Grandma Nora was born in Warren County, Missouri, Marion County, on February 23, 1890, to Thomas A. Sparks and Nancy Ann Hardy Sparks. Anything I was told about her childhood only indicated that her family was rather wealthy and perhaps were merchants, I'm not sure. Her sister, Iva, was a year younger than Nora and Iva never married. Iva died in 1990 at the ripe old age of 99 and left all her wealth to her church.

I was told the marriage between John and Nora was an arranged marriage which is probable due to the fact that many people lived on farms as did John (he had his own land next to his father and mother and farmed as they had). As far as I can tell, John had no religion but Nora was deeply intrenched in her church. They were married around 1914 or 1915 as their first child (Leslie) was born in 1916 and lived in Elm Grove, Payne County, Oklahoma. My father was born in 1919 and his sister, Leta, in 1925. I do know that sometime after Leta was born, Grandma and Grandad divorced which was unheard of in rural, farmland America. My father never talked about it in front of me and the only things I heard was what my mother had related but only tidbits here and there throughout my life. She had told me that Nora had pleaded with John to move to the house she had in Elm Grove (Stillwater), and leave the farm but John refused. Nora's mother and father had passed in 1925 and 1926, respectively, so she was left with some inheritance which I believe to have been a sum that allowed her to make the decision to leave the farm life. From what I have learned about Nora, I believe this was probably a lifesaving move for herself as I believe farm life was too isolated and depressing for her to endure. My mother told me Nora loved John and when he refused to leave the farm for Oklahoma City, she was truly distraught. From what I can tell, she must have had unbelievable strength for a woman of those times to make the decision she did. I believe it was survival for her. She took little Leta and left the boys, then around 10 and 13, to be raised by John on the farm and divorced John. Little did either of them know, but the hardest times were yet to come with the onset of the Great Depression when Grandad lost everything.

I don't know much about the time between Nora leaving the farm and the time of her death in 1950. I don't know what her relationship was with my father, nor the contact she may or may not have had with his growing family. I do know that my mother remembers several conversations over the phone with Nora when she would call and ask about her grandchildren. My oldest brother, John, was named after my grandad, and when Nora spoke with my mother over the phone, Nora would not say his name but inquire, "How's our little boy?"

When I received Nora's death certificate I was saddened to discover how she died. She passed on December 8, 1950, after being at Central State Hospital in Norman, Oklahoma, for two months. Her obituary indicates she was residing at 1414 Chester in Stillwater and a Reverend Ralph Jared officiated her service at Strode Funeral Home. It went on to say that she was married to John Edwin Dailey in 1912 and that she had come to Stillwater with her parents in 1901. The obituary listed cousins Noah and Leslie Hardy and Mrs. Ollie Horton. While in the hospital, she had a gastric hemorrhage and after seven days, died of aspirational pneumonia. At the time, Central State Hospital was a mental facility and I'm not sure of the circumstances that put her there, but her diagnosis was involutional psychosis, paranoid & cerebral arteriose lerosis. After discovering this, and doing some research on the internet, I'm sure that Grandma Nora suffered from postpartum depression in her childbearing years (the reason she had to leave the isolation of the farm) and suffered mentally during menopause. She was only 60 when she died. She is buried next to her parents in Fairlawn Cemetery in Stillwater, Oklahoma, block 4, row 27, space 1. The inheritance she left to her three children allowed my mother and father to purchase their first home in San Lorenzo, California.

Grandad John Dailey is on the far right with Nora Sparks on his right I'm not sure who these other people are, but on the back of the original photo the list includes Henry Hardy (Hardy is Nora's mother's maiden name), Mrs. Sparks and Iva.

This is a photo of John, son Leslie (age 4) and Nora with Melvin Dailey on her lap. This was probably taken in 1919 as my father was born March 27, 1919.