The most treasured gift I’ve had in my life is a recording of my mother reviewing her life. I asked questions I wouldn’t have thought to ask if it wasn’t for a class I was taking on aging with an assignment to interview an older person about their life development. Mother was happy to help me out. During the interview we laughed, we cried. After her death the recording’s importance magnified many times over. I cannot adequately express my thanks to my brother, Bobby Dale, for updating the interview from tape to today’s technology.
Some excerpts from Mother’s recording about her life are included in this post. Her words are in italics. Three dots mean I skipped some of her words for coherence, that were repetitive, or not in order. I also left out ums, ahs, and other phonemes (small, meaningless speech). I added words that are in brackets to clarify.
Helen Anniece Hanks was the 4th live born child of Mattie “Mae” Meador and Aubrey E Hanks. She was born February 12, 1924 and was the first of her siblings to be born in Floydada, Texas. Her baby picture at about 6 months is below.
Mother spent a lot of time with her grandparents, Tobe and Minnie (Smith) Hanks. They also lived in Floydada.
I stayed with them two weeks, then come home a week. Then go back and stay a week. If I got to wanting to go home, they’d take me home. If I wanted to go back they came back and got me…I’d beg them, “Now I’m going home with you. I just wanted to come home and visit. Don’t go off and leave me.” And then they’d wait til I went to sleep and then go off and leave me. I’d get up and I’d cry and I’d be, oh, they didn’t really tell me the truth because I was under the impression they were going to take me back and I’d be so sad. And in an hour, after I got with all the kids, I’d be so glad they didn’t take me because I had playmates (chuckled).
Mother talked about staying at her grandparents’ hotel.
…We always ate at the table with the guests. We had to be very mannerly and very nice. There were a lot of things we got into that we weren’t supposed to get into. They had a Victrola and they had a record that had two songs on it. I’ve never forgotten those two songs. Another thing, we weren’t allowed to play anything but religious music on Sunday. We’d try to put towels at the bottom of the door. We’d do everything to shut that Victrola up. It was so big we couldn’t carry it around. We were determined we were going to play something besides religious records on Sunday. We got in a lot of trouble over that. They entertained the Stamps Quartette there several times in the hotel. They sang and my mother and daddy sang with the Stamps Quartette a few times.
At the age of thirteen Mother was in an automobile accident that broke her back and tore the skin off of her arm near the inner elbow. Skin from her hip was grafted onto her right arm and left a horrendous scar. As a child I noticed that people stared at her arm but it didn’t seem to bother her. Below she described the accident and aftermath. She and her sister, Laverne, and bunch of kids from another town had gone to a movie.
On the way home had a blow-out. The car turned over – I think eight times. But everybody else stayed in the car and they didn’t get hurt that bad. But I went out the first time it turned – it went into a ditch and across the field and I went out of the car. I don’t know if I fell out or jumped out. Nobody will ever know I guess. I scooted across the field and ditch and hung up and twisted around and around in a barbed wire fence. I had a brain concussion and I was unconscious for a week. They wouldn’t even take me into a hospital because they said there’s no way I’d live. And so I did live. My back was broken and nobody knew that.
Three weeks after I gained consciousness I’d get up and walk around and I kept…fainting. My grandfather came over one night and I fainted at the supper table. He said, “This will never do.” He went down and yelled at the doctor a while about it but I don’t know if the doctor have ever been told because – just country doctors, then, you know, and they didn’t know that much. I didn’t x-ray or anything. I don’t know if they even had x-ray equipment in Floydada or not – don’t know that much about it.
It just broke my vertebras. But it made my back crooked…My grandfather took me to Plainview. They x-rayed and they found out it had grown back all crooked so they had to re-break it and reset it. First time I was in the hospital for – I think I was up there for six months and I wore a body cast for a year. It was just in and out and in and out for a couple of years.
