Frances Lay was the second child of Jess and Mabel Lay.1 Her brother Charles Marion (b 1910) and sister Alyce Virginia (b 1920) were born in the same Georgetown house, the family home of Mabel's parents. Frances did not know where the family lived between Jess and Mabel's marriage and her birth, but she does recall her mother telling her that she (Mabel) returned to her family home in Georgetown for the birth of each of her children.
After Frances was born, the Lay family moved to San Marcos, Texas, where her father operated a laundry. During this period, Mabel’s mother Cordelia Harris became ill and was confined for some time at Scott & White’s Sanitarium in Temple. On January 4, 1918, Cordelia wrote Mabel a postcard: “My dear child. I am sitting by the window in the blue chair. The first time I have sit up since I came. Am just doing fine and think I am going to get well. Don’t know just when I can go home. Don’t worry one bit. I am just fine. Kiss both babies for me. Love & kisses for all.” It is a sign that these were simpler times that the card was addressed to “Mrs. Jess Lay; San Marcos, Tex; c/o Laundry.”
In about 1919 the family moved to Lockhart, Texas. They remained here until after Virginia's birth in November, 1920, and then moved to Bay City, Texas, on the Gulf Coast, where Frances started in school in the Fall of 1921. She remembers living about two miles from the school, and generally walking to and from school. On occasion, Jess would take Charles and Frances to school or pick them up after school in his car, a Chevrolet touring car. A few months later they moved to San Antonio to care for Nannie Jennie Lay, then 60 years old. "Grandma" Lay's husband, Frances Marion Lay, had died in June of 1918 at the family home in La Vernia, Wilson County, Texas. Nannie Lay moved to San Antonio in 1919, where she lived alone at 734 Essex Street. She had diabetes and her son worried that she needed care, particularly in preparation of her meals. In San Antonio, Jess Lay worked again at a laundry. Frances remembers that her mother and grandmother quarrelled frequently because Nannie would not follow her prescribed diet, and would sneak into the kitchen to eat sweets.
Jess and Mabel and their three children lived with Nannie Lay in the Essex Street house for only a year, partly because of the dissension between Mabel and Nannie Lay. They moved to a house on Drexel Street and Frances attended school at Highland Park elementary school. About this time, Jess Lay left the laundry business and began working for a company that sold janitorial supplies. He travelled throughout Texas and five neighboring states selling cleaning supplies to commercial concerns. Frances remembers that he was gone for about three out every four weeks.
When the depression came, the Lay family began to experience trouble making their financial ends meet. In 1931, Jess Lay was laid off by the janitorial supply house for which he had worked for 10 years. He tried to go into business for himself, making floor-sweeping compound in the family garage. However, this venture did not succeed and he went to work for the Southern Equipment Company selling on a commission basis. Again, he was unable to earn enough to support the family, so in January, 1933, the family moved to La Vernia, where they rented a house with two acres of land for $8 per month. For the next eighteen months, Jess and his son Charles continued to work in San Antonio, and Frances continued to go to school there, at Brackenridge High School. The family drove back and forth to La Vernia, a trip of one hour. In La Vernia, the family had an extensive vegetable garden and a cow. At one time during that year, Frances remembered Jess and her Uncle Richard Wells slaughtering a pig.
In high school, Frances concentrated on secretarial skills courses, shorthand and typing. Although she remembers "hating" shorthand, she excelled at tying, and won a "competent typist pin." Her speed of 67 words per minute was the best recorded in the competition. She graduated on June 1, 1933, at the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium, one of a class of 430.
After graduation, Frances tried unsuccessfully for a year to find a job using her secretarial skills. On July 1, 1934, the family moved back to San Antonio, where they lived at 409 Drexel Avenue. Jess went to work for the Southwestern Specialty Company, wholesale jobbers. Frances obtained a job working in the dining room at the San Antonio State Hospital and started work there on September 1, 1934.231 She worked every meal, seven days a week, and lived on the premises for a pay of $30 per month and room and board.
On April 14, 1935, Jess and Mabel Lay moved again to 734 Essex Street, the same house in which they had lived earlier with Nannie Lay, Jess Lay's mother, who had died in 1931. The Essex Street house belonged to Nannie Lay when she died, but the lawyers insisted that Jess and Mabel pay rent to her estate while they lived there.181 In the early 1940s the house was sold for about $2000. Jesse Lay's portion of the estate came to $165 and was divided between Charles, Frances, and Virginia; Mabel Lay, the widow, got nothing. Virginia Lay remembers "That $55 was a godsend to Phil and me because we had our 1935 Chevy in the garage for repairs after a wreck and the costs were $52! Hard times for all of us. We all figured that the lawyers got the bulk of the house sale."
