Oral History Interview with Charles & Marcia Williams

Oral History Interview

with

Charles & Marcia Williams

Interview Conducted by Karen Neurohr October 19, 2007

O-STATE Stories Oral History Project

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

Interview History

Interviewer: Karen Neurohr Transcriber: Elizabeth Scheihing Editors: Tanya Finchum, Juliana Nykolaiszyn, Latasha Wilson

The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Project Detail

The purpose of O-STATE Stories Oral History Project is to gather and preserve memories revolving around Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (OAMC) and Oklahoma State University (OSU).

This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on October 5, 2006.

Legal Status

Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with Charles & Marcia Williams is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on October 19, 2007.

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

About Charles & Marcia Williams…

Charles Williams was born in Osage County, Oklahoma. He graduated from Ponca City High School in 1949 and enrolled in Oklahoma A&M College thereafter. Upon serving his country in the military, Charles returned to Oklahoma A&M to finish his education in 1954. He earned a double major in animal husbandry and agricultural economics in 1957.

A native of Billings, Oklahoma, Marcia Stinnett Williams attended nurses training in Ponca City, Oklahoma at St. Joseph’s School of Nursing. Marcia met and later married Charles Williams in Ponca City while he was on leave from the military. Upon his return from the service, they lived in Stillwater while Charles finished school. She worked for the hospital in Stillwater and later for a local doctor. Both Charles and Marcia are tied to Oklahoma State University through their family relationship with Frank Eaton, better known as Pistol Pete.

Charles and Marcia have five children and live in McPherson, Kansas.

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

Charles & Marcia Williams

Oral History Interview

Interviewed by Karen Neurohr October 19, 2007 Stillwater, Oklahoma

Neurohr Today is Friday October 19, 2007, and my name is Karen Neurohr, I’m with the OSU Library. We’re at the ConocoPhillips OSU Alumni Center today and I have a couple of special people here that we’re going to interview for O-STATE Stories, an Oral History Project of the OSU Library. Thank you for coming today for the interview. I’d like to start by having each of you introduce yourselves for us.

M. Williams I’m Marcia Stinnett Williams, from McPherson, Kansas.

C. Williams I am Charles C. Williams from McPherson, Kansas, and I graduated fifty years ago.

Neurohr Fifty years ago, this is your fifty year reunion.

C. Williams Yes.

Neurohr Okay, well I want to start our interview today by finding out a little bit about you, and where you were born and raised. Marcia we’ll start with you.

M. Williams I was born in Billings, Oklahoma. My father was a rural mail carrier and my mother taught piano in her home. I graduated from Billings High School, went to nurses training in Ponca City and stayed there for three years until I started working. We got married and then Charles wanted to go to OSU for the last two years of his college experience, and I worked for Dr. Fry in his office while Charles went to school.

Neurohr Charles, where were you from originally?

C. Williams I was born and raised in Osage County, and graduated from Ponca City

High School in 1949. Then I came here to college in the fall of ’49. I went the fall of ’49 and the spring of ’50 or that year. And then the next year and a half I went to Northern Oklahoma Junior College. Then from there, why Uncle Sam came along, and I spent three years in the 508th Airborne. I got out of the service in 1954 in January, and the second semester here had started. So I worked at Johnson Grain Terminal in Enid Oklahoma building the new elevator. I fell and got hurt, and broke an arm and so forth but I was able to start to college the next fall here. I found out while in the service what college really meant. I think I made the honor roll all of the last three years I was here, but I couldn’t say that the first year I was here.

Neurohr (Laughs) When you say you were building an elevator are you talking about a big grain elevator?

C. Williams Grain elevator, yes. I was on the maintenance crew and this elevator fell from one floor to the next and tore up my left arm.

Neurohr So how did you two meet each other?

M. Williams Well he’s from Ponca City and he was home on leave, I think, from the service and I was still in nurses training there, so we met through mutual friends—blind date pretty much. Then we started corresponding because he still had some time in the service and I still had another year of training.

Neurohr Charles, let me find out a little bit about what it was like for you as a student here, you were married at the time and you were working Marcia?

M. Williams Mm-hmm.

Neurohr So, were there a lot of married students going to school here, when you were here?

M. Williams Well, that’s mostly who we knew, were married students.

Neurohr Where did you live?

C. Williams Over on North Husband, what was it 412 or 214 or something North Husband?

M. Williams I think it was 207.

C. Williams 207 North Husband.

M. Williams It was in a duplex.

C. Williams You know, back then nobody had any money, and so we were all in the same boat. They could either come to our house, we can go to their house, and we’d play cards and do this or that. But we all realized why we were here.

