McCurtain Co. OK - Biography:  JAMES ALBERT DREHER

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Submitted by: Sue Webb Bodishbaugh    suebod@tampabay.rr.com
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JAMES ALBERT DREHER
August 16, 1915 – January 9, 2004

Listening to stories told by Uncle James Albert Dreher over the years gave 
us a glimpse into the fascinating world of life in early McCurtain County, 
Oklahoma. With his permission, I audiotaped, videotaped and took notes of 
our conversations. He claimed since he was the youngest child, he did not 
know or retain much family history, he hadn’t paid attention to it. But his 
remarkably detailed memory astounded everyone.

James loved nature, creatures big and small, wild and domesticated, all 
children, “funnin’,” life, and all its joys. He loved to fish and hunt, 
walk in the woods, and he loved to cook. His one wish was to live to be 100 
years old. Details of his stories might have escaped had I not captured them 
at the time. I have tried to clarify his exact words by placing my notes in 
brackets. I’m sure there are errors, both in his memory and my assembling of 
many years’ notes. As Uncle James said, “Give ‘em a mistake or two. Everybody 
likes to find a mistake somebody else made.” 

As you read of James’ life in his own words, I hope his charm comes through 
as genuine, modest and loving as he was. 

James Albert Dreher, youngest child of Pearl Edith Gibson and James Archie 
“Jim” Dreher, was born August 16, 1915, at the family home in Union Township, 
Sweet Home, Pulaski Co, Arkansas. Within two months, in October of that year, 
the family moved to McCurtain County, Oklahoma, where James grew up and went 
to school. This is his story.
						 * * *
I was born on August 16, 1915. August 16 is called Black Night of August. We 
always called it Black Cat Night cause the moon will never come up on 
August 16. That’s so!

Earliest Memory:

I was about four years old and I was bit in the head by a dog. My grandma, 
Catherine Octava [Booth] Gibson had a sister, Louisa. Looked like Louisa but 
they pronounced it lu-EYE-suh. So Louisa was my great-aunt. Grandma’s sister 
Louisa was married to a Thomas, Tom Thomas. [Louisa Booth Thomas] was real 
sick and they was in a covered wagon and came to our place in Union Grove, 
where both my grandmas were staying at the time. Our uncle [Tom Thomas], he 
drove the covered wagon and when they got there [Louisa] died within a few 
days and they buried her in Hayworth Cemetery. It was hoped the two grandmothers 
could heal [Louisa]. She was a Booth, Louisa Booth Thomas. So Louisa was our 
great-aunt, but our aunt, and our uncle, he drove the wagon. 

They had a black dog and they told me to leave the dog alone. I crawled under 
the porch where he was and got him by both feet. I will never forget that Grandma 
Gibson was staying with us at that time and she had a receipt and she’d make bovine 
salve in sticks, thumb-width and about eight inches long in tubes-like. She put it 
on a rag and stuck it to that bite. It’d stick like adhesive tape. They put that on 
and it didn’t scar too bad. An Indian doctor had taught grandma how to make it and 
she’d make it and heat it over the lamp and roll it and wrap it in tissue paper in 
tubes. It had beeswax and cow tallow in it. Then they’d put it on a piece of cloth 
and it’d stick to you. Mostly they killed any dog that bit a kid, but this was my 
fault and I had to take my medicine. Never got a whipping for it but I should have. 
I was always a biter. I bit anyone and everyone. I got a few whippings for it but 
I’d bite anybody to get the best of them.

I stuttered so bad til I was in the ninth grade that you couldn’t understand me. 
The teacher was subbing. She was going to college to be a teacher. Her daddy was 
our teacher. He got sick and he was out of school for two weeks and that two weeks 
she filled in. She told the kids there that it was real ugly to make fun of somebody 
that stuttered, that they couldn’t help it. She told me if I’d work with her, she’d 
help me. So after school and all, I did. If I was recitin’ or readin’ and I stuttered, 
you had to start all over again at the beginning. It wasn’t but a few weeks of that 
and I could see the difference myself. After she left I kept it up and that was it. 
I was cured. Now, if I get real mad I might stutter a little, but that’s all.
Pearlie’s name was Pearl, not Pearlie. Pearl Edith. Dad called her Pearlie and she 
called him Jim. Mother was Choctaw-Chickasha. My grandmother was Cherokee – dad’s 
mother. Dad was Cherokee on his mother’s side and a first-generation American on his 
father’s German side.

Hunting with dad in the Choctaw Nation:

One time I was 14 or 15 years old, my dad and I was out coon hunting about eight 
miles from the house. This was all the Choctaw Nation. We was getting coons to sell 
to make some money. We found this cemetery with David Crockett and his family over 
there, and the hanging tree and under it was the timbers where they’d built the gallows 
to hang the people. They built the gallows right by the cemetery so they didn’t have 
far to go. Hang ‘em and bury ‘em! David Crockett was Chief of the Indian Nation and he 
married a Garland, daughter of the Governor of Oklahoma. His son was Governor of the 
Choctaw Nation, Samuel Garland. Not the David Crockett that fought at the Alamo, but 
one of his relatives, maybe his son.

Grandparents:

My grandfather, dad’s dad, was Johann Georg or John George, was George Dreher. He was 
born in Germany. All I know is that the two brothers was coming across there and grandpa 
was four years old and his brother was eight. So anyway, his brother got sick and the 
eight year old, he died, coming across. There was a lot of them that died, and they 
dumped him overboard, buried him at sea. There was no other way to do it. Him [George] 
and his mother made it across. 

John George Dreher, my grandpa, he’s buried at Pine Grove in Sweet Home. He died when 
he was 84 years old. I wasn’t but four years old when Grandpa Dreher died and now I’m 
82. I plan on making100. What killed him, when he was a young man and plowing a new 
ground, the plow hit a root or a stump or something like that and the plow handle hit 
him in the side. They operated on him for that and he wore a truss. Eventually there, 
the inner lining spread and the intestines and everything came out and inflammation 
set in and that’s what killed him, Grandpa Dreher.

[Note: In 1854, 4 year old George Dreher of Hesse-Kassel Province of Germany, immigrated 
to the U.S. with his mother and 8-year old half-brother. George was a farmer in Ironton, 
Arkansas. He never learned to write, made “his mark” on all documents, but he did have 
an excellent command of English. He was such a stickler for English, he only allowed 
that tongue to be spoken in his home. This was often a source of disagreement with 
George’s Native American wife and her family, most of whom still spoke their native 
tongue as their primary language. George Dreher refused to teach “the German” to his 
children because, quoting from his grandfather, James Albert Dreher said George “wanted 
them to be Americans.”] 

