Month: January 2016

Memories of my Grandfather, Orrie Clark

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Orrie Lee Clark is my granddaddy Orrie Lee Clark was born on 23 January 1905 in Cross Plains, Callahan County, Texas. He was the fifth of eight children born to James Ransom Clark (1869-1918) and Kate Emeline Harrell (1874-1958). Not long after his father’s death in 1918, the family moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. There he met and married Daisy Mae Hughes on 05 November 1927. They raised two daughters and he served his county honorably during Read More …

Don Sroufe, a painful family secret

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 “… known as Don Sroufe” Discovering that Robert Lee Marshall was also known as Don Sroufe was a stunning revelation for me and my family (see The Elusive Robert Lee Marshall). But after reading the entire divorce file, I felt a deep sense of sorrow for both my dad, Alton Jackson Marshall (1925-1984), and my grandmother, Lillian Florence Howle (1902-1994). My heart ached for my dad because he had lived his life knowing very little about his Read More …

The Elusive Robert Lee Marshall

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Who is Robert Lee Marshall? Using the small bits of information that my grandmother had shared about her early life (see In Search of My Father’s Father), I began looking for Robert Lee Marshall by searching the Internet. Of course, this was such a common name that the search engines returned thousands of hits. Even when I added other identifying terms into the search box, the results were still too numerous. It didn’t take me long to realize that if Read More …

In Search of My Father’s Father

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Who was my father’s father? My father never knew his father. He was even unsure of his father’s name until he applied for a passport in the late 1960’s. This unknown man remained a mystery throughout my father’s life and continues to do so today. My father, Alton Jackson Marshall, was born in Clinton, Oklahoma on 17 February 1925 to Lillian Florence (Howle) Marshall and a man whose name she stubbornly refused to reveal until forced to do so when Read More …