45 Years Together- Beginnings

Leaving for our honeymoon from the Crest parking lot. It doesn't get any more old school Midwest City than that.

“Wedding Day Get-away” Digital Image. Photographed 21 January 1967, Midwest City, OK by Tom Browning. Privately held by Richard Cheek, Midwest City, OK, 2012.

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In January of this year, Jene and I celebrated 45 years of being married. As a part of our celebration, I selected one picture from each of our 45 years and made an album (real prints, not virtual) for her.  We had lots of laughs and tears looking at those pictures.  I decided to share the pictures with our friends and family on facebook and was amazed at how many people really seemed to be interested in our old pictures. Some of them, who for some reason are enjoying these installments,  asked if I would include some  stories to go along with the pictures.  So here they are.

Our story begins in 1960. My family moved to MWC in 1957 when Dad was transferred  to OKC for his final assignment before retiring from the US Army. Jene’s family moved to MWC from LIttle Rock in 1958. We first met as sophomores at Midwest City High School in the Fall of 1960. She had been a Rocket and I, a Thunderbird, but now we were Bombers and soon became good friends. We had a common interest in Speech and Drama and spent many hours together with the rest of the drama crowd at rehearsals, contests, performances, and just hanging out.  Our first kiss was in our Junior play, The Pleasure of His Company. I played her grandfather and kissed her on the forehead. We had our first date sometime in the Spring of our Senior year.  We really don’t remember exactly when it was. We do remember going to the Senior Prom together.

After graduation in 1963, we went off to OU with about half of our graduating class. After some starts and stops, our relationship deepened and I asked her to marry me in the Summer of 1966.  We originally set a date for after graduation in 1967, but soon decided we really didn’t want to wait that long. So after our whirlwind courtship of seven years we were married 21 January 1967 at Meadowood Baptist Church in Midwest City.

The reason we left from the Crest parking lot was that my Dad had not wanted to have his black Corvair covered with shoe polish so we parked it there and planned to have the Best Man, David Leighton, take us from the church after the wedding. But Jene’s sneaky Aunt Marcia managed to get the secret location out of Dad and all of our plans came to naught.

The stories of the other pictures will come in future installments.

 

Marvelous Monday: Sam I Am

Many more pictures will follow but wanted all of you to have a chance to meet our Sam, born 25 July 2009, 10:43 pm at Baptist Hospital in Oklahoma City.  He is our first grandson.  We do already have three granddaughters who have already been prominent in this blog.

 

Wordless Wednesday: Tongue Twister!

Tongue Twister

“Tongue Twister” Digital Image. Photographed May 8, 2009, Midwest City, OK . Privately held by Richard O. Cheek, Midwest City, OK, 2009.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Weekly Genealogy Blogging Prompt #5

Weekly Genealogy Blogging Prompt #5-Another generation of Cheeks comes to Mangum

Prompt: Talk about your genealogy adventures while on vacation. Doesn’t everyone plan a little genealogy visit during vacation? Take your readers along for the ride.

I haven’t gotten to do as many of these as I intended. In fact this is the first one of the weekly prompts that I’ve had time to post.  So much for good intentions.  A couple of years ago, my older brother who lives in SC came back to Oklahoma for Christmas along with his wife and two grandchildren. He doesn’t get back this way very often so we tried to do as much as possible in the few days he was here.  One of the thing he really wanted to do was visit our father’s hometown, Mangum (Capitol of Greer County), OK.  The “Capitol” thing is something I will have to explain later.  So two days after Christmas in 2007, we set out. Our party consisted of my brother, my two sisters, myself, our four spouses, a daughter of one sister, and the two grandchildren.

Mangum is filled with memories for my brother and I. We lived there several times when we were growing up, spent entire summers there several times. It was where we went “over the river and through the woods” to grandmothers’ houses. It was home to some of our favorite relatives.  It was where we went each time our soldier father went off to war. It was these memories that my brother wanted to share with his grandchildren.

One of the first things we did was go to Grandma Cheek’s old house.  It was quite a shock and certainly not what it looked like when she lived there.  She was always an immaculate housekeeper and a wonderful cook.  Her neat, little, white frame house looked like a shack. We were glad she is not around to see what has become of it.