M. Williams I think they started growing up a little bit.

Neurohr Oh. (Laughter) You didn’t have any children yet, at that time?

M. Williams We had one child while we lived here.

C. Williams But studies came first, and we played afterwards.

Neurohr And, Marcia, were you working full time?

M. Williams Yes.

Neurohr And Charles you were just going to school full time?

C. Williams No, I worked for the Park Department. And that was interesting. The superintendent of the city parks owned the duplex that we were in. So he found out who I was and what we were doing and he insisted that I come to work for him, and so that worked out real well.

It’s kind of amazing. It was very amazing when we first started to school here. I started and went to work for the college sweeping out some of the old Army buildings up here every afternoon for fifty cents an hour. And you know, we thought that was a lot of money—got along just fine. Then came back and went to school on the G.I. Bill after I got out of service, but did quite well with Marcia working, and me working, and the G.I. Bill. I don’t know, a lot times we thought we had more money then, than we do now. (Laughter)

Neurohr Who was the park superintendent that you mentioned that owned the duplex?

M. Williams Do you remember his name, Gene—I’ve got to think.

Neurohr His first name was Gene, okay.

C. Williams Yeah, and it was kind of amusing when we rented the apartment it said no children, and when she got pregnant, why we really sweated to have to go tell him.

M. Williams We thought we were going to have to leave the duplex and move to another place, but this couple did not have any children of their own. And so they were very nice about it. They helped us a lot with little Rosemary.

Neurohr Did they live in the other part of the duplex?

M. Williams They lived right behind us. They had their home right behind us and they were always very, very nice. They did not make us move.

C. Williams They were always wanting to take care of Rosemary. (Laughs)

M. Williams Yes.

C. Williams One of the interesting things—we always remember about that apartment. One night during the summer, we had a tornado come through and the sirens went off. We had to go about a block and a half down the street to a basement. We both ran out the back door and got about half way down the street and realized we’d left Rosemary! (Laughs)

M. Williams She was asleep.

C. Williams So we had to turn around and go get her, and by that time the storm had passed over. (Laughter)

Neurohr So you must have had a car when you were here.

C. Williams Yes.

Neurohr And you were able to use the car to get to your job?

M. Williams Actually I didn’t know how to drive. I never did take driving when I was in high school, but I did learn to drive while we were living here because the doctor’s office was clear on the other side of town, up where the hospital is now. I had Wednesday afternoons off. That’s how the doctor operated his practice. So on Wednesday afternoon I learned how to drive. Charles didn’t really use the car, he walked to school.

C. Williams It was about three blocks over there and so she really needed it. When I first came down here to school we lived in the Army barracks at the south end of town. We were kind of looking at them down on the wall, the Army dwellings—yes these were Army barracks.

Neurohr Was that part of Veteran’s Village they called it?

C. Williams Uh-huh. And I was assigned to just one building along with four Koreans. You know they were good people, fine guys.

Neurohr But you had just been in the Korean War.

C. Williams No this was the first time, before I went in the service. Yes they were over here. The only problem with those guys was they liked terrapins and they like snakes and we had to walk back and forth from that area up here to campus. They’d bring the damn terrapins in. You’d get up the next morning, put your shoes on—you had to have the terrapins out, bugs and so forth (Laughter), but I tell you they were nice guys. They only stayed down there one semester. Then, the next semester three of my buddies just lived right around the corner here and they had the upstairs of this two story house rented, so I spent the rest of my time there.

Neurohr You said that you wanted to come to school here at OSU, after you were on the G.I. Bill. Why is it? Did you have family members who had come here before you?

C. Williams No.

Neurohr What was the connection there, the draw for you to come here?

C. Williams Well I came back to become a veterinarian and chemistry kept me out of vet school. That was the primary reason I came back to OSU and it was in the home area here. I was the first one out of our family to go to college or graduate from college. My parents didn’t, their parents didn’t, then two brothers—a sister that never graduated from college, but I have nephews and nieces that have come down here or gone elsewhere and graduated, but I was the first one in the clan to go to college.

Neurohr Was your family supportive about your decision to go to college?

C. Williams They didn’t care. They had this kind of mentality that you’re growing up now—you can do whatever you want to do. As long as you can afford it, do it.

Neurohr So when you turned eighteen were you pretty much expected to find your own way, go to school or start working?

C. Williams That’s right.

M. Williams That’s him. My family was maybe a little different, but I don’t think that he had that much family support.

Neurohr Did you always want to go into nursing?

