Beloved Gus Lubbes

A beloved Muskogee resident died July 9th, 1926. With the passing of Gus Lubbes, the community lost one of its more storied residents.

Articles tell the following: Gus was nearly scalped, he mined for gold, he won and lost fortunes, he served near the Little Bighorn at the time of Custer's massacre, he married the same woman in two different locations and he met nearly every famous Westerner regardless of race. Oh, yes, he sailed around the world to boot. Some of this is probably true, but which parts and how much remains uncertain.

A 1922 history of Muskogee says that his name was William A. Lubbes. William is clearly in error because his tombstone says his first name was "Warner." This is an Anglicized spelling of the Germanic "Werner" that most likely was his true name. Gus is derived from Augustus. Various descendants argue that it was August or Augusta.

That same history says, "Gus was born on a sailing vessel on the Pacific Ocean on the 12th day of July, 1841." The author greatly garbled this story. Here are some of the facts about Gus.

In 1900, Gus reported his birth occurred in Holland in July 1843. His entries on the next two censuses suggest the 1843 birth date is more accurate. The census records say that his family's native language was Dutch and that he immigrated to the United States in 1845 or 1846.

A granddaughter said that he "was actually born in Rotterdam Holland on July 12, 1842." She claimed that Gus' mother died aboard ship, probably on the way to America.

The 1880 census reported him being born in Holstein, as were both of his parents. Holstein today is the part of peninsular Germany that borders Denmark. In the 1840's, it was both a member of the German Confederation and under the rule of the King of Denmark.

The 1880 census also opens up a chapter in Gus' life that he tried to shut out. Gus told an Oklahoma City reporter in 1925 that he arrived in Muskogee in 1878. Another article agrees with this date. Then Gus said he lived in Arkansas for several years.

This does not agree with the 1880 census. Augustus Lubbe (the enumerator omitted the "s" on his name) had a family in Jefferson County, Colorado that included a wife and two sons. It is unclear what happened to his wife. After moving to Indian Territory, reportedly before the census was taken, Gus has no contact with members of this family. Both sons moved to Oregon and live full lives.

Gus told reporters different versions of this story. He said he was on the battlefield in Wyoming Territory when General George Armstrong Custer was killed. Lubbes reportedly served with the command of Major Marcus Albert Reno who lost 40 of his 141 soldiers that day.

Recent analysis of records by the battlefield historian turned up no record of Gus. Maybe further research will show that Gus was somehow linked with the massacre. It may also be Gus' storytelling that was part of the charm that endeared him to so many neighbors.

Gus served as the head jailor for the United States Prison located downtown. A half dozen years into his service, charges were filed against him and the United States Marshal, Leo E. Bennett, for prisoner cruelty and misuse of blankets and food. The allegations were unfounded.

Changing times led to Gus resigning on April Fool's Day, 1907 as jailor. A year and a half later Governor Charles N. Haskell, a former Muskogee businessman, selected Gus to serve as a deputy warden during the construction of the new state's first prison near McAlester. Gus undertook the responsibility at age 65. He worked there for about a year, part of the time in full control following the resignation of the first warden.

It was the occasion of Gus' seventy-fifth birthday in 1916 that reminded residents of his contributions. He was given a gold watch in honor of his services to the community, too many to be listed here. During the oratory lauding Gus, N. A. Gibson proposed the formation of an Old Settlers Association in Gus' honor. Gus survived for another ten years, dying just three days short of his 85th birthday.

Pat Hurley's Muskogee Years

In these financially troubling times, Americans compare today's conditions with the waning days of the Hoover presidency when the stock market crashed. While President Hoover will forever be judged by his monetary policy, he is also remembered in this area for having chosen an Oklahoman to serve as his Secretary of War.

Patrick Jay Hurley was born on January 8, 1883 in the Choctaw Nation. His father eked out a living working as a laborer in the coalfield mines. When his father was not mining, which was often, he sharecropped a small plot of land. From and early age, Pat learned that working was necessary.

That diligence was also drilled into him when it came to education. There were no schools nearby for white students. He learned from his mother to read and write. On long walks with his mother, he also learned the power of observation. She stressed to him the value of education, too.

