In the latter part of 1902 a young man named Don Blanding moved into a new house on "D" Avenue with his family. The next year Don wrote the class motto for his fourth grade class.


In a effort to expand his horizons Don decided to learn to play the piano and began taking piano lessons from Mrs. E. P. McMahon. In 1908 Don attended Lawton High School and graduated in 1912, but not before naming, editing and illustrating the Lawton High School Yearbook "Lore".


But more importantly prior to graduating Don saved the life of Billie Cassin a young neighbor that lived at 910 "D" Avenue. In an effort to ditch piano lessons young Billie leaped off her front porch to follow playmates and cut her foot deeply on a broken milk bottle.


Don carried Billie into the house and phoned the doctor. Eighteen months and three operations later her foot was healed enough to attend elementary school classes again. Don left Lawton that fall and it would be 24 years before Don and Billie would see each other again.


In 1936 Don had become an accomplished and world famous poet and journalist, as well as author of prose, illustrator, and speaker . It was his celebrity that led to a chance meeting with Billie on the set of "The Gorgeous Hussy" in which she was staring, they had the opportunity to spend some time catching up and talking about old times, only now Don referred to her as Joan or Ms. Crawford. Sometime in the mid Twenties Billie Cassin had taken the stage name Joan Crawford.


So the short story is:

Joan Crawford lived about a block and a half from what is now my cleaners. Where.... by the way... they put my clothes on wire hangers.

(Just a side note.... The picture of the house in this post is the house that currently sits at 910 D Avenue. I don't know if it is the house that sat there in 1912 but I would guess that it is. I did look for the broken milk bottle in the front yard.... Alas... it was not still there.)


Drats... my eBay luck.