|
Milestones in Missouri History
Professor-Statesman Ignace Hainer
1820 - 1898
Professor Ignace
Hainer, Hungarian and American statesman, was removed from his post as professor
of modern languages at University of Missouri at the beginning of the Civil War
due to his firm opposition to slavery. Professor Hainer and his family
thus voluntarily removed themselves from the State of Missouri to the State of
Iowa (Decatur County), where he taught school, farmed, and served as U. S.
Postmaster and as a member of the United States Grand Jury.
Professor Hainer
had served as an adjutant general, a journalist, a lawyer and member of the
cabinet of Premier Batthyani and of Gov. Louis Kossuth during the 1848
Hungarian War for Independence, when the Hungarians sought freedom of the press
and freedom for the surfs. During the war, Hainer was, for five months,
imprisoned by the Austrians, with the aid of Russian troops, prior to immigrating
to America.
Professor
Hainer’s son, Eugene, was in 1896 elected to the U. S. Congress from Nebraska.
Professor
Hainer’s son, Julius, a graduate of Cornell University Law School (Class of 1885),
was appointed a professor of medical jurisprudence at St. Louis College of
Physicians and Surgeons. He previously taught mathematics, physics and
chemistry at Iowa State College.
Professor Ignace
Hainer’s son, Bayard T. Hainer, was (in 1898) appointed to the United States
Supreme Court, then as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma
Territory by President William McKinley.
When Oklahoma
became a state, Justice Hainer was appointed chief counsel to the Federal Trade
Commission and general counsel for the Stockyards Administration of the U.S
Department of Agriculture during the Coolidge and Harding Administrations).
Bayard T. Hainer
is the author of A Treatise on the Modern Law of Municipal Securities
(1898, reprinted in 2010 by Cornell University School of Law)
Professor Ignace
Hainer’s daughter, Ada Hainer Blaise, is a great grandmother of
journalist-social critic Thomas Mitchell Blaise Shepherd, Joplin,
Missouri native son.
Club Woman Rebekah Blair Hughes
Descendant of Confederate Governor
Claiborne Fox Jackson
(1917-2004)
Rebekah Blair
Hughes was born on November 8, 1917 in Carthage, Missouri. She was the daughter
of Rebekah Harris Blair and of Clay Cowgirl Blair Sr., one of the original
members of the Joplin Rotary Club and a publisher and co-owner of the Joplin
Globe. When she was a small child, she moved with her parents to Joplin.
She attended Joplin
public schools, graduating from Joplin High School in 1935. She spent her freshman and sophomore years
at Wellesley College and Monticello College and was graduated from the School
of Journalism at the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1939, where she
became affiliated with Kappa Kappa Gamma social sorority. Following her
graduation, she was hired as a journalist by the Joplin Globe. She also worked
as a journalist for the Green Bay [Wisconsin] Press-Gazette.
She married FBI agent Fred G. Hughes on
January 2, 1945. Following their
marriage, Mr. Hughes acquired a position with the Joplin Globe Publishing
Company, which he eventually headed as president and chairman until it was sold
to a syndicate.
Mrs. Hughes served as president of the Century
Club and Women of Rotary. She also served as a member of the board of directors
and secretary of the Joplin Public Library for 20 years.
She died Friday, January 9, 2004 at her home
in Joplin. A memorial service was held for her at First Presbyterian Church.
Burial was at Park Cemetery in Carthage.
NOTE: Rebekah
Blair Hughes was a direct descendant of Missouri Judge David Harris and of
Missouri Confederate [Pro-Slavery] Governor Clayborne Fox Jackson.
Her husband, Fred, and her two brothers,
attorney Clay Cowgirl Blair Jr. and Judge Charles David Blair, preceded her in
death. Her cousin, Charles Allen Blair, Joplin Globe advertising executive and
the father of Jean Gregg Blair Bowerman, also preceded her in death.
Her survivors included two daughters: Sally
Hughes Knowles and Mary Jane Hughes Nelson; four grandchildren: Gregory Hughes
Taylor, Matthew Sharp Taylor, Ty Nelson and Blair McKay Murray. Five nephews:
Clay Cowgill Blair III, Peter Blair (son of Carolyn Ball Blair and stepson of Cowgill
Blair Jr.), and Allen Blair of Kansas City; and Episcopal church lay reader and
gay and lesbian advocate Timothy Blair of Los Angeles, and postal
administrator Dan Blair of Washington, D.C.
Rebekah Blair Hughes is survived by one
niece, Ann Blair Dalby of Grosse Pointe
Farms, Michigan.
1878 ~ 1958
Hon. Thomas Mitchell Blaise
Shepherd
Educator ~Publisher ~ Author ~
Analyst ~ Social Critic
President ~ Joplin Council of Churches Youth Council
1955-56
Consultant ~ Ozark Gateway Regional Planning Commission
Founder- Director ~ Shepherd-Montessori Institute
The Shepherd-Widmark Center for Sane Living
Author: The
Investor’s Handbook on Mexico
Journalist John Snyder Shepherd
Sportsman ~ TV Producer ~
Lifeguard
1937 – 2002
Explosives
Heir George N. Spiva
real estate developer & artist
1873 – 1950
Producer-Director
of Charity Musical Revues
Fundraiser
for Various Medical Foundations
Victim of
Medical Malpractice at St. John’s
~ Betrayed by Her Physicians and by Her Lawyers ~
(1906–1976)
Clara
Olive Snyder Shepherd was born February 16, 1906 in Piqua, Ohio. She
was the daughter of Mabel Mitchell Snyder and John Abbott Benham Snyder, who
moved to the Joplin area in 1909 from Piqua, Ohio. Her father established and
operated the Galena Harrow Factory at Galena, Kansas in 1909, and the J.A. Snyder Transportation Company at Joplin in
1914, an interstate bus line serving Southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas.
He was also one of the founding members of the Joplin Rotary Club and the
Joplin Chamber of Commerce.
Mrs. Shepherd’s
mother, a native of Wellsville, New York, was an early-day member of the
Century Club.
Mrs. Shepherd
attended Joplin public schools, graduating from Joplin High School in 1924. She
attended National Park Seminary in Forest Glen, Maryland,
graduating in 1926, and the University of Kansas, where she was affiliated with
Pi Beta Phi sorority.
She married Dudley
E. Blaise at First Presbyterian Church on December 26, 1934. Mr. Blaise was a
mining engineer connected with the Admiralty Zinc Company of Picher, which his
father E. F. Blaise headed as president.
Following the sale
of Admiralty in 1936, the Blaises moved to Guanajuato, Gto., Mexico, where Mr.
Blaise served as president of El Cedro Silver Mining Company, a company jointly
owned by Clara Olive and Dudley, by Dudley’s father E. F. Blaise, by Dudley’s
stepfather R. C. Canterbury, by Joplin mining engineer Bill Stewart and by a
Mr. Young, a British mining engineer, a company later liquidated following a
lengthy strike by mine workers.
Following a
divorce from Mr. Blaise in 1949 on grounds of having deserted her and their two
sons ten years before, she married Charles M. Shepherd, director and treasurer
of the Empire District Electric Company of Joplin. Mr. Shepherd died during a
business trip to New York in 1955.
Prior to her
marriage to Mr. Shepherd, Clara Olive work as a civilian office employee at
Fort Crowder (during World War II), as a pass inspector at Spencer Chemical
Co., in Pittsburgh, Kansas, as an evening shift PBX board operator at Empire
District Electric Co.
Following World
War II, Clara Olive also worked as an office manager and medical assistant for
Dr. Sam Grantham. She produced and directed civic-sponsored musical revues
throughout the USA from 1946 to 1949.
Following her December 1949 marriage to Mr. Shepherd, she served in
various leadership capacities for the American Cancer Society, the Multiple Sclerosis
Foundation, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the American Arthritis
Foundation, and served as a member of the board of directors and executive
secretary of the Jasper County Heart Association. She served as president of
the Tri-State Writers Guild. Following Mr. Shepherd’s death in 1955, she sold
pianos and Hammond organs for Jenkins Music Company. She was also a piano and
organ teacher.
Clara Olive
Shepherd served a president of St. Margaret’s Guild and as a sponsor of the
Young Peoples’ Service League of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church. She was also a
member of First Presbyterian Church.
She was a great
granddaughter of Charles Merriman, Ashtabula, Ohio. Her father was a nephew of
Abbott L. Johnson, founder of the Warner Gear Company of Muncie, Indiana, and a
first cousin of Ray Prescott Johnson, founder of the Borg-Warner Corporation.
Her mother was a cousin of Helen Mitchell Frampton Black, whose
father-in-law, Van Lear Black Sr., owned the Baltimore Sun newspaper
enterprises and Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland.
Clara Olive Snyder
Shepherd died in 1976 at Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, following a knee
operation that left her unable to ever walk again. Graveside services were held
at Mount Hope Cemetery in Webb City, conducted by Parker Mortuary. She was
survived by two sons, John Snyder Blaise Shepherd (who eventually died homeless
of a seizure disorder) and Thomas Mitchell Blaise Shepherd, and by her cousin
Mrs. Barry (Margaret Johnson) Goldwater, Phoenix, Arizona.
Clara Oive
Shepherd was a victim of gross medical malpractice during orthopedic surgery
she underwent at St. John’s Hospital in 1962, which left her without a hip.
Because a group of well-connected Joplin physicians and lawyers failed to
adequately protect her interests, Mrs. Shepherd encumbered additional medical
complications, and unable to return to work, resultantly lost her home.
Although Ms. Shepherd sought damages of $25,000, she was awarded a mere $400 in
an out-of-court settlement arranged by attorneys without her approval.
Spencer, Scott & Dwyer was general counsel for St. John’s Medical Center.
Edward Farmer, Lloyd Roberts and Jack Fleischaker represented Mrs. Shepherd.
The surgeon who operated on Mrs. Shepherd was a Dr. Pipkin of Kansas City,
recommended by Dr. Scorse of Joplin. Dr. Scorse reportedly met Pipkin while
the two of them were patients in a psychiatric sanitarium. Dr. Scorse’s son
served as a Joplin police officer. Roberts’ son served as a city prosecutor.
Fleischaker’s son also served as a city prosecutor.
Joplin
Industrial Leader Joseph Newman
1936 - 2006
Joseph “Joe” Newman,
Joplin industrial leader, died on September 20, 2006 at National Health Care
Center in Joplin. Born April 26, 1936, in Enid, Oklahoma, he moved to Joplin in
1949, where his father, Sol Newman Jr. was general manager of Newman’s
Department Store, founded over 100 years ago by Sol Newman Sr. and his
brothers. He attended Joplin High School, graduating as valedictorian in 1954,
and then attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, graduating with
high honors in 1958. He continued his education at The Wharton School of
Finance in Philadelphia, graduating with high honors and an MBA. He married
Sara Van Fleet, daughter of Joplin lawyer Herbert Van Fleet, in June 1958. Joe
was preceded in death by his father, Sol Jr.; his mother, Helen ; and his youngest
sister, Helen Jean. A sister, Judy Newman Marks, survives. Other family
survivors include wife, Sarah; sons, Michael Newman, Dr. Joseph A. Newman, and
a daughter, Leigh Frogge, and their spouses. Joe and Sara have 10 grandchildren
and one great-grandchild. . . complete
story
NOTE: Dr. Joseph
A. Newman was named a co-defendant in a lawsuit in which he was charged with
negligence of a female patient that died while in his care at St. John’s
Hospital, for which the surviving family members of the deceased were
reportedly awarded $8 million, an amount later reduced to $4 million by an
appellate court ruling. The legal proceedings took place in Springfield,
Missouri.
Rancher Suzanne Childress Sharp
& Partner Raymon Sharp
Childress Royalty Company
Big Star Oil
& Gas
Raymon Dereed Sharp was born Oct. 10, 1926 on a ranch near
Quay, New Mexico. He graduated from Joplin High School with the class of 1944.
