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Denison Poultry and Egg Company 131 East Morton Street Denison, Texas 
In 1877, two brothers in their twenties, Andrew and Karl Cleiman, had come to Denison on an MKT train from St. Louis with a load of mules to sell. They were sons of a German immigrant living in Chester, Illinois, on the east side of the Mississippi, below St. Louis. They got the mules off the train, and Karl Cleiman stood at the tracks and looked west up Main Street - a big broad street with lots of activity. The next day he said to his brother, "I'm not going back. We'll sell the mules, we'll give the money to Dad, you can take it back up to Illinois." In
1878, Karl was an employee at the White Elephant Saloon in the 100
block of
North Rusk. A couple of years later, he was an employee of a livery
stable. A
few years later, in 1883, he got married at St. Patrick's Catholic
Church. In
another couple of years, he had a small real estate business at 117
South Rusk
Avenue. [AU:
ANNE CLYMER GODDARD DOUBTS
THIS, THINKS CHICK HAD A REAL ESTATE BUSINESS AROUND THAT LOCATION
LATER]
By 1909, he had changed his name from Karl Cleiman to Charles Clymer
and had an
attractive Victorian-style cottage
Charles and his wife, Annie Ellen "Nellie" Shuel, raised sons - William ("Will"), Charles "Chick" Clymer Jr., John Raymond "Ray" Clymer Sr. (born August 10, 1891), and Albert - who were educated at Denison High School. Charles, the father, passed away in 1910. Will married Emma, and they had a daughter named Ellen Louise Clymer. This family lived in Fort Worth. Will died in the flu epidemic of 1918. Ray, who had attended the University of Texas, married Mavis White, W. R. White's daughter, before World War I (around 1915). He served in the Navy in World War I. Mavis died young, in 1927, after she and Ray had three children: Mavis Clymer (later Bryant), Anne Clymer (later Goddard), and Ray Clymer Jr. At the time of Mavis White Clymer's death, the family was living in Wichita Falls, and Ray took the children back to Denison to live with his mother at 929 West Morton Street. Anne Goddard recalls that Ellen Louise Clymer once came from Fort Worth to visit, and Grandma Clymer gave a dance for her in their house. Ray Clymer Sr. had founded the Denison Poultry and Egg Company (DP&E) in 1928, either before moving to Wichita Falls or shortly after his return. Prior to 1930, the Foster Produce Company occupied the block of land along the MKT tracks between East Sears Street and East Morton Street. Around 1932, this one-story building, 150 feet by 75 feet, was taken over by the DP&E. It housed mostly poultry processing. Another building later was erected across Morton Street, at 131 East Morton Street, and it housed the office and meat and hide processing operations. Ray Clymer Sr. headed the DP&E, employing various relatives, including "Chick" and Albert Clymer (Ray's brothers), William Richard ("Dick") White Jr. (brother of Mavis White Clymer), and William Richard ("Billy Dick") White III. Historian Lee Kennett, in his book, The Home Front, recounts the phenomenal growth of "The DP&E," as it was called familiarly, during World War II. The fact that Sam Rayburn of Bonham was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives may have helped the company secure its lucrative government contracts to produce powdered eggs that formed part of the troops' C Rations. Ray's son-in-law, Monroe David "Bud" Bryant Sr., managed round-the-clock shifts of female "egg breakers" recruited from as far away as southern Oklahoma. He also invented the egg-drying equipment used in the operation, which took place in the old Foster building on the south side of Morton Street, across the street from the main DP&E office and down the block from the Green Gables Cafe. During World War II, Anne Clymer, fresh out of college at Southern Methodist University, was sent to Birmingham, Alabama, as office manager of the DP&E's plant there. Another plant was located in Tennessee. A Mr. Debord was the manager of both these plants. At that time, Albert and Viola Clymer were living in Birmingham, too. Later Anne married a returning GI, James "Pancho" Goddard of Durant, Oklahoma, and he, too, worked at the DP&E. At this time, too, Ray married his second wife, Irma Rose, in Durant, Oklahoma, on April 24, 1943. Their son, Charles Claude Clymer, now a Dallas attorney, was born around 1945. The
third and youngest child of Ray Sr. and Mavis White Clymer, John
Raymond
"Sonny" Clymer Jr., served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War
II.
Ogden Wells of Sherman (a high school classmate of Ray Jr.) told this
story
Ray and I were on Guam together during World War II. Ray was in charge of procurement-food and such. He could secure liquor when no-one else in the Pacific could. He had some hens that he kept. At that time there were no eggs available anywhere; all you had to eat were C-rations. But Ray had hens that laid actual eggs. In Ray's hands, those eggs were like gold. He traded them for anything we wanted from anywhere in the Pacific. Following the sudden death of Ray Sr. on May 5, 1950, at age fifty-eight, Ray Jr. and the Goddards eventually became joint owners of the DP&E. Lester Maurer, a former DP&E employee, recalled in 1994: Ray and Pancho decided there wasn't enough business here. Center, Texas, was the center or heart of poultry raising, and they decided to move the business there rather than trucking. Of course, when the building burned [on the night of June 8, 1952], we had already moved the office up to the Barrett Building, so fortunately, when the place burned, the offices were not involved. I imagine it was because, from Ray's standpoint, it was a lot nicer, air-conditioned, up there in the office building than down there in that ramshackle frame building that we used to have. Although Ray first moved to East Texas, in the 1960s the DP&E ceased operations. The Goddards established a feed business in Longview and Center, and Ray moved to Wichita Falls. As distributor for Golden Distributing Company of Colorado for much of North Texas, he became a community leader and a longtime member of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission. He constructed his local Coors Beer warehouse at 131 East Sears Street, a block from the former DP&E site. by Mavis Anne Bryant
"Freddy the Fryer" Alabama plant
Lester H. Maurer Vernice Atnip McGough Mysterious Death Carl Waltz William R. White
Letter to Mr. Lester H. Maurer 1996 Letter to Mr. Vernon Temple 1995
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