M. Williams Well not always, but it finally came to me. In those days women were pretty modest, and even my grandparents thought it was a terrible thing for me to be taking care of men, but they came around. They could see how much I enjoyed it.

Neurohr What was the name of the program you were in, in Ponca City?

M. Williams Well it was St. Joseph’s School of Nursing. I think it disbanded about ’77 or so. It was a three year diploma program under the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Neurohr I hadn’t heard about that before. Had it been there a while when you started?

M. Williams Oh yes, I think it had. I think it cost my father $175 to get me into school there and then after you start progressing in your training, they give you twenty dollars a month. So I don’t think the nuns made anything, really, by the time that you finished school. You probably used all that money up, so it was kind of interesting. I always think about how much it cost to be educated any more.

Neurohr Charles, what degrees did you end up with—what did you study?

C. Williams I had a double major in animal husbandry, and Ag econ. I lack nine hours having a master’s in Ag econ.

Neurohr What professors do you remember especially?

C. Williams Totusek. I was trying to remember my favorite one in Ag econ last night. He was killed in a car wreck, I can’t remember—I can’t tell you what his name was. But he was up in Kansas on a summer tour or something and failed to stop at a railroad track and it killed him and another professor.

Neurohr What do you remember about Professor Totusek.? I’ve heard some other alumni talking about him?

C. Williams Oh, Tot, he’d feed you the line or this or that, but Tot said we were gonna do this—and that’s the way we did.

Neurohr What classes did he teach?

C. Williams Oh, I had judging under him and I think that’s all the classes I had under him was judging. But Tot would say, “Now boys, this is the way we’re gonna do it.” You may not like it, but that’s the way you did it. And the

boys respected him for that.

Neurohr Were there very many women studying agriculture at that time?

C. Williams Oh we probably had two or three in our class, but most of the others were boys. And the same way for Ag econ. There there’d been a couple in those classes but the rest of it was all boys. But I understand it’s changed considerably since then.

Neurohr Yes, I think there are a lot more women that go into agriculture now, than used to. My husband had a similar experience. He went to Texas A&M and he wanted to go into vet school and I think the chemistry class down there made it difficult for him, and he wasn’t able to get into vet school there, so he went a different direction. But things do have a way of working out for you in the end don’t they?

C. Williams Yes.

M. Williams Certainly.

Neurohr Okay.

C. Williams I’d go to summer school and take chemistry. I was just as proud of my C’s as those guys that were taking it the second time with their A’s, and there was a lot of them. Ninety percent of the class in the summer in chemistry was vet students taking it over again to get into vet school.

Neurohr Those types of classes—probably didn’t have much of those in high school to prepare you for that.

C. Williams Like none.

Neurohr Yes, like none. (Laughs)

C. Williams I wanted to tell you about a botany class and the botany professor that we had here. When I first came here in ’49 it was right after World War II. A lot of Veterans were here and I knew most of those buddies. Well, in the botany class, the bell would ring. I tried to think of that old professor’s name, but anyway he locked the door into the classroom. That went on three or four times or maybe longer, but one time he made a mistake—the veterans came in and didn’t quite get there by the time the bell rang and he locked the door, and they kicked the door down. Needless to say, he never locked that door again. (Laughter)

Neurohr Well when they kicked the door down did they just come in and sit down?

C. Williams They just came in and sat down and class went on. (Laughter) But that’s the way those old professors were. If you weren’t there when the bell rang, time was over with.

Neurohr So being a married couple—Charles was taking classes, you were working, didn’t have a lot of extra money probably. So what did you do for fun, did you go to any dances or movies or anything?

M. Williams Well they used to have some very nice big band dances on campus in those days, and if we could afford it—we did go to two or three of those—Tommy Dorsey, and Vaughn Monroe and things like that.

Neurohr So they came to Stillwater and performed?

M. Williams Yes, they did.

Neurohr Where were those dances held?

M. Williams Well, I think the Student Union.

Neurohr I bet that was fun.

M. Williams It was. But otherwise, I think we would buy a watermelon, and split it between two or three couples and we played a lot of Pitch [card game]. I had a baby to take care of finally and so we had plenty to do. Charles was taking like twenty-one hours, and so we didn’t have television or anything like that. We were kind of close to our families so on weekends we could drive home and see them or they’d come to us.

Neurohr Did you have a telephone?

M. Williams Yes.

Neurohr Did you talk to your families very often?

M. Williams Oh I think so.

Neurohr You know sometimes the students now, they’ll call home every day and talk to their parents.

M. Williams Oh, well it wasn’t like that.

C. Williams Wasn’t anything like that.

M. Williams No.

Neurohr Where did you shop for groceries?