Raymon attended University of Houston. He served with the airborne European
theater during World War II.
Suzanne Childress, daughter of rancher, mining and oil
baron Paul Childress, married Raymon Deweed Sharp in 1950. Suzanne and Ray
resided at and managed the Childress Fox Farm and Ranch north of Joplin from
the onset of their marriage. Suzanne, her dad, and Raymon were also principals
in the operation of the Childress Royalty Co., founded by Suzanne’s father, and
Acme Properties, Inc. Suzanne and Ray were married 36 years at the time of her
death in 1986.
Ray also operated a Ryder Truck Rental franchise in the
Joplin area for several years. He also co-founded Big Star Oil & Gas
Company of Midland, Texas.
Ray married Libby M. Harpole of Midland, Texas in 1991,
where he resided up until his passing on January 11, 2011. He was survived by
Libby, his partner of 20 years, and by several children, to include Paris
Sharp, Frank Sharp, Newt Sharp, Mary Starr Schaffer, Sarah Sharp and Anne
Sharp; and several grandchildren and great grandchildren. His mom, Effie Greer
Sharp, died in 2001.
Ray and Suzanne Childress Sharp were survived by Suzanne’s
first cousin Emery Carlyn ‘Carl’
Childress Jr. Carl was orphaned during his early childhood and reared by his
grandmother Minnie Childress, and his nanny Jessie Russell. He spent his
summers at the Childress Ranch. Carl attended Columbia Elementary School in
Joplin. At the age of eleven, he was enrolled at Kemper Military Academy, from
where he graduated in 1956, then enlisted in the Army, where he was trained as
a cook. Following his discharge, he briefly worked as a cook at Briarbrook
Country Club in Joplin. He and his wife now reside in Italy, Europe. One of his sons, Emery III, operates a restaurant
in Nevada.
Emery Carl Childress & Classmates
1950 Photos
Hon. Ignace Hainer, Esquire
Secretary to
the Premier of Hungary
Professor, University of
Missouri
Member: Iowa Grand Jury
In 1856, former celebrated Hungarian
general, lawyer, journalist and statesman Ignace Hainer was appointed a
professor of modern languages at University of Missouri, a post he held for
about five years until the beginning of the Civil War when he was relieved of
his post by the Confederate pro-slavery governor of Missouri merely because of
his outspoken opposition to slavery. Considered one of the foremost Latin
scholars in America, Professor Hainer was also fluent in French and German, as
well as in numerous Hungarian dialects and in English. One of his students was
Stephen B. Elkins, who later became a U.S. Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. Hainer was born in 1818 in Csepreg,
Sopron, Hungary. His father, Ignace Hainer Sr. , of German ancestry, was
also born in Hungary April 7, 1784. His mother was the former Catharina
Madarasz. He was a cousin of Hungarian patriot and painter Viktor Madarasz. He
married Etelka Barthos, daughter of Lajos Barthos and Elizabeth Szilagyi.
Mr. Hainer received a liberal education was
admitted to the bar, licensed to practice in all the courts of Hungary. He had
distinguished himself as a general, lawyer, journalist and cabinet secretary to
Hungarian Patriot Lajos Kossuth and Premier Lajos Batthyani, during the 1848
Hungarian fight for independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Among the
reforms Batthyány and Hainer achieved in Hungary were freedom of the press and
freedom for the serfs. However, during a later invasion by the Austrians, aided
by the Russians, Batthyány was killed and Hainer was imprisoned for five
months.
Unable to live under the oppressive and
tyrannical rule of the Austrians, Mr. Hainer and other Hungarians who had fought
for the democratization of Hungary left Hungary and settled in the Hungarian
reserve known as “New Buda” in Decatur County, Iowa, informally known a “the
Hungarian government in exile.” In New Buda, Mr. Hainer farmed, served as
county treasurer, taught school, and was appointed to the Decatur County Grand
Jury.
Professor Ignace Hainer’s son, Dr. Julius
Caesar Hainer, held M. S. and M. D. degrees. He was a professor of
mathematics, chemistry and physics at Iowa State College. He graduated from
Colgate University Law School in 1885 and was admitted to the bar in St. Louis,
where he was appointed a professor of medical jurisprudence at St. Louis
College of Physicians and Surgeons and at St. Louis College of Law.
Professor Ignace Hainer’s son, Eugene Jerome
Hainer, also was graduated from Iowa State College with a degree in law. After
establishing a law practice in Nebraska, he was elected to the Congress of the
United States in 1896, serving two terms..
A third son, Bayard Taylor Hainer, who was graduated from the
law department of Michigan State University and who began his law practice in
the State of Kansas, after settling in Oklahoma Territory was appointed Associate
Supreme Court justice of Oklahoma Territory by President McKinley in 1898. Hainer also served as chief counsel for the
Federal Trade Commission from 1925 to 1933 (during the Coolidge and Harding administrations). He also served as
general counsel for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Bayard T. Hainer is the author of A
Treatise on the Modern Law of Municipal Securities, republished by Cornell
University Press in 2009 (800 pp.) A 2010 shortened edition is 572 pp. Both editions available from Amazon.com/books
Professor Hainer and his wife, Etelka
Barthos Hainer, reared four sons and five daughters. Those children not already
mentioned included a son, Victor Madarasz Hainer, and daughters Ada Hainer
Blaise, Laura Hainer Radnich, Hermoine Hainer, Norma Hainer Birch and Vesta
Hainer Chase.
Professor Hainer’s grandson, Eugene Frank
Blaise, was an independent oil producer and headed as president the
controversially historic Farmer’s National Bank of Tulsa. Blaise was also
associated in the oil business with Charles J. Wrightsman and Harry F. Sinclair
(Chaser Oil Company).
Professor Hainer was a great great
grandfather of Thomas Mitchell Blaise Shepherd, publisher of The
Investor’s Handbook on Mexico and The Joplin-Carthage Times.
More on the Ignace Hainer family here.
The Olden Days
Joplin Globe History
Over the years, the Joplin Globe recorded
history.
The Globe reported the chartering of the
Joplin Rotary Club in 1916 and the chartering of the Joplin Chamber of Commerce
in 1917. The Globe announced that local membership in the Ku Klux Klan, which
included Joplin’s most prominent citizens, had reached approximately 1,500 by
1921, and that the Klan stood for 100% Americanism. The Globe announced in 1923
that the Ku Klux Klan presented an American flag to the Joplin High School ROTC
and $10,086 in cash to C.S. Bankard, chairman of the Freeman Memorial Hospital
building fund, at a banquet held in the Connor Hotel.
The Globe reported the death of J.A. Snyder,
founder-owner of the J.A. Snyder Transportation Company, Southwest Missouri’s
first inter-urban bus line, in 1931, while a patient at Freeman Hospital; the
death of Mr. Snyder’s mother, Olive Merriman Snyder, a resident of Muncie,
Indiana, a week later at Freeman Hospital; the marriage of Snyder’s daughter
Clara Olive to D.E. Blaise in 1934; and the sale of the Admiralty Zinc Company
by D.E. Blaise and his father, E. F. Blaise, president, for an amount disclosed
as “upwards of $100,000” in 1936. E.F.
Blaise and the Stotesbury, Drexel and Biddle families of Philadelphia were
listed as controlling stockholders. E. F. Blaise was a nephew of former
Oklahoma Territory Supreme Court Justice Bayard T. Hainer, who also served as
chief counsel for the Federal Trade Commission.
The Globe reported that a divorce was
granted to Clara Olive Snyder Blaise from D. E. Blaise in November 1949. Mr.
Blaise was reportedly residing in LaPaz, Bolivia, where he was employed as a
mining engineer for the Patino Tin Mining Company at an annual salary of
$25,000. He was residing with a Miss Alice LeRoi Jordan, an alumna of University
of Southern California school of social work, who had sired a son, Stephen, by
Mr. Blaise, born in December 1940. Mrs. Clara Olive Snyder Blaise, who was not
awarded alimony or child support, was represented by Jasper County attorney
John W. Scott. A Bolivian attorney, Jose Rivera, later obtained a $240 monthly
child support award for Clara Olive, an award that was immediately reduced to
$80 monthly. After returning to Mexico City to live, where he was president of
Drilmex, S.A., Mr. Blaise discontinued making the child support payments to
Clara Olive.
The Globe reported the marriage of Clara
Olive Snyder Blaise to Charles Maynard Shepherd in December 1949 at First
Presbyterian Church. Rev. Otto Seymour officiated. The bride was attended by
her mother, Mabel Mitchell Snyder, and her two sons, Tom and John Blaise, who
afterwards assumed the sir name of Shepherd.
The following year, 1950, the Globe reported
the death of George N. Spiva, founder of the General Explosives Company, later
purchased by Dupont. The Spiva family also contributed to the Freeman Hospital
building fund. Mr. Spiva’s first wife, the former Bessie Tamblin of Galena, by
whom he sired one son, George A. Spiva, died in 1926. He was survived by his
second wife, Zella, and by his son George and several grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.
The Globe also reported on the 1950 unsolved
murder of Miss Gwendolyn Creekmore, a Joplin school teacher and neighbor of the
Fred Hughes family; the murder of the Mosler family and the arrest and
conviction of hitchhiker Bill Cook; the indictment of Joplin veterinarian Dr.
Guy Meredith on a morals charge and his resultant suicide the following day.
Dr. Meredith left behind a wife and daughter.
The Globe reported Roderick C. Meredith, son
of Crocker Brothers Stockyard accountant Carl Meredith, to be the official
Golden Globes champion for 1950. Meredith, a graduate of Joplin High School,
was later appointed dean of Ambassador College in Pasadena, California, founded
by media evangelist Herbert Armstrong and his son Garner Ted Armstrong. Rod
Meredith later formed the Worldwide Living Church of God (headquartered in
North Carolina) and launched his own TV show Tomorrow’s World, featuring
himself and evangelist Richard Ames – married to Rod’s younger sister Kathryn
Meredith (pianist).
In 1955, the Globe reported that Tom
Shepherd, citizenship chairman of a Joplin Council of Churches protestant youth
organization, the United Christian Youth Movement, had also been appointed
chairman of Youth Week, and that he had invited all of Joplin’s Negro ministers
and youth to an interdenominational protestant youth rally at he First
Presbyterian Church in Joplin. Other officers in the UCYM included Don
Chilcutt, president, Donna Kitts, Beverly Bass, Judy Baum and Ronnie Powell.
The rally was the first time in Joplin’s history that Negro members of the
community had been invited to participate in a religious service at First
Presbyterian Church. Prior to that time, the only Negro invited into the church
by the Church Elders and Dr. Rev. Otto Seymour was Joe, the janitor, who was
paid to clean the church.
The Globe reported the self-inflicted fatal
gunshot wound of Joplin CPA Robert Scott at Shoal Creek during the spring of
1955. Scott was affiliated with Baird, Kurtz and Dobson. He was a brother of
Joplin attorney John W. Scott of the law firm Spencer, Scott and Dwyer.
The Globe also
reported the mysterious death (presumed suicide) of Joplin tax and insurance
consultant Charles M. Shepherd, former Empire District Electric Company
director and treasurer, whose body was recovered from the East River in New
York on May 31 of that year [following a meeting with Federal government
officials in Washington]. Shepherd, a native of England and of New York City,
was survived by his wife Clara Olive Shepherd and two stepsons John and Tom
Shepherd. The Shepherd residence was located at 816 Richmond Road.
The Globe announced the appointment of Tom
Shepherd as president of the Joplin Council of the UCYM in September 1955. Other officers appointed included Ronnie
Powell, vice president, Beverly Bass, secretary, and Judy Baum treasurer. Anna
Jean Cummins was appointed citizenship chair.
In 1956, the Globe reported the selection of
Clara Olive Shepherd to be residential chairman of the Joplin Cancer Crusade.
