wasn’t Jesse the one who lived here? That name seems familiar.

CG: Ithink she is still alive.

KG: I am not sure. Corinda was the name of one wife. Leon palled around with some of those boys.

DP: Some of his children would have gone to Liberty School too.

KG: Yes, I am pretty sure they did.

DP: Talk about your immediate family, your mother, father, names and ages of your siblings.

KG: The oldest of the family was Leon, our big brother, he was born April 27, 1929. He was born over just east right there behind the highest hill in Seward County, behind where our present farm location is, on that little dirt road. he foundation is still there. It was called the Sewell place. There was a grade school there and he went to grade school there. They closed that school when Liberty opened. [Some
discussion as to whether it might have been Prairie Rose School. No one knew what it would have been.] They made a home out of that and that is where he was born, in that house. Then there was Gaylene, she was born in 1933, January 25. She was born in the farm home that we lived in there on the present place. I was also born there in that house, April 22, 1938. Billy, our Billy Graham, was the only one born
in the old Epworth Hospital. Mother thought she had it made in the shade, Ithink. She and Daddy thought he would be a girl, another girl. They had planned on that. Low and behold Daddy was there when he was born and Dr. McCreight said, “For goodness sake, get the cowboy boots out, Clifford, you’ve got a big boy here.” That was in the days when they kept you for about ten or 12 days. I got so
homesick for MotherI could hardly stand it. I was only seven. I couldn’t go up there, you had to be 12 years old.

DP: Talk about your mother first.

KG: Mother was a precious, precious person. It is hard for me to talk.

DP: If you weep a little, that is fine.

KG: She was such a hard worker. She always took such good care of the family. As I remember, she would always teach us the Word. We always had family devotions together, every morning after we had breakfast. She was so smart. I always wished I could be intelligent like she was. I would come home with schoolwork that I just couldn’t figure out and she would sit up with me all evening and we’d work on my studies for school the next day. She was always a positive person, just truly loved the Lord. I found out as I got a little older that she could not feel secure about her salvation. One day, I don’t know how she got it or why she got it, she got a Scofield Bible. She began to read the Word and it had so many references. That was the first time she ever found out about eternal security. Up to that time she had
felt like if she thought anything wrong, said anything wrong, that she’d lost her salvation. After that it totally changed her.
She really was a good cook. We’d have fried chicken about every Sunday for dinner. And she wanted to keep that house spotless. Back in those days when the wind really really blew bad and the dirt blew so bad, the windows were so loose in the house that she would wet towels and things and lay in the windows sills. She was a good housekeeper, encourager. She truly loved the Lord. Had a good voice. [DP: she had a beautiful voice.] She sang in the choir until she simply couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do, which was in her 60s or so.

DP: Talk about her teaching the children. Child Evangelism.

KG: I can remember the day that your mother called, and she said, “Lydia, we’ve got to go to (l think it was either Hutchinson or Topeka). I’ve learned the most wonderful thing. I’ve learned about Child Evangelism Fellowship, how we can win the little kids to Jesus.” I think, I am not sure, but I think I went with them. They went and got all the information, came back home inspired to teach the little kids. Had it not been for your mother, Donita, of finding out about that, I don’t know. I don’t know how she found out. That was such a blessing in disguise. It just went from there. I mean she lived to tell The Story. And had the Good News Clubs.

I can remember the air base was here, matter of fact we housed one of the air force military guys that was out here at the base. They couldn’t find a place in Liberal to rent. He had a wife and a son. Marion Greenwood and his wife. They lived in the west bedroom. They ate meals with us, the whole thing. At that time, they had a Blue Bonnet Courts for the military boys to live in and they had kind of a recreation
center. She [Lydia] got scheduled somehow through the city that she could go out there weekly and have a Good News Club. Won hundreds of kids to the Lord. We found a book later where she had written a lot of their names down. Then she started a Good News Club on Saturdays. Gaylene would play the piano wherever there was one provided. She started a Club over at the Panhandle Eastern
compressor station, about 13 miles northeast of Liberal. We’d go over there every Saturday and those kids would flock in there. Ithink she even influenced some of their parents” lives. I’ve talked to some of those people in the past and they can remember Mother and how she taught their children the Gospel. Then she had Good News Clubs up in the Light Park. They had a shelter belt there, a little fishing pond,
and she would meet around that fishpond and shelter belt. Led tons of little kids to Jesus right there in that shelter belt. She taught Good News Clubs in a lot of the homes here in town too. She and your mother. A lot of those neat ladies. One day she was practicing her lesson and Billy was about four. She went through the lesson and he was sitting there watching and listening and she also gave the
invitation. When she got done, he says, “Mamma, I want to accept Jesus as my savior.” She got called to go to the mission field early in Daddy’s and Mother’s marriage. She said, “Lord, what shall I do? I have a family of three children. How can I go?” It was just about that time when your mother called, and the field opened up right here in Liberal. She used to tell us kids, “You may not feel like you can follow the
Lord”s will “cause I felt like I couldn’t go to the mission field. But the Lord finally made me willing to go. Once I was willing, then the door opened up where I could do it right here where I lived.” I think of that very often.

DP: My mother said that Lydia was an excellent teacher, that Lydia was a far better teacher than she considered herself to be. Lydia had a gift for storytelling.

KG: She just dearly loved it, that was her life. Of course, after some time, she taught Sunday School at church.

DP: I remember going to those Good News Clubs in the park in the summertime. They would have sixty kids! My mother played the accordion. Your mother sang, they had the stories for an hour. Tell what goes on in a Good News Club. I’m sure you went with your mother and saw what happened.

KG: Oh yeah. We went to about every one, Ithink. They would place this flannel board – We had neat special songs – “Halleluiah, halleluiah, praise ye the Lord.” We’d sing that, the Lord’s Army. Then there was a story. They had an easel with a flannel board on the easel. Then there were figures that looked like the Biblical characters. Maybe they would tell a story about boys and girls, our age. The figures had
flannel on the back and they would cling to the flannel board They would have these wonderful, beautiful scenes. And they would tell a story about the Gospel of Jesus And they would give the invitation and the little kids would just – you know Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”

DP: As I remember often there would be a Bible story and there were series of lessons. Series on John, on some of the Prophets, Genesis – so there would be several lessons in a series. On Paul. Several different series. There would also be a missionary story, maybe-l remember the Impy and Newman series about the old man and the new man, about living the Christian life and what it meant to live the Christian life. A series on how the Bible came to be, on some of the early martyrs, the translator Wycliffe and some of those early martyrs when they began to translate the Bible into English. Some of the early Reformation activities. There was quite a variety of lessons that could be presented. My mother spent hours and hours and hours preparing those lessons and I think your mother did too.

KG: She did. I can also remember she had a Good News Club in Mr. and Mrs. Card’s home. I can remember that Mrs. Card said, “You all better get saved now and know Jesus as your savior.” She was talking to her children. They were good kids.

DP: Lots of children in that class too.

KG: It is amazing. What a mission!

DP: I remember walking down a street in Liberal with my mother when I would come to visit and she’d meet someone on the street and they would say, “Hello, Mrs. Priefert. I accepted Jesus in your class that summer. Do you remember that?”

KG: I can believe that.

CG: A lady in our Sunday School class, Shirley Kulow, that is how she got saved. She tells that every now and then.

DP: I have said that today we might ask if that is a proper approach – we might kind of question that. But I don’t think one can question the act of telling children about Jesus and how God loves them.

CG: I have said to my family, Itell them, go ahead and bring in the net. If they need another experience, God will give them that experience. We all need a new experience now and then. So I think it is better to come to the realization that they are a sinner and pray that prayer even though they don’t realize what all it means. Do we ever know what all it means? Then God can give a new experience along The forgiveness part is an everyday thing for most people, if you really want to live close to the Lord. A lot of people don’t agree with that, I know they don’t, but I think it is better to be willing to ask God’s forgiveness. After all that is what David got close to the Lord with, even with all the sins he had. Some of them we think were pretty gross. [Laughing]

DP: Your mother found a mission and she was very successful in that mission. Very fulfilling part of her life.

