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OTTO BRYAN NEELY August 21, 1900 - January 1, 1987; 86 years old
By Roy "Buddy" Neely Jr.
Otto was born while the family of his father Will Henry lived on and worked a rented farm in Ellis County, Texas near the small town of Maypearl. It was late summer and the cotton bolls were starting to appear. Soon the foliage would begin to turn, the bolls would open, and Otto's older brothers would be in the white fields pulling their sacks down long rows as they harvested the crop by hand. It would be many decades before the development of mechanical strippers to ease that onerous task. Will's wagon was loaded and tromped to capacity before he drove the team of mules three miles to the gin at the railroad tracks in town. Many bales of cotton those fall days from productive Ellis County farms filled boxcar after boxcar on trains headed to the port at Galveston where they were loaded onto ships bound for the rapidly growing textile industry on America's east coast. Times were better for the Will Neely family, at least compared to the difficult struggle for survival back in Blount County, Alabama, where they had come from eight years previously (as more fully described in the From Ulster to Texas: 6 Generations of Neelys Project and the Will Henry Neely Project). Will had made progress on various rented or sharecropped farms, so that he was then operating on the "home place" of landowner and banker R. Wells Griffith, where they lived in a large 2-story house. That is not to imply that the Neely family was wealthy by any means. Nevertheless, there was always plenty for all to eat, their housing was better than anywhere previously, and Will was accumulating teams of mules and horses as well as his own farm equipment. Will planted cotton. While it was not his only crop, Miles later recalled "My dad had to have cotton, he always had cotton, it was his staple crop. He thought he couldn't make money any place else." And so it would also be with Otto. He was born to cotton and it would occupy a major part of his lifetime's work.
At the turn of the century, in 1900, well over 90% of our country's population were rural dwellers, producing food and fiber for all. Those figures are more than reversed today, one hundred years later, as only 3% of our people now live outside of cities and towns, and they produce enough to feed and clothe all America as well as for substantial exports, by employing modern agriculture's technology and equipment. We have come a long way, and those of Otto's generation, including several of his brothers and sisters, participated in and aided that evolution. Notably, Otto, Bud, Miles, and Erastus made significant contributions in production ideas that were applied not only to their own fields, but then also adopted by major farm equipment manufacturers to the ultimate benefit of all.
Will moved his family westward to Nolan County in December of 1905 where his earlier diligence and success in Ellis County had enabled him to acquire a section and a half of virgin prairie land. The house he built for his family there, and much of the story of the family's life for six years at Wastella and two years at nearby Loraine and Colorado City, as well as nine more years 164 miles further west at Barstow, are written about in some detail in Chapter 3 and will therefore not be repeated here. Altogether in those formative years we get a picture of the life and environment in which Otto grew up from age five until he was twenty-two.
What do we know about Otto? He and Edna left no children nor grandchildren from whom to inquire. Never mind. Otto was well known wherever he went and made strong impressions. Norman remembers that when he was in college, he wrote a letter addressed to "Uncle Otto and Aunt Edna, Gilbert, AZ", and it was delivered without delay. From Unice's audio tape we learn that Otto's second name came from William Jennings Bryan, noted nineteenth century lawyer, politician, and orator. It is interesting to conclude that even though Will and Ulah had received minimal formal educations, they evidently concerned themselves with events and issues of the day. Otto was a big boy, always big for his age, and at maturity was the tallest of all the nine Neely brothers. He apparently was a strong and willing worker, a quality which of course appealed to his father, Will. We get hints of what appears to have developed into a lifelong special relationship between Otto and his father, but that is not to suggest that he was especially favored over the other children. More inferred is that they worked well together and enjoyed mutual confidence and respect in that aspect of their lives. Consider the following: In the fall of the years 1911, 1912, and 1913, in Nolan and Mitchell Counties, after drought had largely decimated Will's home farm crops, especially the cotton, all the children who were big enough (including 6-year old Miles in 1913), but excepting Otto, were "sent back to East Texas to pick cotton for wages" to bring in cash for the family. It appears that Otto was chosen to stay at home and help his father with the livestock and the remnants of the sorghum crops. A decade later, in Barstow, Otto was still living at home at age 22 when his three older brothers, Erastus, Clyde, and Grover had left home in their teens. Although Otto had already started farming there partly on his own, and was acquiring teams and equipment, he continued to also work for and with his father. Later yet, in Gilbert, shortly after the move from Barstow, he and another brother (probably S.T.) partnered with Will in the first farming venture in Arizona. He later bought into (with Will) the 160 acres on Warner Road, although Will bought out Otto's half share after the first or second year. He continued to live at home until he was 28 years old, even after all his younger brothers and sisters except Dixie had gone on their own.