Movie actor Robert Cummings – then star of the Bob Cummings Television Show –
returned to his hometown of Joplin from Hollywood to help promote the Joplin
Cancer Crusade and to dedicate the new Joplin Civil Defense Center. Citizens of
Joplin welcomed Cummings and his family, to include his then wife Mary and son
Robert Jr., with a Bob Cummings Day
celebration that included a parade down Main Street. Cummings established the
Annual Bob Cummings Award to bestowed on a Joplin High School promising actor.
JHS senior Duane Hunt was the recipient of the first award.
Ann Nathan, daughter of Joplin school
teacher Ruby Garrison Nathan was a later recipient of the award. Ann later
founded the Ann Steele Theatrical Agency in New York City. Her son is
Christopher Jones, a/k/a Christopher Steele, Broadway actor and Hollywood
actor, film voiceover and scriptwriter.
Joe and Margie Cresap and Clara Olive
Shepherd entertained Bob and Mary (his third wife) Cummings and childhood
friends of the actor with a cocktail party at the Cresap home in May 1956.
Actor Robert Charles Cummings was (from
1931` to 1933) married to Emma Myers (Gaines), granddaughter of Bill Myers,
Carthage and Joplin industrialist, who founded the Joplin Cement Co. and also
served as mayor of Joplin. Cummings’ father was an early-day Joplin physician;
his mother was a minister of the Science of Mind Congregation in Hollywood,
California.
Years later, the Globe reported that
Cummings sued the owner of the Bob Cummings Motel in Joplin for “using” his
good name. Still later the Globe reported that Cummings had defrauded Ma Bell
by using a sophisticated electronic decoding device. After his
Japanese-American wife divorced him, he remarried to a Hollywood grocery
cashier, whom he later divorced because she refused to permit him to consummate
the marriage.
The Globe reported the 1956 arrest of Bucky Jeans, Bob Thornhill
and Bill Thurston for stealing hubcaps. Jeans and Thornhill had recently
graduated from Western Military Academy. Thurston had attended Culver Military
Academy for two years, prior to returning to school at Joplin High School. He
afterwards underwent ‘treatment’ at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.
The Globe reported, the following day, the subsequent arrest of
Terry Lee Mills and Carl Childress (a recent graduate of Kemper Military
Academy) for the copycat crime of stealing hubcaps from the Claude E. Jardon
family. Mr. Jardon was the owner of Jardon-Brelsford Motor Co. Mills had been
selected to be a member of the National Honor Society at Joplin High School,
from where he had graduated only two months before. Childress, the nephew of
Paul Childress (Childress Royalty Co.), had recently graduated from Kemper
Military Academy.
Terry Lee Mills, one of those arrested by Jopin police in July
1956, was later appointed trustee of a Tulsa Presbyterian church. He is
advertised as a specialist in estate management for a top-drawer brokerage house,
with offices in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They make their money the old fashioned way,
so it is said.
The Joplin Globe reported that Mrs. William
R. (Mary) Thurston had been accused by attorneys for W.R. Grace & Company
of fraudulently concealing property at the time Thurston Chemical Company was
purchased by Grace. Mr. Thurston later formed a partnership with Joplin realtor
J. Connor Wise for the purchase of the Frisco Building at 601 Main Street. The
building has since been sold and developed into a cooperative apartment house.
After moving to Tulsa, where Mary and
William R. Thurston established Thurston National Life Insurance Co., they
purchased, then later sold, the Sinclair Building in downtown Tulsa. Harry
Sinclair, C. J. Wrightsman and Gene Blaise (Admiralty Zinc Co.) were founders
and partners of Chaser Oil Company, pioneer forerunner of Sinclair Oil Co., to
later become a part of ARCO, which was eventually purchased by BP – British
Petroleum Corporation – third largest conglomerate in the world as of 2010.
The Globe reported that Tandy Craig,
daughter of Peach and Dr. Irwin T. Craig, was working behind the scenes as a
production assistant for the Tennessee Ernie Ford road show.
The Globe reported the death of Mabel
Mitchell Snyder, widow of John Abbott Snyder, in September 1962. She died at
St. John’s hospital following a stroke she suffered after falling out of a
nursing home bed and hitting her head on the floor. The nursing home was owned
by F.C. Wallower.
Frank C. Wallower’s farm property, east of
Range Line Road, was later purchased by city fathers for the purpose of
establishing Missouri Southern College, later known as Missouri Southern State
University.
The Globe reported that Miss Jean Gregg
Blair, daughter of Betty Belle and Charles A. Blair, attended a party in Kansas
in honor of Barry M. Goldwater Jr., who is a cousin of Thomas M. Blaise
Shepherd of Joplin.
The Globe reported that Lynden Baines
Johnson defeated [by a landslide] Senator Barry M. Goldwater in the 1964 race
for President of the United States. Senator Goldwater’s wife, nee Peggy Johnson
of Muncie, Indiana, and Clara Olive Snyder Shepherd of Joplin were second
cousins.
Peggy Johnson Goldwater’s granddad, Abbott
L. Johnson, Muncie, Indiana industrialist, who also founded the Warner Gear
Company, was one of the financier-benefactors of the Keystone Hotel in Joplin.
Columbia School patrol boy Tommy Blaise
(then a sixth grader) reported that [in 1948] he was threatened and intimidated
by pedestrian-bully Roy Barsh Jr. while performing his duties at the corner of
F Street and Moffet Ave., although Blaise had not cited Barsh for a violation
of any kind, nor did he even know Barsh at the time. Roy Barsh (whose dad had
recently acquired ownership of the Joplin City Market) later said he had been
encouraged to hit the Blaise brothers in the face by Boyd Garlock, a punk
neighbor whom he was walking with at the time. Boyd Garlock’s sister, Jane, and
her male and female classmates had gotten into the habit of tormenting and
batering Tom’s older brother while their mother was away trying to earn a
living to support the family. They would then afterwards spread false rumors
about John in order to justify their various crimes.
Boyd Garlock later dropped out of Joplin
High School and ran away from home, relocating in the Washington, D. C. area.
Columbia School patrol boy Tom Blaise
(Shepherd) reported that he was later assaulted by pedestrian classmate
Geraldine Hadley while patrolling the intersection of E Street and Moffet Ave.
Hadley hit Tom Blaise in the face after crossing his intersection, although he
had not said anything to her, nor had he cited her . Hadley was walking with
Tommy’s girlfriend, Mary Ana Buck, who
witnessed the assault.
The Joplin Globe years later reported the
arrest of Roy Barsh Sr., owner of the Joplin City Market, for stealing a car,
the suicide of Roy Barsh Jr.’s father-in-law, the divorce of Roy Barsh Jr. by
his wife Louanne, and the suicidal death of Louanne’s father, Mr. Steinrod.
The Globe reported that the Joplin Elks Club
was raided and a number of slot machines confiscated by the Joplin Police
Department.
The Globe published a photograph of
attorneys Ross Roberts, Malcolm Robertson, Jim DaNeen and Jon Dermott dressed
as women for Secretaries Day; and the Globe reported that homosexuality was
rampant among a group of Jasper County male deputy sheriffs.
The Jasper
County Sheriff’s office, the Gay & Lesbian Center offices and several law
offices were all housed in the Miner’s Bank Building.
The Globe reported the arrest and
prosecution (by Judge Stewart Tatum) of a Mr. Jarvis, a Joplin gentleman, for
sharing his home at a Joplin hotel with a lady
The Globe reported that Democratic
Congressman Robert Young accused Republican Jack L. Williams, executive
director of Ozark Gateway Regional Planning Commission, of conflict of interest
regarding a U.S. Corps of Engineers project on property adjacent to land owned
by Williams, which land would stand to significantly increase in value were the
project approved. Williams was the brother of Mrs. Paul D. Terry, First
Presbyterian Church Sunday school superintendent.
The Globe reported the arrest of Thomas
Connor Nolan, a graduate of Kemper Military Academy, a former partner of
insurance broker Richard N. Craig and president of the Connor-Nolan
family-owned Security National Bank, for embezzlement; and the arrest of
Nolan’s cousin, Mr. Wittich, for selling contraband (Wittich’s father Porter
Wittich was a writer for the Joplin Globe).
The Globe reported the arrest of former city
prosecutor Robert Richart on a prescription drug (Demoral) duplication
irregularity, an apparent forgery of sorts via a copy machine, the dismissal of
the charge on a technicality, and Richart’s subsequent selection for the
position of president of the Missouri Bar Association.
The Globe reported (in 1993) that Republican
Missouri Attorney General William L. Webster, son of Senator Richard M.
Webster, pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges and was sentenced to two years
in prison. It seems that Webster’s reelection campaign received unusually large
contributions from law firms making claims against a little-known $30 million
workers’ compensation fund, which Webster had defended by appointing private
lawyers as special assistant state attorneys general. Lawyers that contributed
to Webster reportedly obtained substantially larger settlements for their
clients than those lawyers who did not contribute.
The Globe reported the murder of musician
Johnny Kemm at Shoal Creek by a man he had allegedly met in a bar. Kemm,
husband of pianist Elizabeth Kemm and father of three sons, was a First
Presbyterian Church organist, who had formerly been employed as an organist by
the Missouri State Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Springfield, and who
frequently performed as an organist in Joplin nightclubs.
Gilbert Barbee was the original principal
owner of the Joplin Globe. Harrison C. Rogers was president of the Joplin Globe
from 1910 to 1920. Upon his death, John H. Cragin became president. Ross Burns
became secretary and general manager. Cowgill Blair Sr. was selected to be
business manager and Ray S. Cochran was selected to be managing editor.
Elizabeth Rogers Molloy was society editor of the Joplin Globe for many years.
Mary K Molloy, daughter of Elizabeth Rogers
Molloy, operated a private kindergarten. at the Molloy home in Joplin during
the early 1940s. Students enrolled in Mary K’s kindergarten included Sarah Van
Fleet and John Snyder Blaise.
Harrison Rogers’ son, H. Lang Rogers, Globe
executive editor, issued a phony press card to an old Marine Corps buddy, Verne
Kennedy, a retired Marine Corps general, who was never employed by the Joplin Globe.
Kennedy bragged that he used the Globe press card that Rogers gave him in order
to gain free admission to community events without having to pay, while he was
serving as vice president of University of Oklahoma.
Incidentally, Verne Kennedy’s companion,
J.D. Cameron, a 25-year-old Army vet who also attended bar for Kennedy at his
private faculty parties, was later charged with the attempted murder of three
O.U. students, a female graduate student of clinical psychology, a female
graduate student of social work and a male undergraduate fine arts student. He
appeared at the door of their apartment, drunk, pointing a loaded shotgun at
them. Following his release from jail, on the stipulation that he receive
outpatient psychiatric treatment, Cameron (about a year later) once again made
a threat on the life of one of his previous victims, the fine arts student, by
holding a knife at his throat, professing his unrequited love for the male
student, a former employee of the Joplin Globe that was not interested in
having any form of relationship with Cameron.
J. D. Cameron, a native of Lindsay,
Oklahoma, was a published poet [‘Sienna Woman’ and other poems], who had
attended Oklahoma Baptist University as a philosophy and English major prior to
being inducted in the Army, where he was, in his own words, “trained to kill.”
J. D. Cameron’s uncle, Charles Echols, was
the CEO of an electrical contracting firm, the owner of the Coronado Hotel in
Norman and the owner of the El Toro nightclub, north of Norman. Echols was the
major electrical contractor for numerous University of Oklahoma dorms and
classroom buildings. The contracts were awarded to Echols by O. U. Vice
President of Operations Verne Kennedy.
