The Oklahoman Oct 8 1965 page 35
EDMOND -- Milo M Bernard, 66, died Thursday in an Edmond hospital. Srevices are pending with Baggerley Funeral Home.
Bernard formerly was a school teacher for about 30 years in southern Oklahoma. He moved to Edmond in about 1950 and was in the insurance business. He was a member of the American Legion and was active in the Kiwanis Club. He was deacon in the Church of Christ.
Servivors include his wife Elizabeth; a son Richard M., of the home; Two daughters Mrs Elizabeth Sandlin and Mrs Pat Ott, both of Duncan; a sister Mrs Wynona Stovall, Los Angeles and a brother Gene, Fullerton Calif.
Milo Marion Bernard m. Martha Elizabeth Cole
Dec. 22, 1923
Edmond, OK
b. Aug. 6, 1899 (Yukon, OK Territory) b. April 2, 1905 (Texarkana, AR)
d. Oct. 7, 1965 (Edmond, OK) d. Aug. 30, 2002 (Waurika, OK)
(Buried in Gracelawn (Buried in Gracelawn Cemetery,
Cemetery, Edmond, OK) Edmond, OK)
Thelma Elizabeth Bernard Sandlin
b. Dec. 24, 1924 (Waurika, OK)
m. Aug. 11, 1945 (Hoyt Nick “Red” Sandlin) (Memphis, TN)
Children:
Tim Bernard Sandlin
Sally Anne Sandlin Ford
d. Feb 13, 2004 (Duncan, OK)
Patsy Pauline “Pat” Bernard Ott
b. Oct. 11, 1932 (Paden, OK)
m. June 1, 1952 (Robert Leonard Ott) (Edmond, OK)
Children:
Sue Helen Ott-Rowlands
Ann Patrice Ott Galloway
Kim Lynette Ott Marlatt
d. July 31, 2003 (Duncan, OK)
*Richard Marion Bernard
b. Jan. 16, 1948 (Duncan, OK)
m. Dec. 27, 1969 (Terry Lee Bowman) (Duncan, OK)
Children:
Benjamin Cole Bernard
Emily Lynn Bernard Bare
Milo Marion Bernard
b. Aug. 6, 1899 (Yukon, OK Territory)
d. Oct. 7, 1965 (Edmond, OK)
Martha Elizabeth Cole Bernard
b. April 2, 1905 (Texarkana, AR)
d. Aug. 30, 2002 (Waurika, OK)
Model children, model spouses, model Christians, model parents and grandparents! That’s the summary of the lives of Milo and Elizabeth Bernard.
Milo Bernard was the fourth son, and fourth of the six children who lived to adulthood, of Charlie and Florence Bernard, farmers from southwest of Yukon, Oklahoma. The name Milo came from a well-behaved neighbor child, whom Florence Bernard admired. Marion came from the husband of Florence’s niece Onie, Charles Marion Luckenbaugh. Milo was born on the family homestead, and he was always proud of his farming roots. While three of the brothers led rather unsettled lives, not so Rex and Milo. The former earned his living as a retail grocer (“Bernard and Sons Grocery” in downtown Yukon) and later as a vacuum cleaner salesman, but his passion was preaching the gospel in non-Sunday School Churches of Christ, for which he accepted no cash payment. Milo became an educator, a teacher, coach, and administrator. He also closely followed a strict reading of the gospel’s teachings.
Milo Bernard, an early Boy Scout, seemed always to do the right thing. Certainly, this was his mother Florence’s view, for she often wrote glowingly about young Milo in her diary. On April 19, 1915, for example, she noted that “Bro. Jones,” baptized fifteen-year old Milo in El Reno, and added, “He has been reading the New Testament this winter and had his mind made up without any persuading. Oh how proud Papa and I felt as we went to the water to see him baptized. Tears of joy came to my eyes as I said to him, ‘Papa, the Lord is letting us live to see some of the fruits of our labors, ain’t he?’ and he answered, ‘Yes.’ He was baptized in the Y [presumably the Yukon River] east of Obe’s and Rex’s “…. Milo is in the 9th grade and such a good steady boy. I hope he can go on till he gets his education.” March 31, 1916, she wrote, “Milo is sixteen, and a good steady Christian boy. He is trying so hard to get an education. Hope he will succeed but do hope he will have judgment enough not to let it spoil him.” On May 13 of that year, “Milo is finishing the 10th grade. He is such a good steady boy. Do hope he will make a good and useful man.”
Some of Milo’s earliest memories are recorded in a letter, which he sent to his nine-year old grandson, Tim Bernard Sandlin, April 5, 1960.
“When the Town Whistle and the Church Bells began ringing, Indian Territory and Okla. Territory became The State of Okla. [November 7, 1907]. I was playing baseball at the time, and we had to stop to find out what was taking place. I was about 8 years old and in the 3rd Grade. When the bells quit ringing, recess was over, and we had to go in.”
“The country was all wild prairie when My Daddy came here, lots of Buffalo, Wild Turkey, Deer, Antelope, and a few wild Indians. Lots of Indian ponies. The prairie schooner had to cross streams, ride over rocky hills, and follow Cattle trails coming from Texas up here. There was a famous Cattle trail called the old Chisholm Trail. I was told that it crossed our place. I am not quite sure, but I do know that there was a large trail that made big ruts right across our pasture, and I used to make my little Indian ponies jump it almost every time I went across it. (That is, he jumped part of it. Sometimes I jumped the rest.)”
In high school, Milo was an excellent student, an active participant in school activities, and a starter on the basketball team. In an era when guards played defense and did not shoot the ball, he was named the conference’s top “standing guard,” as the league’s best defensive player. At commencement time, Florence wrote, “Milo graduated with a class of twelve from Yukon High School tonight [May 7, 1917]. To say that we were proud of him would be only the truth for he certainly has conducted himself throughout the school and during all the graduation exercises with credit to himself and to us. I hope he may lead a useful life and oh I hope he will live and die a Christian. Dear Milo, I am too sleepy to write much but must tell you how much I love you and how proud we all are were of you tonight.”
With the Great War having just reached America, Milo went off to Edmond for teacher training at Central State Normal School. A year later, the other boys and he returned to Central in uniform, as cadets in the Student Officers Training Corps. Sleeping on cots on the top floor of Old North, they trained for a war which would end less than two months before they were to go on active duty. Officially, Milo enlisted in the U.S. Army on October 1, 1918, and was released on December 17, 1918. He did not serve long enough for a pension, but he did pick up lots of songs, which he sang for the next four decades (“There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding,” “K-K-K-Katy,” “In My Castle on the River Rhine,” “Over There,” “Hinky-Dinky Parlez-Vous,” “Mademoiselle from Armentieres,” and, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm, After They’ve Seen Paris?”)
In two years, including time for student military training and, again, lots of student activities, Milo completed his teaching certificate. His mother was still proud of him but now a little nervous about his commitment to book learning. “I sometimes feel uneasy [for Milo] for fear he will become careless of his religious duties over there, but I keep hoping and praying for him. He is such a good boy.” Although she said over and over that he was “such a good boy,” Florence worried for the rest of her life that Milo would pay more attention to education and his job than to church.
In the Cole family, Elizabeth was the baby. Named for her two grandmothers (Martha Jane Stafford Wilson and Mary Elizabeth Cox Cole), Elizabeth was the fifth child (one brother died before her birth) and second daughter of railroad worker Pat Cole and his wife Parthenia Jane “Thenie” Wilson Cole. Elizabeth almost did not survive infancy. When she was only two months old, her mother developed rheumatism and went to bed for several months. “So little was known then about bottle feeding,” Elizabeth wrote in her 1978 Memories Book, “and, since no milk they tried would agree with me, I almost died. Finally a neighbor told them about Eagle Brand milk, a new product. It saved my life.” She became “Leslie’s baby,” when her twelve-year old brother took over much of her care. He was a devoted guardian, once threatening a county doctor with a “licking” if he stitched up a cut on Elizabeth’s forehead. Fortunately, another new product, adhesive tape, held the cut together, though it left a scar, which took years to recede into Elizabeth’s hair line.
Elizabeth had a happy, small-town childhood. Later, she fondly remembered playing outside on long summer evenings, catching fireflies, making a playhouse in a huge barn loft, and her 10th birthday party (“the only one I ever had except for family get-togethers until [daughter] Pat gave a lovely luncheon for me on my seventieth birthday”). Interestingly she never talked about her family’s Presbyterian religion, doubtless a hand-me-down from their Scots-Irish origins.
Less fondly remembered were medicines and cures: Horehound candy, Scott’s Emulsion, and poultices of biscuits soaked in milk (to block infection from a nail puncture), and honey and flour (to bring a boil to a head). Her father would hold Elizabeth on his knee and blow warm smoke in her infected ear (another boil popping strategy). She had adenoids removed three times and her tonsils taken out as well.
Pat Cole had tried farming and barbering in Texas, but finally settled down to a job with the Texas and Pacific Railroad. The company sent him first to Texarkana, Arkansas, then to Bonham, Texas, then back to Texarkana, and finally back to Bonham. He then left the employ of the railroad and moved the family to Altus, in southwestern Oklahoma, where he bought and ran a recreation hall (pool and dominoes) until lured into the cotton gin business with Thenie’s brother-in-law Judd Wilhite. Elizabeth’s sister Thelma Cole finish high school there.
By 1916, Wilhite had proved a poor businessman, the company collapsed, and the Coles moved on to Roxana Pump Station near Wynnewood in south central Oklahoma. Two years later, they moved into town, where Pat worked as an engineer for the city water and electric department, and where Elizabeth spent her high school years.
Thelma Cole, a young tomboy turned high school belle, became a teacher, working for one year at a two-teacher school called Clabber-Flat, near Altus, where she made $45 per month (enough to cover her $12 monthly costs for room, board, and laundry). The next year, she taught at Paoli, then moved to Wynnewood to work in brother Carl’s drugstore for a year. When there was an opening in Wynnewood schools, she returned to the classroom for six years before marrying Wynnewood oil refinery superintendent, Edward Elzy Peveto, who she forever called simply, “Peveto.” In private, they were “Toots” and “Boogie.” During her Wynnewood teaching days, Thelma housed Elizabeth in her apartment while their parents were at the pump station.
This allowed Elizabeth to go to high school but at the price of living in her popular sister’s shadow. According to Elizabeth, Thelma had quite a social life.
“During World War I, sister had three beaux in the service; Phil O’Neil, who remained stateside, and Frank Welch and Horace Williams, who were overseas. [Older brother] Carl kidded her that if either Frank or Horace were returned to the states, he would wire both the returned soldiers and Phil that Sister was seriously ill and to please come. He kept her going in circles ….
It was Horace who called her not long after the war ended and proposed to her. Ray Riddle, whom she was dating then, was in the living room. Not wanting to embarrass Horace [not to mention herself], she said, “Horace, I can’t hear you.’ Three or four times he repeated the proposal and each time she said she couldn’t hear him. But when he said he’d write and ask her, she heard immediately and said, ‘Yes, Horace, you do that.’”
In 1922, Elizabeth graduated in a class of sixteen from Wynnewood High School and went to Central State Teachers College, as it was then called, to begin her teacher training. There she roomed with a Williams family at 230 East Campbell and became close friends with their daughter Bobbie.
As Elizabeth recalled in 1978, “On Friday afternoon, November 10, 1922, Bobbie Williams and I went to town. Coming back, we met [Milo Bernard] in the intersection of Boulevard and Hurd. Bobbie introduced us, and we all visited for perhaps ten minutes. Milo was already teaching mathematics and coaching at El Reno Junior High School. Elizabeth and Bobbie walked home, while Milo went to town to find Bobbie’s boyfriend, Warren Waddell. The two men arranged a double date.
When Milo telephoned Elizabeth, she put him off long enough to ask Mrs. Williams about her new suitor. She replied, “Goodness, yes, go with Milo anytime.” Elizabeth did – the four went to a movie and then to Vans, a popular college student meeting place. Milo stayed with Waddell in Edmond overnight for a second date on Saturday before going back to El Reno.
When school let out for Christmas vacation, Milo renewed his pursuit of Elizabeth, riding in a friend’s car to Edmond or catching the Interurban trolley. On April 6, 1923, four days after her eighteenth birthday, Milo proposed, and on Independence Day, he took his future wife home to meet his parents. “Milo brought his girl to see us,” wrote the always doting Florence Bernard. “Miss Elizabeth Cole. She is a sweet-looking little girl, but Milo doesn’t look very well, and I’m uneasy about him dear faithful Milo.”
Within six months, Milo and his “sweet-looking little girl” would wed. “[Elizabeth and Milo] are to be married soon, and we will lose another boy but hope he will still love us as we do him, and we hope she will love us to as well as she can.” Clearly, Florence was reconciling herself to the coming marriage whenever it might occur. As it happened, the sweethearts moved more quickly that anyone had imagined.
In mid-December Elizabeth came to El Reno, and together they hatched a plot to marry a week later, on December 22, the longest night of the year, as Milo later would often recall. They told no one except Milo’s best friend and a friend of Elizabeth’s. The wedding took place in a Mrs. Gee’s Edmond boarding house at 312 East Main Street, where Elizabeth had lived the previous winter, and in the same room where Milo had asked for her hand the previous April. This is roughly where the University of Central Oklahoma’s Howell Hall now stands. Presbyterian minister, Rev. Le Roy C. Ilsley, conducted the service, as Milo wrote to his parents the next day:
Milo Bernard’s Elopement Letter
Wynnewood
Oklahoma
Sunday
Dear Mother, Dad and all:
Did you know you have a new Daughter in Law?
We were married last night at 7:30 P.M. in Edmond at the House where Elizabeth stayed last winter.
We never told anyone and believe me they were very much surprised when we got off the train this afternoon and we told them the dirty deed was did.
There were only two people, the Preacher and us at the wedding and we caught the very next car out for the city. Gaither and [Ocie Couthing, Elizabeth’s friend] stood up for us. They were the two witnesses.
We had planned this last week when Elizabeth was in El Reno but we both decided not to tell anyone.
Momma, I have the sweetest little wife in all the world and you can’t imagine what a happy man I am.
I never thought it was possible for me to love anyone as I love Elizabeth since she is now my wife. I love her more even now than ever.
Don’t know yet when we will come to El Reno, but will let you know soon.
Lots and lots of love to all.
Milo
P.S. Give this letter to Gene and tell him I am sorry I couldn’t send him more for a Xmas present but will _____ to the letter next time.
Didn’t know what to get him so guess I’ll send the money.
Love,
Milo
Soon after the ceremony, the young couple caught the streetcar to Oklahoma City (Edmond had both a trolley and a streetcar) and from there took a train to Wynnewood to break the news to the bride’s mother and brothers in person and to spend Christmas with them before braving Florence and the Bernard family in Yukon. Elizabeth’s father had died a year and a half earlier. As described on the society page of the Wynnewood newspaper, the new “Mrs. Bernard, who is the charming and accomplished daughter of Mrs. W. P. Cole” married Mr. Bernard, “a very promising young man.” Later, an El Reno reporter would spot Milo accepting congratulations and passing out cigars on that city’s main street.
Florence pouted.
Now she had a rival for Milo’s love. Writing in her diary on Christmas Day, Florence noted that “Milo was married Saturday night, and we are glad that he is so happy.” But, she added, he “has not been home yet – but expect him soon with this bride. She is a sweet girl, and I hope we shall all love each other when we get better acquainted.” And, once again, “We hate to give Milo up. He certainly has been good to us.”
Judging from these comments and from the secrecy of the ceremony and the use of a Presbyterian (not Church of Christ) minister, it is safe to suggest that Florence was not happy. Tensions between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law continued for many years.
In May 1923, Elizabeth had earned her Elementary Teaching Certificate from Central. That fall she had taught in Depew, but when she and Milo married, she resigned “to go wherever Milo’s work took me and to try to make a happy home whatever our circumstances might be.” Their first home was an upstairs apartment in El Reno where Milo was teaching. The following summer, they moved to Edmond so both could attend summer school. He completed his bachelor’s degree; she worked to upgrade her temporary teaching certificate to a lifetime one.
