Biography notes for Leroy Churchman
(written 8/27/1998 by Charles Leroy Churchman)
Leroy Churchman was a beekeeper all his adult life. He started as a young man by raising a pig and trading it for a motorcycle which he then traded for a hive of bees. It was fortunate he traded off the motorcycle for Roy had the mechanical aptitudes of Godzilla as evidenced by the story he told of he and his brother Marion overhauling a Ford Model T transmission. Upon completion of the repairs they cranked up the Ford and Marion stepped behind the car to push it off the jacks. Roy then engaged the low gear pedal to test the results, but instead of going forward, the car shot into reverse and chased poor Marion all over the cow pasture. Marion managed to escape when a wheel struck a rock, stopping the car. This is possibly the same vehicle they drove
to Missouri to trade a load of honey for cider. On the trip back they decided to sample their wares and tapped into a gallon jug, stringing a siphon hose to the front seat so they could sip away the miles. Unfortunately the jug they tapped into happened to be "hard cider" and in a short time they had become quite jolly. The Ford, seizing on this opportunity to display its independence, decided to take the road less traveled, and as a consequence they found themselves upside down in a bar ditch feeling somewhat chagrined. Despite a bent wishbone (part of the steering) the Ford was drivable. They saved most of their cargo, salvaged what dignity they could and crept home with the Ford proceeding crabwise down the road like a ship sailing against the wind. Most of their profits went to repairing the Ford. Such were the
perils of entrepreneurship.
Roy's love of beekeeping never wavered from the moment he took up that rather eccentric occupation. His one other ambition was to finish high school, but times were hard and money was short. His brother Virgil's dream was to become a school teacher, and since there weren't resources enough for both of them to attend high school, Roy chose to take a job in a grocery store in Eureka to help support Virgil so Virgil could finish his education and earn a teaching certificate. To Roy this was not a sacrifice but an obligation. He and Virgil were very close brothers and Roy simply felt it was the right thing to do. During this time Roy made good friends with the preacher of his church who in turn put him in touch with a beekeeper in Mt. Hope, Kansas who offered Roy a job taking care of his bees. Roy moved to Mt. Hope where in addition to taking care of bees, also helped out in the Jewell Furniture Store and assisted Mr. Jewell with his mortuary business. He met Flora Belle Weir who was living in Wichita at the time and was soon keeping company with this vivacious young flapper of stern Presbyterian upbringing. This whimsical combination so captivated Roy he married her. His pet name for Flora was Burnie. According to Flora the nickname arose from her having a rather sharp tongue which Roy would say burned him. Apparently Roy engaged in enough mischief to be frequently "burned" and the name Burnie stuck. (I can remember the times Mom would light into him about some small misdemeanor, and he'd say, "Now Burnie. . ." and her face would soften and Dad would escape a tongue-lashing. Dad was a foxy little guy and quite the charmer.)
Soon after they were married, Roy was offered an opportunity to buy a beekeeping business in Reece, Kansas. The business thrived and the family grew to include two sons, the second of which arrived about three months after a tornado nearly erased the town of Reece. He told the story of a man who was running up the street after the tornado to check on his family and heard screams from a house that had been destroyed. According to Roy's story the man ran inside to see if he could help and found a woman had been trapped by a wood cook stove that fell on her. The man (never named) lifted the stove off her and helped the woman outside before the house collapsed. Later it was said that it took four men to lift the stove. It wasn't until many years after his death that a friend told us that the man who saved this lady was our dad, Roy! We were also unaware of the true reason he gave up his dream to attend high school until years after his death. Roy was never one to blow his own whistle. In all the hundreds of stories he related about his life, never once do I remember him representing himself as the hero.
Life was good during the early years in Reece. Business thrived sufficiently he borrowed money to purchase a new Overland truck and more equipment. He rented a nice two-story house, joined the Odd Fellows Lodge and became a pillar of the community, but in spite of hard work and much enthusiasm, the business became a victim of the crash of '29. The bank foreclosed and Roy lost everything. He moved to Wichita to start over. It was at this time he became the "Honey Man," buying honey in bulk from other beekeepers, bottling it and selling it to area grocery stores under the brand name of Clover Blossom Honey. This was the principal way he made a living throughout the Great Depression. A third son arrived in 1935, the year of the worst dust storms of the 30's and also one of the coldest winters in memory. Roy somehow managed to contact the county doctor and persuade him to come out in a blizzard in the middle of the night to deliver Dale, but according to Roy, the county nurse did most of the work while the doctor warmed his behind in front of the little coal heating stove. One might say he was entitled, since he had to cough up the fifty cents for a sack of coal to keep the fire going.
To say times were hard was the grossest of understatements, but there was always food on the table, shoes to wear and a house to live in. There was no money for utilities, so light was provided by kerosene lamps and water by means of a hand pump. Luxuries came in the form of a Saturday night movie in the park and a quart of ice cream from Tate's on the way home. Sunday's were spent picnicking in the park and going to the zoo. Alternative entertainment was a trip to the airport to watch the planes take off and land. There were three flights a day; Braniff, TWA and Continental. On the way home there would be a stop at the dairy store to buy milk (seven cents a quart) to make homemade ice cream. If honey sales had been good that week, there might also be ten cents for a couple of Nehi sodas to make sundaes.
The Great Depression refused to ease its grip on the economy, so swallowing his pride, Roy finally took a janitorial job at the Relief Office working nights, and little by little gained enough to make a deal for several truckloads of honey on consignment from a beekeeper named Bradshaw. The honey was packed in two and three pound tins and had sugared because it hadn't been properly heated (pasteurized) before packing. It was the family's job to heat the tins in hot water to liquefy it, then open the cans and empty them into a tank for bottling. This off-beat cottage industry enabled Roy to earn enough to start accumulating a few hives of bees and begin to produce some of the honey he sold. The war came along and he took a job at Boeing which enabled him to purchase more bees and more equipment. Flora also took a job at Boeing and together their fortunes were so much improved that Roy was able once again to become a beekeeper full time during the summer, returning to Boeing during the winter to supplement the income from honey sales and purchase more colonies of bees. He was appointed State Bee Inspector and elected president of the Ark Valley Beekeepers Association. He wrote numerous articles for Gleanings in Bee Culture (a beekeepers magazine) and was an accepted authority on diagnosis and treatment of diseases of honey bees. He never quite reached his goal of owning enough bees to produce all the honey he could sell, but his optimism for the beekeeping business never waned.
Roy never earned great material rewards for all his hard work and
sacrifice, but he had a great life doing what he loved. He was a fiercely independent man who was never happy working for anyone else. His material needs were small and his desire for wealth ambivalent. He taught his sons the work ethic by example and the invaluable lesson of appreciating what you had. He lived a full life enjoying the things that mattered to him most--his flowers, his bees, his family, friends and grandchildren. He had the love and respect of all who knew him, and that surely must be a definition of success.
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