Captain Betty Patrick, domestic partner of a
St. Philip’s Episcopal Church clergyperson, succeeded Elizabeth Rogers Molloy
as society editor and woman’s news editor of the Joplin Globe. Captain Patrick
also wrote a short-lived gossip column for the Globe, which included a story
about a local so-called “drunk” gentleman caller, who was reportedly doused
with a bucket of water by a Mr. Havens from an upstairs window as the gentleman
caller stood on Mr. Havens doorstep. Captain Patrick and her domestic partner,
who were occasionally seen “cocktailing” with other church members at Twin
Hills Country Club on Sunday afternoons, reportedly placed their infant son
David C. Patrick Jr. in an institution
for autistic children soon after his birth. He was later placed with foster parents.
Captain Betty Patrick’s domestic partner,
she claimed, thoughtfully prepared nightly “hot toddies” for her while she was
pregnant with their child. Captain Patrick, who later founded a gourmet
restaurant, died following a lengthy, yet heroic, battle with cancer. Her
domestic partner, who prided himself on his knowledge of wines and classical
music, died several years later. During
his youth he was an Indiana choirboy.
The Joplin Globe reported the death of
Joplin civic leader Clara Olive Shepherd in November 1976 at Hillcrest Medical Center
in Tulsa, as a result of secondary surgical procedures during knee replacement
surgery at St. Francis Hospital several months before. She was survived by her
son, Tom Shepherd, with whom she made her home for the last year of her life,
and by her son John Snyder Shepherd.
Gene Gaines Heads Major Bancorp
Gene Gaines, CEO and president of First
Professional Bank of Santa Monica, California ($268 million in assets), has
been appointed to the board of directors of First Columbia Bancorp ($610 million
in assets). First Professional has branches in Pasadena, Beverly Hills and
other locations, as of August 7, 2000.
Prior to the appointment, First Columbia
merged with First Professional to become the parent company. First Columbia
Bancorp lists Ranch Santa Fe Bank in San Diego County as a subsidiary.
Gene Gaines is the son of Emma Myers Gaines
and the late E. F. Gaines (Joplin Cement Company). Gene is the twin brother of
Nancy Gaines Holland (Russell, Kansas). The two are alumni of Joplin High
School (Class of 1959) and of
University of Kansas (Class of 1963).
Sam Hillhouse CEO of Oklahoma Bank
1938 - 2004
Samuel Knox Hillhouse, son of Clara and Hal
Hillhouse (Joplin Seed & Feed Company) was serving as chairman and
president of Peoples National Bank of Bethany, Oklahoma at the time of his
death in 2004. Sam is an alumni of Columbia Elementary School and Joplin High
School (Class of 1956). He served in the United States Air Force.
Sam was survived by his wife, Mireille, whom
he met and married while stationed with the Air Force in France, and two
sisters, Ruth Richardson, Louisiana, and Jane Etta Pitt, Springfield, Missouri
and several nieces and nephews, to include actor Brad Pitt.
Film Actor
& Producer Brad Pitt
American award
winning film actor and producer William Bradley ‘Brad’ Pitt was born Dec. 18,
1963 in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He is the son of Jane Etta (nee Hillhouse) Pitt, former
Joplinite, and of William Alvin Pitt, Shawnee, Oklahoma.
Brad is a
grandson of Clara (nee Bell) and Hal Hillhouse of Springfield and Joplin,
Missouri
Brad’s parents
met while students at Oklahoma Baptist University. His mom Jane has worked as a
school guidance counselor and his dad has operated a trucking business in
Springfield.
The Pitt family
moved from Shawnee to Springfield soon after Brad’s birth. Brad attended
Kickapoo High School in Springfield and the University of Missouri, where he majored
in journalism. Brad dropped out before graduation and went to Hollywood, where
he studied acting and worked at a variety of odd jobs to support himself until
he landed acting rolls in television sit coms and in blockbuster films, to
include Thelma and Louise, Legends of the Fall, Seven Years in Tibet, Fight
Club, and The Mexican.
Reared in a
Southern Baptist family, Brad he is an independent humanist, supporting human
rights for all people. He has made substantial gifts to a variety of charities
intended to aid the needy, to include a $1 million gift to St. John’s Hospital
of Springfield for the establishment of the Jane Pitt Pediatric Center. Brad
and wife Angelina Jolie made a $500,000 gift to aid Joplin victims of the May
2011 toronado.
Brad was married
for several years to Jennifer Anniston (Friends) and is currently
married to Angelina Jolie. He and Angelina, who met while doing a film
together, have sired three children of their own and adopted three more. Brad’s
own net worth was reported by Forbes magazine to be upwards of $100 million. He
and Angelina are building a family mansion – with two swimming pools – in Greece.
JHS Student Molested by Neighbors
Who Ganged Up on Him After
School Hours,
Abducted Him From Doorway of His Home,
Then Assaulted, Battered and Slandered Him.
Victim Now Seeks
Millions in Damages
Parents of Boys
Who Mocked, Molested, Battered Altar Boy
Cited for Multiple
Assaults, Battery & Criminal Negligence
Victim Seeks $50
Million in Punitive Damages
Parents Virginia
& Dr. Virgil Jeans Cited for Assaults and
Batteriies
Committed by Their Son Buck.
Thelma &
Cecil Thornhill also Cited for Assaults and
Battery of the
Same Teenager.
Teen Leader Tom
Shepherd, who apparently was suffering from a form of autism – high
functioning autism – now called Asperger’s syndrome – from his early childhood,
had undergone years of medical treatment to correct two of several birth
defects, to include a cryptorchidism and missing lateral incisors.He underwent
an orchipexy at age eight, then was afterwards fitted with an orthodontic ‘stay
plate.’ He also suffered from ongoing torment by other children and teenagers
over his birth defects. Ironically, Tom always tested in the superior rage of
intellectual ability on professionally-administered tests.
Following three
years with active duty in the Coast Guard – between the ages of 18 and 21 – the
years of 1957 to 1960 – Tom Shepherd spent several months in three different
marine psychiatric facilities being examined, as a result of having been
assaulted and battered by shipmates and civilians and incarcerated by the Shore
Patrol, even after he himself had summoned the Shore Patrol because a civilian
had commited a crime against him.
Testing revealed
that although Tom Blaise Shepehrd had a superior level of intelligence, he
appeared to be autistic and to become confused in dealing certain types of
situations involving other people. He had from a young age experienced great
difficulty participating in contact sports, as well as most any sport – to
include tennis and golf – that required the visual tracking of a moving object
or target. He was thus given an honorable psychiatric medical discharge from
the Coast Guard for a condition that he attempted to conceal from others
throughout his young adult years – yet a condition for which he was taken
advantage of by others, to include employers and people he casually met in
non-work social situations – both males and females, many of them considerably older than Tom.
Funeral
Directors Thelma and Cecil Thornhill and Virginia and Virgil E. Jeans, M.D.
were the parents of two of the offenders that repeatedly mocked and molested
Tom Shepherd and his brother John Shepherd (who was born with a foot deformity)
during their early childhood.
From the time they were young boys, John
and Tom Shepherd were the repeated victims of
psychological torture and various forms of sexual assault and battery by
the sons of some of Joplin, Missouri’s most prominent business and professional
people.
Tom Shepherd reports that in 1954, when
he was 15 years old, he was abducted, assaulted and battered as he opened the
front door of his home at 816 Richmond Road to invite his neighbors Virgil
E. Jeans Jr., Bob Thornhill and Jim Dailey inside. Although Shepherd no longer
wished to associate with them because they had repeatedly mocked him, sexually
defiled him and battered him, his mom was insistent that he open the front door
and invite them in on the evening he was assaulted in the doorway of his own
home.
“While holding the storm door open to invite
the three boys in, I was grabbed around the neck and shoulders, pulled out onto
the porch, then pounded in the face and knocked to the snow-covered ground,”
says Shepherd, who characterizes the assault as a “depraved, premeditated act.”
Shepherd sustained multiple injuries,
including the breaking of his orthodontic stay plate and loss of a connecting
tooth, which required orthodontic repairs. When Shepherd’s mother insisted the
three boys phone their parents and tell them what they had done, they defiantly
and insolently refused. When the parents of the three boys, Virginia and Dr.
Virgil E. Jeans, Thelma and Cecil Thornhill, and Anne and Al Dailey, were
informed of the crime by the victim Tom Shepherd and by his mother, Clara Olive
Shepherd, they were unapologetic. They also made no attempt at restitution.
All of the boys were well aware of the fact
that Tom Shepherd had undergone several years of orthodontic work, to include
the fitting of a stay plate to support two missing adult incisors. They were
also well aware that Tom Shepherd was not inclined towards using his fists to
settle disputes. They were also well aware of the fact that Tom was a
gentleman, yet they afterwards spread malicious rumors about Shepherd in order
to justify their crime – rather multiple crimes – of assault and battery on
him, as well as ongoing sexual harassment of him and girls Tom was dating, in
an ongoing effort to soil his and his girlfriends’ reputations.
The most troubling factor for Tom – a factor
that ate him on the inside up for years – is that Bob Thornhill afterwards made
up a lie – a malicious lie – falsely claiming Tom had called his mother
a name – in order to justify his violent crime against Tom. Tom had never in
his life said or done anything disrespectful towards Bob Thornhill’s mother or
towards the mothers of the other boys, although all of them had made
disparaging remarks of one kind or another to Tom regarding Tom’s own mom over
the years.
Ironically, Bob Thornhill had made a
violently obscene gesture at his own mother while her back was turned to him –
a scene that Tom had witnessed – prior to Thornhill’s assault on Tom in the
doorway of Tom’s home.
“I consider all three of my remorseless
assailants and their parents to be depraved, and even today I cannot imagine
any decent person being associated with any of them either socially or in
business.
“The reason I did not want to associate with
them,” explains Shepherd, “was because they had, over the years, repeatedly
psychologically and physically tortured both me and my brother. Jeans,
Thornhill and Bill Thurston had tried to engage me in masturbation from the
time I was eleven years old, at the Jeans home no less. Jeans was the self-appointed
sex teacher and leader. They once
unbuttoned my Levis and attempted to pull my penis out in a bedroom at the
Thurston home in front of Mary Thurston and Nancy Gaines, two young girls. They
just couldn’t keep their perverse eyes and their groping hands off me.
“Jeans and Thornhill had trapped me in the
Thurston basement areaway, then stepped on my fingers and spit down on me, as I
tried to hoist myself out. Thornhill also pushed me backwards off the Jeans
family yard 4-foot-high retainer wall the day before I was assaulted in the
doorway of my home. I had also been psychologically tortured during an
overnight Bon Voyage party for Jeans at the William R. Thurston cabin on Grand
Lake in 1952.
“Both Jeans and Thornhill had repeatedly
made crude and vulgar references to my mother and other Joplin women.
Ironically, I had also witnessed both Jeans and Thornhill make vulgar gestures
at Thelma Thornhill when her back was turned to them. I observed Bob Thornhill
giving his own mother the finger while her back was turned. Dailey had deliberately hurled a softball
into my face prior to the start of a softball game, obviously realizing that I
was not paying attention.
“In another incident the previous summer,
Jeans and Thornhill had stood by gawking and giggling after Malcolm Robertson
molested me by pulling my swim trunks off me from behind while I was swimming
at Twin Hills Country Club, then taking them with him, so I would be forced to
climb out of the pool stark naked. As I climbed out, all of them, including the
lifeguard, stood around gawking and giggling.
“It was obvious. They seemingly couldn’t
keep their eyes or their hands off my private parts. I kind of feel like I was
a victim of child molestation. The fact
is that I WAS a victim of child molestation and it is my firm belief that the
parents of the boys that molested me encouraged the molestation. I was their
scapegoat of sorts. The fact is that I
did not have a dad to coach me or stand behind me, as they did, and I did not
perform well in most sports. However, they weren’t much better than I was at
any sport. I was also a little slow in ‘catching on.’ However, it seems that
the real reason I was resented was because I did not respond to their sexual
advances.
