Remembering Lois Curtis

   Lois Curtis was born in a house on McDermott Drive in Allen on December 23, 1923.  Yesterday she was laid to rest in the Allen cemetery almost directly across the street from her childhood home. The life of this much loved Allen resident had come full circle but not until she touched the lives of many along the way.

   Born Anna “Lois” Gilliland, she attended the Allen School and graduated in 1941. She married Walter Curtis shortly after he graduated from Allen in 1942 and the couple settled down on a farm near the intersection of Custer and McKinney Ranch Road in Frisco.

   During the 1950’s Lois worked part-time with Ruth Canady cooking for children in the Allen School.  According to her son Bob Curtis, the lunch menu was literally homemade.

   “The ladies brought their own recipes in from home and cooked meals that the kids loved like fried chicken, yeast rolls and hot desserts. Turkey and stuffing were her specialty and years later when she no longer cooked, she still had the cafeteria staff using the same recipe we enjoyed each Thanksgiving.”

   As the school district grew, Lois moved into a full-time position as food service manager which she held until her retirement. Walter Curtis supplemented his farm income as the school district tax assessor and bus driver. That also grew into a full-time job with the schools and the couple moved into Allen from the farm in 1962.

   An interesting story from 1963 involved Lois with her friends and co-workers Iva Mae Morrow and Bertie Davidson. The ladies tuned in each day to the popular soap opera “Days of Our Lives” in the kitchen each day until one day a news bulletin reported that President Kennedy had been shot.

  Curtis rushed to tell Principal James Griffin who at first didn’t believe the news. They then called Superintendent Le Rountree and high school principal Max Vaughan to share the news with the older students. It all began with Lois and her “Days of Our Lives” TV set.

   It wasn’t her cooking or his driving that led to a middle school being named for Walter and Lois Curtis in 1994. Outside of work, the two devoted their spare time to making Allen a better place for kids and families.

   Whether it was running the scoreboard or running one of the first school PTA groups, Walter and Lois were there to help.  Along with Pete Ford and Alvis Story, the Curtis were among the biggest Allen Eagles fans in town and rarely missed a sporting event.

   “My father devoted 34 years of service to Allen children and my mother gave 37 years,” explained Bob Curtis. “Allen was their town and the pride they showed in the schools and community was evident through every one of those years.”

   With Lois, her three children, numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren, Bob Curtis figures there has been a Curtis family member in the Allen Schools for the past 82 years. He retired as the district’s long-time facilities director in 2010 and more recently his daughter Stacey Dunston has been teaching math at the Lowery Freshman Center.

   Following Walter’s death in 1992, Lois continued to support the Allen Eagles Allen sporting events until she was sidelined by an illness in 2009.

   Whether it was an extra helping of her signature turkey stuffing or a helping hand for a child who lost his lunch, Lois Curtis was a mother and a friend and a darn good cook to thousands of Allen students. For that we all say thank you and God Bless.

Senior Wills & Junior Prophesies

1950 Allen High School Junior Senior Banquet at Sherman Hotel

   It is prom weekend in Allen, Texas and that means big business for hairdressers, restaurants and limousine services.  Like graduation, the senior prom is a high school rite of passage that most of us have experienced once or twice.

   In some ways the prom hasn’t changed a bit.  Kids still dress up, enjoy a nice dinner, go dancing and stay out much later than normal.  Then again, speaking with some former students and teachers, I would say the Allen High School prom has come a long, long way.

   For many years, Allen High School’s prom was actually called the Junior-Senior Banquet, according to Jill (Enloe) Dietz, who graduated in 1975. “The tradition was that the juniors would raise money to pay for the seniors and then both classes would attend the banquet.”

   The fundraising each year centered around a turkey dinner that was held each November.  Ella Jo Adams, former AHS home economics teacher, recalls the turkey dinner as a  big community event.

   “The mothers did most of the preparation and food service director, Lois Curtis coordinated it all. Everyone came out because they knew it supported the senior’s banquet each year. Of course the town’s population was probably less than 1,000 at the time.”

  Seniors Niki Keramat and Tyler Johnston will be attending the Allen High School prom at the Allen Event Center this Saturday. They will be joined by almost 1,000 classmates. The couple is part of a group of 20 and will be riding in a limo to a nice steakhouse and sushi restaurant before attending the prom around 9 p.m.

   In comparison, Honey (Bankhead) Gray and her date attended the 1974 junior-senior banquet at the Hilton Inn Hotel in Dallas with about 75 students. There were 41 seniors graduating that year.

