LOGAN CO, AR - PAUL ADOLPH HUNTER - Bio

Submitted by: Carol Walker [klwalker@ctaz]

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Paul Adolph Hunter

On August 11, 19, On August 11, 1913, Paul Adolph Hunter was born to
Alfons and Mae Hunter, on a farm near Booneville, Arkansas. The sixth
of twelve children, two of these died as infants from unknown causes,
Paul grew up on the family farm.  They didn't have much money, for
these were the Great Depression years, so they learned to live with
what they had.

Paul didn't attend school much because of the many accidents he had as
a child.  When Paul was seven or eight years old, he threw a blasting
cap into a fire and almost lost his hand when the cap exploded.  At
the age of nine or ten years Paul lost the vision in his left eye,
this happened when he joined some friends in a corn cob fight.  The
boy throwing the cob that did the damage was Jack Benny, of course not
the Jack Benny everyone knows as a comedian.  When he was ten or
eleven he was trying to help his brother crank start a Model T Ford
and was ran over by the car, which broke both his legs.  When he was
twelve, while going to see some girls he knew in the circus, he and a
friend hopped a freight train.  When Paul jummped off the train, it
happened to be over a small bridge.  When he landed on his back, six
ribs were broken.  Even with all this, Paul attended school till the
seventh grade.  He attended two different schools,  Pleasent Ridge was
one of them.

At the age of thirteen he ran away from home so he could become a
truck driver.  He was a truck driver for about seven year.  Driving
from Fort Smith to Texarkana, Arkansas.

In 1934, he was married to his first wife, together they had a
daughter and were divorced shortly thereafter.

In 1935, Paul headed to California to make his fortune.  He found work
driving a truck from the orcharrchards and fields to the packing
plant.  Paul married a girl from a neighboring farm that he had known
since childhood, on one of his few visits back home.  This marriage
took place September 5, 1939, in Fort Smith.  He and his new bride,
Thelma Brown, returned to California to start a long life together.
Over the next eleven years they had seven children, no two were born
in the same town, five were born in California, one in Oregon and one
in Wyoming.

Paul wasn't allowed to fight in World War II since he had no vision in
his right eye, from a childhood accident.  It was necessary to take a
civil service job, so during the war he worked as a welder in the ship
yards in Portland, Oregon.

Paul worked as an auto mechanic in towns from Anchorage, Alaska to
Lupton, Arizona.  He worked a a boat mechanic at Temple Bar Resort on
Lake Mead, Arizona for two years, he also worked for the State of
California, as a maintance man at Mitchell's Caverns, which is in the
mountains above Essex.  When his children asked why they moved so
much, he'd reply "I'm looking for a place where the wind don't blow;
got a good boss and you get paid twice a week".  Paul spent his last
years in Hinlkey, California with his wife, Thelma, of fifty-one
years.  He spent his retirement years doing the things he liked best,
gardening, selling Arkansas hardwood handles at a swap-meet (I think
this was his way of meeting and people, and telling and retelling some
of his stories, which was one of his favorite pastimes) and returning
to Arkansas every September to visit his brother, Sam.

Paul died on September 25, 1990 after a long battle with lung cancer,
he was predeceased by his son Paul Harley Hunter (August 15, 1940-June
26, 1990)
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