Have you been watching the TV series, Who Do You Think You Are. I have and I’ve been struck by the almost universal response to the discovery of a family connection. When Spike Lee discovers an ancestor who worked as a slave in a Confederate pistol factory, he wonders what the man may have thought about the situation. When Sarah Jessica Parker finds an ancestor who left his family for the 1849 California gold rush and died shortly after arriving, she wonders what he must have thought about the collision of his dreams with reality. The discoveries bring mysteries that intrigue and questions that can’t be answered.
We have a mystery in our family tree, too. My husband’s father seldom spoke about his own father and mother. He spoke of an uncle affectionately, but on his mother and father he was largely silent. In searching Ancestry.com, I came across some facts that when put together provoke more questions than they answer. Fact one: My husband’s father (we will call him John A.) was born in 1916. Fact two: In the 1920 census, his father (we will call him John L) was living with a wife whom we will call Lucille. No other person was listed as part of the household. Fact three: In the 1930 census, John L was listed as living with a wife, whom we will call Marilyn. Also part of the household in 1930 was a 14 year old son, John A. The questions begin: Where was 4-year old John A in 1920? How did he happen to appear in 1930? Is he Lucille’s child or Marilyn’s? What happened to John L.’s first marriage? What was John A’s experience during those years? The facts provoke certain speculations, but we will never know the truth because the family tree can’t talk, and John A and John L took the truth to their graves. They didn’t keep journals, write memoirs or personal histories, or even tell family stories. How would I handle this mystery in a family history book? I’ll address that next time . . . .
My grandparents were hardworking people who saved money and spent frugally. I remember when grandma would give me a particularly generous gift, she would ask me not to tell grandpa about it. For his part, grandpa was a savvy guy who I believe always knew and went along with her deception. I also remember a great grandfather who chewed tobacco and whom I rarely saw when I was a child, but when I did he always gave me a silver dollar. The aversion of the tobacco juice and the attraction of the shiny dollar are inextricably linked.
Did you talk about money in your family—the value of it and the earning, saving, and spending of it? We didn’t in mine. Money was a taboo subject. Did you get an allowance as a kid? How much was it and what did you do with the money? Did you have a piggy bank? Mine was actually a deer. I once shook my deer bank upside down and wiggled a table knife in the slot to get out nickel for a pack of chewing gum that I bought at the gas station on the corner. I felt so bad I went home and confessed. When did you get your first bank account? What does money mean to you? Freedom? Security? The means to do good? What’s the best investment you ever made—and the worst? Your children and theirs will be fascinated with the answers.
“We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.” Gloria Steinem
“Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.” Carl Sandburg
Mark Twain toasted women at a Washington DC correspondents’ banquet in 1868. It’s outmoded but still funny. Here’s a link to the full text (be sure and read the expurgated parts marked by asterisks, they are the funniest bits.). In short, he says–
“Wheresoever you place woman, sir — in whatever position or estate — she is an ornament to that place she occupies, and a treasure to the world. Look at the noble names of history! Look at Cleopatra! look at Desdemona! look at Florence Nightengale! look at Joan of Arc! look at Lucretia Borgia. Well, suppose we let Lucretia slide. Look at Mother Eve! You need not look at her unless you want to, but Eve was ornamental, sir — particularly before the fashions changed! . . . I repeat, sir, look at the illustrious names of history! And, sir, I say with bowed head and deepest veneration, look at the mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not lie — could not lie. [Applause.] But he never had any chance. It might have been different with him if he had belonged to a newspaper correspondent’s club. [Here, the reporters heartily booed Twain.]
As a sweetheart she has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wet nurse she has no equal among men! [Laughter.] What, sir, would the people of this earth be, without woman? They would be scarce, sir.
Then let us cherish her — let us protect her — let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathies — ourselves, if we get the chance. But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is lovable, gracious, kind of heart, beautiful — worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference. Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially, for each and every one of us has personally known, and loved, and honored, the very best one of them all — his own mother!”
It is a particularly somber Veterans Day. The losses mourned at Fort Hood and the seven fallen soldiers honored at Fort Lewis add to the gravity of this day. I’m thinking today of all the veterans of the U.S. armed forces who have touched my life. My husband, US Army, Vietnam. Our dear friend, US Army, Vietnam. My brother, US Army and US Navy. My father, US Air Force, WWII. My uncle, US Navy, WWII. My grandfather, US Army, WWI. And indirectly through diaries, my great great grandfather, a civilian chaplain during the American Civil War. More distantly, I even have a relative who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.
