Month: March 2022

“A Great Little Joy Spreader”

On By Rob RoehmIn Contemporaries1 Comment

[By Rob Roehm. Originally posted August 16, 2011, at the now-defunct REH: Two-Gun Raconteur blog. This version lightly edited.]

Readers of School Days in the Post Oaks may recognize Edith Odom as the salutatorian of Cross Plains High School’s class of 1922, the same class that Robert E. Howard graduated with. There were only ten members of the class, so I did a little research to see what I could find out about them. There’s not a lot of information for most, but Odom is an exception.

Born Edith Jewel Odom, possibly on October 9, 1906, she spent most of her early life in Callahan County with her parents, Simeon Edward and Julia Velma. Both the 1910 and 1920 Census records list her father as a farmer. In 1922 she graduated second in her class (Howard’s friend Winfred Brigner was first), but missed the graduation ceremony, which had been delayed due to bad weather. The Cross Plains Review reported that she was “unable to reach town in time for the exercises.”

Like Robert E. Howard, Odom went to another high school to pick up the extra year of schooling necessary for college attendance. She moved to Clyde, Texas, at the opposite side of Callahan County, and attended her senior year in Abilene. After graduating in the spring of 1923, she enrolled at McMurry College in the fall (along with REH’s friend from Cross Cut, Austin Newton). By December of that year, she was already making a name for herself on campus. She was elected secretary of the French Club and chosen as “Class Beauty.” The school’s newspaper, The War Whoop, described her as “not only physically beautiful, but is well-rounded, radiating a charming personality. It might easily be said, ‘To know her is to love her.’”

Her “Class Beauty” status was elevated in 1925, when she was chosen as the yearbook’s “Most Popular Girl.” The quote next to her photo (at the top of this post) might explain her popularity: “My ambition, as you know, is to make men happy and keep them so.” Another factor in her popularity was her membership in the McMurry Girls’ Quartet. The group performed at many local functions and private parties. The Abilene Morning News, April 23, 1927, under the headline “Business Men’s Bible Class Has Quarterly Feed,” reported the following:

[. . .] Other entertainment for the evening was given by students of the Fine Arts Department of McMurry College. The girl’s quartet composed of Carolyn McNeely, Irene Meador, Edith Odom and Beulah Tracy gave a group of numbers.

Odom was queen of the “McMurry Fete” and graduated with a B.A. in English in 1927. Beneath her senior picture in the yearbook, we learn that “Yes, she is going to teach school—for a while,” as well as the following:

Edith is everybody’s friend, and when she goes away McMurry will have lost a great little joy spreader, and the world will have gained through McMurry’s loss.

After visiting relatives at Big Spring that summer, Odom started teaching at Denton, just south of Clyde. The 1930 Census has her living in Callahan County, with her parents. The War Whoop gave its students an update on their popular alumnus in its May 16, 1930 edition:

Alumni Directory
Edith Odom, B. A. 1927. Edith is still spanking youngsters at her home in the hinterland near Clyde. She is hard pressed for time to teach by stove sellers, hardware peddlers, school teachers, farmers and highway inspectors. The “Queen” is still as friendly as ever.

As the summer ended, Odom changed locations and was up in Miami, Texas, in the panhandle, teaching school for the 1930-31 school year. The next summer she was married:

(Pampa Daily News – Aug. 31, 1931)
MIAMI, Aug. 31. — (Special) —A marriage of much interest in this community was solemnized recently at Abilene when Miss Edith Odom became the bride of Bill O’Loughlin of this city. The bride is a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. S. E. Odom of Clyde, and was a teacher in the public schools here last year. The groom is a son of Mr. and Mrs. M. W. O’Loughlin of Miami.

After her marriage, Mrs. Bill O’Loughlin shows up pretty regularly in the Pampa Daily News’ “Society Page” as a member of a bridge club and president of the Junior Home Progress club. The February 16, 1940 War Whoop reported some sad news:

ABOUT OUR EXES
[. . .] They also told us of the recent death of Edith Odom’s father. Edith, as many of you know, is Mrs. Bill O’Loughlin of Miami and has a two-year old daughter, Ann.

