Published: May 26, 2009 11:03 pm      

Elven Johns celebrates his 100th birthday today

Local remains loyal to Demons

DUNCAN — If Elven Buel Johns had listened to a fellow oil field worker years ago, he would not be celebrating his 100th birthday today with a luncheon and reception at West Side Christian Church.

The middle of five children, Johns, born May 27, 1909, in a half-dugout in the Texas Panhandle, came to Cotton County, Oklahoma, with his family in a covered wagon when he was only a few months old. The family settled between the two Beaver Creeks — Big Beaver and Little Beaver — in an area where Johns still owns 30 acres across the road from his family’s original homestead. The Waurika Lake project took in much of the original farm.

Johns started to school in Walters, and attended Lee Elementary in Duncan during one of the intervals in which the family moved back and forth between the two counties. He remembers running out to the playground one day with his schoolmates to watch a plane flying around the area — a novelty in those days.

He graduated from Duncan High School in 1928, and remains a loyal Demons fan.

“I could have graduated in 1927, but I wanted to play football. I was a guard on the Duncan Demons football team, and they’d let you stay and play back in those days,” he said.

He still treasures a photo of himself with other members of his football team.

His favorite car was a black Model A Ford, but he learned to drive in a Model T, he said.

After high school, Johns worked in the oil fields near Borger, Texas, and was employed by Halliburton for a short time.

It was in the oil field that he almost lost his life all those years ago. He was sitting with some other workers when one of them turned to him and told him there was a fire in a tank and he should go put it out. Adding, as Johns stood up, “before it blows up.”

When Johns heard those words, he sat back down, just as the tank exploded. Had he heeded the man’s words and been closer to the explosion, he would not have lived to tell about it.

During his school years, his family built a house on Second Street in Duncan. When the Depression hit, and times became hard, the Johns family moved back to the farm in Cotton County, and never had to worry about going hungry. Although it was difficult, Johns managed to scrape up enough money to attend what were then Cameron College and Central Teachers College in Edmond, and Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee. He earned a lifetime teaching certificate and taught fifth- through eighth-graders for eight years in two-room schoolhouses in the Prospect, Plainview and Lone Star communities in Cotton County.

“I liked to teach agriculture classes best. I was a farmer, and that’s what I knew,” Johns said.

Farming was always the love of his life, however. He enjoyed raising cattle, working in his gardens and picking up pecans with friends and family in the big pecan grove on his family’s acreage.

During World War II, Johns worked in an aircraft factory in Grand Prairie, Texas, doing his part for the war effort.

On Jan. 29, 1945, he married Lela Rauch in a Church of Christ parsonage in Duncan with Joe Laird, minister, officiating. After their marriage, the couple returned to the farm to make their home. Their only child, Anita Johns, with whom Johns now lives in Duncan, was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, as it was the closest hospital to where the family lived.

Lela Johns died in 2003, after 58 years of marriage.

Elven Johns remembers happy times spent hunting and fishing.

“We had different seasons for different animals, and I shot whatever was in season. I never shot a deer, though. There were plenty of them around, but I never shot at one. I liked the deer,” he said.

Squirrels and other small game were his usual targets.

Johns is a longtime member of West Side Christian Church, where he will be honored from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. today, and a former member of the Noble Foundation and the Upstream Flood Control, which was aimed at reducing flood damage around the Duncan area.

Now retired, Johns still likes to visit the farm as often as possible, just to look around and remember days gone by. He also enjoys going out to eat with his daughter.

If he could have anything he wanted for his birthday today, Johns said he’d like to go fishing.

“Catfish. There are all kinds of catfish, but mudcats were what we generally caught.”

“Did you ever cook any fish I caught?” he asked his daughter.

“I’ve cooked fish, but they were the kind you bought. I’ve never cooked any you caught and, when it comes to cleaning ’em, you’re on your own!” she said, as they shared a laugh.