It was a hard summer, made more difficult at the end by Florence’s arrival for Milo’s commencement. Elizabeth recalled in a 1994 letter to her son: “When [Milo] got his bachelor’s, Mother Bernard wanted to see him graduate so came on the Interurban [trolley car] even though she knew we had a small apartment. Mother [Elizabeth’s mother, Thenie] was with us. I was pregnant and going to school feeling like the “dickens,” and Mother [had taken] over the cooking. We had paid all of … [Milo’s sister] Winona’s [expenses] for summer school so you can see how crowded we were. Mother Bernard arrived bringing Winona’s best friend, for she thought, ‘Sister would love to have her.’ Even your Dad was upset. I could go on and on.”
Summers were busy. In August 1924, Milo and Elizabeth moved to Waurika, where he was high school principal and coach. Thelma Elizabeth was born there on Christmas Eve, two days after their first wedding anniversary. In summer 1925, Milo worked for Elizabeth’s brother Leslie Cole at the Wynnewood swimming pool concession stand while Elizabeth, her mother and sister spent three weeks in Edmond where Elizabeth completed more hours for her lifetime teaching certificate. She earned that endorsement in May 1927. Soon thereafter, she, Milo and Elizabeth’s mother loaded up a new Ford Sedan and drove to California where Milo worked as a painter for Elizabeth’s brother-in-law Ed Peveto, who was building a new refinery. They lived in Norman in the summers of 1928 and 1929 so that Milo could work on his Masters of Education degree.
Milo then became superintendent and Elizabeth a teacher at Union Valley consolidated school in SW Oklahoma, near Randlett (1927-29). Elizabeth’s mother, now called “Docca” by the family, lived with them to take care of Thelma Elizabeth. Milo had his best basketball team there. Playing in a time of jump balls after each basket, Union Valley deployed a big center and four other 6-foot starters to win 32 of 34 games and four tournaments. Milo was 5’7”.
Elizabeth was an excellent teacher. As described in 1983 by former pupil Evelyn Jameson Brooks, she was “a strict teacher [who] seemed to know everything – history, mathematics, and English.” A woman of “warmth and gentleness and humor,” Elizabeth was “a Christian lady with a spirit to match the talent. She was easy to work with, always loyal to her fellow man, her church, and its belief. No teacher is more loved or appreciated by her pupils. And none was easier nor fairer to work with.” Another former pupil, John Lewis, wrote to Elizabeth, December 8, 1983, that “I am eternally grateful to you for the sound foundation you provided to me in English, Literature, and Reading,” which put him ahead of his peers. He also wrote of the “care and concern you demonstrated toward me that permitted me to trust you and your guidance implicitly at the time in my life, for whatever reasons, there were few people I felt I could trust. He concluded, “You and Mr. Bernard challenged us to aspire to standards of excellence. Equally important, however, you provided an educational base from which we had a realistic chance to achieve excellence.”
Milo served as school superintendent in Davidson, 1929-32, where he also owned and operated an icehouse in the summers. In 1930, Charlie Bernard, son of Milo’s brother Lewis, came to live with the family when his mother died and the family dissolved. His cheerful and puckish personality certainly added to the family’s morale, if also stretching their budget even thinner. Less than a model student, Charlie was a popular prankster, beloved by all. He loved basketball and farm life. Elizabeth wrote about him at length in her Memories Book.
Milo’s brother Gene worked for him in the Summer of 1932, and kept the ice house business going, but any money that Milo put aside from teaching and selling ice did not last long. It was the Great Depression, and rural banks were failing everywhere. The one in Davidson was no exception. When it went down, it took with it the Bernards’ life savings. It would be years before they received repayment.
Milo and Elizabeth moved to Paden, staying 1932-34, where the depression delivered another blow, cutting Milo’s paycheck in half, just as daughter Patsy Pauline was born, October 11, 1932. Milo called Pat, their “depression baby,” and later he told her that his two hardest financial years were those when she was born and when she married. With their limited funds, Milo and Elizabeth supported a family of seven, including the two girls, Docca, Charlie, and a boarder named Miss Trueblood. Charlie became Pat’s unofficial guardian, much as Leslie had been Elizabeth’s. Once he built a cart hitched the family dog to it, and took Pat for rides around the neighborhood.
Milo again returned to OU to work on his masters in the summer of 1934. That fall, it was on to the superintendent’s job at Hollister for 1934-35; and then to the same position in Hastings, where the family settled down for a long run, 1936-45. There the beloved rat terrier pup Toby joined the family. She would stay with them into their Comanche days.
There too, Charlie finished high school. That fall, he went to Edmond, and then after quitting school at Central State, he went to California to work. On June 8, 1941, he accidentally fell to his death from a mountain near Santa Monica. Elizabeth later consoled herself with the thought that Charlie was due to be called for the draft, and that perhaps the fall had spared him from a worse death in battle. Rarely has an addition to the family had the sort of impact that Charlie had. He was greatly missed.
With the Second World War underway, it should have been Charlie registering for the draft, but in fact, it was Milo, who at age 43 reported to the Hastings, OK, draft board on February 16, 1942. His registration showed him weighing 147 lbs, standing 5’6”, with blue eyes and brown hair.
Thelma Elizabeth (now called, “Liz”) graduated as salutatorian at Hastings in 1942. Her classmate Yvonne Forsythe Morgan later (1983) remembered their school’s superintendent, Liz’s father, in this way: “Mr. Bernard was our stabilizing factor, and we respected him greatly. He usually would hear our side before he corrected us, and he was very subtle in his powers of convincing us he knew the governing rules much better than we. We miss him.”
Liz started college at Central, then transferred to the University of Oklahoma. She met sailor Hoyt “Red” Sandlin of Carbon Hill, Alabama at a dance at Ft. Sill in Lawton. They fell in love. After he became a naval air cadet, assigned to Memphis, Liz took a bus to meet him there, where they married (in violation of navy rules) on August 11, just as the war was coming to an end, five days after Hiroshima. They made their first home in Norman, where both finished at OU. They then moved to Comanche and finally to Duncan, where he taught for many years, with time out for teaching stints in Mons, Belgium, Oklahoma City, Norman, and Lawton. They lived in Duncan at the time of her death, early in this century.
With Charlie gone and Liz in College, expenses might have dropped, but that fall an appendectomy put Elizabeth in bed at a time when her mother was also ill. Enter Miss Clara Mason, who “came to help out” for a few days and stayed to work for the Bernards for three years.
In 1945, Milo, with much regret, took the superintendent’s job at Comanche. He had already accepted that position when a more desirable Norman principal’s position was offered him, but he felt ethically obligated to go to Comanche. It was not a good choice, for the community was very active in school politics and school management and very split over what it wanted. Milo won funding for a new football stadium, for example, by putting the name of one prominent family on the structure and the name of another on the field. Feeling the stress, he resigned after two years to devote full-time to his secondary job, selling insurance for Security Mutual Insurance of Lincoln, Nebraska. After a year in the field, he reversed course and taught at Duncan Junior High for three years, in order to meet minimum standards for Oklahoma State Teacher’s Retirement. During this time, Richard was born on January 16, 1948, in Duncan’s Weedn Hospital, the first child on either side of the family to be born in a hospital and not at home.
In 1950, Pat graduated as valedictorian from Comanche High School, and enrolled for a year at Abilene Christian College in Abilene, Texas. With finances tight the following year, she transferred to Central State College, and in 1952, she married Robert L. Ott, a Comanche electrician and widower. Milo tried to talk Pat out of the match, for a Catholic-raised husband, eleven years older than Pat, was not what he had in mind for her. After they wed, Bob went to work for Halliburton at their Duncan facility. Later, he taught for Oklahoma State University’s Technical Branch in Okmulgee and supervised electrical maintenance at the Conoco (later, Sun Ray) oil refinery south of Duncan. For part of his time at the refinery, Pat and Bob lived just across from the plant, a plant which would later be closed and labelled a federal environmental hazard site. Bob, a heavy smoker, died of heart failure. Pat, a non-smoker, died prematurely after him of heart failure connected to lung cancer, the only documented case of cancer in the family.
Having missed the Norman chance (and an earlier one to move to Alaska), Milo took a second opportunity to work in a college town in 1951. In Comanche, he had won a number of awards for selling life insurance. Now, encouraged by promises from District Agent Charles Randolph, he went back into insurance sales full-time and moved the family to Edmond, anticipating savings on future costs of son Richard’s assumed college attendance at Central State. They bought a newly constructed, three-bedroom tract home at 101 E. 10th Street, a house which would not see the new century in that location. The arrival and later expansion of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church onto an old cow pasture on the north side of the Bernard property eventually resulted in the removal of all of the houses on their block and the donation of the Bernard home to Habitat for Humanity, resulting in its removal to Choctaw, OK.
Even for an award-winning salesman, it was difficult to sell insurance as an unknown newcomer in a growing community. Sales lagged. And, although he continued to sell insurance right up to his death, Milo missed teaching. When the chance came, he took on extra duties and went back to the classroom at Oklahoma City’s Taft High School for three years, and thereafter substituted in the schools of Oklahoma City, Edmond, and Piedmont.
Dick started kindergarten in 1953, took the name Richard in 2nd Grade, and graduated from Edmond High School in 1966, becoming the only Bernard to have all of his schooling in one place. His senior year, he and life-long friend Brad Rice won the high school national debate championship. In late 1969, he married Terry Lee Bowman of Duncan. Richard earned degrees from the University of Oklahoma, Wake Forest University (NC) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, finishing his Ph.D. in History in 1977. He taught history and served as a college administrator in positions ranging from department chair to president. Richard and Terry lived in several places, including New Zealand. In 2007, they moved to Edmond, where he was Dean of the Jackson College of Graduate Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma until his retirement June 30, 2018. Terry was a bookkeeper in an accounting firm, retiring December 31, 2017.
Milo taught school for 33 years. Elizabeth taught for 11 ½ years. In all, Elizabeth had a child in some level of education every year for the 49 years from 1928 to 1977, with that number still larger if one counts Richard university career.
Throughout their lives, Milo and Elizabeth were devoutly religious people, though according to their daughters, perhaps not so much in their earlier years as later. Milo grew up in an Anti-Sunday School Church of Christ in Yukon, and Elizabeth in several Presbyterian Churches. Years later, when she and Milo were living at either Davidson or Hollister, they attended a Church of Christ revival, and Elizabeth decided at that meeting that she wanted to be baptized into that church. But, there was a problem. The country congregation was immersing people in an earthen stock tank, and being deathly afraid of the snakes which sometimes inhabited those tanks, Elizabeth was not about to get into one. So instead, she and Milo drove into Waurika, where she was baptized in the safe and sanitary waters of the First Christian Church.
Together, they attended mainline Churches of Christ, substituting the Christian Church, a historical cousin denomination, when a Church of Christ was not available, such as in Waurika and Hollister. For their ten years in Hastings, they drove to Waurika’s First Christian Church.
By almost any standards, they were fundamentalists in their faith and conservative in their social outlook, but in the extended Bernard Family, they could still find themselves on the left in religious debates. Many a night, Milo and brother Rex argued the literal interpretations of the Bible, and Elizabeth would refer to her Anti-Sunday School brethren as being “so narrow.” Milo served as elder, deacon, and church treasurer in the Edmond Church of Christ, and he stood firm for traditional interpretations of God’s truth. As had his parents and grandparents before him, he opposed instrumental music in church services, dancing (in Richard’s teen years if not in those of his sisters), drinking, women smoking, divorce, Catholicism, and assorted other threats to “New Testament Christianity.”
Elizabeth generally agreed with these stands, though her family background and the Presbyterianism of her youth may have tempered her views on religious matters. In Comanche, she became more involved in church activities and perhaps more religious, though theological discussions never interested her. As a widow, she became devoted to Bible study and church affairs, allowing herself only brief breaks from orthodoxy to join her family in an occasional glass of wine. Milo and Elizabeth’s strong faith doubtless had effects on their children and grandchildren, though only Pat, Bob, and daughter Kim and her family remained within the brotherhood of the Church of Christ. The Sandlins, who for years attended Duncan’s Christian Church, became Episcopalians; Richard and Terry joined the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Both Milo and Elizabeth were active members of the Edmond community. He was elected justice of the peace, became a charter member and commander of the American Legion Post, and joined the Chamber of Commerce, Quarterbacks Club, and Kiwanis. Working with the Chamber, he helped to pass a bond issue for a new Edmond swimming pool. Elizabeth was a member of the American Association of University Women and Kappa Kappa Iota (an educators’ sorority). She occasional worked as a substitute teacher and was active in PTA. In other places, Milo had been a Boy Scout leader, Mason, member of the Red Red Rose (a fraternity for male school teachers), and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. Victims of the Depression, both were Southern Democrats, who voted straight tickets throughout their married lives, except in 1960 when Milo could not pull the lever for his party’s presidential candidate, a Catholic. In her later years alone in Duncan, Elizabeth more and more often voted Republican.
Having for all practical purposes, raised three separate families (the children were eight and nearly 16 years apart), Milo and Elizabeth had by the early 1960s, five grandchildren, Liz and Pat’s children: Tim and Sally Sandlin and Sue, Ann, and Kim Ott. Elizabeth claimed that all except Kim were partial to their grandpa, but both Liz and Pat disputed this. Dick, only 2 ½ years older than his nephew Tim, was still in high school when Milo’s health began to fail.
Milo died October 7, 1965, at age 66, after 41 years of marriage. Like his father and most of his brothers, he died of a heart attack. Suffering the attack on a Monday evening, he passed away in the old Edmond Hospital (above the old Broncho Theater on Broadway) later in the week. Due to his many family, church, school, and community ties, his funeral was quite a large one. The following autumn, Richard left for college, leaving Elizabeth alone in Edmond, where she remained until 1973, when she moved to Duncan to be near daughter Pat and to live with her sister Thelma and her husband Peveto. Her social activities became tightly wound around the Northside, and later the Chisholm Trail, Churches of Christ.
The following year, Elizabeth made the trip of a lifetime when she flew to Europe. In 1973, Liz and Red had moved to Mons, Belgium, where Red taught in the American high school at SHAPE, NATO’s international command headquarters. Richard and Terry had followed them to Europe a year later. He taught during 1974-75 for the University of Maryland at U.S. bases in Germany, Spain, and England. Elizabeth joined this foursome in Belgium for Christmas 1974, and with them, toured Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. In Oudewater, Holland, Elizabeth stepped onto a scale and received a certificate saying that she was too heavy to fly on a broom and therefore definitely was not a witch. In Interlocken, Switzerland, Richard, Terry and Elizabeth stayed in a bed and breakfast with a view of Jungfrau, and talked way into the night with the owner, a woman who spoke German with no English and only a little French. It was an animated conversation.
Always a proper lady, Elizabeth had a delightful time In Mons with the Sandlin’s friends, recording this in her travel diary on Christmas Eve: “Dinner tonight at Taylors. Invited for 8:00 – an hour of cocktails during which everyone stood. These people don’t know they can sit and visit. Some of us gave up. Dinner at 9:00. We thoroughly enjoyed it.” And on the next day, “A typical English dinner with the Neuborocks. Table cleared after each course. Lots of chatter but all light – never hear any discussion on world affairs, politics, etc. If it starts, hostess steers conversation to trivialities.” Christmas night the five listened to American Armed Forces Radio and BBC broadcasts, as it reported the death of comedian Jack Benny. After Christmas, Elizabeth stayed with Liz and Red a while then followed Richard and Terry to England, where they toured London and the north, bringing an end to a “marvelous experience.”
Back in Duncan, Elizabeth shared two houses, first Pat and Bob’s old house and then one across from the church, with “Thelma Nantie” and Peveto until their deaths in the 1990s. Almost every year, Elizabeth traveled to see Richard and his family, which now included grandchildren, Benjamin and Emily.
In 1996, a fall suffered when visiting them in Youngstown, New York, followed by eight weeks in a hospital and rehabilitation, convinced Elizabeth to move into Duncan’s Sterling House, an assisted care facility. From there she moved to Westbrook Care Center, a nursing home in Waurika, where she and Milo had lived so many years before. In Waurika, she grew weaker in body and mind. In all, Elizabeth lived nearly 37 years longer than Milo, dying in late summer 2002 of accumulated ailments of old age. Her 97-year old heart, lungs, and kidneys all failed. Her spirit did not. Although she had recorded advice to others about grieving in her Memories Book, she never once mentioned the prospect of her own death. For her, life was always something that lay ahead.
