Fletah Cladena Woodyard was born Fletah Cladena Jenkins in 1904 in Pittsburg, KS, the daughter of Charles Jenkins Jr. and Charlotte "Lottie" Cordray, per the 1910 Colorado census where the Woodyard name was rendered as Woodward. Fletah was adopted by her mother's second husband, William Samuel Woodyard, in Crowley County about 1912. Upon the death of her mother in 1918, she went to live in Harvey County, KS with Samuel W. and Clara Stratton, per the 1920 census there, where she was referred to as their "stepdaughter." Fletah's stepfather William Samuel Woodyard was the son of Lewis Dunbar Woodyard Jr. and Phoebe Jane "Jennie" McCallister and the stepson of Lafayette E. "Lafe" Matzenbacher. He had been married to Mildred Judd who died in childbirth and then to Charlotte Cordray with whom he had three children: Helen G. Woodyard who was married briefly in Harrison County, MO to Gale Evans (with whom she had a son Carl Everette Evans in 1925), Lafayette William "Bill" Woodyard who never married, and Glenn E. Woodyard who married Verna L. Heimdal; all three settled in Crowley County and died in La Junta, Otero County, CO.