KG: I think your mother was too. Mrs. Dean Smith –

DP: Yes –

CG: I remember a class over at Satanta. I played the piano. Can you believe that!

DP: Anything else you want to talk about regarding your mother?

KG: She was such an encourager. I think she encouraged all of us kids to go through school. “Cause I really, if l could of, I would have just got out of going to school. I just hated school.

DP: As a little kid in Liberty School, you hated school then?

KG: I did. When I got into high school, the only reason I wanted to stay there was because of music. I didn’t give a hoot about anything else. I had band and chorus. To this day, music speaks to me just as much as the Word.

DP: What was your Mother’s and Dad’s marriage like?

KG: It was good as far as I ever knew. But Daddy would ask Mama what she thought they ought to do about this and about that and she would look in the, that little book to see when to plant the wheat, the Almanac. She would look in there and see kind of when she thought he ought to plant wheat or the maize or whatever. She and Gaylene would fix the best lunches and take out to the field when they were
cutting, the wheat and the row crop. Oh, they were good, I wanted to eat it myself. don’t know, she definitely was an encourager.

DP: Your father seemed like a quiet man.

KG: Daddy was quieter. But he could be just as funny as Grandma Graham and he was like Grandma Graham, so was Leon. They could imitate, voice and all, anybody you wanted to hear, and we just laughed and had more fun. Sometimes us kids would get tickled at the table at mealtime and Daddy would just say, “You gotta quit that laughing.” Sometimes the more he said that the worse it got. Sometimes we’d just have to get up and leave the table, we didn’t know what we were laughing about. We’d come back to the table and it might get serious and it might not and the first thing you’d know, Daddy would start laughing with us. Sometimes he didn”t, but sometimes he did. Leon and I would do that now and then even until the day that he [Leon] passed away and went to heaven.

DP: Tell us about your mother as she became older.

KG: Yes, as she became older, I would say in her latter fifties. We especially noticed it long about 1969. I know Bill was in the Air Force in Turkey. He went over there for a year-and-a-half. We had a lot of things going on at the farm, I don’t remember if Gaylene was out at the farm from Wichita or what, but we came to town. Maybe Leon and Connie were there, I don”t remember. But we came into town and
pulled into Bob’s Diner and she said, “Karen there is something wrong, I just can’t remember like I used to.” It took me by surprise and I said, “Well, Mamma, I think when Bill gets home from Turkey, I think that has got you on edge and it’s messing up your memory because you are nervous about him being over there. I think when he gets home from Turkey you will be just fine.” But she wasn’t. It just
progressed and progressed.

Finally, Bill and Barbara lived in Tulsa and they came up to Halstead, Kansas. Barbara’s parents lived close to Halstead and Daddy went up there and they took Mother there. She spent a week and went through all kinds of tests. I took them back about a week later to see what the tests said. They had done some brain scans and many other tests. The doctor said he couldn’t tell us what was wrong. But he said
he could tell us that it was hereditary, and it is very dominant in females. That really disturbed Gaylene and me. Mama was scheduled for more intense brain scans in Wichita, he had scheduled us, and I took off work and took her to Wichita, she and Daddy. We got there at Wesley Medical Center that day and they said the machine was broken. Daddy said if they couldn’t do it that day, they were not coming
back. We all four regretted that.

Eventually in 1984, I think it was on Gaylene”s birthday, we placed her in a nursing home over at Hugoton because she was running away there at the farm. Sometimes she would head over to Tom Fitzgerald’s, have a cup of coffee and sit in the car. Daddy and Mama were in town one day at Safeway grocery store and Daddy said for her to wait in the car, that he would run in and get just a few things.
When he came out the door, the car was open, and we couldn’t find her. He called me at work, and I went immediately, and called Leon. Gaylene and Billy didn’t live here at that time. I ran through the grocery store, just frantic, couldn’t find her, I looked outside the building and I saw a police car setting in the parking lot and I decided I would go to the police station. I told Daddy I was going to go tell the Police to start looking for her. I got out to the police car and for some reason came back in, I thought there was probably a policeman here or at least close since the car is parked here. I walked back in and this policeman was standing just inside the door and he said,” Are you looking for someone?” I said I was looking for my mother and he said that she was upstairs. I went up there and there she sat. There were
several people there with her and I said, “Mama, it is time to go home.” She had no idea what had happened. She walked to the car with one shoe on and it was dead winter. I just felt like the Lord had told that policeman that I was looking for someone for him to make that remark. Maybe he had been up there with Mother. I don’t know. Maybe I looked enough like her that he knew what was going on. I don’t know, Donita.

Anyway, she passed away in 1994. The week before she passed away, she had over the period of time had pneumonia three times. Every time the doctor would say that she would not live through the night. We would race over there. I remember one night Leon and Connie came, and I went. They tried to feed her some mashed potatoes and she said, “Um, these are good.” The third time she came down with
pneumonia there was a new doctor who had come on the scene there in Hugoton and he called Leon. He said that he did not feel that it was Alzheimer’s, or she would never make it through this pneumonia the third time. He said he would like Leon’s permission to do a cat scan. Leon said to go for it. The next day Leon called me, and they had the results and so I met Leon and Connie and we all three went over
there. The doctor said that this was not Alzheimer”s. He said that there is a little trigger in your neck that lets the fluid inside your brain drip down in your spine. He said that that trigger has been shut off for some time and the fluid has built up in her head. He suggested air-lifting her to Wichita. He had talked to a neurologist and he could put in a shunt and drain that off and she could be coherent again. We
decided to do that. Leon flew with her and Gaylene and I drove up there. He [the doctor] looked at her ten or fifteen minutes, Leon said, and then he said that it was just too late. The pneumonia was just so bad. He said that had he had her ten years ago he could have done wonders for her. She came home by ambulance and passed away a week later. She was 86.

The tape is stops here.

DP: We’re back again talking to Karen.

KG: About the country Sunday School, I remember that after it had been started awhile, Mother started Christian Endeavor for the youth. Delbert Bryant came, was one of them. Nina Moreland came. They didn’t live very far from the schoolhouse. Remember Lila Marie Moreland, she married Henry Carr. She came and I think Nadine, Denny and Hugh. Also, the Swan boys came and the Chance girl. Vernon Swan and Paulene Chance.

DP: Yes, all those young people in that era and then the boys went away to the service. I don’t think it ever activated after that.

KG: Probably not. She made the decision, one time, and I don’t know how she found out about it, was to take the youth to Camp Wood. It was back in eastern Kansas somewhere, I think. Delbert was going to take the wheat truck and they were going to ride in the back of the truck, as I remember. Gaylene and I visited about this just a day or two ago and she said Delbert changed his mind and decided he didn’t
want to go. Then he changed his mind back and decided they would go. He’d drive the truck. That must have been Mr. Fraim’s [the truck]. She told me earlier on that Opal Fraim taught something there in Sunday School. I don’t remember just what it was she said she taught. So anyway, they went. Leon went, can’t remember if Gaylene did, Delbert drove the truck and a bunch of those kids that were in CE.

DP: Swans, Harndens – the Franzes maybe.

KG: That’s when Delbert accepted Jesus as his savior. Ithink he always explained to me that Mother was the instigator of him accepting the Lord. Of course, your grandmother and granddaddy, they had that about a “36 Ford car. We might be down there by the granary on the south side we had that basketball goal and we’d hear him coming from the east. Oh I mean he was really rollin’ along and he would come
up over that hill, that hill behind the house, you know the highest hill in Seward County, and he’d come up over that thing and sometimes when he”d see us out there playing basketball, he’d just pull in and shoot baskets. Oh, he could get way back out there towards the road and just hit that so easy. I can remember that. Delbert was so well liked, he really was, and he was a grand fellow. Then I remember
the first time we met Webbs. They came to Sunday School at the country Sunday School. They had this little boy and then they had a baby in a baby basket, and they set it on top of the desk. I would get up on my toes and look in there you know. They seemed so friendly and come to find out it was Lanora and Delmer Webb. Howard was their oldest son and that was Darrel in that baby basket. Little later time
Delmer taught Jay and Paul and I in Sunday School. I remember we met down in the basement. I don’t remember if anyone else was in our class or not.

