When I was 8 or 9, I went on a field trip with my class to the state capitol, in Oklahoma City. As we were walking down a hall – I believe it was outside the senate chambers – a man walked up to my mother and said, “Hi Jim, how have you been doing?”- At that time everyone called her “Jim” instead of Wenonah. They talked for a while and then the man walked on.
I asked, “Who was that?”
She replied, “That was the governor, Johnston Murray.” While I stood there with my mouth open, she explained that her brother Homer “Snip” Paul had been a senator, and that she knew a lot of people at the state capitol. There were pictures on the walls of each of the state legislatures, and we found Snip in several of them.
“Alfalfa” Bill Murray was in his second year as governor in 1932, Snip's first term as a senator, and his son, Johnston, recently divorced from Marion, my violin teacher, was working as a service man for Consolidated Gas Utilities Company in Tonkawa, Oklahoma. By the end of his father’s term as governor he had worked his way up to plant manager.[i]
Wenonah was in school at OU at the time, living with her other brother Haskell, who had a job at the state capitol as head attorney for the School Land Department, a job that Snip got him. Patronage was frowned upon, even then when there were no laws against it, but in the middle of the Depression, politicians practiced it openly. My mother said it was the only way her family survived.
She didn’t have a very high opinion of “Alfalfa” Bill. She said he was an “uncouth old reprobate.” One day, as she was walking down a street she saw him sitting on the curb, chewing tobacco and spitting into the street. My mother had no patience for people who were slovenly or uncouth. I asked her why Johnston was so different from his father, and she said, “because his mother raised him. Bill had nothing to do with it.”
Wenonah's brothers, Snip and Haskell, had a different opinion of Bill Murray. Snip had supported his candidacy for governor and later, some of his proposals in the legislature. Haskell told me that one day Murray had called him into his office and asked him to be lenient with the farmers who were delinquent on their loans from the School Land Department.
I don’t know when Wenonah would have met Johnston Murray, but it was probably around the time his father was governor. She was in school at OU during that time, often at the state capital visiting her brothers. She even dated one of the senators.
In 1942, the year I
was born, Johnston Murray, decided to go to law school, and in 1946 he got his
degree and passed the bar. He rose quickly in the party ranks, and in 1950 ran
for governor. He didn’t always agree with his eccentric father on issues, but “Alfalfa”
Bill supported him anyway. He said that he’d vote for his son “even if he were
not related to me,” and that he, “if elected … will be as diplomatic and
careful as his mother’s uncle …Otherwise, he is a Murray. ‘A chip off the same
block.’” [ii]
Johnston’s mother’s uncle was, of course, the dignified Chickasaw Governor, Douglas
H. Johnston.
Murray’s campaign was almost cut short by some dirty politics by his opponent, Bill Coe, who claimed that he had deserted his first wife, Marion, and left her and his son, Johnston Jr. without any support, but she put an end to his claim with this letter, printed in the Daily Oklahoman newspaper, just before the election.
Dear Son:
You and I have too long been in the
news as a result of half-truths and outright falsehoods for me to remain silent
any longer.
It is absurd for anyone at any time
to say that your father, my former husband, Johnston Murray, ever deserted or
failed to provide for you. He just doesn’t do that sort of thing. Particularly,
it is absolutely false for anyone in public or private life to say that he ever
deserted his family.
I am so sorry that you and I have
been so wrongfully brought into the news by Mr. Coe. We both can stand it, and
certainly Johnston Murray can stand it too.
Affectionately,
Your mother, Marion[iii]
Johnston Murray won the election and became the first Oklahoma governor of Native American descent. Murray’s plans to cut government spending were thwarted by the state legislature, and then his second wife, Willie, decided to run for governor, since Oklahoma law prohibits governors from succeeding themselves.
Willie was kind of interesting in her own right. She had been a concert pianist- Johnston seemed to have a thing for musicians – and while living at the governor’s mansion, hosted weekly open houses, often providing the entertainment. Johnston supported her candidacy, but their relationship went down hill after she was defeated. After a bitter divorce, Johnston was ruined financially - he should have stayed with Marion. But she was probably better off without him. She married again, this time to a violinist named Thede, and they played together in the Oklahoma City Symphony.
Johnston married
again too, to Helen Shutt – I don’t think she was a musician, and they moved to
Ft. Worth. He was driving a limousine there when he ran into an old friend
from the Oklahoma State legislature, Gene Stipe, who convinced him to return to Oklahoma and
practice law, which he did.[iv]
[i] “Johnston Murray,” Oklahoma City (Oklahoma) Daily Oklahoman, 8 October 1950.
[ii] James R Scales, Danney Goble,
Oklahoma Politics: a History,(Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1982) 268.
[iii] “Resenting the Distorted Statements Made by Bill Coe, Mrs. Unger Recently Wired Her Son…,” Oklahoma City (Oklahoma) Daily Oklahoman, 23 July 1950.
[iv] Erin Dowell, “Johnston Murray,” Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History Culture, https://www.okhistory.org.
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