Touching Lives The Lasting Legacy of the Bivins Family
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Touching Lives The Lasting Legacy of the Bivins Family
Jeanne S. Archer Stephanie Kadel Taras, Ph.D.
produced by: Tell Studios Inc.
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A book project by: Tell Studios Inc. www.SaveYourHistory.com Copyright Š 2009 by Jeanne S. Archer All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying or recording without permission of the publisher. Touching Lives: The Lasting Legacy of the Bivins Family reflects the opinions, feelings, and memories of descendants of Lee and Mary Elizabeth Bivins. The stories and conclusions are matters of personal opinion, not necessarily fact, and are in no way intended to be hurtful to any individual or group. The opinions expressed within these pages do not necessarily reflect those of Tell Studios Inc. All photographs and illustrations, unless indicated otherwise, are courtesy of the Bivins family or the Bivins Foundation. Book design and layout by cj Madigan, Shoebox Stories www.shoebox-stories.com Cover design and photo collages by Nikki Ward, Morrison Alley Design ISBN 978-0-9749148-6-2
Printed in Canada
In honor of an amazing family: past, present, and future
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R Contents
Acknowledgments Prologue
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Hard Rain and Green Grass: Julian Bivins
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A Hard Day’s Work: Berneta Bivins
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Part One: The Pioneers The Land
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Part Five: The Descendants
Levi and Lizzy
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Panhandle Pioneers
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Still Waters Run Deep: The Elizabeth Claire Bivins Childers Family
A Home in Amarillo: 1000 Polk
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Seeing the World: Oliver Bivins
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Helping People of All Ages: The Bivins Batson Family
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Part Two: Building a Ranching Empire 39 Conquering the Open Range
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The LX
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The LIT
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Entrepreneur’s Entrepreneur
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Two Amarillo Children: The Lee Truscott and Betty Teel Bivins Family 229 The Noisy Years: Raising Four Bivins Boys
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High Expectations: Betty and Her Boys Come Into Their Own
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Part Three: Making a Difference Investor in Innovation
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Part Six: For the Betterment of Humanity
Leader of Men
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The Mary E. Bivins Foundation
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Granny Bivins
103 Timeline of Activities of the Bivins Foundations
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Epilogue
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References
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Part Four: Sons of the Pioneers Larger Than Life: Miles Bivins
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Full of Life: Myda Bivins
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If Walls Could Talk: 2311 West Sixteenth
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One [insert 010 Lee Bivins]
lee Bivins
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R The Land
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maps made by early 19th century explorers from the eastern United States designated the southern Great Plains as “The Great American Desert.” The vast grassland, larger than all of New England, was considered uninhabitable for its lack of water and rainfall, and the mapmakers warned it could only be crossed at great risk. Some settlers, like Lee Bivins and his family, were willing to take the risk. They would eventually take full advantage of all that this rich and diverse ecological environment had to offer. For it had never been a desert in the least. It just required a new way of working and living with the land. Nineteenth century settlers were not the first to discover the gifts of the Southern Plains, but it was mostly unchanged from its natural state when they arrived. Flat grasslands stretched to the horizon and far beyond. “Oceans of grass” is the way historian Laura V. Hamner described it. A monotony of grass, unbroken by fences, roads, and buildings, left travelers confused about where they had been and weary about how far they were going. “Though the grass looked like velvet, it was tufted,” wrote Hamner, “and the wagons bumped, bumped, bumped over the seemingly level carpet. Walking on it was a slippery progress, though few did much walking.” Any change in the elevation of the land was rare, whether a rise to look out from or a gorge promising water far below. Trees and bushes were scarce, except along waterways, where cottonwoods bent toward the river, and currant and gooseberry bushes grew, tangled with wild grapes. Beaver dams created deeper pools of water along shallow creeks. Wherever one looked across the vast plains, huge herds of buffalo grazed. Their dark shapes moved in groups north and south, from one water source to another, following age-old trails and cycles. Every so often, wild horses, the land
