Obituary -- Funeral arrangements: The body of Cal Campbell, 60 year old Commerce constable, victim of the blood stained hands of Clyde Barrow or his hoodlum ally, will be laid to rest in G.A.R. cemetery at Miami, Tuesday afternoon. Campbell was shot down Friday in a gun battle in which he and Chief of Police Percy Boyd faced the withering fire of the Texas desperado and criminal associate. The shooting occurred near the Lost Trail Mine. The toll of lives that the Southwest's public enemy No. 1 has exacted in his terrorizing spree the last year was believed to have reached nine with the Commerce officer's death. Mayor J. R. Grimes has requested that Commerce business houses close from 2 o'clock until 3 o'clock Tuesday afternoon in tribute to the dead officer. Funeral services will be held at 2:00 pm. The constable had lived in Commerce and vicinity for approximately 40 years. He was one of the men who helped build the Northeast Oklahoma railroad through to Columbus Kansas. He was an employee of the State Highway department about four years. For the last four years he had served as an officer. His wife died about 13 years ago. He is survived by two sons, Carl Campbell and James Campbell of Commerce; five daughters, Mrs. Elsie Monroe and Mrs. Ruth Calkins, both of Los Angeles; Mrs. Iva Mcbee and Mrs. Frances Thornton, both of Commerce; and Miss Fern Campbell at Miami R.R. 2; three brothers, Ed Campbell of Beatrice Nebraska; John Campbell of Joplin Missouri and A. E. Campbell of Commerce; and one sister, Mrs. Alberta Dustheimer of Chicago Illinois. His body lies in state at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Iva McBee. He had made his home with this daughter. Friends and relatives may view the body at the home until Tuesday afternoon. Services will be held in the Christian church at 2 pm Tuesday. The Rev. C. C. Cockrum will officiate. Hal Mitchelson undertaking company of Commerce will be in charge of burial.

A shot blazing from the machine gun of one of two men, accompanied by a blond-headed woman, took the life of Cal Campbell, 60, Commerce constable, and another shot either wounded or killed Percy Boyd, chief of police in a gun battle that occurred about 9:30 this morning near the Lost Trail Mine, on a road west of Commerce. The killers seized Boyd and fled in a sedan toward Chetopa Kansas. Descriptions of the two men closely fit those of Clyde Barrow, Texas killer, his partner, Raymond Hamilton, Texas fugitive, and the woman resembles Bonner Parker, the pair's cigar-smoking companion. Reports from the posse at 2:30 this afternoon were that the fugitive car had been seen last about nine miles west of Chetopa, headed toward Coffeyville Kansas. The scene of the gun battle at the Lost Trails Mine happened after a motorist called the officers and told them he had passed by an automobile stalled in a mud hole, the occupants of the car not wishing to have him pass.
The officers had apparently started out of the car to investigate the action of the two men and woman when the fugitives opened fire. Three empty cartridges were found in Campbell s revolver, and Boyd s gun also was recovered, indicating both he and Boyd had engaged in an exchange of shots before the fatal missile entered the left side of the constable s body, killing him instantly. C. M. Dodson, who had heard the gunfire, jumped into his truck and drove out to the mine. When he arrived the men were starting to take a vehicle parked in the yard of Clarence Robinson nearby, but on seeing Dodson the killers forced him to pull them out of the hole. One pointed a gun at him while the chain was tied to the sedan. Boyd was being led around the car into the seat, with blood streaming down the left side of his face and chest, Dodson said, when he started to pull the car out of the hole. The vehicle, with the blond girl inside smoking a cigarette, was facing east when pulled out, but the driver wheeled it to the west when the trio fled, Dodson stated.
About three miles further west, near the Timber Hills farm, the fugitives ran across a car driven by A. N. Butterfield, a farmer living near Commerce, and occupied also by his brother, the auto being stranded in the middle of the road. The desperadoes climbed out of their car, one shouting: "We ve just killed two men and we're in a hurry. The law is after us." With that the men assisted Butterfield and his brother to move their car out of the way. They then escaped on toward Chetopa Kansas. Butterfield said he could not see whether Boyd was in the car. Dodson said one of the two men was about 23 years of age and the other about 25 to 27. He said both were blond and that one was very small, weighing around 126 pounds, and the other probably 140 to 146. One had a "breaking out" all over his face, he stated. Two bullet holes were noticed by Dodson in the windshield of the fugitives car. Three holes, all on the left side of the automobile, were discovered in the car driven by Boyd. An empty machine gun clip was found after the affray and also a shotgun shell, which would indicate the trio had at least three weapons in their possession. Boyd s and Campbell s guns were found near the shooting. Dodson said he saw two of the outlaws firearms when he was ordered to pull the vehicle out of the muddy spot.
A farmer living north of Commerce said he saw the blond-headed woman driving a sedan near his home Thursday afternoon. This morning shortly before 9 the woman and the two men were seen driving near the First State bank of Commerce. It was believed they were awaiting the opening of the bank so they could stage a holdup. Shortly after the shooting, Sheriff Dee Watters and sixteen officers joined in the chase for the killers. The officers traced them as far as Chetopa to U.S. Highway 73, which turns off toward Joplin Missouri. Later the fugitives were reported to have been seen stuck in another mudhole at Banner schoolhouse, about four miles northeast of Welch Oklahoma. The net of the law spread for miles around the Chetopa vicinity. Andy Walker, a Miami pilot, took off from the municipal airport in Miami about 11:15 am. He flew over Chetopa and over all roads heading to that community in an effort to "spot" the desperadoes from the skies.
