Arthur Wade

Arthur Wade was born in 1889 to Tom and Mary Wade in a small town in Texas. Arthur went to school for only a day and a half because he was needed at home to sharecrop the fields. As a result, he didn't learn to read or write. When he was older he worked as a sharecropper and mill-hand for the WPA and the Armour Packing House. When he was not at work, on occassions, Arthur would pass time playing the guitar at local juke-joints. While visiting a relative in Kansas City, Arthur met Velena McCain and her son Theodore. They eventually fell in love and were married in 1928. 

Although he was profcient in mathematics or what he called "ciphering", Arthur decided to go to night school where he learned to write his name. In 1929, a son, Arthur was born and 2 years later a baby girl, Gloria. Arthur moved his family to Oklahoma, so Velena could be close to her father, Frank McCain. While living there, they were blessed with three more childern, Nadine, Ruby and Willie. 

The larger Wade family, moved back to Kansas City, where Patricia and Thomas were born. Sadly, after the birth of Thomas, Velena passed away. Arthur then decided to move back to Oklahoma to start a new lile, where he met and married Maggalean Hinds who had seven children of her own; James, Bob, Ray, Bennie, Johnnie, Leon and Annie Mae. Arthur Wade passed in 1981, in Wichita, Kansas, leaving many grandchildren and great-granchildren to cotinue the legacy.