C. Williams Safeway.

M. Williams I think so. And we thought Stillwater was a nice town. We used to enjoy going around town.

C. Williams We used to do a lot of hunting and fishing.

Neurohr Around Stillwater, you did? Where did you go for that?

C. Williams (Laughs) North of town. We’ve eaten a lot of duck, and we’ve eaten a lot of frogs and we’ve eaten a lot of…

M. Williams Goose.

C. Williams Geese, yes. A bunch of us old buddies we all liked to hunt, so we’d hunt and we would use to go frog hunting in the fall and…

Neurohr Well Marcia did you cook that…

C. Williams We hadn’t been married too long and we caught…

M. Williams (Laughs) He’s gonna tell this story.

C. Williams …we got a bunch of frogs and brought them home and she said, “I’ll cook ‘em.” Once we got them cleaned and she put one bunch in the oven and those frog legs began to move and out the back door she went. The cooking event was over! (Laughter)

M. Williams Well I had never seen them cook before.

Neurohr Oh, gosh. (Laughs)

M. Williams I had no experience.

Neurohr You probably weren’t very eager to eat it either! (Laughs)

M. Williams It was pretty scary. (Laughs)

Neurohr One of the things that I certainly want us to talk about a little bit has to do with the current mascot that we have here at Oklahoma State University, Pistol Pete. He was modeled after Frank Eaton, who was a real person. Marcia if you will start and tell me about your family and the connection with Frank Eaton?

M. Williams Well my grandfather was Ed Stinnett from Enid, and he and Frank Eaton were old friends. I can’t tell you exactly how—I think they were probably in the Cherokee Strip Association together. They used to ride horses at the beginning of the parade on the 16th of September every year to celebrate the opening of the Cherokee Strip. He was an old friend and he would be at my grandparents’ every once in a while. He lived at Perkins which is close to Stillwater. So after we were married, why we would see him on occasion and maybe help him with rides because as far as I know he didn’t drive, and he was quite elderly by that time.

We would see him on occasion and he was always a great storyteller. He would tell us things about his childhood. He always dressed like that— he had the long braids and the big hat, and always wore his guns. And I guess one experience maybe that you want me to talk about is when I took care of him in the hospital. Before I started working for Dr. Fry, I worked at the hospital for a while and he would come in as a patient. Most of the time we could hardly get his hat away from him, much less his guns, because he was just a stayed-old cowboy. So usually we had to get special permission, and he’d keep his gun under his pillow while he was a patient there, so that’s something that you can’t forget. He was a great old cowboy that we kind of grew up with.

Neurohr So you knew him as a child?

M. Williams Mm-hmm.

Neurohr What else do you remember about him?

M. Williams I guess just being the character that he was. Even in those days you didn’t see people dressing like that very often. I just thought that he was an interesting storyteller and I didn’t think too much about him, actually. He was just an old friend of my grandparents. I have a great picture at home with them leading that parade. We had the picture blown up, it

was a rather small photo, and I had the picture blow up to an eight by ten, and then I realized that both of them had their guns pointed. It’s really a cute picture and I really treasure that.

Neurohr Oh yes, I bet you do. Did he like children, how was he around children?

M. Williams Why yes, he had children of his own. In fact, I met his son one time. I happened to get to meet him in a restaurant over in Enid. Sure, he’s very friendly, very nice to children. He always accepted us as part of his extended family in a way. He liked Charles too.

Neurohr Charles, will you tell me what you remember about him?

C. Williams Well I had seen Frank, or Pistol Pete, for three or four or five years prior to coming to school down here. It seemed like annually the college would invite him on campus to speak to the English class. Well it happened to be an English class I was in that day and he came in and he always pulled his old pistol. Well that day he forgot to take the bullets out of it, and there was a hole shot in the ceiling in Old Central over there. So from then on the college made him check that pistol in when he talked to the classes. But that was quite an experience that day. It didn’t seem to bother him a whole lot, just like an everyday event, but it was quite interesting.

Visiting with old Pistol Pete, why you only had to say, “Hello, Pete,” and conversation was on, he’d do the rest of the talking. He always liked to tell me about the old boy that came through Perkins and shot his dad and rode on to somewhere in New Mexico. And old Pistol Pete would always say, “Well I got on ol’ Bowlegs, followed him out there and found him, shot him, got back on Bowlegs and came back to Perkins.” If I’ve heard that story once, I’ve heard it twenty-five times, about when he went out and killed the old boy and got on his horse and came back.

M. Williams It seems like he spent about half of his life avenging his father’s death. He was determined to get the men that had done it, because I guess they just shot him in the doorway, didn’t they?