Two months prior to being assaulted in the
doorway of his home by Thornhill, Jeans and Dailey, Tom Shepherd, who was a
sophomore enrollee in the Joplin High School ROTC program, was assaulted during
a Veteran’s Day parade by a senior ROTC member, Don Smith. Smith, described as
“a punk with a chip on his shoulder,” was a member of Phi Lambda Epsilon
fraternity, who was angry because Shepherd, a Phi Lamb pledge, had reported
Smith to an ROTC inspecting officer for stealing his ROTC cap only minutes before
an inspection. The inspecting officer, another Phi Lamb member, thus returned
Shepherd’s cap to him.
A few days later, Smith bullied and
humiliated Shepherd while he was in platoon formation during the Veteran’s Day
parade, repeatedly screaming vulgar references to Shepherd’s mother with his
fists clenched in an assault position in an ATTEMPT to provoke Shepherd into
swinging back at him, then saying, “I am calling your mother a bitch and you
just stand there with that yellow stripe running down your back.” Smith also threatened Shepherd with bodily
harm, to be carried out at the next Phi Lamb meeting, saying, “I’m gonna beat
the shit out of you at the next Phi Lamb meeting.” Although Smith’s performance
was witnessed by many ROTC cadets, he was never disciplined for his attack on
Shepherd.
“Smith was a two-fisted punk, as well as a
coward. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been picking on me. The ROTC cadets that
witnessed the melee – most of them members of my platoon – and failed to
afterwards come forward in my defense – were as wrong a Smith himself – as they
did not wish to stick out their necks in behalf of justice.
Other senior members of Phi Lambda Epsilon
fraternity at the time were Pete Blair (the adopted son of Cowgill Blair Jr),
George Blackburn and Joseph Newman (valedictorian of the Class of 1954). Prior to the ROTC incident, Shepherd had
been repeatedly taunted by another football teammate, Don Gary, a lowlife
kunt, who grabbed a dollar bill out of Shepherd’s hand in the Junge Stadium
locker room. The compounded interest on the dollar bill, which was never
returned, now amounts to $1 million, says Shepherd. Gary was gawking and
pointing with his finger at Shepherd’s private parts, while Shepherd was trying
to get dressed, after showering in the Junge Stadium locker room, following a
football practice. Russ Kaminsky and Floyd Belk were acting coaches. Shepherd
also has a pending $5 million damage claim against the Joplin Board of
Education.
Tom Shepherd also recalls the time he agreed to
participate in a wrestling match with Charles “Sonny” Keeter at the
Keeter-Shelton home, 930 N. Sergeant Avenue. Bob Martini, whose dad designed
the Missouri State Highway Patrol office building on Range Line, organized and
refereed the match, although Tom Shepherd was reluctant to participate in the
match from the onset. However, within minutes after the match began, Shepherd
appropriately pinned Keeter’s shoulders to the ground in accordance with fair
rules of wrestling.
After Shepherd released Keeter and started to
get up, Keeter lunged at him, ripping Shepherd’s shirt apart and clawing at his
chest with his fingernails, drawing blood. Keeter then ran into his house.
Minutes later he came back outside, swinging a baseball bat, his drunk
stepfather, Frank Shelton, following behind him and coaxing him by yelling,
“Hit him, Sonny, hit him.” Keeter thus started running towards Shepherd,
swinging his baseball bat at Shepherd. Shepherd repeatedly ducked in order to
avoid being battered. However, under Missouri law to even coach someone to
commit a battery or to attempt to commit a battery is a crime of assault.
Charles Keeter and his stepdad NEVER apologized to me for their violent attack
on me.
Ironically, even Buck Jeans himself, who witnessed the melee,
expressed to Tom his own disbelief and shock that Frank Shelton, assistant to
the president of Empire District Electric Co., of which Tom’s own stepdad was
treasurer, coached his own stepson to batter Shepherd with a baseball bat.
Thus, Buck Jeans (a/k/a Virgil Jeans Jr.) was indeed a witness to the violence
that Frank Shelton had encouraged, as were Susan Keeter and Bob Thornhill.
Tom Shepherd, however, believes that
Frank Shelton’s behavior had the ironic effect of encouraging Buck Jeans and
Bob Thornhill (who was also present during the wrestling match) to believe that
it was OK to batter Tom Shepherd. Had Charles Keeter succeeded in bashing Tom
Shepherd in the head with his baseball bat, which he indeed attempted to do,
Tom Shepherd could have wound up being a victim of murder. Therefore, says
Shepherd, the actions of Frank Shelton AND his stepson Charles Keeter, should
be viewed as an attempted murder.
Therefore, Frank Shelton and his stepson
Charles Keeter are hereby cited for the attempted murder of Tom Shepherd. It
bears repeating: Frank Shelton and Charles Keeter are guilty of attempted
murder. They are also guilty of encouraging additional violence against Tom
Shepherd, ironically by those who were witnesses, to include Buck Jeans and Bob
Thornhill.
“Keeter, like the rest of them, couldn’t
keep his eyes and hands off me. He (and his parents) once invited me to spend
the night with him at the Shelton home, in the same bed no less. What was so
strange was that at the time I was dating his sister, Susan. I only lived two
doors away.
“The fact is that only a few days before, my
mom had complained to Keeter’s mom, Louise Shelton, that Keeter’s older sister,
Susan, had made an insolent remark to an elderly lady passing by the Shelton
home on her way to visit my mom and stepdad. I myself witnessed the crude,
insensitive remark, as did others. I do believe that the real reason Frank
Shelton encouraged Charles to batter me with a baseball bat was because my mom
had complained about Susan Keeter’s insolent, low-brow remark. I also
believe that the hidden reason Charles Keeter later attempted to undermine my
self-esteem in the Twin Hills pool house was because my mom had complained
about his older sister’s insolence – insolence that I myself had witnessed.
Views of Tom Shepherd in Later Years
“Jeans also invited me,
with his own parents’ encouragement, for a sleep-over at the Jeans home on
Islington Place, up the street. The two of us shared his bed. I think that both
Keeter and Thornhill afterwards became insanely jealous of the fact that Jeans
had invited me to spend the night with him. In fact, it was right after Keeter
invited me to spend the night with him that Jeans invited me. Jeans and Keeter,
as well as Bill Thurston, were all ape over me. I was a sleepover guest of the
Thurston family on numerous occasion. Bill Thurston enjoyed jacking off when
the two of us were together. I went along with it, not realizing at the time that
Bill himself was actually homosexually inclined. When he later remarked that
his dad told him that “we will eventually grow out of it,” I was sort of
confused. Grow out of WHAT? I thought.
“At the time, I didn’t have any internal awareness of what homosexuality
actually was. When I went indifferently along with the game of attempting to
jack off with Jeans, Thornhill and Thurston, I experienced no actual sexual
feelings for other males. I was merely attempting to conform – in order to
avoid being humiliated by my neighbors – without having internalized homosexual
feelings. My actual sexual feelings were only for females. I was naïve.
Ironically, all three of those boys ultimately used me as a scapegoat –
probably when they eventually realized that I did not share their actual sexual
orientation. It wasn’t until several years later – after I matured and was
around other mature males that I became more aware of the situation that had
existed – it was like I was the only straight dude amongst a group of semi-gay
dudes.
It was when Buck Jeans afterwards – in early 1954 – tried to
persuade me to accompany him to the the yard of attorney and neighbor Roy Coyne
– then to fondle him, after exposing himself, outside the sunroom window of the
Coyne home, that I suddenly realized Buck and I were not at all alike in our
sexual orientation. I was neither homosexual, nor was I an exhibitionist. I was
a naïve, inexperienced teenager. One can only imagine how the aberrant
psychological conditioning, initiated by Buck Jeans, affected me, permanently –
to the effect of mentally destabilizing me – confusing me – of setting the
stage for a schizophrenic breakdown. The behavior of Bob Thornhill, Jimmy
Dailey and Bill Thurston Jr., as well as that of their parents, merely exacerbated
the effects.
Bill Thurston Sr. took Bill Jr. and me with him to Oklahoma City
in February 1952. The three of us shared a suite at a landmark Oklahoma City
hotel. The occasion?
Mr. Thurston had a date
with the governor of Oklahoma on February 16, 1952 to discuss the fertilizer
business. Mr. Thurston then owned Thurston Chemical Co., a fertilizer
industrial giant that he later sold to W. R. Grace & Co. The Thurston
family then later founded an insurance company in Tulsa and purchased the
historical Sinclair building in downtown Tulsa. My granddad and C. J.
Wrightsman and Harry Sinclair were partners and owners of the Chaser Oil
Company, early-day Oklahoma enterprise that ultimately became a part of the
Sinclair Oil Company.
My own great great uncle,
Bayard T. Hainer, had been an Oklahoma Territory Supreme Court Justice. A
resident of Oklahoma City, he later served as chief counsel for the Federal
Trade Commission, as well as general counsel of the U. S. Department of
Agriculture. My own granddad, E. F. “Gene” Blaise, was an Oklahoma oil
producer, who had once been president of the Farmer’s National Bank of Tulsa,
forerunner of the Bank of Oklahoma. Thus Bill Thurston Sr., who apparently was
well aware of my family’s connections, via Gene Gaines Sr., a mutual friend,
schmoozed me for reasons Jeans, Thornhill, Dailey and Keeter were not likely
aware of, as none of their parents was native to the Joplin metropolitan area.
“Later on, while Jeans and I were alone in
early 1954, Jeans tried to engage me in a ‘lewd act’ behind a large evergreen
tree in the yard behind Joplin Attorney Roy Coyne’s home. He unbuttoned his
fly, pulled out his already semi-erect penis and began stroking himself. He
then said, in an obvious attempt to molest me, to undermine my self-esteem as a
male, ‘Touch it, it feels neat.’ With those very words Jeans, in effect psychologically molested
me, even though I did not respond to his suggestion or reciprocate in any
manner.
“I was naturally confused and affronted by
Jeans’ suggestion – especially in view of disparaging remarks he had made about
other males he claimed were “homosexual.” I just shook my head. He then asked
me to open my own fly and pull out my own penis. However, I did not comply.
Instead, I went back home, feeling not only demoralized, but highly troubled
because of remarks Buck Jeans had previously made about other males engaging in
sex play.
“Buck, who was a violinist, told me that his
mom, Virginia Jeans, forbade him from playing in the JHS orchestra because she
had heard a rumor that the orchestra director, Frank Coulter, whose own dad
founded the YMCA, was a homosexual. Ironically, Virginia Jeans had no qualms
about Buck joining the Y, where we dudes all swam together naked, then showered
together naked.
“Roy Coyne, whose yard Buck Jeans had
persuaded me to accompany him to, lived across the street from my own
family home. Roy Coyne, which I doubt that Buck was aware of, was also my
mother’s attorney. Coyne’s son-in-law, Bill
Stewart, had been a business partner of my biological father, Dudley Blaise Sr.
years before. He had also served as a member of the board of directors of a
mining company in Guanajuato, Mexico that my mom and dad owned – El Cedro
Silver Mining Company.
“What was so bizarre and confusing about
Jeans AND Thornhill was that they themselves were forever running to me with
stories about other males they claimed were ‘queer’ and expressing their
indignation, their contempt and scorn for those males, some of whom they
claimed their fathers told them were ‘queers.’ I often wondered how it was that
their own fathers were so KNOWLEDGEABLE about ‘queers.’ It seems as though they themselves belonged
to a secret queer club or something.
“Of course, it is my opinion that Dr. Virgil
Jeans and Virginia Jeans were already very much aware of their son, Buck’s own
homosexual inclinations, as well as his exhibitionistic inclinations.
“Buck had previously (a few years before)
invited Bob Thornhill and Bill Thurston and me to his home and in the side
yard, when he quite openly unzipped the fly of his own jeans, exposing himself
to us, while simultaneously prodding us to do the same in order to obtain an
erection. During the session, his younger sister, Gingy, joined us, when we
began (at Buck’s encouragement) to play a kissing game. Two neighbor girls,
Vick and Dana Thomas, witnessed the scene and left, saying they were going to
report what they saw to their parents. As they left, Buck mocked them. That was
his style.