Milo Bernard’s Elopement Letter
To His Parents
Milo Bernard (33778623)
EDMOND -- Milo M Bernard, 66, died Thursday in an Edmond hospital. Srevices are pending with Baggerley Funeral Home.
Bernard formerly was a school teacher for about 30 years in southern Oklahoma. He moved to Edmond in about 1950 and was in the insurance business. He was a member of the American Legion and was active in the Kiwanis Club. He was deacon in the Church of Christ.
Servivors include his wife Elizabeth; a son Richard M., of the home; Two daughters Mrs Elizabeth Sandlin and Mrs Pat Ott, both of Duncan; a sister Mrs Wynona Stovall, Los Angeles and a brother Gene, Fullerton Calif.
Milo Marion Bernard m. Martha Elizabeth Cole
Dec. 22, 1923
Edmond, OK
b. Aug. 6, 1899 (Yukon, OK Territory) b. April 2, 1905 (Texarkana, AR)
d. Oct. 7, 1965 (Edmond, OK) d. Aug. 30, 2002 (Waurika, OK)
(Buried in Gracelawn (Buried in Gracelawn Cemetery,
Cemetery, Edmond, OK) Edmond, OK)
Thelma Elizabeth Bernard Sandlin
b. Dec. 24, 1924 (Waurika, OK)
m. Aug. 11, 1945 (Hoyt Nick “Red” Sandlin) (Memphis, TN)
Children:
Tim Bernard Sandlin
Sally Anne Sandlin Ford
d. Feb 13, 2004 (Duncan, OK)
Patsy Pauline “Pat” Bernard Ott
b. Oct. 11, 1932 (Paden, OK)
m. June 1, 1952 (Robert Leonard Ott) (Edmond, OK)
Children:
Sue Helen Ott-Rowlands
Ann Patrice Ott Galloway
Kim Lynette Ott Marlatt
d. July 31, 2003 (Duncan, OK)
*Richard Marion Bernard
b. Jan. 16, 1948 (Duncan, OK)
m. Dec. 27, 1969 (Terry Lee Bowman) (Duncan, OK)
Children:
Benjamin Cole Bernard
Emily Lynn Bernard Bare
Milo Marion Bernard
b. Aug. 6, 1899 (Yukon, OK Territory)
d. Oct. 7, 1965 (Edmond, OK)
Martha Elizabeth Cole Bernard
b. April 2, 1905 (Texarkana, AR)
d. Aug. 30, 2002 (Waurika, OK)
Model children, model spouses, model Christians, model parents and grandparents! That’s the summary of the lives of Milo and Elizabeth Bernard.
Milo Bernard was the fourth son, and fourth of the six children who lived to adulthood, of Charlie and Florence Bernard, farmers from southwest of Yukon, Oklahoma. The name Milo came from a well-behaved neighbor child, whom Florence Bernard admired. Marion came from the husband of Florence’s niece Onie, Charles Marion Luckenbaugh. Milo was born on the family homestead, and he was always proud of his farming roots. While three of the brothers led rather unsettled lives, not so Rex and Milo. The former earned his living as a retail grocer (“Bernard and Sons Grocery” in downtown Yukon) and later as a vacuum cleaner salesman, but his passion was preaching the gospel in non-Sunday School Churches of Christ, for which he accepted no cash payment. Milo became an educator, a teacher, coach, and administrator. He also closely followed a strict reading of the gospel’s teachings.
Milo Bernard, an early Boy Scout, seemed always to do the right thing. Certainly, this was his mother Florence’s view, for she often wrote glowingly about young Milo in her diary. On April 19, 1915, for example, she noted that “Bro. Jones,” baptized fifteen-year old Milo in El Reno, and added, “He has been reading the New Testament this winter and had his mind made up without any persuading. Oh how proud Papa and I felt as we went to the water to see him baptized. Tears of joy came to my eyes as I said to him, ‘Papa, the Lord is letting us live to see some of the fruits of our labors, ain’t he?’ and he answered, ‘Yes.’ He was baptized in the Y [presumably the Yukon River] east of Obe’s and Rex’s “…. Milo is in the 9th grade and such a good steady boy. I hope he can go on till he gets his education.” March 31, 1916, she wrote, “Milo is sixteen, and a good steady Christian boy. He is trying so hard to get an education. Hope he will succeed but do hope he will have judgment enough not to let it spoil him.” On May 13 of that year, “Milo is finishing the 10th grade. He is such a good steady boy. Do hope he will make a good and useful man.”
Some of Milo’s earliest memories are recorded in a letter, which he sent to his nine-year old grandson, Tim Bernard Sandlin, April 5, 1960.
“When the Town Whistle and the Church Bells began ringing, Indian Territory and Okla. Territory became The State of Okla. [November 7, 1907]. I was playing baseball at the time, and we had to stop to find out what was taking place. I was about 8 years old and in the 3rd Grade. When the bells quit ringing, recess was over, and we had to go in.”
“The country was all wild prairie when My Daddy came here, lots of Buffalo, Wild Turkey, Deer, Antelope, and a few wild Indians. Lots of Indian ponies. The prairie schooner had to cross streams, ride over rocky hills, and follow Cattle trails coming from Texas up here. There was a famous Cattle trail called the old Chisholm Trail. I was told that it crossed our place. I am not quite sure, but I do know that there was a large trail that made big ruts right across our pasture, and I used to make my little Indian ponies jump it almost every time I went across it. (That is, he jumped part of it. Sometimes I jumped the rest.)”
In high school, Milo was an excellent student, an active participant in school activities, and a starter on the basketball team. In an era when guards played defense and did not shoot the ball, he was named the conference’s top “standing guard,” as the league’s best defensive player. At commencement time, Florence wrote, “Milo graduated with a class of twelve from Yukon High School tonight [May 7, 1917]. To say that we were proud of him would be only the truth for he certainly has conducted himself throughout the school and during all the graduation exercises with credit to himself and to us. I hope he may lead a useful life and oh I hope he will live and die a Christian. Dear Milo, I am too sleepy to write much but must tell you how much I love you and how proud we all are were of you tonight.”
With the Great War having just reached America, Milo went off to Edmond for teacher training at Central State Normal School. A year later, the other boys and he returned to Central in uniform, as cadets in the Student Officers Training Corps. Sleeping on cots on the top floor of Old North, they trained for a war which would end less than two months before they were to go on active duty. Officially, Milo enlisted in the U.S. Army on October 1, 1918, and was released on December 17, 1918. He did not serve long enough for a pension, but he did pick up lots of songs, which he sang for the next four decades (“There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding,” “K-K-K-Katy,” “In My Castle on the River Rhine,” “Over There,” “Hinky-Dinky Parlez-Vous,” “Mademoiselle from Armentieres,” and, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm, After They’ve Seen Paris?”)
In two years, including time for student military training and, again, lots of student activities, Milo completed his teaching certificate. His mother was still proud of him but now a little nervous about his commitment to book learning. “I sometimes feel uneasy [for Milo] for fear he will become careless of his religious duties over there, but I keep hoping and praying for him. He is such a good boy.” Although she said over and over that he was “such a good boy,” Florence worried for the rest of her life that Milo would pay more attention to education and his job than to church.
In the Cole family, Elizabeth was the baby. Named for her two grandmothers (Martha Jane Stafford Wilson and Mary Elizabeth Cox Cole), Elizabeth was the fifth child (one brother died before her birth) and second daughter of railroad worker Pat Cole and his wife Parthenia Jane “Thenie” Wilson Cole. Elizabeth almost did not survive infancy. When she was only two months old, her mother developed rheumatism and went to bed for several months. “So little was known then about bottle feeding,” Elizabeth wrote in her 1978 Memories Book, “and, since no milk they tried would agree with me, I almost died. Finally a neighbor told them about Eagle Brand milk, a new product. It saved my life.” She became “Leslie’s baby,” when her twelve-year old brother took over much of her care. He was a devoted guardian, once threatening a county doctor with a “licking” if he stitched up a cut on Elizabeth’s forehead. Fortunately, another new product, adhesive tape, held the cut together, though it left a scar, which took years to recede into Elizabeth’s hair line.
Elizabeth had a happy, small-town childhood. Later, she fondly remembered playing outside on long summer evenings, catching fireflies, making a playhouse in a huge barn loft, and her 10th birthday party (“the only one I ever had except for family get-togethers until [daughter] Pat gave a lovely luncheon for me on my seventieth birthday”). Interestingly she never talked about her family’s Presbyterian religion, doubtless a hand-me-down from their Scots-Irish origins.
Less fondly remembered were medicines and cures: Horehound candy, Scott’s Emulsion, and poultices of biscuits soaked in milk (to block infection from a nail puncture), and honey and flour (to bring a boil to a head). Her father would hold Elizabeth on his knee and blow warm smoke in her infected ear (another boil popping strategy). She had adenoids removed three times and her tonsils taken out as well.
Pat Cole had tried farming and barbering in Texas, but finally settled down to a job with the Texas and Pacific Railroad. The company sent him first to Texarkana, Arkansas, then to Bonham, Texas, then back to Texarkana, and finally back to Bonham. He then left the employ of the railroad and moved the family to Altus, in southwestern Oklahoma, where he bought and ran a recreation hall (pool and dominoes) until lured into the cotton gin business with Thenie’s brother-in-law Judd Wilhite. Elizabeth’s sister Thelma Cole finish high school there.
By 1916, Wilhite had proved a poor businessman, the company collapsed, and the Coles moved on to Roxana Pump Station near Wynnewood in south central Oklahoma. Two years later, they moved into town, where Pat worked as an engineer for the city water and electric department, and where Elizabeth spent her high school years.
Thelma Cole, a young tomboy turned high school belle, became a teacher, working for one year at a two-teacher school called Clabber-Flat, near Altus, where she made $45 per month (enough to cover her $12 monthly costs for room, board, and laundry). The next year, she taught at Paoli, then moved to Wynnewood to work in brother Carl’s drugstore for a year. When there was an opening in Wynnewood schools, she returned to the classroom for six years before marrying Wynnewood oil refinery superintendent, Edward Elzy Peveto, who she forever called simply, “Peveto.” In private, they were “Toots” and “Boogie.” During her Wynnewood teaching days, Thelma housed Elizabeth in her apartment while their parents were at the pump station.
This allowed Elizabeth to go to high school but at the price of living in her popular sister’s shadow. According to Elizabeth, Thelma had quite a social life.
“During World War I, sister had three beaux in the service; Phil O’Neil, who remained stateside, and Frank Welch and Horace Williams, who were overseas. [Older brother] Carl kidded her that if either Frank or Horace were returned to the states, he would wire both the returned soldiers and Phil that Sister was seriously ill and to please come. He kept her going in circles ….
It was Horace who called her not long after the war ended and proposed to her. Ray Riddle, whom she was dating then, was in the living room. Not wanting to embarrass Horace [not to mention herself], she said, “Horace, I can’t hear you.’ Three or four times he repeated the proposal and each time she said she couldn’t hear him. But when he said he’d write and ask her, she heard immediately and said, ‘Yes, Horace, you do that.’”
In 1922, Elizabeth graduated in a class of sixteen from Wynnewood High School and went to Central State Teachers College, as it was then called, to begin her teacher training. There she roomed with a Williams family at 230 East Campbell and became close friends with their daughter Bobbie.
As Elizabeth recalled in 1978, “On Friday afternoon, November 10, 1922, Bobbie Williams and I went to town. Coming back, we met [Milo Bernard] in the intersection of Boulevard and Hurd. Bobbie introduced us, and we all visited for perhaps ten minutes. Milo was already teaching mathematics and coaching at El Reno Junior High School. Elizabeth and Bobbie walked home, while Milo went to town to find Bobbie’s boyfriend, Warren Waddell. The two men arranged a double date.
When Milo telephoned Elizabeth, she put him off long enough to ask Mrs. Williams about her new suitor. She replied, “Goodness, yes, go with Milo anytime.” Elizabeth did – the four went to a movie and then to Vans, a popular college student meeting place. Milo stayed with Waddell in Edmond overnight for a second date on Saturday before going back to El Reno.
When school let out for Christmas vacation, Milo renewed his pursuit of Elizabeth, riding in a friend’s car to Edmond or catching the Interurban trolley. On April 6, 1923, four days after her eighteenth birthday, Milo proposed, and on Independence Day, he took his future wife home to meet his parents. “Milo brought his girl to see us,” wrote the always doting Florence Bernard. “Miss Elizabeth Cole. She is a sweet-looking little girl, but Milo doesn’t look very well, and I’m uneasy about him dear faithful Milo.”
Within six months, Milo and his “sweet-looking little girl” would wed. “[Elizabeth and Milo] are to be married soon, and we will lose another boy but hope he will still love us as we do him, and we hope she will love us to as well as she can.” Clearly, Florence was reconciling herself to the coming marriage whenever it might occur. As it happened, the sweethearts moved more quickly that anyone had imagined.
In mid-December Elizabeth came to El Reno, and together they hatched a plot to marry a week later, on December 22, the longest night of the year, as Milo later would often recall. They told no one except Milo’s best friend and a friend of Elizabeth’s. The wedding took place in a Mrs. Gee’s Edmond boarding house at 312 East Main Street, where Elizabeth had lived the previous winter, and in the same room where Milo had asked for her hand the previous April. This is roughly where the University of Central Oklahoma’s Howell Hall now stands. Presbyterian minister, Rev. Le Roy C. Ilsley, conducted the service, as Milo wrote to his parents the next day:
Milo Bernard’s Elopement Letter
Wynnewood
Oklahoma
Sunday
Dear Mother, Dad and all:
Did you know you have a new Daughter in Law?
We were married last night at 7:30 P.M. in Edmond at the House where Elizabeth stayed last winter.
We never told anyone and believe me they were very much surprised when we got off the train this afternoon and we told them the dirty deed was did.
There were only two people, the Preacher and us at the wedding and we caught the very next car out for the city. Gaither and [Ocie Couthing, Elizabeth’s friend] stood up for us. They were the two witnesses.
We had planned this last week when Elizabeth was in El Reno but we both decided not to tell anyone.
Momma, I have the sweetest little wife in all the world and you can’t imagine what a happy man I am.
I never thought it was possible for me to love anyone as I love Elizabeth since she is now my wife. I love her more even now than ever.
Don’t know yet when we will come to El Reno, but will let you know soon.
Lots and lots of love to all.
Milo
P.S. Give this letter to Gene and tell him I am sorry I couldn’t send him more for a Xmas present but will _____ to the letter next time.
Didn’t know what to get him so guess I’ll send the money.
Love,
Milo
Soon after the ceremony, the young couple caught the streetcar to Oklahoma City (Edmond had both a trolley and a streetcar) and from there took a train to Wynnewood to break the news to the bride’s mother and brothers in person and to spend Christmas with them before braving Florence and the Bernard family in Yukon. Elizabeth’s father had died a year and a half earlier. As described on the society page of the Wynnewood newspaper, the new “Mrs. Bernard, who is the charming and accomplished daughter of Mrs. W. P. Cole” married Mr. Bernard, “a very promising young man.” Later, an El Reno reporter would spot Milo accepting congratulations and passing out cigars on that city’s main street.
Florence pouted.
Now she had a rival for Milo’s love. Writing in her diary on Christmas Day, Florence noted that “Milo was married Saturday night, and we are glad that he is so happy.” But, she added, he “has not been home yet – but expect him soon with this bride. She is a sweet girl, and I hope we shall all love each other when we get better acquainted.” And, once again, “We hate to give Milo up. He certainly has been good to us.”
Judging from these comments and from the secrecy of the ceremony and the use of a Presbyterian (not Church of Christ) minister, it is safe to suggest that Florence was not happy. Tensions between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law continued for many years.
In May 1923, Elizabeth had earned her Elementary Teaching Certificate from Central. That fall she had taught in Depew, but when she and Milo married, she resigned “to go wherever Milo’s work took me and to try to make a happy home whatever our circumstances might be.” Their first home was an upstairs apartment in El Reno where Milo was teaching. The following summer, they moved to Edmond so both could attend summer school. He completed his bachelor’s degree; she worked to upgrade her temporary teaching certificate to a lifetime one.