DP: Towards the end it was Dale and Jay and your family and Paul and I and my folks, and Delbert. I can’t remember if there were others coming.

KG: That was good. It was good times. I was so young, according to Gaylene, that Lee Swan just thought I was wonderful. One morning Mama was curling my hair to come to Sunday School, and she set me up on the kitchen stove and I wouldn’t sit still. She was kind of swatting me with the brush, getting after me for wiggling around. Come to find out one of the burners on the stove was on. We got that all taken care of and it was starting to heal. I don’t remember if Gaylene said Mama had it covered with gauze or what. One Sunday in Sunday School, Lee Swan picked me up, put his arm under me and he tore all that flesh loose. I guess it just like to have killed him. I was so young, I simply don’t remember it. But I loved that male quartet, Lee Swan, Henry Franz, Don Priefert and we think Pete Gentzler. They could really really sing. I think your mama played for them. Ithink it was after we had closed the country Sunday School, I think your parents went to the Presbyterian Church. They had something going on over there, and I can remember she [Lowene] called me on the phone and said, “I want you to sing a solo for this occasion.” I said that I didn’t think I could do that. She said that yes, I could. I think the folks brought me over to your house and I’ll never forget, I would assume I was about six or seven years old, I wasn’t very big. I sang at that meeting at the Presbyterian Church, seemed like it was on a Sunday afternoon. The song I sang was “The Birds Up In the Treetops”: The Birds up in the treetop sing their song, the flowers in the garden blend their hue, so why shouldn’t /, why shouldn’t you love him too I think was the way it went.

DP: Can you remember the melody?

KG: [Sings the song] – I’m missing some of it, but anyway. I can remember I was so scared. I get just as scared now when I sing a solo which I never sing anymore. She was great in encouraging everybody. Do you want to talk about country school?

DP: Yes, whatever you remember. I remember that there were just five of us in country school, Dale and Jay, Paul and 1, and you. I have a confession to make. I remember how we teased you. I don’t remember any particulars, but I remember we teased you and I don’t know why.

KG: I don’t know either. I don’t remember that, Donita. I know it was in the middle of our third grade, Paul and Jay and 1, they decided to move that schoolhouse two miles north. We were out of school I think about a month. We had Mrs. Jantzen, I think, as teacher. She was so mean. It was nothing for her to send home 200 or 300 math problems to do for our study for the next day. Homework. Mama finally
said to me, “Would you like to go to town and finish this grade?” I said that yes I would. So, I went to Washington Grade School. I had Mrs. Van Buskirk the rest of the year.

DP I didn’t know she was a teacher. I never actually knew her. Mr. Van Buskirk was at Liberal High School.

KG: She was kind of a red-headed lady, she was a good teacher. Daddy had to bring Gaylene to town to
high school, so he just let me out at Washington School. I finished that year and I loved it. I began to make a lot of friends, so I went back for the fourth grade and I had Mrs. Fleming. That is where I met an awful lot of our classmates [that I went to school with later in high school]. Just became such good friends with them. I wanted to stay for the fifth grade, so I did, I had Miss Warrenton. Then I think I came back out to Liberty for the sixth grade and the seventh, I think. One of those years we had Mrs. Mitchell, Lucille. She was one of the best teachers I ever had in my life. She was born again, and I mean she had the patience of Job.

DP: She was a very people person.

KG: She was. That is a good description. To this day, Ijust love her to bits. I have told her if once, forty times, you were the best school teacher I ever had. She always spoke to you. I can remember one day we took a test, Paul and jay and I, and somehow, I was so thrilled at the grade I made on that test and Paul was so disturbed that he didn’t do very well. Come to find out she had given him my papers and I had his papers. Paul and Jay were brilliant. I was so blessed to go to school with them. Anyway, I forget now what I was going to say – Gaylene’s first daughter was born when she was our teacher. She said, “Karen I want to take you home from school today because I want to see your new niece.” Oh, I will never forget, she was in the south end of the living room in the baby basket, little lane was, and she just
came right in and said, “Oh, she is so gorgeous, she is beautiful.” I was as proud as a peacock. I thought never ever would any of my teachers have taken me home and come in to look at my new niece. That just thrilled me.

DP: She was a friend to people. My parents knew her. It was more than a teacher, it was also a friendship.

KG: Yes, it was. In the sixth and seventh grade, Daddy took Gaylene to high school. Mrs. Mitchell and Bob lived on Tucker Road on the northeast corner. Ithink they rented that house. She always drove a new Studebaker and she would start north toward Liberty and we would meet her on Highway 83. Daddy would stop and I would get in her car and go on to school. That way Daddy didn’t have to get
Gaylene to school and get me to school. It was something else.

In the eighth grade I came to town and lived with Gaylene and Dee. Freshman year I was back home. I’ll never forget the day that school had just started, and we had a class meeting and we needed to elect a president of the class. Jay Kapp was elected as president of the class. It wasn’t very many days after that when he passed away. It tore the whole class up.

DP: That was a terrible shock.

KG: I know one-time Gaylene was talking to Dale about it. He said they never could figure out-l think they did an autopsy but couldn’t figure out what took his life.

DP: As I recall, I think they even sent his body to the state to have an autopsy. Something about a flap on the windpipe that closed. They said his body was a perfect specimen, perfect health. They had never seen that kind of thing happen except in an old person.

KG: Dale told me later, “l don’t know but I know one thing. My folks came to know Jesus as their savior.” Isn’t that wonderful.

DP: The whole family seemed to accept it. Jay was just a model in every way. He was handsome, he was a good student, he was a good person. Everything about him was perfect.

KG: He was mannerly. Absolutely. I loved Jay and Dale. We would go over sometimes and ride to school with Kapps. The next week Daddy would take us all. They were neat kids. The class is still kind of devastated by that. We had our fiftieth class reunion, the girls asked me if I would be the emcee and I said no, no I can’t do that. Yes you can. I said, “No”, and especially if Paul comes. I said I’ve always been intimidated by Paul because he is so brilliant. And I was so always so d-u-m-b dumb. They said now you just don’t let that bother you and I said, “Well it does and it always has. If he is coming I won”t do it. Now, if he doesn’t come, I will consider being the emcee.” They said that, no, you are going to do it regardless. So I did. I’m telling you, we had the best time.

DP: Paul remarked, he said he was kind of surprised, he said that you were phenomenal!!

KG: Mercy, it was all the grace of the Lord. He came in to the register and I was there helping Jamie Smith Brown at the registration table and I had made up name cards with the school graduation picture, he picked it up and kind of stepped behind the table and was visiting a little bit. Janie turned around, I didn’t want her to say anything, and said, “Karen has always been just inhibited by your brilliance, she
has always been intimidated by you,” was the way she said it. I said Janie I didn’t want you to say that. Paul said, “You were intimidated by me! I was intimidated by you and Jay. Because you both learned to write your names before I did!” [Laughing] We had a really good time at that class reunion. When I started out, I announced that, I spoke on the fact of where I was born and raised and I said I started in
the first grade with Paul Priefert and Jay Kapp in the country school. They just let out a big sigh. They had no idea we started to school with each other. We got the nicest thank you letter from Joan and Paul afterward. We were thrilled. I appreciated them writing that letter.
That is allI can think of to say about the schools.

DP: Talk about your work life and something about your personal life.

KG: Gaylene led me to the Lord. Someone had had an accident on 83. I was in the first grade. One night we went to bed and it was so cold upstairs. No heat, linoleum floors, the mice were thick. Leon would say he could feel them walk across his upper lip in the night and I could hear them running around on that linoleum floor, tick, tick, tick. We slept together, Mama had made these real heavy thick quilts and
Leon had a bunch piled on him and Gaylene and I slept together in the west bedroom. The folks would warm bricks and wrap them with newspaper and put them at our feet to keep us warm. One night, Gaylene and I got in bed and it was so cold and we just lay close together and we didn’t want to move because it was cold outside of where your body had laid. We would hardly turn over. We hadn’t been in
bed very long and she said, “Now Karen I want to know do you know Jesus as your savior?” I said no. This accident had just happened to these people. She said, “Do you want to ask Jesus into your heart?” And I said, “Yes I do.” I can remember we both jumped out of bed, ‘course the bed seemed high to me I was so small. We knelt at the side of the bed and that is when I asked the Lord into my heart. She was
concerned about those people who had been in the accident if they were prepared to meet Jesus. So that was one reason she asked me that night.