My grandpa Dreher only allowed English to be spoken in the home. But sometimes, when 
he got mad, especially if the folks were there, the other folks, his wife’s kin, they’d 
all get to talking and it would be German, Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasha – it was some 
kind of noise, everyone talking in their own language. We kids would just get quiet and 
listen. I have often wondered if they did that on purpose, just to make us get quiet and 
settle down. It always worked. But Grandpa only allowed English in his house.

Grandpa George married my grandma, Mary Frances Thomas. Her daddy was [Henry R.] “Bucksnort” 
Thomas, in Arkansas. He was an alcoholic, Bucksnort was. He was the drunken Indian who came 
to Little Rock to visit Lou and Carrie and the family. One night he got drunk and stood in 
front of Louis’ store, where he shot and killed one of his brothers. After he fired, he 
kept right on going, he didn’t stop. He disappeared and was never heard from again. 
[Henry “Bucksnort” Thomas actually shot Henry Pendelton Thomas, in an argument regarding 
their children, first cousins who had married. The timing of the first of Louis Kayser’s 
stores, the one on Ironton Road, and the article regarding the shooting do not correlate. 
The killing happened many years before the Kayser family moved down from Buffalo, New York. 
There are articles regarding the shooting and hunt for Bucksnort Thomas in the Arkansas 
newspapers. These same articles mention George Dreher as a member of the hunting party. 
Bucksnort Thomas was never caught but was said to returne to Ironton often, to visit his 
family.]

Mary Frances Thomas and George Dreher married on May 11, 1871, at Bucksnort’s house. They 
settled in Ironton where they farmed cotton, corn, peanuts, and raised cattle, chickens 
and hogs. George peddled produce with a wagon and a team, within the little city of Little 
Rock. He made a good living, “Even though the town [of Little Rock] wasn’t too big.” 
[Between May 1971 and Jun 1900, Mary Frances (Thomas) and George Dreher had ten children, 
nine boys and one girl. Known are William, James Archie, Mary, Thomas, George, Charles, 
and Walter.]

Now, my grandmother on dad’s side, her dad helped the Cherokee Indians on the Trail of 
Tears when they moved from North Carolina. He was one of the government workers. Dad’s 
mother, her daddy. He married one of the Indians. Virgil, my Aunt Rose Ella [Gibson] 
Dobkins’ husband, he told us that grandma [Mary Frances Thomas Dreher] was getting a 
pension from her husband’s military service during the Civil War. Mary Frances Thomas 
Dreher was dad’s mother. She was half-Cherokee, her mother was fullblood. The 
Choctaw-Chickasha blood was from my mother, so I’m mixed three ways. “Chickama.” Ask 
them how they are and they replied, “chickama.” I still remember many Choctaw words. 
I went to school with the Indians and being part Indian, I learned some of the words 
there. [Uncle James always pronounced the word Chick-a-shay, never Chickasaw.]

Dad’s mother, Grandma Dreher, yeah, she was Mary Frances Thomas. She was stern. Some 
of the kids said she was mean but she was just strict. After grandpa died, she came to 
live with us in Oklahoma. She was strong of body and will and still made dad go outside 
his own house to smoke. Mom was just a girl when she married, so she still had stuff to 
learn, too. I remember grandma fussing at mom for not keeping her chickens properly 
penned in a coop and letting them wander the yard. 

Here’s a story:
Mom’s chickens had gotten into the outhouse and made a nest. She wasn’t very good with 
the chickens at first. It was during the winter and bitter cold. Grandma [Mary Frances 
Thomas] Dreher had to go to the outhouse. She was in a hurry to get back to the warm house 
and made a quick dash to the outhouse. She turned, threw up the back of her long skirt 
and backed into the outhouse. She got a real nasty surprise when a hen pecked her fanny. 
She hollered and screamed and danced around. Then she got mad. We kids were witness to 
this scene and her screaming and doing a stomp dance. We hid and laughed ‘til we cried. 
From then on, each time Grandma disciplined us and we were mad at her, we’d hide and tell 
each other the outhouse story. That made us feel better. If we was at church and bored, 
one of us could look at the other and whisper, “Chickens,” and get the other going to 
where mom or dad would have to take them outside, they’d be giggling and laughing and 
couldn’t hold it in, and they got in trouble. Sometimes I could just look at my sister 
and make my eyes big like I was going to say it and she’d say, “No,” like, don’t say that 
word. And she’d look away and not look back at me, so she wouldn’t get in trouble. We was 
grown and we’d get together and shake hands, adults now, and one of us would say, “Remember 
the chickens?” 

Grandma Dreher taught my sister Lou how to sew, cook, quilt, can, and how to be a wife. 
Lou followed her around all day, helping her. Grandma watched us kids while mom helped 
out dad in the fields. Lou named her daughter after grandma. That was Vivian Frances Kayser. 
In 1929, grandma was still in excellent health and working hard, living with us in Oklahoma. 
Our whole family has always had good teeth and Grandma Dreher had all her teeth good and 
strong until she was 79 years old. She slipped on ice on the back porch, fell and broke a 
tooth. She claimed her Native American heritage gave her strength of body and strong, 
healthy teeth. Her children all remember how proud she was that it was the only tooth 
problem she ever had in her life! At her death, she had no cavities and no missing teeth. 
Grandma wanted to move back to Arkansas to live with other relatives and got what they 
call now the Alzheimer’s disease or something like that. She’d wander away and get lost 
and they’d have to all go find her. She was a little thing then, real small. She carried 
a little doll with her she called her baby. She died in 1935. She and grandpa are both 
buried at Pine Grove Cemetery at Sweet Home. 

Now, on mother’s side, the Gibsons all came from Kentucky, Grandpa John Loyd Gibson. 
Grandpa’s wife, Grandma [Catherine Booth] Gibson, her brother John Booth was the one 
they claimed killed Abe. Abe Lincoln. But he wasn’t. The one who killed Abe was red-headed 
and [our John Booth] was black-headed. Grandma Gibson’s brother, John Booth, he got a 
password and put out [took off] in a car [train], I mean, to cross the river, and he got 
a passport and left and went to Texas and was down there til the late 1860s. Every John 
Booth in the country was caught and held up, investigated. Even after the hanging [of the 
criminals caught]. And he got sick there and thought he was going to die and he told them 
he wasn’t the one that killed Abe. He said, if they’ll check my bones, my leg and my s
houlder there, the collar bone, they was broke, and they can find out I’m not the one 
that did it cause it’s the wrong leg. [John Wilkes Booth had broken the other leg.] So 
the reporters, the local and federal law men, they got to houndin’ him a bit and he come 
up here between Talahane and Oklahoma City someplace and stayed there and he passed away 
[in Oklahoma]. So they [the government] went ahead and dug him up after he was buried, 
and it was the right leg. What I mean is, it was the correct leg and the shoulder was 
broke when he was much younger, but that he wasn’t the right one, the one that killed 
Abe. He wasn’t the one. He wasn’t John Wilkes Booth. He was red-headed. They were after 
a scapegoat. But the government dug up our grandma’s brother and checked his bones and 
then they buried him. But he wasn’t the one.

