This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.
Students at the Gentry Intermediate EAST Students in Gentry, Arkansas, worked with the Gentry Public Library to produce a short documentary about everything from protecting local skies during the 1950s to supporting the library and feeding hungry families.
Burt Crume (00:05): One of the lasting legacies of community I described about in Gentry, is how citizens rallied to stop a bank robbery.
Janie Parks (00:14): On March 31st, 1923, the First National Bank building in Gentry was held up by the Al Spencer gang. About noon on that day, the bandits drove into Gentry in a new Studebaker car they had stolen in Tulsa. And came into the bank building with their guns a blazing, as some of the newspaper articles said. The cashier at the time, Mr. Covey, and three others were ordered to raise their hands and to give them the money in the bank vaults.
Janie Parks (00:49): Unbeknownst to the Spencer gang is that there was an alarm system in this brand new bank in 1923. And when the teller hit the button, the whole town rushed out into the streets to see what was going on at the bank. And a shootout ensued in the streets. And the Spencer gang fled over into Oklahoma. Got away. But were later arrested.
Burt Crume (01:19): One of the members of the Al Spencer gang was a guy named Henry Wells. And when I was a kid growing up in Okesa, Osage County, Oklahoma, there was an old man sitting around, leaning on a cane always, like this. But he had big handlebar mustaches. The only picture I could find of Henry Wells is one taken at Woolaroc in about 1927 when Frank Phillips started having the Outlaw Law Man Reunions picnic.
Burt Crume (01:48): Henry Wells did spend five years in McAllister, the state pen, in Oklahoma, that's where he made Al Spencer. And so they planned stuff. People have pretty much decided that Henry Wells wasn't part of the robbery part of the gang, but he did help in the planning and set it out. Don't know what happened for sure, with Henry Wells from when he got out of prison in 1923, until a story in 1946 in the Pawhuska Newspapers saying, "I'm going to retire from the banking business."
Danny Feemster (02:18): Well, it was a tower that had a walkway built up on top of one of the businesses on main street, which was Blacker's Variety for years, I believe around along in there now. It's across from where ACE Hardware was. But it was manned 24/7, and we took volunteers, took time periods. Maybe you'd be there from two or three hours. Any time a plane went over, you'd tell the direction it was going. And whether it was a little plane, a big plane, because we didn't know the makes of all the planes.
Danny Feemster (02:50): But that was what it was for. It was reported, I don't know what it was reported, just as soon as we saw it or what. When I was up there, I had covered an area time reporting, but I don't ever remember calling anything in. So I don't know how that worked. This was back in probably the early '50s.
Marla England (03:09): It had to be around the middle ‘50s, because I barely remember. I was born in 55 and I barely remember going up there with my parents, because it was such a interesting, sort of scary thing to do.
Find a complete transcript: www.museumonmainstreet.org
Asset ID: 2022.06.01