Note: My uncle, Kenneth Ramsey, was lost at sea in 1944. He is listed in the National World War II Memorial registry as “Missing in Action or Buried at Sea.” You can search this registry or enter an honoree on line.
One good question usually leads to another, doesn’t it? In her Photo Detective blog, Maureen Taylor asked “What children’s book influenced your life?” I immediately thought of “Wind in the Willows” for its exploration of the beauty and power of friendship. You can go to Maureen’s blog to find out her answer and share your own choice. But before you go, I have another question, well, two really. Who are your true friends and why?
The value of friendship has been discussed by philosophers throughout time. Some argue that friendship is good for the individual. Friendship is life-enhancing and makes us feel more alive. We get more absorbed in activities and get more out of them when we do them with friends. And friends are mirrors that show us the goodness of our own lives. (Aristotle, I think). Others take the view that friendship is good for society. Friendship promotes the general good because it makes us consider the welfare of others.
All good, I say. As I get older friends matter more to me. Last night I had dinner with one dear friend and tomorrow I will have breakfast with another. Both have kept the bridges between us in good repair for decades. Sometimes I think they are Mole and Ratty to my Toad. For that I am grateful.
In personal histories, people often neglect friendship as a value to write about and share with future generations. So here’s the question again, who are your friends and what do they mean to you?
The pine woods behind were our playground. We ran home for cookies when the air raid siren howled.
The air raid sirens were tested every Wednesday at noon. If I ran home when they blew, I would get a cookie. My favorites were the crispy wafer cookies that came in brown, pink, or white squares. This reward program, instituted by my mother, was a regular feature of childhood summers. I recently had occasion to remember it, thanks to Susan Hessel and her blog, Pinky Pie. In this blog, she shares her breast cancer journey, as befits a personal historian, writer, and teacher.
An article posted by a friend on Facebook set off powerful memories for Susan, mainly about St. Louis during the hottest Cold War years, and Susan’s blog entry about them did the same for me.
I remember the school duck-and-cover drills in which we sheltered against the lockers in the hallways of Browne Elementary in Spokane, Washington. Like Susan’s, my father rejected all pleas to build a backyard bomb shelter, but, unlike Sue’s, my father was more blunt about it. “Our neighbors will just kill us for it,” he said. When Sacajawea junior high school sent home permission forms to evacuate students by truck and bus in the event of a nuclear attack, my parents refused to sign. Instead I would have to run home, 2 miles, up hill (and, yes, depending on the season, in the snow). This was a death sentence, I was certain of it. Mom explained that if we, her children, were trucked out of town, she feared she would never find us. Such were the terrors of the time.
It was generally rumored that Spokane would be targeted in a nuclear attack because the town was ringed by missile silos. I have no verification of this, except that, when I was 17, I dated a young Air Force lieutenant who was stationed at a mysterious facility that was not Fairchild Air Force Base.
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington is said to be the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere.
In addition to calling up these memories, Susan’s blog reminded me about the dangers of radiation from the A-bomb tests. Her hometown of St. Louis was in the path of the prevailing winds from the Nevada test site. I was spurred to check the winds in my area. Spokane lies 130 miles northeast from Hanford, Washington, where plutonium was manufactured. There were air releases of radiation between 1944 and 1957 from the Hanford plants, mostly from routine operations. But Hanford’s largest single release was the result of a secret U.S. Air Force Experiment called Green Run. Between 7,000 and 12,000 curies of iodine-131 were released into the air on December 2 and 3, 1949—when I was 3 months old. The purpose of Green Run was to test Air Force equipment for monitoring the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program. With some selfish sense of relief, I found that Spokane is upwind from Hanford. The winds from Hanford blow from the northwest to the southeast—away from Spokane but toward many other communities dotting eastern Washington and Oregon.
I don’t have cancer, and perhaps I never will, though both my parents died of it. In considering all the forces that propel our individual life journeys, Susan Hessel aptly reminds us “we are all living at the intersection of personal and history.”
What was your worst job? That was the question going around the dinner table at the end of the day at the Association of Personal Historians conference. How typical of a bunch of story tellers to tell stories. Who won? It’s not my place to say, but I can say it wasn’t I. I told about my dismal days as a paralegal intern at a large, national intellectual property law firm. All the partners and associates were pleasant to work with except for one. She was a brilliant attorney—and a bully. The environment became so toxic that I would sit in my parked car for many minutes, steeling myself to enter the building each day. I would make a quick turn to avoid meeting her in the hallways. I was filled with dread everytime she approached my desk. I had breezed through paralegal training and thought the job would be a snap for me. Instead, there I was feeling totally inept and a failure. After six months of daily misery, I quit, but only when another job opportunity came to me like a miracle.