Mother’s parents moved to New Mexico but she stayed in Floydada with her grandparents because she had more operations scheduled. Her last operation was on her arm at a hospital in Amarillo when she was fifteen. After the operation her mother planned on moving her to be with the family in New Mexico. Mother recalled:
So, Clifford [Warren] wrote and asked me if I wanted to get married [while she was in the Amarillo hospital]. That way they couldn’t make me go. I’d never thought that much about it but I wrote right back and said absolutely because I knew that was a way to stay. Never thought about really getting married. He talked about it several – I knew that they were moving – I told him that we’d be moving – that he’d have to come to New Mexico to see us. He said I won’t have to go anywhere – you’re staying here. I, you know, I hadn’t thought that much about it. Not really. The day that my mother came to get me – I was still in Amarillo because I had my operation in Amarillo. She came after me and he came up there and we run off and got married. Laughed. Then we took my mother back to Albuquerque and faced the wrath of my mother and my father.
…the first night of our marriage, after we took my mother to Albuquerque, we moved in with his parents in a four room house…At 7 o’clock the next morning when I woke up he was in the field. And I had to face another person that I didn’t know (laughed). Which was Mrs Warren. But Mrs Warren was the nicest person I think that ever in my life I have met.
Helen lived with her husband’s parents during the first years of her marriage. At the 1940 census there were four in the farm household: her in-laws, her husband, Clifford, and herself. The census indicated that Helen completed one year of high school and Clifford completed seven grades.
Below, L-R, are her son Bobby Dale, Helen, and her mother-in-law and father-in-law, Jane (Knowles) and Tom Warren. The photo was taken in 1942.
Mother was nineteen in the photo above with her husband, Clifford Warren, and two sons, Bobby Dale (top) and Jerry. The photo was taken in 1943.
The Warren family farm was located by Barwise and Sandhill, farm communities in Floyd County near Floydada. Tom Warren, Helen’s father-in-law, was the business man and manager while some of his sons and their wives worked the farm for several years in the 1940s. Helen not only cared for her children and helped her mother-in-law cook for family and hired help, she helped on the farm. I suspect this was true of other farmers’ wives. Helen helped irrigate, drove a tractor, hoed cotton, picked cotton, picked tomatoes, filled the truck with wheat, drove a combine, pulled cotton trailers to the gin, loaded and unloaded cotton.
Not too long after Helen’s father-in-law died in 1950 they lost the farm (could no longer rent it) because they couldn’t get bank loans for crops. They lost all of their farm equipment and everything else they owned to pay debt.
The photo below pictures Helen, in 1987, visiting the old farm land in Floyd County. She was delighted to be on the property that had been her life for fourteen years when she’d married.
Despite protests from her husband, Helen went to work to help dire family finances. She first worked for Bud Goen at the Goen Drug Store on California Street, downtown, in Floydada. She said of that experience:
I got a job as a soda clerk in a drug store. But I got the job in thirty minutes. I knew the guy at the drug store. He had – I’d known him all my life. We lived next door to each other for probably ten years when I was growing up. He had just opened a drug store that had a pharmacy and a soda fountain that served sandwiches for lunches. He did his own bar-b-q. His wife made home-made pies. He’d made the drug store all new. He’d built it on the corner. He was going to pay for this store in a certain amount of time. He was determined he was going to pay for this store in half the time his loan allowed for him to pay for this loan. I hated that man – before I got through working for him – I hated that man with a purple passion. But I’ll tell you, he was the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my life because he taught me how to work. Every ice cream cone had to be exactly. You’d get chewed out just as much for making too little ice cream as too much. Everything had to be exact. The sandwich stuff was measured out in a certain ounce cup and you put so much on each sandwich. You didn’t put anymore or any less. Nobody left that drugstore on any shift without accounting for each penny. I don’t mean a dollar – til every penny was accounted for. He had a pie cutting knife and you didn’t do anything else with that knife but cut pies. Every slice was absolutely uniform. I got to where I almost hated him but everybody had a job to do and everybody knew what their job was so nobody got overworked and nobody got underworked. Everybody got the same treatment.
Helen later worked for a laundry ironing shirts and cashiering. She worked at a hotel coffee shop when she decided to leave her birth town after living there for 33 years.
