JT (John Thomas) Powell
1915-1997

JT Powell was born in Blanket, Texas, April 29, 1915 and was the last child of John Thomas Powell and Nina Shaw Powell. Nina was 42 when he was born and was undoubtedly tired of raising kids. He was number eight. Daughter Esther had been in charge of sibling Burl and was not excited about the new addition to the family knowing that she would be his nanny. When Nina found out she was pregnant with J. T., she didn’t tell Esther for a long time. She knew that Esther would not be happy because Esther had just gotten through taking care of Burl. When she finally told Esther, Esther was really angry and she sulked until the baby was born. When Baby JT was born everyone came to see him except Esther. She wouldn’t look at him, didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Finally, John Thomas, Sr. made her come in the house to see the new baby. She said as soon as she saw him, she fell in love. From that time on, JT, as he was called, was her favorite.

Story was related by Jerry Andrews at Esther’s memorial service in Brownwood, Texas, 2005.

The Powell family moved around often, trading land and moving up. JT first remembers that they lived between Blanket and Zephyr close to Bethel Church. That is where he was born. They next moved closer to Blanket where they remained for about six years. He went to school at Antioch where the teacher came by the Powell house and transported JT to school.The family moved to Blanket again and rented a house until 1928. During that time JT senior worked in a store. Young JT went to school in Blanket until the family moved between Newberg and Priddy where JT Sr. bought half a section of land. He had part in cultivation and part for grazing. JT went to school at Newberg, Texas until the family moved to May, Tex about 1930 through 1936. By this time JT’s father was getting rather old and JT did all of the chores and farming tasks. He finished high school in 1933 at May HS which at that time only went through the eleventh grade. In 1936 the family moved to the outskirts of Brownwood in a house on Austin Avenue.

After WWI when the Powell family lived on the Beard place, Brooks and Onnie Lee Powell, JT’s oldest brothers came home from the war impressing the young JT with their 45 pistols, gas masks and parts of their uniforms that they wore rolled up to the knee.

Life on the farm in central Texas during the twenties and thirties was very difficult.The Powell family always had plenty to eat since almost everything was grown or raised at home: vegetables, milk, butter, eggs. Necessities like sugar, flour, etc. that were not raised were bartered for with items that were raised.Neighbors would sometimes kill a yearly calf and go around the countryside in a wagon selling parts. It was great, according to JT, when they could afford to buy steak.

JT read and did homework by a kerosene lamp. At Newburg, he read hours on end by a lamp where he slept in the attic. His dad gave him a new 22 rifle at age ten. He stated that he was the proudest kid ever and spent hours hunting squirrels and rabbits along a creek where they lived supplying lots of meat for the family. During his younger days, JT had very little responsibility. He had to feed the chickens and hogs but had much freedom due probably to the fact that he was the tail end of the family and his parents were tired of raising kids. His father, John Thomas, Sr., was a quiet, easy going man with a great sense of humor. Nina, his mother, was a good loving person but very stern. She was the disciplinarian of the family.When she spoke, she intended for you to do what she said. She was never mean but she didn’t put up with any foolishness. If you were assigned a task she expected you to do carry it out. Once JT spent the night with friends without telling his parents. Knowing that he would get a whoopin’ the next day, he went home through the cotton patch where he stuffed the seat of his pants with cotton.

Shooting rabbits and squirrels was great fun for him. The family did not have a radio until 1936--had a telephone. Also they had old edition phonograph. At Comanche there was indoor plumbing. An above ground cistern caught rain water which was sometimes the only water available. The toilet was still outdoors. Baths took place in a #2 wash tub with water heated over the wood stove in the kitchen and poured into the tub. In the summer showers were taken under the water tower of wind mill. The family's first electricity was in Comanche but they didn’t have it again until they moved to Brownwood.

