Newspapers / The Kings Mountain Herald … / April 14, 1981, edition 1 / Page 3
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'))! TuMdoy. April IS. 1M1-KIMG8 NOUMTAIM HERALD-Pag* 3 ivUiza- froin during IS that lan? If :ate to ons to worked whole w that ctedin n with. ling to awner- proud ihts by in the Kloms. 3. Our n. The ;sult of we are ms but to live ;ovem- ust the er any would he loss Think voked, lenext >1 d ..'x' tt 4* bullet ivorite d at a ind at- dential iidents . Can- vemor 1975 'ice by isident NiK sin: ilanted 1, then white Kings [IS and the ac- ram at bet- » • » • )) • )) • )) 5) ))i The Legend Of Bonnie And Clyde By BILL CARPENTER " Forty-seven years ago. May 23,1934, two Texas desperadoes were destroyed by a fusillade of police bullets in a Louisiana am bush. The menace that had laid over Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma for two years or longer would at last come to an end. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker died grotesquely on this Wednesday morning, their bodies riddled by 1,000 rounds of ammunition and their life of crime and running from the law was over. The posse of Texas and Louisiana peace officers who ambushed and killed Bon nie and Clyde were Captain Frank Hammer, Ted Hinton, P.M. Oakley, B.M. Gault, Bob Alcorn and Henderson Jordan. At two o’clock in the morning, these dedicated law officers took their stand eight miles south of Gibsland, Louisiana. They selected their spot below an em bankment from which they could see the highway in both directions without being seen. Captain Frank Hammer and his five peace officers lay in the wet grass from two o’clock until nine o’clock at which time, they were about ready to pack up and go home. Bonnie and Clyde had got away so many many times before and perhaps this would be one of those times. However, as they were about to leave, a Ford V-8 sedan, gray in color appeared at the top of the hill, at this moment, the Ford sedan came down the hill and Captain Frank Hammer and his men knew that inside were the two desperadoes that they had hunted for the past two years. Hammer had made a deal with Ivan Methvin, a friend of Bonnie and Clyde, to park his truck alongside of the highway in front of the line of fire. The Ford V-8 sedan stopped where Methvin’s truck was and Clyde Barrow got out of the car and walked up to Mr. Methvin and asked what was wrong. At this moment Bob Alcorn shouted “It’s Clyde!” and a storm of bullets came forth from the em bankment. It was like a bolt of lightning, Clyde fell backward and Bonnie who was sitting in the sedan fell forward, her head between her knees. Afraid that even now they might be alive. Hammer and his men fired another blast into the side of the sedan. Barrow and Parker had both died almost instantly. Hammer sent word to Gibsland for a tow truck to take the Ford into the county seat, Arcadia. It took two hours for the tow truck to arrive and by this time, souvenir hunters had arrived at the death scene. They had to be held off by the officers from the car itself, or they would have taken everything in it and stripped the corpses of their clothing. In Arcadia, Louisiana, a sleepy little southern town where nothing exciting really ever happens, until this day in May, the bodies were taken to the local undertaking parlor, which was located in the rear of a furniture store. Back in the 1930’s the undertaker’s business was shared with the furniture’s business in most cities and towns across this nation. A large mob of people had gathered in front of the furniture store and they had broken the glass window and had damaged much of the furniture as they tried to get into the back rooms of the store where the bodies of Clyde Bar- row and Bonnie Parker were. After the bodies were taken back to Dallas, Texas, it was the same story as thousands of peo ple jammed the streets in front of the two funeral parlors. It was estimated that nearly 40,000 people had gathered in Dallas trying to get in the two funeral parlors to view the bodies of these two famous desperadoes. Clyde’s funeral was conducted on Friday, May 25th and Bon nie’s funeral on Saturday, May 26th. The Rev. Clifford An drews was in charge of both ser vices. Why had so many people come to the funeral parlors or at the church services of these two desperadoes. Perhaps it was because Clyde Banow and Bon nie Parker had become a hero and a heroine to them. To others, perhaps they wanted to see the remains of the famous outlaw couple and wanted to be able to tell their grandchildren and others that they had seen and attended the funeral ser vices. At Clyde’s funeral some unknown person hired a plane to I drop flowers on his coffin as it was lowered into the Texas soil. However whatever the reason, one thing can be sure -The seeds of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow Legend had been bom on this day in'May, 1934. Legends are told about dif ferent people, some are true and some are only half tme. People like Bonnie and Clyde, John Dellinger and Machine Gun Kel ly could tmst but a few fellow beings and even here as always that trust was betrayed. 