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UNICE ROSCOE NEELY 'U. R.' or 'Unice' November 15, 1902 - November 20, 1995; 93 years old
Compiled by Kate Neely Hillhouse
- from audio tapes made by Wanda Neely Sherman, recording memories about the lives of Unice Roscoe Neely and Reedye Irene Lambert Neely. That has been supplemented from conversations with U.R. and Otto B. For purposes of this narrative, the father will be referred to consistently as Unice and the son will be U.R., omitting the Jr. for simplicity.
Unice wanted to go to college in 1920 but he didn't have any money. His mother took out $50 (quite a sum then) and said that was all she could give him. When he applied to Baylor University in Waco, Texas, he found he didn't have enough credits, but one of his teachers in Barstow (small town school, West Texas) suggested that he try to "challenge" in economics, American history, social studies and one other subject. Needing only three credits, he wanted to just challenge three subjects but the teacher said, "No, no, no. You go for four." He did and passed three out of four and so was accepted. He went to Baylor, and to pay his way, worked as a custodian, helped in the kitchens and tutored other students. Coaches wanted him to come out for sports; they even arranged his work schedule so that he could. After class he went to football or track practice, then did his custodial work and then studied. In 1925, after taking a degree in Bible he was offered a position at Decatur Baptist College. There he taught Bible and coached the football and track teams. He encouraged his younger brother, Ellis (Bud), to come to college there. Bud met Velma Cousins there, who later became his wife and the mother of Bob and Bill. He also recruited his brother Miles to enroll and play football, which he did in the fall of 1926, but only stayed for a single semester, returning home to Gilbert at Christmas. During his college years, Unice missed one year due to eye trouble, therefore delaying his graduation until the fifth year. It is known that he lived in La Pryor, Texas with Clyde's family at the time of June's birth, February 12, 1924. In fact, June was named Eunice for her uncle. On Valentine's Day Unice went to a church party where he met Reedye Lambert. He asked to take her home (allowed because another couple went with them). Reedye at that time had two other boyfriends she dated by turns, but Unice soon pushed them both out. Reedye wanted to be recognized; Unice gave her that freedom, to have an opinion, even if he differed from it. She had gone to Decatur Baptist college but she had dropped out and was working at a milliner's shop making hats. At that time every woman wore a hat not only to church, but whenever she left the house.
They were married June 4,1926. Reedye was a small town gal and had not ever been around a lot of rowdy, boisterous men. After their marriage they went to Arizona for her to meet the Neely clan. Mother Neely, as every daughter-in-law has said, welcomed her into the bosom of the family with open arms. Reedye was not sure that she was welcomed so completely by some of her sisters-in-law who saw this somewhat undereducated woman (several of them were teachers) as a tiny, rather frail woman and a woman who might not be able to withstand tough farm life. However she did very well until one Sunday dinner when chicken and dumplings were served. She dipped in to serve herself and when a chicken foot came up promptly fainted. She was not a country girl.
