Maudie Elmer Trucks, born 1893

Maudie Elmer Trucks (Mama Peek) is the kind of woman you think of when you hear the poem about the women who propped up the South with a "swansdown fan." She looked so small and fragile, that you hardly realized that she had a core of strength few human beings have.

Her husband, Joel Harrison Peek (Daddy Joe) used to say, "She's little, but she's loud!" Somehow things got done when Mama Peek was around.

Mama Peek's father did not want her to get married. He threatened to get after Joel Peek with a shotgun if he came around the house! So, the young couple had to elope. Years later, Mr. Trucks came to live out his last years with his daughter and the man he had threatened with a shotgun! Daddy Joe and he seemed to get along just fine!

Maudie was the first woman in her area to wear slacks. It was somewhat scandalous for women to wear slacks in her day, but Maudie got away with it. She even wore them when going to visit her in-laws (or maybe she especially wore them, then)!

She was a staunch Baptist, but she liked for her children to be involved in the social events available to them in their small Arkansas town. Once, early one morning, out of town relatives suddenly arrived. While serving breakfast to her strict Baptist relatives, two of her daughters (probably Maxine and Patsy) showed up wearing what could only be dressy dance clothes. They had been to a party at the country club all night long. While the girls hustled upstairs, Maudie carried on her conversation with her guests, not apologizing or even taking notice that anything had happened. Apparently, her relatives knew her well enough not to comment on the situation, either!

At one time Daddy Joe owned a string of saw mills, and he and Mama Peek were very well off. But in the early days, Mama Peek cleaned houses for others to help earn the cash to get them under way.

They lost their first child, Bernice to a sudden, severe bout of diarrhea, a common illness that took away so many children back then. One day she was a perky, sassy little two year old who could kick her leg higher than her head, and the next day she was dead. Mama Peek never really got over it. She often talked about how the doctor quit being a doctor because he, too, was so upset over losing this child. He became a preacher.

Mama Peek's house burned down when Patsy (the middle child) was about eight years old. Hardly anything was saved except their lives. One man ran in and grabbed Mama Peek's rocking chair with people screaming, "Don't go in! Don't go in!" He knew it was special to her. He also grabbed the quilt on the bed next to the chair. We have that Dutch doll quilt. It was Patsy's. Mama Peek also found some melted silver globules that were her silver, and she sent those off to be remade in another pattern.

The kids were all separated out to various friends and family while Mama Peek and Daddy Joe rebuilt their home.

During World War II, Mama Peek's son, Joel Keith Peek, and two sons-in-law, Edgar Allman Branch, Sr. and William Leonard Hokanson (Tex) were all in Europe right in the thick of things. Joel was a nose gunner in a B-25 bomber and crashed over enemy occupied territory (Belgium). He was missing for about two months. A local family helped him get to the English channel and find a way across.

Tex was "missing" for about six weeks. Patsy did not get any mail from him, and Tex would write to her every day, so she knew something was wrong. They used to have mail delivery twice a day back then, so there were two times a day to be upset because there was no mail! Also, there were confused news accounts of heavy fighting right where the family thought he might be. After being involved in heavy fighting, his group had been sent to rest and recuperate in the Ardennes forest on Elsenborn Ridge! This was where the Germans began their offensive that was later called the Battle of the Bulge. Tex turned up in a hospital in England, just about the time everyone feared he must have been killed in action. And he had seen plenty of action, enough for a lifetime! Edgar had the most difficult job of all. He was with an identification detail that picked up wounded and dead soldiers, and tried to identify them, day in and day out!

The Peek family was luckier than many. Their family members all made it back.

On September 14, 1946 the Peek family was celebrating a belated birthday at home in De Queen, Arkansas. The family was almost all together again for the first time in years, when the phone rang. Everyone was at the table having birthday cake when Mama Peek took the call. Tex could hardly get the words out, so the doctor had to tell Mama Peek that if she wanted to see her daughter alive, she had better hurry to Houston! William Joel Hokanson had been born and was a healthy baby, but Patsy nearly bled to death. She lost so much blood that the doctor did not think she would survive.

Mama Peek later said that she almost arrived at the Arkansas train station still wearing her apron! Her tone of voice suggested that this was roughly equivalent to showing up in your underwear! She could joke about it because there was good news in Houston. Patsy made it and was soon home with her husband and baby.

Mama Peek did lose Patsy to cancer in 1978. S he said, "Now I've lost two daughters." The deaths were 67 years apart, but both losses were equally fresh and painful in her mind.

Mama Peek's heart gave out on her in 1987, and she passed away peacefully in her own home.

See also Solomon Peek Descendant Chart.

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