I started dating Bob Hadsell when I was about 17 or so. Mama always said you can’t date until you are at least 16. Oh, I was so upset. I thought afterwards, well, it was just as well, nobody asked me out anyway. I started dating Bob, we dated for quite a few years, three or four years. I was married to him when I was twenty, in 1958. We were married almost five years when he wanted a divorce. So, I divorced at
that time. We had no children, thank the Lord, to go through that.

To back up, when I knew I was going to graduate, I started looking for a job. Someone said to go downtown on Main Street, there is a pipeline company there, just go in there and apply. We have heard it is a good place to work. I went down there, they were next door north of the Warren Hotel at that time. They had plate glass windows with dirty, filthy venetian blinds and had a screen door on the outside rather than a storm door and I opened that door and I went in. The switchboard operator was there on the left and I said, “I’d like to put in an application.” She said, well okay I’ll get you one. So I sat there at that little red table and filled out that application. I had no idea what it was. We graduated on May 23rd . I was out to the farm and Mama wanted me to do some wall papering in the dining room and I was in the middle of that. There had been a few weeks pass since we had had graduation, and the phone rang. And he said, “This is Warren Ditch at Panhandle Eastern Pipeline. I”d like for you to come in and talk to me. We’d like to have an interview with you.” I said, “Oh, Mr. Ditch I just can’t get loose right now.” I was just petrified. I said, “I’m really busy right now.” I don’t remember what he said, and I hung
up. Mama said, “Who was that?” I said it was some man from Panhandle Eastern Pipeline. “What did they want?” I said they wanted me to come in for an interview. “What did you tell them?” I told them that I was busy right now. She said, “You get on that phone and call them back.” So I did. He set me up for an interview. I went in and they said that they would get ahold of me. I thought that I probably
would not get the job. Instead, at that present time they hired Marilyn Daugherty that we graduated with. In about two weeks they called me back. In fact, I went to work June 25, 1956. Marilyn was working there too, Georgie Carlyle, a lot of the girls that I already knew. Feradine Stuck that used to go to our church, Feradine VanHyning, she worked there. They were a good bunch of girls.

I started out in gas measurement. We measured the gas that had gone through the pipeline in so many days. Most charts were eight-hour days. I ran an integrator which I think was made by Singer Sewing Machine. You had a foot pedal just like an electric sewing machine and you had two ink pens you would put on those lines on those gas charts and handles that you had to direct that around those charts on
those lines. You would take down a number before you started, you would take down another number after you got around the chart. Then they would figure coefficients and all kinds of things and you would end up with a millionth cubic feet of gas that went through that pipe in so many days. That is how they priced it, what their gas checks would be. I did that for three-and-a-half years. Then I transferred into
duplicating and ran all kinds of copy machines. Loved it, more so than I did my first position. Seemed like they wanted to bicker between each other. I was as happy as a lark. That was when the first Xerox came out, that you had trays with toner in it and you had these flood lights to take a picture of the copy and all that. We had a Photostat machine and a BW machine which was where we ran those 42-inch maps that they had all the wells marked on that drafting had done. Then we had a multilith machine. It was electric and we didn’t have to run it by handle. I worked there about three-and-a-half years and then there was an opening on the switchboard. I went on the switchboard for about three-and-a-half years. Switchboard and reception desk. Then I heard the rumor that one of the switchboard operators was
going to get laid off if one of us didn’t take the steno job for the assistant manager of our department of office services. He came and asked me if I would come in as his steno and I said that I didn’t want it. He said that somebody was going to have to go. I prayed about it and thought about it and finally I accepted that job. I was steno for the assistant manager, Phil Curtain and then Hank Riley. Phil was over the office services and transportation and the vehicles. Hank was transportation specialist. Phil was the assistant manager of both divisions. I was their steno and then I would work the switchboard from one to two when somebody had to go to lunch at that time. “Cause the switchboard had to be manned 24 hours a day. I got in there and that is when there were manual typewriters and we did carbon copies. I also did steno work for the communication manager. I’d just about get the letter done and I’d make a mistake
and have to start over.

It wasn’t long and my boss said that he wanted me to be in charge of the company aircraft, the company jets. He had been doing that. He gave me the book and tried to explain it and I thought – oh brother! He said that he wanted me to start buying all the commercial airline tickets. At that time, we would get all the commercial air tickets at the People’s Travel Agency at the First National Bank. I started delving into
that and I stayed close with this girl in Kansas City that scheduled the airplanes ’cause the corporate jets came out of Kansas City, that was their home base. One day she got to talking to me about the Lord. We began sharing with each other and sure enough she was a born-again Christian. A delightful person. There was nobody any better to work with. We are still good friends to this day. It was miraculous to
have that position. There were a lot of blessings that came with that. Lots of times when some of the employees would be ill and need to get out of Liberal, she would get a vice president’s approval for me and they would fly down here and pick them up, take them wherever they needed to go. Wendell Wettstine, you probably remember him, worked at our storage department, came down with cancer,
very severely ill. Finally, his wife Ruth decided to take him to Warez where they did laetrile, some kind of a shot. They had flown commercially out there. She had to give him shots in the restroom all the way out there, he was in such pain. He had been out there quite some time and one day she called me at work, and she was sobbing, and she said that she thought he was going to die here [in Mexico]. I’ve got him into old Mexico and if he dies in Mexico, I can’t claim his body. She asked if l could possibly get a company airplane. I said to give me a few minutes, I will call Kansas City and see if we can get an approval. I called Donna, she called back in short order and said she had the vice president’s approval. They would dead head out here to San Diego in the morning, that that was the closest place they could
land, and she needs to get him over there to San Diego. They did and she was blessed in the fact they could get him a small gurney and they took him over there and it was just small enough that they could lay that down in the isle of the airplane. She had one of her daughters there who was an RN and Ruth. Wendell walked up and boarded that plane and laid down on that stretcher because he wasn’t able to
sit up. I met the ambulance that took him right to the hospital. It cost mega bucks to fly an airplane deadhead clear out there and then fly him here and then back to Kansas City. But the company at that time was family. That happened quite a few incidences.

Then in ’76, Hank Riley retired and my boss, they had taken the assistant manager and put him in safety. My boss in Kansas City made me supervisor. He said that he would like me to take Hank Riley’s position. I said that I can’t do that. “Why can’t you?” I said that I don’t know how to make oil field beds or design them or whatever. And I said, “Roger, I have no idea.” He said, “You could do it. You know how to drive
wheat trucks don’t you?” And I said, “Oh yes. Did it for many, many years.” He said there was no reason why I can’t take this job. He said it would be the same size trucks if you have to drive trucks. He said, “Karen, I could certainly pay you a lot more money to take this job than if you set there as a steno or anything like that.” So, I accepted it. Absolutely loved it. I did that until I retired. They made me retire at
55 in 1993.

I was over a vast radius of vehicles. I think we counted vehicles, cars, pickups, trucks, trailers, things like that one time. Had to make up a report and I think I had around 700 and something in the entire fleet. Every time an old vehicle was retired when they got x number of miles and they would receive the new ones. At that time they had a choice of color. They had standard things they would put on them. One
day, I finally talked them into putting AM radios in the pickups. They were afraid they would just sit around and listen to the radio. I said that I didn’t think they would find it that way. Finally talked them into putting air conditioning in. For years they didn’t have either one. They would bring in their old vehicle and we would have the new one at the Radio Shack which is on Second Street. They would have their new company radio installed and the boys out there in communications would take out the old radio. We would go out there and pick up the old vehicle and take it into at that time the new building. We worked out at one of those old barracks for years. Checking in new ones, getting rid of old ones. At first, they would put them up for bid. We would send dealers all around a chance to bid on them. They’d come and look at the old vehicle and bid, we’d have sealed bids. Then they finally got wise and decided to try to bring these car carriers and we would start sending them to the auction in Kansas City. Man, it really paid off. Saved a lot of hassle, paperwork. I would always be out there when they would come to load. Oh, we had some experiences! Then they decided to send the four-wheel drives to Denver. They thought that would pay better than Kansas City because of the weather out there. They would sell like gold! One time they had me fly up there and be there for the auction in Kansas City and I would explain anything that was wrong. We tried to be honest about the condition of the vehicles.