It was at the State Hospital that Frances met Clayton Heathcock, who also worked there as a guard. On December 12, 1935, Frances and Clayton eloped and were married in Hondo, Texas. Tragically, on the same day Jess Lay suffered a heart attack and died in the hospital a week later (December 19, 1935), at the age of 48.
In May 1936 Clayton and Frances Heathcock quit their jobs at the State Hospital and took up residence in a house on Gimbler Street in San Antonio while Clayton worked with the Plaza Hotel Laundry. After the birth of Clayton, Jr. on July 21, 1936, they moved to Dallas where they lived for six months while Clayton tried his hand at selling refrigerators on a commission basis. When this job didn't work out, they returned to San Antonio and Clayton resumed his job with the Plaza Hotel Laundry. Their home at this time was 613 Ripley Street and for a time Frances' widowed mother Mabel Lay lived with them at that address. The author remembers the house well. It was a somewhat rambling frame house with a porch on the front. Its large, fenced-in back yard was mostly dirt. There were often chickens being raised in pens, and "wringing the neck" and plucking the feathers to prepare for a meal was a regular occurrence. Along the back fence was a creek and a railroad track. The next-door neighbor was Oscar Warneke, Sheriff of Bexar County.
In this period, full recovery from the depression had not yet come, and Clayton Heathcock had trouble earning enough to support his family. In the summer of 1938 he returned to his family home in Stockdale, Texas, the "watermelon capitol" of Texas. During the harvest season, which only lasted a few months, Clayton was able to earn as much as $50 per day stacking watermelons onto trucks for shipment.
On August 7, 1939, their second child, James Franklin, was born; at this time the family still lived at 613 Ripley Street. Clayton continued working for the Plaza Hotel Laundry until 1940, when he took a brief job (5-6 months) working as a night watchman for the San Antonio Public Service Company. The author still remembers his father going to work in his Model T ford with his revolver strapped to his leg. The 1940-41 San Antonio City Directory lists Clayton and Frances Heathcock as residents of 1715 Santa Anna; Clayton was an attendant at the San Pedro Texaco service station. Frances' sister Virginia Lay is listed in this directory as an employee of Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., still living at 613 Ripley Street. Her brother Charles M. Lay and his wife Agnes lived at 503 Bailey Avenue; Charles was a salesman for the Dixie Cup Corporation.
During the Second World War, Frances and her family continued to live in San Antonio. Clayton held several jobs, including one as a bus driver and another stint with the Plaza Hotel Laundry. The author remembers visiting the laundry office, which was on the ground floor of the Smith-Young Building, after school in the afternoons. One of his fondest recollections is being allowed to type on an old Royal upright. Another vivid memory from this period is the laundry panel truck, which Clayton frequently brought home after work. This vehicle had only a driver's seat, and was rigged for clothes hangers in its back compartment. It was often used for weekend trips to Stockdale, where Clayton, Frances, Clayton, Jr., and Jimmy Heathcock visited Will and Mollie Heathcock, Clayton's parents. For these trips, Frances had to sit on an orange crate while the children lounged about in the rear of the truck.
In March, 1945, the owners of the house on Ripley Street sold the house and the Heathcock family were forced to move. Their first residence was the top half of a two-story duplex on B Street. This apartment had been occupied by Frances' sister Virginia and her husband Phillip Scott before they left for New York, where Phil Scott was in the armed services. During this period, Frances was pregnant with her third child. They stayed in this location for about six months, then went into a nomadic phase which saw them living for two weeks in a two-bedroom apartment remembered in the family as the "roach house" after its other inhabitants, who outnumbered the Heathcocks by many fold. It was at this house that a cat burglar entered one night and took Clayton's wallet and watch. After only a few weeks in this unpleasant environment, they lived with Frances' brother Charles Lay for two weeks, with Clayton's relatives Henry and Ola Mae Stalls for two weeks, and then moved to Georgetown where they stayed with Grace and Lowrey Foster, Frances' aunt and uncle, until their daughter Peggy Frances was born on September 24, 1945. After the birth, Frances and the three children remained in Georgetown for a few more months, while Clayton, Sr. continued to work in San Antonio.