It was a hard summer, made more difficult at the end by Florence’s arrival for Milo’s commencement. Elizabeth recalled in a 1994 letter to her son: “When [Milo] got his bachelor’s, Mother Bernard wanted to see him graduate so came on the Interurban [trolley car] even though she knew we had a small apartment. Mother [Elizabeth’s mother, Thenie] was with us. I was pregnant and going to school feeling like the “dickens,” and Mother [had taken] over the cooking. We had paid all of … [Milo’s sister] Winona’s [expenses] for summer school so you can see how crowded we were. Mother Bernard arrived bringing Winona’s best friend, for she thought, ‘Sister would love to have her.’ Even your Dad was upset. I could go on and on.”
Summers were busy. In August 1924, Milo and Elizabeth moved to Waurika, where he was high school principal and coach. Thelma Elizabeth was born there on Christmas Eve, two days after their first wedding anniversary. In summer 1925, Milo worked for Elizabeth’s brother Leslie Cole at the Wynnewood swimming pool concession stand while Elizabeth, her mother and sister spent three weeks in Edmond where Elizabeth completed more hours for her lifetime teaching certificate. She earned that endorsement in May 1927. Soon thereafter, she, Milo and Elizabeth’s mother loaded up a new Ford Sedan and drove to California where Milo worked as a painter for Elizabeth’s brother-in-law Ed Peveto, who was building a new refinery. They lived in Norman in the summers of 1928 and 1929 so that Milo could work on his Masters of Education degree.
Milo then became superintendent and Elizabeth a teacher at Union Valley consolidated school in SW Oklahoma, near Randlett (1927-29). Elizabeth’s mother, now called “Docca” by the family, lived with them to take care of Thelma Elizabeth. Milo had his best basketball team there. Playing in a time of jump balls after each basket, Union Valley deployed a big center and four other 6-foot starters to win 32 of 34 games and four tournaments. Milo was 5’7”.
Elizabeth was an excellent teacher. As described in 1983 by former pupil Evelyn Jameson Brooks, she was “a strict teacher [who] seemed to know everything – history, mathematics, and English.” A woman of “warmth and gentleness and humor,” Elizabeth was “a Christian lady with a spirit to match the talent. She was easy to work with, always loyal to her fellow man, her church, and its belief. No teacher is more loved or appreciated by her pupils. And none was easier nor fairer to work with.” Another former pupil, John Lewis, wrote to Elizabeth, December 8, 1983, that “I am eternally grateful to you for the sound foundation you provided to me in English, Literature, and Reading,” which put him ahead of his peers. He also wrote of the “care and concern you demonstrated toward me that permitted me to trust you and your guidance implicitly at the time in my life, for whatever reasons, there were few people I felt I could trust. He concluded, “You and Mr. Bernard challenged us to aspire to standards of excellence. Equally important, however, you provided an educational base from which we had a realistic chance to achieve excellence.”
Milo served as school superintendent in Davidson, 1929-32, where he also owned and operated an icehouse in the summers. In 1930, Charlie Bernard, son of Milo’s brother Lewis, came to live with the family when his mother died and the family dissolved. His cheerful and puckish personality certainly added to the family’s morale, if also stretching their budget even thinner. Less than a model student, Charlie was a popular prankster, beloved by all. He loved basketball and farm life. Elizabeth wrote about him at length in her Memories Book.
Milo’s brother Gene worked for him in the Summer of 1932, and kept the ice house business going, but any money that Milo put aside from teaching and selling ice did not last long. It was the Great Depression, and rural banks were failing everywhere. The one in Davidson was no exception. When it went down, it took with it the Bernards’ life savings. It would be years before they received repayment.
Milo and Elizabeth moved to Paden, staying 1932-34, where the depression delivered another blow, cutting Milo’s paycheck in half, just as daughter Patsy Pauline was born, October 11, 1932. Milo called Pat, their “depression baby,” and later he told her that his two hardest financial years were those when she was born and when she married. With their limited funds, Milo and Elizabeth supported a family of seven, including the two girls, Docca, Charlie, and a boarder named Miss Trueblood. Charlie became Pat’s unofficial guardian, much as Leslie had been Elizabeth’s. Once he built a cart hitched the family dog to it, and took Pat for rides around the neighborhood.
Milo again returned to OU to work on his masters in the summer of 1934. That fall, it was on to the superintendent’s job at Hollister for 1934-35; and then to the same position in Hastings, where the family settled down for a long run, 1936-45. There the beloved rat terrier pup Toby joined the family. She would stay with them into their Comanche days.
There too, Charlie finished high school. That fall, he went to Edmond, and then after quitting school at Central State, he went to California to work. On June 8, 1941, he accidentally fell to his death from a mountain near Santa Monica. Elizabeth later consoled herself with the thought that Charlie was due to be called for the draft, and that perhaps the fall had spared him from a worse death in battle. Rarely has an addition to the family had the sort of impact that Charlie had. He was greatly missed.
With the Second World War underway, it should have been Charlie registering for the draft, but in fact, it was Milo, who at age 43 reported to the Hastings, OK, draft board on February 16, 1942. His registration showed him weighing 147 lbs, standing 5’6”, with blue eyes and brown hair.
Thelma Elizabeth (now called, “Liz”) graduated as salutatorian at Hastings in 1942. Her classmate Yvonne Forsythe Morgan later (1983) remembered their school’s superintendent, Liz’s father, in this way: “Mr. Bernard was our stabilizing factor, and we respected him greatly. He usually would hear our side before he corrected us, and he was very subtle in his powers of convincing us he knew the governing rules much better than we. We miss him.”
Liz started college at Central, then transferred to the University of Oklahoma. She met sailor Hoyt “Red” Sandlin of Carbon Hill, Alabama at a dance at Ft. Sill in Lawton. They fell in love. After he became a naval air cadet, assigned to Memphis, Liz took a bus to meet him there, where they married (in violation of navy rules) on August 11, just as the war was coming to an end, five days after Hiroshima. They made their first home in Norman, where both finished at OU. They then moved to Comanche and finally to Duncan, where he taught for many years, with time out for teaching stints in Mons, Belgium, Oklahoma City, Norman, and Lawton. They lived in Duncan at the time of her death, early in this century.
With Charlie gone and Liz in College, expenses might have dropped, but that fall an appendectomy put Elizabeth in bed at a time when her mother was also ill. Enter Miss Clara Mason, who “came to help out” for a few days and stayed to work for the Bernards for three years.
In 1945, Milo, with much regret, took the superintendent’s job at Comanche. He had already accepted that position when a more desirable Norman principal’s position was offered him, but he felt ethically obligated to go to Comanche. It was not a good choice, for the community was very active in school politics and school management and very split over what it wanted. Milo won funding for a new football stadium, for example, by putting the name of one prominent family on the structure and the name of another on the field. Feeling the stress, he resigned after two years to devote full-time to his secondary job, selling insurance for Security Mutual Insurance of Lincoln, Nebraska. After a year in the field, he reversed course and taught at Duncan Junior High for three years, in order to meet minimum standards for Oklahoma State Teacher’s Retirement. During this time, Richard was born on January 16, 1948, in Duncan’s Weedn Hospital, the first child on either side of the family to be born in a hospital and not at home.
In 1950, Pat graduated as valedictorian from Comanche High School, and enrolled for a year at Abilene Christian College in Abilene, Texas. With finances tight the following year, she transferred to Central State College, and in 1952, she married Robert L. Ott, a Comanche electrician and widower. Milo tried to talk Pat out of the match, for a Catholic-raised husband, eleven years older than Pat, was not what he had in mind for her. After they wed, Bob went to work for Halliburton at their Duncan facility. Later, he taught for Oklahoma State University’s Technical Branch in Okmulgee and supervised electrical maintenance at the Conoco (later, Sun Ray) oil refinery south of Duncan. For part of his time at the refinery, Pat and Bob lived just across from the plant, a plant which would later be closed and labelled a federal environmental hazard site. Bob, a heavy smoker, died of heart failure. Pat, a non-smoker, died prematurely after him of heart failure connected to lung cancer, the only documented case of cancer in the family.
Having missed the Norman chance (and an earlier one to move to Alaska), Milo took a second opportunity to work in a college town in 1951. In Comanche, he had won a number of awards for selling life insurance. Now, encouraged by promises from District Agent Charles Randolph, he went back into insurance sales full-time and moved the family to Edmond, anticipating savings on future costs of son Richard’s assumed college attendance at Central State. They bought a newly constructed, three-bedroom tract home at 101 E. 10th Street, a house which would not see the new century in that location. The arrival and later expansion of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church onto an old cow pasture on the north side of the Bernard property eventually resulted in the removal of all of the houses on their block and the donation of the Bernard home to Habitat for Humanity, resulting in its removal to Choctaw, OK.
Even for an award-winning salesman, it was difficult to sell insurance as an unknown newcomer in a growing community. Sales lagged. And, although he continued to sell insurance right up to his death, Milo missed teaching. When the chance came, he took on extra duties and went back to the classroom at Oklahoma City’s Taft High School for three years, and thereafter substituted in the schools of Oklahoma City, Edmond, and Piedmont.
Dick started kindergarten in 1953, took the name Richard in 2nd Grade, and graduated from Edmond High School in 1966, becoming the only Bernard to have all of his schooling in one place. His senior year, he and life-long friend Brad Rice won the high school national debate championship. In late 1969, he married Terry Lee Bowman of Duncan. Richard earned degrees from the University of Oklahoma, Wake Forest University (NC) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, finishing his Ph.D. in History in 1977. He taught history and served as a college administrator in positions ranging from department chair to president. Richard and Terry lived in several places, including New Zealand. In 2007, they moved to Edmond, where he was Dean of the Jackson College of Graduate Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma until his retirement June 30, 2018. Terry was a bookkeeper in an accounting firm, retiring December 31, 2017.
Milo taught school for 33 years. Elizabeth taught for 11 ½ years. In all, Elizabeth had a child in some level of education every year for the 49 years from 1928 to 1977, with that number still larger if one counts Richard university career.
Throughout their lives, Milo and Elizabeth were devoutly religious people, though according to their daughters, perhaps not so much in their earlier years as later. Milo grew up in an Anti-Sunday School Church of Christ in Yukon, and Elizabeth in several Presbyterian Churches. Years later, when she and Milo were living at either Davidson or Hollister, they attended a Church of Christ revival, and Elizabeth decided at that meeting that she wanted to be baptized into that church. But, there was a problem. The country congregation was immersing people in an earthen stock tank, and being deathly afraid of the snakes which sometimes inhabited those tanks, Elizabeth was not about to get into one. So instead, she and Milo drove into Waurika, where she was baptized in the safe and sanitary waters of the First Christian Church.
Together, they attended mainline Churches of Christ, substituting the Christian Church, a historical cousin denomination, when a Church of Christ was not available, such as in Waurika and Hollister. For their ten years in Hastings, they drove to Waurika’s First Christian Church.
By almost any standards, they were fundamentalists in their faith and conservative in their social outlook, but in the extended Bernard Family, they could still find themselves on the left in religious debates. Many a night, Milo and brother Rex argued the literal interpretations of the Bible, and Elizabeth would refer to her Anti-Sunday School brethren as being “so narrow.” Milo served as elder, deacon, and church treasurer in the Edmond Church of Christ, and he stood firm for traditional interpretations of God’s truth. As had his parents and grandparents before him, he opposed instrumental music in church services, dancing (in Richard’s teen years if not in those of his sisters), drinking, women smoking, divorce, Catholicism, and assorted other threats to “New Testament Christianity.”
Elizabeth generally agreed with these stands, though her family background and the Presbyterianism of her youth may have tempered her views on religious matters. In Comanche, she became more involved in church activities and perhaps more religious, though theological discussions never interested her. As a widow, she became devoted to Bible study and church affairs, allowing herself only brief breaks from orthodoxy to join her family in an occasional glass of wine. Milo and Elizabeth’s strong faith doubtless had effects on their children and grandchildren, though only Pat, Bob, and daughter Kim and her family remained within the brotherhood of the Church of Christ. The Sandlins, who for years attended Duncan’s Christian Church, became Episcopalians; Richard and Terry joined the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Both Milo and Elizabeth were active members of the Edmond community. He was elected justice of the peace, became a charter member and commander of the American Legion Post, and joined the Chamber of Commerce, Quarterbacks Club, and Kiwanis. Working with the Chamber, he helped to pass a bond issue for a new Edmond swimming pool. Elizabeth was a member of the American Association of University Women and Kappa Kappa Iota (an educators’ sorority). She occasional worked as a substitute teacher and was active in PTA. In other places, Milo had been a Boy Scout leader, Mason, member of the Red Red Rose (a fraternity for male school teachers), and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. Victims of the Depression, both were Southern Democrats, who voted straight tickets throughout their married lives, except in 1960 when Milo could not pull the lever for his party’s presidential candidate, a Catholic. In her later years alone in Duncan, Elizabeth more and more often voted Republican.
Having for all practical purposes, raised three separate families (the children were eight and nearly 16 years apart), Milo and Elizabeth had by the early 1960s, five grandchildren, Liz and Pat’s children: Tim and Sally Sandlin and Sue, Ann, and Kim Ott. Elizabeth claimed that all except Kim were partial to their grandpa, but both Liz and Pat disputed this. Dick, only 2 ½ years older than his nephew Tim, was still in high school when Milo’s health began to fail.
Milo died October 7, 1965, at age 66, after 41 years of marriage. Like his father and most of his brothers, he died of a heart attack. Suffering the attack on a Monday evening, he passed away in the old Edmond Hospital (above the old Broncho Theater on Broadway) later in the week. Due to his many family, church, school, and community ties, his funeral was quite a large one. The following autumn, Richard left for college, leaving Elizabeth alone in Edmond, where she remained until 1973, when she moved to Duncan to be near daughter Pat and to live with her sister Thelma and her husband Peveto. Her social activities became tightly wound around the Northside, and later the Chisholm Trail, Churches of Christ.
The following year, Elizabeth made the trip of a lifetime when she flew to Europe. In 1973, Liz and Red had moved to Mons, Belgium, where Red taught in the American high school at SHAPE, NATO’s international command headquarters. Richard and Terry had followed them to Europe a year later. He taught during 1974-75 for the University of Maryland at U.S. bases in Germany, Spain, and England. Elizabeth joined this foursome in Belgium for Christmas 1974, and with them, toured Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. In Oudewater, Holland, Elizabeth stepped onto a scale and received a certificate saying that she was too heavy to fly on a broom and therefore definitely was not a witch. In Interlocken, Switzerland, Richard, Terry and Elizabeth stayed in a bed and breakfast with a view of Jungfrau, and talked way into the night with the owner, a woman who spoke German with no English and only a little French. It was an animated conversation.
Always a proper lady, Elizabeth had a delightful time In Mons with the Sandlin’s friends, recording this in her travel diary on Christmas Eve: “Dinner tonight at Taylors. Invited for 8:00 – an hour of cocktails during which everyone stood. These people don’t know they can sit and visit. Some of us gave up. Dinner at 9:00. We thoroughly enjoyed it.” And on the next day, “A typical English dinner with the Neuborocks. Table cleared after each course. Lots of chatter but all light – never hear any discussion on world affairs, politics, etc. If it starts, hostess steers conversation to trivialities.” Christmas night the five listened to American Armed Forces Radio and BBC broadcasts, as it reported the death of comedian Jack Benny. After Christmas, Elizabeth stayed with Liz and Red a while then followed Richard and Terry to England, where they toured London and the north, bringing an end to a “marvelous experience.”
Back in Duncan, Elizabeth shared two houses, first Pat and Bob’s old house and then one across from the church, with “Thelma Nantie” and Peveto until their deaths in the 1990s. Almost every year, Elizabeth traveled to see Richard and his family, which now included grandchildren, Benjamin and Emily.
In 1996, a fall suffered when visiting them in Youngstown, New York, followed by eight weeks in a hospital and rehabilitation, convinced Elizabeth to move into Duncan’s Sterling House, an assisted care facility. From there she moved to Westbrook Care Center, a nursing home in Waurika, where she and Milo had lived so many years before. In Waurika, she grew weaker in body and mind. In all, Elizabeth lived nearly 37 years longer than Milo, dying in late summer 2002 of accumulated ailments of old age. Her 97-year old heart, lungs, and kidneys all failed. Her spirit did not. Although she had recorded advice to others about grieving in her Memories Book, she never once mentioned the prospect of her own death. For her, life was always something that lay ahead.
