| Name | Viola HAWKINS  |
| Birth | 1 Apr 1898, Dodge, TX |
| Death | 8 Dec 1959, Mangum, OK Age: 61 |
| Burial | Riverside, Cemetery, Mangum, OK |
| Father | Matthew HAWKINS |
| Mother | Francis WHITE (-1967) |
| 1 | James Calvin McELROY |
| Birth | 17 Mar 1891, Durwood, Indian Territory |
| Death | 4 Aug 1963, Mangum, OK Age: 72 |
| Burial | Riverside Cemetery, Mangum, OK |
| Father | John Wesley McELROY (1862-1935) |
| Mother | Amelia McCOWAN (1866-1918) |
| Children | Edith Francis (1923-1997) |
| Marvin (-1918) | |
| James Veachel (1919-1992) | |
| Ralph Alexander (1921-) | |
| Earl (1926-2002) |
Cal's father was John Westley McElroy, only child of James Alexander McElroy and his first wife, Mary Jones. After her death, "Elic" married her sister Sarah. Elic and Sarah, along with their granddaughter Jenny and Amelia's grandmother Marier Dodge, are buried in Tribbey Cemetery. Elic was a veteran (apparently reluctant) of the Civil War. (Missouri militia Troops?) Family tales have him hiding in the cornfield to avoid the Conscription agents. After the war, he is said to have traveled to California, where he had relatives, and later to have made and lost a good deal of money on wheat in Texas. I assume, but don't know, that J W and Elic got in on the Oklahoma Land Run.
J W was a farmer all his life, lost the farm (located just east of the Tribbey Cemetery) sometime before WW1, due to some action of the government and moved to Duke, Oklahoma where he farmed (he had a fruit orchard of some size) and preached in the Church of Christ. This business of the lost farm was a sore point with Cal all his life, as he was heard later to say that he would not own land, so the Govt. could not take it away from him. As far as I know, he was a renter, lessee, or tenant on every farm he ever worked, or house he lived in.
Amelis died in 1918, probably of the Spanish Flu. J W married again, a widow named Sarah Kennedy, who out lived him and is buried in California, though she has a stone in the Duke Rock Cemetery, where J W, Amelia, their daughter Meba (Babe) and Cal's first born child, Marvin, who also died in 1918, are buried. 1918 must have been a pretty bad year for Cal; losing mother and son so close.
Cal grew up in Pottawatomie County (Pot County) in a typical farm environment and upbringing. I heard few stories of his boyhood (there was one about him and his brother Luther sneaking eggs and sucking them) but I gather he was not a "preacher's pride", rather the opposite. I know he was roaming the country as a hired farm hand by the time he got his growth. He probably had other non-farm jobs. I know he briefly drove streetcars in Oklahoma City after he married.
He married Viola Hawkins August 1, 1915, in McClain County. They soon enough moved to Greer County, where perhaps he had worked, or perhaps his father had already relocated there. Cal and Viola lived on Horse Branch and farmed until 1918. I (overheard) from Viola's sisters, that she lost their first child to a late miscarriage. This may have been a misunderstanding on my part, as I never got to confirm it. At any rate, they left Horse Branch, and according to my mothers memories (her own and things her mother told her) living for the next few years, moving around, living in tents and wagons, making a living by Cal trading horses and mules. He was apparently a good trader. There is mention of time spent around Hobart, and in eastern Oklahoma.
According to mom, he had about a 3rd grade education, though he wrote and spoke as well as most of his peers. He grew up and remained Church of Christ all his life, though he was disdainful of later day preachers, saying that he knew the bible better than most of them.
James Veachel was born in 1919, around Purcell. Ralph Alexander in 1921, in Greer County. My mother, Edith Francis , in 1923, in her grandparents house in McClain county, where they had traveled by wagon, and where here parents were living in a tent in the yard. Earl Roy was born in 1926, when they were farming the Jackson Place, just north of Elm Fork or Red River. My grandmother was pregnant again at least once, sometime around 1930, I gather with twins, but it was a tubal pregnancy, and she had an emergency operation, apparently coming very close to death. Mom and Earl both repeated hearing their father speak of his wife's intestines being laid out on her stomach.
