 |
| Lizzie Reed & Dorrel Cornum - Golden Wedding 1964, Sanford, Colorad Frank, Monte, Duwayne, Bonnie, Gwen, Shirley, Kurt, Judy, Lizzie & Dorrel |
Information from Duwayne Cornum and memories from the Cornum Book complied by Jan Westbrook Ryker (typed by Marilee Cornum Vannoy in 2002)
 |
| Heber Dorrel Cornum - about 1889 |
 |
| Floss & Dorrel Cornum 1891 |
Dorrel helped his father farm and drill wells, which later became the means of supporting his family. He also loved to raise hogs and big gardens. When he was just a kid he worked for Joe McIntire, raking hay for $.25 cents a day. The McIntire ranch was located east of town on the other side of Saddleback mountain. Throughout his life he worked for several different farmers putting up a lot of hay. Duwayne remembered raising hay on his Grandpa Heber’s block 103, now owned by Allen Jackson. He said they raised a good crop of alfalfa hay for 22 years and never had to irrigate it. Grandpa Heber also owned block 111. Dorrel owned block 94, Duwayne said this was poor farming ground. It was not like the good lots that his Grandpa had.
Duwayne also remembered helping Papa drill wells. Dorrel knew the make of the land and where he could always draw water. He drilled many of the wells in the valley, as well as his father and later his son, Duwayne. When Duwayne was just big enough to set on a horse, he would ride old “Pet”, which walked around in a little circle for the power to the well rig. Dorrel would hook up two horses, Pine and Pet, one behind the other to the pull the power. The horses would get tired and Duwayne was suppose to keep them going. Well, he remembered getting sleepy when a wrench come flying through the air and hit old “pet” right in the ribs. This woke both of them up and they picked up their speed. Dorrel always had good horses and they were important to his livelihood.
Dorrel married Elizabeth “Lizzie” Pearl Reed on July 12, 1914. They were married by President James P. Jensen, in the Reed home, which is now where the city park is.
When Dorrel and Lizzie were married they first moved to Mesita, Colorado. There Dorrel was busy raising hogs. Their home was in a bunk house which stood about 4 feet above the ground. When their first baby, Duwayne was learning to walk, he would walk around holding onto the wall. One day as he was walking along the wall and came to the door, his weight pushed the door open and he fell out right on his head. Well this upset Lizzie very much to have her baby fall out and she said, “That was enough of that, and she was not going to raise her little boy over there.”
Dorrel Duwayne was named after is father, but always went by the name of Duwayne. He was born in March of 1915, at the home of his Aunt Naomi (Reed) Valentine. Lizzie had went to stay with her sister Naomi before the baby was born. The Valentine home, a little log cabin, was located on the south west corner of block 44, just north of the new school football field. The little log cabin has now been moved next to the Sanford Museum as part of the museum.
After Mesita, the Dorrel Cornum family moved back to Sanford. They first rented a house where Lorraine Larsen now lives, which is in the center of block 46. Then they moved into the Robert and Clara (Chandler) Crowther house on main street, which is now where Butch Crowther lives. The Crowther home was located on the north west corner of block 30. They were living there when Gwendolyn was born in December of 1916. And another daughter Bonnie was also born there in May of 1919.
Dorrel would recall the good times they used to have in the old Harrison Hall. He said, “Duwayne was a little old towhead sitting in the buggy. He was able to say a few words. Someone’s dog came in and was trotting by his buggy and the little tike hollered “sic-em” and the whole crowd heard him and really cracked up!” He sure laughed as he told it and said how well he remembered it and the good times they all had and how they went together and made their fun just for a good time and at no cost.
Dorrel then leased the Ramey ranch, which was north of Manassa, and now belongs to Ivan Thomas. Mr. Ramey was from Salida, Colorado. Duwayne remembers one visit from Mr. Ramey when he had brought his cat with him. Well the cat got spooked and ran away, they could not find the cat when Mr. Ramey was ready to return home. Mr. Ramey had to leave without his cat, but three weeks later his cat showed up in Salida. It had made it all the way home and had very sore feet when it arrived.
Duwayne also remembered how the railroad ran from Alamosa to Salida. It was the longest straight stretch of railroad in the world. The railroad was a very important means of transportation, hauling freight, mail and passengers.
While living on the ranch, Dorrel had a bunch of sheep. He was plagued by a light-colored crippled female coyote. She limped due to three toes missing on one foot. Dorrel went into John Rasmussen’s orchard and buried a beaver with a trap on top of it and covered it well so the magpies wouldn’t get it. He also had a big log chain on it completely covered up so the coyote couldn’t see it. Sure enough she got caught and headed north. The chain hooked onto a woven wire fence when she went through it. He found her the next morning. Dorrel said he was sure glad to kill that old rascal as she had sure given him a lot of trouble. He also lost 32 sheep at one time, when Jim Daniels ran into them with a car!