BOOTLEGGING

Boys with little supervision could find lots to do in the country. At age 18 or 19, soon after he finished high school, JT and his friends decided to make beer. This was during Prohibition. “I don’t remember where we got the recipe but we bought a ten gallon crock and took it down to the creek which was spring fed.One spring the weather was unusually cool and our brew wasn’t fermenting. A friend’s dad kept beer fermenting in the cellar so we proceeded to try to move the uncooperative batch. My friend Winifred and I put wire around the crock and put a limb through the crock to carry it and started up through the field on a Sunday morning. Dad was out checking the corn crop and we were pretty sure he would make us pour it off. He said, “I knew you boys have been up to bootlegging!” and just walked off. So, we carried our brew up to Dosie Bryan’s house and his dad put a candle under it and worked the beer off.”

“We also made beer at a different place between our house and Dosie Bryan’s in a briar patch off the side of the road. We put the crock in the briar patch where no one would find it. When we went to check on it, it was gone. Recent rain made tracking easy. Because the crock was so heavy we knew there had to be two thieves. We caught up with the culprit hiding behind a tree. The old man, a known boozer, was afraid that I might shoot him. Reclaiming our brew we, carried it back to our briar patch distillery.”

OTHER TALES

“During the Model T days when I was 18 or 19 years old, we had a stripped down Model T which had the bed taken off of it and just the chassis remained. I knew how to wire things so my friend and I hooked up electricity to the bottom of benches in church where several old ladies would be sitting. Nails held the wire which ran to the Model T and a live spark plug. We set outside and watched through the window so we could see when to turn the switch on the Model T on. Everyone on that bench rose up at the same time when we turned the switch especially several shocked old ladies. I was usually the leader of the pack with great ideas to keep from getting bored.”

“Winifred, Dosie and I decided it would be a lot of fun to dig a ditch across the road and watch the cars hit and bounce around. When our trench was finished the first one to hit it was Altus Weathersby, my best friend. He had an old Essex. When he hit the bump going fast all the doors flew open. We had made sure the ditch wasn’t dug at an angle but the impact caused a real jolt. Altus didn’t know that we had dug the ditch until two or three later. He had the law out the next day and we laid low.”

“When we lived at Blanket Earl Dean ran a filling station. I had a BB Gun and was shooting at an insulator on a telephone pole. I was inside the filling station and leaning up against the door. Just as I pulled the trigger Earl went to wait on a car. The bb hit him on the lip. He never had it removed.”

Burl and JT were very competitive and often fighting when they were young. One Sunday morning, JT and Worth Myrick were taking a shower under the water tower at Mamie’s pump house. Burl came by with a wad of gravel and started pelting them with small rocks until they started chasing him. When they did, Burl led them by the road where two women were returning from church. The buck naked boys were humiliated.

HOUSTON

Needing employment, JT took a job at a service station in Brownwood. A pretty young brunette lived on the second floor of the boarding house next to the station. Her name was Kathie Sturkie. She was working as a waitress to help with her college expenses. JT wooed her by spraying a hose in her second story window. She did not finish the semester and the couple married June 11, 1939. In Brownwood, they lived with JT’s parents and when they moved out, Nina Powell was very unhappy with them.

When J. T.’s job at the Brownwood, Texas service station played out because the service station was sold, Kathie and Jay T. moved to Houston in order for him to secure a good job. Both Opal (Kathie’s sister) and A. D. White and Lloyd Sturkie had preceded them in their move to the large city from central Texas. JT went to work for an auto parts store but was fired because he didn’t know anything about auto parts.The couple lived at first with Opal and “Red” in their house on Park Lane. Red was working as a metallurgical engineer at Hughes Tool Company nearby. After about six weeks, they found an apartment on Sherman street where they lived until they bought their first house in the Garden Villas Subdivision in Houston in 1944. Eventually he landed a job with Hughes Tool Company in the early 40’s. When WW II began, he was sent to work at Dickson Gun Plant, a move which spared him active duty in the war.

