Hilderbrand’s homage

For some who look back on their lives and take stock of what they, and possibly members of their family, have accomplished, they find there are few memorable or noteworthy occurrences. Not so with Flavia Elliott of Sallisaw, who has a treasure trove of recollections, especially of her uncle Jack Hilderbrand’s service to his country in World War II, under the command of Gen. George S. Patton.

And that she worked for the USO.

And that two of her other uncles helped build Fort Chaffee.

And that war hero Jack C. Montgomery was a family friend.

And that her mother cared for Jim Thorpe’s children.

And that her mother was a Cherokee Medicine Woman who helped combat the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.

And that one of her uncles worked for Pretty Boy Floyd’s brother.

And that her late husband rubbed elbows — at least figuratively, if not distantly — with John Wayne, Ward Bond and celebrity lawyer Robert Kardashian.

It’s a treasure trove worth celebrating. Jack Hilderbrand was born in 1914 in Muldrow, and died in 2005 in Riverside, Calif., at the age of 90. Twice wounded during WWII and highly decorated, he is buried at Riverside National Cemetery.

Jack Hilderbrand

Hilderbrand joined the Army in September 1940 as a member of the 45th Infantry Division Thunderbirds. He was promoted to corporal in May 1941, and along with Staff Sergeant Jack Montgomery, was deployed to the European Theatre, where Hilderbrand served under Patton in the Sicilian campaign, and saw action in both Sicily and Italy.

“I’ve got an original photo of my uncle — Patton is standing [on the far left], and my uncle is about three or four guys [to the right] in the front row,” Elliott says.

Before the war’s end, Hildebrand was promoted to sergeant, and Montgomery became a first lieutenant.

“My uncle, how he got drafted, he was working for the CC Camp (Civilian Conservation Corps). And the Army came and told him that him and Jack (Montgomery) were drafted, and to report to Tahlequah, Oklahoma — all the Natives had to go up there,” Elliott says.

When the news of his conscription came, Hildebrand was at Bull Hollow Camp, a CCC Indian Division camp established in 1939 located in Delaware County between Leach and Eucha. When WWII broke out, the camp was abandoned. According to a June 29, 1945, article in Your TIMES, Hilderbrand spent 16 months at the CCC camp after finishing high school in Gans. “My Uncle Jack and Jack Montgomery went to high school together in Gans. Jack Montgomery lived in Long, Oklahoma, and Uncle Jack lived in Muldrow. They were buddies,” Elliott says. Her uncle also attended Haskell Indian School, Lawrence, Kan.

“Him and his platoon, the 45th — the Choctaw Nation had code talkers, so my uncle’s platoon would guard them,” Elliott says, admitting that the Choctaw code talkers were not as widely known as the Navajo code talkers.

According to a Dec. 23, 1943, article in the Sequoyah County Democrat-American, Hilderbrand was wounded on Nov. 9, 1943, in Italy. A July 28, 1944, article in Your TIMES later reported that he was also wounded in action on May 29, 1944, in Italy, and returned to duty on June 24, 1944.

“My uncle had a lot of awards,” Elliott says proudly. “There’s several medals that he’s got — Purple Heart and Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster” as well as the Bronze Star, Silver Star and European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal.

After separating from the Army at Camp Chaffee, Hilderbrand returned to Muldrow for a short time before moving to San Pedro, Calif., to join his older brother John, who was working at the Los Angeles Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company. Eventually, two more of Elliott’s uncles — Joe and Jess — as well as Elliott’s mother, Edith Brown, worked at the shipyard. Elliott’s grandmother, Maggie Hilderbrand, also accompanied Jess to California in order to care for young Flavia while her mother worked. (Jess and his mother later returned to Muldrow. After retiring, John moved to Sallisaw.)

According to a Sept. 13, 1945, wedding announcement in the Sequoyah County Democrat-American, Jack married Winnie Skinner of Yuba City, Calif., on Aug. 28, 1945, in Henryetta.

“We miss him dearly,” Elliott says, who is preparing to move to Bozeman, Mont., to be close to her daughter, Colette Linin, who used to live in Riverside, and cared for Jack in his later years.

The Montgomery connection

Montgomery was born in the Long community in 1917, and attended Gans schools with her brother Jack, Elliott says. Also a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Montgomery was recipient of the U.S. military’s highest decoration — the Medal of Honor — for his actions in WWII. In addition, he received two Silver Stars and two Purple Hearts.

While attending Bacone College in Muskogee, Montgomery joined the 45th Infantry Division in 1936, and was detached in 1938. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he re-enlisted and served with the 45th until 1945.

Elliott says Montgomery and her Uncle Jess built her grandmother’s house at Hilderbrand Hill — “that’s what the old-timers called that hill,” Elliott reveals — off U.S. 64 west of Muldrow.

“That’s my grandma’s, that’s where all my uncles and everybody [lived], that’s where Jack Montgomery and my uncle built my grandma’s house in the 1960s.”

Montgomery died in 2002 at the age of 84. He is buried at Fort Gibson National Cemetery, and the VA medical center in Muskogee is named in his honor.