In early 1946, Frances and the children returned to San Antonio and the family moved into an upstairs apartment on Main Avenue. Her brother Charles Lay and his family lived in a downstairs apartment in this same building. It was about this time that Clayton, Sr. began to experience serious trouble because of his alcoholism. The author's memories of this period reflect mixed emotions. On the one hand, there are many fond memories of play time with his brother Jim and his cousins Larry and Pat Lay. Many of these memories pertain to activities that took place in a large, abandoned, "haunted" house at the end of the block. Many games of hide-and-seek and treasure hunts took place in this charming old house. On the other hand, there were also many altercations between Clayton, Sr. and Frances, usually having to do with his coming home drunk.
In the summer of 1947, Clayton quit his job at the Plaza Hotel Laundry and the family moved to Georgetown. Clayton took a job managing the Troy Laundry, which had been purchased by Frances Heathcock's uncle, Charles E. Harris, in 1924. They lived in a frame house about two blocks from the home of Lowery and Grace Foster, Frances' aunt and uncle. The house stood on a large lot that sloped down to a creek. On the other side of the creek was an electrified fence that was intended to keep the neighbor's horses confined. Clayton, Jr. and Jimmy Heathcock spent countless hours building dams across the mud creek and for a time had two pet turtles, each about a foot in diameter, that were kept in the creek. It was in this large yard that the two boys also carried out their first experimented with electricity; they found that by holding a horse's mane and then grabbing hold of the electric fence with the other hand, they could pass a healthy jolt to the animal while not being shocked.
During the 1947-48 school year, Clayton, Jr. and Jimmy Heathcock went to school at the Georgetown Public School and attended church at the Georgetown Church of Christ, which was presided over by a "fire-and-brimstone" preacher, Ben West. The author remembers being baptized by Brother West in a baptistery below the platform upon which the pulpit stood. He also remembers having his first serious infatuation, with another sixth-grader whose name has been long forgotten. However, if anyone ever climbs a large oak tree that may still stand in the yard behind the Georgetown house where the Heathcocks lived in 1948, her initials will be found carved into the bark, well away from the view of prying eyes.
In the summer of 1948, on a Saturday afternoon, the Troy Laundry burned to the ground. There was a strong undercurrent of suspicion that Clayton, Sr. may have been responsible by carelessly disposing of a cigarette while drunk. The author recollects a highly strained atmosphere in the days following the fire, and the Heathcock family soon returned to San Antonio, where they took up residence at 805 Burleson Street. Clayton took a job with a new laundry only a few blocks away, initially named the Acme Laundry. The author remembers walking the neighborhood with his brother Jim handing out flyers advertising the new laundry. He also remembers the bitter winter of 1948 when the temperature dropped to near zero, causing widespread damage to water lines. Clayton, Sr. spent nearly all one night tending to the water pipes at the laundry, then named the Snowflake Laundry.
After leaving the laundry, Clayton, Sr. took work with Stille Auto Supply, where he was working when he died on February 28, 1950. This was obviously a traumatic period for Frances, a widow at age 35 with three children to raise alone. She took a short course to refresh her secretarial skills and on August 4, 1950, began work for the United States Army, as a clerk at the San Antonio General Depot. For the next nine years, she remained at this job, while moving her family through a series of different rental houses. During this period, Clayton, Jr. and Jim graduated from Brackenridge High School (1954 and 1957), Clayton, Jr. entered Abilene Christian College (1954) and married Mabel Ruth Sims (September 6, 1957).
On November 15, 1959, Frances left the San Antonio General Depot and took a job with Kelly Air Force Base as a materials clerk. Her second son, James Franklin Heathcock, married Marilyn Hoag on May 9, 1962. Peggy Frances Heathcock attended Highland Park High School, and graduated in 1964. Peggy entered Abilene Christian College in the fall of 1964, and graduated in 1968. While at Abilene, Peggy met and married Gary Seth Wood, on June 17, 1967.
Frances is remembered by her family and friends as a highly determined individual. As an example of this tenacity, on July 21, 1970, she decided to go on a diet. She had been overweight since her teenage years, and by 1970 tipped the scales at 237 pounds. She entered the Weight Watchers program and in 29 months had trimmed off 101 pounds. Indeed, she was so successful in the venture that she became a Weight Watchers teacher, a hobby that continued for a number of years.
