The Return Home and a New Love

Oh happy day!  My Uncle Homer finally made it home from Korea. It had been a long five years since we had seen him.  I was ten when he returned to Oklahoma, but little did I know he wasn't here to stay, at least not at home with us anymore.  My grandparents had given up farming by this time and moved to the small town of Muldrow, where I grew up and attended schools until I graduated.

Sometime during the latter part of his overseas stay, he began corresponding with a girl who also lived in Muldrow and was a close neighbor and friend of the Riddle clan.  Her name was Opal Juanita Plank.  I imagine that a romance was blossoming by this time through those letters and once home, Homer didn't waste any time looking her up and asking her out on a date.  My grandparents, his mother and father, had known the Planks for many years, lived in the same small town, and were practically next-door neighbors.  There's much more to the beautiful story of Homer and Opal and I was glad to be a part of it.  More blogs to follow on Homer and Opal....

Opal Juanita Plank, A Beauty in High School

Opal's parents, William Jasper (Jap) Plank and Ula Golden Plank, lived in the downtown area of Muldrow and owned a small hamburger shop next to their house on Main Street.  My Grandma Riddle would walk with me downtown usually on a Saturday to buy groceries at the market and we'd stop for one of Jap's hamburgers and an ice cream cone.  I've never had a better tasting burger in my life since!  They ran that shop for many years, and on through my early school years it was still around.  I think many of my Muldrow friends will remember the "malt shop" with its red vinyl booths and great hamburgers when hamburgers were 15 cents, Cokes were a dime, and ice cream cones were a nickel.  Well, that was the 50s, a wonderful era to be a part of and I'm thankful for that wonderful time in my life.  I'm thankful for the love I had through my family, my father, grandparents, and for this amazing man we called Uncle Homer!  

Jap and Golden Plank were like a second set of grandparents to me.

A Country Boy Goes to War

Homer Y. Riddle was the only sibling of nine Riddle children who served his Country proudly in the Korean War.  His three older brothers were married by that time with families to raise. Times were hard with the war going strong.  I believe he tried to help his parents out with the farm, but by that time I had came along to live with my grandparents while he was still a very young man at home.  Homer was more like a big brother to me, cared for me as a baby while my grandparents worked the fields, and was there for me during my clumsy toddler years.  I remember a couple of times when he rocked with me and sang "Take Me Back to Tulsa for I'm too Young to Marry".  

I think he knew that eventually he needed to get an better education in order to have a future other than farming so he enlisted in the Army in 1947.  My grandparents had very little education, they could read and write, but never knew anything other than farming and growing peanuts.

 Uncle Homer took his basic training in North Carolina at Ft. Bragg.  He spent a lot of his early army days at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, but did tours of duty in just about every city with an Army post.  He retired as a CWO-4 and returned to Lawton, Oklahoma with his family to live out his retiring years.  

When Homer left his country home and his mama, daddy and me, he took two pictures with him.  He carried these pictures until he returned home from Korea and gave them back to me.  One is of me with his mom and dad--the other was one of my baby 
  Both pictures were very tattered and almost fell apart when I held them in my hand, but I saved them in an album and still have them today.  

I think I was around six in the picture with my grandparents. I was 10 when he returned home.  He wrote to us many times and sent pictures of him with some of his buddies. He never mentioned the bad times or the war much. Once he sent me some red silk kimono pajamas and a miniature camera from Japan.  I kept those things close for many years until those pajamas were actually in shreds and Grandma threw them out I think.  The camera had real film but I never developed any pictures from it because I kept opening it to check out that tiny film.  I don't know what happened to the camera but I found one on eBay, of course.

Homer was sent to Japan and from there into Korea to help lay radio wire communications. He was there until he received a leg injury from shrapnel and was sent back to the States after that.  He returned home in 1951.  My Aunt, one of his twin sisters, sent Grandma a newspaper clipping out of a Tulsa newspaper and his name was listed as one of the troops coming into Seattle on June 6.  I believe that year was 1951.  She ripped out the clipping rather hurriedly so the year wasn't showing, and wrote, "Isn't it wonderful--look mom, he's coming home."  At the very top of the clipping, she writes, "welcome home darling."  My Aunt and Uncle, along with their four children, met him at the airport in Tulsa and drove him to Muldrow.  Oh, happy day--my Uncle Homer came home from the war!  

It was around this time that Opal Juanita Plank entered his life.  

Homer and Pauline, Final Chapter Years Later

I believe that it wasn't not very long after the picture of Homer and Pauline was taken in 1945 that Uncle Homer enlisted in the Army.  He was sent to Japan around 1947 and then went to Korea to help lay radio wire communication. 

Did he ever write to Pauline?  Did he send her pictures too? And if he did, maybe those pictures and letters were confiscated by her parents and thrown away.  We will never know what happened after that or was he being a good Christian, respectful of his elders, and did what was asked of him by Pauline's parents to stay away from her?   We do know, however, that many years later after the death of his second wife, Opal in 1987, that he contacted Pauline and sent her flowers on her birthday.  Pauline had been married for some time by then and her niece told me this made her husband furious.  It was around that time Pauline probably felt the need to tell her children who this man was and why he was sending her flowers.  He never got the chance to see her again, as far as I know.

 

Uncle Homer passed away on June 2, 1996, at the age of 71, and is buried next to His wife, Opal, in a small cemetary on base at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.   Pauline passed away on August 19, 2000, at the age of 76.  