C. Williams Yes, they used to have a blacksmith shop in Perkins.

Neurohr And that was his father’s shop?

C. Williams They shot Dad right in the doorway. And our recollection is that that was probably one of five that he killed. But back in those days if you were defending yourself, that was all right. The lawman—that was the thing to do. He was never ever involved in any trials or arrests. Well, I’m sure he was arrested a time or two for overindulging, but you know

that’s part of life too.

Neurohr They say you have defining moments in your life, so…

C. Williams Yes.

Neurohr …the death of his father would certainly be classified as a defining moment.

M. Williams That’s what he wanted to talk about and that’s what he spent his life doing, I think.

Neurohr So you said that you gave him transportation periodically when you were going to school here?

M. Williams Mm-hmm.

C. Williams Oh, yes. We’d know when we’d go from here to Enid. We’d get a hold of him, and boy he was ready.

Neurohr You’d go pick him up at Perkins?

C. Williams Yes. Or if we’d be in Perkins and he happened to be up there and needed a way home why… “Well darn it, why wait a minute!”

M. Williams He knew we were here so he would count on that. He had a chance to go visit with my grandparents.

C. Williams And he was talking when he got to the car and talking when he left the car so you didn’t go to sleep. He kept you well up.

Neurohr What were some of his other favorite stories that he told?

C. Williams Oh, just rustling cattle or how he was always after somebody that had broken the law, or their law. He was always telling those kinds of stories, how they used to go after old Bill, or old Frank or whatever his name was. He had all these other buddies, I can’t remember their names but you know he’d name them all off, “Well we spent nine days or twelve days chasing old so and so.” “Well, what’d you chase after him for, Frank?” You know, he’d tell you what they’d done, and that they thought that he needed to correct it, so.

Neurohr Did he wear a badge? Did you ever see him wearing a badge?

C. Williams No…I never—I don’t think…

M. Williams No, I don’t believe he did. By the time that we really were around him very much, he was probably past that. You know he probably wouldn’t be allowed to wear the badge.

Neurohr But he still had his gun with him.

M. Williams Oh yes, oh yes. He wore his holster.

C. Williams And you kind of wondered whether the poor old boy just owned that one change of clothes or not because every time you’d see him that’s what he had on (Laughs).

Neurohr Oh, he had on the same clothes?

C. Williams Oh yes.

Neurohr What color was his hat?

M. Williams Oh it was tan, wasn’t it?

C. Williams Yes, an old tan hat and once in a while he covered it with an old black hat. I guess he put on whichever was closest to the door (Laughs) when he’d come out…

Neurohr Was he married? Did he live with family at this time period or was he alone?

M. Williams Well, he had to, but I’m not sure if his wife was deceased at that time or not. He always seemed to be alone so she could very well have not have been alive at that time—when he was an older man. But I never did meet her. I never did know her.

C. Williams Lee Allred, who lived just south east of town was in our class—is deceased now. I can remember when we were down here and we’d be talking about old Pistol Pete. He can remember Pistol Pete from being just a kid, so that was fifteen—twenty years prior to the time we were here. I have no idea how long they lived in Perkins or where they came from, or anything. I’m sure he’s told me but it’s kind of slipped by.

Neurohr Did he have any unusual mannerisms or way of speaking at all?

M. Williams Just old-fashioned cowboy—just probably had no formal schooling at all. He probably didn’t have very good grammar. (Laughs) But just little things like that—just old-fashioned good guy.

Neurohr Loved horses?

M. Williams Oh yes.

C. Williams Very much.

Neurohr Did he talk about horses a lot?

C. Williams Oh yes.

M. Williams Uh-huh.

C. Williams I don’t know how many he had or how many he’d known but it was quite a bunch.

Neurohr And so he punched cattle too, did he work cattle too?

C. Williams Oh yes.

M. Williams I’m sure, oh yes that was…

C. Williams They had to back in those early days to survive. Wasn’t he a deputy sheriff a time or two through the years?

Neurohr Probably the reason he was chasing criminals. What was your grandfather like? Was he similar, was he a cowboy and…

M. Williams Well, yes he was, but he did other things too. I think he was a cattle inspector at one time, but those were early days. Then later on he worked for the Wichita Eagle. He helped take papers all over the county area, around Enid. That’s where he lived. I think my grandmother worked at the courthouse. She registered deeds—I think that’s what she did. And my grandfather ran for sheriff a couple of times, but I don’t think he ever made it, but he did run.