These early days were hard. Unice lost his shirt cotton farming due to abysmally low depression cotton prices. When Reedye was expecting Wanda she hatched some turkey eggs, raised the poults and sold turkeys at Christmas time in order to have money to buy batiste and woolen goods to make baby clothes. Having no sewing machine then, she hand sewed baby garments and whipstitched the edges of cloth to make blankets for the baby who was born in March of 1930. Unice worked as a night watchman and barbering to make ends meet. At one time they were reduced to living in a tent in the shade of a tree. Unice somehow got electricity to run a fan across a pan of water to keep the tent cool. By the time U.R. was born in July of 1931 they were back in a house. U.R. was very tiny and when they brought him home from the hospital they put him in a poultry incubator, probably the same one that Reedye had used to hatch the turkey eggs. U.R. wore the same baby clothes Wanda had worn and Reedye always told how with curly hair and Wanda's dresses everybody thought he was a darling girl. In late 1931 (probably) Unice and Reedye and the children moved to Kerrville, Texas where his brothers Roy, Bud and Red then lived, and where he worked with Roy in his feed store. Wanda's earliest memories are sitting on the porch of a house in Kerrville, in the lap of a lady with hair piled up on the back of her head. She remembers the hair as brown although this was probably Grandmother Neely, she of the long auburn (call it red) hair. Wanda remembers that she smelled kind of funny, not like her mother, Reedye. She also remembers running down a tremendous hill - Buddy now says it was not much more than an incline to the Guadalupe river, but Wanda thought it was a steep hill. Someone was yelling "Stop, stop!" but she couldn't stop and Buddy tackled her. She didn't like him for it but he did stop her from running into the river. After two years in Kerrville, Unice moved his family to Waco where he went back to school at Baylor to get a master's degree in Spanish. To make a living, they rented a large house and operated it as a boarding house. A man who came to the boarding house for meals only had a cow. He got meals, but no room, for giving Reedye the milk which fed the children and provided coffee cream for others. Wanda helped her mother make the beds. One day as they worked together, Reedye said it was her twenty-eighth birthday. Wanda, thinking twenty-eight must be very old said to her, "Mama, are you going to die?" After that Unice got a job teaching at Allen Academy at Bryan, Texas for the school year 1934-35. They lived on the second floor of a boys' dormitory which had sixteen steps up and that is where Wanda learned to count to sixteen. They ate in a big dormitory dining room. Reedye said to someone, "They've put pepper in the biscuits!" and that someone said to her, "No, those are weevils." Reedye fainted and Unice had to come and carry her out. Reedye had never seen weevils before. Grandpa Neely came to visit with his new bride, Miss Anna. She brought Wanda a doll's china set with two cups, two saucers, a sugar bowl, a creamer, and a teapot. To this day Wanda has some of those items, precious and protected; poor children took care of the few things they had.
Everyone thought U.R.was marvelously good looking. Once someone said to Reedy how handsome and cute he was. In Wanda's hearing, Reedye replied, "Well she may be u-g-l-y, but she is s-m-a-r-t." Wanda asked one of the older kids, "What's u-g-l-y? What's s-m-a-r-t?" Those were the first two words she learned to spell. She came to believe that she was ugly but smart, so she hoped U.R. was not so smart, because he was obviously so very cute. They moved to Grand Prairie the next year where Unice taught Spanish and was assistant coach in football and track. They lived on a low hill and bought a blue car that had to be pushed to roll down the hill to start the engine before everyone jumped in to ride to their destination. Unice was always trying to make more money. In a shed behind the house he cleaned up an old bathtub and every weekend he used to mix up an orange drink called Green Spot. He and Reedye sterilized it in containers like little old fashioned milk bottles and he peddled this orange drink from house to house. It was cheaper than orange juice and had Vitamin C or some other desirable ingredient. In the ditches around the house were crawdads. Reedye tried cooking them one time but everyone thought they were nasty and they threw them out and she never tried cooking them again. But Unice would say to the children about their little mounds, "Be careful, don't step on them, because if you smother out their little holes they won't be able to breathe." Aunt Magabel came to visit with Rosemary in the summer of 1936 not long after Rosemary's older sister Bettie had died. Rosemary fell off their new daybed in the middle of the night and cried. Wanda was sad for her and came running and tried to be a comfort to her, this cousin who was two years older than she was. Magabel and Rosemary were going to the Texas Centennial at the fair grounds in nearby Dallas. Wanda and U.R. didn't get to go with them at that time because they didn't have the money, but later they did go to the State Fair of Texas, in Dallas. They walked and stood in lines and went in and looked at boring things but what Wanda remembers best is a little book that someone bought which had about 28 songs in it. Unice (he had a beautiful voice) taught U. R. and Wanda all of those songs.
Mesa
In the late summer of 1936 Unice drove the family in that blue car over the mountains to Arizona pulling a little trailer behind with a mattress and a daybed tied on the top of the car. They lived in Mesa and he had a job teaching Spanish and serving as assistant football and track coach at the high school. He wore his yellow letter jacket from Baylor to work, though the other teachers wore suits. Since Unice was the high school football coach they went to every football game. When they were little U.R. and Wanda played under the bleachers with other little kids. Unice would buy one bottle of Delaware Punch and Reedye and Wanda and U.R. would share it between them.
