Stone Gardens; A teenage accident victim shares a McCurtain County Cemetery with a WWI Code Talker

On a warm Thursday afternoon in early July 1934, a Ford V-8 carried eight people along U.S. Highway 70 a few miles east of Broken Bow in McCurtain County, Oklahoma. Among them was Woodrow Wilson, a young Choctaw man whose parents had given him the name of the sitting American president when he was born in the spring of 1917.

Contemporary accounts in the McCurtain Gazette placed his age at nineteen or twenty.

Cemetery records and later memorials list a birth date of April 5 or 6, 1917, which would have made him seventeen. Either way, he was still a teenager or barely beyond it when the car, driven by his brother Charles, topped a hill at high speed while racing another westbound vehicle and struck an eastbound automobile driven by Mrs. J. E. Beavers.

Woodrow was riding on the fender. The impact and the subsequent rollover that sent the Ford tumbling several times killed him almost at once. Reports described a broken neck, a broken arm, and numerous other injuries. Help arrived too late. His father, Raymond B. Wilson, who was in the same car, was only slightly hurt

. Several other occupants, described in the papers as Indian women, suffered injuries as well. Mrs. Beavers received cuts about the face. Mrs. D. W. Kolb, also of Broken Bow and traveling in the other car, was not seriously harmed. Both automobiles were heavily damaged. The crash happened around 5:30 in the afternoon on July 5.

Woodrow’s family lived on the outskirts of Broken Bow. His father, Raymond B. Wilson, had been born in 1883 and would die in 1947. His mother, known in cemetery listings as Ellen Louis or simply Ellen, lived until 1963.

The household included several siblings. Laura Mae, born in 1909, later married into the Willie family and lived until 1983. Eliza, born in 1912, died in 1951. Levisa, born in 1914, became Levisa Tate Lewis and lived until 1991. Helen June, born in 1923, married into the Wisdom family and lived until 2001. Frances Bernice, born in 1925, became Frances Bernice Wheeler and lived until 2003.

A brother listed as Rapheal Charley Wilson died in 1936. Two younger girls, Angline and Rosie Lee, appear in the same cemetery records with deaths in 1935, suggesting the family suffered further losses in the years immediately after Woodrow’s death. The cluster of Wilson graves at Yashau Cemetery, along with related families such as the Willies, Lewises, Wheelers, and Wisdoms, marks a multi-generational presence in the community.

The name Woodrow Wilson was unusual in its specific presidential echo, yet not entirely out of place for the era. President Thomas Woodrow Wilson had taken office in 1913 and remained in the White House until 1921. Across the country, including in Indian Territory and the new state of Oklahoma, parents named children after him.

The surname Wilson itself appears among Choctaw families in McCurtain County, sometimes linked in genealogical records to earlier figures such as Alexander Wilson of Smithville, who was enrolled under the Dawes Commission and traced his lineage through Choctaw ancestors including Pisachubbi.

Whether Raymond B. Wilson belonged to that particular line is not firmly established in the available records, but the broader pattern of Choctaw families carrying English surnames after removal, intermarriage, or enrollment is well documented.

McCurtain County itself was named for a prominent Choctaw family whose members had served as chiefs. The land around Broken Bow had been part of the Choctaw Nation after the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek and the forced removals of the 1830s. By the early twentieth century, lumber companies, including the Dierks brothers who named the town after their home in Broken Bow, Nebraska, had transformed the area into a timber center. Highway 70 ran through it as a principal east-west route.

Yashau Cemetery, where Woodrow was buried the next day, sits in that same landscape. Funeral services took place at one o’clock on Friday afternoon with the Reverend William Postoke officiating. The cemetery holds many other local names, some with clear Choctaw associations and others reflecting military service in later wars.

Among those buried there is Joseph Oklahombi, the full-blood Choctaw soldier from nearby Wright City who served as one of the original code talkers in World War I.

The presence of his grave alongside those of ordinary local families such as the Wilsons underscores the cemetery’s role as a resting place for both everyday residents and figures of larger historical note within the Choctaw community.

The accident itself reflected the hazards of early automobile travel on rural highways. Cars were still relatively new in many households. Racing between vehicles was not uncommon, and hills that limited visibility created obvious dangers.

The newspapers treated the wreck as a local tragedy involving a Choctaw family, noted the injuries to others, and recorded the basic facts of the collision and the burial. They did not linger on broader context. Yet the episode sits within the longer story of Choctaw people adapting to statehood, allotment, and the expanding road network while maintaining community ties.

Woodrow Wilson’s short life, marked by a presidential name and ended on a highway fender outside Broken Bow, is preserved mainly through those two brief newspaper accounts, the cemetery listing, and the scattered family records that connect him to parents and siblings who lived longer in the same corner of southeastern Oklahoma.