Aquila Risley
Aquila Cornelious Risley was born on 4 October 1932 at Cookson, in the hills of southern Cherokee County, Oklahoma. He was the youngest child of Silas Willis Risley and Alice Gertrude Henson, who had come down from the Missouri Ozarks. His given name is an old Bible name: Aquila was the tentmaker who sheltered the apostle Paul. Clerks spelled it every way they could, Aquilla, Aquala and Aguila among them.
He went to school at Cookson from 1942 to 1948, and his enrollment papers named his father as Willis Risley. In July 1947, at fourteen, he applied for a Social Security number, giving his parents as Willis S. Risley and Alice G. Henson. In April 1950 the census found him at home in Cookson, 17, the last child still living with Willis and Alice. His father died later that year.
Aquila married Mary Lee Mayhan of Sallisaw, in neighbouring Sequoyah County. In the 1950s they were in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their daughter Darlene was born in San Francisco on 14 November 1956. Ila was born in Contra Costa County, across the bay, on 15 October 1959, and Donna followed there on 26 October 1960. A son, Lonnie Aquila, was born on 9 October 1962 and carried his father's name.
By 1964 the family was back in Cherokee County. In 1964 to 1967 the children were enrolled in school at Park Hill and Tahlequah, the old capital of the Cherokee Nation. The school papers named Aquila as the father of Jerold, born in 1954, of Darlene and of Ila, who went by Lynn. Mary Lee Risley was named as the mother of Ila and Lonnie.
Aquila later lived in Oregon. On 5 March 1985 he married Edna Mae Thomas at Reno, Nevada; both gave Oregon as home.
He died on 10 October 1997, six days after his sixty-fifth birthday, with his last home at Gore, in Sequoyah County. He was buried at Box Cemetery near Vian, where his parents lie. His flat granite marker, carved with a cross, reads "AQUILA CORNELIOUS RISLEY, PVT US ARMY, VIETNAM, OCT 4 1932, OCT 10 1997".
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Cite: Heirology, "Aquila Risley (1932-1997)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/aquila-risley-1932-1997-2d2b9a.