Pat answered the call for volunteers soon to be known as Rough Riders in 1898. Upon being discovered that he was only fifteen years old, he was sent home. Working for ranchers after his fling at military service left him unsatisfied. At last, Pat made up his mind to become a lawyer.

Pat moved to Muskogee and found work at C. W. Turner's ranch. Pat later described Clarence Turner as one of the finest frontier merchants he ever knew. Working near Muskogee led Pat to having an opportunity he had seen little of so far. This opportunity was the possibility of attending a regular school.

That school was the Indian college outside of Muskogee, today called Bacone College. Pat unfortunately knew he did not make enough money to pay tuition and necessary living expenses if he attended. Despite a positive interview with the head of the school, Pat returned to Turner's ranch. A couple of weeks later the head of the college drove his buggy out onto the prairie. Finally finding Pat, the dean offered Pat a job working for the school. Pat jumped at this early work-study opportunity.

Before classes and afterwards, Pat drove a wagon into Muskogee to fetch provisions for student meals. He also had responsibility for caring for the school's livestock. Though studies also required some of Pat's time, his ability of recalling what he read enabled him to participate in a number of extracurricular activities. He played football and baseball, sang in the school choir and served as the school's leading debater.

Pat's first school courses at the college covered educational studies to make up for his missing schooling as a youth. Then he began taking collegiate courses, finally graduating in 1905.

Pat remained in Muskogee by finding employment in the federal government's Indian Service. He worked as a clerk helping members of the Five Civilized Tribes obtain land being allotted them. During his second year in government service, he began "reading law." This was the proctoring method some used for learning to become lawyers.

Friends advise Pat that few who "read the law" became lawyers. The better way, he was told, was to obtain a law degree. In 1907, Pat left Muskogee in order to attend the Yale law school. He returned the following year, after graduation from Yale, and began practicing law in Tulsa.

Pat Hurley led a full life and enjoyed much success after his return to the new state. His service in President Hoover's cabinet was just one of his many accomplishments.

Wauhillau LaHay, reporter

Not every person who has called Muskogee "home" was born here. One such was Wauhillau LaHay. She was born in Claremore on July 17, 1896 to John Martin LaHay and Annie Russell, a native of Glasgow, Scotland.

Wauhillau is pronounced "wau-HILL-er." Her father named her "Eagle" in the Cherokee tongue because she was one-thirty-seconds by blood. The family included three older siblings.

They moved to Muskogee about 1907 because of greater opportunities for her father's legal practice. The family settled into a routine life that lasted but four years. Her father's sudden death of a heart attack at a relatively young age in 1911 ushered in many changes. One change was Wauhillau becoming a school reporter for the Muskogee Daily Phoenix at age fifteen.

Wauhillau then attended the Oklahoma A & M College where she continued her writing at the "O'Collegian," the school newspaper. She returned to Muskogee and, in 1927, briefly broke her writing career by working at Durnil Dry Goods store. This same year she was elected "Indian Queen" in Pawhuska.

Maybe it was her mother's stories of growing up in Scotland that instilled a sense of adventure in Wauhillau. She moved to Oklahoma City and began writing the society section for the Oklahoma City Times newspaper. When Prince William of Sweden traveled to Oklahoma City in November of the same year, the newspaper sent her to interview him. The world-traveling visitor to America was as handsome as the reporter was beautiful. Wauhillau gushed overwhelmingly, "Oooh, hello prince!" It was probably the last time she stood in awe of anyone.

It was the last days of the Roarin' 20's when America was optimistic. Wauhillau's editor approved her idea of reporting on getting her pilot's license. With newspaper funding her lessons, she became the "Times Flying Girl." Just months before the stock market crash in 1929, she flew back to her hometown to say "Hello Muskogee." Muskogee was that year's destination for the Annual Air Tour.

Wauhillau switched to radio broadcasting during the Great Depression. Her first job on radio was in Oklahoma City. Before too long she left Oklahoma and rarely returned professionally thereafter. She migrated west and then north where she wrote for the Chicago Sun newspaper. She broadcast in that town, too.