“Anyone that was not
willing to go along with Buck Jeans’ neighborhood sex program (i.e. public
exhibitionism) got mocked! Some, like me, afterwards got severely battered, as
well as maligned! Buck Jeans appeared to me to be very much conflicted over his
own sexual orientation during his early teen years. Yet, he was also
disturbingly cunning, sly and sadistic. He was intelligent enough to realize
the political power he held, by virtue of his own family’s social position in
the community, and how he was influencing others – most of us younger than he.
After all, his own dad was a surgeon – and a highly rated surgeon. Ironically,
Buck’s mom was domineeringly homophobic – in fact, so domineering that she
(according to Buck) forbade Buck from playing in the Joplin High School
orchestra as a result of a rumor she had heard that the orchestra director as a
‘homosexual.’ Those facts were then and still are very clear to me.
“Over the years Bucky and Bob made crude
jokes in front of my brother and me – jokes that were intended to affront both
of us – suggesting that they were smarter and more manly than either of us –
and that their mothers were more virtuous. Of course, all four of us knew the
truth: Jeans and Thornhill were the most cunning and devious two individuals
that ever walked the streets of Joplin. If they’d been so smart they wouldn’t
have wound up in jail during the summer of 1956 for stealing hubcaps from other
Joplin citizens. If they’d been manly, they wouldn’t have been stealing hubcaps
in the first place, nor would they have been bullying me – ganging up on me
when the three of us were alone – and attempting to sexually defile me. The
fact is that BOTH of them – Buck Jeans and Bob Thornhill – were mama’s boys, apparently highly conflicted –
both of them – over their own sexual identity. They thus attempted to drag my
brother and me down to their level.
“ Because my brother John and I did not have
a father, we were by default dubbed as “mama’s boys,” when in fact virtually
all of those males that picked on us were “mama’s boys, as well as daddy’s
boys. They were all, in my opinion, latent homosexuals, attempting to displace
their own inner sexual conflicts onto my brother and me,” says Tom.
Jeans’ and Thornhill’s later so-called
achievements in life had nothing to do with manliness or intelligence, but
rather with their well-honed skills in lying, cheating and stealing, Their own
conniving parents no doubt covered for them along the way, as did their
parents’ legal and business associates. Otherwise, neither one of them would
have gotten to first base!
Had my own parents and I filed criminal
charges against Jeans and Thornhill at the time they repeatedly assaulted and
battered me back in 1954, they would not have even gotten to first base! Nevertheless,
I hereby find Jeans, Thornhill AND Jim Dailey (their ally in treachery) guilty
of multiple forms of sexual assault and violent battery of me, as well as
psychological torture – sufficient to produce a mental breakdown before I had
even reached the age of 21.
Following the series of assaults on Shepherd
during the winter of 1953 and 1954, Buck Jeans and Bob Thornhill were
disenrolled from Joplin High School and enrolled at Western Miliitary Academy. Within
two months of their graduation from Western, Buck Jeans and Bob Thornhill were
arrested by Joplin police along with Bill Thurston (a former Culver Military
Academy student) for stealing hubcaps from other Joplin neighbors. Carl
Childress and Terry Mills were arrested a few days later for stealing hubcaps.
“Buck Jeans and Bob Thornhill once suggested
that my older brother and I were both born out of wedlock. Jeans later made a
really crude remark regarding our mother – a remark that I would not care to
repeat on-line – a remark that was intended to offend both of us. That was the
straw that broke the camel’s back. It was after Jeans made that remark that
that my brother and I decided, once and for all, that we wanted nothing further
to do with Jeans. Nevertheless, Jeans and Thornhill would continue to encourage
me to socialize with them – then every time the three of us were alone they
would commit some form of violent act – a battery – against me.
“I wonder what Buck and his sister Gingy
would have done if other parents told their own children not to enroll in any
classes Buck or Gingy taught because Buck and Gingy were ‘homosexuals’ and
therefore possible child molesters? ? ? I wonder what they would have done if
rumors began to fly that Virginia Jeans, their own mom, was a lesbian (and
therefore a child molester)?! It was Virginia Jeans that early on persecuted
JHS orchestra conductor Frank Coulter for apparently having the same sexual
orientation that her own son had! It was like the pot calling the kettle black!
Virgil Jeans Jr. was the child molester, as were his own parents, who
ironically encouraged his deviant behavior.
“It is hard to forget or forgive when you
have been a victim of repeated molestation and violence by your own so-called Christian
neighbors, people you thought were your best friends. I just want my
assailants, whom I myself consider to be unrepentant sociopaths, to continue to
THINK about what they did and the impact it has had, not only on me, but also
on my entire family and on the entire community of Joplin.
“Neighbor-referee Bob Martini had even
previously stolen a handgrip exerciser from me. He just took it out of my hand
and walked home with it. Like the rest of them, Bob Martini was above the law.
After all, his dad designed the Missouri Highway Department building on Range
Line in Joplin. He stole my hand-grip exerciser! It’s not the price of the
hand-gripper, but the depravity of the deed. I am also citing him for
previously encouraging the wrestling melee with Charles Keeter, during which I
became a victim of criminal battery. He had previously encouraged my brother
John to wrestle Bob Thornhill, the younger of the two. When Thornhill was
declared the winner, my brother was laughed at, merely because Thornhill was the
younger of the two. Martini, like Jeans and Thornhill, was a very cunning and
manipulative sadist. The sadism was no doubt a cover for their underlying
sado-masochistic homosexual inclinations.
Martini once came over to my backyard
dressed only in a black brief swimsuit and persuaded me to put on some swim
trunks and take a shower bath with him, when he thence proceeded to demonstrate
me how to “feel good” by holding the nozzle of garden hose under his briefs.
For Martini, holding the garden hose nozzle
under his own briefs and then squirting water from the nozzle onto his own
genitals was a very symbolic pseudo homosexual act. Although shorter than I,
Martini was two years older than I. He spent the school year – sequestered away
from females – at Western Military School – an all-boys military academy in
Alton, Illinois.
“When Martini’s mother, Charlene, years
later purchased a mortgage on my mom’s home from the Louis McDonald estate – a
mortgage originally contracted between my maternal grandmother and McDonald –on
our family home at 412 N. Moffet Ave., a home my grandfather, John Snyder, had
purchased from the Landreth family in 1920, and that ultimately became the
property of my mom, my mom, who was seriously ill at the time, was pressured
into selling her home in order to satisfy Charlene Martini’s demands.
‘Although my mom was indeed making regular
interest payments to Charlene, she was unable to pay the principal, a mere
$5,000, because she was disabled as a result of surgical medical malpractice at
St. John’s Hospital that left her without a hip, and because her attorneys,
Farmer, Roberts and Fleischaker, did not fight for her and insist that she be
awarded adequate damages of $25,000 against the surgeon and hospital. She was
awarded a mere $400.00. The negligent surgeon had five other lawsuits pending
against him for medical malpractice!
My grandmother had taken out a mortgage on
her home – which was then free and clear – in about 1960 – at my mom’s
persuasion – in order to pay off medical bills. Realtor Louis McDonald arranged
the mortgage.
“I was – in later years – maligned by
offender Malcolm Robertson and others, who called me a liar merely because I –
many years later – very truthfully
reported their demoralizing sex offenses to their parents and to others.
Robertson himself tried to intimidate me through insinuation and innuendo. He
asked me, ‘Have you ever done any hard time?’
“The only HARD TIME I ever experienced was
when Robertson himself and his macho homo cronies were molesting me – dicking
me as it were! There are, of course, many ways of dicking another dude.
I never did any time. The fact is that I have never really committed a crime.
Following my psychiatric discharge from the Coast Guard, I was hit on by a cop,
by a sheriff’s deputy, by an assistant D.A., by a World War II Navy Commander,
and by a former JHS jock, four years older than I, who was at the time married
and the father of eight or nine children, all of them dudes that other dudes or
women considered ‘God’s gift to women.’
“Let’s get real,” says Tom. Virtually all of
the dudes I grew up with were fascinated with male homosexuality and engaged in
various degrees of mutually consensual superifical homosexual behavior of one
form of another. Like I’ve said, I was invited to spend the night with
virtually all of my friends, all of whom were members of various school varsity
sports teams. Most of us shared the same bed. We dated virtually the same
girls.
When all of my old friends had more or less
abandoned me – after trashing me and some of the girls I’d dated – Sam
Hillhouse phoned me one Saturday morning – our senior year of high school – to
come over to his house while his parents and sisters were out of town. When I
got there, Ray Wilson and Kenny Wilkins were sitting in an arm chair together,
Ray sitting on Wilkin’s lap. They were both ‘out of it’ stoned on something or
other. All three of them had worked the late shift at Thriftway Supermarket the
evening before.
In my opinion, the reason for the violence
meted out against me is PRIMARILY that Bob Thornhill was very self-conscious
over his own homosexual inclinations, as well as over the fact that Buck Jeans
and Bill Thurston had both repeatedly mocked Thornhill, calling him “Big Bob” –
when in fact, during a contest, orchestrated by Jeans, Bob was cited (by the
two) as having the smallest penis. Since I was the low man on the totem pole
for other reasons – namely the degree of clout each one’s dad had in the
community – I was conveniently made the scapegoat AFTER my stepdad had been
removed from the board of directors at Empire District. It’s all about money.
All of us dudes joked around, in different
wasy, in an attempt to mock conventionalities – especially in the realm of what
was considered ‘appropriate gender role modeling,’ primarily because all of us
understood that society itself is two-faced on the subject of human sexuality
and everything else, for that matter.
The entire worldwide economic system is
based on deception and fraud and EVERYONE is well aware of that fact – the
primary reason poor people steal – in their own minds they’re merely emulating
the behavior of the oil barons and other barons that steal from everyone in
order to amass their own fortunes. My own granddad Blaise was closely
associated in the oil business with Charles J. Wrightsman, Harry Sinclair, F.
Martin Aiken, Josh Cosden and others – many of whom made fortunes, then lost
either most or all of their fortunes, in their endless pursuit of the black
gold. Cosden himself reportedly died broke. Read The Greatest Gamblers.
Ironically, Buck Jeans’ mom and Bob
Thornhill’s dad were, in my opinion, outspokenly homophobic – scared to death
that their own sons might embarrass their respective families, based on what
Buck Jeans himself told me and on what I observed with my own two eyes and ears
– when Cecil Thornhill severely admonished his son Bob (in front of me) for not
having a date for some hayride we were both invited to. Cecil was also outraged
that we smelled of tobacco, as cigars were passed out to the guests, during the
hayride. What was so ironic is that Cecil Thornhill himself smoked cigarettes.
Wonderful role model!
Secretly, I do believe that Bob Thornhill
had no respect for his mom OR his dad. His own dad had made him so homophobic
that he was scared of his own shadow. He repeatedly phoned me and asked to come
over to my house or to go somewhere with him when Jeans was either out of town
or busy. Yet he would very nervously and self-consciously suggest the two of us
stalk, spy on and or annoy female classmates in one way or another.
Thornhill needed
male back ups in order to do anything, including the times he and Jeans ganged
up on me when the three of us were together – my sophomore year of high school
– right after Jeans had attempted to engage me in outdoor sex outside of the
sunroom window of the Roy Coyne home and after Thornhill himself had stolen his
father’s garaged Buick by having a locksmith come out to the house and make a
key to fit it – while his mom and dad were in Jamaica. After the locksmith
left, Bob and I went joyriding. He first stopped at Linda Tatum’s home,
flashing his headlights on and off – when he remarked she was dating Mark
Tendai. He then drove to some other girl’s house – way out in the country –
again, a girl who was dating someone else, and again flashed the car headlights
on and off. A few yeas before, while Jeans was in Europe, he perusaded me to
spy on a slumber party that Gretchen Spooner had hosted at her home.
