Edith McCullough Perry:
My Story

When Gladys finished High School (1915) and was ready for the University, and the two younger girls were in High School, we moved to Fayetteville, sold our home at 1022 and rented a cottage on North College Avenue. Not long after that we received some money from an investment Papa had made, enough to buy a Buick touring car, which was a treasure on the days when one of us did not want to make that long hilly walk to the University, and a joy on picnics to Bella Vista. Maibelle and Marguerite enrolled in Fayetteville High School, Gladys in the University as a Freshman, and I as a Special Student, taking art courses and Education courses. I was required to take English I; I didn't mind, but rather enjoyed it. World War I came along and changed my plans. I took an L.I. (Licentiate of Instruction) and went out to teach until the war was over.

Meeting Dr. Grand (the Head of the Education Department who was in charge of the L.I. teachers) he told me of a place he had in mind for me. It was in Greenwood, 18 miles South of Fort Smith. He applied for me and I went to Greenwood for the 1918-1919 school year. I found a home with the Eli Hesters--after spending one night in the Holly Hotel where I met two more new teachers. They were Mr. Sone and Mr. Wood, both 4-F and had come to teach History and Science. Mr. Sone had only one arm and Mr. Wood had only part of his fingers on his right hand. Mrs. Hester had been cook for someone and she was sure of my ration of sugar, she took me on. I could have been satisfied there, but for some reason they moved back to Fort Smith and I moved next door for the rest of the year with Mrs. Bell and her daughter Grace who was a teacher in the grades.

School work was pleasant. Ralph was in my 8th grade class and Hugh was in English 10. Hugh's face was familiar to me because he came down from Fort Smith from visiting his Grandmother Johnson, on the same train that I rode down on. I had seen him standing out at the end of the train, gazing dreamily at the distant landscape, making me think, "That's the saddest looking boy I ever saw." His mother had died that summer and Dr. Grant had told me about that family but I didn't connect the two. There were five boys, Dan older and was away in service of his Country, Ralph, and the two younger, Jim and Fred, in the grades. Their Father was the beloved family doctor and the whole town grieved with them.

I had two students, Pryor Jones and Anne Rachels, both red-headed, who might have given me trouble. I won them both to Christ and made them loyal friends. Ralph moved up close to me and was another good friend. I'm sure he reported at home everything I said or did.

Then the war was over and the boys and men started coming back home. So I knew I would not teach the following year.

At the Baptist Church I had met Dr. J.T. Perry, the father of the boys. The family was the nicest in town. Since their mother's death they had had Grandmother Johnson keeping house for them.

In the spring I was asked to teach the following year and I did not answer promptly, so Dr. Perry (A member of the school board) called me to ask for my answer. I told him I wanted to talk to someone on the board about it, and he asked if he would do. I told him I would come to his office. So I did. I had never been in his office before, but I'm sure he had his plans all laid out before I got there. I'm sure he had talked it all over with his sons, for what he said was not on an impulse. He knew I was headed toward full-time Christian Service and he asked me to marry him and serve there. It was so completely unexpected and I was aware that it would be so easy to make a mistake at that point in my life. But I was in a prayerful state and being subject to God's Will, I was not going to scorn His leading. So I said to myself and to him, "This might just be the right place for me." He was sure it was, and I have never regretted it. As I look back for forty years of widowhood, it is abundantly clear that I had the leading for which I had prayed. (see MY PLACE)

In the spring Mama came down to see me and meet him for I had written her that the best man in the world had asked me to marry him. She was favorable impressed.

In their home was a little deaf lady named Mattie Henderson. She was cooking and keeping house for them sometimes when their Grandmother had to be with another of her daughters. When Dr. Perry told Mattie that he was marrying me that summer, she said, "I will go!", but he said, "No, you'll stay; you and she will become good friends." How right he was, only time would tell. Mother Johnson had to leave to go to her daughter, Myrtle, who was ill.

So, back to Fayetteville to get ready for my July 17th wedding. Mama was glad for me, and, of course, the sisters had no reason not to be, since they had not met him. There was some sewing--clothes and linens kept us busy that six weeks. There was no china painting on that shady screened-in back porch that summer as there had been on other summers. Mama and Marguerite were moving back to Little Rock that fall. Gladys and Maibelle were going out to teach.

We wanted a quiet early-morning wedding, with just my mother and sisters. He drove up from Greenwood, bringing our Pastor and his wife, who sang for me. She sang "At Dawning". (They took the car back to Greenwood and Ralph drove it to Fort Smith to meet the train when we returned.)

We went to Tulsa on the "Katy" railroad. He rode free because he was the Physician for that company. We were met by his brother, Dr. M. L. and we spent the weekend with him and his family. His wife was Anna Johnson, a sister to his first wife, and they had four sons, John, Sidney, Layne and Bruce. The two sets of boys totalling nine were double cousins.

While were were in Tulsa, Mama mailed out the announcements from Fayetteville, and Dr. J. T. bought into M. L.'s practice and signed the papers to buy a house for us at 811 N. Elwood. Then we returned to Greenwood to close up and move into that home in time for school to start. Ralph met us in Fort Smith when our train came in, and drove us to their home in Greenwood. The others were all there, including Dan, who was home from the service. They all came out to meet us as we got out of the car and all of them called me "Mama" by previous agreement. They had decided to do it right at the very first and it would never be hard after that. They were right; they had called their own Mother "Mother", so I have always been "Mama".

Little Mattie Henderson had gone back to her teaching post at the State School for the Deaf at Little Rock, and the boys were doing their own housekeeping.