[James Albert Dreher was two months old in 1915 when Jim and Pearl Dreher pulled up stakes 
in Pulaski County, Arkansas and moved the family to McCurtain Co, Oklahoma where they both 
had family living, Gibson, Thomas, Carter and Bell families. This is where James Albert and 
his siblings grew up, went to school, church, farmed, worked, married, and where many are 
buried.] 

Mom and Dad:
James Archie, Jim, my dad, he had brothers. There was nine kids, eight boys and one girl, 
a sister. One boy was about five years old when he got into the fire that they used to 
cook the clothes to clean them, and before grandma [Mary Frances Thomas Dreher] could 
get to him, he got into that and burned. Burned him so bad it killed him. That left 
seven boys and one girl. I saw the girl, Mary, when I was in boot camp in San Diego, 
during World War II. 

About 1915, dad was about 40 years old and he was put in the Pulaski County Jail while 
they were still in Arkansas. He was suspected of being a “German sympathizer.” Probably 
just because of his name. This was before to World War I. He was held a few days and 
released when it was determined that dad couldn’t speak a lick of German, didn’t have 
a trace of “the German” [accent], and in fact, looked to maybe have “the Indian” in him!
Dad was 6’4” tall and lanky. He was dark, real dark, and always had a mustache. Mom 
called him Jim. Mom was 4’11” and tiny, but they were a team. Dad called her Pearlie. 
She was only 16 when dad married her. She always wore long skirts and dresses, with a 
big apron, and a bonnet - until the very end of her days. Back then, Indians were not 
always welcomed and being so poor and sharecropping didn’t help things. We were what 
you’d call the outcasts to a lot of folks, if you was Indian. Well, mom and dad both 
had black hair and black eyes but mom was really dark. She claimed she was “Black Dutch,” 
and she’d get so angry. For a long time she tried to deny her heritage but everyone knew. 
Later on, she just stopped fighting, accepted it and finally, she clung to it. 

When mom was about six months old, she got the whooping cough and nearly died. The 
White doctors had given her up for dead, so mom’s mother [Catherine Booth Gibson, of 
the Choctaw Nation], sent for a relative, Chief Flying Cloud, whom she always 
respectfully called Doctor Flying Cloud. He came from Oklahoma immediately and 
stayed with the family until mom was well. 

I’m not sure about the relationship of Dr. Flying Cloud. He wasn’t a real medical 
doctor, but an Indian doctor. He used herbs and plants and things but he always 
carried an old Bible with him. I thought for a while he was Grandma [Catherine Booth] 
Gibson’s brother, but he wasn’t. He was full blood Cherokee with a Medicine Man’s 
traditional and herbal knowledge and some White man’s medical knowledge. He could 
prescribe medicine but he mainly cured with herbs, prayers and chants. He always 
wore his full war bonnet, even though the Cherokee people didn’t wear war bonnets. 
This was a part of the Western or Plains Indian garb, but that could have been adopted 
by Dr. Flying Cloud as part of his blending in. Blending in was forced on a lot of us 
back then, whether you liked it or not. He was at our family celebrations and at our 
meal table many, many times. I recall sitting at the meal table with him. 
[Note: Pearl Gibson Dreher’s photograph of Dr. Flying Cloud is in the family possession 
and affirms all Uncle James stated. On the reverse of the photo, Pearl has written to 
her daughter Lou, to whom she once loaned the photo: “This is him, Doctor Flying Cloud. 
This is him, send it back the next post.” Some researchers believe this may be Edward 
Tarwater, Chief or Doctor Flying Cloud, who later became a wandering gospel minister. 
There are stories of the war bonnet being a gift from Sitting Bull, but nothing has 
been confirmed.] 

We didn’t have nothing but a nail keg to sit on til I got grown. I was the “last button 
on Gabe’s shirt.” That’s the last child born. I helped my daddy and worked with the dogs 
as a hazer. A hazer herded the cattle using dogs, kinda like sheep dogs, they’d run the 
cattle right up into the fence for you. If it got real hot, the dogs would go over and 
lay down under the truck while we finished. But if not, you better not touch the dogs, 
they guarded the truck. Friendly to us but not to strangers. We took care of our dogs. 
We fed them meat and they ate about five pounds a day between the two of them.

How dad treated a thief:
	One time a fella dad knew was stealing corn from the crib. He’d just go by and put 
his hand in the crib and take the ears of corn and put it in his sack. Dad knew what he was 
doing. He felt sorry for him and let it go til it got to be just too much. When the fella 
started feeding the corn to his mule, dad said that’s enough, he had to put a stop to it. 
He said he knew how to do it. He took an old bear trap and put it in the crib. One day we 
came home and there stood the old man. He evidently had been standing there for some four 
hours with his hand all swolled up like a cantalope, still caught in the trap. The man was 
bawlin’ and crying, he was hurtin’. He admitted to stealing dad’s corn and told him, if 
you’ll turn me loose, I’ll never be back. Dad did. He opened that bear trap up and released 
him and that was the end of the corn loss on the Dreher farm!

In 1917, we [the USA] were at war and it was rough. A lot of the young men were gone and 
the women and kids did a lot of mens’ work. Mom and dad sharecropped as the crops came in 
and jobs were available. We moved around a bit, Idabel, Broken Bow, Haworth. Mom had family 
here and nearby, the Gibsons, Bells and Thomas families.

[By January 21, 1920, Jim, Pearl and six children, Carrie, Lou, Ernest, Julia, Eunice and 
James, resided in McCurtain County, Oklahoma, where they sharecropped a farm.]