I'll have  some more beautiful stories about Homer's post-war romance with a beautiful lady whom I loved very much, Opal Juanita  Plank.   They were married in 1951, and loved each as much as anyone could love one another, I felt that love just being with them from time to time.  I didn't feel that way at first, but that's another story for this blog.   I believe Homer and Opal were truly made for each other.  Our sweet Aunt Opal passed away on August 15, 1987, at a very young age of 57. They had two beautiful daughters, Joy and Cheri.  Cheri has been helping me put together events I couldn't recall.

Homer and Pauline, Part Two

I wrote yesterday that Homer and Pauline ran away and got married on December 18, 1943.  Homer was 22 and Pauline was 19, or at least this is what the marriage license states.  I now believe his age is stated incorrectly, since his birthdate was December 18, 1924, which would have made him 19 on that very day!  Pauline's birthdate was May 3, 1924, which would make her 19 also, so according to this information she may have been a few months older. 

 Pearlene, her niece, wrote me that Pauline's family found out about the elopement and were so angry about it that they sent Pauline's brother to bring her home.  He told my sweet Uncle Homer to leave and never see her again!  The brother who brought her home and said those horrible words to Uncle Homer was my friend Pearlene's father.  

A date shown on back of this beautiful picture I had saved all these years is '47.  This tells me that perhaps they continued to see each other afterwards, maybe for many years, and that makes me happy to know they didn't forget about each other.  

Homer and Pauline, A Love Story Untold

The sweet story of Homer and Pauline became known to me only last week when I posted a picture of my Uncle Homer Riddle in his Army fatigues for a Veterans Day photo I put on Facebook on November 11, 2015.  The photo was probably taken when he was fighting in the Korean War and would send pictures to my grandparents and to me.  I saved everyone of those precious photos because I loved my Uncle Homer so very much.  I longed for any news from him because he was overseas fighting for our freedom and I missed him so much!

One of my friends on Facebook with whom I attended high school saw the picture I put on Facebook, and wrote relating to me that she believed her Aunt Pauline was once married to a man with the last name of Riddle.  This got me very curious and I told her that I had a picture of a very young Uncle Homer with a beautiful girl but I didn't know who she was.   I had saved that picture for as long as I can remember because my favorite Uncle Home was in it and I always thought he was so handsome and I would steal away every picture of him among my grandmother's things.  I sent a copy of the picture to Pearlene, my friend from high school now living in Florida, and she immediately wrote back saying the girl in the picture was definitely her Aunt Pauline.   I was so excited to finally know who was in the picture with him.  I knew this was not his wife, Opal, the person I remember he married after the war, but I loved that picture and kept it hidden away all these many years, and did not ask questions about it because I figured my grandma would make me throw it out.  (so glad I didn't)  I thought she could be a girlfriend of his at one time. Uncle Homer married Opal Marie Plank in 1953 or 1954 when he returned from Korea, they had two daughters, and remained married until their deaths.  

Further, my friend, Pearlene (Pauline's niece) also had a copy of their marriage license and  sent me a copy.  Information on their marriage license shows that Pauline Cherokee Benge (age 19) and Homer Yuel Riddle (age 22) were married on December 18, 1943.  

How exciting!  Now I know who the beautiful girl in the picture is.  They looked very happy and probably very much in love.  A date on the back of the picture shows the year as 1947.  This was confusing to both Pearlene and me, because she told me they had eloped and were not married for very long because Pauline's family, in particular her oldest brother who was Pearlene's  father, were very much against their marriage, probably because she was so young and in college at the time.  We both think they may have continued to see each other from time to time because of that date.  Pearlene's mother told her that Pauline was very much in love with Uncle Homer, so we both like to think he was her one true love and maybe she nor he ever got over the breakup.   That is the part of the story that makes both Pearlene and me very sad indeed.  We did not know of this when we were  in high school and I wish we had known that we were almost "cousins".

There is more to the story so will try finish it tomorrow or at least very soon.

A Wonderful Uncle

This story has a beginning, although the middle may be a little sketchy, and I am trying to put a good spin on an ending, which I only recently discovered.  A love story that happened around 1941, one that I never knew until a few days ago.

If you have read any of my blog, by now you may know a little about my history but not so much about our Riddle Family history, which is an important segment to the story I am about to relate.

I have written about my grandparents, my father, my mother, my stepmother, my siblings, but little about my aunts and uncles.  My grandfather, John Wesley Riddle, was born on January 5, 1887.  My grandmother, Jean Ella Doyle, was born on June 12, 1894.  I do not have any information about when they were married but I believe they were very young.  They never mentioned the day they wed, nor did they celebrate any wedding anniversaries that I can recall.  Not once in those 17 years I lived with them did they mention it was their wedding anniversary.

They raised nine children but I recall my grandmother may have mentioned losing a child during childbirth or a miscarriage; however, I am unclear about that.  Their first child was a boy they called Council,  because they lived in a town called Council Grove.    After Council, three girls were born--I think Grace was oldest, followed by Velma and then Edna. Next came a son they called Leo, then my father, Elmo John, followed by twin girls, Vera and Eara.  By this time there were five girls and three sons.  Soon after the twins were born, a beautiful little "baby" boy, Homer Yuel Riddle, was born in 1924.  All of these children have passed away and gone to Heaven; however, I am not too sure about Uncle Leo, but we like to believe he made it there too.

The next few posts will be about my favorite Uncle Homer Y. Riddle.  Every child has a favorite Uncle (or Aunt) and he was mine, as well as my cousins who also claim him as their favorite Uncle.

Grandparents, Jean Ella and John Wesley Riddle. Picture was taken during their stay in the Nursing Center a few months before Grandpa died.