A Sudden Gust of Hope

I was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma, in 1932. The Depression was still with us and the Second World War was about to start. My father and mother had met and married in New York. Dad was a full-blooded Ponca Indian. He served as a translator for American Indians during the First World War. Mom was a good Christian woman of German and Irish descent. She was a factory worker in upstate New York. My four older brothers and sisters were born in New York, but after a while my father got homesick, so the family made the long trip to Oklahoma. Had my mother known how she was going to be treated out here I don't think she would have come. Back then, white women didn't marry Indians. Many people made my mom's life miserable.