The Daily Alaska Empire newspaper (Juneau, Alaska)
February 13th 1946 – Ardmore Oklahoma – at least 14 persons were injured none seriously in a tornado which struck this southern Oklahoma city of 20,000 early today strewing homes in its path and disrupting telephone and power lines.
The city was plunged into complete darkness when telephone and power lines were snapped by the storm as it centered it’s force in the southeastern part of Ardmore.
Lieutenant Arch Marriott of the State Highway Patrol reported that 14 persons have been hospitalized and that rescue workers still were groping through the debris for others injured.
At least 25 houses were demolished and a number of others were unroofed or otherwise damaged.
Additional information later: The F3 tornado struck the eastern portion of Ardmore, in Oklahoma. The tornado killed one person, injured 15 others, destroyed 50 homes and damaged 1,700 other structures along a path of 4 miles. The damage was estimated up to $1.5 million (1946 USD).
This same tornado damaged the cupola on top of the Carter County Courthouse and later had to be completely removed..
I see the dirt work has started on the construction site for the new Southern Oklahoma Ambulance Service office and ambulance station in Ardmore. The location is E Street NW and 6th Street where the old Franklin Elementary School once stood. SOAS has come a long way since their office behind the old Seventh Day Adventist Hospital in a wood house when I started working there part time in 1969. I took the photo below in 1972. That pickup is SOAS employee Troy Loard’s and the bicycle belonged to Joe Pack as that was all he had to get to work after his divorce. With his next paycheck Joe bought a car for $50.
https://oklahomahistory.net/my-life-with-thesouthern-oklahoma-ambulance-serviceardmore-oklahoma/
Below is the Craddock Brothers Grocery store in Ardmore. The building burned down in the year 1900.
Crown Bottling Company – Ardmore Oklahoma pre-1910
Long before the major soda conglomerates standardized everything, local communities had their own independent bottling works to mix carbonated water, syrups, and regional favorites.
Operating back when Ardmore was still part of Indian Territory (I.T.), this plant was originally located on South Washington Street. Historical issues of The Daily Ardmoreite from 1910 list Morgan J. Davies as the President and Manager of the operation.
They advertised themselves as “bottlers of pure carbonated drinks.” Interestingly, independent plants like Crown often acted as regional contract bottlers for larger startup brands—at one point, Crown Bottling Works served as the local solo agent for bottling and distributing Coca-Cola in the immediate Ardmore area.
AI is getting too smart for its britches. I did a search using gemini.google.com (not the standard Google search) and searched for the following with quotation marks:
“who is butch bridges in ardmore oklahoma”
The results (actually 2 reports) from Gemini has blown me away.
https://oklahomahistory.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ButchBridgesProfileGeminiSearch.pdf
HAM Radio Talk By Butch Bridges KC5JVT
Echolink # 101960 – Allstar node # 58735 – HamsOverIP # 10301
From This Weeks Mailbag
Q. Do you have a picture of the old ice plant 1 block north of West Broadway and D Street?
A. Yes, a copy of the postcard was sent to me by Robert Hensley. The Ardmore Ice Plant Company.
Q. Do know when Reavis Drug first opened?
A. Here is what ChatGPT reports: The business originally operated as Reavis–Frame Drug Store, a partnership between Maynard Reavis and a member of the long-established Frame drugstore family in Ardmore. After the partnership dissolved, Maynard Reavis moved the business to the northeast corner of Main and B Streets and expanded it into what locals remembered as Ardmore’s first “super drug store.”
The Frame family had been in the Ardmore drug business since the 1880s. William Bascom “W. B.” Frame established a drug store in Ardmore in 1888, and the Frame name remained prominent in local pharmacy businesses for decades.
Estimated opening period
Based on the recollections of longtime Ardmore residents:
- Reavis Drug was already a major downtown institution by the 1940s.
- It was thriving in the 1950s and was known for its soda fountain and gathering place for local teens and servicemen.
- The move to the larger Main and B location occurred after the dissolution of the Reavis–Frame partnership, suggesting the business itself was older than the location many residents remember.
My best estimate is that Reavis–Frame Drug Store likely began sometime in the 1920s or early 1930s, with the standalone Reavis Drug operation following afterward. That estimate fits the known business history and the generation of people who remembered it as an established downtown landmark before World War II.
There is no free lunch -The exact phrase “There is no such thing as a free lunch” appeared in an editorial in the El Paso Herald-Post in June 1938, and a few months later in a speech by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
See everyone next week!
Butch and Jill Bridges
Ardmore Oklahoma
580-490-6823
https://oklahomahistory.net