Wanda was supposed to be delicate; she had a "bad heart" according to a doctor who said that she would probably be dead by the time she was twenty. Wanda thought that was a very long time away but Reedye made her rest and go to bed early. Wanda was jealous because U.R. got to listen to the Lone Ranger on the radio in the living room and she had to listen to it from her bed through the walls. When they had the measles U.R. was the sickest kid ever — he couldn't stand any light at all. Wanda wasn't a bit sick and while she had to stay home she learned to play jacks, and as a consequence of all that practice was the champion jacks player in the third, fourth, and fifth grades for the whole school. When she got to the seventh grade they didn't have that competition any more so she didn't get to be a star for anything. Her hand writing was the poorest ever and the writing certificate you were supposed to get in the third grade she got in the eighth. Another time U.R. was really sick with the mumps, terribly sick, but Wanda was only mildly sick. She used the time skating up and down and up and down their large front porch. She never got as great as U. R. but at least got passably good at skating.
Reedye had a necklace that had about twenty strands of beads all twisted and sewed together with tassels on the ends. They had been given to her by a boyfriend that Unice had cut out soon after he met Reedye. Wanda thought the necklace very beautiful and Reedye told her that if she sat in the rocking chair that Unice had bought for her that she could put it on. And so every so often, as hard as it was for her to sit still, Wanda would say "Mom, I'm ready to sit," and she would get to play with those beads. Wanda thinks that Reedye was very gracious that way. Another example: Reedye had a beautiful pink organdy dress. Wanda said, "It's just like a rose, Mother" and Reedye told her one day, "I'm going to give it to you for a play dress because I will never wear it again" and every so often Wanda would wear this beautiful pink play dress, even outside, and when she saw that it was getting dirty she would come in and try to wash the bottom hem in the sink so it would not be quite so gray. Sometimes when Reedye was sick or Unice was away, Wanda stayed with Aunt Mae and Uncle Clyde, and U.R. stayed with Aunt Edna and Uncle Otto across the street. Sometimes Norman came to visit. Aunt Dixie and her girls lived just a few houses down so they both had companionship of cousins their age and the example of ones who were older. June and Margaret really impressed Wanda. U.R and Wanda played in the barn where the hay was stacked and one time, crossing on the rafters above the hay, Wanda fell and landed on a pitchfork which stuck in her leg. Reedye was away and they didn't tell Unice for about three days until it got so red and so full of puss that they had to tell. They had geese that the children caught and U.R. held while Reedye plucked their feathers from which she made a beautiful pink down comforter. Wanda was supposed to use the geese as a part of her 4H project, but she hated geese. She fed chickens but only with a lot of resistance. They had a billy-goat which she hated like nobody's business. He was always butting her and scaring her. Wanda really didn't want to have anything to do with any animals.
U.R. had a "green, half-broke mare" who ran away with him straight toward an electric fence. U.R. dropped one of the reins, hauled on the other to get her turned away from the fence, but then she dumped him. She threw him regularly, two or three times on any trip he made. Unice was angry, "You always have to tie the head up" (put a short rope from bridle to saddle horn so she couldn't put her head down to buck) but U.R. was bad about not tying the head up. One time Unice had to ride the mare to move some cattle and she threw him on his tail-bone and crippled him up. He got rid of U.R.'s mare.
There were beautiful grapes there and Wanda used to hide under the grapevines to read. Reedye would treat the kids with wintergreen oil and eucalyptus soap she made herself and so they always smelled different from other kids. Wanda doesn't think it ever bothered U.R. but it bothered her. Unice was very upset the first time Reedye bought oleo because he said, "We should really buy butter." She said, "The difference in cost is just too great." And so they had orange packets of saffron that were mashed into the white lard-looking bricks and which converted them into butter-looking spread. Not long after that they started churning butter from the milk from their own cows. Unice felt very strongly about natural foods. Reedye would go to a truck farm and buy lugs of green beans, tomatoes and grapes and then she would can them. The grapes sat around for eight or nine years, and the last ones, Wanda remembers, were very winy, quite tasty, the juice was exhilarating. The tomatoes, Reedye pushed through a big cone shaped colander with a wooden cone-shaped pestle thing.