The body of Campbell was taken to the Mitchelson undertaking company at Commerce. The shot which pierced his left side might have lodged in his stomach or toward his chest. He is survived by two sons, Carl Campbell and James Campbell, of Commerce; five daughters, Elsie Monroe of Los Angeles, Ruth Calkins of Los Angeles; Iva McBee and Frances Thornton, of Commerce, and Fern Campbell, who resides with an aunt in Miami. Funeral arrangements are incomplete, pending answers to telegraph wires sent Campbell s two daughters in Los Angeles.

Obituary -- The old cardboard box has a peach-colored top and is well-worn, with the edges fraying ever so slightly. Inside are yellowing copies of newsprint, carefully trimmed and folded. Written by hand across the top of the lid is the explanation for the collection stored within:
"Clippings of Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker
Outlaws who killed my Dad on April 6, 1934."
Linda Jorgenson of Welch Oklahoma, said her mother, Fern Campbell Turner, clipped and saved every article about Bonnie and Clyde she could find. Fern was the youngest of eight children born to William Calvin "Cal" Campbell and his wife, Edna Jane Allen Campbell, and was 18 years old when her father was gunned down by the Barrow gang on the west edge of Commerce Oklahoma. Included in Fern's collection of news items on the gang are stories about her Dad s murder and about the police chase of the gang throughout Oklahoma, Texas, and finally Louisiana. Copies of the major wire stories were stored alongside copies of local newspapers; The Commerce News; Miami's Daily News-Record and the Parsons Oklahoma Sun. Often, the details differ.
One fact, however, never changes; town constable Cal Campbell was the last documented victim of the Barrow gang. Barrow and Parker were shot to death in an ambush set by Louisiana and Texas law enforcement officials on May 23,1934, near Arcadia Louisiana. Of the 12 murders attributed to Barrow and his gang in the last two years of his life, nine, including Campbell, were law enforcement officers.
Now, 67 years later, the city of Commerce is planning a memorial to honor Campbell. The memorial is planned as part of a small roadside park near the Commerce High School athletic fields; a touch Campbell would probably approve of. At the time of his death, the Commerce constable was known more for his love for his children than as a police officer.
Campbell s wife, Edna Campbell, died 10 days after giving birth to Fern. He spent the remaining 18 years of his life raising the seven surviving children (one child died in infancy). For the next 19 years Campbell raised his children alone, although Fern was reared by her mother s sister and her husband, a childless couple who were able to take care of the newborn. One son, James Campbell, was only 3 when his mother died. "After my mother was gone Dad devoted his life to his family, keeping the surviving five kids together," said James Campbell in a 1968 interview with Mike Royko of the Chicago Daily News. JoAnn Hines, whose father was Cal s brother; said in the first few years after Edna s death her parents used to take care of the smaller children when Cal took the older ones out to the movies. Their lives took a different twist when Cal took the job as constable for the city of Commerce. "Dad had been a contractor until the depression, then he lost everything. That s why he took that police job. It only paid about $15 a week, but it kept us eating. The only reason he had the job was because the people liked him. He sure wasn't a professional lawman," James Campbell said. Former Commerce resident Lee Jeffery was 12 when Campbell was shot, and says his remembrance is that Cal "looked the part" of an old-time sheriff, "he just looked like an old-time Western Marshall, with that handlebar mustache and all," said Jeffery. "I remember he was always around city hall," continued Jeffery. "And the constable acted kind of like a sheriff s deputy would now; the police chief at the time had no authority outside city limits."
Therefore, on April 6, 1934, it was both Campbell and Commerce police chief Percy Boyd who went out to New State Road, just west of the NEO railroad tracks, to check out a vehicle stuck in the mud with two men and a woman inside. What happened next, according to the account of Percy Boyd as related by The Commerce News dated April 12, 1934, is that shots were fired immediately after he and Campbell pulled out their guns, although he did not know who fired first.
Boyd s head was grazed by a bullet fired from the Browning automatic rifles used by the gang. Campbell was struck next, and killed by a bullet in the abdomen which severed his spine. Boyd was taken as a hostage and held for 15 hours while Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker and Henry Methvin drove around the countryside. Boyd said Bonnie and Clyde apologized for killing Cal after buying a paper and realizing be was dead. Around midnight, Boyd was dropped off near Ft. Scott Kansas, and contacted authorities.
"I m sure my father didn't know who killed him. He was just going out to help someone," said James Campbell years later. "It s ironic. I don t think my father would have shot anyone if he had to. As I said, he got the job because he was well liked and needed it. He really wasn't a policeman. He had given so much of his life to us, to keeping us a family after my mother was gone." "I know he was a good, hardworking man, because my dad was. The whole family was," said Hines, great-niece of Campbell. Both Jorgenson and Hines said they grew up "always knowing about Cal's fate, without any memory of being told about the tragic event." However, both say that his death was not discussed by the family members at reunions. "I knew it was something we just didn't talk about," said Hines. "It was still pretty painful." Jorgenson's mother, Fern Campbell, was the last surviving child of Campbell when she died last Feb 10th. Jorgenson said that of Cal's eight children only three grandchildren remain, as well as some nieces and nephews. The other granddaughter, hopes to travel from Kennewick Washington to see the new memorial when it is complete, said Jorgenson. The lone grandson, Billy Calkins, who was 8 years old when his grandfather died, lived in California but has not been heard from in 15 years.
Jeffery said he is grateful for the $10,000 grant, presented by state Sen. Rick Littlefield and Rep. Larry Roberts 1ast month because it is right to preserve the memory of a man "who paid with his life to protect people." Prior to the planned park, the only memorial to Campbell was written on the front page of the April 12, l934 issue of Commerce News, which stated "Mr. Campbell was deeply devoted to his children, with whom he was a real pal..."