Person:Harold Hawkins (6)

Obituary, the Tipton County Tribune, p 2, April 29, 1996:

     Sharpsville, Ind. – Harold Talmadge Hawkins, 84, Sharpsville, died Friday at Miller’s Merry Manor in Tipton.
    Born May 17, 1911, in Tipton County, he was a son of Harry T. and Edna M. (Spaulding) Hawkins. He was married April 25, 1936, in Lafayette, to Lois A. Pumphrey. She survives.
    He retired in 1971 from Naval Avionics in Indianapolis, where he was a mechanical engineer.
    A graduate of Purdue University, he was a captain in the United States Army and served during World War II.
    He was a member of the Sharpsville United Methodist Church, the Napathali Lodge, F & AM, Tipton Elks Lodge, Purdue University Alumni, Purdue Forever Club and the American Legion of Sharpsville. A former member of the Sharpsville town board, he was president from 1948 to 1952. He also served on the Sharpsville Ambulance board of directors and helped develop the Sharpsville Park.
    Others surviving are two sons, Philip Hawkins of Rhome, Texas, and Carldon “Don” Hawkins of San Diego, Calif.; A daughter, Jacquelyn Baden of Sharpsville; three brothers, Robert Hawkins of Anderson, Larry Hawkins of Annandale, Va. and Lloyd Hawkins of Tipton; a sister, Kathleen Reese of Sharpsville; 13 grandchildren; and 19 great-grandchildren.
    Services will be conducted at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Boyer Funeral Home in Sharpsville with the Rev. Ray Squibb officiating. Burial will be in Sharpsville Cemetery. Graveside Masonic and military rights will be conducted.
    Friends may call from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 p.m. today at the funeral home. April 26 1996

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    Following are excerpts from HAWKINS From Tipton County, Indiana. A Migrating American Family 1861-2001, pp 77-106, published by Phillip Ardath Hawkins in 2002.

    Harold was born in the east bedroom of the family home on 17 May 1911. He was the second son of Harry and Edna (Spaulding) Hawkins, and his grandfather, Eli Spaulding helped baptize him, he was told, with water from the River Jordan. The baptism was at the East Hopewell Presbyterian Church across the road from the home place. “We kids had to go to Sunday school and Church each Sunday. Mom went, but Pop not very often. Pop would not work on Sunday though.” Edna once said, when asked who her favorite was, “I guess Harold, because he caused me the most problems. He wouldn’t wear a dirty diaper. He would take them off, and I would have to search the woods before I washed. He would get the strawberry jam, and hide it in the woods. Harold was always hungry.”
    At the time Harold was growing up, Jonas still  owned all the land, and they not only worked their portion of the land, but worked also for [grandfather] Jonas. Everyone worked, and Harry, who had a very quick temper, whipped the boys a lot. Harold’s feelings toward his father were simply stated, “I loved him, he was my father.”
    Harold and his brother Lloyd did a lot of trapping along the Ross ditch, and the Off ditch on the Hawkins’ properties. They had 40 to 50 traps, set primarily for muskrats, but one time they caught a Great Horned Owl that they gave to the Lafayette Zoo, where it lived for a long time.

    America’s attention was focused on the emergence of a new industry, the automobile, when the twentieth century opened, and its development would span the century. Only six years earlier, in 1894, the first commercially built auto was tested by Elwood Haynes on the Pumpkinvine Pike near Kokomo in Howard County, Indiana. In 1909, the year Lois was born, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built, and in 1911, the year Harold was born, the first Indianapolis 500 Mile Race was held. As children they witnessed World War I, and, thankfully, in 1918 they were spared during the influenza epidemic that had been spread by U. S. troops mobilized for that war. The “Spanish flu”, as it was named, killed 43,000 American soldiers, and world wide, twenty million people. One of those who had died was Harold’s thirteen-year-old aunt, Mary Lois Hawkins.
    Harold Talmage Hawkins and Lois Arlene Pumphrey first met when they became classmates in the spring of 1927, following a move by the Pumphrey’s from Prairie Township, Tipton County, Indiana to a farm one mile east and one mile south of Sharpsville in Liberty Township. They graduated from Sharpsville High School with the class of 1928, and married three years later on 25 April 1931 at the Methodist parsonage in Lafayette, Indiana, where Harold was in his third year at Purdue University.