The children remember looking for chickens and setting hens. Eggs were a cash crop. Sometimes they raised chickens for meat. They caught them, hung them out on the clothes line, slit their throats, and let them flap, flap, flap. Then they scalded, plucked, singed, and degutted them, cut them up into various parts and Reedye took them into town to sell. One time Wanda was selling crosses to raise money for tuberculosis research and she came to a house with a long walk up to it. She was quite afraid but Reedye said, "What can they do to you except kill you?" Wanda laughed and Reedye said, "See how ridiculous that is!" After that whenever Wanda became afraid about approaching a new house or a new endeavor she would say to herself "What can they do to you but kill you?" She has grown to have a very strong faith and knowing that she will always end up with God she can rise above times of fear and avoid panic attacks.
Reedye had made Wanda a beautiful yellow dress with white buttons and a white collar. One day Wanda was sitting on the porch admiring it and Reedye asked her to come in and put the dress away so it wouldn't be soiled. Wanda begged to be allowed to "just sit a short time more." Reedye snapped, "Come in now!" Unice intervened for Wanda and this made Reedye so mad she walked out of the house and away down the highway. Unice made Wanda change her dress then put U.R. and Wanda in the car to go after Reedye. Before they caught up with her Reedye had walked all the way past the canal and was marching down the Gilbert Road aiming to stay with Mae and Clyde. Unice convinced her that he would never fight her again and brought her home.
Only one other time is known of that he found fault with Reedye about how he felt that she should behave toward the children. Reedye, driven to distraction by them, sometimes whipped the children, especially U.R., very hard. After one such incident Wanda and U.R. ran away. When Unice found them Wanda said to Unice, "Come and look at what she did to my brother!" Unice took up for them that time but usually he backed Reedye. She could say the most outlandish things and Wanda would say, "Mother, that's really not what happened," but Unice would say, "Don't ever argue with your mother." They could argue with him all day, and could often persuade him, but they were not allowed to challenge Reedye at any time. He always took her side. It was "them against us", the parents versus the children. Reedye's daughter-in-law Bonnie says that she was truly adored. Sometimes she didn't feel adored. When one of her sisters-in-law got a new house Reedye said, "Well, she doesn't work on the farm like I do." Another time she said "Let me tell you, Wanda girl, if you do more than is expected of you, soon, even more will be expected." She was implying that that was not a great thing. But Reedye got out there in her little high heels and her hair rolled around a little scarf and ran after those cows and drove them like nobody's business. Sometimes she'd get in the car and drive after the cows. She really worked hard.
Once when Wanda said she didn't want to change the irrigation water because it was the wrong time of the month for her, Unice gave her a figurative kick in the pants with "Your mother goes out there no matter how she feels. You get out there." And then he said something Wanda never forgot. "You never let your physical condition interfere with your life expectations." Unice expected of them and himself that they would keep working as long as they could lift a hand. Wanda, U.R. and Otto were raised with that kind of expectation and didn't get a chance to feel sorry for themselves very much or to pamper themselves. Reedye was a wonderful seamstress. By this time she had a sewing machine and made clothes for Wanda and U.R. (who doesn't think he had long pants until he was in the fourth grade). She made clothes for herself. She even made suits for Unice. After the first few years he no longer wore the yellow Baylor jacket to school, since he could wear a suit Reedye had made. She always went with Unice to pick out the sacks of oyster shell and chicken feed, because certain patterns on the feed sacks would make good dresses and others would not. About this time they got their first small refrigerator. It was wonderful not having to stop at the ice-house for someone with big tongs to put ice into the back of the car to take home for the icebox. Unice got Reedye a gasoline motor washing machine. Up until then Unice and U.R heated two big washtubs of water and Reedye and Wanda did the laundry on a rub board and hung the clothes on the line. Reedye ironed everything in sight on an Iron-Rite ~ a mangle, a sit-down ironing appliance.
