Alta (Stanley) Lucus

Ancestors

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Biography

Alta Ruth Stanley was born on January 25, 1938, in rural Ellis County, Texas. She was the 5th of 13 children born to Hazel Washington and Odis Stanley. Alta and her family lived at numerous locations in Texas, moving often because her father was a tractor mechanic and he changed jobs often.

She married Dennis Ray Lucus on May 20, 1955, after he graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in mechanical engineering. He was a Lieutenant in the U. S. Army, Chemical Corps, and was subsequently stationed in Alabama. They moved to Anniston, Alabama, where their first child Dennis Jr. was born.

The Lucus family moved back to Texas after Lt. Lucus suffered from heat stroke while on duty and was given a medical discharge. Their second child, Marcia, was born in Fort Worth Texas. The family lived Stockton, California from c. 1961 to March 1962 while Dennis Sr. worked for Convair (a division of General Dynamics) as an aeronautics engineer. They moved back to Texas when he took a job with General Dynamics in Fort Worth.

Their third child, Paula, was born in Grand Prairie, Texas. Their last child, Mark, was born in Fort Worth, Texas. (Details about the children are omitted because they are all living.)

In 1967 the family moved to Seattle, Washington when Dennis Sr. took a job with Boeing. He worked on the SST project until it was cancelled in 1970, and they then moved to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania where he took a job with Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory in the nuclear reactors division.

In 1972 Dennis left the engineering industry to become a full-time minister for Garwood Baptist Church near Daisytown, Pennsylvania. After 2 years he returned to engineering and worked for coal and steel companies. The family moved back to Texas c. 1980. Dennis worked for Bell Helicopter and other companies as a hydraulics engineer until his death in 2004.

Alta worked a a secretary for various companies in Texas until she was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia in 1991. She died of this disease on November 8, 1992 in Fort Worth, Texas. She is buried in the Keene Cemetery of Keene, Texas.

Sources

• Personal records and observations, oral history

Texas birth certificate