Milo Bernard’s Elopement Letter
To His Parents
Milo Bernard (33778623)
The Oklahoman Oct 8 1965 page 35
EDMOND -- Milo M Bernard, 66, died Thursday in an Edmond hospital. Srevices are pending with Baggerley Funeral Home.
Bernard formerly was a school teacher for about 30 years in southern Oklahoma. He moved to Edmond in about 1950 and was in the insurance business. He was a member of the American Legion and was active in the Kiwanis Club. He was deacon in the Church of Christ.
Servivors include his wife Elizabeth; a son Richard M., of the home; Two daughters Mrs Elizabeth Sandlin and Mrs Pat Ott, both of Duncan; a sister Mrs Wynona Stovall, Los Angeles and a brother Gene, Fullerton Calif.
Milo Marion Bernard m. Martha Elizabeth Cole
Dec. 22, 1923
Edmond, OK
b. Aug. 6, 1899 (Yukon, OK Territory) b. April 2, 1905 (Texarkana, AR)
d. Oct. 7, 1965 (Edmond, OK) d. Aug. 30, 2002 (Waurika, OK)
(Buried in Gracelawn (Buried in Gracelawn Cemetery,
Cemetery, Edmond, OK) Edmond, OK)
Thelma Elizabeth Bernard Sandlin
b. Dec. 24, 1924 (Waurika, OK)
m. Aug. 11, 1945 (Hoyt Nick “Red” Sandlin) (Memphis, TN)
Children:
Tim Bernard Sandlin
Sally Anne Sandlin Ford
d. Feb 13, 2004 (Duncan, OK)
Patsy Pauline “Pat” Bernard Ott
b. Oct. 11, 1932 (Paden, OK)
m. June 1, 1952 (Robert Leonard Ott) (Edmond, OK)
Children:
Sue Helen Ott-Rowlands
Ann Patrice Ott Galloway
Kim Lynette Ott Marlatt
d. July 31, 2003 (Duncan, OK)
*Richard Marion Bernard
b. Jan. 16, 1948 (Duncan, OK)
m. Dec. 27, 1969 (Terry Lee Bowman) (Duncan, OK)
Children:
Benjamin Cole Bernard
Emily Lynn Bernard Bare
Milo Marion Bernard
b. Aug. 6, 1899 (Yukon, OK Territory)
d. Oct. 7, 1965 (Edmond, OK)
Martha Elizabeth Cole Bernard
b. April 2, 1905 (Texarkana, AR)
d. Aug. 30, 2002 (Waurika, OK)
Model children, model spouses, model Christians, model parents and grandparents! That’s the summary of the lives of Milo and Elizabeth Bernard.
Milo Bernard was the fourth son, and fourth of the six children who lived to adulthood, of Charlie and Florence Bernard, farmers from southwest of Yukon, Oklahoma. The name Milo came from a well-behaved neighbor child, whom Florence Bernard admired. Marion came from the husband of Florence’s niece Onie, Charles Marion Luckenbaugh. Milo was born on the family homestead, and he was always proud of his farming roots. While three of the brothers led rather unsettled lives, not so Rex and Milo. The former earned his living as a retail grocer (“Bernard and Sons Grocery” in downtown Yukon) and later as a vacuum cleaner salesman, but his passion was preaching the gospel in non-Sunday School Churches of Christ, for which he accepted no cash payment. Milo became an educator, a teacher, coach, and administrator. He also closely followed a strict reading of the gospel’s teachings.
Milo Bernard, an early Boy Scout, seemed always to do the right thing. Certainly, this was his mother Florence’s view, for she often wrote glowingly about young Milo in her diary. On April 19, 1915, for example, she noted that “Bro. Jones,” baptized fifteen-year old Milo in El Reno, and added, “He has been reading the New Testament this winter and had his mind made up without any persuading. Oh how proud Papa and I felt as we went to the water to see him baptized. Tears of joy came to my eyes as I said to him, ‘Papa, the Lord is letting us live to see some of the fruits of our labors, ain’t he?’ and he answered, ‘Yes.’ He was baptized in the Y [presumably the Yukon River] east of Obe’s and Rex’s “…. Milo is in the 9th grade and such a good steady boy. I hope he can go on till he gets his education.” March 31, 1916, she wrote, “Milo is sixteen, and a good steady Christian boy. He is trying so hard to get an education. Hope he will succeed but do hope he will have judgment enough not to let it spoil him.” On May 13 of that year, “Milo is finishing the 10th grade. He is such a good steady boy. Do hope he will make a good and useful man.”
Some of Milo’s earliest memories are recorded in a letter, which he sent to his nine-year old grandson, Tim Bernard Sandlin, April 5, 1960.
“When the Town Whistle and the Church Bells began ringing, Indian Territory and Okla. Territory became The State of Okla. [November 7, 1907]. I was playing baseball at the time, and we had to stop to find out what was taking place. I was about 8 years old and in the 3rd Grade. When the bells quit ringing, recess was over, and we had to go in.”
“The country was all wild prairie when My Daddy came here, lots of Buffalo, Wild Turkey, Deer, Antelope, and a few wild Indians. Lots of Indian ponies. The prairie schooner had to cross streams, ride over rocky hills, and follow Cattle trails coming from Texas up here. There was a famous Cattle trail called the old Chisholm Trail. I was told that it crossed our place. I am not quite sure, but I do know that there was a large trail that made big ruts right across our pasture, and I used to make my little Indian ponies jump it almost every time I went across it. (That is, he jumped part of it. Sometimes I jumped the rest.)”
In high school, Milo was an excellent student, an active participant in school activities, and a starter on the basketball team. In an era when guards played defense and did not shoot the ball, he was named the conference’s top “standing guard,” as the league’s best defensive player. At commencement time, Florence wrote, “Milo graduated with a class of twelve from Yukon High School tonight [May 7, 1917]. To say that we were proud of him would be only the truth for he certainly has conducted himself throughout the school and during all the graduation exercises with credit to himself and to us. I hope he may lead a useful life and oh I hope he will live and die a Christian. Dear Milo, I am too sleepy to write much but must tell you how much I love you and how proud we all are were of you tonight.”
With the Great War having just reached America, Milo went off to Edmond for teacher training at Central State Normal School. A year later, the other boys and he returned to Central in uniform, as cadets in the Student Officers Training Corps. Sleeping on cots on the top floor of Old North, they trained for a war which would end less than two months before they were to go on active duty. Officially, Milo enlisted in the U.S. Army on October 1, 1918, and was released on December 17, 1918. He did not serve long enough for a pension, but he did pick up lots of songs, which he sang for the next four decades (“There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding,” “K-K-K-Katy,” “In My Castle on the River Rhine,” “Over There,” “Hinky-Dinky Parlez-Vous,” “Mademoiselle from Armentieres,” and, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm, After They’ve Seen Paris?”)
In two years, including time for student military training and, again, lots of student activities, Milo completed his teaching certificate. His mother was still proud of him but now a little nervous about his commitment to book learning. “I sometimes feel uneasy [for Milo] for fear he will become careless of his religious duties over there, but I keep hoping and praying for him. He is such a good boy.” Although she said over and over that he was “such a good boy,” Florence worried for the rest of her life that Milo would pay more attention to education and his job than to church.
In the Cole family, Elizabeth was the baby. Named for her two grandmothers (Martha Jane Stafford Wilson and Mary Elizabeth Cox Cole), Elizabeth was the fifth child (one brother died before her birth) and second daughter of railroad worker Pat Cole and his wife Parthenia Jane “Thenie” Wilson Cole. Elizabeth almost did not survive infancy. When she was only two months old, her mother developed rheumatism and went to bed for several months. “So little was known then about bottle feeding,” Elizabeth wrote in her 1978 Memories Book, “and, since no milk they tried would agree with me, I almost died. Finally a neighbor told them about Eagle Brand milk, a new product. It saved my life.” She became “Leslie’s baby,” when her twelve-year old brother took over much of her care. He was a devoted guardian, once threatening a county doctor with a “licking” if he stitched up a cut on Elizabeth’s forehead. Fortunately, another new product, adhesive tape, held the cut together, though it left a scar, which took years to recede into Elizabeth’s hair line.
Elizabeth had a happy, small-town childhood. Later, she fondly remembered playing outside on long summer evenings, catching fireflies, making a playhouse in a huge barn loft, and her 10th birthday party (“the only one I ever had except for family get-togethers until [daughter] Pat gave a lovely luncheon for me on my seventieth birthday”). Interestingly she never talked about her family’s Presbyterian religion, doubtless a hand-me-down from their Scots-Irish origins.
Less fondly remembered were medicines and cures: Horehound candy, Scott’s Emulsion, and poultices of biscuits soaked in milk (to block infection from a nail puncture), and honey and flour (to bring a boil to a head). Her father would hold Elizabeth on his knee and blow warm smoke in her infected ear (another boil popping strategy). She had adenoids removed three times and her tonsils taken out as well.
Pat Cole had tried farming and barbering in Texas, but finally settled down to a job with the Texas and Pacific Railroad. The company sent him first to Texarkana, Arkansas, then to Bonham, Texas, then back to Texarkana, and finally back to Bonham. He then left the employ of the railroad and moved the family to Altus, in southwestern Oklahoma, where he bought and ran a recreation hall (pool and dominoes) until lured into the cotton gin business with Thenie’s brother-in-law Judd Wilhite. Elizabeth’s sister Thelma Cole finish high school there.
By 1916, Wilhite had proved a poor businessman, the company collapsed, and the Coles moved on to Roxana Pump Station near Wynnewood in south central Oklahoma. Two years later, they moved into town, where Pat worked as an engineer for the city water and electric department, and where Elizabeth spent her high school years.
Thelma Cole, a young tomboy turned high school belle, became a teacher, working for one year at a two-teacher school called Clabber-Flat, near Altus, where she made $45 per month (enough to cover her $12 monthly costs for room, board, and laundry). The next year, she taught at Paoli, then moved to Wynnewood to work in brother Carl’s drugstore for a year. When there was an opening in Wynnewood schools, she returned to the classroom for six years before marrying Wynnewood oil refinery superintendent, Edward Elzy Peveto, who she forever called simply, “Peveto.” In private, they were “Toots” and “Boogie.” During her Wynnewood teaching days, Thelma housed Elizabeth in her apartment while their parents were at the pump station.
This allowed Elizabeth to go to high school but at the price of living in her popular sister’s shadow. According to Elizabeth, Thelma had quite a social life.
“During World War I, sister had three beaux in the service; Phil O’Neil, who remained stateside, and Frank Welch and Horace Williams, who were overseas. [Older brother] Carl kidded her that if either Frank or Horace were returned to the states, he would wire both the returned soldiers and Phil that Sister was seriously ill and to please come. He kept her going in circles ….
It was Horace who called her not long after the war ended and proposed to her. Ray Riddle, whom she was dating then, was in the living room. Not wanting to embarrass Horace [not to mention herself], she said, “Horace, I can’t hear you.’ Three or four times he repeated the proposal and each time she said she couldn’t hear him. But when he said he’d write and ask her, she heard immediately and said, ‘Yes, Horace, you do that.’”
In 1922, Elizabeth graduated in a class of sixteen from Wynnewood High School and went to Central State Teachers College, as it was then called, to begin her teacher training. There she roomed with a Williams family at 230 East Campbell and became close friends with their daughter Bobbie.
As Elizabeth recalled in 1978, “On Friday afternoon, November 10, 1922, Bobbie Williams and I went to town. Coming back, we met [Milo Bernard] in the intersection of Boulevard and Hurd. Bobbie introduced us, and we all visited for perhaps ten minutes. Milo was already teaching mathematics and coaching at El Reno Junior High School. Elizabeth and Bobbie walked home, while Milo went to town to find Bobbie’s boyfriend, Warren Waddell. The two men arranged a double date.
When Milo telephoned Elizabeth, she put him off long enough to ask Mrs. Williams about her new suitor. She replied, “Goodness, yes, go with Milo anytime.” Elizabeth did – the four went to a movie and then to Vans, a popular college student meeting place. Milo stayed with Waddell in Edmond overnight for a second date on Saturday before going back to El Reno.
When school let out for Christmas vacation, Milo renewed his pursuit of Elizabeth, riding in a friend’s car to Edmond or catching the Interurban trolley. On April 6, 1923, four days after her eighteenth birthday, Milo proposed, and on Independence Day, he took his future wife home to meet his parents. “Milo brought his girl to see us,” wrote the always doting Florence Bernard. “Miss Elizabeth Cole. She is a sweet-looking little girl, but Milo doesn’t look very well, and I’m uneasy about him dear faithful Milo.”
Within six months, Milo and his “sweet-looking little girl” would wed. “[Elizabeth and Milo] are to be married soon, and we will lose another boy but hope he will still love us as we do him, and we hope she will love us to as well as she can.” Clearly, Florence was reconciling herself to the coming marriage whenever it might occur. As it happened, the sweethearts moved more quickly that anyone had imagined.
In mid-December Elizabeth came to El Reno, and together they hatched a plot to marry a week later, on December 22, the longest night of the year, as Milo later would often recall. They told no one except Milo’s best friend and a friend of Elizabeth’s. The wedding took place in a Mrs. Gee’s Edmond boarding house at 312 East Main Street, where Elizabeth had lived the previous winter, and in the same room where Milo had asked for her hand the previous April. This is roughly where the University of Central Oklahoma’s Howell Hall now stands. Presbyterian minister, Rev. Le Roy C. Ilsley, conducted the service, as Milo wrote to his parents the next day:
Milo Bernard’s Elopement Letter
Wynnewood
Oklahoma
Sunday
Dear Mother, Dad and all:
Did you know you have a new Daughter in Law?
We were married last night at 7:30 P.M. in Edmond at the House where Elizabeth stayed last winter.
We never told anyone and believe me they were very much surprised when we got off the train this afternoon and we told them the dirty deed was did.
There were only two people, the Preacher and us at the wedding and we caught the very next car out for the city. Gaither and [Ocie Couthing, Elizabeth’s friend] stood up for us. They were the two witnesses.
We had planned this last week when Elizabeth was in El Reno but we both decided not to tell anyone.
Momma, I have the sweetest little wife in all the world and you can’t imagine what a happy man I am.
I never thought it was possible for me to love anyone as I love Elizabeth since she is now my wife. I love her more even now than ever.
Don’t know yet when we will come to El Reno, but will let you know soon.
Lots and lots of love to all.
Milo
P.S. Give this letter to Gene and tell him I am sorry I couldn’t send him more for a Xmas present but will _____ to the letter next time.
Didn’t know what to get him so guess I’ll send the money.
Love,
Milo
Soon after the ceremony, the young couple caught the streetcar to Oklahoma City (Edmond had both a trolley and a streetcar) and from there took a train to Wynnewood to break the news to the bride’s mother and brothers in person and to spend Christmas with them before braving Florence and the Bernard family in Yukon. Elizabeth’s father had died a year and a half earlier. As described on the society page of the Wynnewood newspaper, the new “Mrs. Bernard, who is the charming and accomplished daughter of Mrs. W. P. Cole” married Mr. Bernard, “a very promising young man.” Later, an El Reno reporter would spot Milo accepting congratulations and passing out cigars on that city’s main street.
Florence pouted.
Now she had a rival for Milo’s love. Writing in her diary on Christmas Day, Florence noted that “Milo was married Saturday night, and we are glad that he is so happy.” But, she added, he “has not been home yet – but expect him soon with this bride. She is a sweet girl, and I hope we shall all love each other when we get better acquainted.” And, once again, “We hate to give Milo up. He certainly has been good to us.”
Judging from these comments and from the secrecy of the ceremony and the use of a Presbyterian (not Church of Christ) minister, it is safe to suggest that Florence was not happy. Tensions between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law continued for many years.
In May 1923, Elizabeth had earned her Elementary Teaching Certificate from Central. That fall she had taught in Depew, but when she and Milo married, she resigned “to go wherever Milo’s work took me and to try to make a happy home whatever our circumstances might be.” Their first home was an upstairs apartment in El Reno where Milo was teaching. The following summer, they moved to Edmond so both could attend summer school. He completed his bachelor’s degree; she worked to upgrade her temporary teaching certificate to a lifetime one.