DP: Sounds like you had a good time.

KG: I did.

DP: A lot of responsibility. Must have been well organized. Working with people.

KG: Very much so. I loved every bit of it.

DP: You retired then after how many years of working?

KG: 37 1/2 [years]. I have a good retirement from Panhandle. I was very blessed. Got a retirement and a severance package. Was paid for my back time, time you didn’t take off for illness. That would add up. Good insurance. The Lord really blessed me. Not a day of college and you know, I’ve already told you how I hated school. [Laughing]

A little before they moved to Houston, I had two of the greatest bosses that anybody could have. The first boss I had out of KC, over transportation, decided to quit after quite a few years. The assistant manager took his position as manager. I loved Tom Pollick. He called me up not too long after he got in as manager and he said that he would like me to come to KC and be assistant manager for him. I said,
“Oh, my. Let me think about it.” He said to just take my time. I thought about it and talked to Mama and Daddy. Mama broke down and said that if I moved, she would have to move with me. At that time Leon was really busy farming. They lived so far north there. About 18 miles. I would look in on the folks, just really, really often. Usually of a morning when I would get out to the reception desk after coming off the
switchboard, I’d call Mama and we might talk a half hour, every day. Things were starting to get kind of tough. I just felt like I should stay here. It concerned me being single and I wasn’t sure if I could learn how to drive up there. I finally called Tom and said that I appreciated so much him asking me to come, even considering me, but with my parents like that, their health hasn’t been too good. My brother lives
way out in the country and we are the only two left to look after them. I just feel like I shouldn’t come. He said that it was fine. It wasn’t very long after that, they closed that office and I would have ended up in Houston. I said, “Oh, thank you Jesus.” I was so glad I hadn’t gone. But it was a good career. Like I say, if it hadn’t been for the love of the Lord, I don’t know. How that opened up it was just miraculous. I have
been retired since June 1993 [15 years]. I can’t believe it!

A friend and I had started that stained-glass overlay shop on South Main Street. We got that started and the day after I retired, I just went over there. I finally had to close it, business got so bad. I closed it in December of ’06. Louise, my neighbor, did the staining and I did the leading. We did a lot of craft shows. Christmas time of course was the best time of the year for us. You can’t make it all year in a business
just on the Christmas time.

DP: Are you are active in the church and such things now?

KG: I was in tears for about seven months after I left Panhandle. I missed it so bad. I finally began to be able to live with it. Then I was going to remarry in ’87. He was a friend I had met through Panhandle Eastern taking trucks to Wichita. I had known him about 12 years and his wife passed away of cancer in August of 1986. She had been a close friend also. He was so lonely, I invited him out to the church for the Living Christmas Tree and I said to bring your little ten-year-old granddaughter. She was a cutie. He had three grown sons. He came, he didn’t bring the granddaughter. Another friend of mine, Mary Stump Bartell, and I bought this house together in ’74. She was a schoolteacher at Plains for 34 years. I was dating Bud and she had met this guy at church that she was dating him. Bud was close friends to both of
them too. So, he came for the Tree and Mary and Louise and I were going to open our Christmas presents. Then the next April, he gave me my engagement ring. Bud had accepted Jesus as his savior when he was 12 years old but was not living his life for the Lord. He came every weekend and went to church with Daddy and I and got his life right with the Lord.

Karen’s story ends here. No more information about this friendship was recorded. Karen never did marry this man.

The interview continues with Gaylene Graham Fuller. Gay called by telephone, so the interview continues. Both Karen and Connie Graham are present during this conversation

DP: This is Gaylene Graham. I have forgotten your last name.

GG: I have had several last names. I imagine you have too. It is Fuller now. Married to a wonderful man, almost twenty years.

DP: Gaylene is going to talk about how they first began playing the piano and what she can remember about this.

GG: I started out about three years old on an organ, a pump organ. I just picked it out, “Mother, Mother may I go down to the corner to see my bow.” I remember going out to the milk house where Daddy was separating milk and I said, “Daddy, would you buy me a piano, now I have learned to play a song.” I just don’t remember his answer. Then later Mama went to town and bought this piano from Mrs. Frame. I
can’t remember what street, it seems like it was Seventh or so. I didn’t know what she was doing in there. Finally, I went in the house. I don’t know how I became so bold, but I did. This piano had a piano roll, player piano roll I think that is probably where Leon and I learned chords was just watching those piano keys. We probably picked up a lot from there. And Sis was so little that she’d stand up on those
pedals and pump them, make that piano really play those rolls. She was so cute. I remember Loree Harnden saying, Karen you were such a cute little girl everybody wanted to take her home with them. I remember you [Donita] telling me as I was learning how to play that your mama said all I did was bang on the piano. You told me that, Donita!

DP: I don’t remember that at all.

GG: Later then, she wanted me to play for things. Mama had a man that came there to,Liberty during the lunch hour and he would teach me a piano lesson so I could learn to read notes a little. Then there was a Mrs. Dawkins up north of Northern Natural that would drop in once in a while and teach me piano lessons. I didn’t take many from either one of those people, but I learned enough about notes and time
and things like that. But it was the Holy Spirit thing, God had already planned it before I was ever born. I don’t believe that Leon ever did take lessons. But he used his talent more for the Lord than I ever did.

When I got in high school the band leader, his name was Mr. Shupe at the time, he wanted someone that knew the Alma Mater of the school. I had heard Mrs. Crowder play it. I only had to hear it once and I could play it. He said does anyone know the song the Alma Mater and I said, “I do.” He said for me to come and play it and I did. That is how I got involved in high school music. I don’t even know what I was doing in that band room.

A fellow from the college came along the next year. I had signed up, I wanted to get out of high school and just work half days my senior year at a job so I could finish up and get out of high school because I had plans to either be a doctor or a nurse. That was my plan, it was my plan, it wasn’t God’s plan. I don’t know how I thought I was going to afford that. So, I signed up for my biology class and one day they just yanked me out of there and they took me down to the orchestra room and they said they needed me in orchestra. I said that I did not want to play in orchestra. They put me at the cello, and I said that I was not going to sit like that with my legs spread apart like that. Robert Hanson, I think was the last name, did he ever turn out to be good looking. My goodness! He was going to play the string bass and he said that he would trade with me, that he would rather play that. He and Ann Cochran played the cello. Eunice Ellis and several other girls played the violin and I and Marlene Dyson played the string bass.

And Prof McCosh I loved him so as all of us kids did. He decided that I should be in band. The only thing that I could do in band was baton twirler and I couldn’t twirl worth a rit. So he had me try on a uniform and he said we’d find one that fit you and boy, I tell you it fit me like a glove and Daddy bought me an inexpensive baton. It wasn’t like the other girls’ and it just embarrassed me so. All I could do was just
strut down the street and do a little bit of a twirl and Marlene Dyson would try to teach me how to roll it through my fingers. But I just didn’t have that. Then he started a swing band and he brought me in there to play and I could read those notes and I could play “In the Mood” and all those Jimmy, what was the guy that was killed, that disappeared in a plane during WW2? – he played “String of Pearls” and all
those songs. It was Jimmy Dorsey. He played “Little Brown Jug” and all those songs. He was going to start up a little dance band. When I went home, I was surprised that Daddy let me go in for that. Daddy asked me the next morning how it went, and I said that it went really great. I said Prof is really proud of me and how I can play that piano. He wants to start a dance band. And he said, “You know that you
can’t do that don’t you?” That was the end of that. I made very high grades in that string band. I tell you what. Prof was just amazing. He wrote a wonderful autograph in my yearbook about what unusual talent I had. Then Mrs. Cochran came along.