    Harold’s father, Harry, had encouraged his children to seek occupations other than farming, and he paid for Harold’s first two years at Purdue; in return Harold worked on the home farm during the summer. The final two years at Purdue, the early years of the “great depression”, were financed by participating in the Reserve Officer Training Course, and bank borrowing on notes countersigned by his grandfather, Jonas. Harold, majoring in mechanical engineering, graduated along with 857 Purdue seniors in 1932, and was the first of his hereditary line to earn a college degree. He was awarded a BSME diploma and commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U. S. Army.
    Graduating during the depression years of the early 1930’s, there were few jobs of any kind, and Harold went to work in 1932 as a postal clerk in Sharpsville, Indiana for $13.50 per week. In early 1934 he drove the huckster wagon for Horton’s Grocery Store, and then went to work in Anderson, Indiana as a mechanics helper for the International Harvester farm implement dealer where he was paid $15 per week for working in the store, making deliveries, building fences, and erecting windmills. In September 1934 he was hired as a “Plant Layout Draftsman” by the International Harvester Company in Springfield, Ohio at $30 per week, and in 1936, being offered $165 per month, he moved to the Hoist & Crane Division of Robbins & Myers, Inc., also located in Springfield. In January 1940 he went to Buffalo, New York where he was the “Senior Layout Designer”, at $46 per week, for the Curtis-Aeroplane Company. Harold returned to Indiana in November when the Delco Radio Division of General Motors Corporation in Kokomo employed him at $190 per month.
    The first child, a son, Phillip Ardath was born 3 June 1933 while they were living on North Church Street in Sharpsville. A second son, Carldon Sherrill, was born 15 October 1934 at Lois’ parents, on the farm southeast of Sharpsville, two weeks after Harold began working for International Harvester in Springfield, Ohio. Jacquelyn Arlene was born in Springfield, 16 October 1938.
    Lois’ mother, Maude (Worden) died in November 1939, and when Harold accepted the position with Curtis-Aeroplane in New York, it was decided to move the family in with Lois’ father, Orval Pumphrey. Orval was farming the old “VanBibber place“ 1 ½ miles west of Sharpsville, owned by Harold’s grandfather, Jonas. Electricity was not yet available, and illumination was by kerosene lanterns. Water was pumped by hand, the milkman picked up the milk, and there were regular stops by the ice truck, the bread truck, and the grocery “huckster” wagon. The relatives gathered for hand cranked ice cream and card games of Euchre and Rook, and on holidays the men went rabbit hunting while the women cooked. In the winter there was a once a week bath for the children in a washtub placed behind the coal stove in the living room. The family, following the return of Harold from New York, was still living with Orval, and preparing the noon dinner on Sunday, 7 December 1941 when the news of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands was announced. There was shock and anger at the cowardly attack, and there was the realization that Harold would be ordered to active military duty. The orders would read, “Headquarters Indiana Military Area, Special Orders No. 63, March 24, 1942, paragraph 2, DP, following Res officers ordered EAD effective April 3, 1942,..., 1st Lt. Harold Talmage Hawkins, 0296525, FA-Res (Inslig), Sharpsville, Tipton County, Ind. Rank fr Mar 6, 1942.” Harold became the first of this family of Quaker descent to take up arms in over 250 years.
    Harold, per his orders, first traveled to Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, Indiana for physical examination, and then reported to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Shortly thereafter he was assigned to attend Battery Officers Course #53, at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then on 9 July 1942 he reported to the 602nd Field Artillery Battalion (Pack), Camp Carson, Colorado. The family was on leave in Indiana, when Lois’ father Orval married Ina Ethel (Honeas) Wood on 3 October 1942. In the early winter of 1942 Harold was diagnosed with Scarlet Fever, and was in the hospital and on convalescence leave until early 1943. He returned to duty in February 1943, and on 24 March was made the CO (Commanding Officer) of Battery “A”, 602nd FA BN., and promoted to the rank of Captain. In May he was transferred to the 609th FA BN, an element of the newly formed 71st Light Division, as the CO of Battery “C”. Harold never recovered from the effects of Scarlet Fever. After his return to duty, he was having difficulty with the physical demands of field operations, and in August of 1943 he was back in the hospital. In September he requested transfer to AAF Material Command, citing his engineering background, and inability to perform field duty. The request was denied, and on 30 October he was relieved of his command, and transferred to Fitzsimons General Hospital in Denver, Colorado. Effective 24 March 1944 Harold was honorably discharged for medical disability.
    Following his release from active military duty in March 1944, Harold and the family returned to Sharpsville, Indiana. A home was purchased on West Vine Street, and Harold returned to work at Delco Radio in Kokomo, five miles to the north of Sharpsville. Life returned to a more normal flow, but the war effort was a commitment for every citizen. There were war bond drives, there were scrap drives, and there were drives to collect milkweed pods, which would be used in life vests for sailors and airman. In the evenings Lois played the piano as the children sang all the latest songs, and when they were not singing you could find everyone gathered around the dinning room table, working on a picture puzzle. The last piece of the puzzle would always be missing, but then one of the boys would find the piece in his pocket, allowing him to put the last piece in and complete the puzzle.
    The home in Sharpsville was a two-story house, with a hand pump in the kitchen for water, a crank telephone (ring 3 on 72), an outside privy, and there was a single electric light in the center of every room. Heat was supplied by a coal-burning stove in the living room. A small barn, leftover from a time when everyone in town had a horse and a cow, sat on the rear of the lot. The hand pump was soon replaced with an electric well pump and a pressure tank, a septic system was installed and a pantry was converted into a bath room, and additional wiring was installed to provide more lighting and electrical outlets. The front porch was remodeled, and then a complete basement was installed. The basement was a major undertaking. A part of the back porch floor was removed, and Harold and the boys with shovels and pick axes dug and carried the dirt up a stairs in buckets. It was dumped on Harold’s father Harry’s truck, or if the truck was not available, on the ground until it was available. After many weeks of climbing the stairs, Harold constructed an electric operated belt conveyor that the dirt could be shoveled onto and conveyed to ground level, and then shoveled onto the truck. In constructing the basement the dirt was removed to within 16 inches of the existing foundation, and the wall was built of eight inch by sixteen-inch cement blocks. A top cap of cement was poured from the new wall to the existing foundation, creating a 24-inch ledge around the inside of the basement. Drain traps were installed around the block wall, and the floor was poured to drain to the walls. Around the base of the wall, a beer bottle was used to create an indentation to carry any seepage to the drains. The completed project was well engineered, and there was never any moisture problem. The large coal stove was moved from the living room to the new basement, but the convective transfer of heat through floor grates did not adequately heat the house, and a gas furnace with ducting was installed. The second floor haymow was removed from the barn, the lumber salvaged, and the barn was converted into a two-car garage and utility building. The back porch was enclosed, and then the house was re-sided. Harold was not one to remain idle, and any project was a family undertaking.
    The population of Sharpsville was about 500 when Harold was elected to the town board in November of 1946. He served three two-year terms, and was board president during the last two terms. He fought for and won the approval of the first city waterworks to replace the individual family wells, and his leadership led to improvements in the drainage system and the fire department, and to the institution of a weekly trash pick up. Another task that he undertook was curbing the teenage auto and motorcycle racing, reckless driving, and general disturbance caused by spinning tires, and the racing of “straight-pipe” engines. The county sheriff showed almost no cooperation, and it was left to the board and a deputized Harold Hawkins to enforce the peace. There were a lot of changes in this small town during the period, and certainly there was controversy. Harold was tagged with the title of “Mr. Mayor”, and it was a title that grew in respect, and one that he carried for the rest of his life.
    Life revolved around the children, who were involved in all of the school activities, especially in music and in athletics. They started with music lessons, graduated to the Junior Band, and then to the High School Band. Phil played the clarinet, Don played the trombone that Harold had played, later taking up the baritone, and Jaci played the trombone and the piano, and was active in baton twirling. All sang in the school chorus. Phil, and later Jaci, was Drum Major for the marching band that was recognized as one of the best in the state of Indiana. There was a lot of parental involvement in the motivation of the three children, and in the transport to the contests and the performances all over the state. The children were all active in athletics of the period. Each had a bicycle and learned how to swim. Both boys excelled in basketball, track, and softball, and both were selected for the varsity basketball team before the end of their freshman season. During their four years of high school both boys served as team captain, and both were selected to numerous “all-star” teams. Phil was a starter at the end of his freshman year (1948) on a team that was the first to win the sectional tournament since Harold’s team in 1928, and Don was to be recognized as possibly the best to have ever played at Sharpsville. There was no organized athletics for girls, but Jaci was an excellent swimmer, and she became an accomplished baton twirler. Harold and Lois were at every game, contest, or event, and they were on the front row. They participated, they encouraged, and they defended. Harold was a regular in “Letters to the Editor”, where he responded to every slight or criticism of the family, the school, or the town of Sharpsville. The children did well in academics, and the parents were always available for help. The parent of choice was Mother, who gave the help that was needed. Daddy always imparted more information than was desired.
    Movies were a weekly activity, and in many weeks there would be two or three trips to the theater. The family had one of the first TV’s in Sharpsville, a Magnavox, but the limited programming was more a novelty than a challenge to the theater. The time trials and the Memorial Day “500 Race” were in May, family reunions were held on the 4th of July and on Labor Day, and there was penny-ante poker and fishing. Harold loved his fishing trips, and each year he was off to Cass Lake in Minnesota, Bemidji, and then to Redditt, north of Kenora, Ontario, Canada. Sometimes the whole family went, sometimes the boys, and sometimes it was just Harold and a friend. Harold liked the outdoors, rain or shine, and they were his true vacations. In 1949 he built a plywood camper for the back of his Chevrolet ½ ton pick up truck. It was a classic for the time and was attractive as well as functional. Phil & Don, with one of their friends toured the western U.S. in the truck in the summer of 1950, as Harold and a friend had toured in the summer of 1929.
    Harold’s father Harry suffered a heart attack in May of 1950, but was recovering when the boys started their camper tour of the western U. S. While the boys were in California on 27 July 1950 Harry suffered another attack and died. Harold served as the administrator of Harry’s estate, and the 220-acre farm was placed in a living estate for his mother. Harry’s early death at the age of 61 was very difficult for Harold to accept.
    Harold continued to work at Delco Radio, where he worked on the design, development, and the production of auto radios and government electronic equipment. He became the chief mechanical engineer and director of the Oldsmobile and the Packard automobile radio lines, and during that period, he was responsible for the development and implementation of the first signal seeking radio. He made time in the spring of 1951 to accompany Phil’s senior class, as a chaperone, on their trip to visit the Nation’s Capital in Washington D. C., to some of the Civil War battlefields in the area, and to New York City. In September 1952 he quit his $550 per month job at Delco, and for one semester taught mechanical drawing at Purdue University, receiving $525 per month. 
    Earlier in 1952, at his mother’s urging he had purchased the 40 acre “Shields place” on State Highway 19 that abutted the east side of her Hawkins property and the south side of her Spaulding land. Harold purchased the land with house, barn, and sheds for $14,000, and Edna bought Harold’s Sharpsville property. He would remodel this house, enlarge the small basement furnace room, and make many general improvements to the property. While Harold was teaching at Purdue, Lois and Jaci were at home on the farm, Phil had transferred from Indiana University in Bloomington to Butler University in Indianapolis, and Don was in his freshman year at Purdue. Both boys had educational deferments during the Korean War that had started in 1950. Don, in January 1953, transferred to Indiana University in Bloomington to complete his freshman year.
    In June of 1953 Harold went to work for Sylvania Electric, Inc. in Buffalo, New York, and in August Phil and Sharon Wilcox were married in the Sharpsville Methodist Church. Harold had been hired as the Engineer-in-Charge for making design changes in televisions, home radios, and auto radios to adapt them for automatic assembly, and he was paid $725 per month. He resigned from Sylvania in March 1954, and returned to the farm that Lois and the children were maintaining. He then worked part time at $1.25 per hour for the Tipton County Surveyors Office until he went to work for the Naval Avionics Facility in Indianapolis, in 1954, at a starting salary of $5,600 per year.
    Harold, in 1957, decided that commuting to work in Indianapolis and trying to keep up the farm was too much, so he sold the farm for $19,000, and bought back, from his mother, the house in Sharpsville. Lois’ father died in March of 1958, and in June, Jaci, who had divorced Larry Ball, married James Weaver. Later in 1958, to be closer to Harold’s work, they sold the Sharpsville home and bought at 2148 Courtney Rd. in Indianapolis where they lived until 1972.
    During the 17 years that Harold worked at the Naval Avionics Facility in Indianapolis (NAFI), he held many different positions. He started as the head of the drafting department, and one of his first changes was to require his employees to wear a coat and tie. He told them that they were professionals, and that he expected them to look like professionals. His later responsibilities and accomplishments included the engineering of the first all weather terrain clearance radar, which would allow the F-111 to fly within fifty feet of the ground at high speed in weather and at night, and later the development of the new “smart” bombs and missals that could find, identify, and then hit a pre-selected feature of a target. 
    While living in Indianapolis, Harold and Lois’ neighbors were a young couple that hosted a lot of parties. They had added floodlights on the side where they had picnic tables and chairs, and the lights were illuminating the end of Harold’s home, though it was a goodly distance away. Harold asked that they adjust the lights down so as to not light his house, and they did adjust them - to shine directly at Harold’s bedroom window. Harold resolved the situation by getting his shotgun and at close range blasting the lights, fixtures, and house. The sheriff was called, but he advised the couple that they should consider themselves fortunate that it was the lights that had been readjusted, and that they should leave well enough alone.
