Stanley & Victor Cornell Deger

Stanley and Victor Cornell, along with their younger sister Elouise, were born in Elmira, New York, to Floyd and Lottie Cornell. After Lottie died of tuberculosis in 1925, Elouise was taken in by relatives and the boys were surrendered by their grief-stricken father to the Children's Aid Society. Following an unsuccessful placement in Coffeyville, Kansas, the brothers were sent to Texas in 1926, where J.L. Deger encountered them at a placing out meeting while collecting groceries in town. Stanley and Victor refused to be separated, and Deger brought them home to join his family. Stanley later joined the Army, worked in watch making and repair in Kansas, owned Cornell Jewelry Store in Elkhart and later Hugoton with his wife Earleen, raised three children, and after retiring to Colorado worked at a Timex repair station before the family entered the restaurant business. Victor joined the Air Force and served during World War II, then became a movie projectionist who managed nine movie theaters in and around Pullman, Washington with his wife Arleen, and they raised two children. Much loved by their adoptive parents, the brothers reconnected with their birth father and little sister in the 1940s and declared themselves survivors whose roots had been well watered with buckets of love.

Concordia, Kansas · United States