Marvin was a good guy who was a rockhound and stone polisher.
Confusion at present whether he's buried at Wellington TX or Hollis OK.
Born near Loco, Childress, TX, probably on the family ranch.
Grace was a mighty sweet lady, she lived up to her name. She was an artist in oil painting and did her best to teach her cousin's son (Jim Clarence Devenport) how to paint also.
Pete McDonald died of a brain aneurism suddenly. He met Etta Mae in Flagstaff AZ while working as and electrical engineer for Arizona Public Service. They married there and moved to Silver City NM after a while to work the McDonald family ranch where Pete died. He was rushed to a hospital in El Paso where he was pronounced dead.
Pete McDonald died of a brain aneurism suddenly. He met Etta Mae in Flagstaff AZ while working as and electrical engineer for Arizona Public Service. They married there and moved to Silver City NM after a while to work the McDonald family ranch where Pete died. He was rushed to a hospital in El Paso where he was pronounced dead.
Jim L. was born at Mrs. Morgan's house, delivered by a "quack" Dr. Hurley "with grease still on his hands", as Aunt Melva described it. Dad started out as a cowpuncher. He always had trouble with respiratory problems, flunking the physical when he tried to join the service when Pearl Harbor was attacked due to a recent bout with pneumonia. He began smoking around age 15, as most good cow hands do, and smoked until about 8 years before he died, which was about the time he had to go on almost 24-hour oxygen for breathing. He fell in love with "carpentering" at about age 18 or so while helping tear down an old ranch house to build another, working either for the Berryhills or Elkins or for Uncle Cug Pitt. From then on he failed to fit the cowboy mold, wearing economical clothing instead of the latest fads of "western wear", and (shudder) work shoes instead of boots. Either poverty or good sense or both inspired him to raise most of his family working .... with at-home chores as well as helping "at the shop" after school and summers.
He was a critical father who had great pride and love for his kids but also great difficulty expressing that love directly to them. In the last years of his life he became quite a "softie", more and more able to express hugs and emotions with his children. Dad, I sure thought you had a lot of shortcomings, but now that my kids are having similar problems with me I'm quite a bit more sympathetic.... Love, Jim C.
Article on Jim Lawrence Devenport
From Grants Daily Beacon “Know Your Neighbor”
Written by Ward Ballmer
July 28, 1976“I guess I’ve been a wood-oholic most of my life,” said Jim Devenport. “Working with wood just gets into your blood and once you get into it, you can’t quit.”
Due to lung problems he’s had over a long period of years, several doctors have told Jim to stay away from the sawdust and sanding dust always associated with cabinet shops and carpenter work, but he’s been unable to do so.
“Nothing else gives me such satisfaction,” he says simply.
Devenport now operates a wedge-making contraption, which he devised himself, at 712 Catalina, Milan-home of Jim’s Cabinet Shop, which was just recently taken over by his son, John. The Rube-Goldberg-type operation for making wedges for the mining companies was a necessity, Jim says, because when he got a lot of orders, he was unable to find anybody to work for him.
“Nobody else would stand up at the saw all day long,” he recalled, “and unless I could figure out some way for one guy to do it all, I’d lose all that business.”
He rigged up an automatic feeder to push the 2 x 4’s into a circular saw, which cuts them into 1 foot lengths. At the same time, another saw, on the same contraption, is running at a 90-degree angle to the first, and is moving forward and backward one foot at a time. Jim has fixed up a sloping arrangement here which allows him to manually feed the 1-foot-long piece of lumber into the beveled holder.
It is cut into two wedges by the second saw, and both drop into an open burlap bag held below on an old wagon wheel tire. There are four such bags mounted on the steel rim, and Jim can swing a different sack under the saw when he has 50 wedges in a particular sack. The rim is mounted on ball-bearings and turns easily.
He can now keep up with orders, no matter how large, for wedges to be used in underground timbering operations or for any other purpose.
The only problem, he notes, is that in the winter months when his shop must be kept closed, the sawdust “sure does get thick in here.”
Jim is a native New Mexican. He was born on a ranch near House, New Mexico-a small community in Quay County which used to be noted for its basketball teams. “In the ‘20’s,” Jim said, “House won two state championships. Beat Albuquerque and everybody else.” Records show that this is so.
Jim was raised on the family ranch with two brothers and one sister. They went to elementary school at Independence, N.M., a smaller community near House, and to high school at House. Jim played basketball and also ran the mile on the track team while in high school. He graduated in 1935. He was one of nine in his graduation class. “Wasn’t too big of a school,” he noted.
Jim went to work on his father’s ranch for a while, but since he had been doing the same thing all through his school years, he wanted a change. So he came to Northwestern New Mexico as a cowpuncher.
He punched cows for W.F. Pitt at the 3 Circle Ranch out between Crownpoint and Chaco Canyon beginning in 1936. “I like this area from the start,” Jim said.
For the next three or four years he worked as a cowhand all through that remote region. He was a cowpuncher for Mark Elkins, Tom Elkins, I.K. Westbrook and for his uncle, W.F. Pitt, and got to know the area quite well. “Then in about 1940 everything changed for me,” Jim recalled.
He was punching cows out near Hospah and was asked by Wade Smith to help him build a new ranchhouse. Jim became an apprentice carpenter and was introduced to the world of making things with wood. Cowpunching became a thing of the past for him.
“We tore down two old ranch houses to make him a new one just about three miles from Pueblo Bonita,” Jim recalled, “and I spent about a full month just straightening out old nails and cleaning board. But it was fun, and we built a fine home for him”
In 1941 Jim worked at Fort Wingate building forms for concrete igloos and warehouse facilities, then took a job in Lubbock, Texas, at Reese Air Force base as a carpenter. That November, he caught pneumonia and went back to House to recuperate. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, Jim tried to enlist on the 8th, but did not get into the service until January 12, 1942 when his recuperation from the earlier bout with pneumonia was well advanced.