The Cornum family has many found memories while living out on the ranch. During that time, four more children were born to them. A third daughter, Shirley was born in March of 1921; a second son, Frank was born in June of 1923; a third son, Monte was born in January of 1928; and their fourth daughter, Jewel “Judy” was born in April of 1930. Dorrel and Lizzie were good parents and they taught their family to do a honest day’s work.
After living several years on the ranch the Cornum family moved back to Sanford. This time they rented a house from Carl Gylling. The house was on the west and north side of block 27. Mr. Gylling charged $15.00 per month for the rent. Dorrel fed lambs for Walt Crowther. He would ride Duwayne’s horse “King”, back and forth to feed the lambs for $15.00 per month, which was to cost of the rent.
While living in the Gylling house, a fourth son was born to Dorrel and Lizzie. Little Rex was born March 23, 1932. Baby Rex died when he was about 6 weeks old of yellow jaundice, on May 7, 1932. Duwayne remembered how he was as yellow as a pumpkin, and how his mother would set and rock and hold him, while he just screamed. It was a very hard for them to loose this little baby, but it was even harder to see him suffer.
Duwayne tells a story while living there. “It was during the probation period. Papa was always a great hand to be on the edge of everything. That is between the boot-leggers and the law. The boot-legger, he would go to jail; the guy handling the booze, if he was smart, got by all right. Papa had been off on a tear, he was pretty good at that. Well, he had gotten three gallons of boot-leg whisky. Two gallons were sealed up with a cap on them and one gallon had a corncob in it. I found them, they were buried in the grain bin.
Tuesday night was mutual, well, I went and got Belg Westbrook. We had a little nip out of the one with a corn cob in it. Before we got to church there had been nine of us boys in it and the gallon was half gone. We were all soused. I don’t remember what they did to us at mutual. But PaPa did not speak to me for over a week. He was going to run me off. I was about 15-16 years old, and old enough to know better. He was mad we had spilt about half of it; you could smell it in the wheat. The wheat was what used to feed the chickens. The booze didn’t belong to Papa. It was for a Doctor in La Jara; and there wasn’t three gallons when he went to deliver it. Boy was he mad.”
In April of 1934, the last child Kurt was born. He was born in the Cornum hospital in Alamosa, Colorado. This completed the Cornum family with eight living children. You can imagine how happy the family was to have a new little baby boy after the lost of little Rex.
Dorrel and Lizzie spent most of their married life living in Sanford, except for a short time, when they moved to Arizona. The depression had hit, and it hit the Cornum family. So in October of 1934, they packed up all their belonging and moved to Glendale, Arizona. They made the trip in their old truck and took everything they had with them. The truck was pilled up with furniture and they made a bed on the top where all the kids rode.
The first night they stayed between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, just off the side of the road. They put their beds right down on the sand. The second night was spent in Stafford, Arizona. And the third night they made it into Mesa. Kurt was only five months old and he was so sick when they arrived there.
That winter spent in Arizona, will always be remembered as mighty tough. It took all that Dorrel and Duwayne (age 19) could make to pay the rent (that was $15.00 a month) and to live on. Thank goodness they had brought plenty of food with them. Duwayne remembers how they never had a dime. Dorrel and Duwayne worked in the lettuce fields. Well, the piece of ground they farmed the lettuce on became quit a disappointment. They had worked it up, planted, and irrigated it. And when it came up it was as thick as a lawn. It had so many wild oats in it you couldn’t even find the dirt. They had to cut it for hay, it was a total lost. They had bought a gunny sack full of grapefruit for $.10 cents a sack. A gunny sack would weigh 100 pounds, so they had plenty of grapefruit to eat.
When they were working in the lettuce fields, they would have to go out before sunup in the morning, because in the winter time the days were short. It was sure cold going out to work in the mornings. But by the middle of the afternoon it would get so hot they would have to peel off their clothes. Duwayne retells, “I remember Papa coming home with his underwear under his arm one day. He had got so hot he couldn’t stand it. That sure did tickle mother.”
While living in Glendale they went to church regularly. They were the only family with about three other people attending. So they didn’t have much church. Well they were tickled to death to have Gwen come, so she could play the piano for the rest of them to sing. In March the family was able to go to the temple and be sealed for all time and eternity. They went to the Mesa Temple on the 27th of March, 1935. The next month they left Arizona for good.
When the Cornum family arrived in Sanford, they moved in with Lizzie’s sister, Alice Reed, who never married. Aunt Allie, as they called her, became a second mother to the children. They built three rooms on the back of Aunt Allie’s home. In the front part of the house was the post office and a drug store. Allie was the Postmistress in Sanford for some 70 years. Lizzie helped her with the post office and drug store. John Westbrook would meet the train in La Jara with the mail each morning and night. The train came from Durango at night and from Denver in the morning. He would also take orders from Allie for medicine that was needed and bring it back. Allie was so good to people to give them their paper or mail or dry cleaning at the back door when the post office was closed. Her kindness and goodness knew no bounds.
