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Individual Record of Orbra Marion Hawkins
     The following record has been given by Bobby Marion Hawkins, the son of Orbra and Mammie Hawkins. Bobby is the Hawkins family geneologists and we give thanks for his many long hours in developing the Hawkins family history.
     Orbra Marion Hawkins was born on January 2, 1926 in Independence County Arkansas on his parent's farm in Logan Township about 7 miles north of the town of Newark. He was the third child of George Washington Hawkins and Rosie Lee Grizzle Hawkins. Orbra had an older brother, Vernon Durward Hawkins 13 years older, and an older sister, Lillie Martha Hawkins Jackson, just over 10 years older. His father was 44 and his mother 33 when he was born. Orbra was named after his mother's younger brother James Orbra Grizzle and his father's older brother Marion Hawkins.
     He grew up on the rural Arkansas hill farm where his parents lived off the crops, garden produce, and livestock they raised on the 40 acre farm. For cash money they raised cotton, sold eggs, and his father worked during the winter season for timber loggers. His parents had bought the hill farm in 1918 and lived on this farm plus another adjacent 40 acres that they added in 1940 for the rest of their lives. The home that the family lived in was a wooden structure built around the turn of the century. Church services were attended each Sunday at Center Grove Baptist Church, a 3-4 mile wagon ride northwest by dirt roads, where Rosie's distant relative Tolivoro Grizzle was a founding member. School was attended 1-2 miles to the south at the eight grade Logan schoolhouse, where for a time George served on the school board. There were several nearby neighbors as well as friends throughout the surrounding rural countryside. The Hawkins farmhouse faced a country lane, just across which was the Charlie Cook family with several young children who were Lillie's age and her friends. To the north lived the Earl Barber family with two boys and a girl about Vernon's age. In the 1920's and the 1930's the rural Arkansas countryside was much more heavily populated than at any other time period, with typically a family (with a large number of children) on every 40-80 acres. In later years during and after WW2 the countryside population would drop as people migrated to the cities for better paying factory jobs.
     George and Rosie had a stable and caring home life. Both had grown up in unstable homes, as George's mother died when he was a young boy(under 10 years old) and his father died before he finished the eighth grade, leaving George to live with his older brother Oliver Hawkins. Rosie's father died when she was 9 years old, leaving a wife and 4 children to depend upon charity of other relatives for 7 years until her mother remarried. George stated to Rosie when they bought their farm in 1918 that his father had sold a place in Tennessee when he started following the timber logging trade and through various moves across Illinois and Arkansas never owned his own place again, and that he intended for them to keep this place. George and Rosie never amassed a large amount of material welth but they gave to their children a lifelong Christian faith, disciplined work ethic, and a love of learning.
     Orbra to all accounts was an active, mischievous child(much like his grandson Michael today). His older brother Vernon showed him the ropes on how things were done in the country and his older sister Lillie provided a convenient target for pranks. His mother recalled one episode where she and Lillie were hanging sheets and other washing items out on the clothesline to dry, making a trip out to hang up a load then back in to do another load. In their absence Orbra would slip out and loosen the clothesline, letting it fall to the ground. Rosie and Lillie thought that the wind was blowing the clothesline down and would discuss how strong the wind was when they came back out. Orbra of course found this very amusing. Vernon had raised a cotton patch and bought a bicycle with the earnings as a teenager, which Orbra worked hard to learn to ride. Orbra first would pull the bicycle over to the farmhouse porch where he could climb onto the seat, then would push off the porch and ride south down the hill from the house, without pedaling as he was too short to reach the pedals from the seat. Once down to the bottom of the hill he would push it back up and do it again.
     As I listen to my father tell of these times as a youth in rural Arkansas they sound like happy years. There were endless activities on the self-sufficient farm to keep them busy each day, chores tending livestock and chickens, gardens and orchards to tend, cash crops of cotton and fields of hay to plow, plant, and harvest each year, and many other tasks like cutting firewood, drawing wellwater, wagon trips to town to sell produce and pickup supplies. There were family and friends to visit with on rest days, and plenty of hunting, fishing, and swimming to be done in the clear creeks and plentiful woods. These were also hard times in the late 1920's and throughout the 1930's as the Great Depression settled on the American economy. The lifestyle was also rugged with uncertain life spans in those days before medical advances like antibiotics and sophisticated surgeries.