My Dad
written by Mary Powell Ward
(based partly on an interview with Grandson Stephen W. Mosley)
2016

Find A Grave Memorial# 44622755

January 31, 2003



Dear Mother,

I am sending some examples of the family history work I have done. I took what you sent me, organized it and added a bit more but there is still a long way to go. I am still convinced that we need to get our own family up to date so I am depending on you to send me some more information? I am sending you the most relavent family ties but I have 500 names already charted.

Tell me about your childhood. You were the youngest.

How was your childhood different than your siblings?

Describe the places that you lived and approximately when you lived there.

What was the Depression like?

Tell me about your relationship with Auntie as a young girl.

How would you describe Grandad? What were his personal characteristics? His physical characteristics?

How would you describe Grandmother? What were her personal characteristics? What were her physical characteristics?

Describe physical characteristics of your Grandpa Sturkie. Of your Grandma Sturkie.

Uncle Paul wrote stories about the three older boys in the family. What girl stories do you know?

I am also sending family record sheets for John Ira’s family. I need to you fill those out to the best of your memory. This should keep you busy.

Are you having fun yet???

Also I am returning your Beautiful Bones. Sounds too gruesome for me.

Love,

KATHLEEN ELIZABETH STURKIE

Born August 24, 1920 in Hasse, Texas, Kathleen Elizabeth Sturkie was the youngest child of William D. Sturkie and Mattie Lou Luker Sturkie. As a possible name for the new baby was being considered, older sister Opal suggested that they name her Willie May. Kathie was always thankful that her parents did not follow that suggestion.

Will Sturkie and his family lived in Hasse and worked in his father’s (John Ira Sturkie’s) store. He left there and took a job in Waco with Meadow Brothers, a grocery wholesaler. Kathie was about two years old when the family left Hasse..The Sturkie family moved back to Comanche County and lived on the old Luker Farm* That is where Kathie grew up. As the youngest, with four older brothers, any work that she did in the fields was as a “step’n’ fetchit” She told the story that once her father told her as they were working picking cotton, “Kathie, run get the water bucket!” Her reply caused the only “paddlin” she ever received. She told her father that she believed she would just walk. It was too hot to run.

Kathie attended school in Proctor, Texas through grade school and junior high. School was several miles by foot and she probably walked with older brother Howard. Her lunch was carried in a syrup bucket and was usually a cold biscuit with a fried egg in the middle. By the time Kathie was a sophomore in high school, she was living in Gustine where her father was a merchant and deacon in the Baptist Church. An excellent student, she graduated salutatorian and received a scholarship to Howard Payne College in Brownwood, Texas.

In 1938 while working as a waitress to help with her college expenses, Kathie lived on the second floor of a boarding house in Brownwood. There she met John Thomas Powell who worked at the filling station next door. JT wooed her by spraying a hose in her second story window. She did not finish the semester and the couple married June 11, 1939. In Brownwood, they lived with JT’s parents and when they moved out, Ninah Powell was very unhappy with them.

When J. T.’s job at the Brownwood, Texas service station played out because the service station was sold, Kathie and Jay T. moved to Houston in order for him to secure a good job. Both Opal and A. D. White (Kathie’s sister) and Lloyd Sturkie had preceded them in their move to the large city from central Texas. The couple lived at first with Opal and “Red” in their house on Park Lane. Red was working as a metallurgical engineer at Hughes Tool Company nearby. After about six weeks, they found an apartment on Sherman street where they lived until they bought their first house in the Garden Villas Subdivision in Houston in 1944. JT went to work for an auto parts store but was fired because he didn’t know anything about auto parts. Eventually he landed a job with Hughes Tool Company in the early 40’s. When WW II began, he was sent to work at Dickson Gun Plant, a move which spared him active duty in the war.

In 1942, Mary Lou, their first child was born. The Powell’s lived in an apartment on Sherman street until 1945 when they bought their home at 207 Brace Street. Cellia Ann was born in 1945; Charles Robert in 1950; and James Edward, in 1952.

