Amanuensis Monday Letter of Ray Whitson to Little Sister Last Installment

We left off last Monday with Ray telling his sister Mary that  their father had cancer and they had to amputate his leg...
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that he became irritable and short tempered.  No one will ever know what he went through in the suffering, later he would hold his stump in his hands to keep it from jerking.  He didn't have the pain pills we have today.  His body finally rejected aspirins.  He got to where he would take a dozen at one time and it did not help much.
I think this would adversely  affect anyone, don't you?
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Dear Mary I will quit for now.  I will tr to fill in gaps that I have overlooked.  I have always loved the memory of my kids but like my dad I have accepted it as something I had to give up and live with.
Your Brother Ray
P.S. it the other kids would like to read the details of dad's life will you let them?

Taken in front of Service Station. 

[My mother made copies for those that had been too young to remember their father and gave it to them.  She was very grateful to Ray for sharing, and had an empathy for the pain her father had with his leg loss as my father lost his leg also.  I have empathy for both. I grew up watching the challenges an amputation gave my father, and then the pain the Hero had with cancer...I can only imagine how bad it would have been before the pain medication of today.]
So grandchildren, what do you think?  Would you have wanted to have known your great grandfather? I wish I had known him, and my mother does too.  Thank goodness for those who share their memories.

Amanuensis Monday Letter of Ray Whitson to Little Sister Sixth installment

We left off with Ray trying to convey to his sister what kind of father Harry Whitson was...
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We moved to Fay in three covered wagons, took several days, onto grandmother's homestead.  It was close to the Frisco River Bridge.
World War one broke out and dad went to Fort Sill to help as a taxi driver, his own cab, The car did not have a door on the drivers side.  He would climb out over his side of the car hitting his knee on the mechanical horn, bruising it.  Which caused the cancer to start in the knee area.
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Doctors didn't know much about cancer at that time.  They thought at first it was only pain cause by the continued knocking.
He had a nervous breakdown and had to be rushed to Oklahoma City where they cut the leg off at the knee. 
They tried to get him to cut the leg off at the hip.  He wanted to have an artificial leg, being an outdoors man all his life.  I think he would have lived many years longer if had.
It was at the time...
TO be continued....
Surgery would have been done at St Anthony Hospital.  I will have to investigate this further.  This was where I was a Inhalation Therapy Tech during the Viet Nam War.

A snippet view click here to read more about St Anthony Hospital

Amanuensis Monday Letter of Ray Whitson to Little Sister second installment

Harry O Whitson

We left off with Ray telling Mary that his father didn't know the tarp was coming off the quail until the game...







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warden passed by and looking back saw it and almost fainted.  "I would think".  Dad shipped them back fast and to Guthrie, Okla.
One time at Fay, he shipped two truck loads and the deputy tried to arrest him; Dad told him to come and take his guns, he wore pistols at that time.  By the was the deputy was a man by the name of Boyd. Later became Lester Morse's father in law, your cousin dad's , married a Morse.  Boyd never liked Dad after that.
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Historical thought.
Jessie James married a Whitson, "his only wife" in Missouri.
So by shirttail relation we are related to him.
After he met mother he settled down and became foreman of the Davidson ranch, just out of Arnett Okla.  There were over 350,000 acres in the ranch.  Part of it was government land.  Today over half of it is a game reserve.
The day Dad married...to be continued Monday Jan 31.

I researched the Davidson Ranch on page 43 of Notes from Ellis and Cimarron Counties
it says part of the land was 12 miles southeast of Arnett.

Amanuensis Monday Letter of Ray Whitson to Little Sister

My mom and her twin sister.

My mother was the baker's dozen in her family. She was a twin.  Her 5 older brothers left home to join the service when she was still little and never came back to Oklahoma.  When she was in her 60's she began to reach out and search for her brothers.  She never knew her dad Harry O. Whitson and hoped they would help her know about him.
It was a good thing, because they were all gone with in 5 years of her calling or visiting with them.  I will always be grateful, because their knowledge would have been lost.  This letter is 14 pages long, I will do just two pages at a time so the reader's eyes won't glaze over.  Which means, you will have to come back Monday the 24th to see more of the story.  : )


The Letter from Ray Whitson to Mary Langley
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This is a few things that I remember about our dad.
He was born in Terre Houte Ind. Had five brothers, (to my knowledge he never mentioned any sisters) [this was added to the side in his handwriting... but one]
They scattered going to Missouri, Luisianna, Texas, and so on.  Uncle Lute and his sister settled in Custer Okla., just south of Fay about 40 miles by the Frisco RR.
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Most of the boys served in the Spanish American War.
Dad was a "Sooner" He cowboyed a lot. For a while he ran a 'quail route'.  He would furnish the shells and pay them about 75 cents a dozen.  One time while going over the route he had a large wagon load of quail, the tarp that covered them had come loose and the quail could be seen.  Dad did not know it until a game.....to be continued