A love story ...

Johnnie Baptist Bruno was born March 18, 1902, on the home place near Sacred Heart, Oklahoma; Beatrice Casteel  was born near Davenport, Oklahoma Feb. 28, 1907.  Johnnie was named for his paternal grandfather, John Baptiste Bruno, who had come to the Sacred Heart area when the Citizen Band Potawatomi were relocated from Kansas.
Johnnie was Citizen Band Potawatomi and Beatrice was Sac & Fox. All of their children were listed on the Sac & Fox Tribal rolls; the Sac & Fox are a matrilineal tribe.
Johnnie was the oldest of  the five children, who grew to adulthood, of Moses and Frances Bruno. They had 10 children all together and lost five of their children either as infants or as very young children. Beatrice was the oldest of five children born to Lizzie McKinney and James Casteel; their marriage ended in divorce and Lizzie later married Scott Porter.  The Casteel children were: Beatrice, Elizabeth “Libby,” Edith, Reba and James. The Porter children were: June, Jerdie, Winona and Alex. When Lizzie and James Casteel split up they divided up the children. He took Edith; Beatrice and Libby went to the Catholic Convent at Sacred Heart and Lizzie kept Reba and James. The first few years the girls were at the convent they went home on holidays and for a few weeks during the summer. The next few years the visits stopped, but they still got letters and cards. When the letters and cards stopped they decided they must be orphans. There were children there who were orphans and now they had become orphans, too. They stayed at the convent and  finished the eighth grade then went on to the Chilocco Indian School for  High School.  They both had a good education, but had no idea what family life should be like.
Johnnie and Beatrice were married Sept. 8, 1928, after a very short courtship of only three weeks. The story she told was that they knew each other a lot longer and had met when her sister, Libby, married his cousin, Sammy Bruno. When Aunt Lib’s first child, Anona, was born Bea stayed with her for a few weeks to help take care of the new baby and saw him again when he came to see the new addition to the family. She said she wasn’t attracted to him at first because he had a very bad reputation as a ladies man. There was also a rumor about him and a married woman. He told the story a little differently; his version is that Bea was working for his Aunt Julia as a maid/housekeeper and he saw her when he visited his cousins. He said it was love at first sight for him. She still wouldn’t give him the time of day and would try to stay out of sight when he was there visiting his cousins. However, his persistence finally convinced her to at least give him a chance. She agreed to a date, they saw each other every day and three weeks later they were married. She fell in love with him and loved him deeply until the day she died. I think he loved her too, they were always affectionate with each other; always kissing and touching even as their children were getting older and didn’t appreciate all that lovey-dovey stuff.
They had been dating only a couple of weeks when he asked her to marry him, and she said yes, but that she would need some time to prepare, he was so ready that he insisted that they wait no longer than the next weekend. She said the priest would never agree to that and he said they would just find a Justice of the Peace and would later have the marriage blessed by a priest. 
She was a vision in pink when he came to pick her up that Saturday. She wore a pink ankle-length dress with ruffles and lace, white heels that tied on the instep, white picture hat and white gloves. She was a tiny woman only 5 foot 1-inch tall and not more than 110 pounds and must have looked like a china doll. Her hair was  dark auburn and she had gray eyes. Her father was Irish and her coloring favored him.
Johnnie loved to dress up and was probably decked out in suit, tie and a small, snap brim hat. On the day of the wedding, and all dressed up in their wedding clothes, they set out in a borrowed Model T Ford to find the Justice of the Peace. They went to Konawa and found him at the jail. He said he would be happy to marry them, but they would need witnesses. They had been in such a hurry that they didn’t take the time to round up at least two witnesses. The Justice of the Peace said that there were plenty of witnesses in the lock up and they would do. The jail was one big room with the cells on one end. The prisoners were also the only wedding guests they had. They were married and went away for a day at an undisclosed location.
Their first child, Mildred, was born at home July 28, 1929. Bea said that Johnnie named her after an old girlfriend of his. Her middle name Celest was his little sister’s name. The little sister died as a toddler of an overwhelming fever. He told the story of her illness and last days. He was in his teens and very attached to the little girl.  He said he walked the floor with her for days trying to soothe her, but her fever was so high that the heat from her body was almost too much for him to bear. 
J.B. was born August 1930 on the home place. His was a difficult delivery and Grandma had a hard time getting him to cry. She finally rolled him back and forth on the bed and that stimulation was enough, he soon cried loud and long. Bea said she would never have another baby at home and the rest of her children  were born in hospital — Ruby, Bobbie and Dorothy at the Concho Indian Hospital and Jenny at St. Rose Hospital in Great Bend, Kansas.
The ‘Great Depression’ was felt in Oklahoma at about the time that Johnnie and Bea were having children and worrying about caring for them. All of Moses’ kids had homes on his 80-acre allotment. The family worked hard on the land and could provide food and shelter. There was not any money for anything else so the sons started looking elsewhere for work. The second world war was going on in the rest of the world;  in 1941 the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor and the Brunos’ lives changed forever. Johnnie worked for a time in the airplane plants in Oklahoma City, then went to California and worked in a shipyard. He didn’t like California and especially missed his family. Johnnie tried to find work in Oklahoma, but the prospects were worse than ever.
He saw a flier that advertised work in Indiana at an ammunition plant. It had a relocation aspect to it; if you agreed to stay one year the government would pay your expenses and move your family to LaPorte, Ind. He talked it over with Bea and they agreed to try it. They thought they could stay at least a year and not have to pay back the relocation expenses. Bea and Johnny went alone on the train and left the kids with Grandma and Grandpa Bruno. Bea had her pillows in her arms when she got on the train, she turned around with tears streaming down her face and waved at her children. The Indiana move was not a great success and the whole family soon tired of the long winter with snow and ice on the ground for months. The next move was to Ellinwood, Kan. Johnny went to work for Champlin Oil Co. and retired from there when he reached 65 years of age. He found retirement very dull and contracted back to the company for five or six years.
Bea died in January 1959 after a long and hard struggle with cancer and heart disease. She had breast and colon cancer; the surgeon thought they were two separate cancers and not a metastasis from one area to another. She had a huge lump in her breast before she told anyone about it. Johnnie finally convinced her to see a doctor  and she had a radical mastectomy. That was all that was available as breast  cancer treatment at the time.  She knew when she had a year to live and kept a daily diary of that last year. She never complained in the diary and only wrote, I had some pain today. In early January, 1959, she went to the hospital for what was supposed to be a gall bladder surgery, but turned into a colon resection when the surgeon found a large tumor mass in the area of her appendix. She died five days later; her heart could not hold up under the stress. The whole family took turns sitting up with her at the hospital because  they wanted someone to be with her at all times. Sons-in-law Darold and Speck were with her when she breathed her last.
Johnnie suffered a massive heart attack June 3, 1975, and died a few hours later.
Bea and Johnnie are missed everyday. They were good parents and their children knew they were loved. He talked to his children and tried to prepare them for a life that would not always be kind to them. He knew about prejudice first-hand and knew they would someday be the target for it. He knew he couldn’t keep it from happening; he just wanted them to be prepared.
Native people believe in a spirit world and that some of those spirits walk among us. Johnnie was a lightning rod for spirits of people who had just passed on and he often told of instances when he physically felt or saw the spirit of a beloved relative as they passed to the other world.
Rest in peace Dad, Rest in peace.