   “A tradition that I remember from the banquets was the senior wills and junior prophesies,” said Gray. “Seniors would stand up and bequeath all sorts of funny things to the juniors. Then juniors would predict the future for seniors. It was meant to be in good fun but could get rough at times.”

   Allen’s lack of hotels led to proms being scheduled in Dallas and later Richardson and Plano.  Sonya (Knight) Pitcock remembers her 1997 prom being held at a downtown Dallas hotel and then everyone heading to the Swinging D Ranch for the after prom party.

  Ella Jo Adams recalled one year that the prom was almost cancelled. “We received a call from the Fairmont Hotel that our room for the prom had been taken over by secret service staff for President Gerald Ford’s overnight stay at the hotel. We were eventually allowed to use a different space at the Fairmont. We even got to see the President arrive in his limo that evening in April of 1976.

   An interesting fact about early Allen “proms” was that underclassmen were not allowed to eat dinner with the group.  A junior who took a sophomore to the banquet would eat dinner inside while the underclassmen sat outside the banquet hall.  They could join the group when the dancing began. At the same time, most of Allen ISD’s faculty and their spouses or guests attended the banquet along with the upperclassmen. Mrs. Adams helped break down the tradition in 1967 so that all guests could enjoy the banquet and the emphasis was more on the students.

   Asked why he was looking forward to the prom, 2012 senior Tyler Johnston said “it’s exciting because it’s only seniors.  It is our event – our chance to get together and start saying goodbye. It will be great.”

   In a way, the prom hasn’t changed in years.

Allen Cemetary Has Stories To Tell

   James Madison was president of the United States the day Harry Butcher was born in 1817. Teddy Roosevelt was president on the day that Harry died in Allen, Texas in 1901. Harry’s story in between is unknown but those two significant dates in his history are marked on a tombstone in the Allen Cemetery.

   Walking through the cemetery, any cemetery for that matter, is a history lesson on the community it serves. In Harry’s case, we can guess that the Butcher family came to Texas by wagon train over the Appalachians in the mid 1800’s. His family may have come to Allen shortly after the Houston-Central Railroad made Allen a relevant place in the 1870’s. Then again, he may have been a cattle driver from Kansas who met a pretty Texas lady and took up cotton farming. 

   We can only imagine his story but there were people alive in Allen at the turn of the last century who may have known Harry Butcher and some of their children are still alive today. So if you think about it, a person in Allen today could hear stories about growing up in the 1820’s. It is the ability to quickly reach back across generations and “touch history” that makes a visit to Allen’s Cemetery so interesting.

   The Allen Cemetery was created on April 15, 1884 by Lodge 254 of the International Order of Odd Fellows on land donated by the Whisenant family. The IOOF was a benevolent fraternal organization dedicated to charitable causes that was brought to the U.S. from England in 1819. The oldest and most intriguing marker in the cemetery honors Rebecca Hamilton, who died in 1883. Hamilton was related to the Wetzel family that made its name building furniture. The unusual wooden headstone was carved by a family member and has long since fallen victim to Texas weather.

   The cemetery, which sits across from the intersection of Main Street and McDermott, was maintained by the Allen Cemetery Association for many years. Three residents in particular; Dale Holt, Ed Lynge and Ted Summers, all worked to keep up the property and raise funds for its management. A lack of funding led to the cemetery falling into disrepair until the late 1980’s when the Allen City Council voted to acquire the property and operate it through the Allen Parks and Recreation Department. The rerouting of McDermott brought new attention to the cemetery, according to Sue Witkowski, who managed the property for the Parks and Recreation Department.

   “We announced we would soon be raising the price of plots and almost immediately the entire cemetery sold out at the old price of $125 per plot.” Walking through the cemetery, Witkowski pointed out that the oldest graves are set against the creek at the eastern edge. Two of Allen’s oldest family names have prominent locations in the cemetery. R.B. Whisenant (1854-1937) and G.W. Ford (1821-1904) represent two pioneering families that traveled to the area by covered wagon before the Civil War. Whisenant’s grandson Ed Lynge still lives in the area and Ford’s grandson Pete was a lifelong resident and well known businessman.

   Family plots around the cemetery with names like Miller, Summers, Curtis, Taylor, Leach and Compton all tell the stories of families that have figured in Allen’s history for over 100 years. Others tell the story of epidemics or fires that claimed the lives of family members and often small children.
   The Allen Cemetery is at first a memorial to family members but it is also a history lesson for the rest of us and a visit to Harry Butcher’s grave may just get you thinking about life in this country 200 years ago.