In November, 1979, Frances began to suffer from fatigue and shortness of breath. A medical examination revealed that she suffered from congestive heart failure. On the advice of her physician, she applied for and was granted a disability retirement. Although she battled congestive heart failure for the next 15 years, Frances continued to lead a full and relatively active life. She lived in several apartments in the North Central section of San Antonio during this period of her life. She had an active church and social life and travelled to California to visit her children and grandchildren once or twice a year until 1991, when her physical condition deteriorated to such a degree that she could no longer travel. For the last few years of her life, Frances lived at The Inn at Los Patios, a very nice retirement community in San Antonio.
Frances was a long-time member of the Church of Christ. When she and her family first came to San Antonio, they belonged to the Denver Heights congregation, and later moved to the Highland Park congregation. In about 1980, shortly after her retirement, Frances moved to the Sunset Ridge Church of Christ, where she was a regular volunteer in a variety of charitable causes.
Frances Lay died on September 25, 1994, at the age of 79. Her funeral service was conducted by Roy Osborn, a retired minister of the Sunset Ridge Church of Christ and a long-time friend. She is buried at Sunset Memorial Cemetery, alongside her husband, Clayton Howell Heathcock, and her parents, Jesse Lee Lay and Mabel Coral Harris Lay.

Clayton Heathcock was born in a four-room frame cabin on a farm near Sutherland Springs, Texas on 10 September 1910.3 As a child he attended the Sutherland Springs school and, since it was some distance from the Heathcock farm, he rode a horse. This earned him the nickname "Tex" which he carried all his life. The high school for the part of Wilson County where the Heathcocks lived was in Stockdale, about ten miles from Sutherland Springs. Clayton Heathcock attended this school, graduating in 1928. While in high school, he was a member of the basketball team. After graduating, he worked in the Stockdale area, and the family moved to a house in Stockdale in the early 1930s. Stockdale is the center of a watermelon-producing region and, among the jobs that Clayton held in the early 1930s was that of "watermelon stacker" during the harvest season.
In 1935 he left home and moved to San Antonio, some 35 miles from Stockdale, and took a job as ward helper in the San Antonio State Hospital. It was there that he met Frances Elizabeth Lay, a twenty-year old native of Georgetown, who worked in the kitchen. Clayton and Frances developed a relationship and were married in Hondo, Texas on 12 December 1935. The young couple settled in San Antonio and Clayton took a job with the Plaza Hotel Laundry running a pickup and delivery route. However, these were still depression times and he was soon forced to abandon this job because so many of his customers were unable to pay their bills on time. In early 1937 he moved his wife and infant son to Dallas where he obtained a job selling home appliances on a commission basis. This enterprise was equally unfruitful and, after six months, he returned to his family home in Stockdale. For the next year, the young family survived on what money Clayton could earn doing odd jobs, including another stint as watermelon-stacker during the Fall harvest.
After the Fall harvest of 1938, the Heathcocks returned to San Antonio and Clayton obtained a job with a Texaco service station. This was the first of many similar jobs that he held over the next twelve years, including: night watchman for the San Antonio Gas and Electric Company, bus driver, manager of two laundries, a second (more successful) turn as route man for the Plaza Hotel Laundry, and salesman for Stille Auto Supply Store. In this period he acquired and drove one of the early version Model T Ford automobiles. Clayton Heathcock Sr. and Frances Lay had three children.
Beginning in the mid-1940s Clayton Heathcock developed a serious alcohol problem, which was brought about partly by the decade of frustration he had experienced in finding and keeping employment during the post-depression period. In 1947 the family moved to Georgetown, in Williamson County, Texas, where Clayton took the job of manager of the Harris Laundry, an establishment owned by Frances Heathcock's uncle Edward Harris. In the summer of 1948, the laundry burned to the ground. Clayton had been at the laundry on the Saturday when the fire occurred, and there was some suspicion that he had been drinking before the fire began. He was not charged with accidentally starting the fire, but there was considerable ill will among the Harris family and it was generally believed that, at the very least, the fire might not have got out of hand had he been sober. In any event, the fire marked the end of another job, and the Heathcocks returned to San Antonio.
On 28 February 1950 Clayton Heathcock was involved in an altercation in the Alta Mira bar, in West San Antonio. In the course of the incident, he was struck on the head with a blunt instrument and killed. His assailant, one Artimo G. Cantu, the bartender of the establishment, was arrested and booked for murder. Some twenty other persons in the bar at the time were also rounded up by the police as material witnesses. However, all testified to the police that they had not witnessed the affair. Cantu was subsequently released and never brought to trial.4 Clayton Heathcock is buried in a family plot at the Sunset Memorial Cemetery, Austin Highway and Redmond Road, in San Antonio.