2026 - 32 Growing Up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma 1956 - 1968

 The Bartlesville Neighborhood

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 32

Prompt: Neighbors and Community

On July 26 of this year, I received this text message from my oldest brother, Dave:

Today is the 70th anniversary of when our family moved from Tulsa to Bartlesville. You were two years old and would not remember the move but I do. Everything was new, even smelled new. And now you have come full circle back to Tulsa.

I certainly don't remember the move, but I remember the neighborhood.

In 1956, when I was 2½, we moved from 417 S. 47th W. Ave. in Tulsa to a brand-new house at 4785 Dartmouth Drive in Pennington Hills, a new subdivision on the east side of Bartlesville. Our house sat on the corner of Dartmouth and Frank Phillips Boulevard and was then the eastern edge of the development.

Our new home at 4785 Dartmouth Drive under construction, June 1956. Mom, Dave, Storm and I wave from what would become the living-room picture window.

Our father was the district representative for Tulsa Paper Company, with a sales territory covering northeastern Oklahoma. Dave remembers that Dad spent a great deal of time on the road, including Monday through Thursday nights once a month in both Bartlesville and Stillwater. According to Dave, the family decided to move to one of those two cities, and Bartlesville “got the nod.”

Dave was old enough to remember the move. He doesn't remember feeling particularly happy or sad beforehand, but once the family arrived, he remembers that everything seemed new and exciting and that he liked it.

My parents built the house with a VA loan. The original plans had the driveway opening onto Frank Phillips Boulevard, a major east-west thoroughfare, but my parents changed it to Dartmouth Drive. The front of the house, however, still faced Frank Phillips Boulevard.

I've been told that on the day we moved in, I was sitting on the curb along Frank Phillips Boulevard when Sue Perry walked across the street to meet me. Sue would be my babysitter until my brothers were old enough to be home alone. She had two older brothers, Mike and Pat.

Me at about 2½ in our front yard at 4785 Dartmouth Drive. The Dunning's house on the southeast corner of Dartmouth and Frank Phillips Boulevard is across the street behind me. I've been told that shortly after we moved in, I was sitting along this curb when Sue Perry came across the street to meet her new little neighbor.

Dinner at the Perry house with Sue, (Mike and Dave behind her arm) Storm, Pat, and little Libby. 

I just loved their parents, Dan and Beulah. They were like another set of grandparents. I would go over and knock on their door at 5108 SE Frank Phillips Blvd. and then not know what to say because the usual, “Can _____ come out and play?” didn't work. So I would just stand there until they invited me in.

Once my dad came looking for me. I was sitting in Dan's lap, and the back of the chair was toward the door so Daddy couldn't see me. When Daddy asked if I was there, Dan replied, “No, she's not here,” and the search continued. Boy, was I in trouble when they found out I had been there all afternoon.

With Beulah and Dan Perry in 1992, thirty-six years after Sue Perry first crossed the street to meet her new little neighbor. Dan and Beulah were like another set of grandparents to me.

Next door to the Perrys and directly across the street from us, at 5104 SE Frank Phillips Blvd., were Dick and Mary Margaret Roderick and their four boys, Richard, Jon, Charles and Robert. Their ages ranged from about my brothers' ages down to Robert, who was my age.

Richard won a science fair by spinning mice in a centrifuge, like they were doing to astronauts at the time. This was back in the days before much thought was given to the ethics of experiments on live animals.

The boys went to Catholic school, so I never saw Robert at school, but we played together a lot. I made him pretend to be my husband, and my Cathy Doll was our baby. Once I followed him into their house, and as we walked down the hall to his room, he stopped, dipped his finger into the holy water and made the sign of the cross. I did the same, not knowing that his mother, Mary Margaret, was watching us. Of course, she had to call my mother and tell her, and they had a good laugh at my expense. But I always wondered what made that water holy.

Robert Roderick and me having a tea party on our front porch, August 1959. Robert and I were frequent playmates even though he attended Catholic school and I didn't see him at school.