Most socialization involved family. Opal and Red White and Lloyd and Orea Sturkie lived close and supported one another in many ways. Christmases were family events which included a planned program on Christmas Eve and a big dinner on Christmas Day. Everyone participated and enjoyed the fun.

Kathie’s Christian faith was always her mainstay. Raised in a family with a father who was a deacon in the Baptist Church, who lead the singing and the Sunday School, she became a lifelong Baptist. Becoming a Christian at Baggett Creek Church, (the church her grandfather John Ira Sturkie, helped to charter) in the old tabernacle and was baptised in Baggett Creek Her mother, Lou Luker, maintained her membership in the Methodist Church and Kathie attended services sometimes with her mother. In later life, she and JT joined Garden Villas Baptist Church in Houston, Texas where she was a member until her death in 2008. Church attendance was always a requirement for children encouraging them to participate in every activity sponsored by the church. She taught a Sunday School class for 50 years always studying and carefully preparing her lessons.

*This reference to the “old Luker farm.” has not been researched. However, it is believed that Lou Luker and her brothers inherited land when their father, Benjamin Franklin Luker, died.

Kathie is 5’ 4” tall with black hair and fair complexion. (She has the Sturkie/Luker look about her.)

HASSE, TEXAS. Hasse is on U.S. highways 67 and 377 and the Fort Worth and Rio Grande Railroad in central Comanche County. It was founded in 1892 and was first called Cordwood Junction, then later was named after O. H. Hasse, a railway agent at Comanche. In 1900, when its post office was established, the community's population was over 100. By 1915 Hasse had a population of 250 and more than fifteen businesses, including a bank and a telephone exchange. Its population was about 248 in 1940, but only five businesses remained. By 1950 the community's population had dropped to forty, and in 1955 the Hasse school was annexed to the Comanche Independent School District. In 1980 and 1990 the population of Hasse was reported as forty-three.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Comanche County Bicentennial Committee, Patchwork of Memories: Historical Sketches of Comanche County, Texas (Brownwood, Texas: Banner Printing, 1976).

Tracey L. Compton

My Mother
from The Story of a Lifetime by Kathleen Sturkie Powell

She was always there when I got in from school. My mother did the house work and milked the cows. She did the washing on a rub board with no running water and hung the clothes on the fence.

She made quilts with frames hanging from the ceiling.

Mother was a good cook especially considering what she had to work with. Our breakfasts usually consisted of bacon, eggs, biscuits and syrup. We had bacon if Dad had killed a hog. Lunch was always the big meal of the day. We didn’t have meat everyday--chicken usually only on Sunday. During the week we ate whatever was in the garden--English peas, string beans, corn, potatoes, mostly vegetables and always corn bread for lunch. For supper we had left overs and/or just milk & corn bread. Mother made pies mainly for special occasions. We didn’t have dessert every meal. She made raisin pies and Dad’s favorite was sweet potato pie.

My mother was very neat, she had us sweep the yard until it was clean. We had no grass, it was clay or sand. There was no trash laying around.

She cooked for 8 people breakfast, lunch and dinner. She used to feed the thresher crew of 5 to 10 men.

She washed our clothes using a rub board and drawing the water out of a dug well. She milked 2 or 3 cows, morning and night, churned the butter and kept milk in a cooling pan as we didn’t have an ice box.

Her hobbies were sewing and quilting when she had time.

Which of your mother’s physical and personality characteristics did you inherit?
Calmness, I never heard my mother yell at her kids.. She was a kind and gentle person, a good cook and very good at saving.

Describe your mother’s traits with which you are least compatible.

I thought she let Dad run over her. She stood up to him when Hab was in the service. He didn’t think she could write him, but she let him know right away that she was going to write him and she did.

Did she experience much sadness or tragedy while you were little? How did she deal with it?

Her mother died and her brother Ben died, I think she took their death’s hard.

Happiest memory you have of your mother?
I slept with her when I was a senior in high school. After we moved to Gustine, we had just one bedroom. It had two double beds. Dad slept on one and mother & I slept on the other. I never thought anything about why they weren’t sleeping together. Dad was so big, I guess my mother preferred to sleep with me.