Preparing for war

While Jack Hilderbrand was the only one of the five brothers — and seven children — to serve in the military, brothers Joe and Jess did their part as civilians, even though few knew about it.

“Two of my other uncles — this is the story that my family told me — that the Army came to Muldrow and Sallisaw,” Elliott recalls. “This was before the war, kinda hush-hush. They were looking for carpenters to build Fort Chaffee. So my two Indian uncles built some of the barracks, along with a lot of other Indians and a lot of white guys that were carpenters. Just before the war started, they had to get a lot of carpenters, so everybody they could find, the Army had to find guys who knew construction. Up at Short, Long, all around. They were looking for carpenters.”

The Pretty Boy connection

While most of the family moved to California by the 1950s, Elliott’s uncle Jess remained in the Muldrow area — Elliott says it was in the Holt Prairie community “out there by Big Skin Bayou, like a mile or two from Muldrow.” Jess was constable of Muldrow during the 1950s, and worked for longtime Sequoyah County sheriff E.W. Floyd, a younger brother of Depression-era bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd.

“My uncle was a marksman. He was a really good shot,” Elliott says. “In Moffett, there used to be a lot of bars during the ’50s. Those service guys from Camp Chaffee would come over to Moffett, get drunk and raise cane, and the locals got hurt in fights. So they called my uncle from Muldrow, they called him to go help. And he would go and help get the guys that caused broken noses or hurt the locals, broke a wrist or something. He would try to get those soldiers.”

But the servicemen drove better vehicles than what Jess drove. So when they heard authorities had been dispatched to the scene, the servicemen sped off in their cars attempting to flee back across the Arkansas River.

“But my uncle, before they got really traveling fast, he’d blow out their tires — shoot ’em,” Elliott says. “Come Monday, the military would call roll call, and those guys wouldn’t be there, they’d be in jail down in Muldrow. Back in those days, old-timers will tell you, that was really a rough, rowdy, bad place — Moffett — because of all the bars. You could really get hurt there.”

Growing up in LA

Born in 1939 before the U.S. involvement in WWII, Elliott’s exposure to the war was distant and was a legacy handed down primarily from her uncles and other family members.

Now 84, Elliott was raised in the Los Angeles area “since we all went out there,” she says of her family’s migration to the West Coast.

Although WWII and the Korean War were in the past, Elliott’s military roots from her uncle Jack gave her a kindred spirit with servicemen. It was while she was still a student at Downey High School and continuing while she was a junior college student that Elliott devoted her weekends to serving at the USO.

“I used to work for the USO when I was young in Long Beach, California,” she recalls, noting that she was sponsored by the Moose Lodge and Shriners. “This was when I was in high school. Me and my girlfriends, high school kids, that’s what we did. On weekends we’d work on a Friday night. We’d go to the USO, and we’d be canteen workers. We would play games with the soldiers. That was a place for them to go on weekends. We would make sandwiches, take drinks, chips, just basic stuff for the soldiers.”

Elliott, who graduated high school in 1959, says she continued to work for the USO “until I was about 22 years old,” which included while she was studying art at a local junior college. She excelled as an artist, and received awards for her artwork. On one occasion, she says, she was presented an award for her artwork from actor and arts philanthropist Vincent Price.

Living in Southern California where Hollywood was the center of the entertainment universe, Elliott says she “used to go to Hollywood Boulevard a lot when I was a kid.”

When she married William, who was from Clarksville, Tenn., she recalls that “he loved to play golf, and they’d go to L.A. by Hollywood Boulevard.” It was through his job as a meat grader that he became associated with — at least peripherally — Wayne, Bond and Kardashian.

Ward Bond and John Wayne were buddies in Hollywood.

“John Wayne and Ward Bond, they were drinking buddies. So they decided they would start a cattle company, called the Red River Cattle Company. And they’d custom kill where my husband worked,” Elliott recalls. “My husband was a meat grader in L.A., and Robert Kardashian was a lawyer for the company [for which William worked]. He drove a Rolls-Royce, and my husband would say, ’Someday I’m going to drive a car like that’.”

When her husband retired in 1993, the Elliott’s moved back to Sallisaw.

“I have a lot of stories to tell,” Elliott admits. One story of particular note is about her mother, Edith Brown — who Elliott says was a Cherokee Medicine Woman who helped combat the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 — when she inquired at the employment office while Jack was attending Haskell Indian School.

“They said, ‘Well, there’s this lady named Thorpe that’s got two daughters that go to Haskell’,” Elliott recalls, noting that the children were from Jim Thorpe’s marriage to his first wife. “So my mom casually knew Jim Thorpe, because he’d come to visit his ex-wife, because the kids lived in Lawrence, Kansas. In the summertime, the mother hired my mom to take care of the daughters because she worked. So my mom would turn over the two daughters to Jim Thorpe, because he’d come into town and go practice football at Haskell Indian School. So my mom took care of Jim Thorpe’s two girls.”

More than a century since her mother’s early contributions to the world and 80 years since her uncle Jack’s service in WWII, Elliott finds solace as well as a renewed enthusiasm in the memories that are the fabric of her family pride.