Clara was born Clara Wokasch in a log cabin on a farm near Frazee, Becker Co., MN. She was the fifth child of the eight children born to Frantz and Louisa (Fenske) Wokash. They were so poor they could hardly feed eight children. They would go to Fargo, ND, and pick up potatoes for fifty cents a day. Florence D. (Flon) Omans and his wife "Matie" were neighbors of the Wokaschs. Clara spent a lot of time at the Omans house. Since the Omans did not have a daughter Clara's parents thought she would have a better life living with the Omans. When Clara was in the first grade, at the age of six, she went to live with the Omans. Six months after moving in with the Omans they moved to Kamiah, Idaho. Clara never saw her folks and most of her brothers and sisters again. Clara says she could never find any evidence that she was adopted, even though the Omans said she was. But she had food and nice clothes and a nice home. She grew up in Idaho, went to school and graduated from Kamiah High School in 1923. Clara went to primary school at the same school where Matie taught. Clara couldn't speak English, only German, until she was eight years old. She was the only white child in the school where Matie taught. The school was on the other side of the river from Kamiah. Each day they walked to the Indian Government School. Later the Omans moved into a house near the school which was part of the Government sponsored unit.

There were two Indian villages on the outskirts of Kamiah. The Lolo Trail ran along the east side of the river, it is now Highway #12. Lewis and Clark followed this trail in 1805. The village on the east side of the river is where Lewis and Clark stopped. One of Lewis and Clark's men was sick. The Indians doctored him through the winter until he recovered. In appreciation Lewis and Clark's men dug a well which the Indians continued to use for many years. All paths from the Indian teepees and homes led to the well.

After graduation from Kamiah High School in 1923, Clara moved with her family to St. Joseph, MO. There she got a job with the St. Joseph Candy Factory for the summer. In the fall she enrolled at Northwest Missouri State Teachers College in Marysville, MO. She graduated in the spring of 1926 with an Elementary Teaching Certificate. It was about 1927 when she added "Belle" to her name "becaue it was stylish to do so." In the fall of 1926 she got her first teaching job at Mt. Tabor, a country school near Martinsville, MO. She taught 4 years at Mt. Tabor and for one or two years at Martinsville.

source: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=jdk47&id=I49593