children: John, Richard, Gerald

Elizabeth Jane Platt was a Christmas present to Papa and Mama, arriving on Christmas Eve, 1901. She was their middle child, with six older siblings and ultimately six younger
ones. She was born on the farm, at Crystal, just southeast of Maramec, Oklahoma, in 1912, Papa moved to Stillwater to run the Ford garage. She grew up in Crystal and Stillwater,
and then off to nurses training, in Oklahoma City. Sometime in the mid 1920's she was in Mangujn?, Oklahoma, working in the hospital there, where she met and married the son of a local doctor, John Feldman Willis. It was not, apparently, a match made in heaven, for they divorced soon after my older brother, John Feldman, Jr., was born, on July 6, 1926
(Aunt Nora's birthday also). Long after, Feldman changed his last name to Bradley. ln late 1927, Mother and her younger sister, Annie Campbell Platt, were running a restaurant in Maramec, Oklahoma, then an oil boomtown. Two of their patrons were Richard Lacey Bradley and Bradley (is nephew, Ben Fugate. One thing led to another and on Valentines Day, 1928, there was a double ring wedding at Mama's, 1304 South Main in Stillwater.
Elizabeth married Richard Bradley and Annie married Ben Fugate. Mother and Dad moved into Dad's house in Maramec. I was born there on December 18, 1928, so they did not waste too much time. Much of Maramec has since been torn down, but that house is still there and well kept up. The 1929 stock market crash cost Dad his job at the Magnolia Oil Company. lt was about this time that Jim and Wella Nixon moved to Stillwater to facilitate their son Arlie's education at Oklahoma State, leaving their farm vacant. Elizabeth and Dad moved there, and Dad started farming. Actually, Mother loved farming as much as anyone I
know, so it was a mutual effort. This is probably as good a place as any to throw in an interjection about a fine Platt trait: that of the family helping each other out. There
had to have been some kind of compensation to Jim and Wella for renting I'll never know.
But Jim and Wella probably made it as easy for Elizabeth and Dad as possible, Later, when Mother and Dad were running the cleaning shop in Lawrence, Aunt Vira loaned some money to get us over a tight spot. When Uncle Tom Armstrong, Papa's half-brother, was stricken by leukemia, Mother accompanied him to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for several weeks of treatment. In 1950, Mother, destitute for all practical purposes, left Lawrence and moved to Denver, where the only person she knew was Aimie, who received her into their house with open arms until Mother could get on her feet again. In 1978, Mother had terminal cancer, and wanted to go to St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, on the strength of their cancer clinic. Arlie Nixon made all the arrangements for an air ambulance, refusing reimbursement. Arlie puts on a gruff exterior, but he will always be a great guy in my book. I'm sure any of the family could come up with many more examples of this caring and sharing. It makes me proud to have this Platt blood in me. Looking back on those Depression years with adult perspective, I now realize how cruelly wanting they were. One day Dad was doing something to his Dodge coupe, and the motor oil accidentally spilled onto the ground. For the next few weeks or months we used the team and wagon for all our
transportation since there was no money for more motor oil. When the WPA came along Dad was able to get some roadwork at $1 per day. I remember once, Mother and Dad butchered a
hog, dressed it out, and hauled it to a grocery store in Maramec, all for $6. It was a big hog, too.
It was on Jim and Wella's farm that Gerald was born, February 12, 1934. I slept right through it. Mother and Dad always had a cheerful outlook on life, so I did not ever
realize that we were poor or underprivileged. Everyone else was in the same situation.