For the past seven years her life had been filled with loss of loved ones. In 1949 a younger brother tragically died from a gunshot wound. In 1950 she lost her father-in-law that, despite their differences, she admired. In 1952 she lost her beloved grandfather. The following year brought two more deaths: another older brother and, even more heartbreakingly, her mother. She grieved that she hadn’t been able to go see her before her death. In 1955, she lost her friend and mother-in-law and the sibling she was closest to, her older brother, Fred. He died in an airplane crash enmeshed in secrecy. She and Fred were the only two siblings that remained in Floydada after her mother and father moved to New Mexico. In 1957, her ally and support, her Aunt Amy, died from brain cancer. Mother had been her caregiver and suffered through the progression of the disease along side her.
In November 1957, Helen hadn’t heard from her husband who was working with a combine crew moving north. She didn’t have enough money to make ends meet and bills piled up. She called her family in New Mexico and her sister, Grace, and her brother, Billy, came to move her and her kids to Albuquerque.
My dad followed Mother to New Mexico and they were together, on and off, until Mother divorced him in 1963. Mother continued to struggle to support her family and worked hard to keep the family together.
I was working in a drug store and I made the remark one night to my kids and my sister. One of my sisters was at our house visiting. I said I’ve got to get us a career that makes enough money that I can make my kids a living. My husband told me when I left he would never ever pay a dime in child support. It wasn’t because of the kids. He thought that would be a way to get at me. I was coming up short for rent. So I decided to go to an electronics school… all three of my kids that were at home, that were there [Sue, Wayne, and Gail], thought that was a great idea that I go to school and my sister [Glenna] thought that was great too. I didn’t think that was great. I was just talking, flapping my mouth. I went down that night, drove around, and came home and told them that I couldn’t find it (laughing). I was so scared. I knew that I couldn’t learn electronics…Finally my sister took me down there. She went with me. Glenna, she’d already been in electronics. So she took me down there and we found it. And I got into electronics and I really really liked it.
So, in order to get that schooling, I worked at the drug store and went to school at night. After I got out of the school, then, I got a job for Gulton Electronics in Albuquerque but I still wasn’t making enough money to make ends meet. So, I got another real smart idea. I was always alone on weekends. The kids were gone. Everybody had somewhere to go on weekends and I was always there by myself. My youngest daughter, Gail, was usually there with me but she was in one bedroom and I … we didn’t spend that much time together. She liked to stay with my sister because my sister [Glenna] had a little girl her age.
I’d seen this ad in the paper a lot of times about a cocktail waitress on weekends. I didn’t drink. I didn’t have the remotest idea of what a cocktail waitress did and I didn’t know about a mixed drink. The only thing I knew about was a Tom Collins. I could say I want a Tom Collins (laughed) and I didn’t know what that was. But I went down there and talked to him and I told him that I had never done cocktail waitress work and I didn’t even drink. I didn’t know the first thing about it but I had four kids that I was going to lose if I didn’t make more money. He asked me if I had a pair of flat shoes in the car and he put me to work (laughed). That day I didn’t even go back home. He had me get a coke and sit down at the end of the counter. I had so many thoughts go through my head that it was crazy. I thought what am I getting into. This is nuts. I sat there from 6 o’clock til nine drinking a coke. When it’d get watered down he’d have me another coke (laughed). All I did was just look. I’d sit there and observe. He said they’re finally coming into the back station. I put you on the slow station so you could find out what’s going on here. That night, I had, I think, three or four customers. And I probably messed that up properly. Anyway, he told me to come back and I went back the next night.
