Week 30 – In the News

 

My great-uncle, Fred Pennington, was in the news quite a bit during the Dust Bowl days. He was a bootlegger in western Oklahoma, and unfortunately did not evade the law.  Fred was my grandmother’s brother; his wife, Myrtle Ditmore, was my grandfather’s sister, making all their children “double cousins.”  Because of Fred’s extracurricular activities, he was ostracized by the Ditmore’s, but my uncle Joe Ditmore always referred to him with respect. He believed his uncle Fred only did what he had to do in order to support his family. While I could write an entire book on Fred’s escapades from newspaper articles and other records, I found another story of heroism that I’d like to share.

Fred Pennington was born 27 October 1897 in Lexington, Missouri and came to western Oklahoma around 1905 with his parents. They had come to join Fred’s grandmother who had taken part in one of the Oklahoma Land Runs in 1892.  His wife, Myrtle Ditmore, was born 9 September 1896 in Missouri. How her parents came to be in Missouri at that time is a mystery as they had returned to North Carolina prior to migrating to Hydro, Oklahoma in 1907.  On 11 March 1916, Fred and Myrtle stole away to Anadarko to marry. According to the Hydro Review on 23 March 1916, it was “much to the surprise of their friends.”

In 1918, the young couple welcomed son, Norval and were living on a rented farm near Cedar in Custer County, Oklahoma. Their daughter, Lila Fay, was born in 1921 near Hydro, Caddo County, followed by daughter Margie in 1923. By 1925, the family was living on an Indian allotment south of Hydro. On March 16^th of that year, their youngest child, Warren Glenn Pennington was born.

This was apparently a hard birth for Myrtle, as she is referred to as being dangerously ill within a week after Warren’s appearance in the world. She had remained bedridden since the birth. Her sister-in-law, Cora Parks Ditmore, wife of her brother, Carl, had been attending to her, but had left to tend to her own family for a bit. Upon returning, Cora arrived just as an explosion, caused by an oil stove, occurred. She grabbed up the other three children and got them to safety and then ran, selflessly, back into the house to save Myrtle and the baby.  She carried Myrtle and the baby through the flames. The blankets wrapped around mother and child caught fire. Fred, having seen the flames from the neighboring farm where he was working, ran home just in time to help extinguish the flames from his wife and newborn son.  Had Cora not returned when she did, Myrtle and baby Warren would have certainly perished in the fire. Fred suffered burns to his arms, and sadly, the family did not have insurance. This may well have been the beginning of the hard life endured by the Pennington’s.

By the time I was born, my great-uncle Carl was married to a woman named Ethel. She was aunt Ethel to me. I knew that she was not the mother of Carl’s children (my mother’s cousins), but I never gave any thought to his first wife. It wasn’t until finding this story that I became interested in Carl’s first wife, Cora Mae Parks. She was born in Oklahoma on 2 February 1901. She and Carl were married in 1916 when she was just fifteen years old, and she was the mother of all Carl’s children. Little was spoken about her that I can recall. In a photo taken around 1920 of John Henry Ditmore and his family, Cora is holding her son, Charles Henry, and Myrtle is holding her son, Norval. One can only imagine how indebted Myrtle must have felt toward Cora and what their friendship must have been like. 

               

                                                             

Unfortunately, Cora’s life was cut short.  After having survived an appendectomy one week before, and apparently recovering remarkably well, on 20 August 1928, her heart just stopped. Measures to revive her were unsuccessful.  She was 27 years old.  Cora’s children were all so young when she passed away that they may not have known the stories about their mother’s heroism. Her oldest, Lora Belle, was only ten; Charles Henry was eight; Hubert (Shady) was five; and Melba was only two. Her children are all gone now, but I hope that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren will learn what a special person she must have surely been. She was only 24 years old when she saved her sister-in-law’s life.