New Britain Herald Newspaper, January 15, 1929, Page 19

ey s I Z - And Her Sweetheart s t Love If She Didn't u Tell!~What Did Pretty Bet;‘y Do in Such a Crisis? i i Betty Schumann, rronoinced the Common Law Wife of William Me:;lllp‘ 4 ¢ . Oklahoma. ACED with a decision between & great love and a great fortune, what would you do? Would you decide in favor of love in a cottage or would the cold and glittering million seem more worthwhile? That is the question which pretty Betty Schumann, of Oklahoma, had to solve—except that in her case it wasn't quite so simple. Twenty years of life had given her position (uncertain enough, it must be admitted, as only the mistress of millions), luxury and admiration— everything, in short, but love. Finally, that, too, came her way. Its value was more to Betty than many millions—it was everything for which she had longed and had been denied. For a brief moment it was hers to take e refuse, but embracing it would have meant the living of a lie, the enactment of a life-time of deceit, a payment too high-priced even for life’s greatest bless- ing. %o Betty took the million—or thought that she did. But her rich old patron died, cutting her off with a paltry $30 a month as a reward for her devotion and -acrifice. Love gone, the million gone, Betty ued to regain the latter, since she had o placed the former forever beyond her reach. Today the million and a great, aching er life that can, perhaps, never be filled. These facts became known when Betty Schumann contested the will of William . McKallip, 61-vear-old oil magnate of Okmulgee, Oklahoma, whereby he had left her a monthly sum of $30, after having. on his death bed, claimed her as his mate and prevented her marriage with young Harry Orvel Owen. The court de- creed that she had been McKallip's com- mon law wife and heiress to 50 per cent of his two-million-dollar estate. ‘The money will buy happiness up to a certain point, but it will never bring back Owen, the handsome Chi- cago real estate dealer whom she was about to marry when the oil magnate stepped in and claimed her. estimony given during the hear- ing of her suit _revealed that it all started five years ago when McKal- lip, who had amassed a fortune in Oklahoma oil, was vacationing at Park Rapids, Michigan. It was there that he met Betty, one of eight children in a family of modest circumstances. Betty was sixteen and rosy-cheeked and pretty. McKallip was immediately taken with her youth and buoyancy and she, in turn, was imp: ed with his wealth and social position. When the rich widower invited her to his home, or motoring, or for a spin’ across the lake in his magnificent speedboat, she was flattered at so much attention from so much eminence. 1 Betty naturally returned the in- “# vitations of her new “boy-friend”— a bl-year-old widower with a daughter almost as old as Betty attending school in California. The modest home of Betty’s married sister was polished till it shone, in order to put on its best front for her important, new acquaintance. Life was very gay and happy for the sixteen-year-old girl that Summer. She was taught to preside at affairs at the millionaire’s Summer camp on the Minnesota lakes and was showered with beautiful gifts by her generous new ‘“guardian.” hen the time came for cKallip to return to his business in Oklahoma, Betty went with him. In his home city of Okmulgee there were whispers when the rosy-cheeked “niece” took up her abode in the home of the gray-haired McKallip, but so strong was his position in the business world 80 generous had been his gifts to itable and municipal enterprises that nyr]u questioned him openly about the girl. Betty moved in the best circles of Okmulgee. She wore the finest of dresses and the most expensive jewels. Only occasionally, her testimony re- vealed, did she feel at all worried or un- certain as to her position in the McKallip household. At these times she reminded her host that his invitation to accompany him to his home had contained the promise of a wedding ceremony in ine near future. But he swept this aside. “Marriage,” answered the oil magnate, according to Betty, “could not bring us any closer together than we are now. Be- sides, there’s a group of relatives that would kick about it. Why not be happy as we are?” And so the marriage question was dropped and not taken up again even when Betty became the mother of Mec- Kallip’s son, who died a few hours after birth. McKallip had taken Betty to a modest little bungalow, in Dallas, Texas, marry him!” Shrilcd the Dying “You're mine—mine!" for the event and after the death of the baby she spent a Summer at the Min- nesota lakes, recuperatin Another Summer at the lal other Winter in the Oklahom the oil man was stricken with illness. The girl studied nursing and scientific dieting in order to care for him. Betty's duties continued with a trip to California, thence to Kansas City