     Orbra's older brother Vernon wanted an education beyond the eight grades offered in the local Logan school. He went to grades 9and 10 at another country school (Black River) 2-3 miles north. Vernon and his parents agreed that he could raise a patch of cotton of about 1-2 acres and use the harvest to purchase a bicycle to ride 7 miles each way to the town of newark to complete high school grades 11 and 12. Vernon did this and finished in May 1931, when Orbra was 4 years old. Vernon then got a teaching job at Logan school and was Orbra's teacher for the second grade! Vernon saved his teacher's pay and used it to go to college at the University of Arkansas in 1932-33, completing 2 years of Engineering school before running out of money and joining the CCC in Idaho for a year, then on to Arkansas Power and Light in Marion Arkansas near Memphis around 1935. Orbra grew up with Vernon off in the big world somewhere and paying regular visits every few months back home to see his folks, and of course idolized his big brother.
     Orbra's older sister Lillie also wanted an education and finished high school a few years after Vernon at Newark, then eventually attended college also and started a school teaching career. Eventually in the early 1950's in her late 30's she would complete her college degree at Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway, Arkansas.
     Orbra attended the Logan School for eight grades starting in 1930 at age 4, until 1938 when he moved onto high school at Newark. By this time school buses had come to the rural area so that the travel back and forth was not as difficult as for Vernon. He graduated in May 1942 at age 16 from high school. Orbra graduated from Newark with about 25 other young people that year. They included Enos and Eulos Nicholas, Tom Ed Woodruff, and many other townspeople.
     One family that Orbra was specially close to was the Stafford family. The Stafford family had about 6-8 children in it, including Kenneth, Vaughn, Hazel, Dempsey, Darrall, Pascoe, and Dorsey. Orbra was very good friends with Darrall. I have often heard Mrs. Stafford tell a story about the Stafford boys going over to visit Orbra one time. They got involved chasing a hog sow around a pen and making her jump over a feedtrough. Orbra suggested to Dorsey that he hide behind the trough, jump up and scare the hog when the others chased her back around again. Dorsey as the youngest did this and did not scare the sow too bad, in fact she plowed right over him, knocking the breath out of him. The Stafford boys had to take Dorsey home for the rest of the day. Tragically Darrall was struck by a car in downtown Newark at age 17 when riding a horse and was killed.
     Vernon married in June 1939 to Bernice Sullivan from Memphis. They lived at Marion for 2 more years, then in a leap of faith Vernon quit a steady job with AP&L in fall 1941 and they moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas so that Vernon could complete the last 2 years of engineering school for a college degree. Lillie joined them that year and they shared a rooming house apartment. In December 1941 as Vernon, Bernice and Lilie were sitting at their dining table they heard the reports of the Pearl Harbor attack and that America was in WW2.
     Lillie returned back to her parent's home at Newark after that fall semester of school and was living with her parents when a tragedy struck the family. On a windy day in the early spring 1942 a grease fire broke out as Rosie and Lillie were cooking, spread quickly to the papered walls of the old wooden farmhouse and burned the entire house. Rosie and Lillie were home alone and were able to save only one piece of furniture, a dresser. Everything else, food clothes, a lifetime of pictures and books, even lumber stacked on the porch for a possible room addition or new house, burned up. Orbra was in the last few months of his senior year of high school, Vernon was saving pennies through college, and George and Rosie had just bought an aditional 40 acres to the west which was not yet paid off. In conversations with my grandmother Rosie, she remembered vividly how the friends and neighbors came to their rescue with donations of clothes, food and other needed items. The family moved into an empty house a mile or so away, and George, Orbra and neighbors started in building a new house on the 40 acres just purchased to the west. By summer 1942 a white frame, tinroofed 4 room house plus adjoining well house was ready to move into. George would recall later that neighbor Earl Barber "was there when the first nail was drove and still there when the last nail was drove".