Next to them, at 5100 SE Frank Phillips Blvd., were Bill and Peggy Crowe and their daughter, Kathy. My brother Storm always had a crush on Kathy Crowe. Peggy, Beulah Perry and my mom were the best of friends.

Kathy Crowe and Nancy Pickell in our front yard with the Perry house in the background.

One year Mom hosted an elaborate Halloween party. We were told that a fortune teller would be coming and to watch for her. We looked through the big picture window and finally spotted a strangely dressed woman walking up and down the street, apparently trying to find our house. It was Peggy Crowe in costume, but we didn't know that.

Once inside, Peggy read our palms. She had secretly learned things about each of us in advance, so we were amazed by what the fortune teller knew.

That was only the beginning. Mike Perry was laid out on our kitchen table like Frankenstein while the “doctor,” my mother, performed an operation and pulled links of sausage from his belly. We children peered through the shutters in the bar between the kitchen and den to watch. Then, one at a time, we were led into the garage, where Dan Perry and Bill Crowe rattled tire chains and ran a vacuum cleaner in reverse while my dad threw us down onto a mattress. Finally, we were led outside to the iris garden, which had been transformed into a cemetery—with grave markers bearing our own names.

Our kitchen table and the shuttered bar between the kitchen and den—the setting for Mom's memorable Halloween “operation.”

Next down the street, at 5020 SE Frank Phillips Blvd., were Lyle and Evelyn Johnson and their children, DeAnn and Van. They were a little younger than I was, but I played dolls with DeAnn.

On the southeast corner of Frank Phillips Boulevard and Dartmouth Drive were Neal and Ginny Dunning and their daughter, Diane, who was a little younger than I was. They moved before we did. When the moving van was parked in front of their house, I stood on the corner pulling my arm down as if I were blowing the truck's horn. It was something my brothers did when we were traveling to get truck drivers to blow their horns.

But this time there wasn't a driver in the cab. My brothers laughed at me—until the driver saw me, came out to the truck and blew that horn!

Neighborhood entertainment didn't require much equipment. Storm, Dave, me and Diane Dunning playing dress-up.

Up the street at 4780 Dartmouth were Earl and Josephine Retterath and their family, sons Bill, Robert, Ray and daughter Marylou. Their furniture store was one of the first businesses to open in Pennington Hills Plaza, about a mile from our neighborhood.

I came home from school one day to discover that Jo Retterath had completely redecorated our living room: a fancy sofa with a curved section, two chairs, end tables, a coffee table, lamps and pictures on the walls. I spent many nights sleeping in the curve of that sofa when my grandparents were visiting.

Christmas morning on the curved sofa Jo Retterath selected for our living room. When my grandparents visited, the sofa became my bed.

The Retteraths eventually moved to Sandy Springs, Georgia, and we visited them on a vacation.

Adjoining our property to the south were Curtis and Marlys Baker and their daughters, Susie and Kim, who were a year or two younger than I was. They also had Happy the beagle, who would run the fence with our duck Louie, whom I wrote about in a previous blog.

Then, to the east of us on Frank Phillips Boulevard, were Marion and Grace Pickell and their children, John, Nancy and Frank. Frank, Robert Roderick and I were best buddies. We built Flintstone-type houses at a place we called “down the hill,” and once we built a tree house in the Pickells' tree.

Frank Pickell and me playing bride and groom, February 1961. Frank was one of my best neighborhood buddies—and we're still friends today.

It was a neighborhood full of baby boomers. The oldest kids were around my brothers' ages, and the youngest were a little younger than I was. We had free range of the neighborhood and spent most of our time outside—riding bikes, playing hide-and-seek, tag, kick the can and Red Rover. Sometimes we played inside at a neighbor's house. Even today, I think I could draw the layout of each of those homes from memory.

January 1962. Showing off the bicycle I had received for Christmas, with Dave and one of the Roderick boys. The Rodericks' house is across Frank Phillips Boulevard in the background.

