Joe Uknavage, Jr. and the Civil Conservation Corps, CCC

 

In 1936 my dad, Joe Uknavage, was sixteen years old, living with his parents and younger brother in Royalton, Illinois, a poverty stricken coal mining town hit hard by the Depression. He signed up for the Civil Conservation Corps despite their rule that a man must be 18 years old, and soon was sending $25 a month home to his mother, of the $30 he was paid. That was mandated by the CCC rules.

 

 

 

 

 

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a work relief program that gave millions of young men employment on environmental projects during the Great Depression. From its inception in 1933 until it was disbanded when the United States became involved in WWII on December 7, 1941, more than 2.5 million men had served in more the 4,500 camps across the country. They had planted over 3 billion trees, combated soil erosion and forest fires, and occasionally dealt with natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts. (Quote: Joseph M. Speakman, 2006)

 

Dad became a man over the next three years, working his way west in CCC camps in Illinois, Minnesota, Idaho, and California, making friends, toughening his body and his mind. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In November of 1937 he was sent home to his mother’s bedside as she lay dying. After giving birth to her fourth child in 1924, Anna Jane Devine Uknavage was advised by her doctor that another pregnancy might kill her. We believe her kidneys were failing. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anna managed that directive until 1937 when she once again found herself pregnant and ill. She died in December of 1937, age 37, leaving a married 22-yr-old daughter, Petrona Tucker, 17-yr-old son Joe,13-yr-old son Bill, and her husband, Joe Uknavage, Sr., age 50. My Dad told me that he prayed and prayed, walked the dirt roads of Wasson, Illinois, begging God to save his mother, and that when she died he lost his faith in God, so angry, so lost. 

 

He returned to the CCC and was in Tulare, California in late 1939. (In researching the CCC online I just discovered that CCC records are being digitalized and made available to family members so I have ordered my dad's. I hope to learn of all the Camps where he worked and when).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dad’s father, Joe Uknavage, Sr., died on a cold, wet day in February of 1940, in Benton, Illinois, his health eroded by alcoholism, poverty, and loneliness (my opinion). In April when the 1940 federal census was counted Dad was living in Harco, Saline County, Illinois with his Uncle Roy Devine and next door lived Dad’s sister and her husband Reuben Tucker. 

On the census form Dad’s occupation is “Leader in CCC”. Two months later, June 4, 1940, Joe Uknavage joined the US Navy and started training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. For the next six years he was a U. S. Navy Sailor, rising in rank from AS to BM1c, Bosun’s Mate First Class. Dad was always proud of his Naval career and before that his participation in the CCC's. In both, his leadership skills brought him success. 

In August, 2016, Joe Uknavage's granddaughter, Rachel, took her son, Simon, then age 6, to visit a memorial site in southern Illinois that featured a monument to the CCC men. She took that opportunity to tell Simon about his Gr-Grandpa Joe's service to our country, building parks, planting trees, clearing waterways. That particular monument did not have Joe Uknavage's name listed but now we know that just north of there near Springfield, in a small town named Meredosia, his Gr-Grandpa Joe was at CCC Camp 2677 in 1938.

RD’s Art – Overcoming Depression

 

One of our friends is struggling with depression right now and that brought to my mind a highly personal and sensitive subject, one RD might rather forget, but I think it is another example of his creative side and since it was such a big part of our lives I want to talk about it.

Thank God, after years of struggle, he overcame debilitating depression and I think he did it in a very creative way. At the risk of embarrassing RD by telling too much about this time of his life I will describe some of the ways he tried to come out of that deep hole he was in.

He spoke honestly with our family physician, Dr. Maynard "Mike" DeYoung at the Family Clinic and the two of them decided on a regimen of anti-depressant medicines which he took for awhile, but they didn’t help him and the side effects were not good. In his determination to help RD, Dr. DeYoung became a personal friend and he and RD went deer hunting together in the Rocky Mountains, along with a couple of Dr. DeYoung’s friends.

 

 

 

 

After gentle probing about RD’s spiritual beliefs Dr. DeYoung invited the two of us to join him and his wife Barbara at First Christian Church where we came to admire the minister there, Charlie Patchen. Some months later Dr. DeYoung told us of a Wednesday night church group that met in the basement of First Christian, and there was talk that people were getting real help from the ministry of Derin Carmack, former principal of Wellington Junior High, also lay minister. We met new, interesting people there; Loren and Sheila Crabtree became good friends and Sheila taught us both about positive affirmations, a confidence-building technique that helped.

RD also starting going to a chiropractor in town, Ole Lipiec, who treated his lower back pain using the Palmer Method of chiropractic, a gentle technique of adjustment. Soon many of our friends availed themselves of Ole Lipiec’s healing touch and we still talk of him today. He, too, became friends with RD and tried his best to heal the whole person. Ole and his wife, Kathy, moved to Maryville, Missouri, or we would still be going to him.

