Vital Information
| Field | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Birth Name | Infant Lloyd (no given name at birth) | Kansas City birth certificate, File No. 916 |
| Later Name | Aura Gale Orrill (applied after custody transfer) | WikiTree Orrill-24 |
| Known As | Gale Fulghum | Obituary, memoir |
| Born | 19 Feb 1923, General Hospital, Kansas City, MO | Birth certificate |
| Died | 2 Oct 2007, Independence, MO (at home) | Obituary |
| Burial | Salem Cemetery (cremation) | Obituary |
| Biological Mother | Clara Francis Loyd (1903-1984), later Cowden. Youngest of 7 children of Reeves Edward Loyd and Annie Ashby Haines, Kansas City. Married Earl Mead Cowden 39 days after Gale's birth. Had 7 more children. Died Ordway, CO. | Birth certificate, FamilySearch LH77-CZK |
| Biological Father | Edward Awalt (Charles E. Awalt, 1893-1940), WWI veteran, KC typewriter mechanic. Confidence: Near-Certain. Earl Mead Cowden ruled out by DNA (zero Cowden matches). Three independent Awalt-line branches converge on Clay's paternal DNA (James Thomas 55 cM via Sophia Awalt 1803; Kristina Stage 18 cM via Jacob Edward Awalt 1806; multiple Scarbrough matches via Edward's mother Mary Emma Scarbrough). Only known Awalt in KC during conception (~May 1922); unmarried at time; married Anna Mae Pollard 58 days before Gale's birth. Formal confirmation pending direct DNA comparison with Awalt descendants (Mark Arth, Brett Arth, KC area). | Birth certificate, AncestryDNA, WWI transport records, FamilySearch records |
| Custodial/Legal Mother | Sybil Dora Holt, known to family as "Mumo" (b. 1900, Wilmot, KS; d. 1989) | WikiTree Holt-14739, oral tradition |
| Custodial/Legal Father | Clinton "Jack" Orrill (b. 1900; d. 13 Mar 1926) | WikiTree Orrill-24 |
| Adoptive/Stepfather | Fred Forrest Fulghum (1895-1966), WWI veteran. Formally adopted Gale; amended birth certificate filed Jan 28, 1946. | FaG #25618094, memoir, State File AL 10906 |
| Brother (deceased) | Leo Eugene Orrill (9-15 Mar 1922; lived 6 days) | WikiTree Orrill-25 |
| Stepbrother | Robert Edgar "Bob" Fulghum (1924-2003) | FaG #135422906 |
| Spouse | Doris Vaughan (m. 14 Sep 1944, Chicago) | Doris obituary |
| Children | Gary Vaughan Fulghum (b. 7 Oct 1948, Independence Sanitarium and Hospital) | Birth certificate State File 64991 |
Their Story
Infant Lloyd
On February 19, 1923, a boy was born at General Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. He had no name. The birth certificate, File No. 916 in the Kansas City Department of Health, recorded him as "Infant Lloyd." His mother was listed as Clara Lloyd (maiden name). The line for "Name of father" was left blank. Dr. W. L. Gist attended the birth.
General Hospital was the city's public hospital. The blank father field and the absence of a given name suggest an unmarried mother, a child who entered the world without the usual anchors of family identity.
The mother was Clara Francis Loyd (1903-1984), the youngest of seven children of Reeves Edward Loyd and Annie Ashby Haines. Clara was 19 or 20 years old, unmarried, working as a clerk at a mail order house. Her mother Annie had died eight years earlier; Clara had been boarding in Kansas City with her widowed father since at least 1920. Thirty-nine days after the birth, on March 30, 1923, Clara married Earl Mead Cowden (1901-1974) of El Reno, Oklahoma. She would go on to have seven more children with Earl and live until 1984.
The adoption record (Case AD-12551) reveals how the infant came into the Orrill household: Sybil and Clinton/Jack "secured this child from a mother whom a cousin recommended to them." A cousin in the Holt or Orrill family network served as intermediary, connecting them to Clara Lloyd. The petition states they had custody since the child was two weeks old (~early March 1923) and the mother was last seen at that time; she was last heard from when the child was one year old (~February 1924). Sybil had lost both children from her first marriage (Leo Eugene Orrill, who died at 6 days, and a second child whose identity is unknown), and a doctor had advised her against further pregnancies. The child was given the name Aura Gale Orrill and raised as their own. Earl Mead Cowden has been ruled out as Gale's biological father by DNA evidence (2026-03-28: Clay Fulghum's AncestryDNA shows zero Cowden matches). The father was almost certainly Edward Awalt (1893-1940), a WWI veteran living in Kansas City under the name Charles E. Awalt. He was the only man with the rare Awalt surname (~1,200 bearers in the US) in Kansas City during the conception period, was unmarried, and worked as a typewriter mechanic. Three independent branches of the Awalt family converge on Clay Fulghum's paternal DNA, and Clay has multiple paternal matches with descendants of Edward's mother's family (Scarbrough of Bastrop County, Texas). Edward married Anna Mae Pollard 58 days before Gale's birth. He went on to have two children: Dr. Charles Harold Awalt (1926-1998) and Polly Nan Awalt Arth (1929-2014). Gale's half-siblings lived in the Kansas City area for decades without any of them knowing of the connection.
