Grandma Thelma

Curtis Clough

   Every family has a story. I think if you knocked on every door in your neighborhood and asked the family who lived there to tell your their story, it would make a great book.  I grew up in a family of story tellers.  I didn't think much about it until I was older and would be talking with my friends. I was shocked to learn that many of my friends didn't know their lineage - couldn't even tell me their grandmother's maiden names.  I realized how lucky I was to know my family's history.  I want to share a few of our stories.  

   My family has had it's share of tragedy and heartache.  Having grown up in a family that has endured great suffering, but persevered, has shaped me into the person that I am. I was brought up to accept and never question.   Some might perceive us as being cold or aloof but that is not the case.  We are survivors.

Thelma Elizabeth Brantley

   I will begin this series of stories with my maternal grandmother.  This is a hard story to tell.  My maternal grandmother, Thelma Elizabeth Brantley and her twin brother, Elmer, were born Feb. 23, 1913  in the Brantley Bend community which is located on the Buffalo River in north Arkansas. Besides, Elmer, she had six brothers and sisters.  Their family was poor and they would be what we now call "a highly mobile family“ or "migrant workers.”  They would travel to Oklahoma or Washington to make a little money then return to the Buffalo River area until the money ran out.  When Grandma was 18 the family was living in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.  My grandmother met Curtis Clough.  He lived a few miles away in Wanette, Oklahoma. He was the son of a Baptist preacher, and by all accounts, they were a good family.  Grandpa Curtis had learned to play the fiddle and unbeknownst to his parents, Brother Mel and Mattie Clough, he would play the fiddle at local dances to make a little extra money.  We believe that is how he met Grandma Thelma.  He and my grandma got married and she became pregnant with her first child.  They traveled to Overton, Texas because his brother lived there and he could provide work for my Grandpa Curtis.  The baby, Maxine, was born but failed to thrive and she died at age two weeks. Grandma Thelma told me that the baby wouldn't nurse.  She is buried in Overton, Texas and I don’t believe her grave is marked. They eventually came back to Wanette and three years later my mom, Lou Ann, was born.  When Mom was four months old my grandfather got appendicitis.  He was taken to the hospital in Shawnee but gangrene had set in and he died.  My grandmother was in her early twenties, had a baby, no job and no money.  A family member brought her and Mom to Rush, Arkansas so that they could live with Grandma Thelma's parents.  She got a job in town.  Back then poor people didn’t have cars so she would ride the mail car to town and board there and come home when she could – usually on the mail car again.  She met a young man named Paul Brown.  He was working for the CCC and they decided to marry.  Mom was about four.  After the CCC work on Buffalo Park was completed Paul went to work at the local sawmills.  They had a little boy named James Earl. When he was three months old he died of pneumonia.  He is buried in what is now the Buffalo River National Park.  Next came Jimmy.  All was well until he was 18 months old and he got, what was then called infantile paralysis (polio).  He was hospitalized in Little Rock for many weeks.  They were told that he would probably die there.  Paul and Grandma moved to Picher, Oklahoma so he could work in the mines.  Jimmy was still in Little Rock. Grandma was pregnant again and had a little girl name Pauline.  Mom never saw Pauline.  She had stayed in Arkansas with her grandparents.  Jimmy made it and someone went to get him and took him to Grandma and Paul.  When Pauline was six months old she hemorrhaged to death.  No autopsy was done back then so the cause of the hemorrhaging was never known.  Pauline is buried in the GAR cemetery in Miami, Oklahoma.  Grandma had another baby, Paul Roy, who was stillborn and shortly afterward Paul was killed in a mine cave in.  They are both buried in GAR cemetery in Miami, OK.  Grandma now had just Mom and Jimmy, who was crippled.  How did she go on?  I don’t know.  She was in her early thirties and had lost four children and two husbands.  What was it inside her mind that kept her from going insane?  You would never have known what she endured if you were around her.  She later married again to a very bad man. Mom has asked me not to tell the story of this part of her life. It is too painful for her to talk about.  Jimmy lived until he was 18.  He is buried in Cowan Barrens cemetery in north Arkansas next to his grandparents.  Grandma and her third husband moved to the West Coast and stayed there until he died. Grandma then came to live with us.  She had never learned to drive and so she relied on Mom and Dad to help her.  She began corresponding with a man she had known in California and she soon returned there to marry him. I think this is probably the only time in her life that things were easy.  They retired to Arkansas and a few years later, this last husband passed away.  Grandma lived alone for a while.  Mom, Dad, and my sister would take Grandma to shop and run errands.  One Christmas we were at Mom and Dad’s and Grandma said that she had a knot on her neck.  Mom took her to the doctor and she was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  She passed away on March 26, 1997 and is buried next to Jimmy and her last husband.

Mom and Jimmy

   I often wonder how she managed to keep going.  Life had treated her so cruelly but she kept going.  In her later years she enjoyed being with her great-grandchildren. I would watch her holding them and wonder if she was thinking of her own lost children.  She didn't talk about it and if you asked she would say, "That was so long ago."   Many women would have given up.  Many would have lost their minds.  There was something unbreakable in Grandma.  Was it genetic?  Was it some primal survival instinct?  Was it that she was taught to accept and not question?  It is my hope that she is now in a place of peace where there is no pain or sorrow.