The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (33 page)

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Authors: Glenda Riley

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

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Page 187
to raise a women's regiment to fight in the war. Although she still withheld her support from women's suffrage, she argued for women's rights in employment, sports, and self-defense. Consequently, Oakley wired Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, "I can guarantee a regiment of women for home protection, every one of whom can and will shoot if necessary." This time she received no answer; both President Wilson and Secretary Baker opposed her plan. Neither they nor most Americans were ready to accept women in combat.
At this point, Annie reportedly volunteered her services to the government as an instructor without cost and offered to go to camps, posts, or anywhere to demonstrate to soldiers the right way of firing, loading, and handling firearms. According to legend, when a lower-echelon officer's rejection of her proposal leaked to the press, Annie received offers from vaudeville to give shooting exhibitions for as much as one-thousand dollars per week. She would be billed as the shot the U.S. government turned down.
Instead, Oakley and Butler visited camps through the auspices of the National War Work Council of the Young Men's Christian Association and War Camp Community Service. At army posts, Annie gave exhibitions and talks. She and Frank carried their own equipment and supplies; they also paid their own expenses. Soldiers in camps everywhere rewarded their efforts. For instance, on May 22, 1918, at Camp Crane in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Annie drew "cheer after cheer from the soldier boys" as she performed all her usual stunts and then splattered a tin can with a "dum-dum" bullet used by German soldiers. Annie also received numerous letters of thanks for her war service.
Because she had the opportunity to contribute to the war effort, Annie said she was the "happiest woman in the world." Her time in the camps proved even more exciting than her days in the Wild West arena. But sometimes Annie added that she wished she could go to the front so that, instead of shooting at tin cans and other targets, she could knock down what she called German "square-heads" as fast as they advanced. Annie explained that anyone who visited army camps could not escape without catching the "On to Berlin'' spirit and predicted that American troops would have the kaiser "on his knees" in no time.

 

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During the war years, Oakley and Butler also worked to raise funds for the Red Cross. During 1918, Dave became "The Red Cross Dog" by hunting out money that people wrapped in handkerchiefs and hid within one hundred yards of the performance area. Blindfolded, Dave sniffed out the hidden money, which all went to the Red Cross. Annie and Frank always promised to give a like amount to the Red Cross themselves if Dave failed, but he never did.
When Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on November 9, 1918, and an armistice was signed on November 11, Annie, Frank, and Dave celebrated in their own way. Two days after peace, they staged a shooting exhibition. The excitement had ended, and to Annie's despair, they soon returned to retirement.
Life resumed its pleasantness at the Carolina. Along with the other guests, the Butlers participated in the hotel's many theatricals and balls. On Valentine Eve 1919, Annie appeared at a costume ball as Sitting Bull Jr. Dressed in an outfit that included a headdress of pheasant feathers and layers of beads wrapped around her neck, Annie captured first prize.
Annie also continued shooting. On March 19, 1920, at Pinehurst, she marked pennies with bullets and sold her autographs for the benefit of the Farm Life School in Eureka, North Carolina. A few weeks later, Annie and Frank traveled to Montrose, North Carolina, to give an exhibition for a tuberculosis sanitorium. This disease especially interested Annie because it had claimed her sisters Elizabeth and Lydia (Lyda), so she ordered many of her gold medals melted down and then contributed the proceeds to a sanitarium near Pinehurst.
Annie gave lessons as well. One observer claimed that at Pinehurst, Oakley instructed as many as two thousand ladies a year; on April 8, 1921, the
Pinehurst Outlook
reported that Annie had taught thousands of women since 1915, including some eight hundred in 1921 alone. Although many of these women now wore the new calf-length dresses, along with shoes supported by chunky two-inch heels, Annie still favored ankle-length dresses with flat-heeled shoes for teaching. For hunting, however, Annie sometimes wore skirts that fell just below the knee. She had also

 