     Orbra wanted an education like his older brother and sister and joined Vernon and Bernice at the University of Arkansas in the fall of 1942 at age 16, where he studied engineering. He left the U of A after the fall semester, returned home briefly then signed up for sheet metal welding school at Little Rock Arkansas. World War II was ramping up for America and defence jobs were booming. As a young man Orbra could expect military service when he turned 18. The sheet metal school promised to find defense work for him upon completion of the several month training. Orbra traveled by train out to Portland, got rooms at the giant Van-Port worker dormitories and went to work as a sheet metal welder on the Liberty cargo shipyards. Orbra worked on a crew that built a particular room of the ship. There were about 12 ways active at once, so that they would spend several days on one ship on one way, complete it and move to the next ship down the line in a continuous manner. At one point the Kaiser shipyard was launching a Liberty ship every day or every other day.
     In January 1943 Orbra turned 17, with WW2 still raging and no clear sign of it ending ahead. Orbra knew that at age 18 the military draft would call him. An alternative to waiting for the draft was to go ahead and enlist at age 17, with the advantage he could choose to go into the Navy as an electrician's mate which would be in line with his career goals, rather than wait for the draft and possibly be sent to the infantry. Orbra wrote his parents from Portland and requested their permission to enlist in the Navy. Rosie related in later years that George read the letter through and at first said he would not sign the approval papers. After tossing and turning all night over it, and probably praying about it, the next morning George decided that at least in the Navy Orbra would have a bed to sleep in every night and signed the enlistment papers.
     Orbra came back to Newark for a brief visit and went into the Navy in the summer of 1943. A man from Cord by the name of Paul Anderson enlisted and went through boot camp at the same time. They were shipped by train back out west to San Diego where they completed six weeks of Navy boot camp. Orbra said in later years that he was in the beat shape of his life after boot camp, and that he could run a mile without getting out of breath. He signed up for electrician's school and came back east by train to St. Louis, rolling through Arkansas without any break to visit his folks. For three months he studied the Naval electrician's mate classes. Briefly he was hospitalized with an appendix flairup. After completion of the school he returned to Arkansas for a brief visit with his folks. Vernon had graduated in May 1943 with a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering from the U of A and was now in Washington D.C. working for the US Army Communications Command as a civilian. Lillie after returning home from Fayetteville in January 1942 had married A.B. Jackson and was living at Balch in Jackson County. Orbra spent a few days with his folks then traveled west again, this time Stockton California. After a few weeks waiting at a base at Stockton, he was assigned to a troop ship for transport to the South Pacific, a converted French passenger ship the Perseus. They left from pier 33 at the San Francisco waterfront wharf and steamed out under the Golden Gate Bridge. The passage went straight to Tulagi in the Solomon Islands, without any stop at Pearl. Orbra remembers that it was a very crowded ship and that the cooks worked 12 hours a day but could provide only 2 meals per day for each person. At Tulagi Orbra transferred onto a small torpedo net laying ship, the USS Chester. The ship had a crew of about 50 men and was 65 feet long. Orbra's assignment was electrician's mate which involved various repairs of small electric motors as well as care and repair of the main diesel/electric power plant.
     The tour of duty on the USS Chester extended from Orbra's arrival in the late 1943 until after the war's end in September 1945. The ship's purpose was to lay nets at harbors and around large ship anchorage's to block Japanese torpedoes from creating damage. The ship was in the Solomon Islands at Orbra's arrival, and at some point during this period one trip was made to Melbourne Australia for repairs where the crew went ashore and Orbra saw the land Down Under. Among other events in the shore leave he took a taxi ride in town, was called "Mate" by the cab driver, and returned with some Australian money in change. The ship followed the Allied forces advances toward the Marianas and Japan. At some point during this period Orbra had an appendix flare-up and elected to have surgery to remove it while on ship. He still has the scar from the surgery today. Most of the last year of the war was spent in the vicinity of Guam and Saipan where the US Pacific Fleet was headquartered while bombing Japan in preparation for invasion. Admiral Nimitz the Commander in Chief of Pacific Forces had moved his headquarters from Pearl to Guam. Orbra's ship was at Saipan when the war ended. The B-29 bomber Enola Gay took off from Saipan with the first nuclear bomb dropped on Japan.
