Link and Sibbie Shook
Written by Judson Shook
Lemuel Broadway (Link) Shook
(1875 Jeddo TX – 1940 Lake Charles LA) and his wife Sarah Sibbie (Sib) Graham
(1879 Bastrop Co TX – 1967 Gatesville TX) were born 5½ air miles from one
another. They were married Dec 23,
1897and their wedding picture was taken in Smithville, TX. They had two children: Colonel Judson Shook Sr (1899 Cistern TX
– 1975 Junction TX) and Clarence B. Shook (1908 TX – 1967 near Gonzales,
LA). I was 15 years old when Link
died. I remember my grandparents
well, having lived with them in the same house for a short period during the
Great Depression. Now, sixty-two
years, I am the oldest descendant of my grandparents.
Sib
was the granddaughter of Andrew Graham and the daughter of Andrew Kenner
Graham. Sib was one of nine
children. Their house was 5.4 air
miles from Cistern, 3.7 from Rosanky and 11 ¼ from Smithville. About 1997 the Graham house was still
there, but well beyond repair. The
GPS coordinates are 97-16-30, 29-52-56. Interestingly, the picture included in
this website was taken of the AKG family in front of their house about 1895, and
the picture includes Link standing next to Sibbie.
Link’s father, James Wilson
Shook, was a Primitive Baptist preacher who was active in the McMahan and Llano
area. Link somewhat typified the
term “Preacher’s Kid”. He
especially enjoyed being with people – wherever he found them. It is said he could play a banjo and to
a “soft shoe” dance step, which he learned from train porters during his travels
as an area salesman for a tobacco firm.
In the early part of his married life he prospered but over the years a
series of problems beset him. It
was said that one of his business partners betrayed his trust, costing Link a
great deal of money – and then just as Link invested heavily in the export of
cedar from the Llano area, the advent of World War I destroyed the demand for
the highly prized wood in Europe – particularly in England. After recovering from this financial
setback, and again enjoying some measure of prosperity for a few more years, the
Great Depression came along and before the world’s economy was restored, Link
died.
Link and Sib talked a lot
about places they had lived. These
are the ones I recall: Cistern,
Llano, Brownwood, Hico, Spicewood, DeRidder (LA), Lampasas, Gold (10 miles NE of
Fredericksburg) and Gillis (LA). It
may have been they just owned land at some of these places, without ever living
there. I know he and his brother
Oliver owned the Shook & Shook general store in Llano and in Lampasas
they owned the Hetherly Hotel, Lions Drugstore, as well as the café. I still have a small facial scar I
sustained in the café while spinning one of the mushroom seats at the “soda
fountain”.
Link was known to stay out
“with the boys” occasionally and he drank more than Sib would have liked. She evidently poured out any whiskey she
found other than the “hot toddy” liquor they administered when someone had bad
colds or the flu. In later years
Sib would chuckle about these hide-and-seek operations to keep Link from
over-imbibing. She was always
upbeat enough to find humor in many of life’s problems. She had a remarkable way of persevering
when most of us would have been downcast.
Whatever she lacked in physical size was made in grit.
After Link died in a Lake
Charles hospital, Sib moved to Gatesville to live with her mother. When Leah died, Sib and her sister Lina
moved to a house on Pidcoke Street, at the SE corner of Lutterloh. Her sister Edna and brother-in-law
Charlie lived just a couple of houses to the north, providing one another with
family support.
In
February of 1966 – a week or so before leaving to command the 432nd
Civil Engineering Squadron at Udorn, Thailand – my mother and I drove from
DeRidder to Gatesville to see Sibbie for what turned out to be the last time,
ever. She was very frail, but still
high spirited enough for the three of us to have a very good visit. Despite the divorce of my parents,
Mother and Grandmother always retained their great affection and admiration for
each other. I thought then as I do
now that God gave me the best there was in the way of mothers and
grandmothers.
Shortly after returning from
Southeast Asia, I was called that Sibbie had died and that she had wanted me to
see to it that she be properly buried, as she and I had agreed a year or so
before. We had two services for her
– the one in Gatesville and a one smaller one in DeRidder – and then she was
buried next to Link in the Moss Bluff as she had wished.
The
only of her kinsmen who live near the cemetery are my twin nephews, Steve and
Gary Shook, and my nephew’s four children:
Stephanie, Taylor, Ryan and Garrett. They live in Sulphur, about 8.5
air miles from the cemetery where Link and Sib are buried. As it turned out, they were buried close
to the largest concentration of their descendants there is – and about 5½ miles
from the place from Gillis where their last few years together.