Gladys Mann played on Peabody girls' team
By ROWENA PLETT
Staff writer
Gladys Mann is a 95-year-old resident of St. Luke Living Center. She grew up at Peabody.
During her sophomore and junior years at Peabody High School (1924-1926), Gladys was a member of the girls' basketball ball team which competed with teams from other communities such as Durham, Walton, Burns, Cassoday, and Whitewater.
Each team had six players. The court was divided crosswise into three sections. In the middle section were a jumping center and a running center. The two forwards were in the section with the team's goal, and the two guards were in the section with their opponent's goal.
Only forwards could shoot the ball. The players had to remain in their assigned sections throughout the game.
Every time a goal was scored or the ball changed hands, it became a jump ball.
Gladys was the jumping center for her team. Her coach was Ethel Wheeler.
"My coach trained me against a boy," Gladys said. "I could jump pretty high and I did a lot of jumping."
Gladys especially remembers the tournament played at Whitewater. They played an evening game, then played three games the next day, winning all of them. The following day they continued to win and were playing the fifth competition of the day when they got to the championship game.
"We were so tired, we could hardly walk out on the court," she recalled.
However, they played well and were up by one point with seconds to go, but the other team got the last shot and won by one point.
"We just flopped on the floor when the game was over," Gladys said. They took home the second place trophy.
A picture of the team was reprinted in the Peabody State Bank calendar a few years ago.
A history
Gladys was born April 11, 1908, about 40 miles from Regina, Saskatchewan. Her father and mother went to Canada from Nebraska to homestead after Canada sent trains down to the States looking for settlers.
One day, her father said, "Let's get back under Uncle Sam instead of the King."
They moved to Montana, where they were surrounded by large horse ranches. The family survived drought and the deprivations of World War I.
Every year, Gladys' dad received a pair of horses from a neighboring rancher, to halter break and use them on his farm. In the fall, he would return them to the rancher and get another team.
Gladys clearly remembers Nov. 11, 1918, the day the war ended. Her father had gone to town and she and her mother had heard guns firing and train whistles blowing in the distance all day long.
When he returned earlier than usual, he was excited and waving his hands. He was bringing the good news that the war had ended. It was a time of celebration everywhere.
Gladys attended a little, log schoolhouse. It was cold during the winter and the children sometimes sat around the stove to keep warm.
In 1919, the family moved to Nebraska, where her father operated a dairy of 30 cows for an uncle. They were milked by hand.
When the cows came down with brucellosis, the herd was destroyed, and the family moved to Peabody.
They helped her father's parents, Arthur and Nancy Russell, operate boarding and rooming houses for oil field workers.
After her grandparents retired, her parents moved to the country. Gladys attended Wilcox School, a three-room school several miles east of Elbing, and graduated from eighth grade.
After spending her freshman year of high school in El Dorado, she enrolled at Peabody High School.
She quit school her senior year and married Fred Mann, a farmer from Cedar Point.
They raised three sons — Earl Russell, Clifford Fredrick, and Richard Lee — during the Depression years of the 1930s.
Because of a lack of grass, milk cows went dry. There was no feed for the chickens except what they could find for themselves, so they didn't lay many eggs.
When the bank closed, a grocer in Florence took checks from the sale of cream and eggs in exchange for food. Later, when the cream and eggs ran out, he took personal checks and held them.
"The banks will open again someday," he always said.
Fred worked for a neighbor, who paid him in wheat, which he took to a mill to be made into flour.
It was difficult for farmers to get machinery or find parts to repair equipment. Fred finally was able to buy a tractor in 1941.
As World War II came along, everything was rationed. Each member of the family had a rationing card and they were used carefully.
Gladys was active in a Chase County Home Demonstration Unit and served on the county executive board.
Despite difficult times, each of the sons was given a heifer at a young age and grew a herd of their own. They kept heifers for cows, learned how to castrate bull calves, and gave vaccinations.
Each son established his own bank account, filed income tax papers, and paid taxes.
Richard, 67, still farms near Cedar Point. Earl, 76, lives in Wichita, and Clifford, 74, lives in Potwin. Gladys has 10 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren.
Fred died 26 years ago. Gladys has been a resident of St. Luke Living Center for 15 years.
Although she is almost deaf and blind, has no sense of smell or taste, and uses a walker to get around, she has a strong voice and a sharp memory. She is the living center's correspondent for the Marion County Record.
"My husband is still pretty close to me," she said. "I think of him a lot. Every night, I spend one or two hours thinking of our lives together before I fall asleep."
Gladys will celebrate her 96th birthday April 11.
