I was initially surprised to learn of Clydine’s top of her class accomplishment and had never heard about it from my father or anyone else in the family. All I knew growing up was that she was a school librarian, but it turns out she was much more. As valedictorian Clydine earned scholarships from every major college in Texas. Among her papers were certificates or letters from University of Texas, Texas Women’s, SMU, College of Industrial Arts, Southwestern and Midland College. I didn’t find one for North Texas Normal College and Teacher Training Institute located in Denton, Texas where she enrolled after high school. From her copy of the 1916 yearbook, The Yucca, she is listed as a Junior in the Primary Arts department and states she is from Woodland, Tx which I believe to be an error. I found another listing for Clydine in a Denton newspaper article titled “Over 900 Students in North Texas State Normal College”, that I believe to be more accurate than the yearbook which simply listed “Stickney, Clydine, Midland; J. J. Smelser, 126 Maple”. J. J. Smelser is her brother-in-law, married to her sister Emma, this might be why she studied at North Texas, where she could live with her relatives.

In her one year at North Texas, Clydine receive a first-grade certificate and a recommendation letter that helped land her first teaching job in Afton, a town in Dickens County in the panhandle west of Lubbock. The record she created for the Teacher Retirement System of Texas shows she only taught eight of the nine months of the school year in Afton. It could be that she started the school year late, but possibly she didn’t finish out the year due to her mother’s death on April 12, 1917.

Her mother, Elvira had been living in Rowell, New Mexico with her eldest daughter, Annie Brown, when she died.  Her funeral and burial were in Roswell and it is not known if Clydine attended, but we find her back in Robert Lee the following school year where she was teaching  at Simpson School. This was a small one room type school near Robert Lee. Her class consisted of twenty students, ranging in age from six to twenty years in grades first to ninth and ran eight months from September 24, 1917 to May 13, 1918.

Clydine moved around a lot in her first ten years of teaching and continued her own education taking  courses at local colleges and correspondence courses. To finish up her degree she took a year off from teaching to be a fulltime student at the University of Texas. Clydine graduated from UT June 7, 1926 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and is pictured in her cap and gown in the yearbook, “The Cactus” giving Lubbock, Texas as her home.

Clydine’s teaching records provide when and where she was teaching but they don’t always state what she was teaching. Her University of Texas hours accumulation shows her degree was heavy on English courses with a total of 24 hours, then 18 hours each in Latin and Government, 10 hours each of Education and Sciences, and 2 hours each for Math, Bible and Psychology.

Her strong background in English resulted in a job teaching high school English at Abilene ISD for the 1926 – 1927 school year. The following year she taught in San Angelo at Central High School and remains there for ten years. While there she wrote to J. Frank Dobie requesting help starting a folklore society at the high school. Dobie was an English professor at the University of Texas when Clydine was a fulltime student and known for his love and involvement with the Texas Folklore Society. If she received a reply from him it was not found among Clydine’s papers.

In her fourth year at San Angelo Central High School Clydine’s position changed from teacher to librarian and she began taking classes in library science at University of Illinois during the summer in 1929 and received her Bachelor of Science in Library of Science degree on August 15,  1936. After completing her Library of Science degree, Clydine taught one more year in San Angelo then moved to Commerce in East Texas and began an eleven-year stint at Texas State Teachers College as a librarian. The 1940 US Census tells us Clydine was renting a home for $25 a month at 1701 Monroe St. Commerce, Hunt County, Texas. She was 42 years old, single, Librarian at State Teacher College where she worked 52 weeks a year at a $1900 annual salary.

The chart below shows all the places Clydine educated others and herself.

Clydine finished her career in Colorado City where she was head librarian at the high school. This, in a way, was her home coming and was noted in her hometown Robert Lee Observer newspaper, under “Folks You Know” section

By the fall of 1948 she was back in the west Texas area where she grew up and back near family. Her sister, Mae had been living in Colorado City since she married her second husband, Daniel L. Buchanan in 1935. The 1940 census shows that when they married, Mae moved into the home he had been living in at least since 1930.  The 1930 census show Daniel Buchanan head of household at the same 344 Walnut address with wife Ida and a thirteen-year-old son.  I speculate that when Clydine came to Colorado City, Mae decided to buy a new home where the three could all live together.  When Mae died November 15, 1957, her obituary states she was living at 643 Cedar. Mae’s husband continued to live there with Clydine for about six months before ill health caused him to move in with his son, Grover Buchanan in Abilene. Daniel died March 14, 1959.

Sister Mae was well off financially due to her first husband’s land holdings in Ector County that produce oil and gas royalties. She generously gave to her siblings while alive and when she died, Clydine was made executrix of her estate and continued to provide financial support.  Mae’s will dictated that her surviving siblings  would continue to receive the royalties from her oil and gas properties, but after the last one died the income would go to The Methodist Home for Children, originally located in Fort Worth. 

Clydine was close to her niece, Elsie Brown since they lead very similar lives. They were less than two months apart in age and neither ever married and both were teacher who later became librarians. During the summer of 1960, Clydine went to Los Angeles where Elsie live and helped take care of her. Elsie had cancer and died September 4, 1960. Clydine retired in 1962 at the age of 65, but by then all of her immediate family was gone except for her brother, Alvin and sister Hesta. She bought her brother, Alvin, a cabin on Colorado City Lake so they could spend more time together and have a place to gather with her many nieces and nephews. Alvin, my grandfather, often took us grandchildren to the lake in the summers of the later 1960s and it is this setting for the fond memories I have of Clydine. She very much looked like a librarian, always properly attired in a dress with nice shoes and a handbag and my sister remembers her having a nice car.

Clydine lived fifteen years longer than her brother, Alvin, who died in 1974. Sister, Hesta, died earlier in 1972. In my grandfather’s photo album, there are several pictures of Clydine and a young man, but for unknown reasons they never married. Since she was executrix of her older sister, Mae’s estate she employed a lawyer, Frank Ginzel, to handle the directives of Mae’s will. As Clydine aged, Frank and his secretary, Sue Compton, managed her finances and looked after her needs as well. Several of Clydine’s nephews looked in on her as much as they were able living some distance away. My father, Francis Stickney helped his cousin, Wilfred Gardner, along with her lawyer handle her estate after Clydine died December 30, 1989. Clydine Catherine Stickney was laid to rest in Robert Lee Cemetery, Robert Lee, Texas alongside her father, James Franklin Stickney, and sister Mae (Stickney) Witcher Buchanan.