Clara and Cleo Hopper in the 1920s

This snapshot is Clara Beatrice Hopper taken about 1926 at Sapulpa, Oklahoma. She's showing off both her skirt and her legs. Clara was my Grandma Mills. At this time, she was a young single woman with many admirers. She worked as a telephone operator in Sapulpa for a number of years until she married my Grandpa in 1933. She sent most of her earnings home to help her parents provide for their younger children. During her time in Sapulpa, which was then a boomtown, she lived with her aunt, Mrs. Jimmie (Evans) Thompson. This happy shot is taken from one of Clara’s old photo albums, which is filled with images documenting her flapper days in Sapulpa.

The other shot is Clara, taken with her younger sister, Cleo (on the left), just a couple of years later, about 1928. Cleo also worked at the phone company in Sapulpa. My Grandma Clara passed away August 13, 1979, only 36 days after my Grandpa died, and is buried at Memory Gardens Cemetery in my hometown of Pampa, Texas. Aunt Cleo died in 1989 and is buried at the Archer City, Texas Cemetery.

© 2008, copyright Stephen Mills

Marlin and Pauline Mills

This sweet old snapshot is my Grandpa Marlin Mills and his sister, Pauline. It was made on the front porch of their home near Kiefer, Creek County, Oklahoma, probably in the spring of 1918.

This happy time preceded significant turmoil in their young lives, as their younger brother, Jack, would soon die at the age of 18 months. In the emotional aftermath of his death, their mother, Nellie (Shoultz) Mills insisted that the family should return to their home and kinfolk in Gibson County, Indiana. They did so, and are recorded there in the 1920 census. Great-grandfather Roy Mills knew it was a bad move, as he could never make as good of a living there as he could working in the Oklahoma oilfields.

The family moved back to the Kiefer/Mounds area in 1921 and he resumed his job with Texaco (then known as the Texas Company). Nellie's father, Marshall Allen Shoultz, cried after they left Indiana, telling his wife and children that they would never see Nellie again. He was right, as less than a year later, in February of 1922, Nellie died of tuberculosis at the age of 28. She left behind three children under the age of 10.

My Grandpa, Marlin Mills, who was known for years as Barney, died in 1979 and is buried at the Memory Gardens Cemetery in my hometown of Pampa, Texas. My great-aunt, Pauline (Mills) Gattis, is 94 years old at this writing and living in Springfield, Illinois. Their brother Jack died in 1918 and is buried at the Mounds, Oklahoma Cemetery, alongside his parents. Their other brother, Leonard Dale Mills, never married and was killed in Italy during World War II. He was only 25.

This old photo, which originally belonged to my great-great grandparents Marshall and Eva Shoultz, was sent to me in 1979 by my great-grandmother's sister, Mrs. Ruby Shoultz Hartup, of Princeton, Indiana. She also shared her memory of Roy and Nellie and the children stopping by their house to say goodbye as they left Indiana in 1921, and her father's emotional reaction to their departure.

© 2008, copyright Stephen Mills