Memories of Uncle Will:
Dad’s oldest brother Will (Dreher), he was a schoolteacher. He had finished the sixth grade 
and could teach school. Back then you just learned more than you do now and six years of 
education was like a high school education is now. So after six years of school, he was 
the teacher. 
[Notes: William H. Dreher was born April 1874 in Ironton, Union Twp., Pulaski Co, Arkansas. 
October 1899, 25-year old Will married 23-year old Martha “Mattie” M. Unknown. They lived 
in Fouche Twp. in Pulaski County. In 1910, they lived in Union Twp. and farmed. In 1920, 
the couple is listed with three children: Louisa Cora, Bertha and Gladdis, Will managed a 
farm, had a home farm and the family lived very near to his parents and several brothers 
and their families. Will died July 29, 1960 in Little Rock, Arkansas.]

Uncle Tom Dreher:
	Dad’s brother, Tom Dreher, he is dead now. . . . Tom and Doad, his wife, everybody 
called her Doad, they got killed in a car wreck. Tom was a lot younger, a lot younger than 
dad. Tom’s son has a big dry goods store. The girl was working at the Red River in Texarkana. 
Tom and Doad had moved to Wisconsin, where they had the wreck. Clara, one of the other 
workers there with me at Red River, asked me one day about my name, Dreher. Said she knew 
and had worked for a Dreher who had a dry goods store and she told me about the wreck. I 
quit working at Red River in 1973.

Sister Carrie Dreher:
	My sister, Carrie Elizabeth Dreher, was born December 3, 1899, at Sweet Home. She 
went to school in Arkansas until we moved to Oklahoma, in 1916. On March 31, 1920, Carrie 
married Thomas Neudgen Worthington. We called him Neudge. He had been a neighbor and they 
grew up together. When he came back in 1919 they began to date seriously and fell in love. 
Neudge. His marker is on one side and my sister Carrie, hers is on the other side. She’s 
buried beside him but her marker is on this side of the same marker. Says: Thomas N. 
Worthington, Texas, Pvt. 343 Field Arty, 90 Div. Nov 20 1935. Then there are two more 
buried: Carrie, my oldest sister, and John Henry Worthington, their oldest boy, side by 
side, but there are no headstones. Wanda [their daughter] is gonna put one up. They had 
five children, Carrie and Neudge: John Henry Worthington, Helen Worthington, Wanda 
Worthington, Warren Worthington and Muriel Worthington. Helen married Gene R. Taylor 
and he is buried at Tom. Wanda married Don Jenkins. Muriel married a man named Dyer.

Sister Edna Dreher:
	I never knew my sister Edna Octava Dreher. She was born and died before I was born. 
She was born November 15, 1901 in Arkansas and died March 15, 1902. She was four months old 
when she died, and she’s buried at Primrose Methodist Cemetery in Sweet Home. She was named 
Octava for our grandma, mom’s mom, Catherine Octava Booth Gibson.

Sister Lou Vera Dreher:
My sister Carrie was out of school and helped mom. Lou was in her last year of school, the 
9th grade was then the last year. The next year she became postmistress for our town.
In February of 1924, Valentine’s Day, Lou bought Valentines for all us kids. She had one left 
over and sent it over to Little Rock to Louis [Kayser], who had been our neighbor when we 
lived there. She had been sweet on him back then but he was older and never paid her no 
never mind. There was a group of kids that were friends. Lou heard Louis was home from 
France, from World War I, and he was helping his mother run a store and a farm in Little 
Rock - and he wasn’t married. Louis came to Oklahoma to visit Lou, they courted back and 
forth until May of that year, when he took her to Little Rock and married her and they 
settled out over there. Lou was dark too. So was Julia. A couple of us, like me, were 
light, though. My skin is dark-like. I never got a sunburn in my life. But I got the 
light blue eyes from somewhere! 

Sister Julia Octava Dreher:
My sister Julia was born at home on April 3, 1909, in Union Twp., Sweet Home, Pulaski Co, 
Arkansas. She was seven years old in 1916 when we moved to Oklahoma. Julia had begun her 
woman’s cycles and was apparently hemorrhaging all the time. The family sent for the doctor, 
who didn’t want to operate on her because she was so young. She needed an operation, a D&C. 
This was in Oklahoma. It was a common procedure even then. Momma and daddy said no. So they 
took her to a doctor over in Little Rock and he said the same thing. My niece Vivian 
remembers my sister Lou saying the doctors wanted to do a hysterectomy on Julia but that 
meant Julia would never be able to have children. The doctors said, “You’ll never be able 
to have children, to have a family,” so momma and daddy refused the surgery and took Julia 
home. She died two days later. Julia was a beautiful woman. She wanted to live. She just 
bled to death. I was very little the first time I was taken to Bis Byrum Cemetery [now Tom 
Cemetery]. That was when my sister passed away. Her marker reads: Julia Dreher, 1909-1926, 
Gone So Soon. The reason we used this grave yard [in Tom, Oklahoma], dad, after he saw all 
the grave yards through Arkansas and so on, at the funerals you had to dip the water out 
before you put the coffin down, there was that much water in the hole. I’ve seen them have 
to dip the water out and a man stand on each corner of the casket till you could put some 
dirt on to it, to hold it down. So dad picked Oklahoma to bury in. The land here is high 
and dry. You could dig a grave here and that red sand will be wet but there will not be water 
standing in it.
My dad said he remembered when their baby Lemuel died in 1905 in Arkansas. He was just a 
baby, my brother. That was before I was born. The weather had been stormy for weeks and 
the grave hole kept filling with water. Dad said two full-growed men had to stand on that 
baby’s coffin to keep it from floating up until enough soil and rocks could be shoveled 
into the grave to hold it down. The sight of that floating coffin tore mom’s heart out. 
That’s when dad searched the surrounding area and found land that was high and dry at Bis 
Byrum Cemetery in Tom. So Julia was the first of the family to be buried in Oklahoma.

