Yesterday was the annual Decoration Day at our ancestral cemetery. The weather cooperated with blue skies, sunshine (lots of sunshine) and an altogether lovely Oklahoma spring day. The cemetery is well-looked after, neat and serene. Decoration Day is an annual tradition dating back into history. My grandparents came to this very same spot, year after […]
May 3, 2022
Peggs Tornado, conclusion
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This is the second and final installment of my May 5, 1985 Daily Press article about the tornado which destroyed Peggs, Oklahoma on May 2, 1920. In 1920, Walter Neel lived with his parents, brothers and sisters on the Gid Morgan farm, two and a fourth miles southeast of Peggs. The storm went a […]
May 2, 2022
The Peggs Tornado, Part I
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Each year I re-print the story of the Peggs tornado that I wrote for The Tahlequah Daily Press in 1985. This story is important because it is a part of our history. It is a sad story, but it is also full of human compassion and courage. We should not forget the many whose lives […]
Apr 16, 2022
The Easter Egg Tree
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The following story is an excerpt from The Heritage of Etta Bend, a story my mother told me about her childhood in northeast Oklahoma. The “I” is my mother, Susie Latty Day. Mom told me this story and I wrote it to be included in The Heritage of Etta Bend in 1989. It was spring, […]
Apr 12, 2022
A Special Day
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Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States of America. The day of the week was Thursday and Easter was coming in just three days. Five days before, Mt. Vesuvius had erupted and devastated Naples, Italy. In only six days to come, the great San Francisco earthquake would hit California. In Etta Bend, Indian Territory, […]
Apr 10, 2022
The End of an Era
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Dignity in defeat and graciousness in victory. I’ve often wished, if I could go back in time, that I might have been present that day, April 9, 1865, in the parlor of Wilmer McLean of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. I would like to have seen General Robert E. Lee, tall and erect, dressed in dignity […]