What is certain is that by the time Gale was old enough to form memories, he knew only the Orrill household, and later, only the Fulghum name.
A Name That Was Not His
The name "Aura Gale Orrill" appears on WikiTree and in family tradition, but it is not on the original birth certificate. It was applied after the fact, either through an amended birth certificate or through informal adoption. The name "Aura" came from the Woodward family: Mary Alvira Woodward's brother was Aura Clair "Clarence" Woodward (1884-1939). This Orrill family naming convention suggests the Orrills chose the name, not Clara Lloyd.
The adoption record establishes that Gale was not born into the Orrill household but was obtained through a family network: "a mother whom a cousin recommended to them." This makes it less likely that Clinton was Gale's biological father and more likely that the arrangement was a private, informal adoption facilitated by a mutual connection. The biological father, identified through DNA as Edward Awalt, had no known connection to the Orrill family.
Gale had an older brother in the Orrill household: Leo Eugene Orrill, who lived only six days in March 1922. Leo was born to Clinton and Sybil. The adoption record also mentions a second child from Sybil's first marriage who died, currently unidentified.
The Explosion
On March 13, 1926, Gale was three years old. That morning, a tar still exploded at the Standard Oil refinery in Sugar Creek, Missouri. Clinton "Jack" Orrill, age 25, was killed. Less than three months later, his father Frederick Thomas Orrill also died. In a matter of weeks, Gale lost both his custodial father and his paternal grandfather.
Sybil was 25, widowed, with a toddler. She was hundreds of miles from her family in Cowley County, Kansas. What happened next is described briefly in Gale's memoir and confirmed through census and family records: she sent Gale and Bob (Fred Fulghum's son from his first marriage) to live with her uncle and aunt on a Kansas farm.
The Kansas Farm
The uncle and aunt were John William Holt and Clara Effie Kennedy Holt, who ran a 160-acre farm near Wilmot, Cowley County, Kansas. In his memoir, Gale calls them his "foster grandparents." If Sybil was not his biological mother, they were not his blood relatives at all, though the term "foster" takes on a different and perhaps more literal meaning.
The farm near Wilmot is where Gale's earliest memories begin. He attended kindergarten in Augusta, Kansas, in 1929. The memoir, written at age 81, recalls the farm with uncomplicated affection. The Holts raised the boys as their own.
A New Father, A New Name
In 1927, Sybil married Fred Forest Fulghum in Wichita, Kansas. Fred was a World War I veteran (Corporal, Gas Service Company) from New Paris, Ohio, of French descent, who worked as a gas fitter. Fred's first wife, Margaret Parsons, had died on December 14, 1926, leaving him with a young son, Robert Edgar "Bob" Fulghum. Gale was 4 years old at the time of the marriage and was already in Sybil's care. The adoption record notes that Fred "knew of the child and was perfectly satisfied with the responsibility he was assuming." The family moved to Independence, Missouri in 1929 and settled at 1222 North Liberty Street. Both Fred and Sybil were members of the Presbyterian Church, and Gale was raised in that faith.
Fred gave Gale the Fulghum surname. The adoption petition (Case AD-12551) was filed around 1943, when Fred was 48 and Superintendent of the Gas Service Company. The court record states the child "has been entirely dependent upon them and he has supported and cared him willingly and gladly and with no assistance from the child's natural parents." On January 28, 1946, an amended birth certificate was filed with the Missouri Division of Health (State File AL 10906), listing Fred Forrest Fulghum as father and Dora Sybil Holt as mother, with the child's name as "Aura Gale Fulghum." This was Gale's third name: born Lloyd, renamed Orrill, now Fulghum. Gale was 20 when the petition was filed and 22 when the amended certificate was finalized. Bob was already a Fulghum by birth. The two boys, stepbrothers with no shared blood, grew up together as brothers.
What Gale Knew
Gale knew he was not Sybil's biological child. He possessed an envelope labeled "do not open until my death" that contained his original Kansas City birth certificate, the one showing him as Infant Lloyd, son of Clara Lloyd. He carried this document, and this secret, for his entire adult life. He told Gary directly that Sybil was not his biological mother, and suggested that Clinton Orrill might not have been his biological father either ("maybe on Jack"). But the birth certificate itself he kept sealed.