(The following is from memories of their daughter, Judy) “I have the best parents in the world!!! One of the things that I remember about Dad is how his judgment was held in the highest esteem. I know of several people that would come to him and ask his opinion about most anything because they respected his judgment so completely. He was very honest and dealt with his fellow man very fairly. He didn’t owe anyone very long before paying them in full. The fact that the banker O.A. Garris, never hesitated to lend him money when he needed, helped me to know it was because of his integrity.
It would be fun to know how many wells he has drilled in this Valley. There were many I know, and how many homes he has put the plumbing in I can’t begin to say. He has crawled under many a house that was narrow and spidery and put the pipes together for the convenience of having water in the house.
He hauled coal from Walsenburg and took iron to Pueblo to sell many times. He always had good hogs that he was raising to butcher and to sell. My, how he did cook potatoes and grain to feed them. Never did he have an animal on the place that he would let go hungry. He always had fat animals. When it was time to butcher, everybody in the neighborhood had a fresh package of meat. Mother would take the skin of the hog and make cracklins when she rendered the lard from the skin. Oh, they were good!!! Then she would make cracklin biscuits. Say, they were hard to beat. Mother was a wonderful cook!!!
Mother was very good at doing for the family on whatever Dad provided and sometimes that was pretty meager. I never remember going hungry but hearing them talk about how tough times were. At times they must have done without just to see that us kids had plenty.
Mother was a very good seamstress too. I can remember some of the dresses that she made for me and they were cute too. I wish I could tell her how much that I appreciate it and all the things she did for me. Bbecause I didn’t always act like I wish I had, to show her how much I appreciated the things she did for me.
Mother would bake bread and have supper in the making when she would go into the Post Office to help Allie in the evening. We kids would come home from school, thinking we were starved to death, and of course, eat our weight in fresh bread or rolls. Then she would come in with the intend to have supper ready, and we had eaten her bread. She would scold us right good and then fix something real good to eat.
Mother always did her own fixing up around the house. She would paint and sew curtains and was an immaculate housekeeper. She designed her kitchen when she had it remodeled. Buck Canty made it just the way she wanted it. It was real pretty and convenient. She had good taste when it came the redoing whatever.
Sylvia Cunningham was a good friend to Mother and she use to come down. Mother would visit with her in her car in front of the house. I guess they had something in common and enjoyed each others company. Sylvia gave mother a creamer and sugar bowl when I was born, because I was born on her husband, Charilie’s birthday. They had a girl born in September after I was born in April and we were good friends also.
Mother and Dad always taught us kids honesty, how to work and to have Heavenly Father in our lives. They showed us how to love each other and to respect each other and to always stay close as a family. I am so thankful for that. They were truly good parents, not perfect, but really good parents and good people.”
Their grandson Mart recalls, “When I was real small there was a chicken coop in the northwest corner of the property that was the house of the rooster who chased me. Well the rooster was an Easter chick that Duwayne’s kids had gotten. When he grew up they gave him to Papa because he was too mean to keep with the kids. Papa asked me to stand in the gate so the chickens would not run out while he fed them. He knew the rooster would challenge me and he surely did. I was not about to stand and let him attack me so I turned and ran for the car in front of the garage. I got across the garden and almost to the garage when I fell face first on the ground. I looked back and the rooster was waiting for me to get up, so he could resume the chase, which he did. If roosters could laugh he would have been roaring; but not half as hard as Papa, as he watched the whole chase played out.
Papa never had teeth that I remember and we loved to use the grinder he used to grind peanuts. We always had to shell a few nuts and grind them for ourselves, and they tasted especially good that way. Mom was a great cook and one of the very favorite things that I remember eating there was the lemon desserts baked in a little crock bowl. Lemon ice box cake and lemon frozen pie were two other favorites that we had often when at their house.”
Dorrel and Lizzie lived with Aunt Allie until Lizzie passed away in October in 1965. After this Dorrel moved in with his daughter Judy. He enjoyed raising pigs and a big garden.
His granddaughter Jan recalls, “The aroma of potatoes, corn and oats cooking out behind our house for Papa’s pigs is a great memory. He had a big cooker at the pigpen and was always fixing something form them to eat. Loading the pigs for a sale was always a trial.
They had to be shoved up the chute (sometimes with a Scotch blessing from Papa). We used old pieces of hose to encourage them on their way. Papa would usually be the one to hold a large board so the pigs couldn’t run back down and squeeze by, back into the pen.” He was loved by all his children and grandchildren, who called him "PaPa".
 |
| Dorrel Cornum with daughter Bonnie Coombs, and granddaughter Becky - 1970 |
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7730995
