Installment #1: Meet Vivian Claudell

When my grandmother, Lucille Elizabeth Hinote, was quite young - around 14 or 15 years old - she met an older man by the name of William Edgar Lee. Lucille never talked much about her life and the things she did so, naturally, Mom has little memory of her dad or her younger years.

Lucille and Ed were married April 16, 1927. Supposedly Lucille got pregnant with my mother shortly afterwards. Why do I say "supposedly?" You'll find out later in this story.

Apparently, Ed was a bootlegger, a profession that landed him in "The Pen," as Mom calls it. He was in the penitentiary most of the time Lucille was pregnant and even missed the birth of his daughter.

Grandma never talked much about the time when Mom was born. She could be very secretive. However, when she and her family would come to visit us, she and I would lie on my bedroom floor and she would tell me about the time Mom was born. It's a story that evidently she only told me because neither Mom or her siblings have ever heard it. Here's what she told me:

Lucille and her mother (Bertha Viola Olds Hinote) lived in a boarding house in Commerce, Okla. Lucille told everyone that her baby was due in February. However, just four days after she turned 16, Lucille went into labor. Being young, she went up to her room and stuffed rags into her mouth to muffle her cries. She prayed for the labor to stop, but it didn't. One of the tenants was a nurse. When she heard Lucille's cries, she knew the young girl was in labor and immediately sought help. On December 8, 1927, Vivian Claudell Lee was born.

So, was Mom due in February or December? Mom was the oldest of four children. Grandma hid important details about two of their births, so we wouldn't be surprised if Grandma was pregnant before she and Ed were married, making Mom's birth in December right on schedule. However, one of the few things Lucille did tell Mom was because she was "premature," she was a blue baby. We'll never know.

Mom does remember being told that her grandmother, Bertha Viola Olds, and great-grandfather, Jeremiah Knauss Olds, were present during that time.

Sometime before Mom was born, Jeremiah had read a newspaper article about a European woman (mom thought perhaps a princess) with the last name of Claudel. He was intrigued by the woman and liked the name so he named his great-granddaughter Vivian Claudell Lee. Years later Mom and I looked on the Internet to see if we could find this princess. We didn't find any record of a princess with that name, but we did find a famous French artist named Camille Claudel.  Interestingly Ms. Claudel was born December 8, 1864, the same month and day as our Claudell. Perhaps this is the woman Jeremiah named Mom after.

Even though Jeremiah gave Mom her name, the name wasn't official until after Ed was released from prison. The birth certificate listed Mom's name as "No Name Lee." Decades later Mom had to go through the tedious process of getting affidavits to prove she was indeed Vivian Claudell Lee.

After Ed was released from prison, he came to live with Lucille and Mom. He and Lucille both had violent tempers, but Lucille's was worse. One day, when Mom was around a year old, they were sitting at the kitchen table eating. They had just gotten back from buying groceries. Mom was in her high chair and reached toward Ed's plate. He hit her hand with a butter knife. He didn't like being a father or a husband.

That made Lucille so mad that she started tearing up the kitchen. She opened up the packages of food they had just purchased and emptied their contents onto the floor. She turned the table over on Ed and started cutting up any of his clothes she could find. That was the day Ed left the home and the family.

When Mom was about two-and-one-half years old, Lucille met Ote Card. Their relationship was only a casual one. She got pregnant with her second child and registered the infant boy's name as Jerry Douglas Lee who was born in July 1931. Mr. Card was never in Jerry's life. There's a chance he never knew about Jerry.

Bertha was married to George W. Menefee who owned a restaurant in Picher, Okla. Mom, Lucille, and Jerry lived in the back of the restaurant for a time. Bertha continued to run the restaurant after he died. Picher, Oklahoma is now a ghost town. For more information, please click here.

Even though the details are fuzzy, Mom remembers the three of them moving to Galena, Kansas to live with Bertha's father, Jeremiah. Above are Mom and Jerry standing in front of his house which was located on 7th Street. Trolley tracks went through the middle of the street and went all the way to Joplin, Missouri, a neighboring town.

One day Mom was looking out of the screened-in front door. It was raining outside and it was also starting to hail. She saw a man standing outside the house. He picked up a piece of hail and walked onto the porch, handing her the piece of hail. She opened the door and took it. When Lucille saw the man, she told him to leave and never come back. It was Mom's father, Ed Lee. That was the last time she ever saw him alive.

When Jerry was about a two or three years old, Lucille met and married Cecil Glenn Harreld and they moved to a "suburb" on the north end of Galena called Empire. Mom attended the first and second grades at the little school in Empire.

At some point, after Jerry was born, Bertha was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Because she could no longer work, she moved to Galena to be with her family. Bertha purchased an old shack that was on mining property. That land couldn't be purchased but people could move onto it - like squatters. The small shack consisted of two rooms - a living room and a bedroom. There was no kitchen or bathroom and had no running water so water was carried from a house across the street owned by the Crabtree family. Gas was installed by an organization called  Works Progress Administration. They also provided an outhouse that had two seats. I'll discuss more about the WPA and what it was like to live in the shack in another post.

When it was time for Mom to start the third grade, she, Lucille, Glenn, and Jerry moved back to Galena. Glenn had been hurt in World War I and received a monthly check. To earn extra money, he did photography on the side. Mom moved into the shack to live with Bertha. Lucille, Glenn, and Jerry lived somewhere else in Galena. Mom attended Josephine Lloyd's third-grade class. Ms. Lloyd never married. She and Mom remained friends until her death at 101 years old.

Glenn was a good father to both Mom and Jerry. Jerry's birth certificate listed his last name as Lee. There was no one listed as Jerry's father. In those days, a child born out of wedlock had the notation of "bastard" on the birth certificate. Glenn didn't like that, so he gave Jerry his last name. It wasn't done legally. They just started using Harreld on all of Jerry's paperwork. No one ever questioned anything. Harreld was the only last name Jerry knew growing up. He had always thought Glenn was his father. How did things turn out when he found out differently? That is another story.