This pattern of migrating to larger towns led her to New York City. During the 1950's, Wauhillau modified her career by writing copy for advertising agencies there. In America's largest marketplace, she gave this hardheaded advice to career women. In "Advertising Age" in 1959, she told them to "find a nice man, marry him, have babies and shut up." Her quote is now in Bartlett's Quotations. Wauhillau married twice and had two sons by this time. She knew both the domestic life and the career world. Her earlier decision to leave a cruel second husband did not shake her belief in families.

The New York period was just a stepping-stone on her rise to the national stage. Wauhillau's recognition as a first class reporter came when she was employed as Scripps-Howard's White House correspondent. Her charm and wit that earned her one promotion after another in a long career also earned her a recommendation as a bridge partner for President Johnson's wife, Lady Bird Johnson. The breadth of her abilities enabled her to thrive in the worlds of both genders.

Wauhillau reached the top of the newspaper world when she became the first female president of the Washington Press Club. President Nixon's wife inaugurated her as such. Her service of club president, however, set the stage for her retirement.

Oklahoma regarded her life accomplishments highly. In 1977, the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame inducted Wauhillau LaHay into its circle of luminaries because of her contributions. She gladly returned because she believed in setting new goals for those entering into the journalism profession. In her acceptance, she fondly recalled her start at a daily newspaper and then further training at a college press.

As the years passed, her bond with Oklahoma strengthened in little ways, but significant ones. When she gave thought of her final resting place, she was clear about her wishes. Following her death in Colorado, she came back to the town of her youth to be buried beside her parents and siblings in Greenhill Cemetery. When you walk up to her grave, perhaps you will imagine her with pen and notepad in one hand and the other raised to ask a president a probing question. It is how she would have liked to be remembered.

Dub West's First Year as a Teacher

Many area residents know Dub West as a local historian without knowing much about his background. Here is part of the story of his early life before he arrived in Muskogee.

His parents were Adam Clark and Selena West. He was their first child. Though Texans for most of their lives, Dub was born in 1908 while his parents lived briefly in New Mexico.

Dub always went by the initials "C. W." Because his father often went by the name of Clark, the family referred to Dub by his middle initial. The "C." in Dub's name likely stood for Clark, but Dub always denied it. He perpetuated the use of Clark by giving it to his own son.

He spent most of his early life in the Texas panhandle where his father operated a furniture store or worked as a brick contractor in Floydada before the Great Depression wrecked so many careers and lives.

Dub graduated in 1930 from West Texas State Teachers College located in Canyon City. He and his young wife lived in a room on Fifth Avenue their last year in college. The rent was twenty dollars a month. Their room was in the floored attic with exposed rafters in the William Reid residence.

At the end of the summer, Dub began his teaching career in a rural schoolhouse in the Texas panhandle. The school's name and exact location is now lost. All that describes it is that it stood on prairie land along the Canadian River north of Amarillo.

One subject Dub taught was algebra. Yet, he found the school textbook more advanced than the one semester of algebra he studied in college. Therefore, he studied ahead each night in order to be a couple of lessons ahead of his two students, a boy and a girl. Dub was proud that these two told him at the end of the year that he was the best math teacher they ever had.

Kids usually become restive during a school day. Being cooped up in a single classroom was often over whelming. On fair weather days, however, Dub's students had a natural Texas outlet. After wolfing down their lunches, and sometimes during their meals, the children tried to out yell the prairie dogs that lived close by. Of course, the prairie dogs stood on the tops of their mounds and chattered more and more loudly.

Dub settled into the teaching routine well. So, too, did the students for the most part. As April Fool's Day approached, some of the children decided to test Dub one more time. At last, they decided to skip school on April Fool's Day. Being hesitant, one of the pupils approached their teacher and asked him what would he do.

His answer was firm. "I'll expel the student that cuts class," he said. Sensing a revolt near at hand, Dub proposed that if the students came to class and stayed until the noon bell, he would let all of them go on a picnic on the Canadian River during the afternoon. Both teacher and pupil enjoyed the picnic.

At the beginning of summer in 1931, Dub and his wife left the Canadian River school and returned to Floydada, Texas. Dub lived and worked with his parents until the following school year started. That summer, Dub purchased his first automobile, a Chevrolet.