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the descendants of those introduced to the southwest by Spanish explorers, thundered across the grasslands in wary groups. Gray wolves called the prairie home, as did the antelope that could outrun them. Wolves could take down a bison, but could as happily make do with the thousands of prairie dogs tunneling under the soft earth. Wild turkeys perched in the trees. An occasional roadrunner might fly by on its stilt-like legs, or a scaly horned lizard sneak out from the sand. The small burrowing owl would be up at night to hear the coyotes call to one another. And they all avoided the rattlesnakes that slithered by in the cool dark. Humans were here too, of course. Several Native American tribes moved throughout the Panhandle as they followed the buffalo and the seasons. Comanches, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Kiowa-Apache were all nomadic tribes, who had learned to use the wild horses for transportation, hunting, war, and hauling their goods. They had hunted the buffalo sustainably for generations, relying on the bison for food, clothing, building materials, tallow for candles, and much more. This was the land seen by the earliest Spanish explorers, who are credited with naming the high mesa Llano Estacado, or Staked Plains, perhaps because they drove stakes in the ground to find their way back. In a letter to the king of Spain in 1541, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado wrote, “I reached some plains so vast, that I did not find their limit anywhere I went, although I traveled over them for more than 300 leagues … with no more landmarks than if we had been swallowed up by the sea … there was not a stone, nor bit of rising ground, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor anything to go by.” This was the land seen by the Mexican buffalo hunters in the 17th century and by the Comancheros — Mexicans who traded with the Indians — in the 18th and 19th centuries. This was the land seen by white Americans in the mid-1800s, surveying the land for the railroad or making their way west toward promises of gold. But the land began to undergo great change when professional buffalo hunters arrived around 1870 and slaughtered the Panhandle buffalo at the rate of one million a year. At the same time, the land saw numerous violent conflicts between whites looking to settle the area and Native Americans losing their hunting grounds. Indians numbered around 18,000 in 1868; by 1875, they were mostly all confined to reservations. By 1881 the buffalo were nearly extinct on the Plains. Railroad tracks crisscrossed the land so
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that people could now find their way in and out of what had become the Panhandle of the state of Texas.
R Even so, the Panhandle plains remained vast, empty country and formidable habitat. But the first permanent settlers in the Staked Plains saw all that grass and knew what it meant: good grazing. Thus came the sheepherders and cattle ranchers, who each decided to put down roots in 1876. Casimero Romero, a don from New Mexico, arrived in the Canadian River Valley with his sheep, his large family, his servants, and carriages of belongings. Meanwhile Charles Goodnight settled with his cattle and cowboys in the Palo Duro Canyon and, with John G. Adair, established the JA Ranch, the first of many ranches to come. The Palo Duro Canyon must have been a welcome sight after the dry, unbroken plains. Carved by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, it was more than 800 feet deep in places. The 120-mile long canyon had water at the bottom, with plenty of cottonwood, willow, and salt cedar trees growing along the riverbanks and the cool shade of the multi-colored canyon walls. Mesquite and juniper trees, yucca plants, and prickly pear also grew here. Grand pinnacles and buttes, and ancient carvings and paintings, must have added to its wonder. Back on the sandy banks of the Canadian River, Romero and his colleague, Agapito Sandoval, built a sandstone plaza and homes of adobe bricks. (Sandoval located his family’s home on Corsino Creek, and the remains of that plaza — known as the “Corsino Ruins” — are still visible now on land owned by the Bivins family.) Romero’s son, Jose, was five when his family settled along the Canadian, and he remembered it as “a beautiful stream, no sand bars at all. It was hardly more than twenty feet wide, and had deep, clear living water in most spots. The banks were fringed along practically the entire distance we traveled with many bushes: wild chokeberries, plums — great big plums, too — wild gooseberries, and grapes. There were many cottonwood mottes scattered along the banks.” He remembered thousands of buffalo coming to drink at the river’s edge. The sheepherders had to be careful crossing the river, as the riverbed was treacherous with quicksand. The lowlands of the Canadian River Valley
the land
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R The LX
The details of the scene are lost to history. But one can easily imagine Ben Masterson striding into Lee Bivins’s office in the old Amarillo Opera House and saying, “Let’s settle this like two gentlemen.” It was an October day in 1910. Masterson, although a new resident to Amarillo, had made a name for himself with his JY Ranch in King County, and Bivins had surely known him for years. Both men wore business suits and round, black-rimmed glasses. Both had been Texas ranchers a long time. Both had been on the frontier long enough to see arguments escalate beyond gentlemanly solutions. Was it Bivins who offered to flip a coin? Probably so. He had that kind of nerve, and such chances had served him well before in buying cattle. But this was a riskier proposition. His dispute with Masterson was over some land they both wanted to buy: more than 100,000 acres of prime Canadian River Valley grassland, just north of Amarillo, on offer from the British owners of the LX Ranch. Fortunately it wasn’t a winner takes all proposition. According to family legend, the two men agreed that whoever won the coin toss would choose whether he wanted the land on the north side of the river (91,000 acres) or the south side (just over 30,000 acres). The coin came down in Masterson’s favor. He chose the north side. “That way,” he said, “when the snow gets bad, my cattle will have their hind ends to the north wind and not their faces.” If Bivins had to settle for the smaller section and the southern banks, it didn’t seem to bother him. He got the LX headquarters, and within a few years, he added greatly to the acreage on his side of the river. Before long, he bought the LX brand, which was like buying into a legacy.
