Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
You’re probably familiar with the Wright brothers of aviation fame, but Portales had its own Wright brothers, well-known in their time for sadder reasons.
Durward Haynes Wright and his younger brother Warren Wright both died during World War II, making their mom, Lillie Mae Wright, a double Gold Star mother, an honor no woman seeks.
With Memorial Day on the horizon, it’s a good time to remember this family.
You can find the Wright family marker in the Portales Cemetery, a short walk north of the Joe Blair pavilion where the American Legion’s Memorial Day observance is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Monday.
The four original family members share one elongated granite marker. The brothers are flanked by their parents — father Robert Durward on the left and mother Lillie Mae on the right.
The Wright family came to Portales in 1924. Young Durward would have been around 8 years old, and Warren around 5.
Mr. Wright worked at the Joyce Pruitt Department Store until it went out of business, and then at the Fields and Bonner Clothing Store until ongoing health issues forced his early retirement.
His namesake son enlisted in the United States Army on March 18, 1941. He ended up being one of 54 Roosevelt County boys in the Bataan Death March in early 1942.
On June 21, 1942, Durward Haynes succumbed to malaria while imprisoned by the Japanese in Camp Cabanatuan in the Philippines.
As if war itself is not tragedy enough, communication during World War II was unimaginably slow.
On June 22, 1942, Lillie Mae Wright buried her husband in the Portales Cemetery. He had died two days earlier, only a day before their son died in the Philippines with no knowledge of his father’s passing.
Newspaper accounts tell us that Mrs. Wright had no word whatsoever about Durward Haynes until February of 1943 when she was notified only that he was “a prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines.”
It would be another two years — sometime in January or February of 1945 — that she received “unofficial notice” of his death.
That piece of news came, heartbreakingly, only days before her younger son, Warren — known as “Sol” to his friends — was killed in action as a Marine on Feb. 19, 1945, the opening day of the battle of Iwo Jima.
Sol had enlisted on New Year’s Day of 1942, following his big brother into action.
Lillie Mae Wright lived to be 100. When she joined her husband and sons in the Portales Cemetery in 1994, the remaining Roosevelt County survivors of the Bataan Death March served as her honorary pallbearers.
On Monday as our nation observes Memorial Day, let’s take a moment or two to remember Roosevelt County’s Wright brothers and the woman who loved and buried them both.
They deserve nothing less.
Betty Williamson tips her hat with gratitude to all who have served and all who loved them. Reach her at:
