A Monthly Publication for Frontier Communities in Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona

Don Trammell was born in 1932 at home in Cliff, New Mexico, to Sam and Alta Hawkins Trammell. His father’s mechanic’s shop was next door. Two midwives delivered him — Mrs. J.B. Horn and Mrs. G.E. Brown. “Both signatures are on my birth certificate,” Don said. “My parents came to the area from Texas in 1931. They had starved out from the drought and the Depression. My uncle Frank Trammell was running the Basset holdings.” Frank Trammell needed a mechanic and a truck driver. “Dad filled both,” Don said. “I have three older sisters, all of whom were born in and around Stonewall County in West Texas.” His sisters are Mary Roeschke, Doris Peterson and Jeanne Barlow, all of whom are alive.

Their son was Hugh McKeen, born in Palo Pinto, Texas, March 8, 1863. He married May Balke

“Our younger brother, Leon, was killed in a car accident just before his 21 st birthday,” Don said. “One of four young men had a brand-new Olds 88. They went to Lordsburg, Deming and back to see how fast they could go. On the way back, almost to Hurley, the car left the ground, and all four flew out of the vehicle and died.

“It happened right after my wife Marti and I got married,” Don said.

Don has done a lot of genealogy on his family and has found the Trammells back to 1617 and the Hawkins back to the 1600s.

“The Trammells went from Germany to France to England,” Don said. “Thomas Trammell — I think he was a Hugenot.”

“On my mom’s side, Ben Hawkins was in Virginia in the 1600s,” he said. “Both families came before the Pilgrims, I think. I’m pretty sure about the Trammells.”

He said the first Trammell came over as an indentured servant. He sued because he wasn’t released on time. He won, so there’s a record of his being in America.

“Genealogy is habit-forming,” Don warned.

He believes that the name Trammell in Germany was likely Treimel. The Hawkins side of the family is consistently English. Ancestors included John and Dora McMillin Trammell and Samuel Robert and Antonia Davenport Hawkins.

“I grew up in Buckhorn on the banks of Duck Creek,” Don said. “In Buckhorn, I had 35 or so cousins. The Browns and the Crumbleys were large families.”

Grandma Crumbley was the matriarch, he said. Her daughter Nancy married a Brown — one to George and one to Wilson. Double cousins were common.

Don’s uncle Frank Trammell married Aunt Mary Hawkins, which made their children Don’s double cousins.

“My father was killed when I was six years old,” Don said. “He was working with the highway department and was killed on the job.

“Mom became the Postmaster of the Buckhorn Post Office,” he said. “She spent 26 ½ years as postmaster.”

Buckhorn was a fourth-class post office. It would be open a couple of hours a day for her to post mail and give people a chance to pick up their mail.

“I went to school at Cliff and graduated from Cliff High School in 1950,” Don said. “I started working on ranches. I got my first job when I was 10 years old. Slats Farrar owned the Buckhorn Store. After he was injured in a mine accident, I would get off the school bus at the store and help sell candy and transfer things from the warehouse to the store. Gertrude would price and shelf them.”

When he was about 11 or 12 years old, Don helped Slats cook for a roundup and then for the older G.E. Brown.

During the summer when Don was 14, he did chores at the Moon Ranch.

“I would paint tanks or roll wire,” Don said. “My freshman year in high school, I went to work for the McCauley Brothers. That summer it was Tom McCauley and then Hap McCauley. I did chores and on weekends would truck bales. I didn’t live at home, but in the bunkhouse at Hap’s until I graduated.”

On April 1, 1948, when he was a sophomore, a couple of his buddies talked to everyone about ditching. Several agreed, but “only three of us spent the day on the river. It was hot, and we had no water except for what was in the river. We caught a fish and cooked it.”

“We went back to school after the buses had left, so we walked to one of the kid’s houses,” Don said. “Ken Grahan and Billy Henry were the other two.

“The next morning, Fred Foster, the principal, met us at the door. He wanted to know if we had a good time. Of course, we did, we told him,” Don said. “He said to come into his office. ‘OK, you will memorize the preamble to the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence’ he said.

“He gave us a week,” Don said. “I didn’t waste any time learning them, and I can still quote them almost verbatim.”

He said he still thinks that memorization teaches important skills.

He graduated in a class of 13 and went to the University of New Mexico where the freshman class was 2,300.

“I figured I was as smart as I would ever be, so after the first semester, I went back to working for Hap, doing dozer work for a few months. Then I went to the smelter in Hurley and worked as a car dumper. It was there that I learned I wasn’t near as smart as I thought I was.

“Every time I would apply for a job, they would ask what education I had,” Don said, “so I went back to Western.”

Slats had opened a service station by that time, so Don worked for him for almost four years.

“I worked there until my senior year, when I starting driving a laundry truck for Whiteway Laundry, owned by Bob and Katie White,” Don said. “Their son Robert E. White went to Boys State and Boys Nation in 1954-55.”

“I was tired of school, so I volunteered for the draft and went into the Army in 1955 and got out in 1957, two days after I married Marti on Jan. 5,” Don said. “I met her at a honky-tonk, the Riverbank Clubhouse in California, while I was in the service.”

They returned to Silver City, and Don finished his bachelor’s degree in elementary education at Western.

“I taught for a year in Silver, a class of 32 kids,” Don said. “In April, there was a strike at Kennecott, and the number of students dropped to 23 or so. Last hired was first fired.”

Marti had worked in a county’s school office in California, so she got a contract instead of an application.

“Back we went to California,” Don said. “We spent 10 years in Ceres, south of Modesto. I got one of the best educations one could get. I taught sixth grade for two years, then I was the head teacher for three years. I spent five years in administration as the supervisor of child welfare and attendance and registrar and director of pupil personnel services.”

The district unified and Don decided he needed a master’s degree.

“It was because I couldn’t stand the superintendent who came in,” Don smiled.

So it was back to Western, where he got his masters degree.

“I started looking for a job again,” Don said. “I became principal of the elementary lab school on 12 th Street and then they asked me to be the supervising teacher, which I did for two years.”

His next stint was as a counselor at Silver High School, where he spent 25 years.

“At Silver High School, one of my responsibilities was the lockers,” Don said. “A bunch would all of a sudden puff. I opened one and it had wadded up paper inside with sugar and a paper about saltpeter. I went to the chemistry teacher. She said if the two are compressed together they spontaneously combust.

“There was a Rexall stub with the saltpeter, and I knew which pharmacist had a daughter in high school,” Don smiled, “so I confronted her, and she went pale. I never had any more locker fires from spontaneous combustion.”

“With my two years of military, I retired with 37 years of experience,” Don said.

Now he and his wife Marti work with Faith Community to try to bring an assisted-living facility to Silver City.

 

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