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The LX Ranch was established in Potter County in 1877 by W. H. “Deacon” Bates and David T. Beals. The two Boston investors had started their first ranch in 1875 on the Arkansas River near Granada, Colorado. Meanwhile they sent an employee, John Ray, south to look over land along the breaks of the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle. About 20 miles down river from the new settlement of Tascosa, Ray came upon a buffalo hunter’s supply camp, kept by a man named Pitcher, on the north bank of the Canadian. Pitcher was probably the first Anglo resident of what would become Potter County. The two men stood alone in a vast spread of free grassland teeming with buffalo, deer, and antelope eating the nutritious buffalo grass that would be perfect for cattle. To John Ray, this looked like a good place to stop. Around the fourth of July, 1876, Bates followed Ray to the Panhandle with a herd of young steers. He brought along a trail boss, a cook, and a cowboy named Charlie Siringo (who would later make a name for himself as a Pinkerton detective and author of several published memoirs). Siringo roped his first buffalo during the drive south, and he remembered seeing 300 Apache Indians camped on the Canadian. Bates founded the headquarters of what was to become the LX Ranch on Ranch Creek, about two miles east of Pitcher’s camp. Bates and Beals quickly bought more short-horn and long-horn cattle from Colorado, Dodge City, and South Texas. Before that first winter, thousands were grazing on 40 square miles of free range on both sides of the river. The land the LX eventually claimed went as far south as the Palo Duro Canyon, as far north as Dumas, Texas, and 35 miles from east to west. By 1878 they had built a large bunkhouse of stone and adobe, complete with an attached kitchen and spacious storeroom. Later, stables, corrals, a blacksmith shop, and wagon sheds were built. The dozen or so structures of the LX headquarters represented the first permanent buildings constructed in Potter County. The first post office in the county was opened at the LX headquarters and named Wheeler. The county’s first cemetery was also located on the LX. Six bodies were buried there between 1887 and 1890, including the wife of the ranch bookkeeper and her infant son, another infant, and three ranch hands. Bates and Beals soon abandoned their Colorado holdings and brought all their ranch horses to the LX. The highly bred horses quickly became known
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Crossing the Canadian River on the LX Ranch.
“The Outfit” on the LX Ranch.
LX Ranch Chuck Wagon.
Dipping pens on the LX.
Cattle Branding on LX; July22, 1918.
Branding during the early days on the LX Ranch.
Three
Mary Elizabeth Bivins
Making a Difference 51
Many of her grandchildren described Granny Bivins as “regal� as this photo depicts.
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R Granny Bivins
Until the very last years of her life, Mary Elizabeth Bivins attended the annual sale of boys’ livestock at the 4-H and Future Farmers of America auctions at the Amarillo Fat Stock Show. Dressed impeccably and sporting one of her carefully coiffed white wigs, she would enter the drafty, sometimes bitter cold sales arena, and all eyes turned her way. Someone would begin to clap, and in a moment the crowd was rising from its seats and applauding. When the auction could continue, Mrs. Bivins began to bid, and eagerly so. She propped up the sale prices of many swine and sheep with her high offers, and if no one bid against her, she might even raise her own bid to ensure a good price for the young boy’s animal. When the auction was over, she usually designated her stock purchases for re-sale and sent the proceeds to a local charity. Lizzy Bivins would live another 22 years after the death of her Levi. She would continue to live at the house on Polk and attend to the needs of her family. But she would also carry on Lee Bivins’s legacy of community work and become recognized in her own right for her contributions. Granny Bivins — as she will always be known to her family — would eventually establish the Mary E. Bivins Foundation that continues a family legacy of community giving and leadership to this day. Just as the Foundation bears her name, so she served as the foundation of the Bivins family. She set the standard for a gracious, welcoming home. She provided the glue that kept her family in touch on a daily basis and cemented them to each other and to Amarillo. She ensured that her descendants saw the wider world and broadened their reach. She served as the primary example of generosity to worthy causes and community needs.