He served four years in the Army Air Force as an airplane mechanic. He spent 18 months in the Aleutian Islands and was being trained as a gunner to head for Europe when that portion of the war ended. He also recalls being at Langley Field, Virginia, when secret testing of the first jet airplanes was under way. “You couldn’t believe it,” he said incredulously, “those things came zipping by with no propellors at all.”
While in the service, Jim met Pearl Shelley in Winslow, Arizona. She was working in a department store as bookkeeper and he was visiting friends and relatives there while on furlough. They became “more than a little” interested in each other, and on his next leave, they went to Joseph City, Arizona and were married on July 12, 1945.
After the war, Jim took a home-building job in Tucson, Ariz., then moved to Winslow where he opened up a cabinet shop. He operated this for almost three years, heard there was a lot of work in the Clovis, N.M., area, so the Devenports moved there. “I couldn’t find all this work I had heard about,” Jim said, “so I put in a cabinet shop in Portales.”
He operated this for a few months, then sold it and put in a shop in Lovington, N.M. He kept this going full blast for several years until his doctor told him he had to get out of that business and stay out. So he sold the shop and moved to Bowie, Ariz., as a carpenter. “I soon had me a shop there, though,” he said, “and ran it from 1953 until we came back to Grants in 1956.”
When he got here, he went partners with Lloyd Bliss and Wesley Tietjen in operating a machine shop in Milan. “We had a going deal until all the companies put in their own machine shops,” Jim recalls, “so I just kept on at the same spot and made a cabinet shop out of the building. Been here ever since.”
Jim and Pearl have had five children. The first two, Jim and George were born in Winslow. Jim now operates a TV repair shop in Grants, and he and his wife, the former Joan Jenkerson of Belen, have provided four grandchildren for the Devenports to spoil. George was killed in an automobile accident last year.
John was born in Lovington, and just recently took over operation of his father’s cabinet shop in Milan. Daughter Neena (spelled that way so she wouldn’t be called “nine-uh”) lives in Wichita Falls, Texas, where her husband is a career Army man. Their youngest son, Bruce, is on a mission in Thailand for the Church of Latter Day Saints.
Jim has built a lot of homes in Grants and Milan, and has “done more remodeling and cabinetmaking than you might suppose.” He has yet, however, to complete his own home at La Cantina, in Lobo Canyon. “I’ll get around to that one of these days, I guess,” he said, but he didn’t sound too convincing.
“Whoever heard of a shoemaker’s kid who wasn’t barefoot?” he asked.
Pearl fell and broke her hip from getting caught in the revolving door at the Mesa Arizona Temple.
She suffered lameness and limited walking ability for many months afterward, and at one point was so crippled up that the doctors insisted she would have to have replacement hip surgery to regain mobility. She decided to try exercising more, and almost immediately began increasing her mobility by walking without her walker or cane much of the time.
In December of 2000, she fell again while staying with Neena in Utah. After a trip to a local concert, she tried to walk up a stairway without waiting for Neena to park the car and come assist her, and fell down the steps, clonking her head in the process, and breaking her OTHER hip. This began a downward spiral in well being that culminated in her death on 22 February 2001 at the hospital.
She was taken to the emergency room after her fall, where the medical people insisted there was nothing seriously wrong with her and that she just needed to walk and exercise to regain strength in her hip and leg.
She suffered increasing pain and agony, until at Neena's insistence the Doctor reexamined her and discovered she had broken her hip. She was hospitalized, and varied in strength, but gradually weakening until she had difficulty breathing and expired peacefully after Neena insisted they stop trying to keep her alive forcibly. The respirator and other machines and tubing she had just before she died were attempts to keep her from having seizures and convulsing, all of which ceased when the heroic efforts were halted. She hung on for only a short few moments afterward, and died peacefully with Neena present at her side.
George was fatally injured in a car wreck March 14 or 15, 1975. He collided with the rear end of a tanker truck while driving a sedan, and was thrown forward into the windshield where his head struck the upper portion of the windshield housing, causing a massive head/brain hemorrage. One of his legs was broken too. He lay in the hospital at St. Joseph's in Albuquerque for 2 days while his heart beat steadily, the heart pulse being the only activity emanating from his brain stem. A lung machine was used to keep him breathing. His heart finally stopped on Monday, 17 March.
Grandfather Shelley contracted diptheria some years before he died and was a near-invalid for many years as his strength gradually disappeared.
He died at home in 1952 in the presence of his family.
Margaret Cleo was promised (in one of her several patriarchal blessings) that she would be able to live as long as she desired.
Her husband died fairly early, in 1952, and life was not easy for her, as he had been nearly invalid for many years. She worked in the Northern Arizona Poultry Plant for many years, supporting her children and sending her son Kimball on his mission, then enjoying the grandchildren as they came.
Her health was good until shortly before she died, when she fell and broke her hip and had to be waited on by her daughters-in-law. Margaret died on the anniversary of her husband's death, exactly 20 years apart.
"Little Lester" died about age 4, and thus does not need baptism according to LDS doctrine.
Aunt Beulah had diabetes. Even as a young girl she had problems with her eyesight, especially after dark; probably this was related to her diabetes problem. She spent the last several years of her life in a nursing home in Sunset Utah, living a surprisingly long time considering her medical problems.
Kevin was an Indian baby adopted by Elmer and Beulah SPENCER.