As the Depression went along, the Dust Bowl joined forces with it to make a farmer's life untenable. I joke with people that those of the family with money moved to California; those with none had to stay in Oklahoma; and that we moved up to Lawrence, Kansas. Mother always said that the university there was the big reason for selecting Lawrence, thinking ahead to the time when we three boys might attend it. They bought a dry ¢leaning shop and
operated it for ten years. It barely brought in enough money to keep it open. They worked from morning till evening, six days a week running it. Spring evenings, they would plant a big garden, and it was Feldman's and my chore to water the newly planted veggies. In the fall, evenings were devoted to picking and canning the new crop. One fall, they had about 250 quarts of canned vegetables in the cellar of the little house, even made the paper about it. Those jars stood between us and starvation. Sunday was church' except in fall and winter when we made forays into the countryside for firewood. No central heat in the house, just the heating stove. No chain saws either, just Mother and Dad on each end of a five-foot crosscut saw. It was a fun day for us kids- Mother had a Dutch oven and for lunch would cook a whole pot of 'vittles' for us in the woods. Again, our lives were no different than most others and with a cheerful family life we didn't suffer. With the
outbreak of World War II, the dry cleaning shop turned into a little gold mine. Thousands of young soldiers and sailors training at the university had to keep their wool uniforms
clean. A munitions plant was built ten miles east, where for safety; they had to wear wool clothes. After years of renting, we were able to buy our own home, a big,beautiful,
two story stone house. lt was about this time that a nurse's position opened up with the counties public health office and Mother started going around giving inoculations to all the rural grade school kids, still working at the cleaning shop, and keeping the house going. The next year, 1944, Feldman was drafted into the Navy, just two weeks after his eighteenth birthday. I started high school and got my drivers license

21he war years left Mother and Dad physically and emotionally drained. With their rural background, they both wanted a slower and less strenuous pace in their life. In what was a not so good business decision, they sold the house and business and bought a farm southwest of Lawrence. It was a fun place a creek for swimming, woods for hunting, but no fences and few tillable acres. A good part of their savings went toward just fixing it up. By 1948, the savings were gone, so Mother went back to work, doing private duty nursing. It was then that our family doctor's wife was stricken with cancer and he personally asked Mother to be a caregiver for her. The wife soon died, and an unfortunate love triangle ensued. Mother and Dad divorced, and the doctor reneged, setting a lot of Lawrence tongues wagging. This was probably the most depressing part of her life for Mother, but with her strong resolve, she decided to move to Denver and become a real estate sales person. Arriving in Denver with only the clothes on her back and a mortgaged car, she turned to sister Aimie for help, who with characteristic Platt generosity welcomed her with open arms. She lived with Aimie and Frank until she could get a job and an apartment. I do not remember whether it was weeks or months but it showed that Aimie and Frank were two very wonderful people. See my 'Ode to Aimie' in her chapter. 'They' say that women are discriminated against because of their age, their sex, their marital
status, etc. Mother paid no attention to these silly notions, and by hard work, conquered them all. She worked all day at a real estate office, napped from 6 till 10 PM did private duty nursing from 11PM until dawn, then back to the office. It was grueling, but she kept at it until the real estate business improved. With her real estate partner, Ben Groussman, they soon became the owners of the real estate brokerage company. Ben Groussman is one of the finest men I have ever known. As of 2001, he and his wonderful wife Bea are still alive and doing well. They are living in a retirement apartment in Denver. Mother spent the next twenty-five years in Denver, in real estate. While the traditional real estate sales made a living for her, her real success was in buying distressed properties and then turning a profit on them. In 1954, she bought a small
acreage in the mountains near Central City. This became her beloved Twin Aspen Acres.
From a tent to a cabin, to a larger cabin, to a beautiful house, was a progression that naturally followed. It was a beautiful place and she spent many enjoyable years there.
A horrible experience occurred in 1977. Two armed burglars broke into her house in Denver, robbed and shot her. Sister Margaret and brother Raymond were visiting her at
the time. Thanks to their help, a marvelous rescue squad, and some Divine intervention she survived. The rescue people gave her a blood transfusion right in her own bed,
before taking her to the hospital. A week later, she was home, just in time for brother Lyman's funeral, who died May 22, 1977.
It was shortly after this that she developed her first symptoms of cancer, probably the most dreaded word in the English language. The week before Christmas, 1976, she was
operated on for cancer of the colon. The surgeon pronounced her completely clear of any trace of malignancy after the operation. Little did he know. She enjoyed her real estate, but in the spring of 1978, at age 76, finally decided to retire. She wanted to be near one of us, and as Feldman was the most settled of the three of us, bought a
little house in Meriden, Kansas, a half dozen miles from Feldman's farm. She did not enjoy it long. A second cancer operation followed in the summer of 1978, and this was followed by chemo and radiation, all to no avail. With little trust in the Topeka hospital, and with Arlie Nixon's help, she transferred to Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa. They could do no better, and she passed away there on December 8, 1978. With her prior consent she was buried at the little cemetery at Clinton, Kansas, only four miles
from the farm where she and Dad had the bittersweet years of 1946 to 1948. Dad is buried beside her. They were a good couple together and had things been even a bit different, they would have enjoyed many more years with each other. I have said very little about Dad, because this chapter is about Mother. He was a good man and a smart man, though not well educated due to the time and place of this birth. He could anything he put his mind
to. He continued to live on the farm until a year before his death in 1964. I miss them both very, very much.