Description:
Julian Stenish talks about growing up in Enid, Oklahoma, life during the great depression, and more.
Transcript:
Interviewer: Male Interviewer, possibly named Bob
Interviewee: Julian Stenish
Interview Date: 5/20/2007
Interview Location: Bradford Village, Edmond, OK
Male Interviewer: Okay, Julian. Would you tell us where you were born and then how you came to be in Oklahoma?
Julian Stenish: My life has been quite an experience in travel, which I may or may not have time to tell. My parents started, both in Enid, and were married in Enid, but the business opportunity that seemed to be the best at that time was mining for lead and zinc because World War I was close to happening. My father and a relative went in the business of taking old mines in the Joplin-Webb City-Pitcher area of Oklahoma and drawing them out because mines soon became a water flooding problem. My father thought he wanted to do that on his own, and he and my mother went to buy 160 acres that had, at one time, showed prospects of lead mining. That’s why we were in this little county seat town in Arkansas, Mountain Home, Arkansas. That’s why we were there at that point.
We then later, through accidental loss of my father when I was a baby, due to an accident that took his life, my mother and I went to Fredonia, Kansas, to be with her mother and that is where I lived at that point. At the age of six, almost seven, they wanted to start me in school in Enid because they later planned after they could settle their estate in Fredonia, oil moved to Enid. At that time, it was in late August. They sent me on ahead, pinning a note on my clothes for the conductor to keep an eye on me and be sure I changed trains at Beaumont on the way to Enid. Arriving at Enid late at night, probably 9:00, maybe 10:00, my Uncle Harry, whom I was to live with for several months until my parents came, met me at the station in a horse and buggy and took me to his farm on South Cleveland, which was in way out, on the bounds of the city limits. Now it’s close by, south of what’s now known as the Crossroad Mall. I may be wrong about that. It’s a mall there in Enid that runs west on Cleveland Street. One mile south of that quarter, he homesteaded. He didn’t make the run. He bought it later. That was to be his home.
MI: Could you tell us about your early years in Enid, your education and where you went to school, and some of the people you met?
JS: My earliest time was when I lived that four months with my grandfather. I went to a little country school called Sunny Slope. It bordered the western boundary of Vance Air Base. After that, when my folks came, I moved into town with them and I went to a school they called Jefferson. That is now part of the area that’s still a building there. It’s used as a kitchen for preparation of food for schoolchildren at that address. Then, my folks moved near on the west side of town. I went to Kenwood school. Kenwood was up on that boulevard there up off of Elm Street. That’s no longer there. I don’t know and I don’t remember, but Kenwood took me through the eighth grade and then into high school at Enid High School. I didn’t complete my high school. I stopped when my mother and my grandmother – the loss of her – took us to Texarkana, Texas, where I finished high school as a senior. In Enid, I still, even at this age, take the Enid paper and Enid has always been a dear, wonderful place for me to live. I’ve had an occupation. The employment was always good there. Friends, many of whom now are gone – it will always be dear in my heart, the city of Enid.
MI: Can you tell us a little about the adventure you had on the railroads after you left school?
JS: In the summertime while going to high school, and sometimes I carried it on into the winter when it didn’t interfere with my basketball, which I played there at Enid High, but there were two summers that I worked up at the Frisco Railway. I worked in what they called the yard office as a youngster, running errands and learning the trade. Someday I’d hoped to work for the railroad. During this time, I experienced people riding freight trains, and passenger trains for that matter, without paying for it, and after I had left the railroad, I wanted to make one more time to be on my own, to see some of the country, and I never was afforded a chance or didn’t have the money to do it.
I left Enid on what I call my - [pause]. I can’t remember. I had a name for that. I left Enid and rode a freight train to California, worked part time at a town near San Francisco, and later near the oil. One year that I was gone, I worked in San Francisco.
Many experiences for a young boy. I wasn’t a hobo. I was working all the time. I didn’t ever ask for a handout, but the experience that I had and being interviewed in a fashion by those people who, in their age of life, were out on the road. It was during the Depression, the “dirty thirties,” they called it in Oklahoma. The whole nation was in depression, and I was an unusual sight, a young boy eighteen years old, to people that had misfortune. They wanted to talk to some young person and left me answering a lot of inquiries about my life. I’ve often thought it would make a wonderful movie, the experience of older people and the youth that we had. They are problems that still happen today.
MI: So that was some of your experiences in the Depression. What else do you remember about the Great Depression, those years?
