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Charlie Edwin
Partain
April 10, 1898 is the birth date reflected in the delayed birth certificate dad received in 1943. There was some confusion about the actual year of his birth since his sisters could not agree. He was born in Settlement, AR. Settlement became known as Shirley, AR when the railroad came through in the 1930’s. The house was located about 6 miles East of Shirley on what is now State Highway 16. It was just down the hill from the Special Davis Cemetery and church and just inside the county line between Van Buren and Cleburne Counties.
Sometime between 1902 and 1905 the family moved to Spiro, OK and from there to Bokoshe Mountain just outside Bokoshe, OK.
While living of Bokoshe Mountain dad held joint title (along with Oliver’s wife, Fannie Partain) to a piece of land described as:
The North Half (1/2) of the South East Quarter, Section Nineteen (19), Township Eight (8) North and Range Twenty-Four (24) East, containing 80 acres.
On October 7, 1929 they sold the land to George H. Vancil, the father of Arthur Partain’s wife, Lola.
On March 22, 1922, while living on Bokoshe Mountain, Charlie took Beulah McCullar as his bride. They were married by “L.R. Crumb, Freewill Baptist Minister of Gospel of Tucker in LeFlore County.” Thus began a life-long commitment that produced three boys:
Charlie’s father, John Thomas Partain, was an ordained preacher in the Church of Christ. However, it was a Union preacher named Mr. Graham who baptized Charlie and Beulah in Brazil Creek while they were dating. At the time of their marriage, dad was a clerk for a “foot washing” Freewill Baptist Church. Mother joined the Freewill Baptist Church after they were married and after Edward was born. The Freewill Baptists offered to send dad to a seminary but mom talked him out of it.
In 1929 dad took mother, Edward, and Wayne and moved to the community of Antioch, which is about 3 miles east of Stigler, OK. Wayne started school in the first grade there. It was about this time that a Church of Christ preacher named Mr. Mansfield held a revival meeting in the area and mom and dad were re-baptized in Stigler Lake.
In 1933 they moved to the community of Eureka to farm with dad’s brother, Arthur. Wayne started the 2nd grade there. The country was deeply in the grip of the Great Depression and dad loaded up the family and went to Arapaho, near Clinton, in Western Oklahoma to pick cotton. On the move back they had a wreck in the old 1929 one-ton truck dad owned. Dad’s brother John and nephew Leland Ford were traveling with them. Mom and Wayne got some nasty cuts on the face. Wayne still has to scars to show for it. It didn’t do the truck any good either.
Upon returning to from Western Oklahoma in 1934, the family moved to the community of Havana, west of Stigler. Charlie got a job running the County Farm. He worked there for about a year and drew enough salary that he could buy his first new vehicle, a 1935 Chevrolet Pickup and a gasoline-powered Maytag washing machine.
In 1936 the family moved out north of Stigler to what they called “the Terrell Place.” That was another severe drought year. The family drew water from a well and carried it in 55 gallon barrels out to the field to hand water the tomato plants and somehow managed to keep them producing enough to support them.
The next year, 1937, they moved back to Havana. Wayne was in the 7th grade. I was born January 13, 1941. In December of that year dad had to pack up the family and go to California to survive a bad crop year. We were only there from December through the following February and returned to Havana for spring planting.
In 1943, with Edward in WW II and Wayne pretty much grown and off to college, dad took mom and me to Tulsa, Oklahoma. We lived the first year with mom’s sister Thelma. Most of the time dad worked for a men’s clothing store, but for a short time he and mom’s sister Deletha ran a small restaurant. I can still remember the French fries. There was a movie theatre across the street. We gave their employees a discount and they let us go to matinees. I only remember, “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” and “The Headless Horseman.”
At some point during our Tulsa sojourn, we lived and worked at the Turley Children’s Home that was a ministry of the North Main Church of Christ in Tulsa.
Later on we had our own house just off of 11th Street on Xantheus Place. I started school there and got my first bike there. Mother took care of children part of the time to supplement our income.
No matter where dad was his entire life he was always drawn back to the farm. He was a farmer at heart and he was very good at it. So, in 1948 we moved back to the community of Rucker, four miles east and 4 miles north of Stigler on what we called “the Wiggington Place.” Our water supply was a hand-dug, spring fed, cistern on the side of the hill. I still have nightmares from having to get down in there to clean it out. There were more creepy-crawlies than a body can stand.
I was glad when dad bought 40 acres on Highway 9 (3 miles east of Stigler) with a water well instead of a cistern. I still had to carry water 100 yards uphill but I didn’t have to get in it. It wasn’t until I was a sophomore in high school that dad put an electric pump on the well and we moved the outhouse inside.
In 1953 we had a bad hailstorm at the worst possible time. The young crop was completely wiped out and it was too late to replant. Wayne was preaching in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas and knew that the church in San Juan, Texas needed a preacher. Dad got the job and we spent the next two years there.
Dad loved to preach and he was good at it. His heart went out to the Mexicans living in poverty. I remember spending time in one-room huts where a number two galvanized tub sitting on a dirt floor held a fire that was the cook stove, heat, and night light for the house. He despised the opulent Catholic Cathedral that cast a shadow on the poverty surrounding it.
We got back to our farm in Oklahoma in time for me to finish the 7th and 8th grades at Rucker. Rucker was a two-room schoolhouse, but by the time I got to the 7th grade, only one room was being used and one teacher taught all 8 grades. One day some of the kids decided they were going to play hooky. I told dad I though I would too. He said “fine, I can always use more help in the field.” I went to school.
In 1959 I graduated from Stigler High School and went off to Oklahoma Christian College near Oklahoma City. Shortly after beginning college I was diagnosed with an eye disease that pretty much wiped out the first semester. While being treated, I decided that we really couldn’t afford Oklahoma Christian and that I should find a job. I contacted the church in San Juan, Texas where dad had preached and asked if they had a job for me. They said, “Sure” then they called dad and said, “Why don’t you come back too?” I guess it was a bad crop year because dad said; “Ok” and we went as a team.
Mom and dad stayed in San Juan long enough (about two years) for me to marry Donna Bolds then they headed back to the farm. As dad’s health declined he slowly reduced the acreage he farmed. He had always plowed with horses. We had a Farmall Cub Tractor for a brief period but it got distemper and dad didn’t know how to treat it so he went back to horses. The last horse he owned he shared with his brother Arthur. They had a running battle over who owned the front half and who owned the rear half.
Dad spent a lot of years either preaching or serving as an elder for the Church of Christ in Stigler. When he finally sold the farm east of Stigler, he and mom moved to Bokoshe, Oklahoma and he preached for the Church of Christ there for the rest of his life. They bought a double lot right in the middle of town on the main highway where they continued to raise and sell vegetables.
Charlie was born with a severely enlarged heart. He worked long hours at hard manual labor all his life. When he died of congestive heart failure, his doctor said he had never heard of a person living that long (79 years) with that condition. He told my brother, Wayne, that dad was “a living miracle.”
Beulah continued to live alone in their house in Bokoshe and to raise and sell vegetables for many more years. She died in February of 2000 one month short of her 97th birthday.
Charlie died in Sparks Hospital in Fort Smith, AR March 1, 1977. A memorial service was held at the Bokoshe Church of Christ and he was buried in Old Bokoshe Cemetery right beside the road and next to Cotton and Connie Tankseley. Twenty three years later Beulah’s body was laid to rest beside him.
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