Early Years - Dwyer's Memories

    I recall or was told much about the Duncan family, and I believe that I am the last of the bloodline to know some immediate history.  I was born in a two-room house resembling a railroad boxcar on an oil lease near Henryetta, OK, on 7 January 1922.  The location consisted of several such houses owned by the oil company that leased the mineral rights.  Tiger Flats no longer exists, but it was located Southwest of Okmulgee.  It could be reached by going about five miles West on 4th Street toward Lake Okmulgee turning south on a dirt road, and going South about five miles.  I do not know the size of the Tiger Flats area, but I heard that it was also about two miles from Henryetta.  It was only a site of oil wells with houses of oil field workers on it.  At the time it was established, horses and wagons were more common than automobiles, so workers lived near the places of work.  Workers also worked twelve-hour shifts to avoid time loss in travel.

    Stephen Hill Duncan went to Okmulgee after his discharge from the Army following WW I.  He had been working in Illinois coal mines and heard of oil strikes where fast money could be made.  He was unskilled but experienced in mining, railroad construction, and farm work.  The precise date of his arrival in Oklahoma is not known, but his first child, Dorothy, was born in that two room house on 24 May 1920.  The name of the attending physician is on her birth certificate.  That same physician is recorded on the birth certificate of Dwyer, the second child.  However, the physician was not actually in attendance but arrived after the birth.  Hill Duncan had driven to Henryetta for the doctor and did not return with him until after the birth.  A Mrs. Oral Black, a neighbor, did assist in the birth.  The Blacks and Hill Duncan family remained friends until the deaths of the Blacks, who were childless.

    According to Winnie Duncan, she was alone at my birth in an unheated house, because the natural gas lines piped from nearby oil wells were on top of the ground where they followed the contour of the land.  The raw natural gas contained moisture, and the temperature change from underground to surface caused condensation in the pipes.  That condensation gathered in the low areas of the pipes and froze to prevent the passage of gas.  Therefore, no heat was in the house.  Winnie said that Dwyer was placed next to her body under the bed covers for warmth, and the late physician said that Dwyer would have died within thirty minutes if unattended.  He was already blue in color.  The story was that Hill and the doctor leaped from the moving model-T Ford when near the house.  The car kept going until it hit a building nearby.

    Hill returned to Illinois to work and look after his parents.  Winnie said that she gathered Dorothy and two week old Dwyer and took a train to Illinois by herself.  She said that she found Chalen Duncan ill in bed when she arrived.  Selena became ill soon thereafter.  Winnie said that she had to care for everyone by herself.  There can be no doubt that she was physically strong.

    A picture of the two-room house was destroyed, but I recall it as unpainted and unattractive as a simple box shelter.  Three houses nearby were more like houses with gabled roofs and battened exteriors painted dark green.  Blacks, Godwins, and Greenfields lived in those houses and worked as pumpers on the producing oil wells.  Water wells produced strong sulfur water serving as laxative until the bodies adjusted.

    Winnie and Hill moved into Okmulgee prior to 1924, but the precise date is not known.  They bought a new two-story house properly called an airplane bungalow.  The address was 1010 N. Bryan.  A third child, Deone, was born in that house on 8 February 1924, with a Dr. Cott in attendance.  I recall that birth in the only downstairs bedroom on the Southwest corner of the house.  The living room was on the Southeast corner, and the dining room was on the Northeast corner.  The kitchen was on the Northeast corner.  A single bathroom was near the door of the ground floor bedroom and at the foot of a straight stairway leading up to a landing in front of small clothes closet.  A South bedroom and a North bedroom on the sides of the landing were the early rooms upstairs.  Each upstairs room had windows on three sides.  1010 N. Bryan was on a dirt road that was oiled annually with the dregs from the bottoms of oil storage tanks.  Graders evened the streets occasionally to reduced potholes.  The oiled street was extremely hot during summer months, and bare feet of children suffered.  The main part of Okmulgee was paved with brick or concrete, and Bryan was the first street on the West side of town that was not paved.  Bryan was also the last street on the West side to have indoor plumbing.  An alley behind 1010 had a series of outhouses located so that a horse drawn wagon emptied the outhouses periodically.  1010 was the only two-story house near that alley, and the second story provided a good watching place when physical family arguments occurred across the alley.