The year of 1938 Unice and Reedye went to Stanford at Palo Alto, California. He planned to finish his Ph.D. in education and he got everything done except a little bit of his dissertation. He always planned to go back and finish it but somehow he never did. For the first few years at Mesa they leased a house with twenty or so acres and had pigs and chickens and calves to fatten for slaughter. They started with only a couple of cows and U.R. became a very proficient milker very early. Unice and U.R. built a corral when they got about twenty cows, and they went with their stools and hobbles into the corral to milk them. They poured the milk through strainers into cans, tightened up the lids and rolled them out to the road for pickup by the milk truck. That would be grade B milk. U.R. is proud that Unice used to say, "U.R. was the best hand I ever had." He feels that he had a great childhood and is glad that he was allowed to work.
In 1941 Unice went into farming and dairying full time. He bought the Wallace place (160 acres with a really nice house) on the south side of Apache Road and built a dairy barn with stanchions that took care of twenty cows at a time. The milk was chilled and then went in cans (later in a milk tank) and then to the creamery as whole milk where it was separated to make ice cream and various other milk products.
When Otto B. was being born in August of 1943, Unice came home and asked Wanda and U.R. what to name the new baby. U.R. said to name it after Uncle Otto or Aunt Edna, because they didn't have any children of their own and they should have someone named after them. When U.R. was in the seventh grade he borrowed money to buy a cow for a 4H project and the cow died. Unice went with him to Valley National Bank to get another loan for another cow, with which he was able to make enough money to pay off the loan. He finally sold the cow to Unice.
Casa Grande
In 1945 Unice sold the Wallace place and moved the cattle to 500 acres in Casa Grande where he and U.R. built a house and a raised, U-shaped walk-in barn with DeLaval milkers and cooler. It had to accommodate about 250 milking cows. His brother, Roy, had helped Unice design the dairy he and U.R. built out of concrete blocks, with welded pipe stalls. He said he couldn't have done it without Roy. While they were building, U.R. got stung by a scorpion at a wooden shack where they were staying. Unice soaked U.R.'s foot in cold water from the milk cooler and took him into the hospital where he had been born. He had convulsions and they worried for his life. Unice called a friend who drove from Tempe with some scorpion serum and U.R. recovered amazingly quickly. After it was all over Unice called Reedye to tell her what had happened and that all was well. This was one more reason for Reedye to hate Casa Grande. She had said she was never going to leave the Wallace place, she was never going to go to live at Casa Grande. Unice sold the place out from under her, picked her up and put her in the car and took her to Casa Grande with the last load of stuff. Reedye had loved Mesa, loved her house, her church, her friends in the Eastern Star. All that, and she was leaving it. But in Casa Grande she became active in the Farm Bureau, and in 1949 she was the national president of the Farm Bureau Women. She moved from one activity to the other, but she couldn't anticipate that in 1945.
U.R. and Wanda went to Casa Grande and started to school there. He was a big shot in football and she was a little shot in band and choir. U.R. participated in the 4-H butterfat analysis contest and came in second in the state competition. U.R. tried to teach Wanda to drive. She was trying to make a turn right where the canal was and the front part of the car ended up in the side of the canal and then they had to walk back home and have Unice pull the car out with the tractor. If Reedye had had her way Wanda would not have driven again but Unice said, "She needs to get behind the wheel right now and U.R. needs to continue to teach her." So Unice got the car out, pushed it way back, put Wanda back in and went off without looking back. Wanda thought she knew how to drive because they had a little Fordson tractor that she had been driving around, but she didn't realize that the Fordson went a lot slower and gave her a lot more time to get things organized than the old Packard. When people complain that she drives with a heavy foot she tells them she drives this way because she was taught by her brother.