Brother Ernest Dreher:
	Ernest James Dreher was born March 14 1907 at Sweet Home. He was nine when we moved 
to Oklahoma. I was about ten years old and Ernest did something – he was about fifteen years 
old or so, and dad whipped him. Dad got his razor strap and had Ernest’s head between his 
legs and his rear sticking out and razor strapped him. All of a sudden I saw dad’s face get 
real tight and he turned bright red and he went to hitting Ernest harder and directly then 
he turned [Ernest] loose and Ernest took off to the barn, running. We was on the porch and 
dad went on into the house and I followed dad, like a kid, curious, and just as he got to 
the door he called to mother, “Pearlie, get a piece of the tore up bed sheet so you can 
wrap my leg up.” “What’s the matter with you, Jim?” she asked. “Well, that damn boy, he 
bit a piece out of my leg.” Dad dropped his pants, it was just mom and dad and me in there. 
He dropped his pants and that piece of leg meat was just hanging by one side on the inside 
of his leg. It was a chunk of meat [Ernest] bit off. Mother took the bovine salve and the 
old bed sheet strips and wrapped it up and that hunk of meat stayed there. But that was 
the last whipping he ever gave Ernest. But he never told him, ever, that he took a plug 
out of his leg.
	[Note: On February 28, 1928, 21-year old Ernest Dreher married Frances Coleman. 
The son Carl Dreher was born in Oklahoma. In March 1932, their daughter Margaret was born 
in Oklahoma. Ernest was a mason, working for General Electric in their nuclear plant and 
then in Washington, D.C. as a guard. He was an avid golfer. Vivian, Louis and Edith remember 
visiting their grandparents when Ernest still lived in Oklahoma, close to his parents. 
They have special memories of Uncle Ernest, who was then just a young man himself, newly 
married. He would bring in watermelons from the field for a special treat for the kids 
when they visited.]

::Tom Cemetery--Tom OK
Sister Eunice May Dreher:
My sister Eunice May Dreher was born April 10, 1913 at home in Union Twp., Sweet Home, 
Pulaski Co, Arkansas. She was a wild one, full of life, and a hothead. Mom said, “Spirited.” 
I remember one time I threw a dipper of water on Eunice. The dipper was made of granite, 
stone. I was just a boy and just playing. I just threw the water and got her wet. I put 
the dipper back in that bucket and started running. Eunice picked up the dipper and hit me 
on the right arm and hit it so hard, she broke the bone. The big bone in the forearm. They 
got dad and dad took off from farming and checked my arm and said, “Yeah, it is broke.” He 
said there was no use to take me to the doctor. Mother went to the barn and got wood shingles 
and dad took four pieces of wood shingles and put them around my arm, then wrapped them with 
strips of old bed sheets we kept for rags. That arm healed right up just as straight as could 
be. Eunice and I both should have gotten a whipping for it, but we didn’t. 
Eunice married Albert Shamburger on November 9, 1938. His family wasn’t so hot on Eunice being 
Indian and all, so we weren’t too close after they married. Now, she was dark and had the [features], 
there wasn’t no way she could hide it. Late in life, Eunice got sugar [diabetes] and Alzheimer’s 
disease. Albert cared for her at home but it was hard, with them both being older. Her kids all 
pitched in to help with meals and shopping and all but one day they come to the house and found 
the door locked. Inside, Eunice and Albert were both dead, shot to death. They were sitting side 
by side in their twin recliners. Very odd. No fingerprints on the pistol. It was there on the 
table. No blood on the chairs they were sitting in, and their clothes had been changed and them 
positioned in the chairs. Very odd. It was said to be a murder-suicide but I don’t know. I went 
to the morgue to see her and her arms were black and blue with fingerprints-like, like where 
someone would hold you down. Eunice loved children and they all loved her. She was so good 
with kids. They were her life. The church was building a nursery to be named after her. This 
was before she died. Eunice and Albert are buried at Tom Cemetery also.

My niece, Vivian Kayser Bodishbaugh:
	One of mother’s favorite stories she always told was how, in the late 1920s her 
granddaughter, Vivian (Kayser) Bodishbaugh, who was just a tiny girl at the time, would come 
to Oklahoma to see them and visit. One day, mother was milking the cows and she was sitting 
on her low milking stool, just inside the fence. Vivian was on the other side of the fence 
watching her and she was leaning on the fence with her little hands holding onto the squares 
of the chicken wire, watching mother. Finally, Vivian asked, “Grandma, is that MILK coming 
out of those cows?” Mother said, “Yes, home, it sure is.” “Well,” says Vivian, with a pout, 
“I’m not gonna drink any more milk!” “Why?” asked mother. “Cause at home, our milk comes out 
of a bottle!” Mom always loved that milk story and would laugh and laugh when she told it.

Surviving the Depression:
All mom and dad’s kids had married and moved away and several had died. Only Eunice and I were 
at home in the late 1920s. Ernest and his family lived close and helped all they could. Everyone 
helped with the farming and everyone had ways to make spare money too. That’s the only way we 
survived the Depression. The family worked together. 
Dad and Ernest and I often hunted the Choctaw Nation for deer, sometimes black bear, rabbits, 
squirrels, but mostly possum. Possum hides tanned out to about 26” square and in the early 
1930s had a $2.00 value. Sometimes we ate possum meat and sold only the pelts. Sometimes we 
sold the entire animal. When we sold to the Black community of Oklahoma, those folks required 
that one paw be left on the pelt, to prove it was coon and not cat.
In 1929, October 1929, people sold stocks and it was called Black Thursday. The stock market 
crashed and all of a sudden, almost everyone was out of work, no jobs.
Near the cemetery was a way to the whiskey house. It was during Prohibition. A car would be 
loaded with wildcat whiskey, going to Oklahoma City, and if they knew they was coming, they’d 
stop you and take all the whiskey. They couldn’t say anything anyhow, ‘cause it was against 
the law anyway. So the next thing you know, them others would be making a run and they’d get 
him then. That went on til back in the early ‘30s.

School:
	I went to high school in Haworth, Oklahoma, finished there. Went through the eighth 
grade in Bokhoma, Oklahoma in the school there. That’s all it went to at that time. Eight 
grade was the last grade and then you graduated. Then I went to Haworth and finished the 
twelfth grade. Class of ’37. I went to school with a lot of Indians. One of my friends, 
Woodrow Wilson was his name. He was full blood Choctaw. He’s a high school teacher. I 
picked up some Indian words from him and knew some from home, from my mom and my grandparents. 
I had malarial fever in school and missed twenty days and lost twenty pounds. They only 
gave me quinine. That was my medicine. Because I’d missed so much school, I made one “F” 
in math and the teacher let me work extra and helped me. That was the only “F” I ever 
made. I had a C+ average over the four years.
	[Note: Up to 1998, Uncle James continually threw in an odd word in our conversations. 
I would have to say, “Excuse me?” He’d repeat the word and then say, “Sorry. That was 
Choctaw for [whatever].” I finally asked him how he remembered all these words and he said, 
“When you grow up with them, they just get stuck inside you somewhere and come out at the 
oddest times.”]

Timberland.
I sold my land on the Oklahoma side before I went into the service. I wished I hadn’t but when 
I came back, all the big shots had done gathered it up, timberland. So I checked on the 
Arkansas side and I could go to get some of that. Course, I got some in Oklahoma, too, now, 
but at the time I didn’t have any.