When Thornhilll
needed to make a scrapbook for Mrs. Ramsay’s ninth grade speech class, which we
were both enrolled in, he phoned me and asked me for help. He came over to my
house and my older brother, John, whom Bob had repeatedly mocked, thus aided us
both in preparing a scrapbook, a class assignment. As I said, Bob and I and Buck and I were very tight, good friends
until I suddenly – for no fault of my own – became a scapegoat for both of them
– after Don Smith threatened and attempted to intimidate me during an ROTC Veteran’s
Day parade in November, 1953.
What mainstream
society calls heterosexual behavior or straight behavior is merely a
class act and everyone knows it’s an act. Heterosexual behavior – manly
behavior – is typically characterized by a man’s willingness to demean
women-in-general and any man that treats women with common courtesy. Thus, it
is people like Bob Thornhill and Jim Dailey and Charlie Perkins that perpetuate
violent crimes against women, as well as violent crimes against other males.
The underlying cause is their own conflicts over their own sexuality – their
self doubts about their own ability to perform in a bedroom with a mature
woman.
Charlie Perkins
said to me, at a Phi Lamb meeting, “You’re not a real man until you’ve had some
‘nigger pussy’ and we’re gonna get you some.” Don Smith wanted to know if I’d
ever had any titty and if I was a virgin. The fact is that I already was, at
age 14, more of a man than any of them. I wasn’t about to talk about any of the
girls I’d dated – the many girls I’d dated – to include the
spin-the-milk-bottle game with Charlie’s sister, when Judy Perkins came to my
house and insisted on showing my brother and me how to play the game. She then,
of course, dictated that her two younger brothers, Phil and Tommy, alternate
playing the role of a female.
Reminds me of another incident in which
Father Malcolm, rector of Grace Episcopal Church, Carthage, who was not only a
regular boozer, but also a smoker, made a big stink about the fact that some of
the members of the West Missouri Diocesan Youth Commision were smoking
cigarettes during a convocation at Park College near Kansas City. People like
Cecil Thornhill and Rev. Father Malcolm are such ignorant hypocrites. They
punish and humiliate others for emulating their own behavior.
“Several other prominent Joplin people to
whom I complained retaliated against my mother by making threatening phone
calls to her, threatening to have me locked up in a mental institution, and
harming her in other ways. Those who maligned my mother and me are the ones who
are the liars, as well as the nuts! It is unfortunate indeed that Joplin people
cannot feel safe in their own homes, while attending school, while attempting
to participate in sports in a lawful manner, or while swimming at Twin Hills
Country Club,” says Shepherd.
The 1954 assault by Jeans, Thornhill and
Dailey had a direct bearing on the breakup of the marriage of Tom Shepherd’s
parents later that same evening, the resignation by his stepfather as treasurer
and director of the Empire District Electric Company a month later, and the
presumed suicidal death of his stepfather a year later.
On May 31, 1955, the body of Tom Shepherd’s
stepfather, Charles Maynard Shepherd, was pulled out of the East River in New
York City.
Charles Shepherd had gone to New York a
couple weeks before to be interviewed for a position with Con Edison, a major
electrical power corporation, following an interview in Washington, D. C. for a then available position as a
federal auditor.
During his interview Charles Shepherd
reportedly advised U. S. government officials that the president and the former
treasurer of Empire had conspired to defraud the IRS out of approximately
$250,000 in corporate taxes over the years by misrepresenting costs for the
construction of a power dam facility in the Ozarks.
Empire District Electric Co. had formerly
been a subsidiary of Cities Services and Shepherd had worked as an accountant
for Cities Service in the New York City home office for approximately 30 years,
prior to going to work for Empire as an assistant treasurer in 1944. Ed Flick
was then treasurer. Following Flick’s death in 1948, Shepherd was appointed
treasurer.
Although Shepherd’s death was presumed by
many to be a suicide, it was never officially ruled a suicide, and there was
conjecture that he possibly was given a new identity by the IRS in exchange for
his testimony against Empire District officials, and that someone else’s body
was actually retrieved from the East River and buried. The body was placed in a
sealed casket, prior to the arrival of Shepherd’s wife, Clara Olive, who flew
to New York for the funeral. She never actually saw her husband’s cadaver.
A couple years later, the Joplin Globe
reported that the body of a man fitting Charles Maynard Shepherd’s description,
with papers identifying him as Charles Maynard, and linking him to Joplin,
Missouri, was found in a San Francisco hotel room. When Shepherd’s widow
attempted to follow up on the matter, believing the body of Charles Maynard may
actually have been the body of Charles Maynard Shepherd, her husband, the
matter was dropped by the officials. Clara Olive Shepherd was also supposed to
have received a $25,000 payment from the IRS for her husband’s testimony, prior
to his death. She never received the money.
Two months prior to Charles Shepherd’s
reported death, Robert Scott, a Joplin CPA, had died of what was reported as a
self-inflicted gunshot wound. Scott was the brother of John W. Scott, partner
in the law firm of Spencer, Scott & Dwyer, which was general counsel for
Empire. Scott’s law firm was also general counsel for St. John’s Hospital,
where Tom Shepherd’s mother, civic leader Clara Olive Shepherd, was victimized
by medical malpractice during orthopedic surgery in 1962 and was resultantly
left without a hip.
Offender Virgil Jeans Jr.’s brother-in-law,
Fred Laas [who died in 2001], later became a partner in the law firm of
Spencer, Scott & Dwyer.
Jeans’ sister is Dr. Virginia Jeans Laas,
author of Love and Power in the Nineteenth Century: The Marriage of Violet
Blair and other historical books about the Blair family. Offender Bob
Thornhill's parents founded and operated the Thornhill-Dillon Mortuary and
Funeral Chapel. Dailey, an all-around Joplin High School athlete, won a
basketball scholarship to St. Louis University. Offender Malcolm Robertson, a
former municipal judge, is a partner in a Joplin law firm. He reportedly is
general counsel for the Joplin Board of Education. Jeans has worked as a
Ventura, California schoolteacher for many years. Offender Thornhill has
enjoyed a career as a commercial airline pilot.
Offender Jim Dailey was affiliated with the
Arthur Andersen accounting firm until it went out of business following charges
of corruption. Offender Charles Keeter was later elected president of the
Joplin Rotary Club and Lt. Governor of the Missouri Rotary Club.
Keeter’s stepfather, Frank Hampton Shelton,
should have been placed in a maximum security prison many years ago and kept
there, according to Tom. Shelton’s daughter by his first marriage is Jean
Shelton Kinmonth, a Cincinnati interior designer. She taught Tom and John
Shepherd and others how to swim while she was working as a summer lifeguard at
Landreth Park public swimming pool during the 1940s.
Tom Shepherd’s grandfather, John Abbott
Snyder, who founded a Missouri-Arkansas bus line, was one of the founding
members of the Joplin Rotary Club, the Joplin Chamber of Commerce, and Oak Hill
(Twin Hills) Country club. Tom Shepherd, who during high school served as an
altar boy and several terms as president of the Young Peoples Service League at
St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, was also appointed president of the Council of
Churches youth organization, the Joplin Council of the United Christian Youth
Movement in 1955. He served with the Civil Air Patrol, the United States Marine
Corps Reserve and the United States Coast Guard.
Tom Shepherd, who was a Rotary Club
sponsored delegate to Missouri Boys State in 1955, is a third cousin of former
California Congressman Barry M. Goldwater Jr. He is a great great grandson of
Judge Ignace Hainer, Adjutant General during the 1848 Hungarian War of
Independence, Hungarian-American lawyer, statesman and University of Missouri
professor of modern languages. Tom Shepherd is a great great nephew of Oklahoma
Territory Supreme Court Justice Bayard Taylor Hainer, who later served
as general counsel for the U. S. Department of Agriculture and as chief counsel
for the Federal Trade Commission prior to his death in 1933. He is also a great
great nephew of Congressman Eugene Hainer and of Julius C. Hainer, professor of
medical jurisprudence at St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons
(Washington University).
Board Refuses to Censure Vulgar
Librarian
Joplin
Mayor Larry Hickey, an alcoholic beverage distributor, and members of the board
of directors of the Joplin Public Library, including Rebekah Blair Hughes, have
been repeatedly criticized for failing to take proper disciplinary action
against head librarian Margaret Hager and board member Dorothy Roberts. Both
women are accused of being remiss in the exercise of their official duties and
in using inappropriate and vulgar language towards Thomas Mitchell Blaise
Shepherd, a gentleman and the author of The
Investor’s Handbook on Mexico, when he telephoned them on
official business in 1970, regarding the fact that his book, which had been
approved by the library board, had not been cataloged and made available to the
public, merely because of an admitted petty grudge Miss Hager held against Mr.
Shepherd’s mother, stemming from a minor incident that had transpired fifteen
years before.
Librarian
Margaret Hager had illegally towed away civic leader Clara Olive Shepherd’s car
from a library parking area in 1956. Because the parking area, according to the
Joplin Police Department, did not have a visibly posted NO PARKING sign, which
was hidden behind a large hedge, Miss Hager was determined to be at fault by
the Police Department, and required to pay the towing charges out of her own
pocket.
“It
was merely a case of sour grapes,” says Tom. “Hager, Roberts and other library
board members were quite obviously insanely jealous of me because I had
demonstrated my capacity for authoring and publishing such a book when I was a
mere 31-year-old lad. At the time my own wife was head catalog librarian for
the UCSD Biomedical Library at La Jolla, California . . . . I can’t begin to
tell you how many times I got shot down because of some long-standing petty
grudge another male or female held against my mom . . . My mom was forced to
‘wear the pant’ as it were and since she had no husband to defend her, both
males and females took advantage of her, as well as of my older brother and me
.”
Dorothy
Roberts’ son, Ross T. Roberts, stalked and harassed Tom Shepherd and Miss Elsa
Newman, repeatedly demeaning and demoralizing them with offensive, vulgar
comments at a Valentine’s Day party at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Winfred Post in
1953. Sex Offender Ross T. Roberts was later appointed a Federal judge by
President Ronald Reagan. He reportedly died of Lou Gehrig’s disease in 1988.
Mayor Larry Hickey purchased Clara Olive
Shepherd’s home from her at 816 Richmond Road in 1957. Larry and his second
wife, Virginia Scruggs, operated a beer
distributorship for years.
Shepherd Library Collection
Books You Should Own
A Treatise on the Modern Law of Municipal Securities
by Bayard Taylor Hainer reprinted by Cornell Law School Library
in 2010 – a FULL and UNABRIDGED 800 page edition. A shorter edition, published
in 2009 is 572 pp. Same price. Originally published by Bowen-Merrill in 1898.
Hainer, who was born in Columbia, Missouri in 1860, was graduated from
University of Michigan School of Law. He was appointed a United States Supreme
Court Justice of Oklahoma Territory by President William McKinley. He was later
appointed chief counsel for the Federal Trade Commission during the Coolidge
Administration. He died at his home in Oklahoma City in 1933. His father,
Ignace Hainer, was a lawyer, journalist, army general and secretary to the
Premier of Hungary during the 1848 Hungarian War of Independence, and (after
settling in America) was appointed a professor of modern languages at
University of Missouri, then as a member of a Decatur Country Iowa grand jury.
Bayard Taylor
Hainer’s brother, Dr.Julius Caesar Hainer, was a graduate of the Cornell
University Law School (Class of 1885). Dr. Hainer received his formal education
in Hungary and at Iowa State College, where he was a professor of physics,
mathematics and chemistry. Following post-graduate law studies at Cornell
(Class of 1885), Dr. Hainer was appointed a professor of medical jurisprudence
at St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons (Jefferson Ave. and Gamble Sts)
– now a part of Washington University. Julius Caesar Hainer also held an M. D.
degree.