What is the most painful memory you have of her/
Her last years she was sick and had to rest a lot. I was holding her over the toilet the night she died. She had congestive heart failure.

Mother was a Methodist.

She died Oct. 4 1949. She had congestive heart failure at 64 years of age. She is buried by my dad in Baggett Cemetery, six miles from Gustine.

Most important things I learned from my mothers were patience, love and trustworthiness.

My Dad

Dad was born November 2, 1882. Born 5 mi. s.e. of Proctor Texas on the old James Clemons farm. He grew up around the Graham’s Chapel Community.

My father shared the story about his father eloping with his mother. He got his brother to drive the wagon parking away from the house and she climbed out the window throwing down her hump back trunk. He also remembered being the the next room when his Grandpa had his leg cut off.

Dad was strict and firm in his beliefs. His way was the right and only way. He had to keep four boys in line.

He worked in a grocery store, did book work for Meadow Bros. in Waco and he was a farmer. He was also a Mason. Dad was a Baptist and always early at church. He led the singing the Sunday School at Gustine Baptist Church. He served on the Grand Jury at Comanche. He was fairly strict, I was around five and he was in the cotton patch. He told me to run to the house and get him some water. I said “ I couldn’t run.” he picked up a switch and I ran.

His best qualities were instilling work habits and honesty in his 6 children.

My dad taught me honesty and frugality. When I married he said “There are a lot of ups and downs to marriage and a lot of them were downs.”

Dad was the boss, but mama did what she wanted to. If I had been her I would have divorced him.

Taken from excerpts of
Story of a Lifetime by Kathleen Sturkie Powell

Kathie Powell

KATHIE POWELL, 88, passed away December 25, 2008. Kathie was a long time member of Garden Villas Baptist Church where she taught Sunday school for many years and had many friends. Born Kathleen Elizabeth Sturkie on August 24, 1920 in Hasse, Comanche County, Texas, she was the daughter of W.D. Sturkie and Mattie Lou Luker Sturkie. Kathie was preceded in death by her husband, John T. Powell of Houston, Texas and grandson Stephen W. Mosley of Clear Lake and by siblings, Opal White, Ira Sturkie, Paul D. Sturkie, Lloyd O. Sturkie and Howard N. Sturkie. She is survived by her children: Mary Lou Ward of Colorado, Celia A. Bonney and husband Jim of Riverside, Texas, Bob Powell and wife Vicki of Knoxville, Tennessee and James E. Powell and wife Elizabeth of Houston. Also she leaves three grandchildren and two great grandchildren. Visitation will be from 2 PM to 4PM, December 28, 2008 at SouthPark Funeral Home in Pearland, TX. Services will be held Monday, December 29, 2008 at 1:00 PM at South Park Funeral Home. Please visit www.southparkfunerals.com to sign the family guest book.

I was born August 24, 1920 In Hasee, Texas. Born at home, the last of six children, I’m sure my parents were tired of children .My sister Opal said I had a head of black hair. She was 15 years older and took care of me, washing my diapers, etc.

My friends and I played paper dolls, cutting them from the Sears catalogue. We made play houses in the 2 ditches using old bottles for people. My best friend was Dorothy Purvis and she lived across the big ditch from me. We had lots of fun. My cousin, Edith Luker also lived across the field.

I was pretty quiet, but my Dad said I was hard headed. I played on the school basket ball team and also played softball and gymnastics in school.

Our home in 1930 was what you might call poor. We drew water from a dug well. We milked cows, had a garden, fruit tress. My Dad farmed, raising corn, peanuts, maize for the cattle. We had no air conditioning not even a fan. We put our bed outside under a tree in the summer. In the winter, we slept under wool quilts so heavy you couldn’t turn over. My family lived off the land, selling corn, peanuts, butter and eggs. I never felt we were poor because we had plenty to eat, eggs, bacon, peas, bean and other things we raised in the garden. My mother canned corn, peas, beans, fruits. Dad killed hogs and made sausage, ham and bacon.

