Clifford Leon Vandiver Written by his brother, Willis Vandiver

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Clifford Leon Vandiver Age 34

Introduction

Sister Loree called me February 25th, 1984, from Rigby, Idaho. She introduced the conversation by saying that she had some bad news. It was!! She had developed liver cancer as a result of previous breast cancer.

Sis was one of the best amateur genealogists and the only one in the family. Genealogy has been one of her life-long interests and endeavors. She expressed a heartfelt desire that certain things get finished for the benefit of all our families. She strongly expressed this to Merrill and me about a month before her death. She said, in effect, that Clifford had lived a short but good life and that his memory should not fade into oblivion with the deaths of his immediate brothers and sisters.

"What a shame it would be," she said, "that my children and yours should never know what kind of person he was; that his life slide away unknown, unappreciated and forgotten."

Merrill and I promised Loree that we would get together and reconstruct, as best we could, the events, anecdotes and personal characteristics that would tell his story.

Fortunately, Merrill knew more about Cliff than anyone else in the family because he was with him more. He grew up with Cliff. Together they worked and played. They shared common interests in hunting, guns, fishing and work. They worked several summers as sawyers in the timber during the Great Depression of the 1930's when men had to depend on their strength, speed and skill to scratch out a bare living - especially if you had a young family as did Merrill. In their day they were both strong, big and physically tough.

I had four older brothers - much older than I. They were all good men! They were honest, kind, ambitious and very generous - especially to me as the kid brother growing up in a motherless home. Much good could be credited to each one but Cliff is the one to be written about here. He had some characteristics that stood out and were different from the rest of his brothers and sisters. Merrill and I do want these characteristics described and illustrated by events that happened, but we hope not to distort them at the expense of truth and accuracy. Memories are faulty enough and biographies written by loved ones can become easily eulogized and distorted. We have tried to stick to the facts as best that memory provides despite the danger of distortion colored by our love and respect for Clifford.

Clifford

Missouri Home of Jim and Edna Vandiver

Clifford was born March 6, 1908, in Adair County, Missouri, the second child and son of James P. and Edna Woods Vandiver. The family lived in the house shown here on a farm. Little is known about their day to day life. Probably Cliff's birth was attended by a mid-wife because we know that at least three more later births were so attended and the birth was not recorded in the county records. Thirty-three years later when the Army demanded a birth certificate before Cliff could be released after serving the required one year in the pre-war draft, he had difficulty getting it because there was no record of his birth. Getting the certificate took several weeks and Pearl Harbor was bombed and he was frozen in the Amy as were all other men in the services.

The first five children were spaced very close together. Their fifth child, Loree was born December 10, 1912, just 21 days short of 6 years after the birth of the first-born son, Willard.

Willard and Clifford

In March 1913, the Vandiver family migrated West by train. At Marshalltown, Iowa, they changed trains and were chugging along at night in the old steamer "Puffer-Billy". All were asleep in their berths when the train wrecked and came to rest in a marsh with many of the cars on their sides. The baggage cars caught fire and burned. All the family valuables were lost including the family pictures. Cliff's parents had no camera during their young married life; consequently there are no pictures of him except those given to us by Missouri relatives. Some passengers were injured but none were killed; only Susan Vandiver, Dad's sister-in-law, was injured. She suffered a broken hand.

A relief train was sent out from Marshalltown which took the family back to town. Dad was the only man allowed to go back on that train because Mother had broken her hip a few months earlier when a run-away team threw her from a carriage as she was taking several cases of eggs to town. She needed help to take this young family back to town. Mother was expecting Loree at the time of the carriage accident and now Loree was 3 months old.

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