“Aunt Nettie is on the left, about 4′8″ or thereabouts, Gayle in the middle and Mom in the car.
“Nettie Belle Hook Poland was Alice Johnson Derry’s maternal aunt. Aunt Nettie was a fraternal twin, whose twin was the mother of Gayle Barnes Fisher. Aunt Nettie raised Gayle.” - from Jan
posted by Paula
“The Geo W. Derry, Sr. family - Doyle, Geo, Ardis, Alice, Duke with Janis in front. I think this was taken just before Duke and Marian were divorced - but I’m not sure what year that was. This was taken at Doyle’s house in Ft. Worth.” -from Jan
posted by Paula
“It looks like Melvin is showing Duke how to do something - shoot a gun? load one? slingshot? I think it’s Aunt Vivian in the background on the left. Duke looks like he’s about 7 or 8 years old.” -from Jan
posted by Paula
Alice Cecelia Johnson, age 18
Duke, Ardis, Doyle, Geo, Alice & Jan (in front of Doyle) - August 1952
“This was when everyone came home after we had moved to a 4 room apt the previous fall. Duke & Marian (she was pg with Mike) lived in Norfolk and didn’t stay overnight. It was crowded but a lot of fun. Paul was 16 months old.” -from Jan
posted by Paula
This was taken soon after their marriage which took place August 18, 1944. Ardis was 26 and Claude was 24.
posted by Paula
“In the background is the old Derry homestead. The porch is the front of the house but I don’t think the front door was ever used. Uncle Melvin is on the left, Daddy is in the middle and Uncle Sandy is on the right.” -from Jan
George would have been about sixty in this picture. Sandy was younger and Melvin was the youngest.
Click on the picture to see a slightly larger and more detailed version..
posted by Paula
“Grandpa & Gramma Derry - about 1935 or 1936… on their home place on Cedar Creek, near Oakdale, Nebraska. 8 miles from Elgin in the other direction. They homesteaded here in 1888 or 1889.” -from Jan
posted by Paula
Doyle went into Nurse’s Training at the University of Nebraska Nursing School in Omaha, Nebraska, September 1, 1933. That was 4 days before I was born. At that time when people learned to become nurses, they didn’t graduate with a college/university education like they do today. She graduated in 1936. I’m not quite sure when she moved to Chicago but I do know she became an Air Line Stewardess in 1937. She talked Ardis into joining her after I was 4.
Jan (Janis Derry Burch)
I heard a lot of stories that Doyle, Ardis and Duke told about their growing up years. Here are a few of them. These events took place after 1931 which is when they moved to Valentine.
1. Mom was in the hospital with phlebitis (legs packed in ice) and Daddy and the kids decided to make strawberry jam, with Daddy telling Doyle and Ardis how to do it. They thought he was so smart since he knew how to do this. What they didn’t know was he was going to the hospital and asking Mom what and how to do it.
2. Doyle was driving the car (she was 15 or 16) and a black cat started to cross her path. She backed the car up around the block so it couldn’t cross and so she wouldn’t have any bad luck.
3. Ardis and Duke were having an argument and Ardis became totally infuriated and threw the butcher knife at him. At the last second she hollered DUCK! - He did - because the knife went into the door in back of where his head had been. (Every time I heard this story, I could just see that knife moving back and forth in the door!)
4. Duke’s real name was George William Derry, Jr., and he got the nickname after they moved to Valentine. He said he was walking along, all dressed up and this man (whose name I don’t remember) saw him and asked him why he was all duded up - some how Duke came out of that.
5. When we moved to Wayne in 1939, Duke enrolled at Wayne City High School as Duke Derry. Mom didn’t find that out until it came time for graduation - at that time his name in the records was changed to his real one.
6. When they lived in Eli, there was a 1 room schoolhouse that Doyle and Ardis attended. Duke was 4 and bored - he wanted to go to school, too. He’d sneak in after school would start and the teacher would chase him out. One of the last times he got chased out she took the broom to him and hit him below his left shoulder blade. I think he was allowed back in school after that. When he was in the Army Air Corps, he had surgery on his back and the tumor that was caused by that broom hit was removed.
I never quite understood why but somehow in the transition from Eli to Valentine, he was dropped back a grade so he didn’t graduate until he was 18.
Jan (Janis Derry Burch)
From left, back row: Bill May, Geo W., Melvin, Arthur (Grandpa), Melvina (Grandma) Derry
Front row: Sandy, Madelyn (Melvin’s daughter), Altha M (Zaida Derry May’s daughter), Arthur May (Zaida’s son), Janis (Geo’s daughter), & Duke (Geo’s son)
[Edited on August 4 2008 to replace picture with higher-resolution scam. Click on the picture to see it full size.]
Paula
Thank you so much, Paula, for your work. Some additions to previous Ardis notes…Nell and Wallace Scott are my Aunt and Uncle. Wallace and Frank Scott are brothers. Wallace and Claude were very good friends and also friends of Doyle and Frank while they were all stationed in Louisiana in the Air Force. Wallace and Nell introduced Ardis and Claude to each other originally. When Ardis died, I talked to Nell and she told me the story of taking the train from Little Rock to Oklahoma for the wedding and all the details. It is a great story. We laughed at how things had changed so much. Uncle Wallace died just after Christmas in 2007 and Karen and I went to Conway, Arkansas for the funeral. I will have to get Nell to write down the story for us. She is 90 and looks great.