C. Williams Where were they—they were from Chandler, is that where they came from?

M. Williams Yes, they did live in Chandler. He was also a butcher because I remember him bringing meat into my grandmother’s house—he’d bring meat in. There was a sale of a butcher shop in Billings, where I was raised, and I think that’s how they got to Billings, and so they lived there. I have some great old pictures of them in that shop.

Neurohr You knew the Bellmon family?

M. Williams Well, yes…

Neurohr …in Billings?

M. Williams My dad was a rural mail carrier and so when I’d go on the route with him, we’d always pass their farm, and we knew him—sure. Not real well but as I said my mother used to teach the girls piano.

Neurohr Okay, I’m going to switch back to Frank Eaton here, do you know if he could read?

C. Williams I have no idea.

M. Williams I really don’t know for sure if he did, but I would just guess it, because even my granddad, I don’t think he had more than about a fifth grade education.

Neurohr That was common back then.

M. Williams Sure, sure. And so if Frank had that much—if he went to school he would have known how to read.

Neurohr Well it’s great to get some stories from people who knew Frank Eaton. I met one other person who graduated from school here. Henry Bedford. He’s a rancher in Montana, and he remembers Frank Eaton coming to class, as well, and talking to students, so that must have been a fairly common occurrence during that period. And that tells me that the professors sort of appreciated his background and his history. What did he talk about when he came to classes, just his experiences?

C. Williams His experiences, that’s about all.

Neurohr And were the student’s just spell bound to listen to him?

C. Williams Oh yes. So many of the students weren’t from around here. I can’t remember whether it was English or Oklahoma history, but you know they both fit in and it was quite interesting and quite an experience for those students who hadn’t been involved in any of that before—just to hear him.

M. Williams Or just to see him, because he was quite something to look at.

Neurohr Do you think he was proud to be selected as the model for the mascot?

M. Williams Oh, sure. I’m sure he was.

Neurohr Do you remember anything in particular about that at all?

M. Williams Did he ever say anything as far as his lectures were concerned about that? I don’t remember hearing him talk about that, but I can just very well imagine—he probably took it all with a grain of salt but then I’m sure he was.

C. Williams “Oh hell, son, look what they’ve done now!” (Laughter)

M. Williams That’s something he would have said.

C. Williams “Look what they’ve done now!” (Laughter)

Neurohr Well, there was a picture in the paper today of him in a classroom, and some students were around him, in the O’Colly and it makes me think that he must have enjoyed being around the college students.

M. Williams Oh, I’m sure he did.

C. Williams Oh yes.

Neurohr Yes there's an article about him, there's a big picture right here…

M. Williams [Neurohr shows newspaper article] Oh my goodness! Oh yeah, isn’t that great? And those students look like they’re just intrigued. He’s showing them his gun. Oh yeah, that’s great.

Neurohr Did any of your kids come to school here?

C. Williams No.

C. Williams Not because we didn’t try.

M. Williams Well we lived in Kansas then, so they went to several different schools in Kansas.

Neurohr Grandchildren?

M. Williams We were really glad when our granddaughter came to school here. She graduated last year.

C. Williams When she said I had gone to school here, they waived part of her out-of- state tuition.

Neurohr Oh good. Does she know your stories about Frank Eaton?

M. Williams Well, I don’t know if we’ve talked too much about that. We have some, but maybe not too much.

Neurohr I think she would find that very interesting.

M. Williams Oh sure, sure.

Neurohr Yes, to know that you knew him like you did.

M. Williams Oh well, she knows that, but she probably doesn’t know too many details. As the generations go, they kind of take a lot of that for granted, you know. They don’t think too much about it.

Neurohr You said you would take him home or pick him up in Perkins, what was his house like?

C. Williams An old shack.

Neurohr It was an old shack? (Laughs)

C. Williams Kind of back behind the blacksmith’s shop.

Neurohr Oh the blacksmith’s shop was still there at the time, was that in downtown Perkins then?

C. Williams Yes, ma’am. And the old blacksmith’s shop wasn’t in operation, but you knew what it was.

Neurohr I wonder if it’s still there.

M. Williams We haven’t been back to Perkins for years.

Neurohr Have you ever talked to anyone else about him? Has anyone ever asked you questions about him before?

M. Williams Not very much.

Neurohr Well some people have tried to do some research about him before, and I just wondered if they made the connection or knew about you all, and your connection with him.

M. Williams Well, we don’t know too much.

Neurohr Knowing him as a child though, I think, and that your grandfather being friends with him is probably pretty unique, and that you knew him across a long period of time like that, I think that’s pretty special.

