Remembers seeing Pretty Boy Floyd’s funeral

Northeast of Sallisaw lies an area called Akins—a small community of just under 1,000 residents, home to Sequoyah’s Cabin, beautiful countryside and the Akins store.

For the casual passerby, the area might not seem like much, and historically speaking it has always been similar to what it is now. But for 97-year-old Roland resident Roy Spradlin, the landscape holds a wealth of memories and stories that stretch back to a different era.

Spradlin, born in Fort Smith in 1926, spent much of his childhood near Brushy and Belfonte with his family. For Roy, life as a child was not easy. His family, sharecroppers hit hard by the Great Depression, struggled to make ends meet.

“Back around the time of the Great Depression, I remember everybody was just so poor. We all had to make do with what we had available,” he said.

One of Spradlin’s earliest memories was when he was about four, sitting on his mother’s lap as his father drove a borrowed Model-A into Sallisaw.

“Back in those days, a lot of the streets were dirt,” he recalls. “We used to go into town to trade (groceries), and one time I remember being in the car bouncing along, sitting on mama’s lap, and my dad hit a bump pretty hard, and mama and I just fell out of the car.”

“Years later, mama told me that it was the first time daddy drove a car and he didn’t know how to steer away from bumps,” he said. “But I always wondered why there was no door on our side of the car.”

As a child, Sallisaw seemed like a big town to Roy, and a trip there was a special treat.

“While my dad traded, mama would always take me to this little store and buy me candy. We would sit outside the grocer’s waiting for daddy, and I always thought the town was so big, and that there were so many cars,” he said.

“Though looking back, there was probably only a handful—but to a child who never spent much time in an actual town, it was a pretty big deal,” he said.

After the Great Depression hit, his parents struggled to make ends meet and moved to Akins to work on a farm.

“There wasn’t much work at that time for people, and people were leaving for California. My dad made inquiries with folks and found a farm in Akins hiring hands, and we moved there and lived in a tent,” he said.

It was while living at this farm that Roy witnessed history.

“In October 1934, we kids were playing outside and we looked down the road and saw a line of cars as far as the eye could see,” Roy remembers. “This was curious because here we were in the middle of nowhere and only a few people drove on the road at all; it was strange. So, we ran to the fence and watched the cars on the road. I had only ridden in a car a few times, and the most cars I ever saw were in Sallisaw—but here were hundreds making a line to the Akins cemetery.”

He said eventually, his cousin ran inside to get his parents, and they came out and watched the cars with them.

“I mean to tell you— there were hundreds of cars,” he said. “Finally, daddy walked over to the cemetery to inquire about who had died, and came back and told us that it was Pretty Boy Floyd. We had heard of him before, he was kind of like Robin Hood to some folks. But he was a gangster, too.”

Roy said at some point, he and his parents ended up at the cemetery.

“We met with some family friends who had taken lunch and were picnicking in the actual cemetery. I remember running around with some other kids and even climbing into unlocked cars and sitting behind the wheel of a particularly beautiful Buick!” he said.

Roy said that he later heard that 20,000 people attended the funeral of Pretty Boy Floyd, which was held at the Akins Cemetery on Oct. 28, 1934. He said he also remembers his mother going back to the cemetery the next day and taking a couple of flowers from the fresh grave to press between pages in her bible.

Spradlin’s family moved to California in 1936, and Roy stayed there until his wife passed away in 2021. He then moved back to Oklahoma to live with his niece, Linda, in Roland. During his time in California, Roy was a car salesperson, farmer and banker.

“Most little towns are not very famous, but Akins sure drew a crowd that day!” he said.