DP: Do you know that she also played by ear? [Mrs. Cochran also had “perfect pitch” – the term used for someone who knows the name of the note just by hearing the sound.] [DP note: I think Gaylene is confusing the names of the music teachers. Robert Holman was the orchestra teacher and did play string instruments, in fact was quite a good violinist. Mrs. Cochran was the vocal teacher, and very
accomplished and successful choir leader. It was Mrs. Cochran who recognized that Gaylene had perfect pitch.]

GG: I did not know that.

DP: She was a well-trained musician of course but she also had that gift of playing by ear.

GG: We had another orchestra leader before Prof. He said, “Gaylene I am going to turn my back on you and I am going to play a key on the piano.” I don’t remember her last name. [See the above note] She wanted me to tell her what key it was, I could tell each key by ear. Now, that was God given, I don’t know what else it was. It had to be. I can tell when somebody is sharp or flat, just a little. I still can, I still have that ability. When she came along and I got into chorus, then she put me into acapella choir. One morning she said, “Is there a Gay Graham here?” And I said, “Yes I am she.” She called me and said that she would like for me to play a piece for the choir. When I sat down to play of course I was putting all kinds of doodle-lee-doos this and that. And she said, “Oh no, no. You have to play it by note. I will use you for other things.” And she did. When we would have any drama or anything, she would use me for the entertainment between the concerts or anything, to play the piano. I mean she kept her word to me.

You know with the choir we won so many awards. One day, it was a cloudy day and we were putting on a special choir program during the day. That day the whole choir went flat, and she stopped us, and the audience applauded, and she said, “No, no, we’re not through. We”re going to start over.” And she hummed this key and said that we were flat. I have never loved anyone, I don’t think, like she and Prof
McCosh. Then we got into the acapella part and she elected me to be in that which was a real honor. We had to put on extra concerts so that we could pay our passageway on the railroad to go to Topeka and KU. Mama made me a pair of pajamas, I’ll never forget it, for that trip. I think I was a junior that year. I was wanting to get away from home. I thought my life was just pretty rough and I was taking care of a
lot of the family, “cause Mama was out with Child Evangelism, so much was going on, conventions and everything and I was having to do a lot of the home work and I thought it was too tough. I would lay in bed at night and tell Karen my plans to get away. I feel so bad about it now. Because it wasn’t God’s plan. Anyway, we went up there to Topeka and she took us to this VA hospital where there were mentally ill men that had been hurt in the war. It was a VA or mental health institution where we sang, one or the other. Then we performed, we went over to KU and sang there at the University. Those music directors up there were just amazed at the sound we had. One of the songs we sang was “Dry Bones” and so Marlene Dyson and I had our string basses up there because we did the bum, bum all through the dry bones.

Marlene Dyson was a dear friend to me. I didn’t have the nice clothes she did. Her dad worked for Panhandle Eastern. But she never treated me like I was lower than she or anything. Daddy just didn’t have the money to buy me the clothes like the other girls wore at school. But I was always treated with grace and dignity from the other girls. At Glee Club if there was any time left, they would always say to let Gay play the piano for us. I would sit down and play and when I would get off of school in the evening, I would play the piano. Early in the morning, I would go in and play. It just seemed like I was just caught up in the music. I loved it. Mama would order music, Christian songs, and I would play on that and I would put those runs in there. It was just a heyday.

By then we were going to the Friends Church. Leon and I were. Freddie, I can’t remember what his last name was, he could play the piano real well. I picked up a lot by just listening. On top of that your mother had Prof McCosh come out to the house and he brought either a clarinet or a saxophone. He could play just about any instrument. And I could too. I played the accordion, the violin, I could pick up
the string instrument and play it. I never did try to play a reed instrument. We would be over there at your folk’s house, you may remember that. We would just have a big time playing all kinds of music. Everyone was playing the piano, wasn’t your mama? McCosh would be right there until we all wore out. We knew we had to get home and get some rest for the next day. Your mama would encourage, she just
kept encouraging me. She got Marlene Franz, she was a real trouble maker in grade school. I don’t know if she is still like that, I hope not. Marlene Franz and 1, she got us to singing at Sunday School. Now they were high powered duets, they weren’t just little tiny duets out of the hymnal, they were special ones. I don’t know who ordered them, if she did or who. In the basement of your house you had that lovely
swing, we all loved to swing in it. Do you remember that?

DP: Oh yes.

GG: We’d come over just to ask if we could go downstairs and swing in that swing. It was so much fun.

I had something else to tell you that would just blow your mind. My Aunt Nola thought your Grandpa John was just perfect. When Aunt Nada was going to be born, Aunt Nola just loved your grandfather and thought he was just the best deal. When Aunt Nada was born, Grandma said she didn’t know what to name her. Nola said, “Why don’t you name her “Priefert”.” Not too long ago, I think the last time I talked to her, she said, “l thought John Priefert was the best thing in the world. I couldn’t see why we couldn’t name Nada ‘Priefert’.” [Laughing by everyone]

DP: The people I have been talking to I have said, “Tell me your John Priefert stories.” Actually, they don’t have many so that is a wonderful John Priefert story!

GG: And Aunt Nola never forgot him. I think she still knew about him when they put her in a nursing home. She said that he was just such a nice man.

DP: He was a very outgoing person. He loved to visit. He was a big jokester. He never met a stranger in his life.

GG: He must have been. See, I never knew him.

DP: They moved back to Emporia when I was about seven years old.

GG: I loved your mother so much. I never knew your daddy much, but I loved your mother. When he passed away, I had a loaf of pumpkin bread and I took it over there. You can’t help but weep, but he was in a better place. America is getting so evil anymore. We had a man in our church that passed away last Saturday night in his sleep. He was 76 years old. I said that we should be shouting Halleluiah because he
has entered the gates of heaven. An older woman in the church was just crying and carrying on and I felt so bad about it. As I read the Word more and study about the Holy Spirit, he has planned our lives and I have got off track.

DP: Now, I have a story about you, and it is a wonderful story. We were in the country school together maybe just one year because you are that much older than I. I don’t remember more than one year that you were also there. [Karen whispered that Gay is five years older than I am.] Jerry and Richard Salley were in that school that year.

GG: Gosh, they were a mess. They picked on Dale Kapp all the time.

DP: They were so mean. That is what I am going to say and one day you got so sick of them picking on Dale and you grabbed one by the arm and you swung that kid ’round outside, and I mean with a lot of vigor, and you got ahold of the other one and swung him around and you said to those boys, “Now, you leave Dale Kapp alone.” And I think they did after that.

GG: You know I said, “Come on kids, help me.” You all just leaned up against the schoolhouse. If Mrs. Jantzen had caught me, I’d still be in school!

DP: I said that Jerry and Richard both should have been expelled. They were just such behavior problems.

GG: They did it every noon.

DP: I remember how Jerry used to tease me. I was the littlest kid in school when I first started there. He teased me unmercifully. They were just downright mean.

GG: One day, he told me, “You’re the biggest sow I ever saw.” I just walked over and popped him one. The teacher saw me and she said, “What did Jerry say to you for you to do that to him ?” And I said that I was too ashamed and embarrassed to say.

KG: Leon told me not long before he passed away that Daddy and Mama had bought him some new cowboy boots and he wore them to school and when Jerry saw them that day, he said, “You got some new boots don’t you?” Leon, said, “Yes.” And Jerry just went over there, took his foot and just tromped the top of those boots. Leon told me that just not long ago.

GG: They are getting paid back for it now. It is sad. I pray for them. But he is getting his due. It is a sad way to get them.

DP: I have said, I could just never imagine him growing up to be a decent adult. [Laughing] I am sure he probably did.

GG: Jerry has had several wives. Jouette had lupus. His boys, I think one of them has it.

KG: I think all three of them do.

GG: He has not had a happy life. Jerry was always so sweet to me after I moved away and I would come back and he would see me on the road, he would always stop and visit with me. I was his first girlfriend. You know he was just a sweetheart and he would try to protect me from Santa Clause. I was scared to death of Santa. Daddy had to come and take me up and put me in his lap. He was worried about me. Jerry just wasn’t doing the job.

DP: I remember when we would come in from recess at school, we would always sing, and you would play the piano. We’d sing for quite a long time sometimes.

