Two women sat together on the couch of their living room. They giggled, they held hands, they cuddled. Then one put her hand on the other’s cheek, leaned over and kissed her.
“I couldn’t make it without Marcy,” said Drucy. “And I couldn’t make it without Drucy,” Marcy said.
Ninety-year-old Drucilla “Drucy” Head Morris and Marcella “Marcy” Head Sharum share a home together in Springdale. They are identical twins - the oldest twins in Arkansas - and have talked to each other every day of their lives.
Even better, they’ve dressed alike nearly every day of their lives.
“We get up every day and ask each other what we’re wearing,” Drucy said.
“I think they talked about it the night before.
I never did figure it out,” said Gary Morris, Drucy’s son.
TWO OF EVERYTHING
Drucy and Marcy made their first appearance - dressed alike - on June 23, 1923, at their grandmother’s house in Johnson. Drucy was born just 10 minutes before her sister. They are the daughters of Leila and Carl Head. And twins were a surprise.
“It was Dr. Martin’s busiest time of year,” Drucy recalled the story.
“Our grandmother really saved us,” Marcy said. “She was halfway a nurse.”
Laura Beeler served as a midwife in the rural community and helped others in need.
The girls weighed 3 pounds and 3 ½ pounds, respectively, and their grandmother placed them in shoe boxes to sleep.
The girls grew up on West Meadow Avenue, and the house remains today, standing beside Sisco Funeral Chapel. Their father, Carl, moved the family to town and owned and operated Head Brothers Furniture Exchange with his brother Everett a block north on Emma. At other times, he worked at Kelly Brothers Lumber Co., Pioneer Lumber Co. and packed wine at the Welch’s processing plant. He and Beulah Nelson, aunt of Harvey Jones, founder of Jones Truck Lines, ran the trucking company’s salvage storefor years, selling returned and damaged merchandise.
The Head family Christmas tree sheltered two of everything each year.
“Half of it was for Drucy, and half of it was for me,” Marcy recalled. “We got the exact same things. I think that’s why we never got jealous.”
Drucy recalled bananas and oranges stuffed in their stockings, and Marcy remembered rollerskates and a wagon.
“That was the thing to do then: have a wagon,” Drucy said.
Living only a block away from the bustling downtown shopping district of Springdale, the girls and their mother would carry lunch to their father each day. Often, he gave them a treat.
“Daddy gave us a dime to go to the show at the Concord Theater,” Drucy said.
Tom Mix was their favorite. “It was all Westerns. I love them. I still do,” Drucy said.
“On Saturdays we got to go with Grandma,” Marcy said. “Any change she got, we put in our little purses.”
Their grandmother grew strawberries at her Johnson home, just south of the current Tyson Foods headquarters complex.
The girls would help with the harvest, working on different sides of the same row, earning 2 cents for every quart picked.
“Grandma was so proud of us working to pick berries,” Drucy said.
When they were old enough for real jobs, the girls worked Saturdays at Meyerson Drug Store.
“The first dollar I earned went to Crystal Bagby on Spring Street,” Marcy recalled. “I got a $1 permanent.”
The girls remember when Roy Ritter opened AQ Chicken House in 1947. “It was a big deal,” Drucy said.
“It was the only eating out place.”
“People went crazy,” Marcy said. “There were long lines. But, oh, the fried chicken and the rolls … itwas good food.” BUSINESS WOMEN
The girls completed school through the 12th grade - a point of pride in those days. They attended first grade at the old Washington school, with Ola Watson as their teacher. They graduated from Springdale High School with just 59 other students in 1941 - the largest graduating class at that point. Their school was in a three-story building on the north side of Emma Avenue, where the high school has expanded today.
After high school, Drucy attended Fayetteville Business College and took a job as secretary for Joe Steele, a pioneer in the field of canning, and later as the 40-year office manager of Arkansas Western Gas at Emma Avenue and Mill Street.
“I ran the office by myself,” Drucy recalled. “People would come in for their meters and pay a $10 deposit. They would come each month to pay their bills.
Everybody came to town on Saturday.”
Then Marcy attended business school and got a job with First State Bank.
She retired 40 years later as an associate vice president.
Marcy recalled shopkeepers carrying their money in waste baskets down to the bank. In those days, deposits were posted by hand, not computer.
“Holcomb’s market did a good business,” she said.
“My hands got tired recording every check.
“I loved my job because I got acquainted with a variety of people,” Marcy continued. “I was happy to see my customers.”
Customers would come in to the bank and wait their turns at her teller window, even though others might be open, said Gary Morris, Drucy’s son. “They wanted to see her based on her trust, her kindness and her customer service. And that’s not reflective of anybody else.”
Marcy wouldn’t let mention of the bank go without praise for its president.
“Shelby Ford was the greatest man that ever came to Springdale,” she said.
“The Depression was felt all over, and people were raising chickens. They would come in for a loan to raise chickens. Shelby Ford said if he could loan money for cattle, he would find a way to loan money for chickens.
He was called the ‘Chicken Banker.’”
The women say they never tried to trick people into thinking one twin was the other. But it still happened.
“New people would come into town to get their gas meters and then go to the bank,” Morris related.
“They’d say, ‘I swear I just saw you down at the gas company.’”
