Joseph "Jodie" Howell Dunagan

"Jodie" Dunagan was born February 23, 1883 to parents Lorenzo Dow Dunagan and Mary Ann ?.

1880 census shows his parents with Joe's siblings: Cotter?, Mattie, Robert and Levi, in Callahan County, Texas before his birth. The 1900's find him in Duncan, Graham County, Arizona Territory living in the household of his cousin, Joseph H. McCleskey. (Note: This cousin would still be in Graham Co, AZ for the 1910 census....but he would live with Joseph in the 1920 and 1930 census of Menard County, Texas).

Jodie married Mary Elizabeth Dye in November 1908 in Arizona. Mary was born February 17, 1880 in Dripping Springs, Texas.

For the 1910 census, Joe and Mary are still living in Graham County, Arizona.

Jodie died in Menard County, Texas August 28, 1974 and is buried in Resthaven Cemetery next to his wife, Mary Elizabeth, who died November 10, 1976.

Menard Messenger-June 28, 1923

"Mrs. J. H. Dunagan whose husband runs a store about twenty miles up the river, and sister, Mrs. C. T. Sullivan of Austin, honored the Messenger office by a short call Monday. Mrs. Sullivan, accompanied by her husband, Miss Dyer and Mr. Frazier of Austin, was sent to Menard county to visit her sister and regain her health. The others returned to Austin after a day or two's visit. After being here six days Mrs. Sullivan had gained five pounds and thinks Menard is a paradise. Mrs. Dunagan reports the tourists quite numerous along the river and said they furnished a source of quite a bit of revenue."

The Menard News
Thursday, November 25, 1976

Mary Dunagan Buried Nov. 12-----
Services were held at 2 on November 12 for Mary Dunagan. Services were held at the Mission Funeral Chapel with burial in Rest Haven Cemetery. Roben Hanes ? officiated.
Mrs. Dunagan passed away in Austin on November 10.
Born February 17, 1880 in Dripping Springs, Texas, she lived in Menard County for ? years. She was married to Joe Dunagan on November ?, 1908 in Arizona. She lived with her husband in a grocery store in Menard. She was a member of the Church of Christ.
She is survived by several nieces and nephews.
Serving as pallbearers were ? Amos, Henry Dale ?, H. H. Mears, Robert ?, Otis Lyckman, Jack ? and Billy Joe Haney.

(Note: I didn't have a good copy of this obit, so I couldn't read the material marked with a ?)

"Around Menard County they still talk of Joe Dunagan's aeroplane. "Jodie", as he was known, ran a small filling station and general store on a quiet country lane midway between Fort McKavett and Menard. When business was slack, Dunagan would slip out to his huge wooden garage, tinker to his heart's content. He was a mechanical genius, folks around Menard say, and a good blacksmith to boot.

"Jodie" was a blacksmith, a "piddler", a regular inventor; he could do or build anything, recalled Menard Justice of the Peace, Buddy Wymann, who knew Dunagan for 26 years. In his old workshop Dunagan transformed Model T. Fords into dump trucks and tractors repaired all manner of early-day machines. And he didn't stop there. "He would tell us how people would someday land on the moon," remembered his niece, Jean Sprouse of Austin. "He'd sit and draw us pictures of how they would do it, with the different rockets and all. People thought he was crazy at the time, but he was a genius…"

Dunagan never quite got to the moon. But he couldn't shake the thought of flying. "He had this motorcycle, sidecar and all," said former McKavett resident, Joe Freeman, "and he'd ride it all over the country; you could see his dust clouds miles away." So it was only natural that when he tired of flying down country roads, he'd figure out a way to put wings on his cycle, or vice-versa. An old story in the Menard News tells how Joe first acquired some blueprints from the Heath Airplane Co. in 1919 and "sat about building the Heath Parasol Plane." The four-cylinder engine from his motorcycle became the flying machine's power plant, while the cycle's wheels were reborn as a tricycle landing gear. Prop for the plane was ordered from Fort Worth and Joe set about the tedious task of fashioning a fuselage from steel tubing, covering it with Irish linen, sealing the cloth with "an airplane coating material."

It took awhile, working in spare moments, between customers. But finally early one morning Joe pushed open the massive wooden garage doors, wheeled his contraption across the road to a pasture. What happened next is anyone's guess. In the Menard News story, it went like this: "He decided to taxi around a bit, had read some books on flying but had never had any lessons, so he really did not intend to fly." Calling on his memory for some of the tips on flying he had read in books, he circled the field and brought the plane down in what he called a pretty fair landing-just a little too heavy."

He never flew the plane again, the News said. "I was scared so bad that one time, I never wanted to go back again," they quoted Duragan as saying. Wymann said that was the way it went, while Ms. Sprouse agreed that "he flew it just one time in the air." Some old timers just wink though; say the plane never left the ground. "Just didn't have enough power to get up in the air," one man who farmed near Dunagan's store said. "But it does make a better story to say he flew…" So, who kows? Whether he ever made it off the ground or not doesn't really matter to folks around Menard. Dunagan's place as a minor Menard County legend is forever safe.

Today the shop still stands, much as it was when Dunagan sweated and dreamed inside the tool-lined walls. Bits and parts of rusting, crude machinery litter the yard behind it. But the plane? Some men from Eden bought it, hauled it away in a truck, years ago. Stories tell that it was wrecked, without ever leaving the ground.

Dunagan died in 1974, a 92-year-old man. But his legends still live along the San Saba. And his workshop stands as a dusty monument to the spirit of early-day West Texas resourcefulness and genius."

SOURCE: Article Taken from "Stalkin Kin" Vol. 5 No. 1, published by the San Angelo Genealogical Society and posted here with permission.

NOTE:  While I strive for accuracy in all transcriptions, please be advised that typing errors may be present.  I would suggest you always verify my online information with a copy of the actual record.

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