How Gale obtained the original, unredacted birth certificate is itself a mystery. According to Patricia Becker of the Missouri District Court, the process for adoptees to obtain their original (pre-amendment) birth certificate was not available until 2019. Prior to that, the amended certificate (showing the adoptive parents) became the permanent document. Gale obtained a certified copy of his amended certificate on June 21, 1979 (the document itself says so). But he also had the original File No. 916 document showing "Infant Lloyd" and Clara Lloyd. Gary notes that Gale had friends in political places in Jackson County. This access may explain how he circumvented the normal process, and may also explain his reluctance to share what the certificate revealed.
In his 2004 memoir "The Best of Times," Gale wrote about "Jack and Sybil Orille" as his parents, calling them his "assumed biological parents" in a photo caption. The word "assumed" was not casual phrasing. It was a man of 81 writing around a secret he had carried for decades, leaving a breadcrumb for anyone who might one day look closely enough.
Football, Engineering, and the War
Gale graduated from William Chrisman High School in Independence in 1940. He attended William Jewell College before transferring to the University of Oklahoma, where he played on a championship football team and received honorable mention All-American. By 1942, at age 19, he was at the Missouri School of Mines in Rolla (his draft registration card lists his employer and mailing address as 509 W. Eleventh, Rolla, Phelps County). He registered as "Gale (None) Fulghum," listing no middle name and giving Fred F. Fulghum as his permanent contact. Through the Navy V-12 Program, he graduated with honors in Metallurgical Engineering.
He entered the Navy as an officer during World War II, serving in the Southwest Pacific. After graduating from Navy Midshipman School in Chicago, he married Doris Vaughan on September 14, 1944. The marriage joined two Jackson County, Missouri families: the Fulghums (by adoption) and the Vaughans, whose roots in the county went back to the 1830s.
Meanwhile, his stepbrother Bob Fulghum served with the 860th Engineer Aviation Battalion in the South Pacific, building airstrips across the island-hopping campaign.
Gale and Sybil
Gale's relationship with Sybil was deeply strained. According to his son Gary, Gale hated Mumo. In light of the birth certificate, this may have been compounded by the knowledge that Sybil, who was not his biological mother, had claimed him as her own. (Source: Gary Fulghum, oral testimony to Jordan Fulghum, March 2026. Confidence: Moderate Signal, single oral source, but from Gale's only child.)
The Uncle He Never Mentioned
Gale's paternal uncle (in the Orrill family), Price Vinton Orrill, lived in Blue Springs, Jackson County, from 1930 until his death in 1990. Gale lived in Independence, in the same county, for most of his adult life. The two men were less than 20 miles apart for decades. Yet Gary Fulghum, Gale's only child, never knew Price existed. If Gale had no biological connection to the Orrills, his silence about them is less surprising: they were the family of a man who may have been his custodial father but not his blood. (Source: Gary Fulghum, oral testimony to Jordan Fulghum, March 2026. Confidence: Moderate Signal, single oral source.)
After the War
After the war, Gale worked as an engineer at Jones and Laughlin Steel Company (per Gary's 1948 birth certificate), later in production management for Westinghouse and for International Systems Controls. He and Doris had one son, Gary Vaughan Fulghum, born October 7, 1948, at Independence Sanitarium and Hospital. The attending physician was M. W. Etzenhouser, M.D. They were lifelong members of the First United Methodist Church of Independence.
In January 2004, at age 81, Gale wrote "The Best of Times," an 80-page memoir dedicated to his grandson Clayton Vaughan Fulghum. It is the primary source for much of this family's history: the photographs of "Jack and Sybil Orille" in Fairmount, the Kansas farm, the relatives he called his "foster grandparents," the original surname lost to a phonetic misspelling. Without it, the Orrill connection might never have been recovered.
Gale died on October 2, 2007, at his home in Independence, Missouri, at age 84. He was cremated and buried at Salem Cemetery. The birth certificate that revealed his true origin was obtained by his son Gary in March 2026, nearly two decades after his death.