The next thing I knew, I hadn’t been there very many weeks, til he put me on the front, the busiest station we had. It made the girl on that station so mad she threatened to kill me (laughed). It made me mad because I had been driving her to work and this lady knew where I lived and everything. She was really furious about it. The first thing I found out was she was overcharging the customers from a nickel to a dime for each drink. He told me I put you up there for a reason. You don’t mess around, you don’t drink, you don’t smoke, and you don’t mess around with customers. You just do your job and get it done. That’s why I put you on that busy station. I couldn’t handle that busy station. But when I’d get in a bind he’d come and help me out. Or he’d send one of the girls to help me out and I learned how to handle that busy station. But I found out that girl had a certain price. It’s not any wonder he got her off of that station. She had a different price for every customer in the house. And Bobby Uncer, from the Uncer Brothers, was one of our best customers. That’s the reason I always liked to watch him at the [car] races. He used to shame them into leaving me big tips. He’d say, “Leave that money in the plate. She needs it.” (Laughs)
The place where I worked found out about my second job and had a fit because I was working two jobs. We were doing government projects and they said that wasn’t good on my record to be working a second job. So they gave me overtime. We had gotten into a NASA contract at that time – a big NASA contract – and I had started working at one place, Gulton Electronics, then. We built the first ground [unclear] for Apollo in the early 1960s. So I didn’t have to cocktail waitress anymore but I was married to my job and loving every minute of it. And my kids were going wild. I never knew where they were.
But for the first time in my life I felt like a person. I was doing something that I wanted to do. But I still had a lot of guilt about my kids. They were real good about doing what they were supposed to do but, still, I wasn’t home like I had been for a lot of their life. Although I wasn’t working two jobs I was still working 15-16 hours a day. And for two years we worked on a contract without a day off except for Sunday. For a lot of hours. We put in a lot of overtime hours. But that was one of the first accomplishments in my life that I felt like I’d really really contributed to.
In 1966 Mother moved from New Mexico to California to marry her second husband, John Elliott. She was surprised with a “change of life” baby, Anniece. My sister, Gail, talked Mother into giving the baby Mother’s middle name. Mother said although she felt betrayed by the idea of another baby after her other children were mostly grown, Anniece was the joy of her life.
Descendants of Helen (Hanks) and John Elliott are below.
Mother and John divorced in July of 1973. They remained good friends. When married, they began their day by discussing their plans for the day. After they divorced, they continued that ritual by phone each morning at seven. John died on June 22, 1977 at the young age of 48. Mother grieved for a long time when the phone didn’t ring at 7am.
Click here for John Elliott’s “Find A Grave Memorial.”
CW, Helen’s son, took the photo below in May, 1982.
Mother didn’t see her sisters often but enjoyed when they were able to get together. They stayed in touch, too, by phone.
Except for Bobby Dale and Anniece, Mother’s adult children lived with her at one time or another while she was living in California. Her children were her priority. Photos of her with her kids all together are happy ones.
She was Jerry’s caretaker. She continued working in electronics and started her own business as a contractor with the electronics firm where she was previously an employee making speakers. This gave Jerry a job, too. Mother picked up the parts from the company. She and Jerry welded circuit boards and assembled parts. Mother then delivered the completed products back to the company.
I moved to California in 1984 after taking an early vested retirement from Bell. Mother, Jerry, my daughter Nicole, and I all lived together in Davis while I attended the University of California, Davis. I cannot imagine how I could have managed going to school full time and working part time without Mother being there for Nicole.
Mother died unexpectedly while I was attending graduate school at Sacramento State. I took her to the Davis General Hospital emergency room because she wasn’t feeling well and she was admitted to the hospital. While there she had a massive stroke that resulted in her death. We had talked about her longevity when we did her life span interview. Mother thought, in 1987, since she had lived four more years than the age when her mother had died, she might live as long as her dad who had lived to age 83. I had believed her. It wasn’t to be. She was only two weeks away from her 67th birthday when she died on January 29, 1991. We were all in shock and devastated. It was the worst time of my life.
Helen’s siblings that survived her all attended her funeral service held at the Davis Funeral Home Chapel. The photo below was taken at Helen’s home after her service. Betty Jean came from Houston, Texas. Grace, Glenna, Sonny and Billy drove from New Mexico. Glenna’s daughter drove in from San Francisco. Laverne drove with her daughters and additional family from Merced, California. Helen’s siblings and nieces, Recie Hornyak and Lola Ball, provided the food served after the funeral. My brothers, sisters, and I are forever grateful for their abundant giving.