Cal and Viola (the grandkids called her Mackie) settled for a long while at White Flat, east of Reed, OK. Mom's report cards have here there from 1934 to 1939. Earlier, when Ralph was born and later in the 20's, they lived in Mangum, where Mom started school at the old school in the south part of town, and where she remembers a big smoke for a fire, and being terribly frightened that her Dad was caught by the fire. They lived also in Reed, before White Flat, and Cal worked his sister, Vesters farm for a while, after her husband died of the effects of being gassed in WWl. In 1939, they lived on the Wetzel place, just north of Mangum.
Cal worked a good deal for the WPA and PWA in the 1930's. He helped plant the first shelterbelt in the USA, and poured a good many road culverts mostly in the Reed-White Flat area. I suspect this kept them fed during the Dust Bowl years, although Mom recalled they made some kind of crop during all , except one of those years. (She of course didn't know how good the crops were.) She recalls the usual pattern of operation was a visit to the banker, at the start of the year, when Lacey Noble's greeting was, "Hello, Call. How much do you need this year?"
At any rate, by 1940 cal was out of farming, running a gas station in Mangum. Later he drove a heating oil truck around the county. It was perhaps at this time or a little earlier, that he took the older boys and did cotton picking during harvest, in Texas as well as Oklahoma. I don't recall hearing of other jobs, but he did what most men of that time did; he worked any job he could that would support his family.
(One possibly unexpected result of one job: my possibly overdue mother went along with him on his fuel deliveries on those rough country roads; and my twin brothers arrived the next day.)
In 1947, Cal and viola moved to Peoria, Arizona, where his youngest brother Robert lived. He worked the next three years with Robert who was a labor contractor. They (and we, after mom took her four kids out in December 1947) lived in a "Tourist camp" on the west side of Peoria. My earliest memory of Paw-Paw is being about five years old, sitting in his lap, leaning back against his comfortable pot-belly, listening to the "Lone Ranger" on the radio.
We moved to Texas in October 1950, and Mackie & Paw-Paw had moved to Oakland, California a month earlier. They took Carol, my sister, along with them, and she lived with them for a while.
J.C. got a job at a cannery there (only job I know about) and worked there till he retired in 1956. The only story I remember about this job was the time he saw a whole mouse, dead, in a can of spinach about to be topped. The only other story was the time he was looking up other McElroy's he found in the area. He went to a "McElroy" address, but the "McElroy" who opened the door was a large black man. J.C. just turned around and left. My brothers, Joe and Roy (the twins) lived with them for about nine months in 1952-1953.
Upon retirement, Cal and viola returned to magnum, to the house on Friendship Street, and lived there till Mackie died in 1959. Afterwards, Paw-Paw lived in various places around Mangum, and was living near Hwy. 283, where the federal housing is now, when he died in 1963. He had been having health problems, including strokes, and was in the hospital. I donÕt know if he had another stroke there, but I know he got really mad at the nurses there. The way many nurses speak to their patients (as to a miss-behaving retarded child) would have driven Cal to a fury. He might have given himself a stroke. He is buried near Mackie in Riverside Cemetery in Mangum.
What kind of man was he? He had a strong personality. He was positive and had confidence in himself; he felt, I think, little or no need to apologize for or doubt himself or his beliefs; nor need to defer to anyone, for any reason. Without ever hearing specific stories from his peers in Mangum, I never the less gathered the very distinct impression that all regarded cal McElroy as no man to trifle with. He had a "hot temper". Two stories I did hear, with few details: At different times, for unstated offenses, he knocked both of his grown sons on their rears. Both were quite a bit more sizeable than him. (But they stayed close enough, that years later he felt comfortable borrowing money from Ralph.)
Second story from my grandfather Albert Collinsworth: When they were both working for WPA, They had a disagreement. Grandpa Albert was very careful with his words when he told us grandsons about this, but I think the two came to blows, or nearly so. I know they and their wives were always quite correct to each other in later years.
That I leave no false impression, I record that he was in no way a loud, disagreeable, or frightening man, not in the least. His grandkids all loved him, and he loved them too, and showed it. He was a pleasant man, but not much of a smiler; of the many photos of him he is smiling in only one, but that one is more in accord with my memories of him that the serious ones. Of course in that one he is grinning at his brother Robert, and Uncle Robert could get a grin out of a wooden statue.
I know he loved his wife all his life (they were still kissing like newlyweds when they'd been married nearly 40 years) and I think he was sort of lost when she died
He was a man in full color, and I am proud to be kin to him.
By James Collinworth,