GG: I remember the day that you were sick. I don’t know who the teacher was, I think it was Mrs. Jantzen. She was a mean old wreck.

DP: She couldn’t stay awake at her desk.

GG: She was so mean to Paul. “You better get busy, Donita, and do your work,” she said. You just sat there like something was wrong. That evening your folks must have taken you into the doctor because the next day they had to do surgery on you for your appendix. I thought that is why Donita sat there like she did, she just wasn’t feeling well. That year with Mrs. Jantzen, she dropped my spelling book and she marked all over my English work. We had those double desks and she would sit at my desk and go off to sleep. All you kids would turn around and look. I just sat there and thought – you know, the school board should have known about her.

DP: I am sure we didn’t tell our parents all that or they would have done something about it.

GG: We should have. It’s a wonder any of us passed. I don’t know if you told your parents how she was treating Paul, but you should have.

DP: No, I don’t think I did.

KG: Oh I hated her. She would ask us, Jay and Paul and I, to write from 1 to 100 on the blackboard in front of the whole school. Paul would get down around 73 or something and he just couldn’t think of that next number and he would stand there and he would work and work at it. Finally, she’d come over there and she would just yell at him. Then she would yank him around and he would wet his clothes and then she would say, “Get out to the bathroom.” It was too late.

DP: I don’t remember that. I wonder if he would remember that.

GG: I don’t know how it didn’t affect the rest of his life.

DP: I didn’t realize that he was a year younger than Karen and Jay both. His birthday is February, either the 1st or 2nd, and he was born in 1939.

KG: Jay was born on the same birthday – May 23rd I think, 1938.

DP: So the two of you were a year older than Paul.

KG: I didn’t realize that.

DP: I didn’t either until _____ I think my mother started him because there wouldn’t be any other kids in his grade.

GG: He would have been better off waiting a year until we got rid of that old hag.

GG: We lost one teacher Miss Burns.

DP: I never went to school to her. LaVera Burns. She taught English. She was my freshman English teacher at Liberal High School. She was a good teacher.

GG: I don’t know who you are talking about. There was a Miss Burns at Liberal High School that I did not care for one bit. Then Thelma Stevens. Oh my. I thought she would live forever. Itell you what, I did no care for her.

DP: I never took a class from her.

KG: I took Family Living by her and enjoyed her.

GG: She was all right in that maybe, but not in history. One time we got that paper you get in history and then you had to read the thing. We got it from Mr. VanBuskirk from another class, a day earlier so we all memorized the answers to the questions. When she gave it to us the next day, Ithink I missed one or two just on purpose. She gave us all a zero. Oh, she was a hateful old thing. She knew that we had
gotten the answers from somewhere because those were the first good grades. She ought to have known, I’ll tell you who was the best English teacher and that was Mrs. Darst.

DP: She also taught Latin.

GG: She said, “The test is on the board and if any of my students make a bad grade it is not because they don’t know what they are going to have.” Oh, I loved her.

DP: Yes, she was a good teacher. I had her for Latin. She was a good teacher, one of the very few good teachers that I had in high school.

GG: Yeah. And then Hazel Grabiel, she got me in trouble in English. I had read The Scarlett Letter and in this book report we had to use a different word for book report.Hazel was a gorgeous girl,she had natural curly hair. Now the Grabiels came to Sunday school up there, there was a whole bunch of them, and she was the youngest. She needed a book report. “Gay, do you have one?” I said, well, “Yes.” She said to let her see my book report. I should have said, “Nothing doing.” But I didn’t. I let her look at it. Well, she changed it around a little. But then I got called on the carpet. I think her name was Mrs. Reed. I don’t know what year I had her. She said, “What about this, Gay?” And I said that I didn’t know what she was talking about. I said that I had read The Scarlett Letter and I wrote the book review. But she said that Hazel Grabiel has her report. “She may have but I read the book and it was a very difficult book for me to understand because I didn’t know really what the woman had done for a long time to get the scarlet letter on her.” Then it was the pastor of the church that had absolutely raped her or that she had sex with and then he was the one that wanted the scarlet letter on her. It was hard for me to understand the book. I thought it was a very arduous book to understand. I don’t know what Hazel wrote for her book review, but I was the one that got a discount for a bad grade for it.

DP: Do you remember much about the Rural Sunday School?

GG: Yes, quite a bit. I taught a class of little boys there before I finally left to get married. I was a little girl and Mrs. Blanche Neil had my Sunday School class. I don’t remember whether she taught us anything or not. Mr. Combs, whenever he would come to visit, there was a portion of the chalk board that was just 24 or 36 inches wide at the north end of the chalk board. He would always draw a cross on a hill and
then he would make a sunrise and he would take his chalk and do these streaks like Christ is risen. He would always do that when he came to visit. I don’t know what he had to do with the Sunday School.

KG: He was the one that came to the farm and asked Mother if she would open that country Sunday School. He was from Meade. I can remember the day he came.

DP: There was an organization that he represented that he worked with. I think he was kind of like the circuit rider preacher, only these were Sunday Schools not a church.

KG: Like a district superintendent or something like that.

DP: Yes, something like that.

GG: I didn’t know, I thought Mama was the one that opened it.

KG: She was. He came and asked her if she would. Now and then he would speak.

GG: That was quite a group that met. I think that your mother always played the piano, near as I can remember. Nadine Harnden would lead the singing. She’d stand up there and she would pick out the songs and she would swing as she sang. I was so impressed with that. Then later, they’d set several chairs up there on the stage and they had choir. They had that reciting bench up there and the twins [the Harnden twins] and me and Marlene Franz and a bunch of them as we got older, we would sit up there on that reciting bench. One Sunday we had to have memory verses. One Sunday Delbert Bryant’s verse was “Jesus wept.” Another time his verse was “I have taken a wife and therefor I cannot come.” He was a mess. [Laughing] You know I loved him so much. I tell you what, I would have run off with him in a minute. I really liked guys.

KG: May I insert something here. I remember the day after he married Kathy, they went home from I think country Sunday School and she said, I just don’t want to cook today. And he said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll make a deal with you.” He said, “I’ll make Sunday dinner if you will take off all your clothes and walk down there south by the barn and around the pond in the nude.” She said, I’ll just do it.” So, she did. I thought, oh if Delmer Webb had driven by what would he have thought! [Laughing by everyone]

DP: I never heard that story.

GG: I had a tooth that was bothering me. Took me into the doctor at the hospital and at emergency gave me a shot and gave me some pills. I thought those pain pills are not going to work. So, I will take another one because I don’t think they are going to work. I remember coming out to the kitchen and looking out there at that swing, that swing by our back porch. I thought it would be fun to get out there in the nude
and just swing and swing. [The tape recording here is too difficult to understand – something about her going in the yard in the nude and she was just out there smiling and smiling – the effect of the pain pills.] Maybe this was ten years ago. Then he [her husband] got me in the house and put me back to bed. [The story continues but the laughing prevents it being understandable on the tape.]

KG: Well you better get back to country Sunday School!

GG: I wish you could come down and see us here it is so beautiful. We live in southeastern Oklahoma. It is just full of trees. The iris is blooming. We have a few kitties, a darling little dog.

Not a very big house. Now back to country Sunday School. Henry Franz became superintendent. He did not like Mama. They would get into arguments and I watched all this. Marlene would invite me over to Sunday dinner. Mrs. Franz was a really good cook. Marlene would tell me all kinds of stories and stuff. Finally, Mama told me I couldn’t go over there anymore.

DP: You and Marlene were about the same age weren’t you?

GG: She was just a little older than me. I look a whole lot younger than she does. If you have not seen her – she looks old, old. Karen can show you a picture of me.

DP: Didn’t you and Karen sing at Delbert’s funeral?

GG: No, I didn’t. We sang at Mrs. Dean Smith’s funeral.

DP: I heard you sing at someone’s funeral. It was at the First Baptist Church. You were having some back problems at that time. I don’t remember what you sang. I very definitely remember the two of you singing together.

KG: There were some other people that you mentioned taught Sunday School there in the country.

DP: I think Hazel Harnden taught the adult class.

