John Manning Arthur 1946

John was in the US Navy during World War II.  He was stationed in Bremerton, Washington after he had broken his leg in 1946.  This letter is to his aunt Mamie Frances Hansen who lived in Los Angeles.  Mamie was the "big sister" to John's mother, Ernestine, and all of the children of Mama and Manning Atwood.  She had written John and suggested he was a "Country Boy."

John's reply:

…this country boy has spent two years in the Navy in this country.  I have been everywhere except Florida and California. I've seen the best and the worst of people.  I have waded in the reflection pool ini front of the Lincoln Memorial.  I have spit 518 feet from the top of the Washington monument.  I have been dead drunk;  I have danced with the best and the worst.

I have spent a weekend in New England and talked Texas and Texas A&M to an honor graduate of the Harvard class of '34; I rode through New York City with three days to spend, but kept right on going.
I've blacked Navy fliers' eyes and they have blacked mine.  I paid $5 for a steak I could have gotten in Texas for sixty cents; I've swam in the Atlantic Ocean, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, the Pacific Ocean, Puget Sound, and the goldfish pond in the Boston Commons.

John Manning is the toddler in the front row with his Daddy Hipp Arthur in 1928. 

I've danced in the Pump Room, the Empire Room, Marine Room in Chicago, and at the hotels in DC, Boston, Buffalo, and across the country to Seattle.  I've drunk beer in the dirtiest taverns in the same cities.  I've hitch-hiked from Buffalo to Boston; I've been under Niagara Falls, and I brought a pocketful of Ontario, Canada, back to the United States just for the hell of it.

I've done all sorts of things just for the hell of it.  And in spite of the fact that I may be a country boy, the people that I was with and I enjoyed every minute of it.  In short, I've been around and I'm damn proud of me, and I don't mind telling anybody.

A gathering of the Atwoods and their extended family iin 1928

On Mothers Day in 1928 the whole Atwood clan gathered at Mama and Papa's house in Comanche, Texas.  Atwood men at top are l. to r. Thurston in his Boy Scout uniform, Manning "Papa" Atwood, Edward Atwood and Watt Atwood, whom my father Thurston referred to as "the swamp rat."

Below is the photo of the whole group.  First Papa and Mama in the back row, then Frank "Watt" next to Ruth "Zamp" in the center.  The woman holding the baby boy is Alma Atwood Denny with her son Cleve B. Denny.  Thurston is the last one in this line.

In front left to right is Harold Denny, Alma's husband, Hipp Arthur with his first son John Manning and beside them is Ernestine Atwood Arthur.  Edward the eldest son is on the right seated.