In 1993 Helen’s children and grandchildren (those that were able to go) gathered at Bobby Dale’s and Kate’s home in Waldport, Oregon to celebrate Thanksgiving and to spread Mother’s ashes in the ocean.
The photo below was edited from the Albuquerque Journal with an article written by Joseph B Frazier about the Oregon coastline featuring the Yaquina Head Lighthouse. Mother’s ashes were scattered in the ocean near there.
Children of Helen and Clifford Warren
Bobby Dale Warren, 1st born child of Helen and Clifford, was born September 12, 1940, in Plainview, Texas. He had a baby picture taken but I’ve been unable to locate it.
Below are photos of Bobby Dale as a baby and a grade school picture.
Bobby Dale first married Marcella Nut in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They had two sons, Robert “Rob” Allen and Steven. Below are school pictures for Rob (L) and Steve (R).
Bobby Dale later married Kathryn “Kate” (Lancaster) Benting and gained a daughter, Meagean Benting.
Steve and Sue (Daron) Warren’s daughters, Crystal and Kailee, at Thanksgiving 1993.
Jerry Dean Warren, 2nd born child of Helen and Clifford, was born November 28, 1942 in Floydada, Texas. Below are his baby photo and a grade school picture.
Jerry served as a paratrooper in Viet Nam. He was paralyzed from the chest down, due an auto accident in 1963, just before he turned 21. He didn’t marry.
The left photo is Jerry (center) with his brothers, Bobby Dale (left) and Clifford Wayne (right). The right photo shows his mother and siblings gathered in his room at home: L-R Helen, Sue, and Bobby Dale. Jerry is in the back.
Jerry died from cancer on March 18, 1993.
Barbara “Sue” Warren, 3rd born child of Helen and Clifford, was born December 21, 1945. She first married Silverio “Joe” Armijo. Sue has one daughter, Nicole Maria Elena Armijo. Her middle name Maria was after her paternal grandmother, Maria Eva (Sandoval) Armijo, and Elena is Spanish for Helen, Nicole’s maternal grandmother.
Sue’s (my) baby pictures are below.
Below are Sue, daughter Nicole and Tim Gay and their son, Ian Gay Armijo on Mother’s Day, 2014.
Sue married a second time to Eddie Apodaca Patricio Garley. Their photo is below.
Clifford Wayne (CW) Warren, 4th born child of Helen and Clifford, was born September 7, 1948 in Floydada, Texas. His baby pictures are below.
CW first married Phyllis Day and they had a daughter, Sammie Irene Warren Stowe. Sammie was adopted by Phyllis’ second husband. The photo below was recently posted on facebook and Sammie gave permission to post. Sammie is with her daughter, Aubrey Nicole, and granddaughter, Riley Rae Fisher.
CW married, second, Ernestine “Tina” (Dilling) King. CW and Tina had two children: Tommie Mae and Drew Dean.
Linda Gail Warren, 5th and last born child of Helen and Clifford, was born February 4, 1952, in Floydada, Texas. Gail had a baby photo taken but I’ve been unable to locate it.
Gail had two daughters, Kimberly Jo Warren Harvey and Crystal “Cody” Harvey. The photo below is edited from a group picture taken the week Gail married Jim Harvey.
Kimberly Jo, born June 14, 1967 in Sacramento, California, gave Gail seven grandchildren: Bailey Michelle and Spencer Ray (twins), Donald Gene, Alic Ryan, Emily Anniece, and Weston and Jocelyn (twins). Gail and John Schmidt adopted Emily, Weston, and Jocelyn.
Crystal Cody, Gail’s second born child and Jim’s third born child, was born April 8, 1980 in Sacramento, California. Her older half siblings were Laurie and Jimmy. She is known as Cody to family and as Crystal to everyone else.
Below is Crystal Cody, about eighteen months, with her dad, Jim Harvey.
Crystal Cody gained a daughter when she married Joe Rodene. In addition to Celeste, Joe and Crystal have two sons, Nathan and Caleb.
