Read The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley Online

Authors: Glenda Riley

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Women, #History, #United States, #19th Century, #test

The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (34 page)

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Dave, As Told by Himself." When Dave's story appeared in the
Newark Sunday Call
on June 24,1923, the
Call
's editor explained that the piece was about Frank and Annie's dog. "Wherever they lived . . . Dave was ever a third guest. Everywhere that Annie went the dog was sure to go." But "The Life of Dave" was about far more than that; it revealed the warm spirit of the Butler familyAnnie, Frank, and Daveand provided a retrospective of their retirement years together.

According to Frank's story, Dave especially remembered the summer of 1917, when Annie, Frank, and he went to New Hampshire and the air crackled with news of the U.S. involvement in the war. Later, the Butlers worked in cantonments, and Dave earned $1,629 for the Red Cross. Dave had learned a lot on his travels and had even developed his own philosophy: "I know during my travels I have met all kinds of dogsgood, bad and very bad. My master tells me, however, that humans are the same. He also told me I could save a lot of trouble by minding my own business, which I tried to do, but many times when I had little curs running and snapping at my feet I found it very hard to live up to it."

Dave's life story, as told by Frank, also revealed an Annie who was as kind and patient when at home as when she was before the public or giving interviews to reporters. Although Annie may have been incapable of managing a home, in Frank's view she proved herself empathetic and loving when managing family members. After nearly fifty years of marriage, Annie retained her luster in her husband's eyes.

After Dave's death, Annie and Frank continued to live at the Lakeview Hotel and never returned to the Cambridge house, which they had sold in 1921 or 1922. At the Lakeview in 1923, Annie grieved for Dave and hoped for the best in light of doctors' predictions that she would never shoot again. She also showed glimmers of her will to fight; daily she worked her legs painfully and haltingly.

Then, one March day in 1923, Annie and Frank drove to Cooke Field in Leesburg, where members of the Philadelphia Phillies were in spring training. As Frank set up targets and Annie laid out her guns, the Phillies took seats in the bleachers, accompanied

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by the small boys who always seemed to line the practice field. With her right leg encased in its steel brace, Annie stood on her left leg and raised her rifle. In rapid succession, she winged pennies and sent the boys in the grandstand scrambling for them. When, using her left hand, she shattered the five eggs Frank tossed into the air, the Phillies broke into applause.

Annie intended to control her own life. Despite the steel brace, she refused to give in to age and time. Annie also evidenced her old perfectionism. When, also in March, she viewed some photographs of Philadelphia's Drexel Institute girls shooting, she remarked that she wished she had time to give them "a little instruction." Although the young shooters were undefeated, Annie felt they did not hold their guns "quite right" and could benefit from her coaching.

When Annie and Frank visited Pinehurst that October 1923, Frank told people that Annie was fast recovering from her injuries. Annie herself scoffed that although doctors had told her at three different times in her life that she would never ride again, she always had. She remarked that she fully intended to resume her schedule of charity exhibitions.

That same month, the
Philadelphia Ledger
quoted Annie's advice for the "modern girl." "Learn to ride a horsenot merely to hold one," Annie advised. She added that girls should learn to shoot and to occupy their minds with "other people's troubles" so that they would have no time to grieve over their own. Annie had lost none of her true grit; she was still highly motivated and disciplinedthe model western woman.

By the time Annie and Frank reached the home of her niece Bonnie Blakeley, and Bonnie's husband, Rush, near Ansonia, Ohio, where they planned to spend the winter, Annie displayed good spirits. Annie and Frank paid the Blakelys thirty dollars a week for their room and board. In addition, Annie, as neat and orderly as ever, washed, ironed, and mended clothes, as well as helping Bonnie cook. To Rush, it seemed as if Annie "was always doing something," and to Bonnie's daughter, Beatrice, it seemed as if the two women always produced exceptional meals.

Frank spent a good deal of his time walking, without Annie because of her brace. But when with Annie, Frank was as devoted

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as ever. Sometime during this period, young Hazel Moses, granddaughter of John Moses, visited Annie and Frank. She remembered that Frank sat at his wife's right and was "very attentive" to Annie. After dinner, Annie and Frank prepared a bowl of scraps for their current dog, Dave II.

In the spring of 1924, Annie and Frank came out of total retirement once again. They traveled to another North Carolina resort, the Mayview Manor in Blowing Rock. Here, at ages sixty-three and seventy-three respectively, Annie and Frank planned to help establish a new gun club. The
Charlotte Observer
described Annie as "a frail little woman with a bright, infectious smile" and Frank as "hale and hearty." Only eighteen months after Annie's accident, she shattered nintey-eight out of one hundred pigeons and established a new club record.

Rather than collapsing in exhaustion at the end of the season, Annie and Frank visited friends. In October, the Butlers stayed at the Hotel Robert Treat in Newark, New Jersey, while visiting Dr. Edwin Betts, a Newark resident, and Fred Stone, who was in Newark with a show. Annie now looked thin and of indeterminate age, yet she still followed the latest fashions, including wearing cloche hats.

During these years, Annie displayed the same spirit she had as a girl when she refused to let adversity defeat her. She tried to keep moving, although now, at age sixty-four, she lacked the strong body to go with her determined spirit. One can only wonder whether she had left something in her life unresolved or unaccomplished, something that drove her on. Apparently, she failed to recognize the significance of her own achievements, for she seldom spoke of them and gradually dispersed her possessions and documents.

Only as her health declined did Annie gradually accept some of her own limitations. She and Frank decided to return to Ohio to be near her family. They arrived in Dayton in December 1924, where they first rented an apartment, then moved into a two-story white house with a commodious front porch on Lexington Avenue. The following spring and summer they took an interest in local shooting matches, especially those at the nearby Vandalia

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shooting grounds. According to Oakley's grandniece Bess, who attended a match with Annie and Frank, Annie happily offered tips to various shooters. "She hadn't been out of the house for a long time except to the doctor and the market," Bess explained, "and it was a joy to see how happy she was."