1 guess that it will always be of those who kill, steal and prey upon the society of mankind. Clyde Barrow was born on a small dirt poor farm near Telice, Texas on March 24, 1909. He came from a large family and they were desperately poor, just about as poor as a white family could be in the South in those days. Clyde’s father was unable to read and write. His mother could read and write her name but that was just about as far as her education went. However both of them were honest, hard working people and they were found in the cotton fields each day working from sunrise until sunset. As soon as the kids were big enough they were sent into the cotton fields to help their parents. There were eight kids in the Barrow family and later on in life two of them would end up having a police record. I am speaking of Clyde and his brother Marvin “Buck” Barrow. Clyde Barrow was five feet eight inches tall and never tipped the scales at more than 145 pounds. In fact he looked more like a young man going to a local high school basketball game than the “Texas Badman" holding up a local Texas bank. He loved guns from the time he was a small boy tmd always played with them, a toy gun if he had one, if not, he would use a stick for a gun. Due to his love for guns as he became a men he was to become an expert with firearms. He had a preference when it came to cars, most of the time he would drive a V-8 Ford. However this was no doubt due to the fact that in the 1930’s the Ford V-8 was the best car on the nation’s highways and the V-8 engine was faster than the slower 6 cylinder engines that most of the cars had at this time. Bonnie Parker was born on October I, 1910 in Rowena, Texas. She was a very small girl, in fact when she reached womanhood, she was under five feet and weighed only 90 pounds. So in fact both of these Texas outlaws looked no where like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the film “Bonnie & Clyde.” However these two did blaze out a bloody trail through Texas for two years and they did murder a lot of people on their trail more than a dozen of them it has been reported. Both of them loved publicity, they loved to see their pictures in the papers and read about how they were wanted by the law all across the great state of Texas. Bonnie would love to take pic tures of them and send the pic tures to the newspapers and perhaps because of these pictures this Texas couple wouldn’t have been nearly so fascinating to millions of newspaper readers all across this nation. So here we have a brief story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Bar- row of how they lived and how they died. It ws said that these two would walk into a bank and Clyde would say, “Hi, I’m Clyde Barrow, this is Bonnie Parker, we rob banks.” Perhaps because of the movie which was made in the late 1960’s has resurrected the pair as Southern American folk heroes however Bonnie and Clyde lived by the gun and they died by the gun on Wednesday morning. May 23, 1934 in the fussilade of police bullets that destroyed thema nd their life of crime. Some day they will go down together They will bury them side by side; To a lew it will be grief but to the law a great reliei- But it's death for Bonnie and Clyde. (Bonnie Parker) Errors Play Havoc And Faces Are Red Birth, marriage and death are three important events which newspaper reporters are always cau tioned by their editors to “be sure it’s right in the paper.” And simple typographical errors can play havoc with stories when they appear in print. Corrections can even be more embarrassing. Last week’s papers were full of school news, because the student population in town is big business, and we try to play the news fairly by try ing, at least, to cover some of the activities that go on daily at Central, East, Grover, North, West, Kings Mountain Junior High, Bethware, and Kings Mountain Senior High School. But our faces are red. Saturday’s big yard sale at North School, for benefit of school projects, was labeled in Thursday’s recent edition as slated for West School. The Tues day paper carried the details correctly. And to make matters even worse, Jackie Seism had called in a classified ad to advertise the big event and the classified ad, indeed, was in print but alas didn’t tell readers at which school the yard sale was to be held. It merely said, “Gigantic yard sale Saturday beginn ing at 7 a.m.” Since the P-TA at North School is such an active organization and the ladies have real ly been working for several weeks, the success of ^turday’s event was due to the fact that they did their jobs well. Errors in newspapers aren’t funny, however. Reporters and proofreaders take pride in their work and are just as embarrassed as the people they have Feature Idea ? Call 739-7496 Lib Stewart written about. Wh*r*'s Th* Paper Boy? “My father says the paper he reads ain’t put up right; He finds a lot of fault, too, he does, persuing it all right; He says there ain’t a single thing in it worth to read. And that it doesn’t print the kind of stuff the people need. He tosses it aside and says it’s strictly on the bum. But you ought to hear him holler when the paper doesn’t come. He reads about the weddings and he snons like all get out; He reads the social doins with a most derisive shout. He says they make the papers for the women folks alone; Hell read about the parties and he’ll fume and fret and groan; He says of information it doesn’t have a crumb. But you ought to hear him holler when the paper doesn’t come. He is always first to grab it and he reads it plum clear through. He doesn’t miss an item, or a want ad • that is true. He says they don’t know what we want, those newspaper guys; I’m going to take a day sometime and go and put em wise. Sometimes it seems as though they must be deaf and blind and dumb. But you ought to hear him holler when the paper doesn’t come.”
The Kings Mountain Herald (Kings Mountain, N.C.)
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April 14, 1981, edition 1
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