It was a hard summer, made more difficult at the end by Florence’s arrival for Milo’s commencement. Elizabeth recalled in a 1994 letter to her son: “When [Milo] got his bachelor’s, Mother Bernard wanted to see him graduate so came on the Interurban [trolley car] even though she knew we had a small apartment. Mother [Elizabeth’s mother, Thenie] was with us. I was pregnant and going to school feeling like the “dickens,” and Mother [had taken] over the cooking. We had paid all of … [Milo’s sister] Winona’s [expenses] for summer school so you can see how crowded we were. Mother Bernard arrived bringing Winona’s best friend, for she thought, ‘Sister would love to have her.’ Even your Dad was upset. I could go on and on.”
Summers were busy. In August 1924, Milo and Elizabeth moved to Waurika, where he was high school principal and coach. Thelma Elizabeth was born there on Christmas Eve, two days after their first wedding anniversary. In summer 1925, Milo worked for Elizabeth’s brother Leslie Cole at the Wynnewood swimming pool concession stand while Elizabeth, her mother and sister spent three weeks in Edmond where Elizabeth completed more hours for her lifetime teaching certificate. She earned that endorsement in May 1927. Soon thereafter, she, Milo and Elizabeth’s mother loaded up a new Ford Sedan and drove to California where Milo worked as a painter for Elizabeth’s brother-in-law Ed Peveto, who was building a new refinery. They lived in Norman in the summers of 1928 and 1929 so that Milo could work on his Masters of Education degree.
Milo then became superintendent and Elizabeth a teacher at Union Valley consolidated school in SW Oklahoma, near Randlett (1927-29). Elizabeth’s mother, now called “Docca” by the family, lived with them to take care of Thelma Elizabeth. Milo had his best basketball team there. Playing in a time of jump balls after each basket, Union Valley deployed a big center and four other 6-foot starters to win 32 of 34 games and four tournaments. Milo was 5’7”.
Elizabeth was an excellent teacher. As described in 1983 by former pupil Evelyn Jameson Brooks, she was “a strict teacher [who] seemed to know everything – history, mathematics, and English.” A woman of “warmth and gentleness and humor,” Elizabeth was “a Christian lady with a spirit to match the talent. She was easy to work with, always loyal to her fellow man, her church, and its belief. No teacher is more loved or appreciated by her pupils. And none was easier nor fairer to work with.” Another former pupil, John Lewis, wrote to Elizabeth, December 8, 1983, that “I am eternally grateful to you for the sound foundation you provided to me in English, Literature, and Reading,” which put him ahead of his peers. He also wrote of the “care and concern you demonstrated toward me that permitted me to trust you and your guidance implicitly at the time in my life, for whatever reasons, there were few people I felt I could trust. He concluded, “You and Mr. Bernard challenged us to aspire to standards of excellence. Equally important, however, you provided an educational base from which we had a realistic chance to achieve excellence.”
Milo served as school superintendent in Davidson, 1929-32, where he also owned and operated an icehouse in the summers. In 1930, Charlie Bernard, son of Milo’s brother Lewis, came to live with the family when his mother died and the family dissolved. His cheerful and puckish personality certainly added to the family’s morale, if also stretching their budget even thinner. Less than a model student, Charlie was a popular prankster, beloved by all. He loved basketball and farm life. Elizabeth wrote about him at length in her Memories Book.
Milo’s brother Gene worked for him in the Summer of 1932, and kept the ice house business going, but any money that Milo put aside from teaching and selling ice did not last long. It was the Great Depression, and rural banks were failing everywhere. The one in Davidson was no exception. When it went down, it took with it the Bernards’ life savings. It would be years before they received repayment.
Milo and Elizabeth moved to Paden, staying 1932-34, where the depression delivered another blow, cutting Milo’s paycheck in half, just as daughter Patsy Pauline was born, October 11, 1932. Milo called Pat, their “depression baby,” and later he told her that his two hardest financial years were those when she was born and when she married. With their limited funds, Milo and Elizabeth supported a family of seven, including the two girls, Docca, Charlie, and a boarder named Miss Trueblood. Charlie became Pat’s unofficial guardian, much as Leslie had been Elizabeth’s. Once he built a cart hitched the family dog to it, and took Pat for rides around the neighborhood.
Milo again returned to OU to work on his masters in the summer of 1934. That fall, it was on to the superintendent’s job at Hollister for 1934-35; and then to the same position in Hastings, where the family settled down for a long run, 1936-45. There the beloved rat terrier pup Toby joined the family. She would stay with them into their Comanche days.
There too, Charlie finished high school. That fall, he went to Edmond, and then after quitting school at Central State, he went to California to work. On June 8, 1941, he accidentally fell to his death from a mountain near Santa Monica. Elizabeth later consoled herself with the thought that Charlie was due to be called for the draft, and that perhaps the fall had spared him from a worse death in battle. Rarely has an addition to the family had the sort of impact that Charlie had. He was greatly missed.
With the Second World War underway, it should have been Charlie registering for the draft, but in fact, it was Milo, who at age 43 reported to the Hastings, OK, draft board on February 16, 1942. His registration showed him weighing 147 lbs, standing 5’6”, with blue eyes and brown hair.
Thelma Elizabeth (now called, “Liz”) graduated as salutatorian at Hastings in 1942. Her classmate Yvonne Forsythe Morgan later (1983) remembered their school’s superintendent, Liz’s father, in this way: “Mr. Bernard was our stabilizing factor, and we respected him greatly. He usually would hear our side before he corrected us, and he was very subtle in his powers of convincing us he knew the governing rules much better than we. We miss him.”
Liz started college at Central, then transferred to the University of Oklahoma. She met sailor Hoyt “Red” Sandlin of Carbon Hill, Alabama at a dance at Ft. Sill in Lawton. They fell in love. After he became a naval air cadet, assigned to Memphis, Liz took a bus to meet him there, where they married (in violation of navy rules) on August 11, just as the war was coming to an end, five days after Hiroshima. They made their first home in Norman, where both finished at OU. They then moved to Comanche and finally to Duncan, where he taught for many years, with time out for teaching stints in Mons, Belgium, Oklahoma City, Norman, and Lawton. They lived in Duncan at the time of her death, early in this century.
With Charlie gone and Liz in College, expenses might have dropped, but that fall an appendectomy put Elizabeth in bed at a time when her mother was also ill. Enter Miss Clara Mason, who “came to help out” for a few days and stayed to work for the Bernards for three years.
In 1945, Milo, with much regret, took the superintendent’s job at Comanche. He had already accepted that position when a more desirable Norman principal’s position was offered him, but he felt ethically obligated to go to Comanche. It was not a good choice, for the community was very active in school politics and school management and very split over what it wanted. Milo won funding for a new football stadium, for example, by putting the name of one prominent family on the structure and the name of another on the field. Feeling the stress, he resigned after two years to devote full-time to his secondary job, selling insurance for Security Mutual Insurance of Lincoln, Nebraska. After a year in the field, he reversed course and taught at Duncan Junior High for three years, in order to meet minimum standards for Oklahoma State Teacher’s Retirement. During this time, Richard was born on January 16, 1948, in Duncan’s Weedn Hospital, the first child on either side of the family to be born in a hospital and not at home.
In 1950, Pat graduated as valedictorian from Comanche High School, and enrolled for a year at Abilene Christian College in Abilene, Texas. With finances tight the following year, she transferred to Central State College, and in 1952, she married Robert L. Ott, a Comanche electrician and widower. Milo tried to talk Pat out of the match, for a Catholic-raised husband, eleven years older than Pat, was not what he had in mind for her. After they wed, Bob went to work for Halliburton at their Duncan facility. Later, he taught for Oklahoma State University’s Technical Branch in Okmulgee and supervised electrical maintenance at the Conoco (later, Sun Ray) oil refinery south of Duncan. For part of his time at the refinery, Pat and Bob lived just across from the plant, a plant which would later be closed and labelled a federal environmental hazard site. Bob, a heavy smoker, died of heart failure. Pat, a non-smoker, died prematurely after him of heart failure connected to lung cancer, the only documented case of cancer in the family.
Having missed the Norman chance (and an earlier one to move to Alaska), Milo took a second opportunity to work in a college town in 1951. In Comanche, he had won a number of awards for selling life insurance. Now, encouraged by promises from District Agent Charles Randolph, he went back into insurance sales full-time and moved the family to Edmond, anticipating savings on future costs of son Richard’s assumed college attendance at Central State. They bought a newly constructed, three-bedroom tract home at 101 E. 10th Street, a house which would not see the new century in that location. The arrival and later expansion of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church onto an old cow pasture on the north side of the Bernard property eventually resulted in the removal of all of the houses on their block and the donation of the Bernard home to Habitat for Humanity, resulting in its removal to Choctaw, OK.
Even for an award-winning salesman, it was difficult to sell insurance as an unknown newcomer in a growing community. Sales lagged. And, although he continued to sell insurance right up to his death, Milo missed teaching. When the chance came, he took on extra duties and went back to the classroom at Oklahoma City’s Taft High School for three years, and thereafter substituted in the schools of Oklahoma City, Edmond, and Piedmont.
Dick started kindergarten in 1953, took the name Richard in 2nd Grade, and graduated from Edmond High School in 1966, becoming the only Bernard to have all of his schooling in one place. His senior year, he and life-long friend Brad Rice won the high school national debate championship. In late 1969, he married Terry Lee Bowman of Duncan. Richard earned degrees from the University of Oklahoma, Wake Forest University (NC) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, finishing his Ph.D. in History in 1977. He taught history and served as a college administrator in positions ranging from department chair to president. Richard and Terry lived in several places, including New Zealand. In 2007, they moved to Edmond, where he was Dean of the Jackson College of Graduate Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma until his retirement June 30, 2018. Terry was a bookkeeper in an accounting firm, retiring December 31, 2017.
Milo taught school for 33 years. Elizabeth taught for 11 ½ years. In all, Elizabeth had a child in some level of education every year for the 49 years from 1928 to 1977, with that number still larger if one counts Richard university career.
Throughout their lives, Milo and Elizabeth were devoutly religious people, though according to their daughters, perhaps not so much in their earlier years as later. Milo grew up in an Anti-Sunday School Church of Christ in Yukon, and Elizabeth in several Presbyterian Churches. Years later, when she and Milo were living at either Davidson or Hollister, they attended a Church of Christ revival, and Elizabeth decided at that meeting that she wanted to be baptized into that church. But, there was a problem. The country congregation was immersing people in an earthen stock tank, and being deathly afraid of the snakes which sometimes inhabited those tanks, Elizabeth was not about to get into one. So instead, she and Milo drove into Waurika, where she was baptized in the safe and sanitary waters of the First Christian Church.
Together, they attended mainline Churches of Christ, substituting the Christian Church, a historical cousin denomination, when a Church of Christ was not available, such as in Waurika and Hollister. For their ten years in Hastings, they drove to Waurika’s First Christian Church.
By almost any standards, they were fundamentalists in their faith and conservative in their social outlook, but in the extended Bernard Family, they could still find themselves on the left in religious debates. Many a night, Milo and brother Rex argued the literal interpretations of the Bible, and Elizabeth would refer to her Anti-Sunday School brethren as being “so narrow.” Milo served as elder, deacon, and church treasurer in the Edmond Church of Christ, and he stood firm for traditional interpretations of God’s truth. As had his parents and grandparents before him, he opposed instrumental music in church services, dancing (in Richard’s teen years if not in those of his sisters), drinking, women smoking, divorce, Catholicism, and assorted other threats to “New Testament Christianity.”
Elizabeth generally agreed with these stands, though her family background and the Presbyterianism of her youth may have tempered her views on religious matters. In Comanche, she became more involved in church activities and perhaps more religious, though theological discussions never interested her. As a widow, she became devoted to Bible study and church affairs, allowing herself only brief breaks from orthodoxy to join her family in an occasional glass of wine. Milo and Elizabeth’s strong faith doubtless had effects on their children and grandchildren, though only Pat, Bob, and daughter Kim and her family remained within the brotherhood of the Church of Christ. The Sandlins, who for years attended Duncan’s Christian Church, became Episcopalians; Richard and Terry joined the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Both Milo and Elizabeth were active members of the Edmond community. He was elected justice of the peace, became a charter member and commander of the American Legion Post, and joined the Chamber of Commerce, Quarterbacks Club, and Kiwanis. Working with the Chamber, he helped to pass a bond issue for a new Edmond swimming pool. Elizabeth was a member of the American Association of University Women and Kappa Kappa Iota (an educators’ sorority). She occasional worked as a substitute teacher and was active in PTA. In other places, Milo had been a Boy Scout leader, Mason, member of the Red Red Rose (a fraternity for male school teachers), and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. Victims of the Depression, both were Southern Democrats, who voted straight tickets throughout their married lives, except in 1960 when Milo could not pull the lever for his party’s presidential candidate, a Catholic. In her later years alone in Duncan, Elizabeth more and more often voted Republican.
Having for all practical purposes, raised three separate families (the children were eight and nearly 16 years apart), Milo and Elizabeth had by the early 1960s, five grandchildren, Liz and Pat’s children: Tim and Sally Sandlin and Sue, Ann, and Kim Ott. Elizabeth claimed that all except Kim were partial to their grandpa, but both Liz and Pat disputed this. Dick, only 2 ½ years older than his nephew Tim, was still in high school when Milo’s health began to fail.
Milo died October 7, 1965, at age 66, after 41 years of marriage. Like his father and most of his brothers, he died of a heart attack. Suffering the attack on a Monday evening, he passed away in the old Edmond Hospital (above the old Broncho Theater on Broadway) later in the week. Due to his many family, church, school, and community ties, his funeral was quite a large one. The following autumn, Richard left for college, leaving Elizabeth alone in Edmond, where she remained until 1973, when she moved to Duncan to be near daughter Pat and to live with her sister Thelma and her husband Peveto. Her social activities became tightly wound around the Northside, and later the Chisholm Trail, Churches of Christ.
The following year, Elizabeth made the trip of a lifetime when she flew to Europe. In 1973, Liz and Red had moved to Mons, Belgium, where Red taught in the American high school at SHAPE, NATO’s international command headquarters. Richard and Terry had followed them to Europe a year later. He taught during 1974-75 for the University of Maryland at U.S. bases in Germany, Spain, and England. Elizabeth joined this foursome in Belgium for Christmas 1974, and with them, toured Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. In Oudewater, Holland, Elizabeth stepped onto a scale and received a certificate saying that she was too heavy to fly on a broom and therefore definitely was not a witch. In Interlocken, Switzerland, Richard, Terry and Elizabeth stayed in a bed and breakfast with a view of Jungfrau, and talked way into the night with the owner, a woman who spoke German with no English and only a little French. It was an animated conversation.
Always a proper lady, Elizabeth had a delightful time In Mons with the Sandlin’s friends, recording this in her travel diary on Christmas Eve: “Dinner tonight at Taylors. Invited for 8:00 – an hour of cocktails during which everyone stood. These people don’t know they can sit and visit. Some of us gave up. Dinner at 9:00. We thoroughly enjoyed it.” And on the next day, “A typical English dinner with the Neuborocks. Table cleared after each course. Lots of chatter but all light – never hear any discussion on world affairs, politics, etc. If it starts, hostess steers conversation to trivialities.” Christmas night the five listened to American Armed Forces Radio and BBC broadcasts, as it reported the death of comedian Jack Benny. After Christmas, Elizabeth stayed with Liz and Red a while then followed Richard and Terry to England, where they toured London and the north, bringing an end to a “marvelous experience.”
Back in Duncan, Elizabeth shared two houses, first Pat and Bob’s old house and then one across from the church, with “Thelma Nantie” and Peveto until their deaths in the 1990s. Almost every year, Elizabeth traveled to see Richard and his family, which now included grandchildren, Benjamin and Emily.
In 1996, a fall suffered when visiting them in Youngstown, New York, followed by eight weeks in a hospital and rehabilitation, convinced Elizabeth to move into Duncan’s Sterling House, an assisted care facility. From there she moved to Westbrook Care Center, a nursing home in Waurika, where she and Milo had lived so many years before. In Waurika, she grew weaker in body and mind. In all, Elizabeth lived nearly 37 years longer than Milo, dying in late summer 2002 of accumulated ailments of old age. Her 97-year old heart, lungs, and kidneys all failed. Her spirit did not. Although she had recorded advice to others about grieving in her Memories Book, she never once mentioned the prospect of her own death. For her, life was always something that lay ahead.
