Joanne Whisnant

I knew Joanne Whisnant when she was a young child. She lived with her parents in Red Fork, Oklahoma, then a suburb of Tulsa. We went to Pleasant Porter school. Her parents helped her to be independent and she was.

Her mother made clothes with little capes at the shoulders to cover the place where her arms were supposed to be. And she wore pretty shoes to school, no oxfords for her since they would have been more difficult to manage.

Instead of a desk, she had one of the usual school tables with a couple of drawers. She would go to her table, remove shoes, socks were dainty anklets we called them, pull out the drawer for her books and pencil. And away she would go, writing with her feet.

She was a good student. And a pretty blond child.

My aunt, Julia Mays, was a neighbor of her family.

We moved back to Tulsa (just across the Arkansas River) and I saw her no more until high school and she attended one of our dances.

Joanne never said, "I can't do that."

She seemed happy.

She had a friend, Ethel Marie St. Clair, who also played a guitar so they appeared in 1935 in Dallas at a big fair.

I am 85 years old now but remember her well.