Justice Bayard
Taylor Hainer’s great great nephew is Thomas Mitchell Blaise Shepherd, author
and publisher of The Investor’s Handbook on Mexico.
Allegiances: A
Novel, an epic adventure about Union Navy Lt. Jonathan Wade, captain of
the sailing schooner yacht America, who flirts with treason in his
pursuit of a Confederate French southern actress, set in Virginia in 1861.
Written by engineer/yachtsman/playwright Charles Strout Davis Jr., a Princeton
graduate and former engineer and director of the Borg-Warner Corporation, which
his grandfather, Abbott Livingston Johnson, founded as the Warner Gear Company
of Muncie, Indiana. Novelist Davis is a
great grandson of Charles Merriman, Ashtabula, Ohio. He is a cousin of Clara
Olive Snyder Shepherd, Joplin civic leader. Published in 2001 by Merriman
Press, Grosse Pointe.
James Dean: A
Biography by John Howlett. Was teen idol-actor James Dean a victim of
child molestation? According to biographer Howlett, Dean’s most probable
molester was Rev. James de Weerd, a decorated war hero-chaplain who regularly
took Dean and other boys swimming at the local YMCA, where boys were required
to swim naked. He also introduced Dean to fast cars and motorcycles from the
time Dean was about 12 years old. Following Dean’s tragic death at the age of
24, while driving his Porsche Spyder along a California coastal highway on his
way to compete in a race, de Weerd reportedly even bragged to others about
having had a sexual involvement with Dean during Dean’s adolescent years.
Dean’s own reckless, self-destructive behavior typifies the behavior of young
men who have been molested during their teen years. Published in 1997.
An Existential Approach to Sane and Sober Living by Tom Blaise
Shepherd. An examination of alcoholism and mental illness and of our
schizophregenic institutions that send confusing double-bind messages to
people. For instance, our society simultaneously encourages and criminalizes
alcohol and psychotropic drug use. Shepherd’s solution for sober living is
practicing sound nutritional habits, regular physical and mental exercise and
transcendental meditation in lieu of psychiatry, twelve-step programs and
psychotropic drugs. Published in 1997 by Xandex Press.
An Oklahoma
Adventure of Banks and Bankers, an historical piece that includes
information about Farmer’s National Bank of Tulsa and E. F. Blaise, president
of the bank; and the reorganization of the bank as Exchange National Bank,
presided over by Harry F. Sinclair. Written by James M. Smallwood, professor of
history at Oklahoma State University. Published in 1979 by University of
Oklahoma Press.
An Untold Story:
The Roosevelts of Hyde Park, the story of FDR and his association with
Van Lear Black, owner of The Baltimore Sun, Fidelity Trust of New York and The Sabalo, the
yacht FDR was partying on when he was taken ill with polio. Written by FDR’s
son, Elliott Roosevelt, and James Brough. [Mrs. Van Lear Black Jr. was the
former Helen Mitchell Frampton of St. Louis, first cousin of Mrs. John (Mabel
Mitchell) Snyder of Joplin. Published in 1973 by Putnam.
Barry Goldwater, a gossipy
biography drawn on family papers and interviews with members of Senator
Goldwater’s family, including daughter Joanne.
The author reveals how Senator Goldwater facilitated an illegal abortion
for his 19-year-old daughter by leaving her on a “designated street corner in
Washington, D.C. with a Time magazine folded under her arm for
identification” to be picked up and driven to a secret abortion clinic. The
author also talks about Senator Goldwater’s admitted drunken rages towards his
children and grandchildren and the alcoholism of his deaf wife, Peggy, whose
Muncie, Indiana family founded Borg-Warner. It was also Peggy’s money that
reportedly propped up the failing Goldwater Department Store from the time she
married Barry in 1934 until the store was sold to a syndicate. Mention
is made of Senator’s later support of gay rights after learning of his own
grandson’s sexual orientation. Senator Barry Goldwater’s IQ as recorded on
Staunton Military Academy High School records was 103. He graduated in the
lower half of his class. Written by Robert Alan Goldberg. Published in 1995 by
Yale University Press.
The Conscience of a Conservative. The book was allegedly written by
Senator Barry Goldwater. However, it was actually penned by Brent Bozell,
editor of the National Review, and brother-in-law of William F. Buckley Jr.
Incidentally, Bozell also wrote many of Goldwater’s speeches. Goldwater’s
thesis was that welfare should be “the responsibility of families, not
government.” He vehemently fought against Medicare, and sought to dismantle
Social Security. He later collected a fat retirement government pension for
himself and also became a beneficiary of Medicare, prior to his death in 1995,
ultimately establishing himself as an American “welfare queen.” Senator Barry
Goldwater’s wife, the former Margaret Johnson of Muncie, Indiana, was a second
cousin of Joplin’s Clara Olive Snyder Shepherd.
The Greatest
Gamblers. A 376-page epic of American oil exploration written by
Ruth Sheldon Knowles. Originally published by University of Oklahoma Press in
1959. Includes stories about John D. Rockefeller, Harry Sinclair, Charles
Wrightsman and Gene Blaise (misspelled as Blaize, an editing mistake by
University of Oklahoma Press). Knowles very briefly relates the story of the
founding of the historical Chaser Oil Company and its principal characters,
Sinclair, Wrightsman, Blaise and Connelly (taken from The Oil Business As I
Saw It: Half a Century With Sinclair written by Bill Connelly himself). Connelly’s book,
however, includes more details regarding the organization and ownership of the
Chaser Oil Company in 1905, of which Connelly and Sinclair and Wrightsman and
Blaise were 50/50 partners. Chaser later became a part of Paraire Gas & Oil
Co. In 1908 Blaise became owner/president of the Farmer’s National Bank of Tulsa, prior to its
1910 closure, then reorganization as the Exchange National Bank, which Sinclair
headed as president. Exchange was later reorganized as National Bank of Tulsa.
Today it is the Bank of Oklahoma.
The Birth of Oklahoma. by Thomas Shepherd.
A brief history of the banking and oil industries of Oklahoma, focusing
on Farmers National Bank of Tulsa, Columbia National Bank of Oklahoma City and
Chaser Oil Company and its principals: H. F. Sinclair, W. L. Connelly, E. F.
Blaise and C. J. Wrightsman. Read online
The Oil Business as I Saw It: Half a
Century with Sinclair by William
Connelly, University of Oklahoma Press. 1954. Author Connelly, Harry Sinclair,
Charles J. Wrightsman and E. F. Blaise were partners in an early-day (1905)
venture known as the Chaser Oil Company, forerunner of Sinclair Oil Company.
Purchase at Amazon.com/books
Love and Power
in the Nineteenth Century: The Marriage of Violet Blair by Virginia
Jeans Laas, a remarkably well written biography of a vain, arrogant and
egotistical Washington social butterfly and her “flirtations” with men other
than her husband, based on information retrieved from her diaries. Miss Blair
founded Sons & Daughters of the American Revolution. Book contains
historical photos of Blair House, where Violet spent her childhood and of other
Washington landmarks, as well as Ms. Blair’s husband, Albert Janin, her uncle,
Montgomery Blair, (U. S. Postmaster) and other family members. Author Virginia
Jeans-Laas is a professor of history at Missouri Southern State University.
The book was
published through U. S. government grant money paid to Virginia Jeans Laas over
the years and through the able assistance of colleague Dudley T. Cornish,
professor of history at Kansas State University, Pittsburg. Published in 1998
by University of Arkansas Press. Ms. Laas’s husband, Fred Laas, was at the time
a senior partner in a law firm known as Spencer, Scott & Dwyer of Joplin.
Author Virginia
Laas, also known as Gingy Jeans Laas, is the daughter of Joplin surgeon Virgil
E. Jeans (Sr.). She is also a celebrated golfing champion and a director of the
athletic program of Missouri State Southern University at Joplin.
Love and Power in the
Nineteenth Century: The Marriage of Violet Blair by Virginia Jeans Laas is
available from Amazon.com books
Love and Power
in the Twentieth Century: The Marriage of Clara Olive Snyder View and The Andalusian Architecture
of Guanajuato by Thomas Mitchell Shepherd. See Guanajuato. View.
The Missouri Boys – A story told using home-spun English
(e.g.) Southwest
Missouri ain’t what most people think it is . . . Some’s got more money than others . . . It’s jest that some’s more
clever at stealin than others, which is why theyz got more money. Written, by native son Tom Blaise, a/k/a
Tom Blaise Shepherd. Published in 2007
by the Xandex-Shepherd Press.
Tales about
Joplin: Short and Tall, a collection of stories about early-day Joplin (a mining
center) and Joplinites as told by Evelyn Milligan Jones. Well-done
illustrations by Elizabeth (Betty) Nolan, wife of Joplin real estate investment
manager Ralph Lauder Nolan and mother of banker Thomas Connor Nolan II. Edited
and published in 1962 by Dorothea Bleidung Hoover (Harrigan House). Ms. Hoover
was the sister of actor John (Bleidung) Beal.
[Illustrator
Betty Nolan’s son, Thomas Connor Nolan II, was in 1967 sentenced to six months
in the Missouri State Penitentiary for allegedly having embezzled funds from
the family-owned Security National Bank & Trust Co. of Joplin while he was
serving as president of the bank. Nolan was later found guilty of forging the
approval signature of a bank official on a check he was attempting to cash at a
Fort Worth, Texas bank..]
Tales from the
Arabian Nights, a new version of four of the world’s great classics, written and
beautifully illustrated especially for children. Edited by Lisa Commager, a.k.a Lisa Angier, 1958 Radcliffe
graduate and professor of English literature at New York University. Published
by Exeter 1984. Lisa Commager, who co-starred in a NYC showcase production of Corner
in the Morning with Tom Blaise Shepherd in 1965, is the daughter of Amherst
history professor and author Henry Steele Commager.
The Politics of
Experience. One of the most brilliant existential polemics ever written about
the fraud of psychiatry. Authored by R.D. Laing, Penguin Books 1959.
The Investor’s Handbook on
Mexico, a financial-legal guide,
explaining the laws and regulations governing foreign ownership of a business
enterprise, stocks, bonds, and real estate in Mexico. Also explains the banking
system of Mexico. Written by Thomas
Mitchell Blaise [Shepherd], a grandson of Joplin bank director and bus line
owner John Abbott Snyder. The author’s family established a mining business in
Mexico during the 1930s. Published in 1970 by Blaise Publishing Enterprises (Shepherd-Xandex Press), Del Mar, California.
The Visit, a three-act play written by Friedric Duerrenmatt. Was
adapted into English by Maurice Valency in about 1958. It is about greed,
revenge and corruption. An impoverished teenager, Karla Zachanasian, gives birth
to a child whom the father, Serge Miller, denies paternity thereof. She thus
leaves the village in disgrace, only to return years later as an arrogant
millionairess in order to seek revenge on Serge Miller, a local power figure.
She seeks to buy off the local politicians and the judges in exchange for their
agreement to put Miller to death. However, just before the scheduled execution,
she intervenes, expressing her desire that Miller live and experience the shame
of what he did to her, a far worse sentence than death itself. The play was
adapted into a 1964 film, starring Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn. The play
was published by Sameul French, Inc. and can be purchased from Amazon.com
or another book dealer.
Washington, D.
C., a novel about a Washington newspaper publisher Blaise Delacroix
Sanford and his daughter’s paramour Clay Overbury. Novel focuses on a
homosexual scandal. The first of a series of historical novels written by Gore
Vidal with the same cast of characters. Mr. Vidal is a grandson of Oklahoma
Congressman Thomas Gore and a stepbrother of former First Lady Jacqueline
Kennedy. Published in 1967 by Little, Brown & Company. Amazon.com/books
_files/visit.gif){kind=small}
_files/serv.gif){kind=small}