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Forrest’s father, Elno Boyd “Dick” Ladd, was born in Neodosha, Kansas on 18 March 1878. His grandfather, Charles Henry Ladd, was born in Wisconsin on 25 July 1846. The family roots of his great-grandfather John L. Ladd are unknown at this time, but John reported on census records that he was born in New York.

Forrest’s mother, Mary Matilda “Mamie” Anderson, was born in Marquette, Hamilton County, Nebraska on 17 November 1881. Her father, Andrew Gustas Anderson, was born on 1 January 1846 in Sweden. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in Hamilton County, Nebraska on 20 January 1905.

Grandmother Ladd, Henrietta Marie “Ettie” Richmond, was born 4 September 1850 in Ashtabula, Ohio. Her paternal ancestors go back to early British history, with a line of kings of Scotland; King Egbert of England, born about 770; Alfred the Great, born about 848; the Duke of Aquitaine, born about 929 in France; William the Conqueror, King of England, born 1024 in France, and others of note. This line of our family history is our major claim to descent from royalty and historic personages.

Forrest’s birth certificate, a delayed version issued in 1942, shows that he was born in Ripley, Payne County, Oklahoma on 5 May 1907. Ripley is located about ten miles west and north of Cushing, on State Highway 108, just a short way north of Highway 33. Forrest was the third child after Everett, born in 1902, and Roy, born in 1905. His sister Lela was born in 1909. Later children were Floyd, 1911; Ruby, 1913; and Nila, born in 1915. Nila is the only member of the family living at the time of this writing.

Everett, Roy, Forrest, and Lela all were enrolled in the New Liberty Public School, District 136, North Ponca Township, Lincoln Co., in 1916. Forrest probably was in the fourth grade at age 9 at that time. Blanche M. Houston was their teacher. There is also a school picture that is labeled as Mount Air school, with a question mark beside the name, and another school picture with the name of the school not identified.

Forrest’s father died 9 January 1918 of pneumonia as a complication of influenza, and his grandmother Ettie Ladd died the same month. Forrest would have been age 10, going on 11, at that time. Mamie did not remarry until 1928, when most of the children were grown and gone from home. She, along with her children, ran the family farm in the Happy Valley community southeast of Cushing for many years. Forrest would have been 16 years old at the death of his grandfather Charles Henry Ladd of Ripley on 29 February 1924.

Two years later, on 20 February 1926, he and Bonnie Gladys Stillwell were married by a District Judge in Chandler, Oklahoma. He gave Avery, Oklahoma as his place of residence. At that time Avery, located south of Cushing in Lincoln County, was a thriving community and served as the postal address for families in the Happy Valley Community, also located in Lincoln County. Bonnie lived in Cushing, and had graduated from high school in the spring of 1925. We have found no record that Forrest attended high school.

Forrest and Bonnie were acquainted as early as 1921, when both would have been in their middle teens. We do not know how they became acquainted, but in the two photographs we have from April of 1921 they were with a childhood friend and one of Bonnie’s cousins.

At the time I was born in January 1927 Forrest was a sharecrop farmer on 80 acres across the road from his mother. This was an upland farm and they grew garden items, maize, corn, and perhaps some wheat. The house there was a small two-room frame structure with no utilities. Water was obtained by drawing water from the well and the outhouse was out south close to the chicken house. Heat was furnished by a potbelly wood-burning stove in the room that served as both living room and bedroom. Cooking was done on a wood stove in the room that served as kitchen, dining room, work room, and family room. Although there was an outside door in the living room, it was almost never used. All everyday in and out traffic from the house went through the kitchen door, which faced on the end of the driveway and was in the direction of the well, the woodpile, the chicken house and barn, and the outhouse. I can recall several incidents from life there that involved Forrest, such as walking behind him in the trough left by the single-blade plough pulled by a team of horses, seeing him take care of a sick calf until the veterinarian could get there, going fishing with him, being allowed occasionally to go along on a nighttime hunt for racoons or possums, hearing him and Uncle Floyd teasing Mom until she broke out in hives, trying to hold my mouth right so I could make pebbles skip across the pond like Dad and Floyd could–these are some of the memory fragments of life with Dad in those early years.

One story from our lives in that house involves my cousin Chester Anderson. Chester is about ten years older than I am, and visited us fairly often in those days. When I was quite young (too young to remember the incident) he told me about the bears that roamed about in the dark and how they liked to get little boys and eat them up. When my mother found out the source of my sudden fear of the dark, she could have scalped Chester. Today, Chester’s head is close-shaven and I sometimes remark that the reason is because my mother pulled all his hair out by the roots and it never grew back. I don’t know that this incident affected Dad as much as it did Mom, but it certainly introduced a new complication of having a little boy around the house.

