McBirnie/McBurney Bear Roots
Person Page 20
Willie Mae "Billie" Ellis
F, b. 15 September 1920, d. 20 April 1998
Pop-up PedigreeF, b. 15 September 1920, d. 20 April 1998
- Father: Robert Oldham/Olden Ellis b. 16 May 1890, d. 8 January 1975
- Mother: Alta Erlene Foreman b. 24 September 1895, d. 22 February 1974
- Birth*: 15 September 1920, at home, Rose Bud, White Co., AR1
- (daughter) Census: 1 April 1930, Clovis, Curry Co., NM, head of household=Robert Oldham/Olden Ellis, wife=Alta Erlene Foreman2
- Education*: between 1933 and 1937, Clovis High School, Clovis, Curry Co., NM
- Employment: between 1937 and 1941, Clovis, Curry Co., NM, a cream tester for the Trinidad Creamery
- Marriage*: 6 July 1941, Santa Rosa, Guadalupe Co., NM, Groom=Thomas "Tom" Joseph McBirnie
- Married Name: 6 July 1941, McBirnie
- Residence: between 1942 and 1945, 1233 E. Willetta, Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ, Principal=Thomas "Tom" Joseph McBirnie
- Residence: between 1945 and 1948, 1740 E. Roosevelt, Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ, Principal=Thomas "Tom" Joseph McBirnie
- Residence: between 1949 and 1955, 1022 N. Ninth Street, Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ, Principal=Thomas "Tom" Joseph McBirnie
- Residence*: between 1955 and 1969, 2201 E. Palm Lane, Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ, Principal=Thomas "Tom" Joseph McBirnie
- Baptism: 3 March 1958, Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ, Certificate of Baptism
Church of Saint Agnes
1954 N. 24th Street Phoenix, Arizona
This is to Certify
That Willie Mae McBirnie nee Ellis
Child of Robert O. Ellis
and Alta E. Foreman
Born in Rosebud, White Co., Arkansas
on the 15th day of September 1920, was Baptized
according to the
Rite of the Roman Catholic Church
by the Rev. Neil Mullaney
the Sponsors being Rose O'Connor
as appears from the Baptismal Register of this Church
Dated March 4, 1958 Volume 2 Page 66 No. 2674
Rev. Neil Mullaney ass't Pastor - Residence: between 1969 and 1992, 2201 E. Palm Lane, Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ
- Employment*: between 1972 and 1989, clerk-typist, Phoenix Public Library, Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ
- Retirement*: 26 April 1989, Phoenix Public Library, Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ
- Residence*: between 17 September 1992 and 1996, 4255 N. 31st Place, Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ, 85016
- Death*: 20 April 1998, Phoenix, Maricopa Co, AZ3
- Burial*: 24 April 1998, St. Francis Cemetery, Phoenix, Maricopa Co., AZ
- Biography*: Mom was born at home in Rose Bud, White County, Arkansas. She was named after her grandmother, Willie Vashti (Pearson) Foreman. Mom was always grateful that she was named Willie Mae and not Willie Vashti.
According to a “History of White Co., Ark.” by Bonnie Palmer 8/21/97 online at
It started at 2 o'clock in the morning on Thursday, Oct. 29, 1925 and it was arson. Three buildings had been set fire to at the same time (E. A. Robbins old store & brand-new warehouse & J. C. R. Davis's Estate Store) and because of strong winds, the fire spread rapidly. Hassell O'Guinn & Alonzo Fisher saw the fire & started shooting guns in the street to wake everyone up. Jake Fisher woke up & reported having seen someone running from the Davis Estate Store (the last fire that was set). Everyone started screaming and people were in a blind panic because the fire raged in a matter of seconds from the discovery, consuming the entire town. Hassell O'Guinn's family barely made it out in time. There was no water supply nor no fire department of any kind, volunteer or otherwise. The buildings destroyed to the best of everyone's recollection were: E. A. Robbins & Co., A. B. O'Guinn & Brother's store, J. C. R. Davis's store, W. E. Plant's store, Maddox & Shaw Garage, T. A. Grubbs house & bard, Edgar D. Maddox's Barber Shop with the W. W. Owens Estate Store the only one left standing. Charles M. May who lived across the street from the Davis store had his home spared, also. The town was not rebuilt immediately & has slowly came back to life over many spanning later years, although never back to what it was in the 1920's.
