I was the second child of Edith Lurinda Woodward and Benjamin Franklin
     Mulikin, born at the home of my Woodward grandparents on Medicine Boulevard
     in Medicine Lodge on February 10, 1931. On the 26th day of that same month
     my parents, my brother, Benny, myself, my Aunt Ethel and Uncle Bob, and
     their daughter, Roberta, all moved to Montezuma, Kansas. Those were the
     days of the Great Depression, and we all lived together in one small house.
     My little sister, Virginia, was born near Montezuma, where we later lived
     on a dirt farm and survived on eggs and potatoes. In 1934 we moved back to
     Medicine Lodge.
        In 1935, at the age of four I started to kindergarten in the old grade
     school building in Medicine. I was painfully shy and took two weeks to get
     up enough nerve to tell Miss Fullerton "Good Morning." Many of the people
     in the kindergarten class later graduated from high school together in 1948.
     I remember those big dark halls in the grade school and how grown up I felt
     when my classroom was finally on the second floor. Mr. Lamkins was the principal,
     and I remember a group of us listening very quietly outside his office door
     one afternonn. ONe of our classmates, John Scotton, had been hauled into the
     office for swearing on the playground. (Can you imagine that happening today?)
     We were listening for the sounds of the paddle and for John's cries, but all
     was silent. Bid Bad John had fainted at the sight of the "board of education"!!
     I doubt that we ever let him forget about that episode.
        My working career began early; I remember earning 25 cents an hour helping
     plant sweet potatoes for Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock when I was about ten years
     old. My first regular job was washing dishes at Dye's Cafe, where I earned
     one dollar a day during the summer before I entered the seventh grade. With
     my first week's pay I bought a zippered leather billfold at Carper's Drug
     Store. I used that billfold until 1953; when it finally fell apart. They
     don't make things like they used to. During my senior year I paid for all
     of my senior expenses and helped out at home by working at the Snack Shop,
     operated by Vernon Hart and Charlie Bain. My parents were divorced at the
     beginning of my senior year, and Mother had a rough time making ends meet.
     In the fall after graduation I worked at the Ben Franklin Store for Sandy
     Eaton.
        Theophilus (Theop) Dwayne Inslee and I were married in the Presbyterian
     Church in Medicine Lodge on May 8, 1949. We moved to a farm near Isabel,
     where we lived for ten years. Our four children were all born at Nashville,
     Kansas: Glen Eugene in 1951; Phillip Dwayne in 1953; Donald William in 1955;
     and Susan Jane in 1962.
        I began my college education twenty years after my high school graduation.
     I received my Bachelor of Arts in Education with Honors from East Central
     State College in Ada, Oklahoma, in May of 1974; received a Fellowship to 
     Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, in the summer of 1976 for an
     Institute on the History of Women; received my Master of Education from
     East Central Oklahoma State University in August of 1977; and received a 
     Fellowship to the State University of New York at Binhamton, New York in
     1978.
        I taught art history, and social studies in the high school at Stonewall,
     Oklahoma, for four years, from August of 1974 until my resignation in May
     of 1978.
        I used to complain that half of the people in Barber County were my
     relatives and the other half were related to my relatives. I'm sure this
     is no longer true (if it ever really was), and I am sure that the people
     who live ther now are of the same caliber that they were then.
                
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas,  pg. 249
     Submitted by:Phyllis Mullikin Inslee