At Casa Grande they lived in the house U.R. and Unice built. Later they built three or four houses for help. When a new hand came, if there was a vacant house, Unice would say, "I will loan you a cow, but you have to milk her, and I will give you seeds to plant your own garden." The hired hands might not plant a garden but Reedye always did. U.R. and Wanda carried buckets and buckets of water to irrigate it. She raised produce as well as she could, so that they could always have fresh vegetables.
The house in Casa Grande was very much a work in progress as they moved into it. It was made of cinderblocks, with a tin roof and concrete floors. There was electricity for lights and swamp coolers, but at first there was no indoor plumbing, only a hand pump out at the well and an outhouse. Reedye did the cooking on a wood stove. One wood stove heated the house that first winter. The boys slept on a screened patio with tarps to tie down in bad weather. Gradually some amenities were acquired: an electric range in the kitchen, a Frigidaire (that was almost a generic term for refrigerators in those days), and indoor plumbing and eventually a wringer washing machine. Later there was even a carpet and a bathtub. Going back to see it many years later it seemed small to Otto B., but at the time he thought of it as just wonderful.
There was a horse on the place, Old Charlie, as mean as anything. One day he kicked Reedye in the chest and Unice rescued Reedye, and then, furious, beat the horse with the flat side of a shovel. U.R. had a horse named Squirrel. He often rode her without a saddle, moving the livestock from place to place. Once he and Wanda rode together down the road a piece to visit twin friends. A little dog came out of some mesquite trees and spooked the horse and they fell into mesquite and barbed wire. The twins mother wrapped their scratched hands up and they rode back home.
Unice dug a big trench that he filled with chopped hegari and covered it with earth. In the winter they'd open it and take out fermented ensilage to feed the cows. Otto B. liked, and still likes the smell, but according to Wanda it smelled just terrible. Wanda had girlfriends, really very smart, beautiful girls. Some kids in their class said that they were Mexican (meaning low class) but the girls insisted that they were not Mexican. Wanda asked Unice, "Are they Mexican or not?" Unice said, "They are Mexican, and they are American, and they are as white as you are. So from now on when people tell you they are Mexican, you say they are American." Other people who grew up, and were in high school with them would not have dated them or one of their brothers or been friendly with them. But Wanda and U.R. did not see Clara or Elvira as Mexican, and therefore low class, because Unice inculcated in his children a sense that all are equal except for intelligence and physical ability. By the time Otto B. got big enough to milk, the cows were sold except for two house milk cows, one coal black who was called Cola and her daughter Pepsi. He milked by hand, would squirt milk to the cats. He chopped cotton, but didn't pick cotton much, being too small to haul a very large sack. He took off his shoes when school was out and didn't put them back on except for church till school started again.
Otto B. often stayed with Otie and Orville. Barbara Ruth and he would go off exploring. One day on the canal bank they saw several beehives with bees clustered on the outside of the hives. They tried to stir them up but the bees ignored them. They kicked the hives and ran away, but nothing happened. They did it again, and again, and finally the bees had had enough and rose up like a cloud and gave chase. Barbara Ruth and Otto B. ran screaming all the way back to the house, covered with bees. They had a healthy respect for bee swarms after that. Otto B. remembers visiting Uncle Otto and Aunt Edna in the white house that is today a hospice.
Though they had no children of their own they had nice toys; a kaleidoscope, Lincoln logs, puzzles and a sand box with a play farm. Once Edna called him for dinner and, not wanting to leave his playing, he ignored her. "Otto Neely, I've called you seven times to come into this house." He replied, "I don't obey my mommy and I don't have to obey you." Oooops. That was the last time he sassed her.
Uncle Otto had a paint horse called Bubbles, a big old, fat old horse. He gave Bubbles to Unice for Otto B. She was a really sweet horse. Once though, she took him under a chinaberry tree, and Otto B., leaning to the side to avoid being brained, took the saddle with him around her round old barrel and found himself hanging upside down between her large feet. He yelled for help and Bubbles patiently stood still until he could get untangled and out of the way. Later Unice got Indian ponies from off the reservation, half-trained and not handsome, but tough.