Grandma Cheek's house

Just north of town is the farm where our great grandfather Cheek homesteaded before 1903.  We have never been able to do more than see it from the road.  One of these days I will find out who owns it and get permission to go out to the farm house.

Cheek family farm

If you are in Mangum at lunch time there is only one option-the Hamburger Inn- right on the Square.

Hamburger Inn

We were a little late for lunch and they were going to close soon so we had to chose from a limited menu.   But we had a great time and enjoyed examining the antiques? collectables? memorabilia? junk? on the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the tables, etc.

Lunch at the Hamburge Inn

One of the group went exploring and came back saying, “You all have got to see this.”  Most of the tables had old copies of the Mangum Star covered with plastic along with other items from the past.  And one of the papers from World War 2 had a front page story about officers from Mangum in the 45th Infantry   Division.  Among the officers was our father, Captain James Edmon Cheek.

Mangum Star photos

Dad is the second from the left. That find was certainly worth the price of gas for the trip.

Our next stop was the Old Greer County Museum.

Old Greer County Museum and Hall of Fame

This is one of the truly unique, local museums in the country.  It is housed in the old hospital building, staffed totally by volunteers, and filled with the treasured artifacts of hundreds of families and communities.  Each of the old patient rooms is sponsored by a different family, community, or organization.  For more information about the museum go to their website at http://www.oldgreercountymuseum.com/index.html

The picture at the top of the article was taken on the stairs at the museum by one of the friendly staff.  The real find at the museum was in a back room where they had hundreds of old photographs and negatives from the Fike Studio, an regular part of Mangum life for many years.  During one of our stays we lived next door to the Fikes and my brother and I spent many hours playing with their daughter, Susan.  To tell the whole story of the museum is way outside the scope of this article, but I promise a follow-up not too far in the future.

Of course no visit to Mangum is complete without going to the cemetery.  We no longer have any relatives living in Mangum but we do have a lot of them in Riverside Cemetery.

Our great grandparents, Robert Bruce and Carrie Savannah Cheek who are in the blog’s header picture.

Three Cheek gravestone

Notice that the stone includes not only Robert and Carrie, but also Robert’s sister, Columbia Cheek.

Our grandparents, Marion and Anna Cheek.

Grandma and Grandpa Cheek

There are many more Cheeks in the cemetery but I don’t want to neglect our  mother’s family, some of whom also lived in Mangum.  But only her mother and one of our uncles is buried there.

Grandma Orand-Bex-Smith

Her name was originally Paralee Tennessee Lancaster. She married an Orand, then a Bex, and then a Smith and decided she liked Pauline better than Paralee.

If you are ever in Mangum when the lake is down it is obligatory on your way out of town to stop and see the remains of the town of Lugert which was covered when they built the lake.  But this being Southwestern Oklahoma, the town reappears from time to time like Brigadoon.

Lugert revealed.

Look carefully and you can see the foundation and floor of one of the houses.  When we got down to it we discovered it had a cellar but after a little digging, we decided we were just not equipped to do a “dig.”

It was a great trip which give my brother and I the chance to relive a lot of old memories.  Our sisters are both much younger and never lived in Mangum or knew very many of our relatives who lived there.  But it is a very important part of our family history and I was glad to be able to share it with another generation of Cheeks and with you.

 

Big News: Refs Give Irish a Trip to the Sweet 16

You will have to pardon this digression. I will not normally do my whining here. But the Oklahoma women gave a valiant effort tonight playing 5 on 8. Just look at the box score. Oklahoma outrebounded, out 2 pointed, and out 3 pointed the green team. The only stat they didn’t have was free throws. Their opponents shot 24 and the Sooners shot 9. And there was none of that foul ’em to try and catch up ’em with threes at the end of the game nonesense. There were only 3 fouls called on the greenies in the 2nd half and none in the overtime, while their star went to the line 12 times. When did the NCAA pass a rule that if you are a big woman it’s legal to commit mayhem against you on the basketball court? In spite of that the Sooners still had a chance to tie it at the end, but unfortunately their point guard had been fouled out of the game. Oh well, I think I needed something like this to remind me why I hate that greenteam so much.

It was a season where they didn’t quite live up to the pre-season hype but they definitely gave it their best shot at the end. It’s just hard to beat the green shirts and the striped shirts at the same time.