Dec. 30, 2006
Thomas Blaise Shepherd, Publisher
E. F. Blaise: click here to view
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Gene Blaise did stipulate in his will that his three grandsons were to be the beneficiaries of a $4,500 educational trust fund, of which Marie was sole trustee.
Gene Blaise's grandsons, D. E. (John) Blaise Jr. and Tommy, were abandoned by their father, Dudley E. Blaise Sr., a mining engineer, soon after Tommy's birth. They were reared by their mother, Clara Olive Snyder Blaise, who had to go to work outside the home while they were still infants in order to provide for them.
As a young man, John was disabled as a result of a brain tumor. He went missing at the age of 33 and died homeless at the age of 64. While homeless, he was neglected and abused by the operators of several Christian missions, where he occasionally was given overnight lodging, sometimes sleeping on the floor on cold winter nights. While staying at the missions, he also suffered from seizures, from falls, from physical abuse by other residents and and from neglect by mission administrators.
D.E. "John' Blaise Jr., who went by John Shepherd, the sirname of his stepfather, while attending Joplin High school, from where he graduated as honor student in 1955, was a captain in the ROTC, editor of his high school newspaper, and worked as a college lifeguard and radio newscaster while attending SWMS University in Springfield. He received a B.S. degree from University of Oklahoma.
While serving as a Spanish interpreter to the Adjutant General at Fort Bliss, Texas, Mr. Blaise complained to Army physicians that he was losing his hearing. Two years following his discharge, The Mayo Clinic removed a brain tumor, the cause of his hearing loss. During surgery he suffered a stroke, resulting in paralysis of facial and other nerves and in seizures, from which he suffered up until his death at the age of 64 at Cox Hospital, Springfield, Missouri in 2002, where he had been a patient for about ten days. He was homeless for 30 years.
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U.S. Army 1962
College Honor Student
died homeless.
D.E. Blaise Sr., E.F. Blaise
Clara Olive Snyder Blaise
Marie Howard Blaise
Dudley E. Blaise Sr. and Clara Olive Snyder were married at First Presbyterian Church in Joplin, Missouri in 1934. She afterwards transferred an inheritance of stocks into his name. Following the birth of two sons, Dudley Jr. and Thomas, Dudley abandoned Clara Olive and their two infant sons. He was later seen at a cocktail party in Houston, Texas in the company of another woman, a resident of Hollywood, California.
Although Dudley continued to list Clara Olive as his wife on government documents up until Clara Olive obtained a divorce on grounds of desertion in 1949, he did not provide for Clara Olive and the two sons (John and Tom) he sired by her in 1937 and 1938.
Following the 1949 divorce, Clara Olive married Charles M. Shepherd, treasurer and director of Empire District Electric Co., based in Missouri. Mr. Shepherd died by his own hand in May 1955.
D.E. "John" Blaise Jr. and Tom never in their lives received a birthday card, a letter or any gift from their father, who volunteered as a Mexico City Little League baseball coach to other boys, while earning a living as an engineer and executive for major Latin American based corporations.
When John, Tom and their mother went to their father's office in Mexico just before Christmas 1955, in hopes of meeting with their father, their father refused to see them.
Tom enrolled at University of Mexico in Mexico the following summer, then went to his father's home to meet his father. Although he had dinner with his father several times, after Tom left Mexico City, his father never wrote to him, nor did he answer Tom's letters. The following year, after completing two semesteers of college as an honor student, Tom enlisted in the United States Coast Guard.
Below: Tom (left) and John (Blaise) Shepherd, Joplin, Missouri 1951
Both altar boys at St. Philip's Episcopal Church. Leaders in church, school and community youth organizations.
Click on below photo for more.
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Eugene Frank Blaise (1878-1958) was president of the Farmer's National Bank of Tulsa, the Admiralty Zinc Company and the Cushing Refining and Gasoline Company of Tulsa. He was a founder and director of United Producers Pipeline Company of Fort Worth, of the Inland Refining Company, Drumright, Oklahoma, and of El Cedro Silver Mining Company at Guanajuato.