JS: Well, after I got back from my trip, I finally settled down. After a job or two, I landed a job with Eason Refining Company. They and Champlin Refining were on 26th Street, the same street, right on the eastern part of the city of Enid. I’d travelled for almost eleven years. The Depression was still hanging on in ’33 and ’34. The experience – I couldn’t understand it. I was young. I could understand this, though. Many people lost their homes, their farms, and it totally wrecked families because of unemployment. So many left Enid and northwest Oklahoma for California. I was fortunate. I managed to stay – I had a big job in those days. It was $190 a month and they furnished me a car to drive. I could use that for my personal use on weekends. I’ve seen farms sell for farm sales, people losing it, and I could go out not at my request, but some of the people I knew wanted me to experience the hardships that people endured during that time. To see a man and his wife and children losing everything they had, even canned goods they had prepared for the future, was a devastating thing. It never diminished from my mind the hardships that people went through during the Great Depression. We didn’t have government aid then. It was family for family. It was wonderful, the way people cared for themselves without money.
MI: Was it during this time that you met the woman that you would marry, who would become your wife?
JS: Well, I was always working and I didn’t feel comfortable, and I never did date girls. I was kind of an oddball I guess, in that respect. I finally met the young lady that was to be my wife for nearly 55 years. She was introduced to me by some of her relatives, and it all happened at a basketball game. I was playing what we called a town league in basketball, and I was playing for the DeCorset Cream Company team. She was a guest, and I was introduced to her that night, and I knew then who I wanted to be married to. We met at Longfellow’s there in the high school gymnasium there in Enid, Oklahoma, and had a wonderful marriage.
MI: Later on, you got affiliated with the George E. Faling company. Can you tell us about that?
JS: After the years with Eason, a fire prevented any further growth and barely kept us open for a while as a company. World War II came along, and I was drafted at that time. I had started working for the George Faling company, an Enid operation that proved to be a wonderful lifetime experience for me of 34 years in the office of that company. It was a wonderful way to raise a family. At that time, we adopted three children, middle-aged. I was, at that time, at George Faling, and my wife took that challenge. We were unable to have our own, so we adopted. It all worked out with God’s help.
We give Him all the credit in our life for what we have. I’m reading all the time that one of the things we’re short of in the world today is to love one another. I believe it’s either the 13th or the 15th – I think it’s the 13th chapter of John 31-35. (Note: The Bible verse Mr. Stenish is referring to is John 13:34.) “I give you a new commandment, to love one another like I love you. In this, you will be known as a disciple of Mine, who loved one another.” There is a great shortage of love in the world today, something we can all work forward to trying to make better by loving one another. How valuable it is for friends! I think back about how I could have never reached this point in my life without God’s help, of course, and those friends that He would introduce me to, to help me find employment and a good life. It all turned out to be great. We’re short on love. We’re short on communicating. We’re way behind with all our – like the way this visit with the library people, all these instruments now to record this, we still don’t communicate love with one another. Communication, I find, is needed, as well as remembering God’s promise that as we love Him, we love one another.
MI: So, the Church and Christianity have been very important in your life.
JS: Very, very important.
MI: Could you tell us how you got into that?
JS: Well, maybe. This is the low side of my life. I always thought that I could – I say I but I shouldn’t even use the word I. I should use the word “we.” My wife and I, we never had time, even though we were taken care of by God, we’d never taken the time to thank Him and become members of a church. He did touch us. There’s a song about He touched me. He touched us both, and we had a chance for the adoption of these children, and we had enough gumption to not to want to take our children as they grew up to church, but also to go with them. This brought us to the Lord. These children brought us, and we joined church in middle age. I was 45. My wife was 44. The change that it made in our life has been so wonderful that it’s just a different world when that happened. We’ve been active in the two churches that I’ve belonged to, both of us, at University Place Church in Enid, Oklahoma. It was a great change in our lives.
MI: Another thing that’s been important in your life has been sports. Can you tell us how you got involved in that?
JS: In those days, grade school was – so many of the boys that I knew didn’t go on to high school. At the eighth grade, they went to work. I went ahead and I give credit to sports for continuing. I played sports in grade school and in high school. That, later, paid quite a dividend for me because Mr. Faling was a great encouragement, and encouraging person, for the youth of the city of Enid, having gone to great expense to endorse the three baseball teams. There were twelve, fourteen, and sixteen-year olds. Being captain at that time, I was captain of the softball team the company had. I played first base and managed the club. Mr. Faling called me over and he was over three teams. We were fortunate to get the high school coach and Joe Record from Phillips for the middle age. I can’t think of the boy for the younger group.