     In September 1945 the war ended and the USS Chester was quickly sent back toward the States. The crew had encouraged the officers that the ship really needed to go to Pearl for repairs all during the war, and now that it was over the ship really did make a stop at Pearl. Orbra would relate later that he had the misfortune to lose his dog tag shortly before the arrival in Pearl and as a result he was denied shore leave. This was no doubt very disappointing to him! He recalls going to church services on the USS Pennsylvania, a big battlewagon that was in drydock at the time in Pearl. Next the ship continued on to the Los Angeles area, probably Long Beach where the USS Chester was going into dry dock for overhaul when Orbra left it about October 1945, after approximately 2 years service on the ship. Orbra now traveled east again by train, eventually to Millingto Naval Air Station near Memphis Tennessee where he was honorably discharged from the Navy in December 1945. He would be 20 years old in one month.
     For almost 4 years Orbra had been away from home with only occasional visits back to see his folks. He resolved to spend his life on the family farm after being away so long. He returned home of course to changes. Their old home had burned and been replaced in a different location. The old country lane which passed by on the east side of the old homesite had begun falling into disuse and the entrance to his parents home was now from the west side from Highway 122. Vernon had finished college and moved away to Washington D.C. from where he would only visit 1-2 weeks a year back to the Arkansas home. Lillie had married A.B. Jackson and moved to Balch, Arkansas in Jackson County and had a 3 year old daughter named Rosa Lea Jackson. George and Rosie were now aged 64 and 53. The countryside was changing with many families having left during the war years for defence jobs in far away big cities like Wichita or Los Angeles. There were many returning war veterans like Orbra to rural Arkansas who were trying to resume the rural lifestyles they knew before the big war.
     Orbra decided to go into farming on the family property as partners with his father. Shortly after his return he bought a used Allis-Chalmers farm tractor and implements from part of his war pay savings. They began the traditional subsistence farming with cotton row cropping for cash crops. In about 1947 Orbra bought an additional 40 acres from Kenneth and Vaughn Stafford located about 1 mile west of the family 80 acre farm, usually referred to as the "Walker Place". About 10-20 acres of the original 80 were terraced and planted as peach orchards. In about 1948 Orbra bought an Army surplus jeep which replaced the horsedrawn wagon or farm tractor as the main mode of transportation.
     Orbra was young and participated in the neighborhood social life. He began going to church at Pleasant Hill where the Staford boys went to church. Dorsey Stafford had dated one particularly attractive brunette named Mammie Brooks. Mammie had also dated Tudor Dugger of the local community. Orbra had dated Ida Mae McDoniel of the Pleasant Hill group and also Helen Douglas from up north of Pleasant Hill Church. One night at a social gathering at Dempsey Stafford's house Orbra gave Mammie a ride home from the social in his jeep, sometime in 1948. They began seeing each other regularly and November 15, 1949 they married. They married at Newport at the home of J.M. Hughes, then drove in the jeep through Izard County to Calico Rock where they spent a 2-3 day honeymoon at a small cottage near downtown Calico Rock. They drove back through Stone County including a drive up SugarLoaf Mountain south of White River, then back to the family farm. For the first month they lived with his parents while Orbra and George worked on a small 3 room house of their own north of his parent's home. The small house was designed to be converted later to a milkshed when they moved into bigger accommodations. This house turned out to be where Orbra and Mammie lived for the first 12 years of marriage.
     In July 1950 Orbra's Grandma Penny (Rosie's mother) died at age 78. On July 28, 1951 Orbra and Mammie's first child, a daughter named Brenda Fay, was born at Harris Hospital in Newport. During the early 1950's a big drought hit the north Arkansas area. Orbra began working part-time jobs around the Batesville/Newport area to supplement the farm income. For a time he worked for an electrician in Batesville, using his old Navy training. In August 1952 Orbra applied and hired on with the Missouri Pacific Railroad company as a maintenance of way welder, working with Mammie's brother Lloyd Brooks. The railroad work required Orbra to work away from the Newark area home for 5 days a week as part of a roving work gang which moved up and down the railroad repairing track. After 7 years back living on the family farm Orbra was to spend most of the next 22 years away from the farm at various work locations across Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Illinois. Orbra and Mammie agreed this was necessary to support their family. The old days of subsistence living on 40-80 acre farms was ending in rural Arkansas with the modernization and mechanization of farming.