(Susan)
Here is a picture of my parents, Jan and Ted Burch, the day after their wedding, March 17, 1957. It was taken in front of Charlotte and Truman Long’s house in Manasses.
I’ve been working on this all day and have finally succeeded in getting this site set up so that it works when you try to upload a picture. Click on the link right next to “add media”, in the bar above the box you type text into, after starting a new post.
Paula
Mom borrowed the money from Aunt Doyle to go to nursing school. She attended the Baylor School of Nursing in Dallas/Ft. Worth. After she graduated she joined the Army as a surgical nurse. She was Second Lieutenant Ardis Derry.
Mom met Dad (Captain Claude Duke) in San Antonio in 1944, while she was stationed at BAMSI and he was training pilots. Walter & Nell Scott introduced them. Mom told me that they knew each other for four months and were engaged for two weeks. When I went through Mom’s stuff I found her orders to transfer from San Antonio to Chickasaw, OK. It itemized every item of clothing the army issued to her. She thought she should pay back the money she owed Doyle before she and Dad married, but he didn’t want to wait.
They married after she transferred. She met Dad, Walter & Nell Scott & Doyle in some town in Arkansas or Oklahoma. They made Nell loan her white suit to mom, so she could get married in white. It was too big, so they had to pin it to make it fit. I have pictures of her in her borrowed wedding suit. It was August 18, 1944.
(Dana)
As to growing up in a depression - Daddy closed their bank in 1931 and they moved to Valentine. Daddy worked in a gas station for a while, became a county commissioner of Cherry County, and eventually got a job with the Federal Land Bank of Omaha and managed repossessed farms. He later went to work for the 1st. National Bank of Omaha and managed 365 farms for them - I think that is when we moved to Wayne in August, 1939.
Mom said that she always felt so guilty about Ardis because she couldn’t even spare a nickel to give her so she could go to the movies. Ardis knit her graduation dress (I’ve seen a picture of it and may have it but I’m not sure.) As y’all may remember, both Ardis and Doyle were beautiful hand knitters, and Doyle was also interested in weaving. She had a small hand loom and wove a beautiful shawl before Susan was born.
Doyle graduated from high school at the age of 16 and wanted to go to college but there wasn’t any money, so she worked for 2 years as typist and saved up $300 for the tuition to enter Nurse’s Training at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. She had to be 18 before she could start. She entered training September 1, 1933 and I was born at home September 4, 1933. I was kind of embarrassed because all my friends had been born in a hospital - so I asked Daddy one time why - and he said that it was a lot cheaper plus they had a good nurse and a good doctor so there was no worry… It made sense.
BTW, Granddad (Geo W. Derry) is someone to really be proud of - he was a very ethical, honorable man. He finished paying off all the people that he owed money to from the bank in Eli in 1955. When he died February 25, 1977, he was still owed money by people who had borrowed it from the bank. As you can tell, I was mighty proud of him.
Also as a point of interest - they took the last of the buildings away from Eli back in the early 50’s — but the town is still listed on all of the maps of Nebraska that I’ve seen - even the one that was published this year!
Aunt Jan
Ardis was an OR nurse and after she and Claude were married she went back on duty. After a couple of weeks she started fainting in the OR…. She was checked out and she was pg — the doctor said that he would put down that she was 6 weeks along but her reply was, “Oh, doctor, you can’t do that, I’ve only been married 3 weeks!” —- I don’t know if he did or not but she was soon separated from the Army Nurses Corp.
She really had a hard time of it clothes wise. This was 1944 and you couldn’t buy much of anything without coupons and she no real civilian clothes plus the fact she inherited Mom’s narrow feet (as I did), so not only did she have trouble getting shoes she had even more trouble finding shoes that fit her. I think she wore a 8 AAA or AAAA (I wore a 6 1/2 AAAA/AAAAAA hel)… I think (but don’t know for a fact) that all the relatives pitched in clothing coupons for her. I know Mama was worried about her and her clothes.
Aunt Jan
Ardis & Claude (married August 18, 1944) used to joke around saying that Waller and Nell went on their honeymoon with them. Yes, Doyle was there - in fact she is the only member of the family who was at each of the first marriages of us 4 kids. Doyle and her 3 kids came to Nebraska for Duke’s marriage to Marian in August 7, 1949, and she flew to DC to my wedding, March 16, 1957. Daddy couldn’t come to my wedding because he had already agreed to check cattle loans; Duke was going to fly back to DC in a Kansas Air Guard but there was some snag so he couldn’t come so Doyle came - I walked down the aisle by myself but when the minister asked who gave me away, she stood up and said she did for my mother and father. I thought that was pretty neat!
We also took her to National Airport so she could fly back to Ft. Worth - I was still in my wedding dress and veil - we walked into the terminal and a little 4 yr old girl saw us and exclaimed, “A BRIDE!” — A very favorite memory - I’ll never forget how that little girls eyes lit up.
Aunt Jan
This blog is for Derry family members only. To prevent spambots from taking over, I will have to manually create each user account. Just send me an email asking me to create your account.
Please try writing something here! Make a new post with a family story or question in it. Try to make the subject lines meaningful, and change them as the topic of discussion changes. If you ask a question, try using the question itself as your subject line.
Paula
Today I finally figured out how to remove the pesky little bug that prevented the family tree from looking right in both Internet Explorer and less buggy web browsers. Have a look:
Derry Johnson Black Hook Littley Dick Ballard Clarke Everhart family
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