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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 © 2024 If you find any of Grayson County TXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |