Before arriving in Oklahoma City I made a stop in Fort Smith Arkansas to check out the Fort Smith National Historic Site. I had visited the Historical Site last March, at the tale end of my Texas Vacation but it was a cold rainy day and that visit was cut short.
I really wanted to tour the grounds of the Old Historic Site but once again is was drizzling rain. So I made a quick visit to the museum and old jail before visiting the old courtroom where Judge Isaac Parker once held court.
Leaving the Fort Smith National Historical Park, I traveled about a half mile to the Fort Smith National Cemetery which is where Judge Parker is buried. Judge Parker was known as the "Hanging Judge," in actuality of the 13,490 cases that he tried he sentenced 160 people to hang and of those 160 only 79 of them were actually executed. Judge Parker was nominated to the the federal bench by President Ulysses Grant and was approved by the Senate in 1875 and served until his death on November 17, 1895. His funeral was and still is one of the largest funeral in Fort Smith History.
After leaving Fort Smith, I crossed the Arkansas River and entered Oklahoma. On the way to Oklahoma City I made my way to a couple of cemeteries that I wanted to visit. The first one was a small rural cemetery in the Community of Akin.
The small community of Akin, Oklahoma was the home of the Floyd Family whose best known member was Charles Arthur Floyd who was better known as "Pretty Boy" Floyd.
It's a little bit of a hike to the Akin Cemetery which is about 15 miles northeast of Sallisaw, Oklahoma. It took me a few minutes to find the Floyd family plot which are located just about in the center of the Cemetery.Pretty Boy Floyd was depression era outlaw who was identified as Public Enemy #1 following the death of John Dillinger. He got the nickname "Pretty Boy" when a witness described him as "a pretty boy with apple cheeks." The name Pretty Boy was a name he and his family hated, but it stuck with him for the rest of his life.
After becoming public enemy #1, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover assigned his best agent, Melvin Purvis to track down Floyd. On October 22, 1934, Purvis and his agents caught up with Floyd who fled into a corn field behind his hideout near East Liverpool, Ohio. It was in this cornfield that Pretty Boy Floyd was shot and killed.
His body was taken to a funeral home in East Liverpool where it was embalmed and put on public display before returned to Oklahoma where he was once again view by the public. His funeral in Sallisaw drew more than 20,000 people which remains as one of the largest funerals every held in the state of Oklahoma.
Resting along side of Pretty Boy is his parents, Walter and Mamie and his younger brother E. W. Floyd, who ironically served at the sheriff of Sequoya County, Oklahoma from 1949 thru 1970. From Akin I made my way back through Sallisaw and traveled about 120 miles west to the New Hope Cemetery near the town of Meeker where I stopped to visit the grave of Baseball Hall of Famer, Carl Hubbell.
Carl Hubbell played his entire Major League Career with the New York Giants and was known as "The Meal Ticket," who had a career record of 253-154 and was a 9-time All Star and a two time National League MVP. It was during the 1934 All-Star game he struck out five future Hall of Famers, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Fox, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin in succession. After he retired he remained on the Giant Payroll for the rest of his life. Carl Hubbell died on November 21, 1988 from Injuries he received in a car crash in Mesa Arizona.
It was getting on toward late afternoon when I left Meeker and mad my way to Oklahoma City. I found that Oklahoma City Traffic wasn't too bad and decided to make one more cemetery stop before calling it a day.Memorial Park Cemetery in Oklahoma City is a very large cemetery and the grave that I wanted to visit is easy to find and I have visited it before back in 2006. So I knew where I was going.
It didn't take as long as I though to get the video I needed and I figured out that I was only a few steps from the grave of Bennie Owen who was the legendary Football, Baseball and Basketball Coach of the University of Oklahoma. It remains one of the very few people to coach three major sports at the same time for a Major University. Owen Field at Memorial Stadium on the Campus of the University of Oklahoma is name in his honor. From Memorial Park Cemetery I made my way to my hotel. The hotel that I had stayed before out near Tinker Air Force Base had changed franchises and was not longer a Choice Property and was not getting very good reviews at all. So I decided on another Choice Property that is located near Bricktown and I will visit in my next blog.
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