MARY FRANCES PARSONS was born in a little rented house on Clark Street in Houston, Texas. Her parents were John Napoleon Parsons and Pearl Margaret Van Horn. She was the first child and only daughter born to her parents. Her brothers, Virgil Thomas, George Ernest, and Glenn Carlton, followed.
Mary Frances grew up living in a household that was very strict, regimented, and often over-disciplined. Hers was a life of toil and heavy responsibility, not only because she was the only daughter and needed by her mother to help with the children, but when Mary was only four years old, her Mama became severely ill with the Spanish influenza that swept the nation in 1918. With her Mama abed, Mary's workload was increased significantly.
While her Mama was ill, only her worried maternal Grandmother was there to care for the family. In addition, the youngest son of Grandmother Van Horn, John Francis, 16 at the time, was also down with the flu, and died from complications in 1919. Mary remembers vividly the Saturday night before "Uncle John" died. She related that she was hoping to spend the night at the house of her little girlfriend, Eva May Hicks who lived next door. She had sent Eva May in to talk with Grandma Van Horn and seek permission. Mary was hiding around the corner with an ear turned toward the conversation when she heard her favorite uncle in the bedroom weakly saying, "Bye, Monkey." "Monkey" was John Francis' nickname for Mary. Mary shushed her uncle and explained to him that she had not received permission yet, and didn't want her grandma to know she was lurking around the corner. Still John persisted in hoarsely calling, "Good-bye, Monkey." Still, little Mary shushed him and stamped her little foot and became angry. "HUSH, Uncle John! I don't know that I'm going to get to go yet." And still the call from the bedroom . . . "Good-bye, Monkey." Finally permission was granted and Mary joyfully bounded out of the house with her friend, Eva May beside her. The next morning when little Mary Frances returned home she learned that her Uncle John had passed away a few hours after she'd left the night before. Mary carried that sadness with her all of her life, realizing that her favorite uncle was actually saying "farewell" to her, and she only saw it as his spoiling her secret.
Mary's mother was ill for six months, and even after the immediate danger of her illness had passed, the recuperation was long and difficult. During this time, and in between chores, this left little Mary pretty much to entertain herself. This, accompanied by a host of ornery little friends, led her into many an adventure that was questionable in terms of safety, and definitely in terms of "lady-likeness."
She told of one little neighborhood boy, I.O. Price, who always had a way of thinking of the most outlandish challenges that could come to mind. One day as they sat on the front stoop of I.O.'s small house, he challenged little Mary to sneak into the near-by firehouse and hide in the fire wagon. Mary, even though she was afraid of getting caught, was never one to turn down a dare, and off they went.
All went well for I.O. and Mary Frances until the alarm bells rang, the volunteer firefighters swarmed into the firehouse and took off to answer the distress call, with Mary and I.O. still hidden in the dark corners of the fire wagon. When discovered at the scene of the emergency, the children were severely reprimanded, taken back home, a full account given to the parents, and they suffered the deserved punishment given.
Mary told of hard times during those days of growing up. Her father, while diligently pursuing work at every turn, was a drinker, and her life was unstable and constantly insecure, never knowning what would transpire when her Daddy returned home after a long day. His problems were exacerbated by his worry over his very ill wife and his difficulty in providing the bare necessities for his family. There was much friction in the household due to all of the stresses coming from so many different directions.
When Mary's Mama finally recovered and life got back to more "normal", Grandma Van Horn moved back to her home and Mary was left with a heavier load including the virtual raising of her small brothers.
Mary Frances Parsons graduated from Heights High School and from there attended a two-year business college which was paid for by her favorite aunt, May Elizabeth "Lizzie" Canfield-Cloudt, who seemed to see a potential in her niece that others did not. Mary was forever grateful to "Aunt Lizzie" for that gift. After graduation from business school, she was hired on as a secretary in the IBM Houston office to Mr. Artie Lamb. Her beginning salary was $10 a week, $9.50 of which she took back home and gave to her Mama to help out with the household finances. The remaining fifty cents was used for streetcar fare back and forth to work and one pair of silk stockings a week. She took bean sandwiches in a sack for her lunch.
In 1931 a man from Minnesota came to work for IBM, and Mary was fascinated with him because she thought he spoke a foreign language. His northern accent was so thick that she could harldly understand him. His name was James Morrison Mayo, called "Jimmie", and he was immediately liked and accepted by his southern co-workers because of his brilliant sense of humor, his daring attitude, and his warmth. Mary found herself more and more attracted to him, and on March 31, 1933, she married Jimmie Mayo in the parsonage of Pastor Manely, Methodist preacher, the husband of Mary's third-grade school teacher. The newlyweds found a little home near Mary's Mama and paid $10.00 a month rent. In January of 1935 their first daughter, Patricia Anne, was born, and Mary quit her job at IBM to become a full-time mother.
When "Patty" was only about two years old, Mary Frances and Jimmie gathered up their few belongings and moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where Jimmie was transferred with IBM. They rented a home on Northwest 45th Street in Oklahoma City, where their next three children, James Morrison, Jr., Mary Susan, and George Timothy, were born. Mary loved her home in Oklahoma City, and talked lovingly of her neighbors, Mrs. Ellis, Mrs. Banler, and the Aldrich's.
World War II brought many changes in the lives of Mary and her husband, and she found herself in Oklahoma City alone with her children while her husband worked in the Tulsa IBM office, trying to get settled so he could send for his family. During this time Mary was very troubled and afraid. She found a friend in Mrs. Greenlief, the grocer down the street from her home, who was willing to extend credit to Mary between paydays to put food on the table for her children. Thankfully, the time that Mary had to fend for herself without her husband there was short-lived. By 1946 they were all loaded in the old blue Ford, heading for a new life in Tulsa.