During 1925, Annie continued her modified activities. In August, the Butlers attended the Grand American Trapshoot in Vandalia. Although Annie took an inconspicuous seat on the veranda, reporters and photographers flocked around her. Annie even raised a gun to her shoulder and posed for one of the photographers. On October 6, 1925, Annie posed again, this time dancing a jig, leg brace and all, for a
Newark Star Eagle
photographer.

Privately, however, Annie recognized that her end was nearing. On October 7, she and Frank went to the Essex County Surrogate Court, where they each signed a last will and testament. Among other bequests, Annie Oakley Butler left one thousand dollars each to her half-sister, Emily, her sister Hulda, and her brother, John, and distributed other amounts to her sister Ellen, to her nieces Fern, Bonnie, Irene, and grandniece Elsie, and to six nephews, all for a total of thirty-five thousand dollars. Frank Butler gave money to his first wife, Elizabeth, now married to Howard Hall of Camden, New Jersey; to his daughter, now married to a Philadelphia man; and to his godchild, the former Gladys Baker, daughter of Johnny Baker. He designated that his jewelry and guns go to his brother, Will, of Joliet, Illinois.

After the Butlers returned to Dayton, Annie received a letter in December from the Amateur Trapshooting Association in Vandalia. The ATA wanted to purchase the log house that had once been her home near Greenville, move it to the ATA grounds, and preserve it in honor of what she had "done for the shooting game." Unfortunately, the project never materialized, and the house was eventually demolished.

Also, Frank urged Annie to write her memoirs, and early in 1926, he contacted a Mr. Shaw in New York City to help. On March 3, 1926, Shaw responded with pleasure; he expressed his approval that Annie did not intend to present her experiences "in

Page 197

the light, sensational style of a good many writers of today." But the idea of collaborating with Shaw to write her memoirs, like the ATA plan to purchase her girlhood home, never materialized.

Annie began to write a very brief autobiography on her own, reaching only the year 1890. In it, she spoke little of her personal relationships. She condensed her long career into a few pages and confused some dates and events. She also minimized the importance of her achievements and looked instead back to what she remembered as the simpler times of her childhood. "I wish I could live over again those days of simplicity when God was consulted. It far surpassed being bowed to and complimented by the crowned heads of all the world!"

In other ways, however, Annie looked ahead. Although she and her brother, John, had had a falling-out, perhaps over Annie's rejection of the name "Moses," she now purchased from John two burial plots in the family cemetery near Brock, Ohio. As Frank listened to Annie speak of her impending death as the path leading to the gates of "God's Great World," he too decided he wanted a place in the Mosey family plot. After all, over the years her family had become his family.

That May, the
Dayton Daily News
honored Annie and Frank with a series of articles, titled "From Circus Fame to Lace and Silver Hair." The
News
published a drawing of Annie and Frank, both dark-haired and vital, during their early years on the stage, alongside a recent photograph, in which they both appeared white-haired and frail. The
News
reviewed Annie's career and passed on her advice to its women readers, advice as meaningful as when she had first offered it during the late 1880s. In the article, Oakley repeated her long-standing dual themes, women as sport shooters and women as protectors of themselves and their homes. In the matter of shooting, Annie said, gender made no difference. "It is largely a matter of determination and practice that makes good marksmen and women." Most women feared the very sound of gunfire because they lacked experience "in any kind of outdoor sport." But after a little instruction, women could shoot well and were ''keen to excel.'' If women and girls would learn the skill, Annie noted, "they would add to their happiness by falling in love with one of the finest of outdoor sports."

Page 198

Oakley added, "Women should be prepared; not necessarily for war, although it would not be undesirable to have them ready for extreme emergencies in war time, but to defend themselves." Even in the most civilized of countries, occasions for self-defense arose. She claimed to have taught fifteen thousand women to shoot, most recently at Wentworth, New Hampshire, during summers and in Pinehurst, North Carolina, during winters, totally without compensation. "Because I had an ideal for my sex, I have wanted them to be capable of protecting their homes."

Annie also related one of her favorite stories regarding a woman shooter. One wealthy Back Bay woman from Boston came to Annie very much frightened of firearms, but after a few lessons, she did so well that her husband presented her with a "fine pistol." When the woman returned home one day to find a thief stealing the silverware, she held him at bay with her gun while she called the police. Although it turned out that her careful husband had removed the cartridges to avoid an accident, the result proved satisfactory, and the woman credited Annie Oakley with her capture of the thief. Understandably, Annie also railed against state legislation prohibiting firearms in private homes. To her, such laws protected the burglar, who had the advantage because he carried a gun while most people would obey the law and not have one handy when the thief arrived on the scene. Home accidents with guns could easily be avoided by training both children and adults in the careful use of firearms.

The
News
tribute was not the last. In a column about Annie, which appeared on April 30, 1926, Will Rogers remarked that he had visited Annie in Dayton and found her "a wonderful Christian character," in fact, a "greater character than she was a Rifle shot." Emily Brumbaugh Patterson's daughter, Irene, who as a young nurse helped care for Annie, remembers that Annie never complained about her pain or the weight of the steel brace she wore. Irene remarked that for Rogers's visit, Emily had dressed Annie in pink and fixed her silver hair. When Rogers came downstairs after his visit, tears filled his eyes, and he told Emily and Irene that he had never expected to see an angel on earth but that he had just seen one in the person of Annie Oakley.

Rogers's subsequent newspaper tribute honored Annie, now

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