In 1932, during the height of the Great Depression, I started to Happy Valley School at age five. The school had a bus route that passed by our house. Sometime during this period, in addition to farming, Forrest became a bus driver for the Happy Valley School. It may have been in connection with this paid job from an outside employer that he applied for and was issued a Social Security card dated 6 October 1937. Also during this period, the family moved to two other houses in the community. One was a house just across the road from Happy Valley School. Whether Forrest continued farming along with the school bus job is unclear. At least part of the time while we lived in that house, Forrest’s brother Floyd lived with us. Floyd and I shared the bed made by a foldout divan in the living room. Forrest, Floyd, and many others in the community were avid hunters and fishermen. It was common to have tanning boards with the hides of racoons, possums, and perhaps other game animals hanging to dry in the barn. The men had a small side income selling these hides.

I was asleep when this happened, but one night after the men came in exhausted from a hunting trip Dad went on to bed. Sometime later he and Mom heard Floyd in the other room saying “Sitting on the side of the bed, and too tired to get in!”

I recall times when Forrest and others would work on the county roads in lieu of paying poll tax. We had a hunting hound named Old June who was a part of the family, being a companion for me as an only child and a hunting companion for the men at night. We also had Old Red for a time, although I don’t recall that we had him as long as we had June. We did not live very long in the house by the school before we moved to a large two-story house west and north of the school, on the main county road that went to Cushing. During part of the time a teacher and her husband, Lillian and Elmer Daniel, lived upstairs. Lillian was my teacher for one year, probably the fifth or sixth grade. She was one of my favorites. I also was fascinated by Elmer’s work and the wondrous things he did with a drafting board and related tools. I recall learning from him that NBC not only stood for the National Biscuit Company but also for the National Broadcasting Company.

I remember then that we had a dog I was fond of, but the dog sucked eggs. Dad had about all of that he could tolerate, and I tried to convince him that I could break Rusty of the habit. I don’t remember what I did, but I was sure that the dog would no longer steal the eggs. I told Dad that “Rusty doesn’t suck eggs any more.” Dad agreed with me, and then shortly after told me that he had shot the dog. I was quite distressed, but even then had the feeling that this was a habit from which very few dogs were broken. I remember Dad’s efforts in trying to save some cattle that broke out of the pasture and got into the cane field, and became bloated as a consequence. As I remember, he lost some and saved some. I didn’t realize at the time what it meant to a rural family to lose a milk cow.

What Forrest did for a living other than raise cattle and a few crops, as well as drive a school bus, while we lived in that house is unclear to me. He may have started driving for Earl Bray by then. I was not much interested in what the men did for a living, except Elmer, who did much of his work at home. This house was located on an oil storage tank farm, and one of my activities after school was picking up rivets that had fallen to the ground during the dismantling of tanks no longer used. I collected enough scrap metal, which was in considerable demand at that time, to arrange for several trips to town loaded down with iron rivets to sell at a salvage yard.

During this general time frame we lived briefly in Enid, Oklahoma and for a summer in WaKeeney, Kansas. I can recall in the Enid Junior High School how fascinated I was with geometry and the wondrous relationships it revealed. My most clear memory from WaKeeney is the day I jumped from the loft of a barn and landed on a board with a nail sticking up. Again, I don’t remember how it affected Dad but my mother was quite concerned when her son came home with a board flopping from his foot and a nail sticking up from the top of his shoe. Luckily, the dire predictions about lockjaw didn’t materialize.

In 1939, the family moved to town, and for a few years lived on east Main Street in Cushing. At this time, Forrest was driving a gasoline truck for the Earl Bray Company. I completed the 8th grade at Happy Valley in the spring of 1940, riding to and from school that year with two teachers who also lived in town. One was Edra Beall, sister-in-law of the Happy Valley Principal Arthur Beall. About 1940 or 1941 we moved to Coffeyville, Kansas, where Forrest continued driving a gasoline truck for the Earl Bray Company. I remember going with Dad to play tennis on the school-ground courts near our house. He usually won. We didn’t do very much together, because he made long road trips in his work and when he was home we usually had to be quiet so he could catch up on his sleep.