    Harold retired from NAFI in 1971, and in 1972 they sold their Indianapolis home and returned to Sharpsville, where they purchased Harold’s brother Lloyd’s home at 223 West Walnut Street. Community affairs again became an active interest. Harold spearheaded, one of his favorite terms, the establishment of a volunteer ambulance service, and he was a prime mover, another of his favorite terms, in the clearing of the abandoned high school and the development of the land into a town park. The gymnasium, for which he and his classmates had hauled the building tile, and where he and his sons had played basketball, was preserved as a part of the park. Also, there was time for travel, and with a son working for the airlines, that was possible at no cost, on a space available basis. They visited in Dallas, TX with Phil’s, and they visited in Tempe, Arizona where Don’s had moved, and they visited San Diego, California, following Don’s move there. A favorite destination was the islands of Hawaii.
         Harold was interested in family genealogy. In 1937, while working in Springfield, Ohio, the family visited the Caeser’s  Creek cemetery and church in Clinton County, Ohio near where Harold’s grandfather Jonas had been born. In a letter to “Grandpa and Grandma Hawkins” dated 10 October 1937 Harold described the 26 September trip. He stated that the Friends Church was holding a service when they arrived and that a wall of white stone, two feet thick and five feet high enclosed the cemetery. They located the markers for Jonas’ father Charles, and for Charles’ father Henry which were next to each other. Following the service they visited with the custodian of the church records, and discovered that Henry’s parents were Amos and Ann (Millhouse), who are also buried in the cemetery, but do not have a marker.
    In 1947 Harold produced a booklet on his information, and distributed it to the extended family. His speculation on Amos’ father being Philemon III would prove to be incorrect. Contacted in 1977 by a distant cousin, Carl H. Hawkins of Richmond, Indiana they determined that Amos’ father was John and the history was further extended to the immigrant Jeffrey Hawkins. Jeffrey, and his family, who were Quakers, from Norton-Bavant, Wiltshire, England sailed from London with William Penn on the Welcome in August 1682, and arrived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in October of that year. 
    In 1989, Harold, with the assistance of genealogist Marietta Henry, completed Hawkins Family from Wilts Co., England to Tipton Co., IN & Related Families, and it was published by the Selby Printing Company in Kokomo, Indiana. This 234-page book contains a wealth of information on the Hawkins and the Pumphrey families. In addition to the genealogy and various relationships to Pocahontas, Presidents Jefferson, Hayes, and Nixon, there are many humorous tales, and there are numerous factual accounts, as when Harold’s great-grandfather Nathan Spaulding, in 1856, declined to pay $30 per acre for the McGee place, the future location of Kansas City, Kansas. Harold’s line of descent was Jeffrey1, James2, James3, John4, Amos5, Henry6, Charles7, Jonas8, Harry9, and Harold10. 
    In August of 1985 Harold had a light stroke, the first in a series that would occur over the next few years. In early 1992 he was admitted to the Kokomo Rehabilitation Center, and later transferred to Noblesville, Indiana for further therapy. In February 1993 Harold moved into Miller’s Merry Manor nursing home in Tipton, Indiana. He could get about, and he was mentally acute, but he was impaired in the left arm and leg, and he needed assistance that Lois was physically unable to render. Lois, in October 1994 had a very light stroke, and on 7 November 1994, she also moved into Miller’s Merry Manor.
    Harold died intestate the evening of 26 April 1996, a few days before his 85th birthday. He had been returned to the nursing home after being in the hospital a few days with pneumonia and an intestinal problem, and while there he had another severe stroke; he was exhausted. Lois and [daughter] Jaci was present when he took his last two deep and relaxed breaths. The Reverend Ray Squibb, of the Sharpsville Methodist Church officiated at the funeral home and at the graveside. His remembrances of Harold were that “he was not a church man, but a man that had found God; a bit crotchety and insistent upon his own way; he wanted things to be the way he wanted them, and thought that was the right way, and he went after it. He was very disciplined, he was brilliant, developing radio firsts, the low level radar system, and  the “smart” seeking weapons, and he cared deeply about his community. He wanted to be up on things, and he wanted to be in control. He was a very proud man.” The graveside services included the Masonic Rite, followed by the Military Rite that concluded with three volleys fired by a seven-man rifle squad, taps, and on the last notes a fly-over of military aircraft.