The Later Years
In 1948 Unice had an infection in his leg, a thrombosis, and almost died. Reedye was at Unice's bedside when Wanda graduated from high school. Reedye took over running the ranch and did a great job; they even made money that year. In 1950 Unice got out of the dairy business and sold all the animals. The years from then until 1959 were occupied in various farming ventures in Coolidge, Casa Grande and Blythe, California but profits were limited by the availability of water and unpredictable cotton prices. While they lived in Blythe, Otto B. loved to listen to Uncle Erastus' stories. He was jolly and a great teller of tales with a wonderful, infectious laugh. Unice was more successful, during these years, at planting Mexican mission churches in Casa Grande, Maricopa and Stanfield. He was also involved in the establishment of a Baptist college in Arizona, Grand Canyon College.
Unice had left teaching in 1941 because he felt he wasn't making enough as a teacher and thought he could do better for his family as a farmer. But each move, from Mesa to Casa Grande, from there to Coolidge, then back to Casa Grande, and finally to California, that was supposed to make things better actually made them financially worse. Finally after two utterly disastrous years in Blythe, Unice was faced with bankruptcy. He sold absolutely everything to pay off some of his debts and signed promissory notes for the rest. Unice's teaching credentials had lapsed and, though Reedye had been taking courses at Arizona State University toward her degree and a teaching credential, she hadn't yet finished. Nevertheless, in 1959 they were able to go to Peru to work for the Southern Peru Copper Corporation as principal and teacher at the American school for mining engineers' and smelter workers' families. In three years Unice was able to get his teaching credentials reinstated and they earned enough to honorably pay off the "cotton gin debts."
By this time Wanda had finished medical school, was married and had three daughters. Otto B. lived with her in Houston for his last three years of high school while Unice and Reedye were in Peru. U.R was married and living in Kermit, Texas with Bonnie and their four children. In 1962 Reedye and Unice came back to Arizona. They lived in Tempe and Unice taught at Grand Canyon College while Reedye finished her degree at Arizona State. They then moved to Riverside, California where he taught at California Baptist College. Reedye successfully taught retarded children and later was in charge of the Riverside County Head Start Program. During this time Unice also got a real-estate license. Jim Stice (cousin Patsy's husband) was moving houses from areas where freeways were being cut through and Unice got some of those houses and moved them to land he'd bought outside of Riverside, fixed them up and made quite a nice little sub-division. He was also building Mexican mission churches just as he had in Arizona.
In Riverside Reedye began to notice that she was having memory problems and having enough trouble teaching her classes that she took early retirement. Unice continued to do real estate work and taught at California Baptist College until he was seventy, the age of mandatory retirement. In 1975 they moved back to Arizona where Unice joined a real estate firm in Mesa. He became successfully involved in brokering second mortgages for individuals and churches and helped
build the Hopi Hills Baptist Church. Reedye became more forgetful, though. She would drive somewhere and couldn't get herself back home. She wandered. Unice decided to move to Casa Grande where U.R. and Bonnie were living. About 1980 he moved them into a little circle of houses and tried to confine Reedye more to her home so there would be less chance for her to get lost. They lived there until 1989 when Unice's macular degeneration and hearing loss prevented him from taking really good care of her and knowing where she was and what was going on. Several times she left the stove on and things caught on fire. Neighbors found her wandering sometimes and brought her home.