Child of Helen and John Elliott
Anniece Lynn Elliott, 6th and youngest child of Helen and 4th and youngest child of John, was born February 7, 1967, in Sacramento, California. Anniece’s three Elliot half siblings are Diana, John Jr, and Diedre (aka Bug).
Anniece and Kimberly, Gail’s daughter, were 4 months apart in age and spent a lot of their childhoods together. Although Mother hadn’t imagined a child after her other children were grown, she delighted in Anniece. She mostly worked when raising her older children and she treasured being able to dedicate her time to Anniece.
Anniece married Tim Karr and they had three children: Hanna, Kaili, and Jackson. Tragically, Tim died at the young age of 44 from brain cancer.
Anniece later married Steve Yates.
I do not have Mother’s obituary, published in the Davis Enterprise, but the one below that I created and edited with a genealogy software program is far more complete .
Helen Anniece (Hanks) Elliott, 66, of Davis, California, died Tuesday, January 29, 1991.
Born on Tuesday, February 12, 1924, in Floydada, Texas, she was the daughter of the late Mae (Meador) and Aubrey Hanks, formerly of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Helen is survived by six children, Bob Warren and his wife Kate of Waldport, Oregon, Jerry Warren of Davis, California, Sue Armijo of Davis, California, CW Warren and his wife Tina of Salem, Oregon, Gail Harvey and her husband Jim of Citrus Heights, California, and Anniece Karr and her husband Tim of Sacramento, California; six siblings, Laverne Clark of Merced, California, Grace Frink and her husband Gene of Belen, New Mexico, Glenna Smith of Belen, New Mexico, Paul Hanks and his wife Mary of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Betty Jean Coker and her husband John of Houston, Texas, and Billy Hanks and his wife Dorothy of Willard, New Mexico; eleven grandchildren, Robert Warren, Steven Warren and his wife Sue, Kimberly Warren Harvey, Meagean Benting, Sammie Irene Warren Stowe, Tommie Mae Warren, Drew Warren, Nicole Armijo, Crystal Cody Harvey, Hanna Karr; four great grandchildren, Krystal Daron Warren, Spencer Harvey, Bailey Michelle Harvey, Kailee Warren, and Donald Gene Harvey; and numerous nieces and nephews.
Helen was preceded in death by her parents, three brothers, Earl, Fred, and Glenn; maternal grandparents, Isabell Price (Morrison) and James Albert Meador, formerly of Amarillo, Texas, and paternal grandparents, Elmus “Tobe” and Minnie Mae (Smith) Hanks, formerly of Floydada, Texas.
In loving memory of Mother, Mama, Mom, Granny Helen Anniece Hanks
Records located on Ancestry.com
1930 US Federal Census, Floydada, Floyd, Texas Precinct 1
1940 US Federal Census, Floyd County, Texas Precinct 1
Ancestry.com Families
California Birth Index, 1905 – 1995
California Death Index, 1940 – 1997
California Divorce Index, 1966 – 1984
Nevada Marriage Index, 1956 – 2005
Oregon Divorce Records, 1961 – 1985
Oregon, Marriage Index, 1946 – 2008
Texas Birth Certificates, 1903 – 1932
Texas Birth Index, 1903 – 1997
Texas Death Certificates, 1903 – 1982
Texas Death Index, 1903 – 2000
US City Directories, 1821 – 1989
US Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850 – 2010
US Phone and Address Directories, 1993 – 2002
US Public Records Index, Volume 1
US Public Records Index, Volume 2
US Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936 – 2007
US Social Security Death Index, 1935 – 2014
Web: Bernalillo County, New Mexico, Marriage Index, 1888 – 2011
Other Sources
Albuquerque Journal
Helen Hanks Warren Elliott’s “Life Span Interview,” recorded May 27, 1987.
Permissions
Thanks to my siblings, Bobby Dale, Clifford Wayne, Gail and Anniece for gathering photos for me to scan and share. Thanks also to cousins Lola Sanders Ball and Recie Sanders Hornyak for sharing their family photos.
Generations