If Thine Eye Causes Thee To Stumble...

by Linda Paris

Police described the family as typical of the hundreds of itinerants who had come to California from the dust bowl sections of Oklahoma and Texas.

In 1930, there was no place better to farm than in the southern plains of the United States. Men and women had turned the untamed prairie into the most prosperous farmland in the world. During the war, the demand for wheat was outstanding and farmers were paid record prices at a time when the rest of the country was suffering from a depression.

But by 1931 a drought had begun in the Southern Plains, which became progressively worse and worse.

In 1932, the national weather bureau reported 14 dust storms and by 1933 that number went up to 38.

The dust was so thick that it was stuck in the screens and people were scooping up buckets of it from their homes.

1934 brought with it a massive drought that affected 75% of the country and 27 states severely.

In the spring of 1935 the winds blew 27 nights and days without stopping. People began to die of suffocation and dust pneumonia.

It was during this time that hundreds and thousands of farmers decided to cut their losses, pack their families and belongings into their jalopies and head to California.

That is where Ola and Woodrow Harwell came from in 1938 with their 2 sons in tow.

Harwell wore faded denim overalls and his wife wore a patched, gingham dress most of the time. The children were described as “thin and hollow-eyed.”

The Harwells settled in Merced, California, south of Modesto. Ola had 2 sons from a previous marriage and was 26 years old. Her husband, Woodrow, was 20 and worked as a cotton picker.

On the night of August 24, 1938, the Harwells had been living in Merced for four months. As the story was later told by Woodrow, the family had dinner and then gathered together in a circle in the center of their one room cabin for their nightly reading of the bible. Woodrow stated that Ola read and he and the boys would shout out frequent amens throughout.

Then Ola came to the book of Matthew (chapter18, verses 8 and 9)…

“…and if thy hand or thy foot causeth thee to stumble, cut it off…and if thine eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out…”

According to Woodrow, Ola slowly looked up from her Bible and quietly announced to her family that her right eye and her left hand had “sinned.”

Saying nothing else, she slowly rose, picked up a pair of scissors and left the room.

Woodrow then explained to the police that Ola went out to the woodshed, where she stabbed herself in the eye repeatedly with the scissors. It was after this that she placed her hand against a slab of concrete and began swinging a large ax several times with her right arm until her left hand fell to the ground.

When she returned to the house, Woodrow said her clothing was soaked with blood and she simply lay down on the bed.

There, incredibly, he goes on to claim that the whole family finished praying and only when they had finished praying did Woodrow send the oldest boy to the neighbors for help.

The neighbor, Bessie Wilcox, called a Pentecostal minister. The minister called Curtis Sarr, the state highway patrolman.

It was Sarr who finally took the poor woman to the hospital where doctors worked feverishly to save her life, removing fragments of her shattered eye and treating her arm.

It took two full hours from the time the injuries took place to get to the hospital where Ola finally received medical treatment.

In another version, Woodrow said the children followed their mother out to the shed and screamed in terror begging her not to cut off her hand. They then ran back into the cabin as she laid her left arm against a cement pipe and raised the ax with her right arm. She swung three separate times before cutting off her hand.

Woodrow claimed that when she came back into the cabin she was “apparently without pain.”

The physicians who worked on the woman were astounded that she seemed to suffer no “shock” and was conscious the entire time they worked on her.

It would seem that Ola Harwell was obsessed with the idea that she had sinned.

Even though the doctors had said that Ola would live, they would have to sever the hand further up because her wrist had been so badly mutilated.

In 1938 the police did not fully accept Woodrow’s version of the story to be true and he was held for questioning. They did not believe that Ola could do this to herself or if it was indeed even possible?

Could you cause such severe damage to your own eye and continue to function after that?

Could you, even with an eye that wasn’t maimed, hack at your own hand with a heavy ax three separate times?

Wouldn’t you be screaming from pain after you had already chopped it once or twice?

It’s very hard to imagine.

Then there’s the matter of the two hours that Woodrow claims they spent "praying" after Ola returned from the shed, even though she sits there “soaked in blood” and bleeding from the eye and the arm.

Did Woodrow not ask her any questions at all throughout this entire event?

Did he ever say “Let’s get you some help!” or “You must get to the hospital?”

Why does Woodrow then send the son to the neighbor’s house for help instead of contacting the police himself, immediately?

The story is not believable.

To add even more mystery to Woodrow's disturbing tale he told the police that he buried Ola’s hand near the cabin, but his 6 year old son told the police that “Daddy threw Mama’s hand into the canal.”

What really happened to Ola Harwell the night of August 23, 1938?

Did the pressures of such a hard life become too much for Ola or did the pressure become too much for Woodrow instead?

Paris Creative, LLC (copyright 2011, all rights reserved)