William Delbert Cordell

A man of many names; his wife called him Delbert, his brother called him Debs, his co-workers called him Bill and his grandchildren called him Papa (PawPaw).

Being such a young husband, married at 15 and father at 16, Bill worked at any and all jobs to make a living for his family. He told me of riding the freight trains to get from place to place and about the day he joined a group of men who had gathered in the freight yard hoping to be picked for work that day. When the group was asked if any of them knew how to signal trains he held up his hand. He knew absolutely nothing about signaling trains but he took the lantern and headed on down the tracks. He stopped the first worker he saw and asked how to signal with the lantern, so he not only earned a little money that day but also learned a new skill.

He worked as a nurse in a mental hospital in Pueblo, CO. in 1938. (This first picture is dated 1938)

He may have attended a trade school to learn to be a machinist. We know he attended the Oklahoma City Trade School to learn blue print reading in December of 1942 for the Douglas Aircraft Company. [Enrollment card]

He was working as a machinist at Douglas Aircraft in Oklahoma City in 1944 when he was drafted into the Navy. He was on active duty from May 1944 to Dec. 8, 1945. He saw action at Iwo Jima and Okinawa as well as other battles, as a spotter on the minesweeper, USS Defense. He was discharged with a classification of Motor Machinist's Mate 3rd Class. [Honorable discharge card]

Before he went to war, he moved his family to Henryetta, OK to be near Audrey's sister, Katie Sumpter and her family.

After his discharge he worked for Decker Machine & Tool in Henryetta for a couple of years. Then he worked for the smelter (Eagle-Picher Mining & Smelting Co.) until they went on strike and forced him to seek work elsewhere. He drove to the State Employment Office in OKC and found that he had the choice of a job at an aircraft plant in Wichita, KS or one at Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Co. in Duncan, OK. He chose to apply for the job in Duncan, being nearer his original home and his mother in Lawton. He was employed on Sept. 11, 1950 and lived in Lawton with his mother until he found a house for the family at 1015 Spruce and moved them to Duncan on Oct. 15, 1950. Audrey said the family would have starved during the smelter strike if not for the Lahey's Grocery in Henryetta giving them credit. This same Lahey family later moved to Duncan and opened the Lahey Nursing Home on North 5th Street..

Bill missed not having a father and Frances remembers hearing him say once that he wished he had a father of his own. Claude Cordell went to World War I and just never came back home to stay. He did visit a couple of times and we'll never know what happened to make him stay away but I'm sure he must have suffered too, because he never had any other children.

When Claude died in Jan. 1949 his sister told the estate lawyers that he had a son somewhere in Oklahoma. It took almost a year to track Bill down but when they did he traveled to Tennessee and Alabama to take care of his father's estate and to meet his Cordell relatives for the first time.

His aunt, Ruby 'Cordell' Jones lived in South Pittsburg, Tennessee and Bill and Audrey made many vacation trips to visit with Ruby and her family. Ruby's daughter, Dortha 'Jones' Martin, gave us the family tree that I now have in the Cordell family file.

His favorite pastime was bass fishing and he and his fishing buddies made trips to a lot of the good bass lakes in Oklahoma and Texas.

He made beautiful fishing rods for just about everyone in the family and offered to teach me to do it but I didn't have the time or the interest. I still have his rod making equipment.

Bill had a heart attack in 1974 and was on disability until his retirement.

[As told to me by my mother, 1999]

Other images of W.D. Cordell
Click on the image for a larger version

W.D. Cordell as an infant.	His 52nd Birthday.	At work in 1956.	After a hunt in the late 30's. W.D. is on the left, Orval Cornforth is on the right.
Addie & Bill Lovett (W.D.'s stepdad) and W.D.	J.R.'s friend, J.R. Lovett, Glen Cordell, Robert Cordell, W.D. Cordell.	Lee Davidson, JR., Wayne Lovett, W.D., Bobby Lovett, J.R. Lovett, Billy Davidson, Glen Cordell in front.	Wayne Buster, Lawrence Sumpter, Bud Buster, Glen West, Kenneth Sumpter, Glen Cordell, W.D. Cordell
J.R. Lovett, J.R.'s friend, W.D., Robert Cordell and Glen Cordell. Dangerously cool.