M. Williams Well, I guess we didn’t realize how special it was, I’ll try to remember some more.

Neurohr That’s okay. (Laughter)

M. Williams It’s true.

Neurohr Yes and just trying to get your reminiscences about just different things about him so people who don’t know him can really visualize him and just sort of get a good idea about his personality and things like that.

M. Williams I don’t think that we really appreciated what he was and who he was until we actually came to Stillwater. And we realized then, I think, how special he was to people and how unique he was. We started realizing what a special guy he was.

C. Williams Like that one picture there, that shows him with all the students around him—looks like he’s really concentrating. That was what he liked, was to really get up there and explain these things to you, or whoever was around him. And he’d spend all afternoon telling you, “That it’s two o’clock,” and things like that. He wouldn’t say, “Its two o’clock let’s go!” He would talk half a day on whatever you wanted to know, or whatever you were interested in. He’d always find the time. He was very good that way.

M. Williams Did they just ask him over once a year?

C. Williams Mm-hmm.

Neurohr I think he used to be in the parade here too.

C. Williams Oh yes, oh yes.

M. Williams Oh probably.

C. Williams Oh yes, he probably led the parade.

Neurohr Do you remember anything about Homecoming? This is Homecoming weekend, so what was Homecoming like when you were living in Stillwater?

M. Williams The orange door, remember the orange door?

C. Williams All the sororities and fraternities were all decorating something, not as elaborately as they are today. But we had the parade and…

Neurohr Where was the orange door? I haven’t heard of it before.

M. Williams Well wasn’t there a song by that name?

Neurohr Oh I don’t know!

M. Williams I think there was, and that was kind of part of the parade for a while. It was a song.

Neurohr It was a song?

M. Williams I still kind of associate that with the parade in those days. It was always nice and the celebrations on campus were really special and it was so pretty around here, even then. My one special remembrance was how pretty the magnolia trees were because I don’t think I’d ever seen them before, and how very pretty they were in bloom. Theta Pond was always so attractive to me. We enjoyed our time here.

Neurohr It’s nice the campus has retained the beauty, I think.

M. Williams Yes. Those trees are still here.

Neurohr Well, after you graduated with your degrees, your double major, which that had to have been difficult to do—taking extra classes like that, what career did you end up with? Or did you have several different career paths?

C. Williams Well, when I graduated from here, my first job was I managed Gooch Research Farm at Manhattan [Kansas]. I went in to primarily farm management and appraisals. After I left there, I went to Texas and managed part of a large turkey, broiler, feeder pigs, cattle operation for this large company in Texas—Tyler, Texas. I was in charge of their beef cattle, their swine, and their turkeys—fifty thousand turkeys. The day I went to work there, the boss called me in and said, “Charlie, these are your two hired hands.” They were with me constantly.

Then after we left there I went to work for Prudential Insurance Company in the mortgage loan department, and that’s where I became an appraiser. My first assignment was Fort Smith, Arkansas, and we were there for about three years and they transferred me to Hutchinson, Kansas, then to Emporia. In 1970, they decided to get out of the mortgage loan business and the finance business, so they terminated about three hundred of us over the United States. At that time I went to work for McPherson Bank and Trust. I headed their Farm Management department. I was with them almost twenty years. Then I went to work for Farm Credit, as an appraiser and stayed with them till I retired which was about ten years ago. And after I retired from them, I started my own appraisal business and farm management business. That’s what I’m still doing—have stayed quite busy.

Neurohr You continued to use the training that you received here, then it sounds like, in all the different jobs that you did.

C. Williams Yes.

Neurohr So do you think that the university or the college prepared you well for your different positions?

C. Williams Yes and no. You got out of it what you put into it. I always wished that I had taken more appraisal courses when I was here, but they were just barely getting started and it felt like the professors who were teaching it didn’t know a hell of a lot more than I knew. So we thought we better spend more time doing other classes and I didn’t take any appraisal courses here. One thing I always missed, and always have regretted, that I didn’t learn to fly while I was here. I could have done that under the G.I. Bill, but I couldn’t get it worked in.

Neurohr Sounds like you had a demanding schedule, as many hours as you were taking already.

M. Williams He did.

C. Williams I told myself I was going to get out of there in three years, but we didn’t.

Neurohr Did you continue in the nursing profession Marcia?

M. Williams Well, yes. I’ve worked off and on for fifty years, too. But I had five children so I did take some years off because of that but yes, I have worked in the nursing field, in different things—the office, hospital, taking care of disabled. A lot of different areas—loved it all.

C. Williams When she decided to quit, she just sent her license in and said, “This is over with.” No one else could call her and ask her to come to work because she wasn’t legal anymore.

