Remembering Fred Grove



1913-2008



I first met Fred Grove at a WWA convention in Santa Fe, New Mexico, during the 1980s, and we became pen pals. Then, when I attempted to write my first novel, Escape on the Wind, he took me under his wing and became my mentor. His advice helped me make the transition from journalism to fiction, as he had done himself many years before. I miss Fred and his letters, which he wrote well into his 90s. And I'll never forget his generosity.

The five time Spur winner was provoked into becoming a Western novelist. When ten-year old Fred was visiting relatives in Fairfax, Oklahoma, a wealthy Indian woman’s home exploded, killing her and two members of her family. The writer recalled details of the 1923 murder conspiracy to appropriate the woman’s money.

Grove’s mother was Osage and Sioux, which thrust the tragedy into sharper focus. He remembers that “the situation was lawless, with county officials apparently doing little to bring the guilty to justice. A subsequent FBI investigation resulted in prison sentences for two while men, one of them a cattleman and leading citizen of Fairfax, the other the son-in-law of the murdered woman.

“Those were the years of fear in Osage County, of rumors and threats. As a boy, this intrigued me, angered me. I wanted to write about it someday, and air those wrongs. Of course, I had no idea how to go about it, but the events stayed in my mind. The Osage murders, also called “The Reign of Terror” by the press, made national headlines.”

A number of years later, Fred met the FBI agent who had directed the investigation, and  they collaborated on a nonfiction book about the incident. But they were unable to find a publisher. “It was very discouraging. I spent a year reading state newspapers on microfilm. But from this came the novels Warrior Road and Drums Without Warriors. The first was written from an Indian’s viewpoint, the second from that of an FBI agent posing as a racehorse owner looking for match races.” His research  sparked his latent interest in quarter horse racing and led to his later Apache frontier novels.

Fred was born on the fourth of July in 1913, in Hominy, Oklahoma, the fourth of five children. His father had been a cowboy in western Kansas during the late 1880s, and later rode with range outfits in New Mexico and Texas, making a cattle drive to northern pastures. He married an Osage woman who was born on the Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and allotted land in Osage County, Oklahoma. Her maternal great-grandfather, a Frenchman named Henry Chatillon, had guided Francis Parkman on his tour of the plains, which evolved into the classic, The Oregon Trail.

The writer’s parents ranched on his mother’s Osage allotment, where they reared their children. Both of Fred’s brothers died young, which he said, “saddened me considerably.” Determined to write, Fred earned his B.A. degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma, class of 1937, where  sports were his passion.  He was sports editor of the student daily during his senior year and wrote about football, basketball, track, baseball, tennis, swimming and polo. He later worked as sports editor of two daily newspapers before drifting into general news and desk work.

“This was during the depression and you felt lucky to have a job. My first one on a newspaper paid $18 a week and I was glad to have it.” He had intended to write Westerns after World War II,  and interviewed “a lot of Oklahoma pioneers” while working as a reporter for the Shawnee Morning News. “They were wonderful old people who had made the land runs in the state and remembered the 1870s and ‘80s. This further spurred my interests in the West.”

Part II will appear next Saturday.

(Excerpted from my book, Maverick Writers)