The Rosebud fire destroyed the town's records including Mom's birth record and that of her brothers. Later, Mom's brother, Carl E. Ellis, needed a birth certificate in order to join the Navy and a new one was issued showing that his birth date was December 27, 1918 instead of December 27, 1917. When Uncle Bruce and Mom needed new birth certificates issued, they were forced to be a year younger as well in order for the records to be consistent. Since Mom was born after the census had been taken in 1920, the only other proof of her actual age was a record from first grade and the 1930 census.
Mom’s family moved to Clovis, Curry County, New Mexico when Mom was two years old after her father survived typhoid fever that he got working on his river bottom farm after a flood. Mom remembered returning to Arkansas at least once as a child with her family. Spurgeon Pearson, her mother's cousin, took them around on his mail truck to visit all of the relatives.
According to Don McAlavy, a historian who wrote a brief history of Clovis for the Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce, Clovis was founded by the railroad in 1907. It was named by a daughter of a railroad official who was studying Clovis, king of the Franks. In 1929, Ridgely Whiteman of Clovis, New Mexico identified the remains of a prehistoric culture dating back 13,000 years in Blackwater Draw near Clovis. Although human remains have not been found there, the deposits of bone, tools and spear points make it one of the most important archaeological sites in the New World. The Blackwater Draw Museum, owned and run by Eastern New Mexico University, displays artifacts and exhibits associated with the site. In more recent times, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison and Waylon Jennings all recorded their first hits at Norman Petty’s recording studio in Clovis.
According to Sherri Wilson in “A Brief History of Cannon Air Force Base” online at:
Mom attended public schools in Clovis and she was very good in school. At that time, children could skip grades and, because of their records, Mom and Molina Worthington skipped the seventh grade. Mom remembers a school assignment in which each student was required to do a report about someone that he or she found in an encyclopedia with his or her own last name. The only Ellis that Mom could find was Havelock Ellis, the English psychologist and writer who studied sexual behavior. Mom remembers that she had to read the report to the class and was very embarrassed. She said she hoped he didn’t turn out to be a relative.
The Great Depression hit when Mom was ten years old and, as with everyone else who survived it, it continued to affect her values and expectations. She remembered that her family raised chickens and had a garden and that her father had a job at the railroad so her family was better off than most. She still remembers Uncle Bruce chopping the heads off the chickens and then she would have to pull the insides out and “dress” them. The family then sold the chickens for 25 cents each.
Mom attended Clovis High School from 1933-1937. According to “Clovis High School History” online at:
The Depression had more of an effect on Mom's education. She remembered using bleached flour sacks as material for a dress in Home Economics and to selling ads to businesses to pay for publishing a high school yearbook. She also remembered that the commencement speaker told the girls to concentrate on their typing because that was the only kind of job they would ever get.
Portales Junior College, now Eastern New Mexico University, was not far from Clovis and Mom was well qualified to continue her education, but her father felt that he had done well enough with a third grade education and that the education that she had was sufficient. Because Mom’s re-issued birth certificate showed her to be a year younger than what she actually was and because she had skipped a grade in school, she graduated from high school at the apparent age of 16.
Mom went from business to business in Clovis trying to find work but they all required that she be 18 years old. By the time she reached the last business, the Clovis (Raton) Creamery, she was 18 and they hired her as a cream tester. She did so well on the job that her boss suggested that she take the exam to become a certified inspector. She passed the test and started earning 33 cents an hour which was more than her friend Molina was making at the bank. Also, at the Creamery, Mom didn't have to spend her money on good clothes. Social Security notified the Creamery that Mom was working while underage. The boss, Adolph Guthals called her in and told her that she was in big trouble. She explained that she had graduated from high school and needed to find work. Since at that point she was provably 18, he let her keep working.
Mom wrote a song, "The Love Song in My Heart," which she had published. It is a vocal arrangement with piano accompaniment. She had hoped to make some money with the song but, not long after it was published, she heard someone singing a very similar song but no one contacted her about hers.
Mom met Dad at the Creamery. He was a salesman. When he first saw her, he winked at her. She thought this was fresh. Eventually, they started going to movies and eventually decided to get married. Dad had been covering the routes of other salesmen who were on vacation and, as soon as he was finished with that, he was scheduled to be assigned to the Phoenix or Pasadena area and he wanted Mom to come with him. They were going to get married on July 4th but, because of a flood, the bridge over the Pecos River was out and Dad couldn't get through. He had to go 200 miles to get across the river and didn't get to Clovis in time. Hugh and Bobbie Elvin, who were going to be the witnesses, couldn't get off work until July 6th 1941 so that’s when Mom and Dad got married. They went to Santa Rosa, Guadalupe County, New Mexico because they thought that would be the closest town where they wouldn't be recognized. They needed to keep the marriage a secret until Dad got his permanent assignment because only men and single women were allowed to work and Mom would have lost her job.
