Obituary, Chickasaw Times

This is a copy of my mother's obituary, published this month in the Chickasaw Times:

James Wenonah Paul Gunning died in her home in Oklahoma City on May 2nd, after a short illness.

Mrs Gunning, or “Jim” as she was known to her family and to older friends, was born on November 16, 1913, in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, and was a great granddaughter to that town’s founder, Smith Paul. Jim was the last of the third generation of his direct descendants.

The Paul family home was in Pauls Valley, but they also owned a small farm near town, the Chickasaw allotment of Jim’s oldest brother, Willie. Jim's fondest childhood memories were of the time she spent at the farm, riding the horses, climbing trees, and catching fish in the creek which ran through the property. At the home in town the family kept a cow, a goat, and chickens. Jim's chores included milking the cow and the goat, and gathering kindling for the big wood stove her mother used for cooking.

One of the highlights of Jim’s childhood was spending her first year of junior high school at Bloomfield Academy for Chickasaw and Choctaw girls in Ardmore, Oklahoma. She had a wonderful experience there, getting acquainted with other girls of Chickasaw heritage, and being free from the prejudice against Indians she had experienced at home. Jim was frustrated by the school’s policy of forbidding the girls to speak their native language, but the girls taught Jim a few words on the sly. Jim’s father, who spoke Chickasaw fluently also refused to teach Jim his native language, beyond counting to ten and a few simple words, thinking it was more important for her to fit in with the white culture.

The next year Jim decided to return to school in Pauls Valley. She said, “I probably should have stayed at Bloomfield, but I was just too home sick.” In 1931, when Jim graduated from high school, times were tough. The Depression had begun, and Jim had recently lost both her father and her oldest brother, but Jim’s brother Homer, by then a state senator, wanted his younger siblings to have a college education, so he arranged for room and board for Jim with her other brother Haskell, who had recently earned a law degree himself and worked for the state School Land Department. So at a time when women weren’t expected to go to college, with barely enough money for food and clothing, Jim attended the University of Oklahoma and earned a degree in social work. Social work was a new field at the time, created by the need for workers to administer the funds appropriated by Congress for the relief of those hit hardest by the depression.

After her graduation in 1935, Jim was assigned to work out of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, helping mostly Indian families in need due to the depression.

In 1941 Jim married Donald D Gunning, and after the beginning of WWII she did volunteer work for the Oklahoma City Hospitality Club, working with children of poor families, and for the American Red Cross, where she used her training in social work to help decide which men to release from military service to return home to support their families.

In 1942, Mr. Gunning was hired by Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas, and the Gunnings spent the rest of the War there. After the birth of her son Robin in 1942, Jim devoted herself to being a mother and a housewife. She remained active however in many civic and church projects.

After the death of her mother in 1962, Jim went back to work as a social worker, this time using her middle name of “Wenonah,” the name of Hiawatha’s mother, from Longfellow’s epic poem, “The Song of Hiawatha.” Wenonah then worked for 13 more years for the Oklahoma State Welfare Department, starting at the Oklahoma County Office and working her way up to a position as consultant for the State Director.

After her retirement from the Welfare Department in 1984, Wenonah was appointed to the Chickasaw Historical Society Board of Directors on the recommendation of her brother Haskell Paul, a member of the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. She served proudly as a member of the Board until unable to attend meetings for health reasons in 2008.

It was impossible not to be impressed by Mrs Gunning’s pride in her family and heritage, her enthusiasm for her beliefs, and her personal interest in everyone she met. In 2005, when she found out that a friend’s adopted child had been taken from him by the state, she helped him make connections to appeal the decision. In 2007, at the age of 93, she helped her nephew find an apartment at Ada in Chickasaw Senior housing. Mrs Gunning never stopped trying to help others.

Mrs Gunning was preceded in death by her husband, Donald D Gunning. She is survived by a son, Robin R Gunning, MD, of Denver, Colorado, three grandchildren, Donald Gunning, Cheryl Pichette, and Therese Pichette of Spokane, Washington, and 13 great grandchildren.