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adopted the cross-saddle, for riding astride, but on those occasions a long flowing skirt, probably a split skirt, and high leather boots covered her legs and ankles.
Sometime during this period, a laudatory article, "Greatest of Modern Dianas," noted that the thousands of sportspeople who left the snow and cold of the northern winter behind in favor of Pinehurst's moderate climate made the acquaintance of a "motherly woman" and "estimable lady,'' Annie Oakley. It quoted Annie as saying that she had used approximately forty thousand shells a year for thirty years, or 1.2 million shot shells, and intended to keep going, for shooting kept her young. When one wealthy Philadelphian saw Annie shoot, the article went on, he wanted to buy Annie's horse, Fred Stone, and her dog, Dave, who held chalk in his teeth and an apple on his head for Annie to shoot at, then caught a piece of apple in his mouth, just as the poodle George had done those many years ago when Annie had first met Frank. When the man gave Oakley a signed check and told her to fill in the amounts, she said there was not enough money in the world to buy Fred and Dave.
Clearly, in retirement, Annie continued to hone her skills and attract attention. As a girl, Annie had learned to fight for what she wanted. Then, as an adult, she had learned that control and middle-class living gave her ease and pleasure. Thus, in retirement, she also continued to regulate closely her life and her environment. She and Frank lived well but watched their budget, exercised, and monitored their diet. The butcher Roy Lyons remembered, for example, that whenever Annie and Frank returned to Ansonia, Ohio for a visit, they purchased meat from him, always specifying the cut, thickness, and quality. They even taught Roy and his family the precise way they preferred to prepare their steaks.
Unfortunately for Annie, she was unable to control all aspects of her life. Consequently, the year 1922 turned out to be another critical, and very tragic, one for the Butlers. It started exceptionally well; in Pinehurst on April 16, 1922, Annie hit one hundred targets in a row, a record believed to have never been duplicated by a woman. The following day the
New York Times
announced that Annie Oakley had just set a new world's record.

 

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That summer Annie and Frank spent a great deal of time with the Stones and furthered their friendship with comedian Will Rogers, who lived across the road from the Stones and may have taught Annie the art of lariat twirling. They also expressed enthusiasm as Fred Stone organized a charity circus, the Motor Hippodrome and Wild West Show, to be staged at the Mineola Race Track in Long Island for the benefit of the Occupational Therapy Society, which ran training programs for disabled soldiers. On July 1, 1922, the show attracted four thousand society people.
The show began with a parade led by Annie Oakley and Fred Stone. Then came a cavalcade of trucks, each with a stage mounted on it. On each stage, actors performed as they rolled past the grandstand. The Friars, for example, produced a mystery melodrama written by George M. Cohan. Next, Stone did some trick riding while Annie gave what Stone later called "her last great shooting exhibition." Annie skipped into the arena wearing a knee-length skirt and khaki silk blouse, a red tie, and a hat with a broad brim. She put on her spectacles, then signaled Frank to begin. Among other things, he threw into the air three plates and swung a ball on a cord in a circle around his head while Annie caught the plates and ball with bullets.
The show ended with an attack on a stagecoach by what Stone called "a band of redskins." As in Buffalo Bill's Wild West, cowboys drove off and defeated the attackers. Even the stagecoach was as authentic as Cody's "Old Deadwood Stage." Stone had gotten this particular stage, which was built in 1832 and used in Dakota Territory, from Joseph P. Kennedy, later an ambassador to England. After the show, Stone gave it to Will Rogers, who later donated it to the Smithsonian Institution.
After the final applause died down, reporters crowded around Annie while a swarm of photographers snapped picture after picture. Her 1917 nemesis, the
New York Tribune
, reported that "the star of the occasion," which earned eleven thousand dollars for charity, was "the brisk and agile Annie Oakley, who cavorted around the ring, skipping and blowing kisses with the coyness she learned 40 years ago." In spite of her age and eyeglasses, she could still shoot. "The balls looped up against the sky and fell in

 