     From 1952 to 1957 when Brenda entered the first grade of schol frequently Orbra and Mammie along with the children would travel to his work location during the week and return to their home near Newark on weekends. On November 7, 1953 a son named Bobby Marion Hawkins was born on a Saturday night at Harris Hospital in Newport. In 1957 Brenda entered first grade at Newark School. Mammie and children began staying at home during the week and Orbra commuted from his work location to Newark on weekends. Orbra and Mammie started married life attending church services on Sundays at Center Grove Baptist Church where his family had worshiped for many years, but switched in the mid 1950's to Newark Baptist Church where they still attend today (August 1994).
     In 1954 Orbra and Mammie bought their first new car, a brown 1954 Ford. In 1957 they traded for a 57 model Ford black and white 2 door car. In 1957 the family bought a Philco TV set and antenna and tuned in to the Memphis TV stations. A major new era of entertainment had begun!
     In 1956 Orbra and family along with George and Rosie drove from Newark to Washington D.C. to visit Vernon. This was a major trip in those days before interstate highways were completed. Vernon and Obra were to trade visits in alternate years through most of the late 1950's and 1960's. In 1958 Orbra and family along with Rosie and Rosa Lea Jackson traveled by passenger train to Washington D.C., in 1960 Orbra and family along with Rosie traveled in his 1959 Ford Fairlane 4 door car to Vernon's. On this trip the first signs of the major interstate highway system construction were seen.
     In June 1955 Mammie's father had died. In early June 1955 a surprise birthday party was held in the front yard of George and Rosie's home for George's 74th birthday. A large group of friends and neighbors turned out for the potluck dinner spread out under the trees on tables. In June 1957 George Hawkins died on the family farm at the age of 75. He had been over to the old homesite to tear down lumber from the old pole barn to use on a shed at their current home. Alton McDoniel and sons had brought over a horsedrawn wagon to haul the lumber with. When crossing the pasture branch toward the house George had a heart attack and fell off the wagon dead. The author well remembers as a small 3 year old the excitement and tears of this sad occasion. Neighbors rushed to support and aid Rosie. Uncle Vernon drove in from Washington for the funeral. Services were held at Newark Baptist Church and burial was at Blue Springs Cemetery at Newark.
     In spring 1961 Orbra and Mammie made the decision to build a new home. For 12 years they had lived in the temporary housing which had been intended to become a milk shed. Now there were 2 adults and 2 children, ages 10 and 8, sharing the one bedroom house. They chose Best Shell Homes to build a 24 by 38 foot frame house for $3800. The home was built as a "shell" with the outside completed and framing in place for rooms inside but no finish work done inside, no sheetrock, no plumbing, no electrical wiring, etc. Orbra chose a site halfway down the hillside between his parent's original home and their home. A workcrew came out and built the shell home in one week, Orbra and family moved their possessions down the hill to the new home and settled in. A "finishing process" began which was to take many years to add features to the house. Sheetrocking of all rooms was the first step. Then running water was added in about a year. In 1970 indoor toilet plumbing was added. In the 1970's all the sheetrock tape and bedding was finished and inside painting done, also all doors were hung. In the early 1980's a major addition was built on the back of the house by Orbra and Mammie along with adding central heat and air, using underground plenum circulation and an outdoor wood furnace for heating. In 1968 after 7 years of payments of $63.00 per month the original house mortgage was paid off and all future improvements were done on a pay as you go basis. Today they have a lovely and comfortable home.
     In November 1963 Mammie had a serious illness with a ruptured ovarian cyst. She underwent successful emergency surgery in St. Vincent's Hospital in Little Rock. The author well remembers a nervous day spent by Brenda as a 12 year old calling long distance to contact her father Orbra at his work location in Louisiana to tell him Mammie was in the hospital in critical condition, finally successfully reaching Uncle Loyd Brooks, who relayed the word to Orbra.
     In 1967 the railroad assigned permanent work locations for the welder crews. Orbra was assigned (based on seniority) in North Little Rock. He set up housekeeping on weekdays in an apartment in NLR and commuted home on weekends. He would continue this until fall 1974 when he would move to Newport as a welder helper.
