When Barney was born, Mom didn't have a name chosen for him. When the doctor, Bruce Everett Fleetwood asked Mom what name she wanted on the birth certificate she said she didn't know what to name him. The doctor said, "well what's wrong with my name?" So he was named Bruce Everett.
Barney always hated the Everett name, and the kids nicknamed him 'Fleetwood'.
When Barney was drafted into the army in 1941, he renamed himself Bruce Robert on all his military records. It was never legally changed.
Barney and Bill were always very close as kids, so Bill wanted to name his first son after him, but was afraid it would get confusing having two Bruces in the family, so he named his boy Robert Bruce. The Robert, no doubt, was from mom's brother Robert Wheeler, who the whole family loved.
When the family lived at Linton, before they moved to Jasonville, Harold and Bruce were small boys. In that day people had wells in their yards instead of city water in the house. Not every piece of property had a good well on it, but the people who did were generally good about sharing their's with their neighbors.
Such was the case of the Griffith family, they carried water from their neighbor's well. It was Harold and Bruce's job to make sure the family had an ample supply of water.
The neighbors had a little girl, who would many times be playing in the yard when the boys came over, with their buckets, to get the water.
As boys will, they would cut up and act funny to amuse the little girl, and she really enjoyed it.
Now, at that time, the two most famous cartoon characters, in the newspaper, were Bube McNutt and Barney Google, so the little girl decided to name Harold, "Bube" and Bruce, "Barney". The nicknames stuck with them the rest of their lives.
Barney always seem to enjoy his nickname, but I don't think Harold was too excited about being called Boob. I never called him that after I got old enough to realize that Boob wasn't his real name.
Barney was married twice. His first wife was Edna Wise, (Born 01/01/23) the daughter of Clifford and Georgina Guthrie Wise. (Georgina was a sister to Edith's husband John Guthrie). Although Edna was pregnant more than once, during their marriage, she failed to carry any child to full term. The couple seperated in 1946 and later divorced.
In 1956, Barney met and married Arzella Shepherd, the daughter of Woodrow and Opal Keller Orman. Arzella, whose name is a composit of her Grandfather Keller's initials A.R. and Zella Anthony's name, was a widow. She was first Married to Basil Shepherd and had three children from that marriage. Basil Jr., Pamela and Deborah Shepherd.
Barney and Arzella had one son, Michael Bruce Griffith, born January 3, 1958. This marriage also ended in divorce. |
