‘To make a living’ - Coming of age in the Great Depression, Ralph Scrivner worked many jobs to provide for family

Born in 1910 and entering adulthood during the Great Depression, Ralph Scrivner survived by his willingness to perform a variety of work. In 1935, he married Mable Stevens and the couple raised six children. He not only worked in a defense plant during World War II, but operated a café, service station on Route 66 and, amongst other jobs, retired from the state highway department. Courtesy of Carolyn Hancock

A jack of all trades is what many friends and family have used to describe the late Ralph Scrivner. As a young man who experienced the hardships of the Great Depression, and seeking to provide for a growing family, he never hesitated to try his hand at a variety of ventures. These jobs spanned working in the Civilian Conservation Corps to operating a filling station on Route 66, and eventually retiring from the state highway department.
 
Born in 1910 to Martin Luther and Birdie (Sappenfield) Scrivner, Ralph attended school in Russellville. His high school education came to an end when the local school system, which had operated on a subscription basis, closed between the years of 1929 and 1931.
 
“My mother, Mable Stevens, lived in the Spring Garden area and attended a local one-room school,” said Carolyn Hancock. “She later graduated from high school in Eugene and then took the teachers’ examination and started teaching at other one-room schools in the area.”
 
Family history notes that Ralph Scrivner began dating Mable but then moved to Oklahoma in the early 1930s with his father and uncle, who opened the Scrivner-Stevens Grocery Store. However, he and his father soon came back to Russellville, after which his father opened a grocery store. Then, in 1935, Scrivner married his fiancée, Mable.
 
Hancock continued, “My parents had four kids that were nineteen months apart, but the first child died in infancy. Then, six years later, our brother Kent was born, Randy four years after that and Nancy four years later,” she chuckled.
         
Her father, Hancock explained, operated a café in Russellville for several years that was inside what is now Humpy’s Bar. Scrivner and his wife, in addition to their growing family, lived in the rooms above the café.  
 
Not appreciative of the hours associated with working and managing the café, Mable convinced her husband to leave the business. With the Great Depression limiting opportunities for work, he was soon able to find employment with the Civilian Conservation Corps.


“He helped build and improve U.S. Highway 50 before the war, driving a concrete truck,” Hancock said of her father.
 
World War II began to unfold, and scores of citizens were drafted into military service. Scrivner was 29 years old when he was required to register for the military draft on October 16, 1940.
 
Hancock said, “He couldn’t pass the physical exam because he had rheumatic fever several years earlier, and that had caused a heart murmur. So, he moved the family to St. Louis because he was employed at a defense plant there, and we didn’t move back to Russellville until after the war ended in 1945.”
 
Renting their home, Scrivner soon made another move, this time to the community of Lebanon, Missouri, to own a gas station and garage along Route 66. When Interstate 44 came through the area in the 1950s, the government purchased the property where his station had been located and the family returned to Russellville.
 
“It was sometime after this that he bought the MFA Station in Russellville and ran it for a while,” Hancock recalled. “Then he opened a Firestone Store next to the post office in town, selling everything from tires and kids toys to household goods. After that, he bought the Skelly station and garage in town and ran that until an employee stole from him to the extent he had to close.”
 
She continued, “My father then purchased a couple of milk routes and delivered to Kraft and Sealtech. He had two trucks and after Opies Transport (near Mt. Pleasant) decided to get into milk delivery, they purchased dad’s milk routes.”
 
Their home in Russellville, Hancock explained, which has been recently remodeled by the current owners, was initially constructed in 1821 using locally cut and hewn logs, according to records obtained by the family. Her parents built onto the home in 1946, adding a kitchen and two rooms to have more space for their family of five children. 
 
With an eclectic background of careers to his credit, Scrivner was hired by the state highway department and years later retired from their blueprint shop. Hancock also noted that her father was also for many years a substitute mail carrier and managed some rental property. Her mother eventually retired from the Missouri Division of Employment Security.


Ralph and Mable Scrivner were members of Russellville Baptist Church and active in the Masonic Lodge and the Order of the Eastern Star. On November 19, 1981, the 71-year-old Scrivner passed away and was interred in Enloe Cemetery west of Russellville. Mable later married Clayton Morris, who passed away in 1992. After her death in 1994, she was buried with her first husband.  
 
Considering the many shifts in careers her father made during his lifetime, Hancock shared that he learned to survive the hardships of the Great Depression and make whatever sacrifices necessary to provide for his family.
 
“Our parents worked hard and all of us went on to do well in our lives because of it,” Hancock said. “Our father did anything to make a nickel, but when you have a family to support—especially during the Great Depression—you do whatever it takes to make a living.
 
Smiling, she remarked, “And if you asked him to solve something, he’d think about it for a bit and then give you an answer. He had great common sense and was certainly a jack of all trades.”
 
Jeremy P. Ämick is the author of the upcoming historical compilation “Beyond the Moreau.”   

Ralph and Mable Scrivner are pictured in 1960, when celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. Courtesy of Carolyn Hancock