When Dad finished his vacation coverage, he went back to Clovis and picked up Mom and they told her parents and her boss that they were married and Mom quit her job. They got as far as Phoenix when World War II broke out. Dad had to report back to Clovis, since that was where he registered for the draft, but he didn't pass the physical so they went back to Phoenix.
While Mom was on the road with Dad, she made two string rugs which weighed at least 20 lbs. each and would break any washing machine that they were put in. Throughout the War, Dad kept getting notices to come back to Clovis to be reevaluated for the military service but he kept failing the physical. Finally he was told by Guinivere Head not to come back any more because he was permanently 4F.
When they first came to Phoenix, Mom and Dad rented a house at 1233 E. Willetta. It has been torn down for a freeway. This was before air conditioning, so, at night during the summer, Mom and Dad would put the bed, with the legs in cans of kerosene to keep the bugs off, under a clothes line with a wet sheet over the line.
The house was within walking distance of Good Samaritan Hospital and this is where Mom and Dad were living when Tom, Jr. was born. Aunt Kate and Uncle Charlie Bassett had a son, Chuck, Jr., who was about the same age as Tom, Jr. and they left him with Mom and Dad when Uncle Charlie was sent to California as part of his military service. Mom was always pleased that Chuck, Jr. started to talk while he was staying with them.
Mom wasn’t Catholic and Dad was and, at some point, Dad met up with Father (later Monsignor) Donohoe. As a result, in 1943, Tom, Jr. was baptized and, at some point, Mom and Dad were married in the Church. Mom eventually converted to Catholicism.
After the War, Mom and Dad moved to a duplex at 1740 E. Roosevelt which is still standing. When Uncle Alex McBirnie got out of the service, he stayed with Mom and Dad. Mom said that he slept on the couch and, whenever he would hear a loud noise at night, he would roll off the couch to the floor. This is where Mom and Dad were living when I was born. Dad was on the road and I don’t know how Mom got to Old St. Joseph’s Hospital.
When Dad decided to go into business for himself, Mom answered the phone and did bookkeeping at home. As the family grew, Mom and Dad rented house at 1022 North Ninth Street from the Ferrie's. It had (and still has) a Chinaberry tree that dropped hard little berries all over the place. There were bushes all around the back yard and there was a big tree and a swing in the back. There was a porch in the front with a small lawn. This is where we were living when Bob was born. This house was within the boundaries St. Mary’s Parish so this is where I went to school in first grade.
Around 1953, Dad went into the egg business with the Haddy's and February 1, 1955, he bought a house at 2201 E. Palm Lane, Phoenix, Maricopa County, Arizona. It is a brick house, three bedrooms and two bathrooms, with a gas fireplace and a two car garage. The yard was covered with weeds. Mom pulled them by hand and then she and Dad put in a fence and a lawn, rose bushes, paracanthea bushes, junipers, mulberry trees, a silk oak, and a bottle brush tree. They also put in a basketball pole and a tether ball pole at the edge of a big cement barbecue area in the backyard.
We now lived in St. Agnes Parish which was Father (later Monsignor) Donohoe’s parish. Mom used to bake things and make things for the Church bazaars to raise money for the Church. For example, Mom would bake a chocolate cake to sell at the bazaar and Dad would take it to the Church, buy it back and bring it home so we could eat it.
Mom would help me with school assignments. She showed me how to use a grid to divide a picture into sections so that it could be accurately copied to a larger piece of paper. Mom also painted sepia photographs before color photographs were available. She made slack suits for Dad and Tom, Jr. and she also made many of my clothes and taught me how to sew. She was able to embroider and smock.
Mom believed in keeping to a schedule and in not having a lot of clutter in the house. I think her routine was to do the laundry on Monday, the ironing on Tuesday, bake on Wednesday, mend on Thursday, and vacuum the house on Friday. There was carpeting in the living room and dining room, but the rest of the house had asphalt tile which had to be kept waxed and she regularly stripped the old wax and put new wax on the floor. Every window in the house had Venetian blinds in addition to curtains. Mom would wash them in the bathtub and restring them when the cords and tape rotted in the sun. She had a washing machine but she had to hang the clothes out on the line to dry.