Memories of the Navy and World War II:
[I asked Uncle James why a landlubber from Arkansas would join the Navy. He replied:]
As long as that thing floats, you got a place to eat and sleep. Not like the other branches. 
I was in the Navy, the good side, the good guys. I was stationed at the Naval base at Honolulu 
for 17 ½ months and then I was put aboard a repair ship headed for Japan and I got through 
that. We was feeding 9,000 [people] chow at Honolulu every day and we caught a 5,000 draft 
one day and that was 14,000 men we was feeding for dinner that day. That’s the most I ever 
fed at one meal. We had 34 cooks and 22 bakers. Yeah, I was a belly-rubber. 
One time we was taking off and wasn’t told where we were going but we was headed for Japan 
and, do you know, I was working with my mess cooks getting some breakfast there and moving 
out when the loudspeaker came on and said that we had dropped the atomic bomb on Japan and 
well, we didn’t cook no breakfast! Everyone was too happy. Nearly everyone, including me, 
all, we’d got some bonded whiskey and we’d get some out of our locker where we kept it. I 
still had about that much in the bottle when I met the old man [commander] and he said, 
“Cook, what the hell are you doing with that?” I said, “Well, we’re having a little party.” 
And he said, “Okay. How about me having a little shot of that?” I said, “Okay.” He was just 
as happy to get a shot and celebrate as we was. 
When they said [Japan] had surrendered, we pulled back into the Philippines and a boy who’d 
come over from there and had been in the USA long enough to get his citizenship and joined 
the Navy and he was born in Luzon, so we called him Luzon. Luzon said that when we’d docked, 
we had a little time off and he said, “Let’s go down there. It’s been a long time since I’ve 
been here. There’s a place to eat here.” So we went down and they fixed us a big platter of 
meat and rice and everything and it tasted good. We eat that and got up and went out and got 
down the street a little piece and he kinda dropped behind. I was wondering what the world 
was going on and he said, I turned around to take a look and see what he was doing. He got 
down on his hands and knees and barked like a dog. We ate dog. He said, “You ate dog.” 
I said, “Well, it was the best damn dog I ever ate.”
  
Dad’s death:
[Note: The nieces and nephew recall Jim and Pearl’s house was clean and homey, the yard full 
of flowers. Larkspur, cosmos, verbenas, lilies, scarlet runner beans and sweet peas filled 
the yard with the colors Pearl loved. With all her chores, Pearl found time to garden and 
tend to her flowers. Pearl and Jim adored their grandchildren, so two-year old Louis Kayser, 
six-year old Edith Kayser and 15 year old Vivian Kayser were welcomed with open, loving arms. 
Edith and Louis recall one of their favorite memories of their grandfather is his placing 
each child on one of the two plow mules. Louis on one and Edith on the other, and letting 
them ride in the wagon.] 

Me and Mela lived next door to mom and dad. Louis [Kayser] brought my sister Lou and her 
children over to Tom, to spend time with mom and dad and to help mom with the canning. Lou 
was being treated by an Indian doctor for her varicose veins. Louis drove on back to Little 
Rock to run the store. One day, after the family had their lunch, dad went back to plow the 
peanut field. It was mid-day in July and hot in Oklahoma. The kids played while the women 
worked in the kitchen. Not long after, I noticed dad’s mule standing still in the field 
and sent Mela out to check. 
[My niece] Edith was playing on the back porch with the water bucket and everyone else was 
inside. Mela came running down the lane waving her hands in the air and screaming, “He’s 
dead! Grandpa’s dead!” Mela had found dad leaned against a tree, his hat hanging on a low 
branch. It is believed he felt ill or got too hot and stopped to sit in the shade and cool 
off. His mule stood patiently by the plow, still harnessed but not tethered. The doctors 
told me he died of heart failure but everyone else thinks it was sunstroke. It was July 11, 
1940, about 11:30 a.m. 

::Tom Cemetery--Tom OK
[Note: Edith Kayser Jester’s memories of that day, taken 11 Jan 2001.]
I vividly remember the day my Grandpa Dreher died and several events before and after 
his death. My mother Lou Vera Dreher Kayser, my sister Vivian Frances Kayser Bodishbaugh, 
my brother Louis Christian Kayser, Jr. and I were visiting mother’s parents in Oklahoma. 
My younger sister, Miriam Jeanne Kayser Coulehan was not born yet. In July 1941, my dad 
had brought us from Little Rock to Oklahoma to help Grandma Pearlie Edith Gibson Dreher 
with canning her garden vegetables. He left us there and drove back to Little Rock to 
run the grocery store, so we could have a nice, long visit. Mother wasn't well and during 
this time, she was being treated by an Indian doctor for her varicose veins. I was not 
quite six years old, my birthday was the next month (September). I had slipped out of the 
house to grandma's back porch. That was where the washbasin and the bucket of water was. 
It had a long-handled dipper made of stone. As a "city child," I was fascinated with the 
country method of getting a drink of well water and how cool it was. I was dipping the 
dipper into the water bucket and pouring it back into the bucket, just playing with 
water and amazed at the how it cascaded into the bucket. I heard my Uncle James (Dreher]'s 
first wife, Mela Cowling Dreher, yelling, screaming. I looked and she was running on the 
path through the woods between where they lived and Grandma and Grandpa's house. She was 
waiving her hands in the air and screaming at the top of her voice, "Grandpa's dead! 
Grandpa's dead!" I ran to the front room, where my mother, sister, little brother and 
grandmother were, to tell them that Aunt Mela was coming and that she said Grandpa was 
dead. They were sitting there, shelling black-eyed peas. They set the pans aside and ran 
through the house to the back porch to meet Aunt Mela. Later, I remember riding on the 
wagon with Grandpa's body wrapped to take him "into town." All of us were in the wagon 
and Uncle James was driving the mules, Mollie and Ned. Later I realized how sad this 
must have been for Uncle James. The funeral was a graveside tribute [at Tom Cemetery, 
Tom, OK], with a quartet from the church. I was impressed by the number of people who 
there, from way out in the country. I learned a new song that day, "Shall We Gather At 
The River." It was said that was Grandpa's favorite church song and the quartet sang it. 
It remains a favorite of mine, and when I hear it, the little graveyard scene of my 
grandfather's funeral replays in my memory. The other songs I remember sung were, "The 
Old Rugged Cross," and "Amazing Grace." I thought things were way too solemn when the 
music stopped. Grandpa had always said he wanted to die with his boots on, and he did. 
They found him sitting on the ground with his back against the tree trunk, with the 
water jug next to him. His hat hung from a low branch overhead. He had been plowing the 
peanut field next to the house and yard where Uncle James and Aunt Mela lived. It was 
August in Oklahoma, and it looked like he got too hot and sat down in the shade to cool 
off. Some say he had a sunstroke, others say he had a heart attack. The mules were still 
standing where he left them, untethered, so we think he sat down quickly. He still had 
his shoes on, so God granted his wish. And he was buried with his shoes on. Grandma saw 
to that! My memories of him are that he smiled a lot and seemed to love his grandchildren 
very much. We were given rides on the mules when he unhitched them each afternoon when 
he had finished his day's work. I always got to sit on Molly and Louis always sat on 
Ned. The farm was sold after Grandpa died and is now a part of the government lake that 
was built in McCurtain County. We have photographs of his gravestones."