From 1989 to 1991 they lived with Wanda in Lewisville, Texas and then moved to the Arizona Baptist Home outside of Youngstown, Arizona where they stayed till Unice's death in 1997 and Reedye's in 1999. Some of Unice's brothers and sisters had had early macular degeneration. Being told that exercise might help, he started, in his fifties, running, and ran five or six miles a day until he was about seventy-five when he cut down to three miles a day. When they lived in Texas, at eighty-five or six he was still walking two miles a day and literally pulling Reedye along with him. After they moved into the nursing home in 1991 he continued to walk. He walked to the nearest church and worshiped there, a faithful attendee. The last six months of his life he was confined to a wheelchair, but up to the end he was going from room to room in his wheelchair, asking people if they wanted him to quote scripture, because he had memorized large parts of the Bible that he could share. He had outlived all his siblings except Otie. Reedye was still alive but hadn't recognized him for at least a year and a half. He couldn't read, he couldn't watch TV, he couldn't hear, he couldn't see the closed captions. He had leukemia, but refused treatment. He developed cancer of the bladder, and scheduled surgery, but at the last moment canceled. He was ready, as he told U.R., "to go home."
Wanda's adulthood
Wanda went to college in 1948, first at Baylor and finishing at the University of Arizona. She went to medical school in Houston. Half way through she married Sam Pieper, a fellow med student. After she had done her internship at Methodist hospital in Houston they spent two years in Guam where Sam worked in public health and Wanda in the outpatient department of a local hospital. By this time they had three daughters and while in Guam they adopted a young Guamian boy. Back in Houston Wanda completed a residency in ophthalmology and welcomed Otto B. into their home while Unice and Reedye were in Peru. Otto B.'s graduation from high school and Wanda and Sam's divorce coincided in 1961 and she moved to San Mateo, California. She worked there with other ophthalmologists until establishing her own practice in 1965. She married Don Fleishmann in 1963; he died in 1975. In 1977 she married Herb Sherman, with whom she moved to Lewisville, Texas in 1981. Herb worked for Lockheed, monitoring production of satellites. Wanda sold her practice in California and established a new practice in Texas which she finally sold in 1994 to care for Herb through his last years. Herb died in 1999, and in 2000 Wanda began training as a chaplain and was offered a position at the Medical Center of Lewisville (before she had even finished training) where she is still working.
U.R.'s adulthood
In 1950, after a year of college, U.R. eloped with Bonnie and then came to Casa Grande to farm. They farmed in the area until 1957 when U.R. started work on construction projects with Bonnie's brothers who were in the sheet metal business. He had jobs building refineries in a lot of different places. He worked in West Texas, at Odessa, Kermit and Pecos, building plants here and there. By 1963 they were back in Arizona, at Mesa for five years and then finally back to Casa Grande. He worked in several capacities in air conditioning and sheet metal, qualifying to sign off on large construction projects. In 1975 he and Cecil Kinser formed the K & N partnership, which still functions in these fields.
U.R. and Bonnie had four children and seven grandchildren. He is grateful that "She's put up with me about fifty-two years." U. R. says, "My heritage is not for sale. I'm more content than most people because I know where I came from. I am fortunate to have the heritage that I have."
Otto B.'s adulthood
While his parents were in Peru, Otto B. lived with Wanda in Houston and finished high school there. In 1961 he moved with Wanda, her three daughters, and adopted son to California. He went to Arizona State University, to Menlo Park Junior College and back to ASU. Otto B.'s draft status was changed after five years of college, but no degree, so he volunteered for the army rather than being drafted. The army took him from Viet Nam to Berlin to Korea, from language school (Chinese Mandarin) to a bachelor's degree in zoology, from basic training to a commission, to being a warrant officer in a technical specialty called "emanations analysis" which has nothing to do with air pollution but with analysis of enemy radio communications.
Otto B. married Marie in 1965 and they had two sons, Chris and Brian. With hope they adopted Rashida, an American Indian girl child, but that was tragic for them and for her. Not all stories have happy endings. After his marriage to Marie ended, Otto B. began what he calls "the best part of my life, being married to Carmen." Even though their own only child died at six months, their years together have been great. Otto B. tells that on a cross-country trip to Fort Benning, Georgia he and Carmen stopped to see Roy at his home in Midland, Texas. Roy was ill and close to the end of his life, but he told them stories and said how much he loved his wife Elizabeth: "She's my angel." As they left Roy stood on the doorstep giving directions about where to go to get a tarp to cover their goods against a coming rain.