     In May 1969 Brenda Hawkins graduated from highschool at Newark School. She wanted to follow in the family tradition and get an education at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. She had also developed a romantic relationship with a classmate at Newark School, Noel Bruce. Brenda went to the U of A in 1969-70 completing her freshman year majoring in Education. For the 1970-71 year Noel Bruce joined her on the U of A campus as an Architecture major. In December 1970 they married and set up housekeeping in a small house trailer (30 x 8 feet in size) in Fayetteville and commuted to school by walking 2 miles each way a day. Orbra was age 44, Mammie age 41, Brenda age 19, Noel age 18, and Bobby age 17. Brenda and Noel would live in Fayetteville until 1979, first attending and finishing college, then working in the Fayetteville area. In 1979 they would move back to newark.
     In May 1971 Bobby graduated from high school at Newark School. He also wanted to follow in the family tradition and get an education at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, in the field of Electrical Engineering, as Uncle Vernon had done. He first however worked summers at Little Rock at various student labor jobs while staying with his father Orbra at his apartment, and in 1971-72 and the summer of 1972 attended the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. In fall 1972 he transferred to Fayetteville where he stayed with Brenda and Noel in a trailer (larger now, 52x12 feet in size) for the 1972-73and 1973-74 school years, then worked in summers at Little Rock jobs and stayed with Orbra.
     In May 1973 Brenda Graduated with an accounting degree from the U of A. In May 1975 Bobby graduated with an electrical engineering degree from the U of A. In May 1977 Noel graduated with an architecture degree from the U of A and Bobby with a masters degree in electrical engineering from the U of A. Orbra's encouragement through the years to study and get an education had resulted in a strong and successful commitment by his children to finish college!
     Brenda and Noel found work in the Fayetteville area at professional jobs in their fields of training. Bobby found work in his field of semiconductors in Richardson, Texas and moved there in August 1976.
     In September 1977 Rosie Hawkins died at the age of 85. She was buried beside George Hawkins at Blue Springs Cemetery. She was loved dearly by her family and is still missed today. At her death her children Vernon was age 64, Lillie was age 61, and Orbra was age 51.
     In July 1978 Orbra and family began what was to be a series of long vacation travel trips as Orbra, Mammie, Brenda, and Bobby traveled by car from Newark to Canada, crossing Lake Erie, then to Niagara Falls, then across New York State to Gettysburg Pennsylvania on down to Washington D.C. for a visit with Vernon, then back across the states of Virginia and Tennessee to Newark. Vernon had retired from a 32 year career with the US Army in 1975 at age 62, then was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 1976.
     In August 1978 exciting news came to Orbra and Mammie as Brenda informed them she was pregnant with their first grandchild! Tragedy came in March 1979 when Kenneth Noel Bruce was born 2 months premature and died 10 days after birth from complications. He was buried at Macedonia Cemetery west of Newark. In the spring of 1979 Brenda and Noel made a decision to move from Fayetteville back to Newark to live. They set up housekeeping in the empty house that George and Rosie had lived in. Noel found work, first working for an architect in Batesville, then working at the AP&L construction of a power plant south of Newark, then as an independent contractor building and remodeling homes in the Independence County area. In September 1981 a second grandson, Jonathan Noal Bruce, was born healthy and alive. The author remembers the great joy that this family experienced at this event. In December 1984 a healthy granddaughter, Beth Rose Bruce, was added. Finally in Feburary 1989, another grandson, Michael Robert Bruce, came along.
     In June 1988, Orbra and Mammie's son, Bobby Hawkins, Married Amy Lane in Dallas, Texas and added 3 of Amy's children to the family, Kris Lane, Scott Lane, and Whit Lane. Later in October 1988 Kris was to marry James Marple. In February 1991 Kris and James had a daughter, Alyssa Marple, and in May 1993 another daughter, Hallie Marple.
     In November 1979 a surprise wedding anniversary party was held for Orbra and Mammie at the Newark Legion Hut. A large group of family and friends turned out to celebrate this happy occasion. In January 1988 Orbra retired from the railroad at age 62 after 35 years service. Finally he was back on the family farm to spend full-time doing the farm activities that he enjoys so much. Today he lives in active retirement with Mammie, making big gardens in the summer, playing checkers with friends and at tournaments (he has won the Arkansas State Checkers Tournament once), and helping raise his grandchildren with the same Christian faith, disciplined work ethic, and love of learning that his parents George and Rosie provided for him. Orbra is my father, I respect him and love him very much. God bless you Daddy!       By Bobby Marion Hawkins
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