MI: Dusty? Dusty Eevee?
JS: Dusty Eevee. Right, Bob.
MI: He was my coach.
JS: Dusty Eevee. That all was very important because even though I had good employment in the office there, this in addition became a strong point in my life of being closer to management through baseball with Mr. Faling as our owner. Looking forward to, even at my age, Major League Baseball, watching the Atlanta Braves play on TV, I always have something to look forward to. It keeps my attention. I’m keen about the trades that are made in baseball, trading players, trying out new ones, releasing those who don’t make the grade. It’s kept me – it’s one of the things that has kept me looking forward to what is to happen next in the baseball world.
MI: You’re also a fan of the OU football team, right?
JS: Oh, yes. I have nothing against OSU. It just happened that our company management – he did buy season tickets to OSU basketball and football, which I’ve used many times. But he was a great supporter of Bud Wilkinson in those days. He gave them – one year, he bought band uniforms for the OU band, and from that time on, we were very fortunate to have been treated so royally. Many times, I’ve ridden in the company plane to the OU football, and when Harold Holden, the pilot and my dear friend, would call Westheimer Field and he’d say, “Please have transportation for George Faling’s party for the ball game today,” and when we’d get there, here’s this big, red Oldsmobile waiting to take us to the door of the OU football game. It’s still great, but nothing like when Mr. Faling was living.
MI: Tell us a little about how you came to live here in Edmond at Bradford Village.
JS: When the time came when I’d lost my wife with cancer, and also my daughter, who was a schoolteacher, at the age of 31 and my wife was 83, I knew that I would be wanting to move where I could get proper care. At that time, we had the Oklahoma Christian Home, which is now Bradford Village. Due to some terrible mismanagement of finances, the company had to sell and I ended up here. I came here knowing that I would have great care the rest of my life here, and it’s working out, but not as good as if they had been able to hold on to it.
There’s a difference when people don’t have enough money to take them through life, which you see every day. They go on government aid. Bradford doesn’t have the management type business that takes care of people like that, but I don’t see them turning anybody away, so evidently they’ve worked out something to save people from being pushed out. At my retirement party, which will be a day after my birthday on the ninth of June, preparations were made for 140 people. Food will be furnished, and fellowship will reign throughout that afternoon. I don’t know whether we’re about through with this interview or not, but I’m most grateful to the folks at the Oklahoma City Public Library to have arranged for this little visit. I’m not too sharp, but I’ve tried to do my best in my relations. What’s different now – I’ll leave that message with you about God’s word about trying to love as He loved one another.
MI: You’ve shown that in your life. Would you tell us about what you’ve done every Christmas now for the past couple of years to show that kind of love?
JS: Since I’ve moved here, I’ve worked for – I’ve volunteered for cancer. There’s an office in Oklahoma City. They later transferred that office to Atlanta. I’ve helped with hospice for almost two years. Every year, the hungry, ill-treated people, those on unemployment, lots of our friends from Mexico – for years, Red Andrews, who was in the oil business, who was never a wealthy person but he was well-known for his great ways to put out fires in the early days when so many oil field fires were happening. He started a way to help those that needed help at Christmas. For years, I don’t know how, but I always wanted to help on that. The last two years, the Lord has given me strength, and I promise that if I’m able this Christmas to wind it up with my third time to help. I’m known as the Candy Man. I’m at the end of a long line. Usually around 10,000 come for candy and a good dinner on Christmas and gifts. I hand out candy and fruit at the end of the line as people leave. I hope that with God’s strength and love, I’ll be able to do that again this year.
MI: Well, Julian, we certainly hope you’ll be there again this year at the end of that line. We’re going to wrap up this interview now. I might just close with one more question. What do you think is the greatest change you’ve seen in your lifetime? You’ve lived almost 100 years now. What is the biggest change you think you’ve seen?
JS: I’m going right back to nearly what I’ve already said. The difference is the way we live. People are so much different now than they were then. I’m talking as a whole, as a world. The world becomes more difficult. God tells us not to be too wrapped up in things in the world, but to be thinking about the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, who gave His life on a cross for each one of us to have eternal life. There’s a story the other day I read. Have you ever been homesick for a place you’ve never been? I’m not homesick, but I know where I’m going to end up, and that’s where I would say I would be homesick when the time comes. Thank you, Bob Bish. You’re my good friend who’s interviewing for this tape today.
MI: Thank you, Julian.
JS: You’re sure more than welcome. Thank you.
MI: We appreciate it very much, both your time and your sharing these stories with us.
End of interview.