Doyne Heffley and his wife Lilden Dickey Heffley were among our very best friends as I grew up, they lived next to us and are like family. Doyne's sister Helen Heffley Pratt was my best friend my age and we played mud pies together, and later Helen's brother Doyne taught both of us to dance. We knew two steps, straight or shuffle...this was what we did on Friday and Saturday nights at Mitchell Smith's Garage Dance Hall in downtown Lurton... The older guys like Doyne and my cousin Ernest and his friend Harry Sutton would dance maybe one dance with me and Helen just to shut us up...but we learned to dance. The Saturday night dances were a major pastime then, probably around 1942...

Doyne took over his father Mitchell Heffley's 'political' job, driving the US Mail Car around the circle from Lurton to Richland, to Moore, to Ben Hur, to Mt. Judea and back up to Lurton Postoffice via Hwy 123 past my Grandpa Woodards old place... If we wanted to go to any of those places, we rode the Mail car with Doyne and paid him maybe 25 cents or $1 to go all the way around his route. He left early in the morning and delivered mail brought to the Lurton postoffice from Russellville and Harrison the day before. That mail was delivered for years by George Sutton (of the Big Creek Suttons)...George married Susie Brimage, friend and neighbor of my mother Iva Woodard, when they grew up...

As a child, my parents sent me 'in care of the bus driver' to visit relatives in other towns and when I needed to go to Russellville, I sometimes slept over at the George Sutton house in Russellville. During these years George drove what we called the 'Red Ball' bus...Named for his first bus, as he painted a Red Ball on the side.. and after that we called all his later busses 'the red ball'...He carried passengers from Russellville to Harrison round trip each day, stopping at the Lurton postoffice around 10 am with the South Mail and again around 2 pm with the North Mail. Mrs. Cornelia Sutton was postmistress in Lurton for over thirty years. We never truly felt isolated as we could ride to town with "the red ball bus" any day we wanted, in any direction.

Doyne Heffley always wore a little hat and the last time I visited with him at the Tarlton Decoration I told him that his hat was making the trip just fine and I made a photo of them that day...will send you a copy of this to go with his obituary and we can use this in one of my Visits pieces... Even then, he was very ill with kidney problems and on dialysis and must have been bad as they said in the Newton County paper he had died in the nursing home.

In the 1940s, Doyne and Lilden lived up on the hill, next to our house when they had their first baby, Brigetta Heffley (later Brigetta married Jim Smith, first cousin to Lloyd Sutton). His sister Helen and I played with Brigetta like she was a doll. One early memory is about Lilden putting Cherrios on her high chair for her to pick up with her little baby fingers. This was the first time I had ever seen Cherrios and I thought that was pretty neat as we seldom had dry cereal except for oatmeal . I learned to eat raw oatmeal with cream and sugar..on wash day when we didn't have a fire built in the kitchen stove....pretty good, yet. And I thought of Lilden as Cheerios was one of the first finger foods I gave my own babies.

Doyne Heffley, son of Mitchell Heffley (from Big Creek) and Ola Shelton (from Cave Creek) is sadly missed by all who knew him. I treasure our last visit together at the Tarlton Decoration two years ago... We spoke of the early times and fun dances and jokes that were played on our friends in the forties. His wife, Lilden Dickey Heffley is another treasure. My friend Helen Heffley Pratt, Doyne's sister living now in Ozark, Arkansas...

Colleen Haynes Rongey

note: Doyne's Obituary