George Oxley Huestis [H13817]
(1896 - 1955)

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This note was prepared from several hours of conversation with George Clifford Huestis of Tulsa, OK.

George Oxley Huestis was born in Wallace Station in 1896, the youngest child of George and Susan Egan Huestis. He was named for his uncle, who was by that time retired from his ministry.

George left Wallace for the USA in 1913, when he was 17 years old. His older sister Etta Bendall was living in Brockton, Mass so he moved there, and his brother-in-law, Arthur Bendall, got him a job in a shoe factory. The two families remained close throughout their lives, and son George Clifford H. fondly remembers many family visits to the home of Aunt Etta and Uncle Arthur.

George joined the US Army when America entered the first world war. Because of George's farm background and experience with horses he was sent to Fort Dix to work in the re-mount division of the army, working with horses that had been returned from the war theatre. He was ready to go overseas with his unit when the Armistice was declared and he was de-mobilised. George was granted US citizenship as a consequence of his army service.

Towards the end of 1918 he married Agnes Ferguson, a small woman from the area. As George was 5' 11" (the tallest among his siblings), there was quite a contrast in heights. Because of his war service he was able to get a job with the fire department of Providence, Rhode Island; his first assignment was to steer the back end of a hook and ladder truck. Another of his duties was to work in the salvage department, rushing into burning buildings with tarpaulins to cover goods and furniture to prevent water damage. He worked at that for a very long time. When the Depression hit the family was OK because George had a good job. At that time the Fire Department was dominated by Irish and Italian catholics, so staunch Methodist and anglo George stayed at the bottom of the list for a long time. When advancement finally became based on merit, George wrote the tests and was immediately promoted from private to lieutenant, then to Captain and soon after to Battalion Chief. He passed away while in that job; they went out to shovel the fire hydrants clear of snow one March morning, and later while he sat at his desk he had a heart attack and passed away a week later, in 1958.

George was scrupulously honest, and diligent in any work that he did. He was a faithful churchgoer, and a member of the Primitive Methodist church, about 2 miles from home.

George C. Huestis remembers a road trip to visit family in Wallace Station in the late 1920's. George Sr. did not remember the house fondly as it was a country farm house without electricity, which meant no running water and an outhouse out back, which was always cold in winter. Only Leslie was living at home with Grandmother Susan at that time.

There were four children: Albert in 1920, Gladys in 1922, George in 1930 and Chester in 1931. Gladys was an accomplished musician and church organist, but she had had whooping cough when she was young and this weakened her heart so much that she passed away of a heart attack in 1938. This caused great distress to her mother, Agnes, who was years getting over the tragedy.

Albert Huestis, the oldest boy, was a child of the 20's and 30's. He went to Diesel School in Boston and became a diesel engine mechanic and technician. He was among the first to sign up with the Coast Guard after Pearl Harbour, and was assigned first to patrol work in a commandeered cabin cruiser out of Penobscot Bay, Maine. He was later assigned to a patrol frigate, smaller than a destroyer escort, and he spent a great deal of the time in the USS Cheboygan anchored off Iceland as a floating weather station. George suggested that they would be sitting ducks, but too small a vessel for the Germans to waste a torpedo on. He entered the service as a 2nd Class Petty Officer and left the service as a 1st Class Petty Officer, having refused promotion to chief on the grounds that he would then "have to buy his own uniforms". More practically, he realised that advancement brought much more responsibility and not much more pay, and he did not intend to stay in the service once the war was over.

Albert married the daughter of a man he worked with at the General Electric Base Works in Providence, where he stayed for the rest of his working life. He had three sons, Allen in wartime, and Richard and Dennis in the later 1940's.

to be continued . . .

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