Odom also had at least one other child, a son, whom the Pampa Daily News reported on May 27, 1955, won the American Legion Award and was valedictorian of his 8th grade class. And that’s where the record ends. Odom died on July 19, 1969 in Pampa, Gray Co., Texas; she is buried in Miami Cemetery, Miami, Texas.

The Cisco Kid

On By Rob RoehmIn Biography, Contemporaries2 Comments

[By Rob Roehm. Originally posted on June 22, 2015 at the now-defunct REH: Two-Gun Raconteur blog. This version has been updated]

This year at Howard Days, I talked to a couple of people about my obsession with the minutia of Robert E. Howard’s life. While I am a firm believer that the more we know, the clearer the picture of the writer from Cross Plains will become, I still think some of the things that intrigue me are pretty far out in left field. But the folks I talked to said that they found these things interesting, too, and that I should keep on keeping on. Well, I’ve got a few things lined up that may change their minds. Read on, if you dare.

When I first became interested in Howard’s life he seemed to be characterized as kind of a lone nut, with only a couple of friends over in Brownwood and maybe one or two more in Cross Plains. But when you start digging, others emerge. Without mentioning any female companionship (we’ll get to that at some future date), Howard had more friends than just Clyde Smith, Truett Vinson, Dave Lee, and Lindsey Tyson.

Reading Howard’s correspondence and autobiographical writings reveals other friends, including Aud “Slue Foot” Cross, Winfred Brigner, and Ottie Gill, not to mention Harold Preece and E. Hoffmann Price who both visited Cross Plains on more than one occasion. The de Camp papers at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin contain interviews with other Howard pals like Austin Newton, Leroy Butler, and Tom Ray Wilson. Even Howard’s hometown newspaper, the Cross Plains Review, has items of interest like this one from July 25, 1924: “Earl Baker of Ballinger visited Robert Howard last week.” (Baker was a buddy from the Burkett days.) These were all people who came in and out of Howard’s life, friends of circumstance like we all have from time to time, while our core group remains somewhat stable. To this list we should add Ray Adams.

Not too long ago Patrice Louinet sent me a clipping from the November 16, 1923 edition of the Cross Plains Review.

One little clipping, and a question: did I know anything about Ray Adams? At the time, I’d never even heard of him, now I know more than anyone outside of his family needs to know. I’ll share the relevant bits here.

Alton Ray Adams was born in Eastland County, Texas, on October 11, 1905, the first child of William and Fannie. His father was a farmer. Sometime after the 1910 enumeration of the U.S. Census but before the end of the year 1919, the Adams family had moved to Cross Plains and gained two more members: Kermit and Bonnie. And if they hadn’t met earlier, Ray Adams and Robert E. Howard would have bumped into each other at the Methodist Church on Christmas Eve 1919 where they are both on the program giving readings, as reported on December 19.

Presumably, Adams attended school in Cross Plains and, since he was just a few months older, may have had some classes with Robert E. Howard, whose family had moved to Cross Plains in 1919. But Adams didn’t finish school in Cross Plains, as this May 26, 1922 piece from the Cross Plains Review shows:

Back home, at least for the summer, Adams is one of the young men, along with Howard, mentioned in the following July 28, 1922 CPR item:

After the radio experiment, Robert E. Howard went off to Brownwood for another year of high school. Ray Adams went back to De Leon and was visited by another familiar face (CPR Nov. 10, 1922):

After high school, he moved back to Eastland County, Cisco to be precise. But he and Howard appear to have been good enough friends that they tried to stay in touch. When Howard returned to Cross Plains from Brownwood in 1923, Adams visited at least once, as the clip at the head of this post indicates.

How long the pair remained friends is a mystery. Like many school friendships, it may have simply dwindled away, or perhaps they became pen pals, though I haven’t found reference to Adams in Howard’s surviving correspondence. Whatever the case, sometime before the death of his father, W. M. Adams in June 1934, Ray had moved to Montana. He died there in 1942.

Cross Plains Review June 29, 1934