Ranay Churchwell, of Dale, recently made a decision to share part of her family’s history with the people in her hometown.
She bought the Dale Post Office boxes, which had been in her parent’s store, during an online auction, and now she’s selling the doors for $50 each to recover part of the money she spent on them.
Her friend, David Thompson, who loves history and bought four of the doors, encouraged Churchwell. The first to commit to buying them, Thompson was happy to receive the post office box doors used by his grandparents, Carthel and Allie Thompson, his parents, and an aunt. He also picked one up for a cousin on Sept. 23. His father grew up in Dale, and he has fond memories of visiting his grandparents.
Thompson recalls that the Dale Grocery and Market/US Post Office was the only store in “town proper,” although there was another gas station on the curve at Westech Rd. and Hwy. 270.
Yvonne Dossey Sibley – a Dale resident of 50 years – bought three doors. They had been used by her and her husband, Jerry, her inlaws, Hugh and Mary Dossey, and her brother, Omer Gillham.
There were a total of 13 doors sold that evening out of 104 in small, medium and large sizes. Churchwell looked up the combination codes for the doors in a notebook of records her mother kept, which was once thought lost until found in a desk at the store. She would also include the labels with names affixed to the back of the post office boxes, if the customer wished.
When she first got the bank of boxes, built by the Keyless Lock Company in 1955, Churchwell posted about them to friends and family on Facebook. Then, she posted her offer to the Dale High School Alumni Association page.
“The response has been overwhelming. It really has, and it’s been real surreal, you know,” she said. “It’s been really almost tear-jerking. … They can remember coming, you know, and checking the mail for grandma or coming with them or … getting to come and get a soda pop while they were checking the mail.”
“The response has been more than I ever expected. And … tonight was only just a drop in the bucket.”
Churchwell’s uncle, Doyle Peters, owned the store/post office at 208 Oklahoma Ave., and when he passed away, her parents, Bill and Corine Chrz (pronounced “Herz”), moved with their family from Oklahoma City and bought the store in 1973.
Churchwell was a freshman in high school when they moved into the adjoined house. She said her mother sorted the mail into the boxes most of the time, but she would fill in and take over the duty when her parents had other plans.
“I have fond memories of putting up the mail if, you know, mom and daddy took a trip or did something,” she said. “It came in a big canvas bag, and they threw it out on the porch. And we’d go out and get it, and we had a key to unlock it, to unlock the bag. It was sorted, like first class, and then second, or third class or whatever. It was sorted like that, but it wasn’t sorted, as far as names.”
Because of that, when she started taking orders for the doors, Churchwell could remember some of the box numbers before people told her.
The Dale store sold “a little bit of everything,” including gas, in ethyl or regular, and a variety of groceries. Bread, milk, and pop were delivered, but some things like canned goods had to be bought wholesale and hauled. When Churchwell was in high school, her parents started catering to Dale students.
“When mom and daddy had it, they put a window in outside, so the kids could come,” she said. “The high school kids could come for lunch, and we had pizza, and we had sandwiches. We had chips and pop.”
“That was always fun with the kids hanging out on the porch and sitting and talking.”
That business stopped when the school became a closed campus and added vending machines to their buildings. After Churchwell graduated, her younger brother was active in FFA and didn’t have as much time to help out at the family business.
The Chrzes closed the store, but kept the lobby open for the public to check their mail. Churchwell’s mother would still sort the mail and sell stamps at the window. There was also a “big, blue box” outside, and they bagged, locked and left outgoing mail on the porch daily for a delivery truck.
Around 1989, the post office boxes were moved, her father “went to the farm,” and her mother drove a Gordon Cooper VoTech school bus for a time before she, too, retired. Churchwell’s parents didn’t sell the building until recent years, though, when Dale Public Schools made them an offer. In 2018, the administration building was built in its place, and new post office lock boxes stand nearby – the only place US mail is delivered now in Dale.
The worst part of losing their post office, said Churchwell, was losing their own zip code.
“We used to have our own zip code; it used to be 74838,” she said.
They are now considered to be part of McLoud’s zip code area, which gets confusing if there are any shared street names. Churchwell said there is an Oklahoma Ave. in McLoud, and they often received someone else’s mail.
The beginnings of the store/post office were in King, Indian Territory, in 1890, according to The Oklahoman Archivist. King was on the stagecoach line between Tecumseh and Oklahoma City after the Land Run in 1889.
On http://sites.rootsweb.com/~okpcgc/ towns/king.html, it said the first postmaster for King was George A. Newsom, followed by John King, the town’s namesake, and then Ransom B. Kennedy. Kennedy was the first to build his home and general store in King. When the town moved to its present location, closer to the Choctaw, Oklahoma & Gulf Railroad, in 1895, and was renamed Dale – after Territorial Judge Frank Dale – the post office was relocated to his store.