Otto didn't get much schooling by today's standards, although much more than Will or his grandfather got. Will went "to about the fourth grade", while Theophilus, although the 1860 census lists him as "in school" at age 11, was not able to read or write as an adult. There was a one-room school within walking distance (two miles) of the Neely home at Wastella, where Otto started as a six-year old. It is not clear just when he abandoned schooling; it may have been after a year at Barstow. It is well known that he took great pride in his many accomplishments and recognition in later life in spite of the fact that "he never went past the eighth grade." He seems to have been motivated to succeed partly by the very fact that he wanted to prove that he could do so in spite of his lack of formal education. There is little doubt that Otto was of a strong mind. Some say that he had a temper. There are some examples. Doris remembers that "when our son Dan was just a few days old, Uncle Otto and Aunt Edna came to visit us. Dan was squalling like he wanted the whole world to know he was hungry. Uncle Otto commented that he had the Neely temper. Aunt Edna shot back almost instantly with, 'No he doesn't. The Neelys never gave any of theirs away'." It is said that twice in his life, Otto was under a peace bond in Gilbert; further details are either not remembered or not divulged. At about age ten or twelve in Nolan County, he got into a fight in the fields one day with his brother Roy, who was two years older but still smaller, for which he paid by getting "the daylights whipped out of him" by his mother, Ulah. Norman: "Otto had a man working for him who was driving a truck in which the clutch pedal unscrewed. The man pushed the pedal to the floor and revved the engine. Even as bad as his hearing was, Otto heard it, hit the man in the mouth and knocked out several teeth and pulled him out of the truck. Instant termination of employment." One might describe Otto as "action oriented."
Otto had an employee who did not show up for work. Uncle Otto saw one of the children and asked him to tell his dad to come to work. The bigger picture was, Dad was in jail and the kids were hungry. Otto promptly went to the jail, bailed the dad out and in front of the judge told the dad in no uncertain terms with very forceful language that if he ever let his kids go hungry again he would beat him to death. The judge added that he would see that Uncle Otto did not go to jail if he did. Next, Otto gave the dad money to go to the store and get items that the kids could eat right then without preparation. He supervised the process. He was a softie where kids were concerned. It is a well known and often repeated factual story that he would give any kid on the street a dollar the first time he called him "Uncle Otto." He loved to be known as every child's uncle.
Which leads us to other examples of the same. When Norman was little, Otto and Edna wanted to adopt him. The thinking was that while Otto and Edna could not have children of their own, Otie and Orval could produce any number more to take his place. Actually, Otto and Edna were very close with Orval and Otie, and the two families spent a lot of time together. From Muriel: "Aunt Edna and Uncle Otto were the legal guardians for the Knox kids until we were 18 years old. We stayed overnight with them many times and I remember the old home well. That kitchen seemed like a playhouse kitchen. How excited I was when their new home and kitchen were built. I always felt special and loved during those short stays ... Uncle Otto always had a stick of gum in his shirt pocket when I was a child, and after a big hug and 'no vale cinco centavos,' he let me find the gum, one stick." Rosemary relates that "Uncle Otto tried to buy me a leather belt with silver buckle, but I wouldn't let him because I was afraid he didn't have enough money." Little did she know. Virginia was sent to live in the Otto Neely home for a while about 1931 when her father Erastus was clearing desert land for cotton at Palo Verde and her mother, Lutie, didn't feel that the "cotton camp" environment was suitable for her eleven year old daughter. Earlier, Otto had given Virginia a fox terrier puppy, saying it needed a home. He also brought her some guinea pigs and helped Erastus build a pen for them. Bill Cornett also stayed for some time with Uncle Otto and Aunt Edna in 1933. From Bill's oral autobiography on audio tape: "I milked cows for them. They had a small dairy, I think nine cows. They bottled fresh milk to deliver to the town of Gilbert. In those days many people did not lock their houses, so Otto put the milk in their refrigerators." Another cousin remembers Otto declining a certain dish at a church pot luck supper that he knew came from a kitchen where the refrigerator (ice box) was disgustingly unsanitary. There was an unusual great flood in Gilbert in that time, which is documented by a photograph showing Otto delivering milk on horseback, riding down the Gilbert street filled with water. Why had Otto departed from cotton farming and turned to a completely new venture, a "small dairy?" We can only surmise that during some of the depression years, no money could be made farming cotton because (from Miles' tape) "cotton prices were bad and they went from bad to worse." Will's Coolidge venture was terminated; Erastus "went bust" at Palo Verde; Unice fell on extremely hard times and went to work with Roy in the feed store in Kerrville, Texas, as did Miles who decided to get out of farming. So Otto apparently had, as did his father before him when faced with adversity, turned to some other way to make a living. They didn't give up.
Otto and Edna married on Christmas day, 1928, after which Otto no longer lived at home with his parents. Of course. The two were more than devoted to each other. From Virginia, observing during her stay there: "They were passionately in love. Little pats, touches and an occasional kiss were in their every day life. One day I walked into the kitchen and interrupted a real clinch. They jumped apart as if shot. As a budding seventh grader, I thought, at their old age (31 years) they still acted like that?" Not only Virginia, but many others confirmed Otto and Edna's lifelong romance. Some said that "Otto worshipped Edna." Every Valentine's Day he gave Edna a heart-shaped box of candy. Over the years they became larger and more elaborate. All the boxes were kept and displayed on their hall wall. From Barbara Ruth: "Uncle Otto's favorite color was red. He always drove a red pick-up. In fact, Norman used to think that all it took to be a successful farmer was to drive around in a red pick-up. Aunt Edna often wore red clothes to please Uncle Otto, and she looked good in them too. They also had red roosters wallpaper in their breakfast room. When they bought their Cadillac, the closest thing to red they could get was a dusty rose."