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In the 25 years between the completion of the Polk Street house and her husband passing away, Mary Elizabeth Bivins was the wife of a wealthy rancher, civic leader, and, eventually, mayor of Amarillo. Meanwhile her sons, Miles and Julian, grew up, married, and began having families. She embraced her responsibility to host social functions of all sorts and to create an environment in her home that would keep her family coming together. She entertained regularly and hosted her family at daily lunches and Sunday dinners. She invited her six nieces to Amarillo each summer and threw them a party. In a 1957 newspaper article, Elizabeth Claire Bivins Childers (Miles’s daughter) remembered her grandmother’s gracious manners. She referred to a copy of Mrs. Bivins’s etiquette book with such rules as, “Do not load a fork as if it were a beast of burden” and “a knife put into the mouth is a remnant of barbarism.” Betty Childers said her grandmother thought gossip was “the meanest small talk. [She] was always quoting that saying, ‘There’s so much good in the worst of us … so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.’” If she caught her granddaughter about to do something wrong, Granny Bivins would pinch her, “which made me so mad I’d forget my misdeed,” said Betty Childers. Mrs. Bivins had a staff of people working in the house and kitchen. She also had a driver who took her wherever she needed to go. She never learned to drive herself. She tried once, and nearly ran into a telephone pole, so she swore she’d never drive again. Since Lee left home early every morning and stayed out late, Mrs. Bivins developed her own interests and routines. She enjoyed the company of her niece, Lena Gilbert, who lived in the Bivins home for five years while teaching at Amarillo High. (Lena later married J. B. Briscoe, superintendent of the Santa Fe Railroad plains division.) Lena remembered: Uncle Lee was out on his ranches a great deal of the time. My Aunt Liz wanted someone to be there who could be around her all the time, who could drive her around and be a companion to her. She would always be right there in the car waiting when I got home from
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school, and we would drive and drive and drive, and we always knew everything that happened to everybody’s house in town. Lizzy still called her husband Levi, unless she was mad at him; then she called him Mr. Bivins. Said Lena, “I knew Aunt Liz loved him very much. No one missed him like she did when he died.” Mrs. Bivins apparently loved to dance and was known to stride around the ballroom to the “Blue Danube Waltz.” She wasn’t above a one-woman shuffle in her living room, either, and she once caught her heel in the rug while dancing, fell, and broke her collarbone. After Lee’s sudden death in 1929, Mrs. Bivins remodeled the separate bedrooms on the first floor into her own suite of rooms. She turned the front bedroom into a sitting room, where she hung the oversized portraits of Lee and herself that were painted by Nicholas Richard Brewer. This sitting room, with its bay window looking out on Polk Street, is where the Bivins grandchildren and great-grandchildren most remember seeing their “Granny Bivins.” She had a favorite wing-back chair with a footstool where she usually sat. Her grandson, Oliver Bivins, said she’d always take a little Listerine before receiving guests. He remembered arriving at her home for family visits: “We’d run in, hug her around her neck, and I could smell the Listerine. And then we’d just go play around.” The basement was one favorite play area for children.
R Mary Elizabeth Bivins lived to the age of 89, outliving her husband by more than two decades, outliving both of her sons, and living long enough to know some of her great-grandchildren. Many people alive today still remember Granny Bivins, and they describe her as both charming and set in her ways, with a sense of humor as well as sturdy principles that guided her behavior and the behavior of those who came into her home. She always looked dignified and dressed to perfection. She spoke with authority.
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Mary Elizabeth “Granny” Bivins in her home at 1000 Polk.