[Note: Vivian Kayser Bodishbaugh’s memories of that day, taken 1980.]
Vivian doesn’t recall much of the day of her grandfather’s death but she does recall 
the night before her grandfather died. The family had sat gathered to sit on the porch 
in the cool of the evening. An owl hooted three times from somewhere off and Grandma 
Pearlie, a Native American, shuddered and said, "Oh, no. Someone's going to die 
tomorrow." She then explained to Vivian about the traditional belief of her people. 
That night, Vivian dreamed the owl came for her grandfather and she woke crying. Of 
the events of his death, she recalls the same as her sister and brother, but added 
that, since her grandpa was a very tall man, 6'4" or better, and caskets back then 
came in small, medium and large, the large was only 6' long, so they had to lay her 
grandpa on his side, with his knees bent, to fit him into the casket. Being a young 
girl, she thought that was a very uncomfortable position for her grandpa to have to 
sleep in forever, and she cried many tears over that. But she also recalled him 
always saying how he wanted to die with his shoes on and be buried with them on. He 
did and he was.  

::Tom Cemetery--Tom OK
Jim Dreher was buried the next day, July 12, 1940, by Wilson Funeral Home of Idabel, 
in Tom Cemetery, formerly known as Bis Byrum Cemetery, in Tom, McCurtain County, Oklahoma.

Making a Living:
I once had a tangle with the IRS when I claimed dog food as an exemption on my income 
taxes. The IRS came back and hassled me for some time, trying to tell me I couldn’t 
use it and I couldn’t do this and couldn’t do that. But I knew I couldn’t work without 
those dogs and they had to be healthy and fed good and I held out. One day the IRS lady 
came back and said, “It’s okay.”

I had land in Oklahoma and in Arkansas, in seven different places. At one time I had 400 
mama cows. They’re all sold now. I got older and couldn’t take care of them and mostly, I 
couldn’t get help. It’s hard to get good help. When we was going good, the wife drove the 
pick up truck to put the hay out and I rode in the back, putting the hay out for the cattle, 
and the dogs were with us. This was a beef cattle ranch, not a dairy farm. One time I took 
the cattle to sell and a man said there was two cows without white necks. He said they was 
red necks and that they wasn’t worth as much cause they had the red necks. I told him, well, 
it’s all or none. He bought them all.

One time my friend and his wife wanted me and my wife to go down to a bar nearby that was 
an Indian bar, so we went with our wives. When we walked in there was five Choctaws sitting 
there in a booth. I walked over and told them we was going to be here a while and I wanted 
them boys to take care of us. I asked them what they were drinking and they said Budweiser, 
so I bought five Buds and took ‘em to ‘um. Then they came over the where we were and said, 
“Ya’ll stay as long as you want. Nobody’s going to bother you.” And they didn’t.

I was working on a pipeline in Nebraska, taking a dozier and cleaning it off so they 
could get in there and in just a few days we had four foot of snow. It got 19 below zero 
and that ground was froze four feet down. We had to dig eight foot and it took jackhammers 
to get down past that solid ice. I’d only been out of the service a short time and I told 
the boss, I said, “I’m going back to Arkansas.”

Mother’s death:
[After Jim died, Pearl stayed on the farm for a while, going to church and making trips 
to visit her many grandchildren. She’d stay two or three days to a week or so, helping 
can, quilt or make quilt tops. For a time she lived in a rented home, then her son James 
Albert built her a new four-room home with the latest, most modern conveniences of the 
day. He recalled:] When mother died in August 1958, my nephew Louis Kayser had just been 
home from the Navy in January and had gone to a football game with my niece, his sister 
Edith and her husband, Doug Jester, so he couldn’t come [to the funeral], but Edith and 
Doug came down for the funeral. My sister’s eldest daughter, my niece Vivian (Kayser) 
Bodishbaugh, she drove my sister Lou [Lou Vera Dreher] Kayser over from their home in 
Little Rock to Oklahoma for the funeral.

In 1955, mom had a stroke and was taken to Prince Rest Home in Valliant, Oklahoma, near 
Haworth. On August 23, 1958, after three years of nursing home residence and several more 
strokes, she died peacefully in her sleep. She was ready to go. She had a list of all her 
things and who she wanted to get what. Everything was planned out. Her Funeral services 
were by Coffey Funeral Home in Idabel and she was buried in Bis Byrum Cemetery, beside 
dad and some of her kids, those who died in Oklahoma. After the funeral, the next day, 
we all, all us kids had agreed, so we all met up to go on over there [to the house], and 
we had the list. When we got there, [the house] had been cleaned out. Hardly nothin’ was 
left, no quilts, nothing. That was a sad thing. 

[Children of Pearl Edith Gibson and James Archie “Jim” Dreher were: Carrie Elizabeth 
Dreher, Edna Octava Dreher, Lou Vera Dreher, Lemuel Archie Dreher, Ernest James Dreher, 
Julia Octava Dreher, Eunice May Dreher, and James Albert Dreher.]  