It was mentioned above that in earlier years at Wastella and Barstow, Otto became known for hard work and being industrious. He never let up. He always wore gloves. Norman does not remember ever seeing him outside without them. One time Otto sold hay to the Chandler Heights area and loaded the entire boxcar by himself.
He had a way with animals. Three horses were loose in the field; Otto called "Hey, hey, hey, into the corral" and all three would stop, circle the well and go into their stalls. All Otto had to do was shut the gates. One horse was called Powder; he had exceptionally big feet. It was hard to find shoes big enough for him. Otto would have him shod, take him home to do the task at hand, and then pull the shoes off and hang them up until the next time they were needed. Norman: "Otto had a racing mare named C-Note. The mare had cost $100. He wanted to work the mare at a fast trot. To train C-Note, he took her out on a lead and started out with her beside his pickup. He would take off the lead and the mare trotted free beside the truck. If she broke into a gallop, he would say, 'Whoa horse', and she would drop back into the trot." Muriel: "He had a quarter horse named C-Note and one time we went to the desert to see a race between two horses. To define the quarter of a mile, one pickup was the starting line and the second pickup drove a quarter of a mile and stopped - that was the finish line." He had a saddle horse that he had trained to jump up into his pickup when it was time to travel some distance. No rope or other restraint, just Otto's command. Norman has Otto's saddle and spurs. The saddle was made by F. N. Porter Saddlery of Phoenix. Both saddle and spurs have his name stamped on them.
Although few specifics are available, it is clear that Otto was a very good farmer and was (undoubtedly with Edna's help) an astute business man as well. He accumulated a great deal and farmed three sections in the later decades of his life. His cotton was clean and he took obvious pride in showing it to a visitor from Texas who observed that every row was perfect and there was not a weed to be seen for miles. The visitor wondered to himself how many dozens of such good crops of cotton Otto had produced over his lifetime. His three section ranch was later leased to Norman., and later yet it was purchased by the Knox family. His success was measured in attention to details as well as the big picture. While doing business with the Valley Bank, Otto inquired as to what they considered a year to be. The unsuspecting answer was 365 days. Otto pointed out that they were calculating interest on twelve 30-day periods which amounted to only 360 days. So that they would not get reminded of it every time Otto did business with them, the bank issued him a check for $3 and some cents additional interest.
When Otto was growing watermelons one year, he called his broker daily to find out how many tons would be needed the following day. His phone was on a party line and on one certain day, Otto could not get through. He called the telephone company to order a private line to be installed the next day. When told that one could not be installed for six weeks, he then called the Denver office of AT & T, making the same request and suggesting that they check their stockholder list. Edna had invested all her savings, while teaching, in AT & T stock, and Otto had made further such investments from cash generated from his farms. He got his line the next day. It is not frequently mentioned, but is doubtless a fact that Otto made substantial financial gains from investing in stocks, as well as from farming.
In later years he was generous as long as things were done his way. The Baptist Church Grandma Neely had attended had to stop construction for lack of funds; Otto found out about it and gave the money to finish the building. He built a parsonage for the Methodist Church, bought the Gilbert High School to be turned into the Historical Society Museum, built a cottage for Boy's Ranch, and sponsored Little League teams, among other charities. He offered four one-year college scholarships to Gilbert High School seniors. Somehow it was mistakenly interpreted to be four four-year scholarships. Even so, Otto honored that, though it had not been his original intention. Sadly, only one of the recipients even said thank you, so Otto stopped giving the scholarships. He offered to build Gilbert a library. Gilbert wanted money instead so they could get matching funds. That didn't suit Otto and consequently they did not receive any money, nor the library Otto had offered to build. Otto served for many years on the board of the Salt River Project, fifteen of those when Joe Bob also was a member. June remembers that many years ago, he was a member of the Gilbert School Board, at a time when conservative policies included a requirement that teachers be non-smokers, and that a husband and wife could not be employed to teach at the same time. It is understood that Otto served in a number of other civic positions as well.
It is clear that Uncle Otto cared for and was concerned about his extended family. His name frequently appears in the other essays prepared for this book by the sons and daughters of his brothers and sisters. Look for them. He gave Otie and Orval sterling flatware, he advised Miles and helped him get a job managing a large cotton farm, he was "chauffeur" for Muriel and Roger departing their wedding to their honeymoon hotel, he helped Sarah Dixie in times of need, he and Edna had various of their nieces and nephews living with them from time to time, and doubtless many other examples not known to this writer.