“She wasn’t a sad person,” remembered Betty Teel Bivins (wife of Miles’s son, Lee). “I’ve always enjoyed people who laughed a lot, and she seemed to do that. She seemed to have a good time.” One of Betty’s favorite examples of Granny Bivins’s humor and grace was her no-nonsense attitude about wearing wigs. Ever since her hair fell out as a young girl after a bout with scarlet fever, Mrs. Bivins had been frustrated with trying to style her remaining hair. Finally, in exasperation, she went to Marshall Fields in Chicago and bought herself a “transformation” (as wigs were called then). Over the years, she bought many wigs — wigs for parties, wigs for work days — but they were always white. She kept them on stands in her dressing room. People would comment on her lovely hair without realizing it was a wig. Betty remembered, “One person asked her, ‘What beauty shop do you go to? They do such a good job of setting your hair.’ She said, ‘Oh, honey, I just take it off and mail it to Marshall Fields.’ She didn’t care. Another 102
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time, somebody said, ‘Well, what do you do with your hair at night?’ and she said, ‘Oh, I take it off and hang it on the bedpost.’” Betty also remembered her grandmother-in-law one day asking Betty to hand her a hat. Said Betty, “I picked up the hat and was taking it to her, and I saw it had the price tag in it. I said, ‘Oh, Granny. Don’t you want me to take that price tag out? It’s still in your hat.’ She said, ‘Heavens, no. Don’t touch it. If I pay that much for a hat, I want everybody to know it.’” When she entertained at the mansion, she reportedly told the women upon arrival, “Girls, if you want to see the house, just go on the run around.” Granny Bivins hosted big family Christmases at the house on Polk every year. She decorated a giant Christmas tree in the main living room, next to the sweeping staircase; the tree soon became engulfed in presents. Oliver (Julian’s son) remembered the family gathering on Christmas Eve night to exchange gifts at Granny’s. When the grandchildren were too young to read, Miles and Julian would pass out the packages to each child, who sat waiting. “By the time it was over with,” said Oliver, “everybody had quite a few presents.” The tradition continued into the next generation. Claire Childers Burney (Miles’s granddaughter) remembered going to Granny’s one Christmas when she was about six years old. Everyone in the family was there — Miles’s children and grandchildren and Julian’s children and grandchildren. They ate dinner around the big dining table with all the silver, china, and finery, and they exchanged mountains of gifts. Laughed Claire, “I was the only girl in the family at the time, so I really raked it in. You could practically not see the tree because there were hundreds of presents around it … It just went on and on. It was just huge.” (Claire’s mother, Betty Childers, hosted the Christmas Eve gift exchange at her house after Granny’s death, and Betty’s son, Miles Childers, continued the tradition at his house after his mother’s death.) Joe Batson (Julian’s grandson) once opened a battery-powered car that operated with hand controls attached with a wire (this was before wireless remote control toys). He remembered, “The most trouble I got into was I drove the car around Granny’s feet and got the wire wrapped around her feet. Everybody gave me fits, because they thought it [would trip her]. She just loved it … but they got her untangled real quick.”
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Granny Bivins wearing one of her signature hats.
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Timeline of Activities of the Bivins Foundations
1935: Mary Elizabeth “Granny� Bivins writes letter to her grandchildren, laying the financial groundwork for what would eventually become the Mary E. Bivins Foundation. 1949: Mary E. Bivins Foundation established 1952: Elizabeth Jane Bivins Home for the Aged built and dedicated 1954: First scholarship given to a young student pursuing an education to become a Christian minister 1960s: Foundation plays key role in development of Amarillo Medical Center 1965: Foundation awards significant grant to High Plains Baptist Hospital to establish the Bivins Center for Rehabilitation and Chronic Diseases 1968: Bivins Memorial Nursing Home dedicated and opens 1970s: Amarillo Senior Citizens Association organized with financial assistance from the Foundation 1970s: Elizabeth Jane Bivins Home expands 1978: Jan Werner Adult Day Care Center opens with funding from the Foundation 1987: Bivins Memorial Nursing Home completes a 72-bed addition 1988: Foundation provides financial assistance for the Bivins Senior Center, located in the Wesley Community Center 1990s: Foundation continues to aid and assist numerous organizations throughout the 26 counties of the Texas Panhandle
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1996: The Mary E. Bivins Foundation Board of Directors establishes a Foundation office with paid staff 2001: Bivins Village, an independent living community for low-income seniors opens 2007: Bivins Village Phase II opens with 60 additional apartments 2007: Childers Place opens as a nursing and memory care facility featuring an innovative “neighborhood” concept of living 2007: Elizabeth Jane Bivins Culinary Center opens as a state-of-theart food production kitchen utilizing “cook-chill” technology with the capability of preparing more than 2500 meals per day 2008: Bivins Memorial Nursing Home expansion and renovation completed 2008: Grant and Scholarship awards and disbursements totaled over $1.75 million