Milo Bernard’s Elopement Letter
To His Parents
Milo Bernard (33778623)
EDMOND -- Milo M Bernard, 66, died Thursday in an Edmond hospital. Srevices are pending with Baggerley Funeral Home.
Bernard formerly was a school teacher for about 30 years in southern Oklahoma. He moved to Edmond in about 1950 and was in the insurance business. He was a member of the American Legion and was active in the Kiwanis Club. He was deacon in the Church of Christ.
Servivors include his wife Elizabeth; a son Richard M., of the home; Two daughters Mrs Elizabeth Sandlin and Mrs Pat Ott, both of Duncan; a sister Mrs Wynona Stovall, Los Angeles and a brother Gene, Fullerton Calif.
Milo Marion Bernard m. Martha Elizabeth Cole
Dec. 22, 1923
Edmond, OK
b. Aug. 6, 1899 (Yukon, OK Territory) b. April 2, 1905 (Texarkana, AR)
d. Oct. 7, 1965 (Edmond, OK) d. Aug. 30, 2002 (Waurika, OK)
(Buried in Gracelawn (Buried in Gracelawn Cemetery,
Cemetery, Edmond, OK) Edmond, OK)
Thelma Elizabeth Bernard Sandlin
b. Dec. 24, 1924 (Waurika, OK)
m. Aug. 11, 1945 (Hoyt Nick “Red” Sandlin) (Memphis, TN)
Children:
Tim Bernard Sandlin
Sally Anne Sandlin Ford
d. Feb 13, 2004 (Duncan, OK)
Patsy Pauline “Pat” Bernard Ott
b. Oct. 11, 1932 (Paden, OK)
m. June 1, 1952 (Robert Leonard Ott) (Edmond, OK)
Children:
Sue Helen Ott-Rowlands
Ann Patrice Ott Galloway
Kim Lynette Ott Marlatt
d. July 31, 2003 (Duncan, OK)
*Richard Marion Bernard
b. Jan. 16, 1948 (Duncan, OK)
m. Dec. 27, 1969 (Terry Lee Bowman) (Duncan, OK)
Children:
Benjamin Cole Bernard
Emily Lynn Bernard Bare
Milo Marion Bernard
b. Aug. 6, 1899 (Yukon, OK Territory)
d. Oct. 7, 1965 (Edmond, OK)
Martha Elizabeth Cole Bernard
b. April 2, 1905 (Texarkana, AR)
d. Aug. 30, 2002 (Waurika, OK)
Model children, model spouses, model Christians, model parents and grandparents! That’s the summary of the lives of Milo and Elizabeth Bernard.
Milo Bernard was the fourth son, and fourth of the six children who lived to adulthood, of Charlie and Florence Bernard, farmers from southwest of Yukon, Oklahoma. The name Milo came from a well-behaved neighbor child, whom Florence Bernard admired. Marion came from the husband of Florence’s niece Onie, Charles Marion Luckenbaugh. Milo was born on the family homestead, and he was always proud of his farming roots. While three of the brothers led rather unsettled lives, not so Rex and Milo. The former earned his living as a retail grocer (“Bernard and Sons Grocery” in downtown Yukon) and later as a vacuum cleaner salesman, but his passion was preaching the gospel in non-Sunday School Churches of Christ, for which he accepted no cash payment. Milo became an educator, a teacher, coach, and administrator. He also closely followed a strict reading of the gospel’s teachings.
Milo Bernard, an early Boy Scout, seemed always to do the right thing. Certainly, this was his mother Florence’s view, for she often wrote glowingly about young Milo in her diary. On April 19, 1915, for example, she noted that “Bro. Jones,” baptized fifteen-year old Milo in El Reno, and added, “He has been reading the New Testament this winter and had his mind made up without any persuading. Oh how proud Papa and I felt as we went to the water to see him baptized. Tears of joy came to my eyes as I said to him, ‘Papa, the Lord is letting us live to see some of the fruits of our labors, ain’t he?’ and he answered, ‘Yes.’ He was baptized in the Y [presumably the Yukon River] east of Obe’s and Rex’s “…. Milo is in the 9th grade and such a good steady boy. I hope he can go on till he gets his education.” March 31, 1916, she wrote, “Milo is sixteen, and a good steady Christian boy. He is trying so hard to get an education. Hope he will succeed but do hope he will have judgment enough not to let it spoil him.” On May 13 of that year, “Milo is finishing the 10th grade. He is such a good steady boy. Do hope he will make a good and useful man.”
Some of Milo’s earliest memories are recorded in a letter, which he sent to his nine-year old grandson, Tim Bernard Sandlin, April 5, 1960.
“When the Town Whistle and the Church Bells began ringing, Indian Territory and Okla. Territory became The State of Okla. [November 7, 1907]. I was playing baseball at the time, and we had to stop to find out what was taking place. I was about 8 years old and in the 3rd Grade. When the bells quit ringing, recess was over, and we had to go in.”
“The country was all wild prairie when My Daddy came here, lots of Buffalo, Wild Turkey, Deer, Antelope, and a few wild Indians. Lots of Indian ponies. The prairie schooner had to cross streams, ride over rocky hills, and follow Cattle trails coming from Texas up here. There was a famous Cattle trail called the old Chisholm Trail. I was told that it crossed our place. I am not quite sure, but I do know that there was a large trail that made big ruts right across our pasture, and I used to make my little Indian ponies jump it almost every time I went across it. (That is, he jumped part of it. Sometimes I jumped the rest.)”
In high school, Milo was an excellent student, an active participant in school activities, and a starter on the basketball team. In an era when guards played defense and did not shoot the ball, he was named the conference’s top “standing guard,” as the league’s best defensive player. At commencement time, Florence wrote, “Milo graduated with a class of twelve from Yukon High School tonight [May 7, 1917]. To say that we were proud of him would be only the truth for he certainly has conducted himself throughout the school and during all the graduation exercises with credit to himself and to us. I hope he may lead a useful life and oh I hope he will live and die a Christian. Dear Milo, I am too sleepy to write much but must tell you how much I love you and how proud we all are were of you tonight.”
With the Great War having just reached America, Milo went off to Edmond for teacher training at Central State Normal School. A year later, the other boys and he returned to Central in uniform, as cadets in the Student Officers Training Corps. Sleeping on cots on the top floor of Old North, they trained for a war which would end less than two months before they were to go on active duty. Officially, Milo enlisted in the U.S. Army on October 1, 1918, and was released on December 17, 1918. He did not serve long enough for a pension, but he did pick up lots of songs, which he sang for the next four decades (“There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding,” “K-K-K-Katy,” “In My Castle on the River Rhine,” “Over There,” “Hinky-Dinky Parlez-Vous,” “Mademoiselle from Armentieres,” and, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm, After They’ve Seen Paris?”)
In two years, including time for student military training and, again, lots of student activities, Milo completed his teaching certificate. His mother was still proud of him but now a little nervous about his commitment to book learning. “I sometimes feel uneasy [for Milo] for fear he will become careless of his religious duties over there, but I keep hoping and praying for him. He is such a good boy.” Although she said over and over that he was “such a good boy,” Florence worried for the rest of her life that Milo would pay more attention to education and his job than to church.
In the Cole family, Elizabeth was the baby. Named for her two grandmothers (Martha Jane Stafford Wilson and Mary Elizabeth Cox Cole), Elizabeth was the fifth child (one brother died before her birth) and second daughter of railroad worker Pat Cole and his wife Parthenia Jane “Thenie” Wilson Cole. Elizabeth almost did not survive infancy. When she was only two months old, her mother developed rheumatism and went to bed for several months. “So little was known then about bottle feeding,” Elizabeth wrote in her 1978 Memories Book, “and, since no milk they tried would agree with me, I almost died. Finally a neighbor told them about Eagle Brand milk, a new product. It saved my life.” She became “Leslie’s baby,” when her twelve-year old brother took over much of her care. He was a devoted guardian, once threatening a county doctor with a “licking” if he stitched up a cut on Elizabeth’s forehead. Fortunately, another new product, adhesive tape, held the cut together, though it left a scar, which took years to recede into Elizabeth’s hair line.
Elizabeth had a happy, small-town childhood. Later, she fondly remembered playing outside on long summer evenings, catching fireflies, making a playhouse in a huge barn loft, and her 10th birthday party (“the only one I ever had except for family get-togethers until [daughter] Pat gave a lovely luncheon for me on my seventieth birthday”). Interestingly she never talked about her family’s Presbyterian religion, doubtless a hand-me-down from their Scots-Irish origins.
Less fondly remembered were medicines and cures: Horehound candy, Scott’s Emulsion, and poultices of biscuits soaked in milk (to block infection from a nail puncture), and honey and flour (to bring a boil to a head). Her father would hold Elizabeth on his knee and blow warm smoke in her infected ear (another boil popping strategy). She had adenoids removed three times and her tonsils taken out as well.
Pat Cole had tried farming and barbering in Texas, but finally settled down to a job with the Texas and Pacific Railroad. The company sent him first to Texarkana, Arkansas, then to Bonham, Texas, then back to Texarkana, and finally back to Bonham. He then left the employ of the railroad and moved the family to Altus, in southwestern Oklahoma, where he bought and ran a recreation hall (pool and dominoes) until lured into the cotton gin business with Thenie’s brother-in-law Judd Wilhite. Elizabeth’s sister Thelma Cole finish high school there.
By 1916, Wilhite had proved a poor businessman, the company collapsed, and the Coles moved on to Roxana Pump Station near Wynnewood in south central Oklahoma. Two years later, they moved into town, where Pat worked as an engineer for the city water and electric department, and where Elizabeth spent her high school years.
Thelma Cole, a young tomboy turned high school belle, became a teacher, working for one year at a two-teacher school called Clabber-Flat, near Altus, where she made $45 per month (enough to cover her $12 monthly costs for room, board, and laundry). The next year, she taught at Paoli, then moved to Wynnewood to work in brother Carl’s drugstore for a year. When there was an opening in Wynnewood schools, she returned to the classroom for six years before marrying Wynnewood oil refinery superintendent, Edward Elzy Peveto, who she forever called simply, “Peveto.” In private, they were “Toots” and “Boogie.” During her Wynnewood teaching days, Thelma housed Elizabeth in her apartment while their parents were at the pump station.
This allowed Elizabeth to go to high school but at the price of living in her popular sister’s shadow. According to Elizabeth, Thelma had quite a social life.
“During World War I, sister had three beaux in the service; Phil O’Neil, who remained stateside, and Frank Welch and Horace Williams, who were overseas. [Older brother] Carl kidded her that if either Frank or Horace were returned to the states, he would wire both the returned soldiers and Phil that Sister was seriously ill and to please come. He kept her going in circles ….
It was Horace who called her not long after the war ended and proposed to her. Ray Riddle, whom she was dating then, was in the living room. Not wanting to embarrass Horace [not to mention herself], she said, “Horace, I can’t hear you.’ Three or four times he repeated the proposal and each time she said she couldn’t hear him. But when he said he’d write and ask her, she heard immediately and said, ‘Yes, Horace, you do that.’”
In 1922, Elizabeth graduated in a class of sixteen from Wynnewood High School and went to Central State Teachers College, as it was then called, to begin her teacher training. There she roomed with a Williams family at 230 East Campbell and became close friends with their daughter Bobbie.
As Elizabeth recalled in 1978, “On Friday afternoon, November 10, 1922, Bobbie Williams and I went to town. Coming back, we met [Milo Bernard] in the intersection of Boulevard and Hurd. Bobbie introduced us, and we all visited for perhaps ten minutes. Milo was already teaching mathematics and coaching at El Reno Junior High School. Elizabeth and Bobbie walked home, while Milo went to town to find Bobbie’s boyfriend, Warren Waddell. The two men arranged a double date.
When Milo telephoned Elizabeth, she put him off long enough to ask Mrs. Williams about her new suitor. She replied, “Goodness, yes, go with Milo anytime.” Elizabeth did – the four went to a movie and then to Vans, a popular college student meeting place. Milo stayed with Waddell in Edmond overnight for a second date on Saturday before going back to El Reno.
When school let out for Christmas vacation, Milo renewed his pursuit of Elizabeth, riding in a friend’s car to Edmond or catching the Interurban trolley. On April 6, 1923, four days after her eighteenth birthday, Milo proposed, and on Independence Day, he took his future wife home to meet his parents. “Milo brought his girl to see us,” wrote the always doting Florence Bernard. “Miss Elizabeth Cole. She is a sweet-looking little girl, but Milo doesn’t look very well, and I’m uneasy about him dear faithful Milo.”
Within six months, Milo and his “sweet-looking little girl” would wed. “[Elizabeth and Milo] are to be married soon, and we will lose another boy but hope he will still love us as we do him, and we hope she will love us to as well as she can.” Clearly, Florence was reconciling herself to the coming marriage whenever it might occur. As it happened, the sweethearts moved more quickly that anyone had imagined.
In mid-December Elizabeth came to El Reno, and together they hatched a plot to marry a week later, on December 22, the longest night of the year, as Milo later would often recall. They told no one except Milo’s best friend and a friend of Elizabeth’s. The wedding took place in a Mrs. Gee’s Edmond boarding house at 312 East Main Street, where Elizabeth had lived the previous winter, and in the same room where Milo had asked for her hand the previous April. This is roughly where the University of Central Oklahoma’s Howell Hall now stands. Presbyterian minister, Rev. Le Roy C. Ilsley, conducted the service, as Milo wrote to his parents the next day:
Milo Bernard’s Elopement Letter
Wynnewood
Oklahoma
Sunday
Dear Mother, Dad and all:
Did you know you have a new Daughter in Law?
We were married last night at 7:30 P.M. in Edmond at the House where Elizabeth stayed last winter.
We never told anyone and believe me they were very much surprised when we got off the train this afternoon and we told them the dirty deed was did.
There were only two people, the Preacher and us at the wedding and we caught the very next car out for the city. Gaither and [Ocie Couthing, Elizabeth’s friend] stood up for us. They were the two witnesses.
We had planned this last week when Elizabeth was in El Reno but we both decided not to tell anyone.
Momma, I have the sweetest little wife in all the world and you can’t imagine what a happy man I am.
I never thought it was possible for me to love anyone as I love Elizabeth since she is now my wife. I love her more even now than ever.
Don’t know yet when we will come to El Reno, but will let you know soon.
Lots and lots of love to all.
Milo
P.S. Give this letter to Gene and tell him I am sorry I couldn’t send him more for a Xmas present but will _____ to the letter next time.
Didn’t know what to get him so guess I’ll send the money.
Love,
Milo
Soon after the ceremony, the young couple caught the streetcar to Oklahoma City (Edmond had both a trolley and a streetcar) and from there took a train to Wynnewood to break the news to the bride’s mother and brothers in person and to spend Christmas with them before braving Florence and the Bernard family in Yukon. Elizabeth’s father had died a year and a half earlier. As described on the society page of the Wynnewood newspaper, the new “Mrs. Bernard, who is the charming and accomplished daughter of Mrs. W. P. Cole” married Mr. Bernard, “a very promising young man.” Later, an El Reno reporter would spot Milo accepting congratulations and passing out cigars on that city’s main street.
Florence pouted.
Now she had a rival for Milo’s love. Writing in her diary on Christmas Day, Florence noted that “Milo was married Saturday night, and we are glad that he is so happy.” But, she added, he “has not been home yet – but expect him soon with this bride. She is a sweet girl, and I hope we shall all love each other when we get better acquainted.” And, once again, “We hate to give Milo up. He certainly has been good to us.”
Judging from these comments and from the secrecy of the ceremony and the use of a Presbyterian (not Church of Christ) minister, it is safe to suggest that Florence was not happy. Tensions between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law continued for many years.
In May 1923, Elizabeth had earned her Elementary Teaching Certificate from Central. That fall she had taught in Depew, but when she and Milo married, she resigned “to go wherever Milo’s work took me and to try to make a happy home whatever our circumstances might be.” Their first home was an upstairs apartment in El Reno where Milo was teaching. The following summer, they moved to Edmond so both could attend summer school. He completed his bachelor’s degree; she worked to upgrade her temporary teaching certificate to a lifetime one.