and Rochester, Minn., and finally to spe ists in New York in the hope of the millionai: illness. But phy: shook their heads and said that the ail- ment was incurable, It was after a short visit to Okmulgee, when Betty was returning to New York to be with her dying benefactor, that she met Harry Owen, bound East to Chicago. The hours were dragging for both and polite conversation led to mutual admira- tion and interest. “Mr, Owen,” stated Betty, “asked if he might look me ur when he came to New York and I, only too glad to know someone companionable snd nice of my own age, told him he might.” In a few weeks Owen telegraphed Betty that he would be in New York. His sur- prise was great when the young woman met him at the station in the luxurious McKallip limousine; it was even greater when she entertained him in the drawing room of McKallip’s expensive uptown apartment. Weeks followed in which he knew Betty only as the {umpered “niece” of the wealthy McKallip and in which he grew to love her—a love which Betty reciprocated. “I didn’t think about how it would ap- pear to Mr., Owen,” said Betty in refer- ence to her relations with the older man. “I just looked at the happiness of it all. I loved someone who loved me. Every- thing else was blotted out.” And one day she and her young sweet- heart, reinforced with a brand new mar- riage license, went to interview her “uncle” in his sick room. Kneeling at her dying “guardian’s” bedside, Betty timor- ously broached her plan. She and Harry were to be married. McKallip, pale and worn with recent illness, pulled himself in a sitting posture. He was white with rage. “She can’t marry you,” shrilled the millionaire. “She’s mine!” He turned to Betty. “Betty, tell him that you are mi You can’t marry him. I won't have it That was Betty’s moment. She could have denied everything. She mignt have claimed that the old man was weak and worn with illness—he didn’t know what he was saying. But in that second she saw clearly. She saw herself grasping happiness and holding it to her with a lie and living forever after in the shadow and torment of that lie. Knowing full well the penalty, she told her story to Owen—told of her meeting with McKallip in Minnesota, going with him to his Okmulgee home, the little bungalow in Dallas—the child—every- thing! At Right: William T. McKallip, Wealthy Oi Magnaty of Okmulges, Whose Will Was Success- fully Contested by Hi At the end of the recital Owen turned abruptly and left the room, Happiness shut the door after him and remained on the outside. Three days later Wil- liam McKallip died. And that was all until months later when The Beautiful McKallip Summer Camp on the Shores of Lake Belle Tain in Minnesota, Where Betty, Then Only 16, Met the Old Man Who Was First to Make Her Happy and Then Shatter Her Dreams, Copyright. 1928, Internationsl Feature Serrice, Ine., Great Britsln Wights Reserred Owen went, with & recol- lection of his by deadened love, to Okmulgee to testify for the girl— to bear unwilling wit- ness to the fact that she was the common- law widow of William McKallip and that, otherwise, she would have been Owen's bride. The opening of the will was a blow. Why McKallip had cut off Betty with only $30 a month, could not be explained. It never has been explained. Betty confessed igno- rance of why it was done. The will had been made months before she had con- fessed her love for - Pretty Betty Schumann, Whe Lost Le d o Million, and Sued te Regain the Millien to Console Her for the Lest Love. Owen. Betty's lawyers sued to set aside the will and for weeks the case was fought in trial before Judge Swain, of Oklahoma. The judge’s decision scored relatives who attempted to class the girl below the moral level of a wife. He held that she was entitled, morally and legally, to share in the oil magnate’s millions. “] gave myself to Bill when I was & girl of 16,” the young wonfan said. “I don’t know how I came to love Harry Owen—it was something grand and beau- tiful—and it's all like a dream now. “If Bill and I had gone through a mar- riage ceremony it never could have hap- pened.” She sighed as she recalled those few happy days when she believed McKallip would \let her marry the youth she had met on the train, “It looks now as though I am to get the money,” she continued, “but I haven't any love. Bill is dead—and love—well, I guess that's dead, too.” This feeling on the part of Miss Schu- mann is quite understandable, for, after all, as the poets have it, “’tis love that makes the world go ’round.” Nevertheless, a million dollars is a mil- lion dollars, and thousands of young women, unfolding their newspapers at breakfast and reading the disflltrh telling how Miss Schumann will iet ER million, will sigh and reflect—*Ah, if I only & million, what I wouldn’t do with itl" 1t Was Here That Betty Formerly Entertained the Guests of Hor Elderly Patren, Over Whese Functiens She