Seventh Generation

997. Conley Horton O'Kelley was born on 1 September 1927 in HIWASSE, Benton Co, AR. 36.415212,-94.340589 He served in the military US Navy in 1945.¹⁵⁸ He died Home on 1 January 2009 in Alma AR.¹⁵⁹ Conley was buried at Newberry Chapel Cemetery on 5 January 2009 in Alma AR.^138,160

Conley, Azana, and Gary lived in a garage apartment behind the main home on N Elmwood Ave Tulsa OK in 1951.

Near the end of WWII, Conley tried to join the Navy but was turned down because of a fast heart beat.  He was drafted and while at the induction center waiting to be inducted in the Army a Navy man apporached the group and asked if they would rather be in the Navy than the Army.  Conley told him he tried but was turned down.  The Navy man told Conley to follow him and that is how he came to be in the US Navy.  He was stationed on the ARD-29 a floating dry dock.  They would flood the dock and pull the ship to be repaired into the dock then raise the dock and the ship out of the water by pumping out the sea water.  In 1946 the ARD-29 was part of the Bikini Atomic Bomb test code named Operations Crossroads.  Conley told his sons about how after the tests they pulled a ship into the dock and began to clean it of the Atomic ash.  The Navy men were in deck shoes and boxes and they waded through ash mixed with sea water which was about like concrete.  Conley also told how the scientist came aboard and they were dressed in protected suits and wore breathing masks much like gas masks.  Conley was lucky, he had few problems as a result of his exposure but he died of Alzheimer which someday in our future science may discover that the Atomic tests done in the 40s, 50s, and 60s may be the cause of some of these diseases.  It is also unknown just how radiation impacted the DNA that he passed on to his four sons and they have passed on to their children.  It is likely we are different from what we would have been if he had not been exposed to such.

Family story by Rick O'Kelley

My father was an auto body and fender man.  When I was a child he would come home after work looking like the tin man in the Wizard of Oz.  In those days they repaired auto bodies using lead and my family had a very high exposures to it.  As a child I can recall chewing on the lead bars dad would sometimes have in his pockets.  My older brother and I would pound it with hammers, melt it in a pot and do all kinds of things with it.  I have had my blood tested and my levels are considered normal.  When they moved from lead to plastics, that may not have been any better as the hardener in bondo as it was called is a synthetic female hormone that they now believe is very harmful to children.  Dad opened and  his own shop near our home around 1965 and worked in it till he retired.  Dad was a hard worker and a very skilled craftsman.  He should have gone to college after the Navy on the GI bill and became an engineer as he had a natural talent.  He worked for several dealerships but perhaps the most unusually employment was when he worked for Armbrusters in Ft Smith.  They took new cars and cut them in half and manufactured the center and made stretched lemos.  Armbrusters would pay their workers a bonus just before Christmas in US Silver dollars.  Many of these dad spent around town for Christmas for his family.  I tried the craft but found the labor to back breaking.  The fact that he did it for more than 40 years is a credit to his endurance. 

My father wasn't always an easy person.  He was strict in his faith but not cruel.  He was a lot of fun when we were young, you can see that in the photo below but that was before he started going to church and before my two younger brothers were born. He built us a go cart which we pretty much ran the wheels off of.  When dad started attending church he became more serious and in my eyes less fun.  Abraham Lincoln said fathers tend to be tyrants so this change may had more to do with fathers in general and the responsibititues assigned to them because the survival of the family sets squarely upon their shoulders all their adult life and until the grave.  I know because i have felt that burden and it is a burden that only another father can understand.  It is as Harry Truman said, the "buck stops here", everyone in the family look to "father" as the final word or the decider, it is a huge burden because he also receives the blame when he gets it wrong. In his last years as an Alzheimer patient dad was once again a happy person with no cares and no responsibilities. Out of habit I would ask him a question and he would tell me, "I don't know, ask your mother" something very uncharacteristic for my father.  But why should he have worried, he had worked hard all his life and saved to ensure he and our mother were cared for in the final years.  I think it is important that this be remembered about him.  He was a hard working and responsible person all his life.  I spent a few nights with him watching over him in his last years and we had some happy moments that I will always remember. 

April 13, 2006 my brother, Dana, invited me to travel with him, dad, and his son Neil to Hiwassee where my father was born.  I had never been there but Dana had been there previously and wanted to return while he could still remember where it was.  We got to visit with Hershall Keith age 84 who owned the property where my father and two of his siblings were born in the 1920s.  The old home was collapsed into just a pile and Mr Keith had saved some of the best boards for my father.  Mr. Keith told us how he was just a young child at the time but he remembered when my grandparents living in the house by the creek.  They worked the apple harvest.  He remembered my grandfather chopping up firewood in the evenings.  It was there on Mr. Keith's porch where I listened for the first time as my father told how he came to be in the Navy at the end of WWII.  Rick.

Conley Horton O'Kelley and Zelma Azana Peters were married on 15 January 1949 in Oliver Springs, Crawford Co, AR. Zelma Azana Peters was born in 1931 in Crawford Co, AR.

Three of Conley and Azana's children were born in a tiny hospital located in Franklin Co Mulberry Arkansas and ran by Dr Kirksey.  That building still stands today.

Dr Odell Kirksey's Hospital, Mulberry Ar.	Gary, Conley, Rick

Conley Horton O'Kelley and Zelma Azana Peters had the following children:

+1520	i.	Gary Horton O'Kelley.
+1521	ii.	Rick O'Kelley.
+1522	iii.	Dana Harvey O'Kelley.
+1523	iv.	Coy Lynn O'Kelley.