But the depression lingered, sometimes exacerbated by life events, but always present. After years of struggle RD finally consented to see a psychiatrist for I thought talk therapy was the answer as it had helped me when I struggled with mental health issues. RD was balking at the plan, telling me his experience in the Teams with mandatory sessions with psychologists and how he and his teammates taunted and teased them, never confiding or complying.

Right before his first appointment with the psychiatrist RD came to me with an alternate proposal for his treatment. It was “If we can afford to pay a psychiatrist, maybe instead of that we can afford to get a horse?” He went on to say that he’d always wanted a horse of his own and that the care and training of the horse just might be the medicine he needed to come out of his self-destructive thoughts and behaviors. So that’s what we did, cancelled the psychiatrist appointment and RD soon had his first horse, Rocket, a bay thoroughbred, gelding owned by a friend, Nick Chenoweth. Rocket had been returned to Nick by the trainer he hired who said Rocket was untrainable. RD thought otherwise. He and Nick soon struck a deal.

And yes, it worked! Not immediately, not overnight, but each day RD got up and went outside to work with Rocket who needed a great deal of care, understanding, and patience, for he too was damaged. Those with horses know that keeping one involves more than just clean water and a little hay. 

 

 

Soon, RD was learning where to find the best second-cutting horse hay in this area, when it was available, how the prices compared, etc. He and Rocket preferred a mix of grass and alfalfa. And we bought “sweet feed”, a grain/molasses mix that Rocket really liked and was his reward for good behavior. Ranchway Feeds was our go-to place for that. Then, big, strong tarps to cover the hay and tack, all sorts of tack including ropes, bridles, brushes, combs and saddles. RD removed ticks and dewormed but brought in a mobile veterinarian for shots and stitches and a farrier to trim hooves. If I remember right, after a couple of farriers RD took over trimming the hooves himself. Together RD and Rocket healed themselves and each other.

Rattler soon joined Rocket and became RD’s second horse. Maybe he thought Rocket needed a companion. Rattler got his name after being bit in the nose by a rattle snake when he was a colt. He was a roan quarter horse gelding and very smart. He loved to learn and didn’t have Rocket’s startle reflex. 

 

 

I recall one of the games he and RD learned to play whereby RD put some grain in an old tire and Rattler taught himself to grab the tire with his teeth and bounce it up and down on the ground as the grain hopped out. Then he ate the grain. Years after RD stopped putting grain in the tire Rattler still tested each tire in the pasture that way.

 

 

 

Nick took his herd up in the mountains for the summers then brought them down to a grazing pasture near the foothills as fall set in. One year he asked RD to feed and water the herd at that foothills pasture while he took a trip. I went along a couple of times. There was a young black horse with an injury, an ugly cut, on his forehead. We watched as he tried to eat the hay RD threw out for the herd but the other horses kept him away. Of course, RD soon came up with a way to keep the main herd occupied with their hay while he fed the little black horse away from the others. When Nick came back from his trip RD told him about the injured black horse and Nick said he’d probably have to put him down. That was the day RD became the proud owner of his third horse! 

He brought him home and gifted him to me, and let me name him, too. I named him Sid after RD’s Uncle Sidney Russell who was injured overseas in WWII and came home to Arkansas a changed man, sad and quiet. Sid was a small black quarter horse gelding with a white blaze on his nose. He was my first and only horse but RD cared for him, became quite fond of his fiesty spirit. Sid was always watching for an open gate. Only after he died did we learn from our vet Charlie Mizushima that Sid was stunted in growth due to parasites in his gut and the extreme amount of scar tissue they caused. He probably lived with a lot of  pain.

 

 

 

 

RD’s last horse, Roamer, came to us from his dad, Doyle Russell. Doyle was a staunch Democrat and may have named this horse after Governor Roy Romer, or maybe it was Roamer, as in drifter. I never knew for sure. Roamer was a white half Arabian, half wild mustang gelding. He was different from the quarter horses in temperament. One difference I recall is that he didn’t like to walk in water, as in cross a creek. But he had a good personality and we loved him. We loved all four of these horses but I know Rattler was RD’s favorite.

For the next fifteen years RD had horses, and what they brought to our lives was invaluable. He rarely rode them, aside from that eighteen months or so he hired a local cowboy to help him with training. He never put shoes on their hooves. Never needed a horse trailer. Instead he studied them and the way they interacted with birds, dogs, and people. RD trusted them and they trusted him. He learned Linda Telllington’s “The Tellington Touch” a deep massage technique that brought pain relief and calm to each of the horses. 

Thank you, Rocket, Rattler, Roamer, and Sid. And thank you, RD, for finding your own creative approach to restoring your mental health by giving of yourself to other living creatures. My respect and admiration for you grew as I observed and filmed those fifteen years of you with your horses.