Blaise was a grandson of Hon. Ignace Hainer, Esq., lawyer, journalist and secretary to Hungarian Premier Lajos Batthyany and Gov. Lajos Kossuth during the Hungarian War for Independence (1848-49), during which he was for five months imprisoned by the Austrians, prior to arriving in America . Hainer served as a University of Missouri Professor of Modern Languages from 1856 until the beginning of the Civil War.
Blaise was a nephew of Hon. Bayard Taylor Hainer, Associate Supreme Court Justice of Oklahoma Territory and chief counsel for the Federal Trade Commission; and he was a nephew of Congressman Eugene Hainer. Blaise was also a nephew of Julius Caesar Hainer, professor of medical jurisprudence at St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons in St. Louis (now a part of Washington University).
In 1905, Eugene "Gene" Frank Blaise married Laura Greek Miller, daughter of Col. George W. Miller. They sired one son, Dudley E. Blaise (Sr.). Following a divorce, Greek married Chicago and Los Angeles land developer Richard C. Canterbury. Following, Canterbury's death, Greek continued as an independent real estate developer in Los Angeles County.
In 1924 Mr. Blaise married Marie Howard, a native of Missouri. Mr. Blaise was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church of Tulsa, where his ashes were placed.
Dudley E. Blaise Sr. was a mining engineer connected with the Admiralty Zinc Co. He was president of El Cedro Mining Company. He was also connected with the Patino Tin Company, LaPaz, Bolivia, with American Mining & Smelting Company of San Luis Potosi and Coatcoalcos, Vera Cruz, and with Celanesa de Mexico, S.A. At the time of his retirement in 1973, he was president of Drilmex, S.A. in Mexico City. He then moved to Houston, where he resided a few years prior to moving to Montgomery County, Texas, where he died on November 26, 1988.
Christopher Rhodes, attorney for the $1.8 million estate of Dudley's stepmother Marie Blaise, who died Sept. 1976, currently resides in Conrad, Montgomery County, Texas, where he continues to practice law. Rhodes and his wife and children were listed as sole beneficiaries of the $250, 000 estate of Marie's sister, Virginia Golden Howard, who was executrix of Marie Blaise's estate and who resided with Marie and who died 10 months after Marie died in the City of Houston, Harris County, Texas.
In a contest, attorney Rhodes was charged by her relatives with exercising undue influence on Virginia. A woman who was vice president of River Oaks Bank in Pasadena, Texas, also filed a contest, claiming she had been a 'companion' to Virginia prior to Virginia's death. In an out of court settlement, the bank officer was awarded a condominium on Westheimer Boulevard that Marie Blaise had purchased for herself and Virginia prior to their deaths. She then retired from the bank and vanished.
Interestingly, Marie Blaise had three checking accounts at River Oaks Bank at the time of her own death. Following Virginia's death, River Oaks Bank of Pasadena, Texas was named trustee of Marie Blaise's trusts, of which the First Church of Christ Scientists of Boston and the Theosophical Society in America of Wheaton, Illinois, were beneficiaries.
Clara Olive Snyder Blaise was granted a Missouri divorce from D. E. Blaise Sr. in November 1949, ten years after he deserted her and their two sons. At the time, D. E. Blaise Sr. was a missing person. He later, it was learned, via the State Department and the FBI, was residing in Bolivia, where he was employed by Patino Tin Company at an annual salary of $25,000, when he was ordered to pay Clara Olive child support for their two sons John (Dudley Jr.) and Tom, child support he failed to pay. Clara Olive died in 1976. Their son Dudley Jr. (John Shepherd) died in 2002. Their son Tom Shepherd is the sole survivor of the Blaise family.
John ~ Tom
Joplin-Carthage Times The Tulsa Law Journal
Wm. R. Thurston Jr. and Terry Lee Mills were arrested by Joplin police in July 1956 on a charge of robbery.
Ws Today Thurston is an insurance executive. Mills is a trustee for Kirk-of-the-Hills Presbyterian Church