I finished High School in the spring of 1938. I was disappointed that I didn’t get the scholarship to Tarleton College. There were two of us with highest grades: Juanita Wyche and I. She had 1/2 point average over me, but the thing was, she only took 3 subjects and I took 5. I got the second scholarship which was to Howard Payne College in Brownwood, Texas, which was about 30 miles from where we lived in Gustine. My brother who was in Rochelle knew a family who had a girl going to Howard Payne, He arranged for us to meet and we found an apartment on Austin Avenue with Dorothy and Joe Morgan. Nelda Jackson and I got a job at a boarding house near the school. We would wait tables at lunch for our food. This didn’t last long as we couldn’t make our classes on time. Then Dad and Nelda’s mother brought us food and we ate from Mrs. Morgan’s kitchen. We ate a lot of peanut butter, mayonnaise and bread. With that diet, I weighed the most I have ever weighed.

Next door was a Humble Service Station. J. T. Powell worked there. Nelda and I would go over and buy cokes and talk to him. His car wash was right next to our window. JT would squirt water in our window to get our attention.

On the last of January of 1939, JT asked me for a date. I was very happy. On the 31st day of Jan we went to a cafe on the square, had sandwiches and cokes. Went to a show the “Cowboy and the Lady.” I liked him very much and I knew he liked me. He was still living at home and he told his sister later that he just had to have me for his wife.

It was about two weeks before we dated again. I was dating boys from school. Then we started dating regularly once a week. He asked me to marry him and he said he would ask my Dad for my hand in marriage. He did and we set the date of June 11, 1939 less than six months after we met. We were married by Brother Bradford on a Sunday evening at 5 o’clock in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan. Lavern and Buddy came, Worth and Evelyn Myrick. My mother and daddy were not there. I had a blue lace dress and a white hat and shoes. We took Floyd Powell’s boat and went out to Brownwood Lake and spent that night and the next day which was our honeymoon. JT worked on the boat about half of the night.

He took me home to his mother’s house and he went to work the next day. They lived about five miles out of (Brownwood) town. I spent my first week of marriage tearing the old wall paper paper out of the kitchen. JT and I re-papered and painted it. I got a job at Penny’s and worked the rest of that year. In 1940 we came to Houston and JT went to work in a machine shop, then in a car parts store and then he went to work at Hughes Tool Co. We lived in a garage apartment on Sherman Street. I went to work at Penny’s down town, riding a bus. Our first child, Mary Lou was born while we lived there. Then in 1944 we moved to 207 Brace which is now 7155 Brace where I have lived ever since.

A handwritten letter by Kathleen Powell
to Daughter Mary Lou Powell

I was born August 24, 1920 In Hasee, Texas. Born at home, the last of six children, I’m sure my parents were tired of children .My sister Opal said I had a head of black hair. She was 15 years older and took care of me, washing my diapers, etc.

My friends and I played paper dolls, cutting them from the Sears catalogue. We made play houses in the 2 ditches using old bottles for people. My best friend was Dorothy Purvis and she lived across the big ditch from me. We had lots of fun. My cousin, Edith Luker also lived across the field.

I was pretty quiet, but my Dad said I was hard headed. I played on the school basket ball team and also played softball and gymnastics in school.

Our home in 1930 was what you might call poor. We drew water from a dug well. We milked cows, had a garden, fruit trees. My Dad farmed, raising corn, peanuts, maize for the cattle. We had no air conditioning not even a fan. We put our bed outside under a tree in the summer. In the winter, we slept under wool quilts so heavy you couldn’t turn over. My family lived off the land, selling corn, peanuts, butter and eggs. I never felt we were poor because we had plenty to eat, eggs, bacon, peas, bean and other things we raised in the garden. My mother canned corn, peas, beans, fruits. Dad killed hogs and made sausage, ham and bacon.

Find A Grave Memorial# 44622772