Mantle. Three years later, they headed west for Missouri’s Osage country to try to eke out a living aboveground as farmers and grocers. But within two generations, Mantle men would be working in the ground again.
Elven “Mutt” Mantle was eight years old when his mother, Mae, died of pneumonia a month after giving birth to her fifth child, Emmett. Hisfather, Charles, never remarried, and struggled to raise the children alone. An aunt and uncle reared the new baby as their own thirty miles away in Pryor, Oklahoma. Mutt was eighteen when he met and soon after married Lovell Thelma Richardson Davis, a divorcée—a rarity in that time and in that place—who was eight years his senior. Family lore has it that when Mutt arrived to call on Lovell’s younger sister, she stepped forward and declared she would have him for herself. “Mutt married himself a mother,” relatives said.
That was true enough; Lovell already had a daughter and a son from her marriage to Bill Davis. Still a teenager, Mutt took on the responsibilities of a much older man.
It was a union of opposites. “Daddy was a very passive individual,” his youngest son, Larry Mantle, said. “My mom was a hellcat. He did whatever she said.”
The first of their five children, Mickey Charles, was born on October 20, 1931, in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, in the depths of the Great Depression. Mutt picked the name before he knew the child was a boy in honor of his hero, Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane, and his father, Charlie, a semi-pro southpaw pitcher. He ordered Mickey’s first baseball cap six months before he was born. He placed a baseball in the newborn’s crib and seemed surprised when he showed equal interest in his bottle.
Before the boy could walk, Mutt and Charlie propped him up in a corner and rolled balls across the floor to him. Lovell fashioned his first sliding pads from Mutt’s old wool uniforms and had a cobbler fix spikes to an old pair of shoes to fabricate his first pair of cleats.
When Mutt lost his job grading roads in Spavinaw, he took up tenant farming, tending 80 parched acres for four futile years until drought chased him from the Dust Bowl for good. He quit the land for the promise of employment in the mining towns forty-five miles to the northeast. Within a decade, he had ten mouths to feed: his father; Lovell’s children, Ted and Anna Bea Davis; Mickey, his twin brothers, Ray and Roy, Larry, the baby, known as Butch, and the only girl, Barbara, who was called Bob. She never knew why.
Mutt moved his family first to the small mining town of Cardin, then to the Quincy Street house in Commerce, where they slept four to a bed for ten years. The modest one-story structure, measuring twenty-five by thirtyfeet, had four rooms, including the kitchen, which had a wood-burning stove, and tin can lids pressed into knotholes in the plain pine floors. “I cannot believe that many of us lived in that little bitty house,” Barbara DeLise said.
In 1944, much to Lovell’s consternation, Mutt traded it for an old farmhouse with a calf on the outskirts of town. He wanted better air for his ailing father and to live off the ground, not in it. “She was so mad,” DeLise said. “The house was a two-story, and it was a wreck. The cracks in the floor were so bad. And when the wind blew, the linoleum would be standing this high off the floor. So we didn’t stay there too long. It had no bathroom. Had to take a bath in the washtub. We didn’t have nothin’. You just went outside and went to the bathroom. That was pretty bad.”
Grandpa Charlie died soon after, just as his oldest grandson was entering eighth grade. He was laid out in the front parlor, such as it was. “Say goodbye to Grandpa,” Mutt said, escorting the oldest boys to the open coffin.
“From there we moved to Dr. Wormington’s place,” DeLise said. “He lived in town, and Dad took care of his farm. We weren’t growing anything that I know of. Dad just took care of the
Elven “Mutt” Mantle was eight years old when his mother, Mae, died of pneumonia a month after giving birth to her fifth child, Emmett. Hisfather, Charles, never remarried, and struggled to raise the children alone. An aunt and uncle reared the new baby as their own thirty miles away in Pryor, Oklahoma. Mutt was eighteen when he met and soon after married Lovell Thelma Richardson Davis, a divorcée—a rarity in that time and in that place—who was eight years his senior. Family lore has it that when Mutt arrived to call on Lovell’s younger sister, she stepped forward and declared she would have him for herself. “Mutt married himself a mother,” relatives said.
That was true enough; Lovell already had a daughter and a son from her marriage to Bill Davis. Still a teenager, Mutt took on the responsibilities of a much older man.
It was a union of opposites. “Daddy was a very passive individual,” his youngest son, Larry Mantle, said. “My mom was a hellcat. He did whatever she said.”
The first of their five children, Mickey Charles, was born on October 20, 1931, in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, in the depths of the Great Depression. Mutt picked the name before he knew the child was a boy in honor of his hero, Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane, and his father, Charlie, a semi-pro southpaw pitcher. He ordered Mickey’s first baseball cap six months before he was born. He placed a baseball in the newborn’s crib and seemed surprised when he showed equal interest in his bottle.
Before the boy could walk, Mutt and Charlie propped him up in a corner and rolled balls across the floor to him. Lovell fashioned his first sliding pads from Mutt’s old wool uniforms and had a cobbler fix spikes to an old pair of shoes to fabricate his first pair of cleats.
When Mutt lost his job grading roads in Spavinaw, he took up tenant farming, tending 80 parched acres for four futile years until drought chased him from the Dust Bowl for good. He quit the land for the promise of employment in the mining towns forty-five miles to the northeast. Within a decade, he had ten mouths to feed: his father; Lovell’s children, Ted and Anna Bea Davis; Mickey, his twin brothers, Ray and Roy, Larry, the baby, known as Butch, and the only girl, Barbara, who was called Bob. She never knew why.
Mutt moved his family first to the small mining town of Cardin, then to the Quincy Street house in Commerce, where they slept four to a bed for ten years. The modest one-story structure, measuring twenty-five by thirtyfeet, had four rooms, including the kitchen, which had a wood-burning stove, and tin can lids pressed into knotholes in the plain pine floors. “I cannot believe that many of us lived in that little bitty house,” Barbara DeLise said.
In 1944, much to Lovell’s consternation, Mutt traded it for an old farmhouse with a calf on the outskirts of town. He wanted better air for his ailing father and to live off the ground, not in it. “She was so mad,” DeLise said. “The house was a two-story, and it was a wreck. The cracks in the floor were so bad. And when the wind blew, the linoleum would be standing this high off the floor. So we didn’t stay there too long. It had no bathroom. Had to take a bath in the washtub. We didn’t have nothin’. You just went outside and went to the bathroom. That was pretty bad.”
Grandpa Charlie died soon after, just as his oldest grandson was entering eighth grade. He was laid out in the front parlor, such as it was. “Say goodbye to Grandpa,” Mutt said, escorting the oldest boys to the open coffin.
“From there we moved to Dr. Wormington’s place,” DeLise said. “He lived in town, and Dad took care of his farm. We weren’t growing anything that I know of. Dad just took care of the
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