It was a hard summer, made more difficult at the end by Florence’s arrival for Milo’s commencement. Elizabeth recalled in a 1994 letter to her son: “When [Milo] got his bachelor’s, Mother Bernard wanted to see him graduate so came on the Interurban [trolley car] even though she knew we had a small apartment. Mother [Elizabeth’s mother, Thenie] was with us. I was pregnant and going to school feeling like the “dickens,” and Mother [had taken] over the cooking. We had paid all of … [Milo’s sister] Winona’s [expenses] for summer school so you can see how crowded we were. Mother Bernard arrived bringing Winona’s best friend, for she thought, ‘Sister would love to have her.’ Even your Dad was upset. I could go on and on.”
Summers were busy. In August 1924, Milo and Elizabeth moved to Waurika, where he was high school principal and coach. Thelma Elizabeth was born there on Christmas Eve, two days after their first wedding anniversary. In summer 1925, Milo worked for Elizabeth’s brother Leslie Cole at the Wynnewood swimming pool concession stand while Elizabeth, her mother and sister spent three weeks in Edmond where Elizabeth completed more hours for her lifetime teaching certificate. She earned that endorsement in May 1927. Soon thereafter, she, Milo and Elizabeth’s mother loaded up a new Ford Sedan and drove to California where Milo worked as a painter for Elizabeth’s brother-in-law Ed Peveto, who was building a new refinery. They lived in Norman in the summers of 1928 and 1929 so that Milo could work on his Masters of Education degree.
Milo then became superintendent and Elizabeth a teacher at Union Valley consolidated school in SW Oklahoma, near Randlett (1927-29). Elizabeth’s mother, now called “Docca” by the family, lived with them to take care of Thelma Elizabeth. Milo had his best basketball team there. Playing in a time of jump balls after each basket, Union Valley deployed a big center and four other 6-foot starters to win 32 of 34 games and four tournaments. Milo was 5’7”.
Elizabeth was an excellent teacher. As described in 1983 by former pupil Evelyn Jameson Brooks, she was “a strict teacher [who] seemed to know everything – history, mathematics, and English.” A woman of “warmth and gentleness and humor,” Elizabeth was “a Christian lady with a spirit to match the talent. She was easy to work with, always loyal to her fellow man, her church, and its belief. No teacher is more loved or appreciated by her pupils. And none was easier nor fairer to work with.” Another former pupil, John Lewis, wrote to Elizabeth, December 8, 1983, that “I am eternally grateful to you for the sound foundation you provided to me in English, Literature, and Reading,” which put him ahead of his peers. He also wrote of the “care and concern you demonstrated toward me that permitted me to trust you and your guidance implicitly at the time in my life, for whatever reasons, there were few people I felt I could trust. He concluded, “You and Mr. Bernard challenged us to aspire to standards of excellence. Equally important, however, you provided an educational base from which we had a realistic chance to achieve excellence.”
Milo served as school superintendent in Davidson, 1929-32, where he also owned and operated an icehouse in the summers. In 1930, Charlie Bernard, son of Milo’s brother Lewis, came to live with the family when his mother died and the family dissolved. His cheerful and puckish personality certainly added to the family’s morale, if also stretching their budget even thinner. Less than a model student, Charlie was a popular prankster, beloved by all. He loved basketball and farm life. Elizabeth wrote about him at length in her Memories Book.
Milo’s brother Gene worked for him in the Summer of 1932, and kept the ice house business going, but any money that Milo put aside from teaching and selling ice did not last long. It was the Great Depression, and rural banks were failing everywhere. The one in Davidson was no exception. When it went down, it took with it the Bernards’ life savings. It would be years before they received repayment.
Milo and Elizabeth moved to Paden, staying 1932-34, where the depression delivered another blow, cutting Milo’s paycheck in half, just as daughter Patsy Pauline was born, October 11, 1932. Milo called Pat, their “depression baby,” and later he told her that his two hardest financial years were those when she was born and when she married. With their limited funds, Milo and Elizabeth supported a family of seven, including the two girls, Docca, Charlie, and a boarder named Miss Trueblood. Charlie became Pat’s unofficial guardian, much as Leslie had been Elizabeth’s. Once he built a cart hitched the family dog to it, and took Pat for rides around the neighborhood.
Milo again returned to OU to work on his masters in the summer of 1934. That fall, it was on to the superintendent’s job at Hollister for 1934-35; and then to the same position in Hastings, where the family settled down for a long run, 1936-45. There the beloved rat terrier pup Toby joined the family. She would stay with them into their Comanche days.
There too, Charlie finished high school. That fall, he went to Edmond, and then after quitting school at Central State, he went to California to work. On June 8, 1941, he accidentally fell to his death from a mountain near Santa Monica. Elizabeth later consoled herself with the thought that Charlie was due to be called for the draft, and that perhaps the fall had spared him from a worse death in battle. Rarely has an addition to the family had the sort of impact that Charlie had. He was greatly missed.
With the Second World War underway, it should have been Charlie registering for the draft, but in fact, it was Milo, who at age 43 reported to the Hastings, OK, draft board on February 16, 1942. His registration showed him weighing 147 lbs, standing 5’6”, with blue eyes and brown hair.
Thelma Elizabeth (now called, “Liz”) graduated as salutatorian at Hastings in 1942. Her classmate Yvonne Forsythe Morgan later (1983) remembered their school’s superintendent, Liz’s father, in this way: “Mr. Bernard was our stabilizing factor, and we respected him greatly. He usually would hear our side before he corrected us, and he was very subtle in his powers of convincing us he knew the governing rules much better than we. We miss him.”
Liz started college at Central, then transferred to the University of Oklahoma. She met sailor Hoyt “Red” Sandlin of Carbon Hill, Alabama at a dance at Ft. Sill in Lawton. They fell in love. After he became a naval air cadet, assigned to Memphis, Liz took a bus to meet him there, where they married (in violation of navy rules) on August 11, just as the war was coming to an end, five days after Hiroshima. They made their first home in Norman, where both finished at OU. They then moved to Comanche and finally to Duncan, where he taught for many years, with time out for teaching stints in Mons, Belgium, Oklahoma City, Norman, and Lawton. They lived in Duncan at the time of her death, early in this century.
With Charlie gone and Liz in College, expenses might have dropped, but that fall an appendectomy put Elizabeth in bed at a time when her mother was also ill. Enter Miss Clara Mason, who “came to help out” for a few days and stayed to work for the Bernards for three years.
In 1945, Milo, with much regret, took the superintendent’s job at Comanche. He had already accepted that position when a more desirable Norman principal’s position was offered him, but he felt ethically obligated to go to Comanche. It was not a good choice, for the community was very active in school politics and school management and very split over what it wanted. Milo won funding for a new football stadium, for example, by putting the name of one prominent family on the structure and the name of another on the field. Feeling the stress, he resigned after two years to devote full-time to his secondary job, selling insurance for Security Mutual Insurance of Lincoln, Nebraska. After a year in the field, he reversed course and taught at Duncan Junior High for three years, in order to meet minimum standards for Oklahoma State Teacher’s Retirement. During this time, Richard was born on January 16, 1948, in Duncan’s Weedn Hospital, the first child on either side of the family to be born in a hospital and not at home.
In 1950, Pat graduated as valedictorian from Comanche High School, and enrolled for a year at Abilene Christian College in Abilene, Texas. With finances tight the following year, she transferred to Central State College, and in 1952, she married Robert L. Ott, a Comanche electrician and widower. Milo tried to talk Pat out of the match, for a Catholic-raised husband, eleven years older than Pat, was not what he had in mind for her. After they wed, Bob went to work for Halliburton at their Duncan facility. Later, he taught for Oklahoma State University’s Technical Branch in Okmulgee and supervised electrical maintenance at the Conoco (later, Sun Ray) oil refinery south of Duncan. For part of his time at the refinery, Pat and Bob lived just across from the plant, a plant which would later be closed and labelled a federal environmental hazard site. Bob, a heavy smoker, died of heart failure. Pat, a non-smoker, died prematurely after him of heart failure connected to lung cancer, the only documented case of cancer in the family.
Having missed the Norman chance (and an earlier one to move to Alaska), Milo took a second opportunity to work in a college town in 1951. In Comanche, he had won a number of awards for selling life insurance. Now, encouraged by promises from District Agent Charles Randolph, he went back into insurance sales full-time and moved the family to Edmond, anticipating savings on future costs of son Richard’s assumed college attendance at Central State. They bought a newly constructed, three-bedroom tract home at 101 E. 10th Street, a house which would not see the new century in that location. The arrival and later expansion of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church onto an old cow pasture on the north side of the Bernard property eventually resulted in the removal of all of the houses on their block and the donation of the Bernard home to Habitat for Humanity, resulting in its removal to Choctaw, OK.
Even for an award-winning salesman, it was difficult to sell insurance as an unknown newcomer in a growing community. Sales lagged. And, although he continued to sell insurance right up to his death, Milo missed teaching. When the chance came, he took on extra duties and went back to the classroom at Oklahoma City’s Taft High School for three years, and thereafter substituted in the schools of Oklahoma City, Edmond, and Piedmont.
Dick started kindergarten in 1953, took the name Richard in 2nd Grade, and graduated from Edmond High School in 1966, becoming the only Bernard to have all of his schooling in one place. His senior year, he and life-long friend Brad Rice won the high school national debate championship. In late 1969, he married Terry Lee Bowman of Duncan. Richard earned degrees from the University of Oklahoma, Wake Forest University (NC) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, finishing his Ph.D. in History in 1977. He taught history and served as a college administrator in positions ranging from department chair to president. Richard and Terry lived in several places, including New Zealand. In 2007, they moved to Edmond, where he was Dean of the Jackson College of Graduate Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma until his retirement June 30, 2018. Terry was a bookkeeper in an accounting firm, retiring December 31, 2017.
Milo taught school for 33 years. Elizabeth taught for 11 ½ years. In all, Elizabeth had a child in some level of education every year for the 49 years from 1928 to 1977, with that number still larger if one counts Richard university career.
Throughout their lives, Milo and Elizabeth were devoutly religious people, though according to their daughters, perhaps not so much in their earlier years as later. Milo grew up in an Anti-Sunday School Church of Christ in Yukon, and Elizabeth in several Presbyterian Churches. Years later, when she and Milo were living at either Davidson or Hollister, they attended a Church of Christ revival, and Elizabeth decided at that meeting that she wanted to be baptized into that church. But, there was a problem. The country congregation was immersing people in an earthen stock tank, and being deathly afraid of the snakes which sometimes inhabited those tanks, Elizabeth was not about to get into one. So instead, she and Milo drove into Waurika, where she was baptized in the safe and sanitary waters of the First Christian Church.
Together, they attended mainline Churches of Christ, substituting the Christian Church, a historical cousin denomination, when a Church of Christ was not available, such as in Waurika and Hollister. For their ten years in Hastings, they drove to Waurika’s First Christian Church.
By almost any standards, they were fundamentalists in their faith and conservative in their social outlook, but in the extended Bernard Family, they could still find themselves on the left in religious debates. Many a night, Milo and brother Rex argued the literal interpretations of the Bible, and Elizabeth would refer to her Anti-Sunday School brethren as being “so narrow.” Milo served as elder, deacon, and church treasurer in the Edmond Church of Christ, and he stood firm for traditional interpretations of God’s truth. As had his parents and grandparents before him, he opposed instrumental music in church services, dancing (in Richard’s teen years if not in those of his sisters), drinking, women smoking, divorce, Catholicism, and assorted other threats to “New Testament Christianity.”
Elizabeth generally agreed with these stands, though her family background and the Presbyterianism of her youth may have tempered her views on religious matters. In Comanche, she became more involved in church activities and perhaps more religious, though theological discussions never interested her. As a widow, she became devoted to Bible study and church affairs, allowing herself only brief breaks from orthodoxy to join her family in an occasional glass of wine. Milo and Elizabeth’s strong faith doubtless had effects on their children and grandchildren, though only Pat, Bob, and daughter Kim and her family remained within the brotherhood of the Church of Christ. The Sandlins, who for years attended Duncan’s Christian Church, became Episcopalians; Richard and Terry joined the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Both Milo and Elizabeth were active members of the Edmond community. He was elected justice of the peace, became a charter member and commander of the American Legion Post, and joined the Chamber of Commerce, Quarterbacks Club, and Kiwanis. Working with the Chamber, he helped to pass a bond issue for a new Edmond swimming pool. Elizabeth was a member of the American Association of University Women and Kappa Kappa Iota (an educators’ sorority). She occasional worked as a substitute teacher and was active in PTA. In other places, Milo had been a Boy Scout leader, Mason, member of the Red Red Rose (a fraternity for male school teachers), and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. Victims of the Depression, both were Southern Democrats, who voted straight tickets throughout their married lives, except in 1960 when Milo could not pull the lever for his party’s presidential candidate, a Catholic. In her later years alone in Duncan, Elizabeth more and more often voted Republican.
Having for all practical purposes, raised three separate families (the children were eight and nearly 16 years apart), Milo and Elizabeth had by the early 1960s, five grandchildren, Liz and Pat’s children: Tim and Sally Sandlin and Sue, Ann, and Kim Ott. Elizabeth claimed that all except Kim were partial to their grandpa, but both Liz and Pat disputed this. Dick, only 2 ½ years older than his nephew Tim, was still in high school when Milo’s health began to fail.
Milo died October 7, 1965, at age 66, after 41 years of marriage. Like his father and most of his brothers, he died of a heart attack. Suffering the attack on a Monday evening, he passed away in the old Edmond Hospital (above the old Broncho Theater on Broadway) later in the week. Due to his many family, church, school, and community ties, his funeral was quite a large one. The following autumn, Richard left for college, leaving Elizabeth alone in Edmond, where she remained until 1973, when she moved to Duncan to be near daughter Pat and to live with her sister Thelma and her husband Peveto. Her social activities became tightly wound around the Northside, and later the Chisholm Trail, Churches of Christ.
The following year, Elizabeth made the trip of a lifetime when she flew to Europe. In 1973, Liz and Red had moved to Mons, Belgium, where Red taught in the American high school at SHAPE, NATO’s international command headquarters. Richard and Terry had followed them to Europe a year later. He taught during 1974-75 for the University of Maryland at U.S. bases in Germany, Spain, and England. Elizabeth joined this foursome in Belgium for Christmas 1974, and with them, toured Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. In Oudewater, Holland, Elizabeth stepped onto a scale and received a certificate saying that she was too heavy to fly on a broom and therefore definitely was not a witch. In Interlocken, Switzerland, Richard, Terry and Elizabeth stayed in a bed and breakfast with a view of Jungfrau, and talked way into the night with the owner, a woman who spoke German with no English and only a little French. It was an animated conversation.
Always a proper lady, Elizabeth had a delightful time In Mons with the Sandlin’s friends, recording this in her travel diary on Christmas Eve: “Dinner tonight at Taylors. Invited for 8:00 – an hour of cocktails during which everyone stood. These people don’t know they can sit and visit. Some of us gave up. Dinner at 9:00. We thoroughly enjoyed it.” And on the next day, “A typical English dinner with the Neuborocks. Table cleared after each course. Lots of chatter but all light – never hear any discussion on world affairs, politics, etc. If it starts, hostess steers conversation to trivialities.” Christmas night the five listened to American Armed Forces Radio and BBC broadcasts, as it reported the death of comedian Jack Benny. After Christmas, Elizabeth stayed with Liz and Red a while then followed Richard and Terry to England, where they toured London and the north, bringing an end to a “marvelous experience.”
Back in Duncan, Elizabeth shared two houses, first Pat and Bob’s old house and then one across from the church, with “Thelma Nantie” and Peveto until their deaths in the 1990s. Almost every year, Elizabeth traveled to see Richard and his family, which now included grandchildren, Benjamin and Emily.
In 1996, a fall suffered when visiting them in Youngstown, New York, followed by eight weeks in a hospital and rehabilitation, convinced Elizabeth to move into Duncan’s Sterling House, an assisted care facility. From there she moved to Westbrook Care Center, a nursing home in Waurika, where she and Milo had lived so many years before. In Waurika, she grew weaker in body and mind. In all, Elizabeth lived nearly 37 years longer than Milo, dying in late summer 2002 of accumulated ailments of old age. Her 97-year old heart, lungs, and kidneys all failed. Her spirit did not. Although she had recorded advice to others about grieving in her Memories Book, she never once mentioned the prospect of her own death. For her, life was always something that lay ahead.
Milo Bernard’s Elopement Letter
To His Parents
Milo Bernard (33778623)
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Siblings
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