Oscar Ray Hunter and the Panama Canal

On this date, November 17, 1913, the Panama Canal opened. My grandfather's brother Oscar Ray Hunter (1884-1966) was an employee of the outfit that built it. He was there. When you think of the men who built the Panama Canal you think of the real man's man on the cover a man's magazine, like Indiana Jones, chopping his way through the Panama jungle with wild animals and humans as his adversary and digging the long canal fighting malaria the whole time. But remember, Oscar's last name was Hunter. He knew better. He was a bookkeeper. Probably the closest he got to malaria was marrying a nurse there, Charlotte Georgia McCabe.