GG: She taught the young people Sunday School class. She taught when she was 85 or 89 years old at
the Methodist Church. I said to her that she was such a blessing.

DP: I remember hearing her at some public speaking event, I can’t remember where or when. She was a
very quiet person. I was amazed. She was a marvelous presenter.

GG: She really wasn’t that quiet. Aunt Nola was a very public person. She did volunteer work for the hospital and what she did was she collected the money from the people that would buy things there at the snack bar. I have a picture of her there when she gave that up.

KG: She was secretary there for one year of United Way.

GG: She worked there for the Chamber of Commerce after Uncle Granville died. Aunt Nola was a very outgoing person. She was very big with the Masonic Lodge and Eastern Star.

DP: Do you remember anything else about community life out there where you grew up?

GG: Oh, I just remember I just so looked forward to Sundays because we all got to be together. I have a picture of your mother in her Easter outfit. It isn’t colored, but I remember it was purple with a pink lining and she had a hat to match. It was a windy Sunday and we lined up outside of the building, of the schoolhouse. A bunch of little kids. Boy, she was dressed up fit to kill!

DP: I don’t remember that at all. The times I remember of Sunday School there it was coming to an end.

KG: Leon was the outgoing Sunday School superintendent. He finally called a vote and they voted to close it.

GG: We got to where our Sunday School would go to visit a church. I remember one time Daddy told me I had too much lipstick on after I got home. “You have way too much lipstick on.” I just tried to get by with it. I was just too big for my age.

DP: You were mature physically for your age.

GG: And mentally, I was further in my age than other girls.

KG: She still is.

GG: Yes, I still am. [Laughing]

DP: Well, I must confess. We had the party telephone line and you would pick up the telephone to call somebody and there was Gaylene talking to some boyfriend. [Laughing]

GG: Oh, Dee. I married him and I had 20 years of miserable marriage.

KG: Wendell Wettstein was one of the first men you went with.

GG: He was my first boyfriend. I really cared for him dearly and I would have married him in a minute. Then Harold Ellis, oh gosh, he was a born handsome guy. He went to the Friends Church.

DP: Your family went to the Friends Church.

KG: Mama and Daddy didn’t. Leon and Gaylene and I joined about the same time.

GG: There were a lot of young people there, a lot of talent there. Betty and Bob Rowan were very jealous of me and Leon, very jealous. So, there was some conflict there. I can remember playing “Sweet Hour of Prayer” Sunday morning for offertory. What is his name, used to live on Washington Street?

KG: Ralph Miller. He led the singing.

GG: I almost hate to say anything, that was so beautiful. The presence of God and the Holy Spirit just came in. Betty Rowan just could hardly stand it when I played the piano. Bob was the same way with Leon’s singing the solo. He could hardly handle it. Leon had such a beautiful bass voice.

KG: He would sing “Anchored in the Deep.”

GG: Mama planned a birthday party for me, and she called Betty and asked her to invite everybody. Betty met me that morning after church on the steps and gave me a box of chocolates and said “Happy Birthday” and no one showed up.

DP: Oh dear, she didn’t invite anybody. How dreadful.

GG: [Something that is not distinguishable on the tape] I weighed myself this morning and I was
shocked. I weigh 145.

DP: Oh my, you are really thin. You were always a very beautiful girl.

GG: Oh, thank you. [Comments about her hair… Comments about her husband and his hearing aid.]

DP: I am glad that you have someone that has cared for you and taken care of you now for many years. That means so much.

GG: It does. And I try to take care of him. He is just busy all the time.

DP: Something that has been a remarkable experience for me and my projects. I visited people here in this community as well as relatives. One couple live in Chappel, Nebraska and they are in their 80s now. They were such a loving adoring couple. They were relatives of my father. It is just a beautiful thing to see people that have lived all their married lives together for many years and how these last days, every
moment is a precious moment. The affection and the care for one another.

There is a break in the tape.

GG: The last time I saw you, you had white hair and it was like an afro. You looked so beautiful.

DP: It is still white, but I don’t have it that curly.

Discussion about hair…

DP: I plan to put together some kind of book with all these stories about this community. I hope to make CDs of these interviews, so we will keep in contact.

GG: May the Holy Spirit just lead you in the right direction to do this. Itell you what, honey, you got your work cut out.

DP: I know it will be several hours and days and months of work.

GG: I have so many things I want to do. [Some more extended conversation.]

DP: I have just become aware my folks are gone, your folks are gone, almost anybody that knew these stories is gone. I know some of the stories that my folks told. We did make a few tapes of them, but I don’t even know where those tapes are, so I have to find them. I think I know where they are but I haven’t listened to them for a long time. I realized that somebody needs to do something about this
now because five years from now it will be too late.

GG: It doesn’t take long. I am 75. Sissy just turned 70 today. I can remember the morning 70 years ago, probably in because she was born in the night. They took me over to stay with Mrs. Colby and Beatrice and I had to sleep between them, and I thought, “What am I doing over here?” I sat at their table the next morning crying. Beatrice said, “Gaylene don’t cry, they will come and get you.” And I said, “No they don’t love me anymore.” Maybe when they come to get you, you will have a baby brother or sister and I said, “No I am not going to have a baby brother.” And here come Daddy in that old Plymouth and Leon and Evelyn Neil got out and jumping for joy and they said, “Guess what you got at home!” I was so relieved that I didn’t have to stay at Colby’s any longer. She was a wonderful cook, but she was one of these who always had her mouth turned down. Leon said, “You have a new baby sister.” Boy, I was rejoicing. I didn’t know what all that was going to entail. I tried to change her diaper and I stuck her. I was so proud that Mama finally let me hold her. I wanted Leon to see me holding that little girl. I would still hold her if I could.

DP: I would remember when I would go over to the Grahams, quite often you’d go in the house and somebody was playing the piano. Because you and Leon practiced a lot. You really did.

GG: I remember you would come over and eat dinner with us.

DP: I remember coming over to have my hair cut. Your mother for a long time cut my hair.

GG: And Mama had fried chicken. Usually she”d fix one chicken. We don’t know why, Karen and Italk about this, you would say, “More chicken!”

DP: I still have a big appetite.

GG: Usually we just got one piece of chicken. But there was enough for you to eat.

KG: Maybe the Lord told her to prepare an extra one that day.

GG: You’re going to have a big eater there that day. Anyway, I just love you Donita. l”ll be praying for you that the Holy Spirit gives you extra strength. How old are you?

DP: I am 71. Your birthday is the 25th and I mine is the 24th.

GG: And JoAnne Fitzgerald is –

DP: The 24th. Paul is either the 1st or 2nd of February, I can never remember which because my mother’s was one day and his is the other one and I never remember which is which.

GG: Paul Boles – [Some discussion of their birthdays]

Other conversation – not transcribed, but will be incuded on the CD.

DP: I think we grew up in an unusual community. There were many close connections.

GG: My favorite is Tom [Fitzgerald]. I babysat those children.

Other conversation continues.

DP: I don’t want to sound proud, but it seemed like the people in our community were connected. The life standards were different in this community than they were in some of the other farming communities. I think it was true of everyone who lived in the community. I guess I would have to say except for Jerry and Richard Salley. [Laughing by all]

GG: You know Richard ended up being a pilot. He turned out to be a very good-looking guy. When I worked at National Car, he came there one day to check in and he looked at me and I looked at him and I said, “What is your name?” and he said Richard Salley. “Did we go to school together? I am Gaylene,” He said yes, we did. Boy he was a knockout. He was big and broad shouldered. He said he was a pilot. It
about blew me away. I loved his mother.

DP: She was a singer.

GG: Richard scared you to death. He drove like an idiot. I loved Jerry’s mother. She was very sweet. Jerry was always after her to get me a Christmas present.

DP: Jerry and Richard were probably smart kids and were bored stiff in school.

More conversation continues.

DP: Good to talk to you.

Postscript: Information on Bill Graham, the son of Lydia and Clifford

Bill graduated from Liberal High School. He joined the military. He was always interested in flying. He received training while in the military and applied this training to work in airplane-related activities. I do not have more specific information about him. He worked in California. He married and had two children, Monica and Arron. He retired and lives in South Carolina.