Daniels
Family
J.A. and Dora
Singisers sold
their home at 1306 W. Woodard Street in the
spring or summer of 1957 to
J.M. and Roberta Daniels. The
Singisers moved back to Parsons,
Kansas. The 1957 Denison City
Directory, copyrighted in December
1957 and compiled in the fall of 1957, lists
J.N. [sic] Daniels as
employed at Perrin Field and living at 1306
W. Woodard Street.
J.
Maurice Daniels (1916-1987) was born,
according to his World War II
draft registration, in Hemple, Missouri, a
small rural community about
50 miles north of Kansas City and 19 miles
east of St. Joseph.
Hemple, an unincorporated community,
is located in the northwest
corner of Clinton County, Missouri.
Maurice
was in the class of 1934 at Central High
School in St. Joseph, where as
a Sophomore he was on the reserve basketball
squad.
Maurice would
later marry Roberta Foster (1917-2002), who
was a member of the 1935 class at a
different school in St. Joseph.
J.M. Daniels and
Roberta Foster married sometime between 1935
and 1939 when they moved from Tennessee to
Denison, Texas.
A
year later, the Denison Press noted in a
society article about Mr. and
Mrs. Daniels vacationing for a month in
Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma,
noted that they lived in an apartment
at 425 W. Crawford.
(The Denison Press, July 31, 1940, pg.
4). Maurice Daniels
and J.A. Singiser likely met after the
Danielses arrived in Denison;
both men played at the Katy Golf Club, among
other places. They
played in the same tournament in Corsicana
in May 1940. The two
men returned to the Corsicana tournament in
1941, where they were
listed in consecutive pairing in the
newspaper. In 1941 they both
won their matches.
A month earlier,
April 1941, Maurice had set the course
record of 32 at the Katy Golf Club's 9-hole
course in Denison. (Note: Par
would have been 35 or 36).
Almost
a year after Japan attacked the United
States at Pearl Harbor, J.
Maurice, assistant in the personnel section
of Denton District Army
Engineers, was accepted for aviation
training by the Army Air Forces
and left Denison to being his military
service in October, at the age
of 26; Roberta remained in Denison. He
served stateside in
Oklahoma and Kansas. In 1944 Maurice
was commissioned a 2nd
Lieutenant in the Army Air Force.
Maurice and Roberta's only child, J.
Foster Daniels, was born March 16, 1945.
Another
couple who came from St. Joseph to Denison
in the early 1940s were Ray
and Mary Day. Ray, like Maurice, came
with the Corps of Engineers
and was later a civilian employee at Perrin
Air Force Base. The
two families became good friends. The
Days' daughter, Cheri
Louise Day Manor, posted a photo of the
Daniels family on Facebook in
June 2019. It appears to have been
taken shortly after the birth
of J. Foster Daniels in March 1945.
Roberta
& Maurice Daniels with son, J. Foster
Daniels
Maurice
was
recalled to military service in April 1951 and
stationed in Nevada.
Less than two years later, he was back
in Denison at his old post
at Perrin AFB.
About
4 years after his return to Denison, Maurice
Daniels and his family
moved from 1915 W. Bond Street to 1306 W.
Woodard, a distance of about
8 blocks or a little more than half a mile.
By
mid-1961 Maurice, nicknamed
"Boomer," had become director of of
Woodlawn Country Club between Denison and
Sherman or it's possible from
the McKinney (TX) Daily Courier-Gazette of
July 14, 1961 that Mr.
Daniels as the director of the Club's 24th
annual Amateur Invitational
Golf Tournament. Defending champion
Dudley Wysong of McKinney was
expected to enter the tournament and to
defend "his laurels."
Qualifying rounds were held Friday,
July 14, through Thursday,
July 20. Play began on the newly
planted greens Tuesday, July 18,
1961. Some of the participants were
newly crowned City champion,
Jerry Ren, Bob Vaughn, Archie Dean, Dwight
Nevil, and Babe Hanan.
Other golfers from North Texas,
including Paris, Dallas,
McKinney. and Gainesville, were expected to
"put their hats in the
ring." First round matches began on
Friday, July 21. The
second round were played on Saturday, July
22; and finals were played
on Sunday, July 23. All golfers were
allowed to practice on the
course after posting qualifying scores.
Some of the
festivities during the Invitational Golf
Tournament were:
1) A stag
party was held Thursday, July 20, when the
first round pairings were announced.
2)
A cocktail party and style show was held by
Woodlawn's Women Golf
Association on Friday night, July 21,
following the conclusion of the
first round matches.
3) A dance
for all contestants and their ladies was
held Saturday night, July 22, on the eve of
the finals.
Foster
Daniels graduated Denison High School in
1964. The Who's Who section
of his yearbooks shows that his classmates
voted him "Most Humorous."
That year he also won the Denison City
Golf Tournament, and honor that
eluded his father. Foster won the
tournament again in 1967, while he
was on the golf team at East Texas State
University, Commerce, Texas.
Boomer
was still a Civilian Personnel Officer at
Perrin AFB when the base
closed in 1971. Turning 55 that year,
he was probably eligible for
retirement. He died 8 days before his
71st birthday and is buried in
Cedarlawn
Memorial Park, just a mile down the
road from Woodlawn
Country Club. Roberta died in 2002 at
the age of 84.
It
appears
that the Daniels family moved from their
home at 1306 W. Woodard
Street sometime in the 1960s or 1970s.
On October 1, 1981 The
Dallas Morning News listed Roberta as a
winner of a $10 gift
certificate in a coupon bingo game.
They gave her address as 1500
W. Shepherd St. in Denison; she was living
at that address shortly
before she died in 2002. Their son,
Foster, moved to Lakewood,
Colorado, where he still shows an interest
in golf and keeps in touch
with former students at Denison High School.
Biography Index
Susan Hawkins
©2025
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