Their first home in Tulsa was in the north Tulsa area, a small community called Turley. This house was in the middle of a peach orchard, and while the setting was very atheistic, the house was falling apart and was right on the main highway where much traffic made it unsafe for her children to play far from the house. Open wells in the yard made the danger even close to home acute. Also, right in the neighborhood was a beer joint, where many nights men who were intoxicated would stagger up to the windows of the little frame house peering in, banging on doors and demanding in their slurred tongue to be let in. Because there was no safe lock on the back door, many times Mary had to try to quietly scurry to the back and push the old Maytag wringer washer in front of the back door in hopes that in their drunkened state, the intruders would not have the strength or forethought to push it aside. By the grace of God, the door held.
One late night a bleeding, drunken man banged on the front door of the house screaming and frantic because, he claimed, a man was after him with a gun. Thankfully, Mary's husband was not working late that night and he was there to answer the door. The man begged to use the telephone, but since there were four small children in the house and because of the drunkenness of the man and the danger involved, Jimmie lied and told the man that the family did not own a telephone. Mary thought quickly and sneaked into the bedroom and took the telephone off the hook, lest it should ring at that precise moment, and the lie would be "found out."
The four children were hidden in a corner in the back bedroom in case things should get out of hand. The memory of the fear that ran through those children is something that will never cease to exist in this lifetime. Thankfully, the man staggered off of the front porch and disappeared into the night, cursing and yelling his anger in his incoherent manner. All of the lights in the house were turned off and the family sat in darkness, huddled together and fearful of what might happen next. Jimmie sat at the window all night long with his .22 caliber rifle across his lap and at the ready, protecting his family. The next morning the body of a man was found out by the peach shed at the far end of the orchard. He had been shot once, through the head.
The family soon moved out of that neighborhood and moved into a little house in South Tulsa. It was a small rented house but served to be cozy and warm because of the love of Mary toward her children. It was situated back from the road with a long driveway going up to the house. Next to the house was Holland Nursery, owned by Mr. and Mrs. Spoor, who were immigrants from Holland. They had two small children, Peter and Cory. Down the street were good neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Harris and Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn. Right next door were the Truman Rucker's. The Mayo family lived in that home for about four years and then moved to Jenks.
During her working years, Mary Frances held many prestigious positions at various companies. Perhaps her favorite time of employment was when she was private secretary to Ralph Talbot, the owner of the four major movie theaters in Tulsa. He owned the Ritz, the Rialto, the Orpheum, and the Majestic theaters . . . state of the art palaces of the day. During her tenure as his secretary, Mary was privy to many private parties with big-name Hollywood actors and actresses, and corresponded with many she hadn't met. She provided her oldest daughter with many promotional "glossies", photographs that were taken as "stills" and intended to be placed as advertising in the big frames on either side of the theater ticket booths.
Other jobs that Mary Frances held were Town Clerk of Jenks, editor of the Jenks Journal, a position in the business office of Oral Roberts University, various Tulsa oil companies, Dayton Scale Company, and of course, her first job at IBM.
But Mary's one desire, other than to be a good mother to her children, was to write. She was a history buff and collected newspaper clippings, notes from history books, and research data having to do with her favorite interest, the Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma. For years she researched and worked on a historical profile of a little-known Indian maiden named Millie Frances. She spent hours at the libraries, wrote countless letters seeking information, and spent many days and weeks cloistered in a small attic room getting her story together. Two weeks before she had the final draft ready to send, another author had a profile of Millie Frances published in the "magazine" section of the Tulsa Sunday World. This broke Mary's heart. It also broke her spirit. She put away her writing tools and never seriously picked them up again, no matter how her family encouraged her. Too much of her heart had been broken.
Besides her hobby and love of writing, her heart belonged to her six children. She would make any sacrifice, real or imagined, to bring to her children the values, the dreams and the comfort that she missed during her own childhood. Many nights, as one of her feverish children lay in their beds, Mary would sit at their side reading for hours out of "Uncle Wiggley," "Winnie The Pooh," or "Treasure Island," all to bring love to that child, never mentioning or letting on the fact that she was in severe pain from terribly abscessed teeth that were poisoning her body. Hers was a life of giving and she never considered herself in any situation.
When her children grew up, left home, and had their own families, Mary's life was void of the drive that kept her going. When her husband passed away in 1987, she was alone in the big, two-story family Jenks home that she raised her children in. At that time, Mary began spending time with her grown children, visiting their homes and spoiling her grand and great-grandchildren, calling on the telephone, and hoping for a surprise stop-by from any and all of them.
One by one she began having to say good-bye to so many of those she loved. First, her brother, Virgil, then another brother, Glenn, and finally she lost her last brother, George, only four months before losing her husband, Jimmie. In 1990 she lost both her mother and her youngest son, Tim. And in 1995 her oldest son, Jim, and her step-grandfather, Maurice, passed. And once again, with a deeper wound than she could have ever imagined, Mary's heart broke, bit by bit, piece by piece, until dementia began to rescue her from those painful memories of such profound loss.
She lived the last two years of her life with her middle daughter, Susan and her family, and found a peace and comfort that she expressed as "the happiest time of my life." Of course, the family that shared their home with Mary realized that her memories of happier times had faded. Then, in January of 2000, after a relatively short illness, Mary Frances Parsons-Mayo slipped into the arms of an angel and went Home to her Jesus, where so many of her loved ones awaited her.
EARLY MARRIED LIFE
Recollections Written By Mary Frances Parsons-Mayo
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