Precious memories

Longtime resident Marion Hagerstrand recalls her long, colorful history in Tahlequah and points beyond.

By RENEE FITE

Park Hill was bigger than Tahlequah when Marion Hagerstrand was a girl.

Acee Blue Eagle would push her in her carriage sometimes.

Sequoyah High School was an orphanage.

At 88, the charming woman answers her front door with a bright and welcoming smile. Her eyes twinkle at the arrival of a guest, greeted like an old, dear friend.

In her living room, walls of books share the space with her favorite turtle collectibles, paintings, photographs and memorabilia of a long and happy lifetime shared with her husband, Martin.

Two of her favorite paintings in a grouping, “Into the Light” and “Indian Madonna,” both by Ben Shoemake, are center focus on the main wall in the room.

Along the windowsill, a row of violets bloom, received as gifts “back when violets were popular.”

It’s been 10 years since her beloved husband Martin died, but Marion’s memories, like her sweater, wrap warm around her small frame.

Looking back on life gives her joy.

“I have a wonderful group of friends, a son and daughter,” she said.

Her father, brother and husband still loom large in her life.

Hagerstrand’s father, Jack Brown, was a stately man, assigned in his job with the Civil Service to be superintendent of an orphanage that would eventually become Sequoyah High School.

“It had been an orphanage for children from as far back as the Civil War,” Hagerstrand recalled. “My father was superintendent of the school. His mother had died when he was 9, so he understood the situation.”

His father had been a deputy marshal for the Cherokee Nation and the five children went to live with relatives. He graduated from the old Male Seminary and was employed by the government at the school in the 1920s.

The Jack and Nola (La Flore) Brown family lived at the school, along with other employees.

“We were five miles out of town, and cars were different in those days,” she said. “The school had a big farm to provide vegetables and a dairy herd for cream and butter, an orchard, chickens ... what everybody did.”

Her mother was Choctaw, she said, and was a teacher.

Park Hill was the center of culture then, she said.

“We had a bank, the train came through to Tahlequah that carried freight,” she said. “Tahlequah had three paved streets, Muskogee Avenue, Shawnee – where the Hastings house was, and Choctaw, that went to the train station.”

Hagerstrand recalls having many friends and enjoying school.

“The campus was perfectly safe, but they would tell us about gypsies and Little People,” she said, “they told us to be good or they would get us.”

The school was really a big family, and a source of many cherished memories. She wore dresses with bloomers and dark stockings in the winter with high tops. Her grandmother had made her bloomers with a pocket that was so special she had to show her friends.

“The big girls helped the little girls. A 5-year-old couldn’t shampoo her hair,” she said. “It was like a family. I’m so proud of the wonderful citizens that came out of there. Some called my father Dad Brown, because he was the only father they knew.”

Hagerstrand said the advantage to a one-room class was “you kept getting reviews when other grades learned.”

“Oh it was a great day when we got the gymnasium with a stage,” she said with a smile.

She was 11 when they built their home, now known as the Jack Brown House. There were 32 employees and 375 children at the orphanage.

“Dad made sure they could read and do arithmetic before they were passed. They had to make their own way in life, they also needed good health habits and posture,” she said. “He told them to hold their heads up high and be proud of themselves.”

When Hagerstrand was in the eighth grade a law was passed that employees children couldn’t attend federal boarding schools. She and big brother, Jack, along with others from the school, went to Tahlequah.

The school bus had three girls to each seat and a bench down the middle for the boys.

“My father said that wasn’t safe, it was too crowded, so a truck drove us into town.”

Bagley was run by Northeastern Normal School to train teachers.

“My father didn’t want anyone to practice on us,” she said, joking.

By World War II, they’d grown into a high school. Many of the graduates went into the service.

“Jack was older, taller, smarter and better looking than I was,” she said. “He graduated in the first class from Annapolis in ‘41.”

An electrical engineer and a civilian pilot, he served in combat, including Gilbert and Sullivan Landing and in North Africa. He’d been at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, but wasn’t killed. His ship, the U.S.S. Cleveland, was the first to clear the harbor. Officers were needed to train combat pilots, and he was assigned to Pensacola, and that’s when he was accidentally killed by a student while flying.

By that time, Hagerstrand had graduated from the University of Arkansas and had attended Northeastern to get her Oklahoma teaching certificate. With her home economics degree, she taught at Haskell before joining the Army Women’s Auxillary Corps in 1942 with her best friend Gail Rogers, whose dad owned the drugstore.

She was stationed in Cheyenne, Wyo., New Guinea and Manila.

“Back in those days, women didn’t bear arms, they did office work, and were lawyers,” she said. “I was the mess hall officer because of my home ec degree.”

New Guinea was nothing but a jungle, she said. The second-largest island on the globe, there was nothing there but what the military brought besides the ruins of a Dutch plantation. There were 750 women and 5000 men per woman. Security on the base wasn’t just to keep the enemy out, but also to keep the women safe.

Lipstick was very important and hard to come by. Her parents and friends sent her several items in a No. 10 can, including lipstick and clothes pins with the names of each girl who donated one. She used her beer ration to wash her hair to keep it soft. They wore long sleeves and pants to protect them from mosquitos and malaria.

Today, many have families touched by war, but back then everyone was, she said.

“I’m sorry we got in any war, but now we’re like bullies. We should continue to mind our own business until the people in the war call for help, like in World War II,” she said. “We need to be there now that we are, but we shouldn’t have gone.”

Marion met the love of her life, Martin Hagerstrand, met in the Army.

“He was so smart, like my brother was, but they didn’t show off, they just naturally would think about things,” she said.”And he’d been brought up in an orphanage, so we had that in common. He was ethical and great fun.”

He’d been brought up in a religious school.

“They wanted him to be a missionary in India, but he didn’t,” she said. “He traveled somem then joined the Army.”

“He loved me, he cared,” she said, as to why she married him. “I wasn’t looking to get married. It was still a great season of unrest. I didn’t know if he’d fit in with my family. We were in Manila by then.”

Then they dropped the atomic bomb.

“And five days later the war was over. We hadn’t heard anything about a secret bomb.”

Tahlequah has gotten much bigger in her lifetime.

“Martin worked on urban renewal. We needed jobs. He had worked out a deal with Nike, but some people didn’t want it. They were going to make golf balls,” she said.

Cherokee Principal Chief W.W. Keeler had great foresight and wanted to do something for his people, she said.

“He and Martin got together and decided tourism was a clean thing to happen,” she said.

The Heritage Center and amphitheater were built. The Trail of Tears Show was born after they saw “Unto These Hills,” a story from the Bible performed at Cherokee, N.C.

He also worked to establish the Five Tribe Museum in Muskogee.

“He had the intelligence and desire, after he met Mother and Dad, to come to Tahlequah,” she said. “He wanted to know more about any culture that could have a person like Jack Brown come from it.”

Lots of kids grew up with their family working at the ancient village.

“It was thoroughly researched, how the natives were before touched by explorers and kept very authentic. In Spain, Chief Keeler read journals and said it’s all written down just like we’re doing it. It’s not so much like that anymore.”

Hagerstrand believes people could learn a great deal just from studying history.

“I wish we would learn from history how to treat people,” she said. “I think we all know what we need to do, we just don’t do it. We don’t help our neighbors. Cherokees are kind to their elders.”

Hagerstrand looks forward to another decade in her beloved Tahlequah.

“Isn’t it wonderful? I’m just so blessed,” she said. “We’ve progressed in so many ways. It’s like I was supposed to bring Martin here.”

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