Main street oakwood

 



Robert D. Coleman, known as Bob, or Bobbie as a young boy, was born to John and Oleta Coleman on July 18, 1925, the fourth of six children. He attended Oakwood School through all 12 grades and graduated in 1943. The Coleman family owned and operated Oakwood Produce on Main    Street Oakwood. His Father, John Coleman also drove the Oakwood school bus for 21 years.

Robert D. Coleman wrote a series of articles under the entitlement, Main Street Oakwood. These articles are as he remembered them when he was 7 years old, before his family moved to the farm after the death of his grandfather.

Robert D. Coleman was drafted into the United States Navy in June, 1944 and served twenty-four months, mostly in the South Pacific, Japan, Philippines and Northern China. His ship was the U.S.S. Woodford AKA 86, an attack cargo vessel. The first load of cargo was a load of beer from Norfolk, VS to Pearl Harbor. The second load of cargo was from Pearl Harbor to Okinawa. This was a load of five-inch mortar shells.

  After being discharged from the Navy, Bob attended Oklahoma A&M (OSU). He was a member of Theta Chi Fraternity and received his BS degree in accounting in June 1950.

Bob married Jean Davis on September 14, 1952.

After graduation he was employed by CR Anthony Company, Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and the State Treasurer's Office.

In 1959 He purchased Peery's Flower Shop in Oklahoma City and changed the name to Coleman's Flowers Inc.

He was the winner of the Oklahoma State Florists' Association Designer of the Year in 1974.

Mr. Coleman is a member of Northwest Christian Church and Northwest Optimist Club, and was a distinguished president twice.

He is also an amateur artist and his home is decorated with his paintings.

Mr. Coleman considers himself an amateur genealogist, researching the Coleman Family to 1676 in Germany, Scott Family to 1722 in Tennessee, the Haney Family 1800 in South Carolina and the Wood Family to 1760, Johnson, Jonsen, Beckmon from Germany.

 



MAINSTREET OAKWOOD

I lived on Main Street Oakwood during my adolescence years. Main Street started at the top of the hill on the east and extended about seven blocks to the dead end at the hilltop on the west. There were houses on each side on East Main, but only one house faced the street on West Main. Several families owned businesses on the street and some of these families had living quarters either over or behind the businesses. Though it has been more than a half century ago, my memory recalls many incidents from my early years.

Oakwood was a sleepy town twenty miles west of Watonga and twenty miles east of Seiling. Geographically it is less than one half mile square, a glen in earth's topography, the upper drainage follows the Santa Fe Railroad right-of-way and dumps the access waters into Big Baby Creek.

The town was unofficially called Edsel, but when it came time to name the post office, the postmaster, Mrs. Mills named it Oakwood. Their were many varieties of oak trees with their lush green leaves and they turned to bright hews of yellow to red in the fall. Why should our hometown be called by any other name? The population in the early nineteen-thirties was probably four hundred people. We, as a family knew about ninety-nine percent of them as we lived on Main Street of Oakwood, Oklahoma.

We knew many of the people because we delivered the Daily Oklahoma, the Wichita Eagle Newspapers and also the Saturday Evening Post Magazine. The publications were delivered to Abb Smith's house in the far southeast part of the town to Nick Hunck's house in the far northeast sector. We delivered from Lynn Sions who lived in the southwest part of town to Joe Stein living in the northwest part.

One day a man on Main Street asked me about the headlines of the Wichita Eagle and since I was not old enough to read political words, I just turned the paper so he could read it. The man purchased the paper.

 

 

FIRES OF MAIN STREET OAKWOOD

 Fires in the small town were devastating. There was no fire fighting equipment other than a bucket brigade and the supply of water from the horse tank in the middle of Main Street. The water was of little consequence and the wooden structures usually burned out of control, turning them into ashes as the people stood by helplessly.

One was a store building where Blanche Hole had her feed store. It was a produce business where my parents purchased cream, eggs and chickens from the farmers and in turn sold them livestock feed.

The building burned in 1924 along with a grocery store and hardware. Our shoes burned in the fire and the next day our grandfather purchased us all a new pair.

The lodge hall at near the west end on the north side of the street also burned.

The bales of cotton smoldered throughout the night and blazed out early in the morning.

The C.A. Sions store burned one Saturday afternoon.

The Harry Fielder Store flamed out in the middle of one night and burned everything.

 There were probably more fires before I was aware of them.

 

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