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Showers of black pieces." How she shot, even leaning back over a chair, made no difference; she hit all her targets. A film clip captured part of her performance that day at the Mineola Fairgrounds. In spite of its choppiness, the film reveals her extraordinary agility and litheness. Annie raised her guns to her shoulder just as she had when a young woman.
During the weeks following the Motor Hippodrome and Wild West Show, rumors circulated that Annie might make a motion picture in earnest. Even before Stone's charity show, on June 28, 1922, the
New York Herald
had predicted, "If the taste of publicity she [Oakley] gets next Saturday (at the Hippodrome) proves agreeable she may say yes and move to Hollywood." Annie still struggled against retirement, but although she made a number of screen tests, she never made a feature film.
In addition, that fall Annie continued to thrill audiences. On October 5, 1922, Annie shot at the Brockton fair in Massachusetts, which attracted some one hundred thousand people. She shot five exhibitions of five minutes each and earned seven hundred dollars, her first paid performance in years. Afterward, as she watched the surging crowds and listened to the escalating noise, she commented: "All this has its glamour. All this has its lure, especially after 38 years of it, but still, home is best." The old ambivalence about retirement evidently still gripped her.
Then, in November, any dreams she may have harbored about a comeback abruptly ended. On Thursday, November 9, the car in which Annie rode on the way to Leesburg overturned. From the accident on Dixie Highway, an ambulance rushed Annie to Bohannon Hospital in Daytona. Annie and Frank had been traveling with friends, a Mr. C. H. Stoer and his wife, to spend the winter in Florida. When a passing automobile forced the chauffeur-driven Cadillac into the sand, the driver tried to get the car back on the highway but overturned it instead, pinning Annie under the car.
For six weeks afterward, Frank lived in a room across from the hospital and visited Annie daily. She suffered from a fractured hip and a shattered right ankle. When Annie moved from the hospital to her own bed, her half-sister, Emily Brumbaugh Patterson, came to care for her. As Annie learned to get around on crutches,

 

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with a steel brace supporting her right leg, she wrote a letter of thanks to the readers of
American Field
for the "nearly 2,000 letters and telegrams" as well as the "loads of flowers" she had received. She finally graduated to a cane, but the brace remained in place.
Unfortunately, Annie's and Frank's sorrows spilled over into 1923. Although on February 4. Annie wrote to a friend in Newark, New Jersey, that she had been out to dinner and "out of bed 7 hours to day," her joy was short-lived. On February 25, as Frank walked and Dave cavorted, an automobile struck and killed "The Red Cross Dog." The
Leesburg Commercial
eulogized Dave and remarked, "Having no children, Mr. and Mrs. Butler had made of 'Dave' a pet, a hero, a pal, and in his death they feel the sorrow that parents would feel for the loss of a child."
This was true; for years Annie had signed Christmas cards with Dave's name and had written letters to friends on his behalf, letters she signed "Dave Butler." Annie and Frank had also reveled in newspaper accolades that called Dave a "great actor" and an animal with "almost human intelligence." Now, Annie and Frank buried Dave in a peaceful orange grove and planned to erect a small monument. They also issued a public announcement, saying that Dave had worked "through the cantonments for sixteen weeks, doing his bit for his country, and bringing sunshine to the hearts of thousands of our dear boys." Their animal companion, they continued, was ''more [comforting] than some humans," for he had sat by Annie's bedside every day of her convalescence, both at the hospital and at home. They concluded that Dave's memory was ''one of the sweetest" they had ever known.
Letters of condolence poured in. One friend assured Frank that Dave had embodied "character, intelligence and devotion." Annie's grandniece Bess Lindsey Wacholz, who later described Dave as the "love" of Annie's and Frank's lives, tried to console Annie. Annie replied to Bess that she felt certain she would see Dave again, in heaven. She added some advice for Bess that sounded more like advice for herself in her time of despair: "Don't get discouraged. Work for all good. Pass all else by."
Frank also vented his grief by writing; he created "The Life of

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