Helen Mary Woodcox 1911-1999
Excerpts from a booklet prepared in 1984 by Carol Minson which gives glimpses into Helen's life.
Carol: Where did you live? Where were you born
Helen: I was born at Willow Island, Nebraska, on August 4, 1911. At home I am sure. The birth certificate will show the doctors name.
C: You were the first child, and Grammie and Jack (Helen's parents Macie and Jack Woodcox) lived in Willow Island. That's the first place they lived after they were married, wasn't it?
H: Yes, that's where he was working.
C: And what did he do?
H: This I don't know. He was working for a man by the name of "Cotton," but I don't know what he did. There was an elevator there.
My first recollections of that place was that I stepped on a nail that went through my foot. I can't remember the hurt or the pain. Dad came home and took, it must have been a match and put cotton on the end of it and dipped it in iodine and went up inside where that nail was. There never was any infection or anything.
There was a little boy, my age, whose name was BILL RALSTON and his mother
and dad were friends of ours. He and I evidently played together a lot. I
can't remember any more about that.
We moved to Lewellen (Nebraska) in 1915. There was a black Holstein cow that mother
and dad took because she was so productive. I can't remember anything
about the trip at all. I can remember we came into the BROWN'S and Mrs.
BROWN coming downstairs with ISABEL in her arms.
One time I was out in the barn with Dad, across the road...
C: Where you took me to show me the house you lived in near Lewellen?
H: Yes, where you took the pictures (Oct. 1983) one mile west of Lewellen, just off highway 30 on a little side road there.
One time Dad sent me to the house for a salt shaker to sprinkle salt on a bird's tail "so we could catch it" and mother was so mad at him.
And one time he sent me to the house for a match box and mother put cotton in
it and we found some little barn mice, and mother didn't like that.
And then one time, I fell through one of the holes that was in the ceiling of the barn, where they put the hay down for the animals into the manger...there was a manger there and I fell down there and scratched my back on a nail.|
Once I came home from school and there was a mother cow having a baby calf out where I went to pick up the cobs, and I ran to the house to get mother and she came out. She didn't want me to see that. Dad had gone up north to do something with cattle. That very same gate, I was trying to open that and I ran a sliver under my fingernail and when Dad came home he took his knife and cut it out.
We walked east up that road with the PODKONYAK kids and the MARSHALLS. The MARSHALLS had that burro; and the ROHLFING kids and sometime with the BROWN kids. They had a car and sometimes we rode with them.
C: How many grades were you in Lewellen school?
H: From the beginning, I went to the seventh grade. I went to the first grade, or maybe it was kindergarten, and the teacher was MRS. GAINSFORTH. Her husband was a dentist in Lewellen and her son still lives in Ogallala and I have wanted to get in touch with him, but I never have. He was the first boy that ever kissed me, when I was five years old. I can remember that!
Helen's parents histories: Elgin Woodcox
Macie Belle Hays