So we came to Tulsa, and the boys all enrolled in school:--Dan at Kendall College which was later to become Tulsa University, Hugh and Ralph at Central High School and Jim and Fred in Osage Elementary School, now demolished for a free-way.

The house at 811 was quite new and was almost palatial to them with its shining oak floors and light woodwork, plus so many closets. A sleeping porch was added immediately to accommodate three double beds, and the room off which it was built became their study room and dressing room. It had been the breakfast room and back door, but it was on the opposite side of the house from the driveway. So a new breakfast room and refrigerator room and back door were built on the kitchen side of the house. The refrigerator was an ice box, a Frost King, perfectly round, with top for ice and bottom for food. The top opened on top and big cakes of ice were put in regularly, from a horse-drawn wagon which came up the street. Under the ice was a flat disc-shaped water tank which cooled our drinking water. It was filled from a large glass container which sat up on the side of the ice box, and was filled from the top from bottles of drinking water that were bought. The cold water came to a spigot on the outside of the box, where it was handy for all those thirsty boys. The lower shelves were for food, and the shelves rotated for accessibility, like a lazy susan. Milk was brought in quarts only, six of them at a time, usually by whichever one of the boys was working there. The boys all had jobs after school, Saturdays and summers. Some of them worked at the Post Office, too.

At the back of the yard was the garage and two rooms used for servants' quarters. A couple lived there, the man working elsewhere and the wife doing day work for me. Every morning after breakfast she came in to clean and she did all the washing and ironing except for the shirts and sheets which were sent out to a laundry.

Mattie Henderson came every summer to spend some time with us. We became good and lasting friends as he had predicted. The next summer when she came I was wearing a maternity corset for I was expecting my own baby in the winter. The boys were big and friendly and I was very modest so I wanted to conceal my condition with a corset. When Mattie learned I was to have a baby (I was having a "girl"), she told me if I would have my baby call her "Aunt Mattie", she would give her a $5.00 gold piece. I did, she did, and it started Louise's savings account which later was applied on the purchase of her grand piano.

I felt good during my pregnancy. Even on the day she was born, Dec. 24, 1920, I got up on time, stirred biscuits for breakfast (Ralph had already done bacon and eggs) and dusted my house. About noon I went to bed. All babies were born at home in those days, and I had felt wonderful all through the preceding months, so nothing unusual was expected. Dr. M.L.. had been asked to come over and deliver me, and he brought with him a nurse, Mrs. Palmer, who prove very valuable during the next few weeks.

All the boys had been asked to leave the house (it was Christmas Eve, afternoon, and excitement was high). But Hugh had demurred, suggesting that perhaps one of them should stay to answer the door or the phone or take care of any unexpected visit. So, he stayed, studying at his table in that back room, and the others all went over to Uncle M.L.'s home to wait for a phone call that would tell them to come home.

The birth was easy and normal, about 4:00 in the afternoon; when M.L. said, "It's a girl!", I said, "I know it." I had never had any doubt about that; I had taken on a whole house full of boys, and needed a daughter. When someone called to Hugh through the back door of the bathroom that it was a girl and a successful ordeal, he said, "Good!" and pushed back his chair. But he was told to wait just a few minutes before coming in.

Since it had been Christmas week for several days, and the wrappings were still exposed somewhere in the house, I asked someone to bring me a tag and a pen and I wrote "To Daddy and the boys from Mother" and pinned it on Louise's blanket. Then they placed her in her bassinet and put her by the Christmas Tree before the other boys came home. It was a very eventful day for them all. That tag is still in Louise's baby book.

Some of the comments are interesting; Ralph called her "Skeezix" and continued it for years; Sid came in and said, "Too late, too late." I knew what he meant. Jim tiptoed in and looking down at her, said, "I don't care if you are just my half-sister, I'm going to love you just the same." He was almost in tears. Fred came in breathless with excitement. He was almost 9, not really sure about Santa Claus, and he was holding a little potted plant which he had just bought across the street at Maxwell's Greenhouse with the last of his fireworks money. Someone quipped, "Fred thought the occasion demanded flowers."

I think it did, too. It was the crowning day of my life and the final capstone of God's approval of my marriage.

"Oh, I am the saint from the frozen North
I come at the Christmas time.
I drive my reindeer gaily forth
With the jingling, jingling sleighbell chime.

"I fill all the stockings the wee ones hang
I stand by each small bed white
Then hasten away with a merry clang
O'er all the world tonight.

Then when he finished that, all the children moved up to him, singing: --

"Santa Claus, while you are filling
Stockings black or white
Red or blue or gray or russet
Hanging high tonight,

Don't forget the poor and lonely
Give them something, do;
Make this day to us so happy
Joyful to them, too."

He replied: --

"Children, I would gladly promise
For I love the poor;
But I cannot, may not enter
Into every door.

Brief the hours twixt night and morning
Much I have to do.
Gifts to give to those I miss
That is left to you."

The children sang:--

"O, we will strive, dear Santa,
To spread the Christmas cheer,
To help the poor and needy
This glad time of the year,
To banish pain and sorrow
And everywhere to make
A Merry Merrry Christmas
For the Blessed Christ Child's sake.

Dear old Santa, we will promise you
Promise to be always kind and true;
We will make some heart the lighter
We will make some face the brighter
This we promise you, dear Santa Claus."

Then everybody sang the closing song: --

"King Winter holds again his sway,
The year is almost run,
A Merry, Merry Christmas Day
We wish for everyone.

The fir trees tall are bending low
With gifts both great and small,
And merrily swinging to and fro
The bells their greeting call.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!"