The sisters were instrumental in starting a local chapter of the Business and Professional Women. They even attended national conventions. “They were early runners in creating equal opportunity in the workplace,” said Morris.
And, through it all, the women still dressed the same - in sharp business suits and hats. “We wore hats everywhere,” Marcy recalled. “Churches. Funerals.
All required a hat.”
Morris remembered the Western Days celebrations before the annual Rodeo of the Ozarks. Everyone in town would dress western.
“They wore bandannas,” he said of his mother and aunt.
“They were the sharpest things in town.”
Both girls served as Apple Blossom queens and Ozark Smile Girls for the Chamber of Commerce, representing Wilson’s Mercantile.
“They were a couple of good-looking gals,” Morris said.
LIFELONG LOVE
Marcy and Drucy both had a love affair with the railroad.
“I love the Frisco railroad,” Marcy added. “It brought my husband to town.”
Charles Sharum came from Fort Smith as a cashier for the railroad.
“He was in the Army and flew B-17s,” Marcy related.
“But he was shot down.
When he went down, nobody heard from him for a year. He was a POW.”
After the war, Marcy met him at Penrod’s Cafe.
“Everything happened at Penrod’s downtown on Emma Avenue,” she said. “We met, had fun and listened to music.” The jukebox cost a nickle or dime for a song, she remembered.
Drucy enjoyed sitting on the front porch swing as a child, waiting for the train to blow its whistle on its way through town. Later, it took her on her honeymoon to St. Louis.
Drucy met Kenneth Morris at the USO in Springdale, which stood in a block of buildings where Spring Street Cafe is now.
“He was born in Mississippi and raised in Mountainburg,” Gary Morris said of his father. “His family were railroad people. Hisfather, Clay Morris, worked for Frisco.”
Kenneth Morris was a decorated veteran, having earned the Silver Star.
“It’s ironic that Capt.
Morris was able to capture, single-handedly, 300 German soldiers - or at least convince them to surrender.
But it took just one Head twin to capture Morris at the USO,” Gary Morris said.
FAMILY PRIDE
“We did a lot to preserve our family history,” said Marcy, proudly showing off their mother’s journal recording daily activities, like who came to dinner.
“It’s important to,” Marcy said. “We loved them all.”
“They brought us around,” Drucy added.
Their efforts led to the installation of a historic marker at their family’s homestead.
“We played in the mud at Head’s Ford, and we grew up at 709 Meadow,” Marcy said.
Joseph Head, great-grandfather of the twins, came to Northwest Arkansas in 1855 and bought land along the White River from Washington County - a spot that came to be known as “Head’s Ford.”
“You could ford the river at low times,” said Gary Morris, but Head operated a ferry for other times.
“It cost 15 cents to cross the river with cattle,” Morris continued. “Troops from both the North and the South would cross there on their way to and from Pea Ridge and any time they were in Northwest Arkansas.
“Later, it came to be known as a Springdale recreation place,” he said. “People would come out there and wash their cars and go swimming. There was a cave underwater. My great-grandparents would serve fruit.”
The Head family donated land for the first school in Washington County - the Jaybird school - he added.
On the other side, the girls’ mother Leila was born in Chicago, but her mother died in childbirth. Leila came to live with Laura Beeler in Johnson, where she ran a hotel for the railroad. This is the foster grandmother who deliveredthe twins.
“She was their grandmother, but not by birth,” Morris said. “And one of her husbands, Frank D. Jones, played football for the University of Arkansas in 1894 when they were called the Cardinals.”
“Daddy Carl” - as Morris called his grandfather - was the captain of the city’s first volunteer fire department. He helped the department bring the first fire truck to town in 1831.
Today, the restored engine still belongs to the fire department, nicknamed “Old Betsy.”
“That big bell would ring, and Daddy Carl would shoot out the door, and everything would stop,” recalled Morris, who spent a lot of time at this grandparents’ house while his parents worked.
Carl Head was an early member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Rodeo of the Ozarks Board of Directors. He also sold stock to open the town’s airport and bought the second stock certificate sold.
Head’s daughters are members of the Daughters of the Confederacy and they helped in the efforts to open the library and museum in Springdale.
KEEPING IN TOUCH
The women say they never fought - as children or adults.
“I’ve never seen them have a knock-down dragout,” Gary Morris said. “But they did have some ‘I’m not speaking to you for a few days.’
“But when Mom went to Vegas (to visit Gary, who lived there at the time), she called Marcy once a day.
“They are extra personable,” Morris continued. “If they were out to lunch or at Branson or a Vegas show, invariably, somebody would want to take a picture. And if they started a conversation, they were instantaneously friends.”
“If you could tell your life story, what would you tell people,” asked Susan Young, outreach coordinator for Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale.”
“We’d tell them of 90 years of being together.”TWIN FACTS Drucilla Head Marcella Head
Born: June 23, 1923 (Drucilla is 10 minutes older.)
Where: The home of their grandmother, Laura Beeler in Johnson
Parents: Leiliah and Carl Head
Marriages: Drucilla married
Kenneth Morris on March 16,
- They had one son, Gary Morris.
Marcella married Charles Sha rum on April 7, 1946.
Source: Staff Report
Style, Pages 27 on 09/12/2013