Mom was a vegetarian before she got married but she learned to cook meat since that was the only thing that Dad would eat. She made memorable milk chocolate cakes and apple pies. When Grandma and Grandpa Ellis came to visit, Dad would buy a coconut and Mom would make white cake with coconut milk and coconut icing and German chocolate cake and corn bread. On holidays Mom would eat yams or sweet potatoes. Our traditional Thanksgiving meal was a pot roast with carrots and potatoes cooked in the juices with an apple pie, a mince pie and a pumpkin pie for dessert. Our traditional Christmas meal was pot roast with apple pie and mince pie for dessert. Our traditional Easter Meal was ham with brown potatoes and a chocolate cake. Birthdays were observed with a cake added to the traditional meal of cheeseburgers. Each person was allowed to choose the kind of cake that he or she wanted until Bob decided that he wanted a green cake. Mom put green food coloring in the white cake batter and icing. Dad did not find it an appealing sight. After that, all birthdays were celebrated with chocolate cake. All other cakes were banned.
Bob and I also have childhood memories of using a glass of milk to disguise the various vegetables that we were forced to eat. (We suspect that Tom was not subjected to this.) Cauliflower in milk has been voted the most dangerous and distasteful vegetable in existence by those who survived it. Based on the number of mothers who thought that this was the way cauliflower should be cooked, it can only be concluded that this was some Nazi plot aimed at killing off American children. Most children were observant enough to sense that this was inedible and some were able to find ways to avoid eating it. It was deceptive because it was already in milk and so should have been more edible than the usual vegetables but the cooking drew the flavor of the cauliflower into the milk. Most children did not discover what had happened until the cauliflower was already in their mouths and the only thing that they could do was spit it out to try to save themselves which makes mothers very angry. The following is a list of vegetables in increasing order of edibleness: Cauliflower in milk, lima beans, black-eyed peas, peas, green beans, corn.
In the morning, we would usually have bacon and eggs. Occasionally, we would have cereal or oatmeal. We lived two blocks from St. Agnes grade school, so Bob and I would come home for a lunch of soup and crackers every day. At night we would have cheeseburgers and a vegetable and a glass of milk except on Friday's when we would eat cheese sandwiches. Occasionally, we would get spaghetti and meat balls which were wonderful but it took all day for Mom to cook the sauce. Mom would also serve meat loaf and macaroni and cheese. When it was cold, for some reason, Mom would cook hot tamales. Don’t eat the wrapper. During fruit season, Mom would cut up fruit, put sugar on it and freeze it for dessert. After dinner, Mom would do the dishes and one of us would dry them until we got big enough to do the washing as well.
Mom would also read all of the news magazines and keep up with the news to help Tom with his debating and speeches. My earliest memory is of sitting at the breakfast table and Mom and Dad were talking about Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. I assume that this was around 1953 when Stalin died. I remember watching the Republican and Democrat conventions on TV and I was mad because Eisenhower and Nixon preempted Disneyland. Mom also read to us and took us to the library. It was a real shock to go from Mom reading us stories about King Arthur and Odysseus to the first grade reader where we learned to "see Jane run."
In 1962, Mom got a Ford Galaxy with money that Grandpa Ellis gave her. When Dad died in 1969, Mom went to Arizona State University and started working on her B. A. in Education. When Bob got sick in 1970, she decided to go back to work and started working for the City of Phoenix, eventually becoming a clerk-typist for the Business and Science Division of the Main Phoenix Public Library. She continued to work on her degree at night. She completed all of the degree requirements except student teaching. She was afraid that if she took a leave of absence to student teach that she would lose her job since it was not a job related course. Since the teaching field was glutted and schools were becoming combat zones in the drug war, she decided not to student teach but to stay in her library position. She retired April 26, 1989 after more than 17 years with the Phoenix Public Library.
On September 17, 1992, Mom sold the family home and moved into a two bedroom apartment at 4255 N. 31st Place near the Los Olivos Senior Center in Phoenix. She walked around the Los Olivos Park to stay in shape and started going through family records and pictures trying to organize and identify everyone and write down the stories she remembered. Mom became ill with something that the doctors could not clearly diagnose, a combination of Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s. I think that she had a disease that is now called Dementia With Lewy Bodies. Mom died April 28, 1998 and is buried next to Dad in St. Francis Cemetery.
Family: Thomas "Tom" Joseph McBirnie b. 11 February 1911, d. 13 April 1969
- Marriage*: 6 July 1941, Santa Rosa, Guadalupe Co., NM, Groom=Thomas "Tom" Joseph McBirnie
Citations:
Compilers:
Tom McBirnie and Cathy (McBirnie) Griffin
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Site updated on 24 Feb 2007 at 9:35:49 PM from MCBIRNIE; 111 people
