ABSTRACT
Kenneth Roderick O’Neal was born in Union, Missouri, on July 30, 1908. His parents, Oscar and Bessie O’Neal, both taught school in what was then Indian Territory near Union, Missouri, west of Saint Louis. Kenneth had an older sister and brother and younger sister. The family moved the seventy-five or so miles from Union to the big city of Saint Louis, Missouri, where O’Neal attended Saint Louis public schools. O’Neal was acknowledged as a talented artist as a teenager. His high school art teacher recommended him for an art scholarship.1 He graduated from Sumner High School.