timeline of activities
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R References
Personal Interviews In addition to the following material from newspapers and other publications, this book draws heavily on interviews conducted by Jeanne S. Archer with members of the Bivins family between August 2006 and August 2009. Quotations from these interviews are attributed to the speakers. These quotations are based on verbatim transcripts but have been lightly edited at times to smooth the sentence or remove repetition. The following people were interviewed for the book: Betty Bivins Teel Bivins Tom Bivins Mark Bivins Oliver Bivins Claire Childers Burney Miles Childers Joseph Batson Judy Mosley Day Note on Buck Ramsey article: One source for early history about Lee Bivins and his family is Buck Ramsey’s November 1979 three-part series “Lee Bivins — Cattleman” published in Accent West magazine. Quotations from interviews and court documents make it clear that Mr. Ramsey did extensive research for this series. However, he does not cite his sources, and his fanciful writing style leaves open to question how much fictionalizing he might have done to produce the work. In addition, an unreferenced document from the Bivins archives said that Ramsey “set out with a grudge against the family” when he began researching the article, but that he “seems to have been won over by Lee’s virtues in spite of himself.” We have used Ramsey’s material when it helped
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to provide more detail, but we have always clarified when we were relying on his account and tried to verify his information whenever possible. Note on archival material: Some of the following resources were copied from the archives of the Bivins family and file folders in the Amarillo Public Library where original newspaper and magazine clippings have been saved over the years. Some of these documents did not preserve the name or the date of publication. Every effort has been made to track down full citations, but this was not always successful. As in most historical accounts, some records contradicted others. We have done our best to provide details as accurately as possible. Several of the references are from a golden anniversary edition of the Amarillo Sunday News-Globe dated August 14, 1938. The original newspapers are archived at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, but there are also copies on microfilm at the Amarillo Public Library. Chapter 1: The Land Dealey, Edward M. “Story of Old Tascosa, Once Famous Panhandle Cowtown.” The Dallas Morning News Magazine Section, published probably around 1920. Gregg, Josiah. Commerce of the Prairies. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954. Hamner, Laura V. “Panhandle Ranch History at a Glance.” Amarillo Sunday News-Globe, August 14, 1938. Hamner, Laura V. Short Grass & Longhorns. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1943. McCarty, John. “Parade of Plains History.” Amarillo Sunday News-Globe, August 14, 1938. Robertson, Pauline Durrett and Robertson, R.L. (1978). Panhandle Pilgrimage: Illustrated Tales Tracing History in the Texas Panhandle. Amarillo: Paramount Publishing. The Handbook of Texas Online: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/ - Palo Duro Canyon, Casimero Romero, Canadian River. Chapter 2: Levi and Lizzy Note regarding O.C. Bivins: Sources differ as to when O.C. Bivins arrived in Texas. Dates range from 1853 (according to notes made by a family historian) to 1854 (according to a newspaper article written in 1983) to 1857 (according to the Souvenir of Texas published in
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the 1880s) to 1858 (according to the New Encyclopedia of Texas). Whatever year it was, Oliver Bivins was a young man – between 18 and 25) Bivins Ancestry Bivins, Richard to O.C. Bivins, letter dated 19 May 1880, Bedford, Indiana. Davis, Ellis A. The New Encyclopedia of Texas. Published ca 1929. Texas Development Bureau. “Lee Bivins.” “Mrs. E.J. Bivins, Pioneer Woman, Dies at Home.” Sherman Daily Democrat, April 8, 1925. Paddock, B.B. A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas. Chicago: Lewis Publishing, Vol. II, 1906. Ramsey, Buck. “Lee Bivins – Cattleman.” Accent West, November 1979. Souvenir of Texas (a book of biographical sketches, published sometime between 1881 and 1893). www.findagrave.com – Bivins-Childers Families cemetery records and gravesite photos, Llano Cemetery, Amarillo. Note: The statistic on Texas’s population growth from 1860 to 1870 came from the golden anniversary edition of Amarillo Sunday News-Globe, August 14, 1938. Lee’s Childhood Bohanan, Sonny. “History Makers of the High Plains: Lee Bivins.” Amarillo Globe-News, May 19, 2000. Ramsey, Buck. “Lee Bivins – Cattleman.” Accent West, November 1979. Sinise, Jerry. “Lee Bivins” Amarillo Livestock Reporter, September 15, 1983. Standiford, Les. Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America. New York: Crown, Random House, 2005. The Handbook of Texas Online. “Lee Bivins.” www.tshaonline.org Mary Elizabeth Gilbert “Mrs. Bivins Dies.” The Amarillo Globe-News, Monday, December 31, 1951. Davis, Ellis A. The New Encyclopedia of Texas. Published ca 1929. Texas Development Bureau. “Lee Bivins.” Ramsey, Buck. “Lee Bivins – Cattleman.” Accent West, November 1979. Chapter 3: Panhandle Pioneers Bivins Comes to Panhandle Key, Della Tyler. In Cattle Country: History of Potter County – 1876-1966. Wichita Falls, Texas: Nortex Offset Publications, Inc, 1972.
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