A testament to the WPA: how the US saved its people by employing them.

MrsBrady

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Sun Oct-09-11 12:38 PM
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A testament to the WPA: how the US saved its people by employing them.

Edited on Sun Oct-09-11 01:05 PM by MrsBrady

A testament to the WPA: how the US saved its people by employing them.
A personal story from my mother's side of the family.

The WPA helped my family survive during the dustbowl and depression days.

My great-grandfather and great-grandmother had a claim in the future Oklahoma panhandle.
'No Man's Land' it was called, as it was not yet incorporated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Panhandle
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/N/NO001.html

They had come at ages 19 and 18 by covered wagon (He came from Alabama, and they met
while he was in southeast Oklahoma. They married and continued on west: circa 1901)
His siblings and his parents followed. They had their own claims nearby.
They were tough as nails, ambitious, and were determined to work their land. They had been the first to grow wheat in that area, that he could recall. They even helped move a town in Oklahoma to Texas so it could be near the Santa Fe Railway when it came through in 1918.

By the time of the depression and dust bowl, they were approaching middle age, and had 3 older teen sons (two others died in infancy) and 5 younger girls. I know that at least two of the sons and the oldest girl had to go 'to town' to work for room and board in their teens, during high school, because there was not enough to feed everyone. The dirt would blow so much it would cover the fences like snow in the winter. They would live in the basement when the dust would blow, and have to dig the dirt out of the house after the storm. My grandmother said that sometimes all they had for dinner was a boiled egg. Cattle, culled by order of the government, were shot right on the land. Not enough water, grass or feed. Somehow my great-grandmother knew how to keep chickens alive and well despite drought, dust, and wind.

To say times were hard was an understatement.

My grandmother said, "Papa was not a quitter. During the dust storms he stayed on his land. When the crop failed or was hailed out, he plowed and planted again." And also, "If not for the ingenuity and genius of my mother, we would have never survived."

But I don't know if they could have survived it all without the WPA.
Because of the WPA, they had some income that they would not have had. It put food on the table
in desperate times. It allowed them to stay in the home and farm they built themselves, when so many had to abandon their efforts, their land.

Employed by the WPA, he helped clear the land and build the road for Hwy 3 across the Oklahoma panhandle.
He planted trees along Hwy 83 into Texas that are STILL there.
He built rest areas/park areas in Texas and Oklahoma that are STILL there. Permanent outdoor toilets were built for school buildings. Formal entrances were built for graveyards and parks. My great-grandmother was employed to make dresses and under clothes for the US government for needy families. At one point, they were even given food and clothing from this same effort.

There is no reason we cannot have some type of modern WPA.
We need high-speed rail. We need to shore up and modernize what we already have.
I drive across a bridge in Fort Worth that was built by the WPA. I often wonder how often it is tended to.
There are already good ideas thought out. We could employ people to feed the hungry.
There's so much we could do.

The WPA saved families, saved futures.
We could do that again...save families and futures.

on edit: Please post stories, if you desire, about how the WPA helped your family - if you have that in your family history.
also edited to repair web links and spelling errors.