OSCAR LOWELL MALLORY

Condolences & Memories (2 entries)

• I knew Oscar since I was a child. He married my wonderful older sister Karen Brechner. I spent a lot of time with him over the years and learned many things from him. When he was still in graduate school, I would visit him with my sister during the summers at archaeolgy digs he was conducting in the US States of Oregon and Montana. Later when I was in high school, I spent three summers working on his archaeology digs and field surveys for the Smithsonian Institution, along the Missouri River drainage in states of South Dakota and North Dakota. Then when he moved his family to Winnipeg, I visited there many times. Oscar was very smart, opinionated, very funny, cynical in a good way, and sarcastic in a funny way. As the obituary described, he was a very good carpenter and all around good at mechanical things and building things. It came from growing up in rural Washington and Oregon. He was very knowledgeable of U.S.A. and Canadian history. He made many contributions in the form of publications and field reports in Native American archaeology. He also was very skilled in geology, map making, and photography. I have many memories of experiences with him. Too many to put into this, but some of the highlights were being in a field tent camp 29 miles from Mobridge, South Dakota on the banks of the Missouri River when a tornado swept through our camp in the middle of the night. It blew down all our tents, exploded a barn and our cook shack, knocked over telephone poles, turned a 6-ton hay wagon 180º and spread all our personal belongings a quarter mile across the prairie. We found sanctuary that night in nearby barn that had survived. Oscar pulled out a bottle of Bacardi Rum that he had rescued, and passed the bottle around to the 20+ workers all shivering in the barn in our underwear. That was the first rum I ever tasted. We rebuilt the large tent camp and about a month later had another tornado watch. We abandoned the tents and went to the lowest place we could find on the prairie, which was the garbage pit we had dug, and in the middle of the night watch a V-shaped cloud pass over our heads, hanging down from the fast-moving layers of clouds. It passed directly over us, and set down as a tornado funnel on the opposite bank of the Missouri River. Oscar did much archaeological work in Manitoba, and moved to Norway House to help the Cree residents get through some difficult times there. He was very happy to have met Ila Cromarty and was very proud of her accomplishments. I got to meet her a couple of times when she visited Winnipeg. She became a daughter to him, and was welcomed into the Mallory Clan to the south. Oscar was truly a one-of-a-kind man. He was a rugged scientist who braved blazing hot suns, hostile weather, bears, moose, rattlesnakes, and prairie dogs in the name of science. He was hightly educated, intelligent, and a philosopher, yet totally down-to-earth. I still miss him very much today, twenty-one years after his passing. - Posted by: Kevin Cloud Brechner (Brother-In-Law) on: Aug 24, 2022

• I still miss my best friend to this day. He taught me so much and I try to honor his memory by doing my best to live a good life to this day. I hope he sees that I kept my promise to him and I graduate my grade twelve. Planning to go to university, for him, my children and myself. I miss and love him! Hope he is proud. He is a great man, who saved me and showed me a better way of living. I was raised in an environment of abuse and he was there through it all. I will always miss and love my best friend, always - Posted by: Ila Cromarty (Best friend) on: Jul 11, 2013