About 1941 or 1942 Forrest took training at a local school to be a machinist. I can remember going to the school shop at night to watch him work at a lathe. Shortly after finishing this training, the family moved back to Cushing. While Mom and I lived at 839 East Oak Street in Cushing, Forrest lived and worked in Tulsa at a machine shop. It probably was the Hanlon-Waters Company. Forrest was issued an Army-Navy Production Award from Hanlon-Waters on 31 January 1944. One of his WW II ration books of 1943 or 1944 showed his address as 839 E. Oak, Cushing, Oklahoma.

Forrest and Bonnie’s second child, Linda Lou, was born 23 October 1944, in Cushing. I had enrolled as a freshman in Bethany-Peniel College in Bethany, Oklahoma. Bonnie and Linda lived in a different house than the one on Oak Street, but I do not recall the street or the address. Dad was still in Tulsa most of the time.

In 1944 or 1945, shortly after Linda was born, Forrest went to the Bremerton, Washington area to work as a machinist in the Navy repair yard there. I gave him a New Testament just before he left, with the inscription “To Dad, with all my love and prayers. Jr.” (More about this Testament later.) Forrest rented a beach house right on Hood Canal near Union, Washington. Water came up under the back porch at high tide. Bonnie and Linda joined him in 1945, making the long journey by train. I spent the summer vacation of 1945 living with them and working as an electrician’s helper in the Navy yard. Dad and I did a lot of salmon fishing that summer. Since we worked the night shift, we had time during the day to go out in the boat. I think that Dad probably was most content and at peace with fishing gear in his hands. This seemed to be a good summer for everyone in the family. I recall that we had advance word that the Navy Yard would not be working the next day because the war was to be declared over so we went on a fishing expedition in the bay area somewhere fairly close to Vancouver Island. After doing so much salmon fishing, catching smaller fish seemed pretty tame in later years.

Shortly after WW II was over in 1945, the family moved back to Oklahoma, settling in Tulsa. They may have lived on North Lewis Street, but I’m not sure about this address. Their third child, Barbara Joan, was born 18 October 1947, in Tulsa. One of the houses they lived in was on West Cameron Street. Sometime during this era Forrest and Bonnie bought a house at 2509 East Admiral Court in Tulsa. The Ponca City Savings and Loan Company held the mortgage. I don’t recall now how they got the money for a down payment, but I believe there was a story about how that money was provided.

I graduated from Bethany-Peniel College in May of 1948. After attending the Nazarene Theological Seminary for the 1948-49 school year, I enrolled in a graduate program in psychology and education at the University of Oklahoma. Melva Jean Karns and I were married in Ford, Kansas on 20 August 1950. Forrest, Bonnie, Linda, and Joan attended the wedding, with Linda serving as one of the flower girls.

Things were not going well between Forrest and Bonnie in those years, and in June of 1954 Bonnie sued Forrest for a divorce. The divorce was granted in August. To make a long story short, this was a period of turmoil for the family. Forrest’s health was failing from the effects of emphysema, brought on by a combination of iron dust from his work as a machinist and a life-long smoking habit. About 1957 he took disability and moved to a small one-room house on the property of his sister and brother-in-law, Nila and Loyd Haskin, in the rural area southwest of Cushing. He lived there by himself, but apparently made trips back to Tulsa frequently. Bonnie and the girls lived in the house on Admiral Court, and Bonnie had a dressmaking business in her home. The girls were in public school in Tulsa and I was completing graduate work while teaching at Bethany Nazarene College.

Forrest continued to live in the one-room house adjoining the home of Nila and Loyd until his death in 1965. Although he had not been a religious man, while living there, he was converted. He often listened to the sermons of radio preachers, and their ministries had considerable influence on him. I had the privilege of baptizing my father on 17 May 1962, with Pastor E. S. Phillips assisting, in the Bethany Church of the Nazarene. The stub of a bus ticket for the journey to Bethany and back on that date was among the personal effects in his billfold at the time of his death. He had kept the Testament I gave him, and after his death we found the Testament, with the inscription, written below my presentation note, saying “This little book has been a Treasure indeed. When I pass on I want Jr. to have it back. With my thanks, love and best wishes and prayers. Dad.” Needless to say, it is one of my keepsake treasures today.

On 31 March 1965 Forrest and I started our first game of chess by mail. On 2 June while I was visiting him we finished the first game. He allowed me to redo a bad move, then he made a couple of bad “mistakes” and let me win. We started a second game that day, continuing it by mail and on a visit with him on 18 July I won. He won the third game, and the fourth on 7 August. We started game five that same day and finished during a visit on 3 October. Dad won. The sixth and last game was started that day, and continued to the last recorded move on 12 December. The game was never finished.