Dave remembers the neighborhood while it was still being built. He and the other boys would lay out baseball fields on the vacant lots, only to have to move their sandlots when another new house went up.

One vacant field beyond the Pickells' house somehow escaped development and is still vacant today. Frank, Robert, and I once accidentally set that field on fire while playing with firecrackers. We had developed a three-person system: one of us held the firecracker, one lit it, and the third threw it. Apparently the system had a flaw. I don't remember much about what happened next, except that the fire truck came. I'm pretty sure our parents found out.

Probably my cousins Julie and Steve with me in our backyard wading pool. Beyond the Pickell house is the vacant field that Frank Pickell, Robert Roderick and I later accidentally set on fire while playing with firecrackers. The field is still vacant today.

Dave remembers riding his bicycle everywhere—and remembers the hills. He and Storm walked to Will Rogers Elementary School, a distance that seemed much farther to him then than the half mile or so it actually was.

Dave and Storm, my brothers, their first year at Will Rogers Elementary School in Bartlesville. And yes, it was about a half mile from 4785 Dartmouth Drive. 

Looking back on those years, Dave summed it up simply: “I thought it was a good place to grow up. We were lucky.”

Not everything we did was particularly smart. One dangerous game the older boys played was to run across Frank Phillips Boulevard in front of an approaching car and then mime pulling a rope across the street, trying to make the driver think there was actually a rope there and stop.

By 1968, our neighborhood—and Bartlesville itself—was changing. The city's two major employers, Cities Service and Phillips Petroleum, were making changes that affected families all over town. Cities Service moved operations out of Bartlesville, while Phillips was transferring employees to Texas.

One by one, our neighbors began to leave. The Rodericks moved to Colorado. The Perrys and Crowes moved to newer subdivisions. The Retteraths moved to Sandy Springs, Georgia. When Mr. Baker received a promotion at National Zinc, the Bakers moved to a larger home in Woodland Park.

Then it was our turn. My father decided to make a career change and become a Realtor in Bella Vista, Arkansas, and our family moved to Bentonville.

The neighborhood was breaking up, but the friendships weren't.

I recently found a photograph that proves it. It was taken at our last house in Bentonville, where we moved in the summer of 1972. Since the occasion appears to have been Mom's March birthday, the photograph could not have been taken earlier than 1973—at least five years after we left Bartlesville. There in our Arkansas kitchen are Mom, Peggy Crowe and Beulah Perry, still together years after they stopped being neighbors. The women who had once helped create that elaborate Halloween party on Dartmouth Drive were still celebrating birthdays together in Bentonville.

Peggy Crowe, Peggy Wallis, and Beulah Perry celebrating Mom's birthday in Bentonville.

And some of those neighborhood friendships have lasted much longer. Frank Pickell, one of my childhood buddies from “down the hill,” is still my friend today. In fact, he helped me remember some of the people and places as I wrote this story.

I drive through Bartlesville fairly often, and when I do, I almost always drive by 4785 Dartmouth Drive. Once I stopped and rang the doorbell.

I told the older woman who answered that I had grown up in the house and asked if she would mind if I walked around the yard and took some pictures. Instead, she invited me inside to look around.

A four-seasons porch had been added just outside the back door. The bar separating the eat-in kitchen from the den was gone. Oh my! How could you possibly watch a Halloween operating room without that divider and its shutters?

The rooms all seemed so much smaller than I remembered them.

The iris garden—the one that had served as our Halloween graveyard—was gone. Fortunately, my mother had transplanted some of those irises to Arkansas. I later transplanted them to my home in Overland Park, and today descendants of those same irises grow at my home in Tulsa.

The neighborhood changed. The houses changed. Most of us scattered to other cities and other states. But some of the friendships traveled with us, and so did a few of the irises.

And, just as Dave reminded me, after seventy years I have come full circle back to Tulsa.