    Hill commuted to Tiger Flats by Model T until the depression of 1929 caused a loss of jobs in the oil field.  I recall staying on the oilrig for several days and meeting men such as Pete Prouty, Ben Greenfield, and Henry Hendrickson.

    Hill was burned severely over most of his body and permanently scarred by a gas-fired boiler that he lit by throwing a crumpled burning newspaper into the firebox.  A gas leak had caused an accumulation of the raw natural gas.  The flame burst out of the firebox and enveloped him.  Thereafter his skin was sensitive to any insect bites or point pressure, and small hemorrhages appeared.

    Dorothy, Deone, and Dwyer walked five blocks to Winson elementary school, now nonexistent.  Fights on the way home from school were almost a daily occurrence because of gangs on the West side of Bryson.  Wilson school had a consolidated class of slow learners who formed a pair of gangs that waylaid other pupils on their way home.

    Neighbors on Bryson were like relatives.  When a gathering of playing children was near a home at mealtime, all were invited to share.  The lack of radios and telephones caused the people to rely on each other for company or entertainment.  Evening gatherings by a piano were frequent, and evening walks allowed residents to join the group walking down the dirt road while chatting.

    When the depression hit, Hill went to work at the Phillips 66 refinery.  He worked on alternating three shifts.  During the time at 1010, Winnie’s sister, Gladys lived with the Duncan's for four years.  She and a roommate occupied the South bedroom upstairs.

    The house at 1010 was traded for a house at 1221 North Alabama about 1934.  The Alabama house is a single story house remains, but the Bryan house was moved to a farm and has since been demolished.

    Winnie and Hill were divorced in May 1938, and Winnie sold the Alabama house before moving to Stillwater that summer.  Dorothy had attended Tulsa University on an academic scholarship starting in 1937.  Deone and Dwyer finished high school in Stillwater.

    Dorothy dropped out of school to marry D.C. Sellers, Jr. in 1939.  He had dropped out of school at Oklahoma A & M and gone to work in his father’s bank in Drumright, Oklahoma.  Dorothy later finished a bachelor of fine arts degree at Oklahoma State University.

    Dwyer started architectural design at A & M but spent most time playing fraternity at Pi Kappa Alpha.  He worked part time and went to Atlanta to work full time while attending night school at Georgia Tech.  Returning to Oklahoma A & M and fraternity life, Dwyer goofed again on attendance and dropped out to work in the engineering department of Beech Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas.  From there, he enlisted in the Marine Corps.  

    Deone was more diligent in college and finished a bachelor’s degree in physical education.  She had married Walter H. Penquite during her third year, and the two lived with Winnie until Walter was drafted into the Army.  Deone taught physical education in Tulsa Central high school until she followed Walter.

    Hill married Vinita Faye Franklin Miller, a divorcee, in 1939.  Faye had two daughters, Joyce and Delores, and a son Edward Boyce.

    Winnie married Robert Penquite, a professor of animal nutrition in the poultry department at Oklahoma A & M in 1945.  They met while planning the wedding of Deone and Walter in 1943.  Robert Penquite joined the poultry department at Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa in 1945 and remained there as a PhD full professor until 1958.  Robert and Winnie joined Helga and Dwyer on a rural acreage outside of Oklahoma City.  The acreage was annexed by Oklahoma City and became 10724 North Kelley Avenue.  Winnie and Robert moved to Okmulgee in 1963 and lived until Robert’s death from a heart attack in 1969.  Robert was 71 and had retired at 61 following a mild heart attack.  Winnie continued to live alone on 11th Street until a doctor advised that she should no longer live alone.  She moved to a nursing home in Oklahoma City where she broke a hip.  She died from pneumonia in an Oklahoma City hospital while in traction following surgery.  She died in September 1975 at the age of 81.  She and Robert are buried in Okmulgee.

    Hill Duncan returned to oil field work after a brief retirement after the age of 65.  He worked until he had surgery for prostrate cancer.  He was living in Florida for a while but returned to Duncan, Oklahoma.  The cancer spread, and he fell at home and fractured his pelvis.  He died from a heart attack when the pain was too great in a Duncan, Oklahoma hospital.  He died in 1973 at the age of 80.

    Faye Duncan was diabetic and had lower limb blood circulation problems resulting in gangrene in both feet.  A leg was amputated in a Tulsa, Oklahoma hospital, and she died in surgery.  She is buried in Henryetta, Oklahoma in the same cemetery as Hill.  Hill is in the veterans’ area.