News article informant:
Photocopied and submitted by Hazel Kennicutt Sharpe.

Ulysses Simpson Buce

Two articles:

1. Dateline: June 1956 -
   Married 50 Years; Never Had Quarrel
   (50th Wedding Anniversary Celebration)

2. Dateline: October 1972 -
   Odessan, 95, Honored Sunday by Six Children
   (95th Birthday Celebration)
   
   

Article 1:

Dateline: June 1956

Wed 50 years ago in Hurley, Mo., Mr. and Mrs. U.S. Buce, above, will be honored at a Golden Wedding reception Sunday from 5 to 7pm at the home of their granddaughter, Mrs. John Watson, 509 Llano Drive. News-Sun photo by Kathryn Morris.

Married 50 Years; Never Had Quarrel

by Kathryn Morris

"Whenever 5 o'clock came, I quit work and went home. Josie was always standing in the door waiting for me, and had supper ready. I knew she'd be proud to see me, so I never had any reason not to want to go home."

In those simple words, U.D. Buce, 415 West Clinton, this week expressed a part of the formula for marriage which has enabled him and his wife to live together in harmony for 50 years.

Mrs. Buce's contribution to the formula is just as uncomplicated. "I never figured, if anything went wrong in the day, that he had anything to do with it, so I didn't take it out on him."

"People are going to say I'm a liar," Buce declares with a sparkle of amusement in his eyes, "but we never had a quarrel. If we had anything to say, we said it, but we didn't fuss. I grew up with that kind of thing, and Josie did, too; so we decided our marriage was going to be different. And it has been."

The Buces, who have lived in Hobbs since 1938, will celebrate their Golden Wedding anniversary Sunday at a reception from 3 to 7 p.m. at the home of their granddaughter, Mrs. John Watson, 509 Llano Drive.

"We've sent out invitations," Mrs. Buce explains, "but we want all our friends to come, whether they received an invitation or not. There are lots of people who speak to us every day whose names we can't remember; so we are bound to have left out people we didn't want to leave out. I hope they will come."

Their children are J.R. Buce, 516 East Skelly; Mrs. Charles Ashcraft, 615 East Sanger; Sam Buce, Artesia, Calif.; Mrs. W.E. Ball, S&W Trailer Courts; Henry Buce, 108 Berry Drive; and Mrs. R.E. Couch, Phillips Camp.

A grandson, Howard Lee Buce, has lived with his grandparents since his father, Howard Buce, died in 1941. The Buces have nine other grandchildren, and three great grandchildren, Sherri Lynn and Tommy Finn, son and daughter of the John Watsons, and Jeff, son of Mrs. Charlene James.

Son of a farmer, Ulysses Simpson Buce was born near Culberson in Cherokee County, North Carolina. Why was a child born south of the Mason-Dixon line so soon after the Civil War named for a hero of the Northern Army? "I had a strong Republican daddy," Buce says, "Besides that, not all the people south of the line believed in slavery."

The Buces moved to Tahlequah in Indian Territory when "Lyss" was 5 years old. When he got a little older, he became aware of the caliber of the population of that northeast corner of what would later become Oklahoma. It was, at that time, the refuge of outlaws trying to escape justice in surrounding states, the rendezvous of bootleggers carrying whisky into Indian country, and the rough and ready cowmen who brought herds from Texas and other states to graze on the lush pastures of the Osage and Cherokee nations.

"Hanging" Judge Parker and his United States marshals were responsible for law and order in the far-flung regions of the Territory, but the marshals were too few, the court was too far away, and the mortality rate among marshals was high. Young Lyss knew some of the area's famous outlaws and some of the men who killed them. He knew, when he was still a youth working in a blacksmith shop, the tenseness which comes when tempers, fed by the "fire water," flared among groups of armed men and death was waiting just around the corner. But in the midst of violence he never saw a man killed.

Josephine Byrnes was born to a farm family near Linn Creek in Camden County, Missouri. Her parents moved to Indian Territory, settling near Bartlesville, in 1902 when her father and brothers went to work on the Katy Railroad, clearing the right-of-way.

Miss Josephine also landed in a region and among people used to violence. She cooked in a railroad kitchen and slept in a tent carpeted with feed sacks. She was in contact with the adventurers and "hoboes" who made up the railroad gangs, but it is a tribute to her dignity and her decency and to the respect of rough men for those qualities in a lady that not once did she suffer an insult or affront from any of the men in the camps.

The Byrnes men moved into the Tulsa area, working for the Midland Valley railroad, and along came Lyss Buce to ask for a job with the Byrnes brothers. The girl from Missouri and the man from North Carolina met and from then on Lyss Buce was always somewhere around.