M. Williams Well, nurses are so much in demand anymore that if you don’t—the only way I knew to completely leave that field was to let my license go. So that’s what I did, but I worked until I was seventy.

Neurohr How many times have you come back for Homecoming over the years?

M. Williams Well, we’ve been here a few times, when the children were little.

Neurohr You brought your children down to Stillwater?

M. Williams Mm-hmm.

Neurohr I bet that was fun. Did you take them and show them the house you used to live in?

M. Williams Yes we’ve driven by there, and showed them through the Student Union, and they loved that.

Neurohr The Library was fairly new when you were going to school here wasn’t it?

C. Williams Yes.

Neurohr What do you remember about the Library?

C. Williams I spent a lot of time there.

Neurohr Did you? (Laughs)

M. Williams We walked through there this afternoon…

Neurohr Oh good.

M. Williams …just to see what it looked like.

Neurohr How has it changed?

M. Williams You’d have to answer that.

C. Williams It doesn’t appear like there's as many books on the second floor as there used to be.

Neurohr We have a lot of offices on the second floor, now.

C. Williams That’s what it looked like. You know we used to spend a lot of time down in that southwest corner of the Library, where there’d be three or four of us in there. I always remember, I had an old buddy from Ponca City that would come down and see us every once in a while. There were three or four of us in there working on some kind of econ problem—determining the economic life of a bull. And this old buddy from Ponca City till ,I think, the day he died was wondering how we could figure the economic life of a bull but that was the problem assigned to us, and it was the problem we were working on. (Laughter)

Neurohr Oh my.

C. Williams I thought about that when we walked in over there, I said “Well, I wonder if ol’ John is…,” we walked in here thinking. He’s been dead ten

years or so.

Neurohr Oh that’s a good story. Well someone said earlier that there were few buildings on campus that were air-conditioned but the Library was.

C. Williams That’s right.

Neurohr The few places that were popular places for students to go…

C. Williams Of course.

Neurohr …during that time. Do you have anything else you want to talk about for the interview today?

C. Williams I don’t. Do you?

M. Williams I want to try and find out if the doctor I worked for is still alive. I don’t know whether he might be or not. I haven’t heard from him for years.

Neurohr Will you look in a phonebook maybe?

M. Williams Well that’s the only way I know. Of course the hospital over there is so big and different than it used to be, because where I worked was the old hospital, and of course all that—I don’t think there's any of that even left. So all that has changed a great deal.

Neurohr But it was basically in the same location on Sixth Avenue?

M. Williams It was. So, it’s just grown.

Neurohr Yes it has, it certainly has. Do you have any advice for students today— that you would share with students?

C. Williams That you get out of it what you put into it.

M. Williams Work hard, and enjoy.

C. Williams If you’ve come to play that’s what you’re going to get. If you’ve come to get an education, you’ve got to work just a little bit.

M. Williams It must be hard though, at eighteen to settle down and work that hard, because most of them are not too mature to really know what they want at that age.

Neurohr No, they change their majors a few times, but that’s part of the process at that age.

C. Williams That’s right.

M. Williams Yes.

Neurohr Trying to figure out—part of the growing up process.

M. Williams Yes.

C. Williams But you know what—today you can almost go three years without declaring a major. Back then, why you declared it the day you come on.

Neurohr I guess that’s to give them a little time to figure things out, take some of the basic English and history classes and try to figure out what direction they want to go in.

C. Williams You know a lot of students and a lot of parents today are sending their kids to junior college or even taking a lot of it on the computer—English and the basic courses that are required before they get there. Particularly in Kansas where the expenses have gone up there. They can go two years at junior college for what one year cost at the state college.

M. Williams But I’m sure OSU probably has plenty of satellite schools, too. They’re bound to have.

Neurohr There's actually a partnership between Northern Oklahoma College and OSU. There’s a partnership with them and they have a branch campus here in Stillwater, so some students will start out taking classes there and then start taking classes here. In fact, it’s on Hall of Fame, right here close to our campus and those students can use the Library and it’s another way for those students to get started with their education.

M. Williams Well that’s what I mean. I think the big schools are trying to make it easier for kids to save some of their expenses and to still get their education, maybe a little closer to their homes, so they won’t have to have that immediate expense, maybe for a while.

Neurohr It’s been a great interview, thank you so much for participating in this project. We really do appreciate it.

C. Williams Well, I feel kind of honored to be asked.

Neurohr I know you’ll have a wonderful reunion, in a little while at the Foundation.

M. Williams Yes, we appreciate this. Thank you, Karen.

Neurohr You’re welcome.

------End of interview ------