I’ve always wanted to write something about my mom’s stepfather, Will Armstrong. Her dad died in the great flu epidemic in 1918. It was a hectic time ripe with public panic. Funeral homes were out of caskets and if you had a death, your neighbors and families had to step up. My dad’s father, J. T. Bullard, and Will Armstrong volunteered to step up and help the Boyd’s. The two built Grandpa Boyd a casket and took care of the details so he could have a funeral and be buried at the Maxie Cemetery in Victor.

A little over a year later Will Armstrong married John Boyd’s widow, Julia. Julia had a good number of kids. She had Lora, Dora, Cora and Ruth. Will’s children included Lula, Delia, Plumah, Florence, George, Jim, Marcus and Raymond. He and Julia together then had Oma, Ezra and J. C.

Sometime in the 1930s he and his family moved to Lula where he farmed until Grandma Julia was found to be sick and dying of cancer. She passed away in 1940 and we buried her at Lula. I loved her very much. Will Armstrong soon moved to be near us in Centrahoma. I had a five customer Daily Oklahoman paper route at that time. My family ran a grocery store in Centrahoma and Grandpa, a patient man, taught me how to read the news after the Pearl Harbor attack. He taught me to be able to recognize words such as “Kraut” “Nazi” “Jap” and “War.” I developed a deep interest in keeping up with the war news via the Oklahoman, Grandpa, and the radio. I even learned how to spell Messerschmidt. Grandpa and I developed a close kinship reading the Oklahoman together. According to him, while the war was sort of new, he said that we would eventually see German tanks chugging right down SHW-3. I fully believed him. Our friendship flourished through the years and in 1944 he made the move with us up SHW3 to Stonewall. He also kept me well informed on the rich and abundant genealogy of his family but to this day I’m not sure where he was born back in 1871. Just somewhere in the vicinity of Mena, Arkansas. And he had 91 grandchildren and 67 great-grands. The number of his greatgreat grandkids were not numbered but he had a bunch of those too.

He was a town marshal in Wister. He shot down a fleeing bank robber one afternoon in 1906. The felon was shot in the leg and was crippled for life. The robber was only 15 and sadly, grandpa knew the kid. So, he quit his job but continued to serve part-time as a deputy US Marshall for old Judge Parker over in Fort Smith.

One of Will’s sons (Raymond) later settled down in Wister as a city employee and when Grandpa wanted to go down and spend a day with Raymond, I was quick to volunteer. As we drove past a sign pointing us to Robbers Cave Park he remembered an incident back before Statehood. A batch of “wanted” robbers had taken to hiding and camping out there in those big rocks and caves and he was a part of a large posse of US Marshalls who surrounded them and kept them hemmed in for about 12 days. In spite of the expense and trouble when the lawmen closed the trap, the felons all escaped.

He then related the story of when he and some other marshals caught some horse thieves at a place now called “Horse Thief Springs” on what is called the Talimena Drive. It was a well-used US Army built wagon road back then, grandpa said. He had a newspaper picture of one of these malefactors standing in a wagon all trussed up with my grandpa holding him up. The second picture showed the same guy hanging by his neck. Not exactly like what I saw in the movie “True Grit” This was in the Wister newspaper. No court appeals in 1906. Grandpa had a large trunk full of his mementos, news clippings including two obituaries on himself. Both mistakes, obviously. He was still very much alive in 1950.

He died in 1955 at Valley View Hospital in Ada while I was in the service. He was a precious and muchloved old guy and I still miss him.

I still enjoy hearing from you, my readers. Be sure and go to church Sunday.

Wayne Bullard, DPh cwaynebullard@gmail.com