Document Sources
| Document | Type | Vault Note |
|---|---|---|
| Kansas City birth certificate, File No. 916 (1923) | Vital record (original birth registration) | Gale_Fulghum_Birth_Certificate_1923 |
| Missouri amended birth certificate, State File AL 10906 (filed 1946) | Vital record (post-adoption amended certificate) | Gale_Fulghum_Adoptive_Birth_Certificate_1946 |
| WWII Draft Registration Card (1942) | Selective Service record | Gale_Fulghum_Draft_Card_1942 |
| "The Best of Times" memoir (2004) | Personal memoir, 80-page scanned PDF | Fulghum/The Best of Times - Gale Fulghum (2004).pdf |
| Speaks Chapel obituary (2007) | Funeral home obituary | speakschapel.com |
| Doris Fulghum obituary (2014) | Funeral home obituary | signaturefunerals.com |
| Gary Fulghum birth certificate, State File 64991 (1948) | Vital record | Gary_Fulghum_Birth_Certificate_1948 |
| Independence Sanitarium and Hospital certificate (1948) | Hospital record | Gary_Fulghum_Birth_Certificate_1948 |
| Circuit Court of Jackson County, MO, Case AD-12551 (~1943, released Mar 2026) | Adoption record (primary) | Gale_Fulghum_Adoption_Record_AD12551 |
Data Discrepancies
| Field | Source A | Source B | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Birth name | "Aura Gale Orrill" (WikiTree Orrill-24) | "Infant Lloyd" (birth certificate File No. 916) | Birth certificate is the primary source. "Aura Gale Orrill" was applied later. |
| Biological mother | "Sybil Orille" / Sybil Dora Holt (memoir, WikiTree) | Clara Francis Loyd (1903-1984), birth certificate + FamilySearch LH77-CZK | Birth certificate is the primary source. Sybil was custodial/legal mother, not biological. Clara identified through census chain and marriage record (married Earl Mead Cowden 39 days after birth). |
| Biological father | Clinton "Jack" Orrill (WikiTree) | Blank (birth certificate). Earl Cowden ruled out by DNA (2026-03-28). Leading candidate: Edward Awalt / Charles E. Awalt (1893-1940). | No father listed on birth certificate. Earl Cowden eliminated. Edward Awalt identified as only Awalt in KC during conception; unconfirmed pending DNA. |
| Relationship to Holts | "Foster grandparents" (memoir) | Great-uncle/aunt of Sybil, no blood relation to Gale | If Sybil was not his biological mother, the Holt connection is through custody, not blood. |
Photographs from KSGenWeb
The KSGenWeb Cowley County page, maintained by a descendant of Price Vinton Orrill (Gale's uncle), contains photographs of the Orrill and Adams families in the Wilmot area. Several are directly relevant to Gale's custodial parents and extended family.
Clinton "Jack" Orrill, Gale's Custodial Father, c. 1914-1917
!hunters.jpg Taken beside the house on the Orrill farm after a day's hunting. Left to right: Alva Parsons (he married Alice Orrill), Jack Orrill (name was Clinton Orrill, a brother to Price Orrill), Jim Deichman (married Eunice Adams), Tom Adams (brother to Edith and Eunice Adams, and he married Velva Orrill) and the last is Price Vinton Orrill. (1914-1917.) Source: KSGenWeb Cowley County. Jack/Clinton is second from left; he would have been 14-17 years old in this photograph and would die less than a decade later.
The Orrill Family, c. 1917
!Orrill-Family.jpg Orrill family. Back row standing left to right is Clinton (Jack) Orrill, Velvalie (Velva) Orrill, and Price Vinton Orrill. Front row seated is Alice Orrill, Mary Alvira Woodward Orrill (Mollie, aka Doll) and Nina Leta Wells Orrill. (Father Frederick Thomas Orrill rarely had his picture taken.) Abt 1917. Source: KSGenWeb Cowley County. This is Gale's custodial father (back left), custodial paternal grandmother (front center), and custodial paternal uncle and aunts.
Sybil Holt in School Photo
!Students.jpg Back row: 1. Ina Talley, 2. Vinnie Martin, 3. Grace Messenger, 4. Delpha Woltz, 5. Sybil Holt, 6. unidentified, 7. Nina Lanier, 8. Cecil ?. Row 2: 1. Opel Jones, 2. Vernie Venable, 3. Susie Crawford, 4. Lydia Markley, 5. ? Simons, 6. Bernaice Lanier, 7. Cora Smith, 8. Clarence Woltz. Row 3: 1. ? Bunyan, 2. Anna Foot, 3. Alice Orrill, 4. Josie Markley, 5. Eunice Adams, 6. Unidentified. Front row: 1. Mita De Fose, 2. Berenice Campbell, 3. Vada Holt, 4. ? Simons. Source: KSGenWeb Cowley County. "Sybil Holt" (back row, 5th from left) is almost certainly Sybil Dora Holt, Gale's custodial mother, as a schoolgirl. Alice Orrill (Gale's custodial aunt) and Vada Holt (likely a Holt relative) also appear, confirming the close overlap of these families in the Wilmot school community.