Back to Kansas – There’s No Place Like Home

by Thomas B. McDavitt

As related in a previous issue of CRO$$TIES, Bruce and Carrie made their home in Blackrock, N. M., until 1920, when they left the Land of Enchantment for a Home on the Range in Kansas. 

 Bruce loved the New Mexico country and the work he did there.  He received the following letter in mid-1920, when he relocated to Kansas:

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
WEATHER BUREAU
Santa Fe, N. Mex.,
June 16^th, 1920

Mr. Bruce H. Pilcher
Black Rock, New Mex.

Dear Sir:

Your favor of the 11^th instant at hand today at noon, and in reply I beg to say that we should like to continue the observations, if this is possible.  I presume that the irrigation department of the Indian Service will wish to continue the work also, and that a successor to yourself will shortly be assigned to the care of the Dam, and could take up the climatic records.  If this is so, will you please place the matter before him in regard to taking the observation and if you can, kindly undertake to show him plan of taking readings, handling thermometers, measuring precipitation, etc.

We are sorry to learn of your leaving the work, for, in so far as our records and reports were concerned, you have given us excellent service and we are under many obligations for your many courtesies.  And so we hope that good luck will attend you wherever you go.

Very truly yours,
Charles E. Linney,
Meteorlogist [sic]”

The next day he wrote this note to the trading post in Zuni. This note reads,

Gallup, N.M.  6/17/20
Mr. R.M. Ryan
Zuni, N.M.

Dear Sir-
Would like to get the account settled.  Understand we owe you for washer-grafonola-rugs $88 – but I think that there is a credit for 1 sax sugar, mattress, bed or something else.  I haven’t my list with me at present.  Please let me know how we stand and I will fix it up.  You can address me at Lawrence, Ks, RR#1 Box 14. 
Yours truly, Bruce H. Pilcher

Bruce and his family relocated to Wichita, KS, about August of 1920, moving into a new house at 225 North Exposition.  Even in a city in 1920, there was no indoor plumbing and no central heating in their home. Louise began 1^st grade at Franklin School and Adeline started kindergarten (a new concept for Wichita schools that year) at West Side Presbyterian Church, since kindergarten classrooms were not yet available in the school building.  Bruce began working for the Railway Express Agency (REA) at the Union Station.  He worked six nights a week, with Wednesday as his day off.  Adeline says he took Wednesday so he could attend the Western League baseball games at Wonderland Park on Ackerman Island.  In addition to baseball, Bruce loved to read, and is remembered as always having a stack of books next to his armchair in the living room.  He was a regular patron of the Wichita Public Library, with particular emphasis on Zane Grey and other western authors.  He owned a number of books that highlighted his particular interest in the southwestern United States and many of them are now in the family collection.  A bibliography of the books in his library can be found here.

Interestingly enough, during the Depression, when many REA workers were placed on furlough, Bruce went to work for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was created in May of 1935 to help provide economic relief to people suffering through the Great Depression.  Bruce trundled a wheelbarrow day in and day out carrying sand and dirt from the east channel of the Arkansas River to fill in the west channel.  This was a project to eliminate the mosquito breeding ground caused by the low water level of the river in the western channel, and thus also eliminate Ackerman Island between Douglas and Second Streets.  Much of the sand and dirt from Ackerman Island was piled up near the Seneca bridge to hide the Public Works garage in the fork of the rivers.  Bruce’s grandchildren spent many hours in later years sledding down the hill thus formed.  This area is now the site of the Mid America All Indian Center and the home of the Keeper of the Plains statue.

            Bruce returned to work at the REA and worked there until his death in 1947. He was a member of the Brotherhood of Railway & Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express & Station Employees.  During WWII, when the Union and the RR were negotiating a new contract, the Union sought a strike vote from its members.  Bruce refused to strike, saying that our boys were overseas risking their lives every day and they needed the railroads to run on time and support the war efforts.  Bruce owned three cars that we know of, Ford sedans of 1932, 1935 and 1940.  The ‘32 and ’35 Fords are featured in vacation scrapbooks.  He loved to travel and planned meticulously for his two-week vacation trips, always trying to include a holiday to extend the time.  He made scrapbooks of these trips with a Texaco roadmap in the front to show the route and calculate the distances.  Uncle Bob Pilcher has these scrapbooks, with pictures and labels of trips to Albuquerque, Phoenix, Yellowstone, Salt Lake City, Carlsbad Caverns, and other places in the west.  A favorite picture is one of Bruce, Carrie and Bob at the Great Salt Lake in 1937, with Bruce in his Saltair bathing suit. 

Bruce and Carrie traveled west in June, 1947, accompanying Bob and Thelma Pilcher on their “honeymoon” to California.  It was a family affair with both Pilcher family members and McDavitt family members involved in a visitation to the Merle and Adeline McDavitt family who had moved to Sunland, CA, in April of that year. 
Bruce elected to stay in Arizona visiting his sisters in Tempe and Lucille and Gene Kiefer in Phoenix while the rest of the family traveled on west.  His obituary tells the story.

RAILWAY EXPRESS CLERK HERE DIES

Funeral services for Bruce H. Pilcher, 64, for the past 27 years a clerk for the Railway Express company here, will be held at 4 p.m. Wednesday in the Culbertson Mortuary with Rev. C. C. Carnahan officiating.  Burial will be in Wichita Park Cemetery.

Mr. Pilcher died unexpectedly last Friday night [July 4, 1947] while visiting in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Kiefer in Phoenix, Ariz.  With his family Mr. Pilcher went to Tempe, Ariz. two weeks ago to visit his sisters, Mrs. Dilworth Baird and Miss Blanche Pilcher.  His family continued on to California for a visit and Mr. Pilcher was spending the evening in the Kiefer home when he was stricken.

He was born in Olathe, Kan. in August, 1882, and came to Wichita from Gallup, N. M., in 1920.  He was a member of the West Side Presbyterian Church.  The family home is at 225 North Exposition.

Surviving are his wife Karoline [sic] K.; one son, Robert, Kansas City, Mo.; and two daughters, Mrs. Louise Curtiss [sic], Pratt, and Mrs. Adeline McDavitt, Sunland, Cal.; his sisters and four grandchildren.”

From Cro$$Ties, the Pilcher-Kasold Newsletter authored by Thomas B. McDavitt
January – March 2005 Edition