June 22, 2009 09:48 am
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Bill and Irene Wolf of Cleburne look forward to their 69th wedding anniversary on July 13. They’ve lived many places but insist Cleburne has always felt like home.
At 90, they agree that times weren’t easy when they started out.
He was paid 41 cents an hour. At her first teaching job at Sister Grove, she made $92.50 a month and spent $30 of her paycheck once on Christmas decorations for her classroom.
She made hot chocolate and baked apples on the school’s pot-bellied stove for hungry students.
And Bill worked hard, climbing from one job description to a better one.
Wolf was born June 8, 1919, near Farmersville in the Bethlehem community.
His parents, Grover Cleveland “G. C.” and Bertie Wolf, were farmers.
Bill attended a one-teacher union school, which taught first through sixth grades.
He liked school and enjoyed being with others because he was the only child of his parent’s marriage.
“I changed to Snow Hill School, between Farmersville and Blue Ridge. There were no school buses then, so we all walked. I remember when it was very cold or bad weather Dad would come with a horse for me to ride home,” he said.
Bill was always good at sports.
“I was proud when my dad made a baseball bat for me. I was proud of him for everything, really. I never heard him utter a curse word. He was a deacon at our church for over 25 years. In addition to farming, he was the community carpenter. Many times people paid him with food or produce from their farms, as times were hard during the Depression.”
Bill graduated from Farmersville High School in 1937 and immediately wanted to be independent.
“I rented a room in town and started to work at an auto supply store. I felt really good, making $1 a day. Back in high school I had worked at noon for a hamburger stand and got my lunch free, but this was a real, full-time job.”
Timing is important in their story.
As Irene Hawkins returned home to Princeton from the College of Industrial Arts — Texas Women’s University — Bill’s aunt, Della Watson, a friend of Irene’s family, planned a graduation party for her nephew.
“Della asked me to be Bill’s blind date,” Irene says. “It was a typical country party, and he and I went walking together. I liked him from the beginning and didn’t want to share him with anyone else.”
“Oh, I thought Irene was lovely,” Bill said. “She went back to college, and I used our family car to go see her every single weekend.”
After another year of college Irene was granted a provisional five-year teaching certificate and taught for the first time at Sister Grove between Princeton and Farmersville.
“I loved teaching from the start,” she said. “The school had seven grades, and I learned to group my 13 students so that I could cover everything each day. I boarded with a farm family, which cost $20 of my $92.50 monthly salary. I walked the mile to school.
“Others thought I shouldn’t have spent $30 of my own money on Christmas decorations for my students that first year. But they were so precious, and they had never had a real tree with decorations before. I bought yards and yards of tinsel roping — red and green — and huge paper folding bells. The windows were draped with the paper chains they had made. We had a gorgeous Christmas program, the first one that parents could remember there.”
But Miss Hawkins was about to change her name. Bill and Irene married July 13, 1940. She continued to teach at Sister Grove for three more years.
They rented two rooms from a family in a Farmersville home for $10 a month.
“We had our bed in the living room,” she said. “We had a kitchen and shared the bathroom with the family. We had a little stove, an icebox — not a refrigerator — a portable cabinet and a table with four chairs that matched. We paid the furniture out, $8 a month. Bill just made $12.50 a week. With that and my salary we always paid our bills.
After five years in teaching, Irene received her permanent elementary teaching certificate.
Years later she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Texas Wesleyan.
Bill began a career for the Santa Fe Railroad in Caldwell as a member of a communication work gang.
He made 86 cents an hour, more than twice his previous job’s pay of 41 cents an hour at Community Public Service, a power company at Farmersville.
“Oh, but I thought we had moved to the end of the world,” Irene said. “We moved into our apartment right after a storm, and every window was broken out. The environment at work for Bill was a different culture. We were relieved when he was transferred to Summerville as a division lineman’s helper. In Gainesville, he was assigned a 333-mile territory as a division lineman.”
While at Sanger Bill was drafted into the U.S. Army on Sept. 1, 1944, during World War II.
Irene taught for three weeks in Allen and then learned Bill would have engineer basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., and joined him there.
They lived in Waynesville, close to the base, and Irene taught high school math at the high school.
He reached Manila on April 13, 1945, after zigzagging for 31 days on the Pacific Ocean as one of the first passengers of the USS Gen. Blatchford.
When an announcement was made over a loud speaker that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died, Bill recalled that heads were bowed in sorrow because many of the young men, some barely 18, had known little about any other president.
“My civilian occupation qualified me for the General Engineer District with the U. S. Army,” he said. “In Manila, I was assigned a group of 175 Filipino laborers. We installed electrical equipment, tested and repaired panel boards, circuit breakers, outlet boxes, switch boxes and pull boxes. We hung the lighting fixtures and connected them to the wiring system and tested all of the wiring systems for continuity. This work was part of the rehabilitation of the Terminal and Commonwealth Buildings, and personnel living quarters.
“After 18 months I was assigned to work at the Manila Power & Light Company to replace power transmission lines from Manila to other sections. I also maintained the power equipment to Gen. MacArthur’s headquarters.”
Bill had previously operated a power car on the Santa Fe tracks and quickly saw that an army Jeep, with its tires half deflated, fit perfectly on the inside Interurban tracks in downtown Manila, guaranteeing a smooth ride.
He received an honorable discharge from the Armed Forces on Nov. 19, 1946, as a staff sergeant. Among his military awards were two Bronze Stars for the Asiatic Pacific Campaign and the Philippine Liberation.
He resumed his former civilian occupation with the Santa Fe Railroad in the communications department.
He worked on the installation of the microwave equipment that replaced previous land lines in the Dallas, Fort Worth and Cleburne offices.
The Wolfs lived in Kirbyville, where she taught one year. They moved to Cleburne from Brownwood in 1956.
Irene taught first grade at Coleman Elementary School in Cleburne for 24 years, from 1958 until her retirement in 1983, for a total career of 32 years.
Bill retired from the Santa Fe Railroad in 1980, after 38 years and four months of service.
They are members of Field Street Baptist Church and have made 13 mission trips.
They are previous members of the Satellite Camping Club.
They have one son, David, and his wife, Debra, who live in Cleburne. There are two grandchildren.
Looking back over the 72 years since they first met, they both responded quickly that it has been easy to find happiness together.
She said you have to have trust, thinking of the welfare of your husband or wife.
“Neither one of us ever dated anyone else,” he said with a smile. “My aunt, who set up our blind date, didn’t live to see our wedding. We’ll always be grateful for her.”
Larue Barnes may be reached at laruebarnes@yahoo.com.
This story was suggested by Debra Wolf
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Photos
Bill and Irene Wolf of Cleburne.