July 1, 1917

In 1917 the United States entered World War I. China declared war on Germany and Austria, while Pope Benedict XV called for peace. In that year the German-Russian armistice was signed at Brest-Litovsk while the U.S. declared war on Hungary and Austria. Finally in 1918, November 11, the Allies signed an armistice with Germany, ending the war.

On May 29, 1917, Joseph and Rose Kennedy gave birth to a son in Brookline, Massachusetts. They named him John Fitgerald and would call him "Honey Fitz." In February of the same year in a little town southeast of San Antonio, Texas, another boy was born to the Connally family. They also named him John. The first John and the second John would become involved in politics as adults and would be names memorized by students in decades to come.

In this same year, 1917, two one-act operas, "Turandot" and "Harlequin," opened in Zurich, Switzerland. Chicago became the world's jazz center and George Cohan wrote the American war song, "Over There." Sigmund Freud published "Introduction to Psychoanalysis," Buffalo Bill Cody died at the age of 71, and women in the U.S. and Great Britain bobbed their hair!

Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated to his second term as President. Later that year four women were arrested for picketing the White House in behalf of women's suffrage and were sentenced to six months in jail. The U.S. Senate had rejected President Wilson's suffrage bill.

Back in Texas a new airport, Love Field in Dallas, opened in 1917. Ironically Love Field would give John F. Kennedy and wife, Jackie, a warm Texas welcome in November 1963. But that's a different story, to be told by historians. My story is more personal.

My story begins in a house on the Wigham Farm near a community called The Flat in Coryell County Texas. It is Sunday, July 1, 1917. A son, Doyle, is born to Lilly Lou and Robert Tate (every one called him "Spud"). This was their fourth child, second son. Doyle would be known as a "change of life" baby. His oldest sister had given birth to her first son in January and would have her second son on June 30, 1918. Doyle and his sister's two sons would grew up together almost like brothers.

The Wigham Farm was a big farm, three or four hundred acres, by Doyle's recent recollection. His dad farmed about 50 acres on the halves. Farming with a mule, fifty acres is about all anybody could farm by themselves, back then.

Doyle grew into a handsome young man, musically inclined, singing and playing the guitar. He also learned to play the fiddle by ear from his dad because "Spud" played fiddle for the square dances all over central Texas. Doyle also took roles in some of the school plays at the Countyline one-room school he attended.

I am told he was the heartthrob of many of the girls in Coryell County--tall, dark, and handsome. But one girl in particular caught his eye and he married her, Doris Dene, when she was only 16 years old. (She finished high school and got her diploma a few days after their wedding.) Three years later I entered their life--their first-born, the first of four. When I was born Mother was 19 and Daddy, 25.

Daddy was a farmer, always looking for better fields to lease, better seed to buy, and new farming techniques to increase his yield. Later he would begin to run cattle and raise feed for them, but when I was a child he raised cotton and corn. I know this because at harvest time a truck load of Mexicans would come up from the Valley to help pick the cotton. I always looked forward to that time of the year because the cotton pickers would almost always have a girl my age and for that brief season I would have a new friend. We would play together in the shade of the trailer parked in the cotton field where the pickers came to weigh and empty their sacks.

Once, when I was still too young, Daddy tried to teach me to drive the tractor that pulled the trailer he used to harvest the corn. The plan was that he and Mother would pull the corn off the stalk and toss it into the trailer while I slowly guided the tractor down the row. A good plan except for the fact that I couldn't control the tractor and keep it straight. I kept knocking the unharvested stalks down. I didn't last long in the field that day, nor was I ever asked to return!

Daddy is one of those persons that has a God-given ability to make things grow. After he retired from farming and ranching he planted a garden--a big garden. One year he had more than 200 tomato plants. He took produce to the Farmer's Market. Granted, his garden has diminished in size as he has aged, but I will bet you he is selling tomatoes and cantaloupes at the Farmer's Market today, his 92nd birthday!

Last year Doyle was inducted into the Coryell County Music Hall of Fame in Gatesville, Texas. And this year, on the Fourth of July in Belton he will enter the Fiddlers Contest again. That has been his tradition for as long as I can remember. He usually comes away with one of the the cash prizes in his age category. And that, by the way, is one of his most recent complaints. A man his age ought not to have to compete against those young men. The age category is too broad, he says. Fifty-five and up ought to be changed to 55 to 69, so that he could compete with fiddlers nearer his own age, 70 and up. He has officially registered his complaint but doubts it will do any good.

Today I honor my father who celebrates his 92nd birthday and hope that I have inherited his longevity genes.


Pictured with his kids from left to right: Me, Brenda, Daddy, Terry, and Bobby.


Historical resources: The Timetables of History & the Internet.