One time he was ill, and Josie went to his tent to take him some medicine. "Are you going to take care of me for the rest of my life?" Lyss asked. "I guess so," Josie replied, and that was their "understanding."

When the Byrneses moved back to Missouri to work on the Missouri Pacific Railroad between Crane and Springfield, Lyss went along. June 24, 1906, the Buces were married at Hurley, Mo.

After a while they quit the railroad and moved back to Tahlequah where Lyss took up carpentry, a trade he was to follow the rest of his active career. When their children started arriving, they took stock of their situation and decided the Cherokee Nation capital was no place to raise boys and girls, so they moved to Skiatook, a small town near Tulsa.

One event of their stay in Skiatook stands out in Josie's memory. Henry Buce, then about 5 years old, was playing atop the dog house and started to jump down. He caught his heel, fell, and broke his arm.

His frantic mother scooped up the frightened child and started running with him toward the doctor's office. the physician himself came along and inquired, "What on earth is wrong, Mrs. Buce?"

"Henry's broken his arm and I'm taking him to the doctor," she cried.

"Well, it's his arm that's broken, not his leg; can't he walk?" the doctor asked mildly, and that broke the tension.

Lyss' health began to fail, and the family gave up its home in Skiatook in 1929 and moved to Carlsbad, just before the bottom fell out of the nation's economy and the Depression began.

It is a point of pride with the Buces that, although they were living in a new town and were dependent on Lyss' earnings as a carpenter for their livelihood, they survived the depression without going hungry, without calling on outsiders for assistance, and without taking their children from school.

"I think the thing that saved us," Buce declares, "is that we weren't in debt to anybody for anything when it all started."

Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Bowline of Skiatook, old friends and neighbors, stopped by in Hobbs Tuesday to congratulate the Buces on their forthcoming anniversary, but could not stay over until Sunday to attend the reception.

Lyss is 78 years old and Josie is 72. He says he thinks she has done a pretty good job of taking care of him in the half century they've been married. "I'm here anyway," he points out.

They have memories out of history:

He recalls going with his father to Cushing Sept. 16, 1893, before the Cherokee Strip was opened for "the run." The elder Buce had ideas of making the run and claiming some land, but when he saw men standing, sleeping, sitting and waiting to register in two lines' a quarter of a mile long, he gave up. "I wouldn't camp in that line for the whole Cherokee strip," he told his son, and they left.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Buce remember seeing a truck en route from Vian to the famous outlaw hideout, the Cookson Hills, and asking what it was. They were told it was financed by Charles (Pretty Boy) Floyd, one of the nation's most notorious outlaws, who bought van loads of food and distributed it among the residents of the hills who afforded him protection from the law.

They remember areas in the Osage Nation, once rolling prairies of knee-deep grass, that were so badly overgrazed by greedy cattlemen they now are overgrown with scrub timber and underbrush, the grass gone forever.

They remember 50 years of working together to raise a family, of gay times and sad times, and the small emergencies that occur in every-day life, and Sunday scores of their friends will be on hand to help them recall events they may have forgotten, or share memories with them.

-end

Article 2:

Odessan, 95, Honored Sunday by Six Children

Dateline: October 1972

One of Odessa's eldest residents, U.S. Buce, 705 West 69th, celebrated his 95th birthday Sunday, Oct. 15, in the home of his daughter, Mr.s R.E. Couch. A family gathering was held with birthday cake.

Residing in Odessa during the oil exploration Buce, a carpenter before he retired, constructed an office building for Hobbs Pipeline and Supply here in 1937. He followed the oil boom for 20 years working in West Texas and New Mexico, spending much of his time from Imperial to Sundown.

Born in North Carolina, Buce and his parents moved to the Indian Territory, Oklahoma, in 1883. He grew up in the hills in the territory and remembers when the government made a treaty with the Osage Indians and gave them what it considered 'sorry' land, it turned out to be rich in oil.

There were no white schools in the territory, and Buce attended a mission school. He was married in 1906 to Miss Josephine Byrnes. They also resided in Missouri before moving to Carlsbad, N.M. in 1929. She died in 1963.

Since that time he has divided his time visiting his six living children who are: Mrs. Couch of Odessa, J.R. Buce, Carlsbad, N.M.; Mrs. Velma Ashcraft, Hobbs, N.M.; Sam Buce, Lakewood, Calif., Sophia Ball, Farmington, N.M., and Henry Buce, Hobbs.
There are 10 grandchildren and 20 great grandchildren.

Buce, still active, joins friends for various games and accompanies his daughter on trips around town and to Hobbs. He has been an Oddfellow for 50 years and attends lodge occasionally.