On Sunday, 19 December 1965 Nila called me, saying that Dad was very sick and that I probably should come. It seemed apparent that he required medical help, and we decided it was best to have him admitted to the University Hospital in Oklahoma City. I remember calling a physician there and being told “You can bring him if you want to but I can’t guarantee he’ll be admitted. I can’t admit every emphysema patient in the State.” After a night ride by ambulance from Cushing, Forrest was admitted immediately, and an oxygen tent was placed over him. The final diagnosis was advanced pulmonary disease, including bronchiectasis, emphysema, pulmonary fibrosis, and pneumonia with abscesses. He was admitted at 10:45 p.m. on Sunday night and, in spite of the emergency treatment, he died at 8:35 a.m. the next morning, December 20.

The Gene Adams Funeral Home took his body to Cushing, where the Fairley Funeral Home had charge of Forrest’s funeral service. Forrest was buried in the Ladd family area of Parkland Cemetery, located south of Cushing.

My sisters and I decided that what few possessions Dad had, other than personal items we might want to keep, should go to the Haskin family. Several months later I sent a letter to his sister Nila that included the title to Dad’s car, a 1951 Mercury, telling her that the family wanted her son Dale to have it. We also gave Dale a shotgun and Forrest’s .22 caliber rifle, a gun that Forrest’s mother had given him as a teenager as a reward for stopping smoking. (Obviously, he resumed the habit later.) I have his pistol. Forrest was in possession of his mother’s Bible and had had it rebound. I sent it to his brother Floyd in January 1966. Dad also had a study Bible with copious notes written in it. I do not know now what happened to that Bible.

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Among Forrest’s personal effects were a few items readers might find of interest. One of these is a poem found in his billfold after his death:

Lord, grant that I may love to fish until my dying day
   And as I make my final cast most humbly shall I pray,
That when in God’s safe landing net I’m peacefully asleep,
   Then in His mercy I’ll be found good enough to keep.

Here is a letter he wrote to me on 12 July 1962. I have tried to preserve his spelling and punctuation.

Cushing Okla
July 12 - 1962

Dear Son & All

Just a few lines to let you know that I am feeling some better, went to Doc Martin Tue - got some pills for my tummy, also got some Penecillian and have taken 2 shots of it.
My stomach still cramps and I gas & bloat up pretty bad, if it doesn’t get better I will go back in a few days to try to find out what the trouble is.
Don’t have much news, so I will sign off for now.
Hope this finds you all well.
Don’t worry about me, if I get very sick we will call and let you know.

Love to all

Dad-

Here is another letter he wrote a little later:

Cushing Okla
Dec 18- 1962

Dear Son & All

I had hoped I could wait and give your gift to you in person, but as you are not going to be here over Xmas I will go ahead and Mail it, and hope you get it OK.
I had another little spell with my tummy this Mo. But am feeling pretty good again now, hope this finds you all well and Happy.
Oh yes I got a book in the mail, but when I opened it it was addressed to Mr & Mrs Will Hood inside.
Mother got a pkg with 2 pr of mens socks, we decided you had got the addresses wrong and traded– Thanks a million from both of us.
Sorry I wont get to see you Xmas, but hope you have a nice time, and come when you can.
Sorry I have waited so long to write.

Wishing you all a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.

Love and prayers

Dad

Here is a third, typed letter:

Cushing Okla.
Feb, 11, 1963.

Dear Son and all.
Will try to write a few lines to let you know that I am still alive. I sure don,t have much news but eill try to write a few lines anyhow.
I have not been feeling as good lately as I would like to, but feel somewhat better today, Hope this finds you folks, and Linda well and happy.
I must try and write to her, I imagine she thinks I am not much interested in her

How is everything going at school? And how is Linda getting along in her school work,?
I have not heard any thing from Bonnie and Joan for sometime now, how are they getting along?
It is sure cold and windy here today, and of course I am enjoying it very much
Weel Son the sooner I sign off, the less mistakes I will make.

Tell Linda I said tell her Hello, and to write to me.
Take care of your self, And come when you can.

Love and Prayers,
Dad.

I have attempted to copy a little Poem that I thought you might like if you have not already read it.

[The copy of the poem has been lost. Linda was enrolled in Bethany Nazarene College, where I taught, and he knew I would see her.]