::Tom Cemetery--Tom OK
Marie Franco Dreher:
	Marie Franco was born in Maui, Hawaii, raised there and married there. Her first 
child was born there. Her first husband was 33 years in the service before he retired. 
He’s buried in California in the soldier’s cemetery there. 
Marie and I both cook but we each have our preferences. I cook the beans and Marie cooks 
the corn bread. I cook hot cakes from scratch in a minute and tease Marie because she 
has to use the box [pre-mix]. I taught my niece Edith how to make gravy a long time ago, 
when she was first married. I used to make [gravy] in big drums in the Navy, three or 
four drums at a time. You know, I never burned a thing in my life!
The Franco family is related through marriage to royalty. One was a Communist and the 
other a Socialist. One was Madeira, and Miguel or St. Michael, were the two places in 
Portugal they came from. The Germans got mixed in with it. [Marie]’s not 100% Portugese. 
A [female] trapeze artist from Germany came [with a traveling circus troop] to Portugal 
and [the trapeze artist] fell in love with the Portugese man. They weren’t married, but 
they had twins, girls. Everybody was so poor. Nobody could afford to raise one, much 
less two children, so they divided them. The Portugese family took and raised one girl 
and the Germans raised the other. The trapeze artist was the German and the other one, 
the man, was the Portugese. But [the twins] had the name of the mother. So even at that 
point they were all Franco. They are actually half-German, half-Portugese. From then on 
they continued to marry Portugese. For the most part, they are Portugese. Marie remembers 
her grandmother, how she looked. She did not look Portugese. If she did it was only in 
size cause she was a tiny woman. Most are tiny. They are like the Spanish, most Portugese 
women are small. In general, they are not big people. Everybody in Portugal, all the 
people had a lot of Spanish blood. 
A couple of years ago Marie and I gave each other the clock [a beautiful seven-day, 
chiming grandfather clock], for Christmas. We went to Texarkana and bought it. It was 
made by Miller and has our names and the date, engraved on a plaque on it. We like the 
way it sounds.
[Marie Franco Dreher died 8 Dec 1999 at Foreman, Little River Co, Arkansas. She is 
buried at Tom Cemetery.]

*

The Unknown Santa of Foreman, Arkansas.
     
During the 1930s and 1940s, James Albert Dreher was employed with the school system 
of Foreman, Arkansas. He worked as a janitor and he drove the school bus for over ten 
years. It was during this time he became Santa to the children of Foreman. 
     
Some of Uncle James' former student bus riders have come forward with delightful 
memories. They assure us the students remember Uncle James well. They recalled him 
singing to the kids, sometimes in the Choctaw language. This was his favorite language 
and a sound they found fascinating and always quieted to. They recalled how kind he 
was to them, how he always sensed when they had problems or troubles and how he went 
out of his way to cheer them. Mostly, the children of Foreman remember Uncle James 
for Christmas. 

Each Christmas morning, students who rode Uncle James' bus, those who would not 
ordinarily have a Christmas, found a large box had mysteriously appeared on the front 
porch of their house. Inside were small gaily wrapped gifts, groceries, oranges, 
apples, candy, and nuts. Each box also contained a brand new pair of shoes for the 
bus-riding child. How did Santa know the size? No one knows.

The Christmas boxes remained the "Foreman Santa Claus Mystery" for many years. One 
year, several older students - perhaps ten or twelve years old - made the monumental 
decision that most children do at that age. Together they made a pact to stay up late 
or get up early Christmas morning and catch Santa in the act. 

Several children didn't make it but those too excited to sleep were awake, up and 
dressed, waiting for Santa long before the dawn. What they observed became a treasured 
secret among the children of the community for many years to come. Uncle James’ truck 
pulled up and James and Mela got out, got a box from the truck bed, carried it across 
the yard, and quietly set it down on the front porch. Some children remembered the 
sound of James and Mela's boots crunching in the icy morning snow. After the box was 
delivered, James and Mela turned and left just as quietly as they arrived – smiling, 
and sometimes holding hands. They got back into the truck and headed for the next 
house, where the children observed them repeat the pattern of Christmas box delivering.

The children never told their parents or Uncle James what they knew, fearing the gifts 
would cease. It was a secret the older children only whispered about. They knew who 
Santa Claus really was. When a little one was finally old enough to be entrusted with 
the secret of Foreman's real Santa, it was a mark of crossing the threshold into 
adulthood. 

Times were hard in the 1930s and 1940s in Foreman, a rural farm and ranch area with 
a hometown-type downtown we can only dream about today. Hard-hit by the Depression 
and the Dust Bowl, families with a pair of new shoes received a major financial 
windfall with this gift. The oranges, candy, sweets and small gifts were luxuries, 
often only seen at Christmas. 
     
Uncle James and Aunt Mela had one son, Billy Joe Dreher. Neither Aunt Mela nor 
Uncle James were large in stature, but baby Billy Joe was a big baby and he did 
not survive the birth. This is how Uncle James told the story:
”My son Billy Joe weighed over ten pounds and was 24" long. He was born dead in 
1939. He was so big. You didn't take a woman in labor to the hospital back then 
and we had to have the doctor come to the house. We had to meet him about four 
miles off from the house with a wagon and team to get him to where we was living 
at the time and he'd come as far as he could in his car. The river was swollen 
and you couldn't get the car across, so I'd meet him with the team there. And 
every day he'd come down to see Mela while she was a-laboring. This went on for 
many, many days. Billy's head was just too big. You couldn't do nothing for the 
hurting. It drove her crazy. When they put the forceps on and pulled him to try 
to get him out, they broke his neck and he was born dead. He's buried in Tom 
Cemetery in Tom, Oklahoma.”
     
Uncle James and Aunt Mela were unable to have more children, so they adopted the 
children of Foreman. Aunt Mela eventually lost her mind to her grief and had to be 
cared for. Uncle James hired people to come in, keep the house, and be with Aunt 
Mela. After she died, James married Mela's loving and gentle caregiver, Marie 
(Franco) Yeager.
     
In October 1997, after a reunion in Little Rock, the family caravanned cars south 
to Foreman, Arkansas and spent the day visiting with Uncle James and Aunt Marie. 
I teased him about his long white beard and resemblance to Santa. I could tell he 
was thinking of something and his blue eyes really did twinkle. 
     
In 2002, a family member ran into one of Uncle James' former bus students. 
She told the Santa Claus story and put us in touch with other students, who 
verified it. Now we understand that twinkle and the tug on his white beard. 
He was reminiscing! Uncle James told us many family stories and stories of 
his life, but he never said a word to anyone of this generous act of love and 
charity. Now we know. And now you know, Foreman, Arkansas.
*
     
::Tom Cemetery--Tom OK
James Albert Dreher died Friday morning, January 9, 2004, in the hospital at 
De Queen, Arkansas. He was 88 years old. He didn’t live to see 100 as he wished, 
but he packed a whole lot more living into those 88 years he did have. Graveside 
services were held at 2 p.m. on Monday, January 12, 2004. James was buried at 
Tom Cemetery, Tom, McCurtain Co, Oklahoma, near his parents, some siblings, his 
son, and his wives, Mela (Cowling) Dreher and Marie (Franco) Dreher.

Sue Webb Bodishbaugh