A Good Life

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CENTURIONCG.NET

Hardship, Good Memories and Honor Define Vet’s Life

Curtis Wright has managed to ride an eighth-grade education through a good part of the United States and Europe. Not bad for a kid from Drumwright.

“Life is what you make it,” Wright said recently from the lobby of the Norman Veterans Center. “You make it good or bad. I’ve made it pretty good.”

Detroit in about that lasted less than two minutes.

“I was 15 years old, and I had a pretty good left hook,” Wright said. “Some of the boys from my town told the captain, ‘we have an ole boy who can fight him.’ I hit him with a pretty good left hook and put him down.”

Pretty good is an understatement. After finishing eighth grade, Wright left Drumwright for the first time for a 60-plus mile trip to Morris in Okmulgee County and a job with the Civil Conservation Corps. He was 15.

“It paid a dollar a day and you sent half that home,” Wright recalled. “You went out and planted grass and trees. They educated the younger people and gave them something to do.”

After a short time in Illinois, working with a brother, Wright met his first wife and decided it was time for a change in lifestyle. He took a job on a farm for $40 a month and a furnished house.

“Back then, you could get by on it,” he said.

The farm job also came with a deferment from the war raging in Europe. When the property’s owner decided to purchase another adjacent property, Wright decided he’d move on to another career. That turned out to be military service.

Wright would board the Rock Island Red train from an aunt and uncle’s house in Shawnee to Fort Mead, Md. for training, skip a ship across the ocean to Europe, cross the English Channel and head into France for a date with the Battle of the Bulge, a pivotal turning point in defeating the Germans. He solemnly recalled the horrors of war.

“It was terrible,” he said in a hushed tone. “Have you ever seen a man crying to tell you to let his wife know he died loving her?”

Wright and his fellow soldiers would march to the Rhine River, making it on Christmas Day with Patton’s 3rd Army. From there, he headed through Czechoslovakia as the Third Reich was being pushed back to Berlin. For his efforts in battle, Wright returned home with two Bronze Stars.

Wright would spend 40 years in the oil fields of Oklahoma and Texas, as well as some time in Nevada boring out 2,000- foot holes for missiles in the famous Nevada Test Fields. He would work as a roughneck, driller and tool pusher, before retiring as a drilling superintendent from ONEOK.

A few years ago, during a pow wow hosted in Michigan by the Potawatomi Tribe, of which his third wife was a member, Wright became an adopted member of the tribe, serving as the event’s only World War II veteran, and leading veterans marching into tribal ceremonies.

From Drumwright, through Europe and into Michigan for a moment, 96 years has treated Wright rather well he believes.

“Life is pretty interesting,” he concluded with a wry smile. “I don’t suppose I could have done it any better…I maybe could have made more money, but I probably couldn’t imagine any more enjoyment.”- 19SM

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