Earlier in the day at the APH conference, Charles Hardy, III, PhD, president of the Oral History Association, shared with us some wisdom about interviewing people for their stories. He always gives his narrators opportunities to reflect on the meaning of their experiences, to make some sense of them. For example, he may ask “How would you compare your life then to your life now.” He calls these retreat questions, because they enable people to retreat from the past back into the present.
An example of this reflection in action occurred in the workshop about the Veterans History Project, as we observed a Vietnam War veteran being interviewed. After speaking about his experience, he summed up by reflecting that for all the difficulties he faced, he would not change them because without them he would not have met his wife and had their life together all these years.
How would I make sense now of my worst job? I once assume that I could do anything I put my mind to. That was a lesson from my father. We would sit on the cement front steps on hot summer nights in 1957 and 1958. I in my baby doll pajamas ready for bed, and he in a T-shirt. The glowing end of his cigarette would bob in the dark, as he talked, and he would say, “You can be anything you want to be.” But at the law firm, I met my limits face to face. I learned that I can’t in fact do any thing, but more importantly I learned I can be brought low by my own fears. The bullying attorney didn’t do this to me alone; I let her. That ‘s why it was my worst job.
What was your worst job? How do you feel about it today?
In this CNN column today, the writer advises men to give women flowers. It isn’t the specific advice that grabs me. It is the way the writer learned the lesson. From his father.
While the same lesson can be extrapolated from scientific research, it’s so much more real and interesting and meaningful to see and listen to dad.
“Most of what I know about women I learned from how my dad treated my mother. I’d be a better man if I followed his example more fastidiously, but I haven’t . . . But some lessons stick out, ” says John DeVore, the writer , “It’s never too late to relearn passed-down life lessons,” he adds.
There is more, but I won’t spoil the whole story for you. Read it for the glimpse of a long and loving marriage.
The Sound of Music is a much loved movie. Other people like it, but I don’t. 
Christopher Plummer who played the von Trapp patriarch, derided the film as the Sound of Mucus, for maudlin sentimentality. That’s not my objection to the movie. I don’t like it because it was the occasion of the disaster that was my first date. The unlucky boy was my lab partner in sophomore biology class. Biology wasn’t his strong suit; he relied on me to pull him through. In spite of that, he asked me out to the movies. I wasn’t attracted to him, but a girl has to have a first date some time and I felt at 15, going on 16, I wasn’t getting any younger so I said yes. This proved to be no favor to him and no fun for me. As I look back, I am more generous about him now than I was then.
I don’t even remember his name. The nameless, hapless boy drove to my house but didn’t want to drive to the theatre in downtown Spokane, Washington. He wanted us to take the bus. He wasn’t comfortable driving in traffic at night. This was strike one my scorecard. I probably would have overlooked this timidity if he had otherwise been my idea of a dreamboat. He wanted to see The Sound of Music–for the fifth time, as it turned out. He told me all about the movie before the overture even started. I have to confess, in my cruel teenage heart, I thought it weird for a guy to see a musical so many times.
After the movie, we waited for the bus, and waited, and waited. So I called the bus company only to find out that the last bus on that route had departed while we were still watching the movie credits. So I called my father, who drove down at 11:00 PM to pick us up. This poor boy and I rode in embarrassed, humiliated silence in the back seat while Dad chauffeured us home. The boy reached once for my hand, but I withdrew it quickly. I didn’t want my father to see. Needless to say, we never went out again. I’m not sure we ever spoke to each other.
In the movie, Maria sings a song about her favorite things; but the movie doesn’t make my list. Mostly because it reminds me of my own superficial nature and mean spirit. I hope this boy has been a happy man—with someone nicer than I.
I wrote this memory, triggered by a suggestion in a book by Hella Buchheim, a fellow member of the Association of Personal Historians. Her book, Remembering. . . Life Story Triggers & Memory Essays, is an anthology of her newsletters and essays over the years on life-story writing. For people who want to write their memoirs or life stories, Hella’s book is chock full of ways to revive and refresh memories that may have been forgotten. The one that prompted my memory of my first date came from the chapter titled, “The Sounds and Sights of Triggers.” In this essay, she suggests thinking about favorite movies. The Sound of Music wasn’t on her list of movies to start the memory engine, but the list made me think of other evocative movies. Memories associated with Fantasia, Roy Rogers serials, My Fair Lady, Doctor Zhivago (now there’s a story), and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie are also cuing up for their turn to be told. Thank you, Hella. I know one could put together an interesting, rich life story by opening to any page of your book.
Note: Hella Buchheim is a colleague who sent me a copy of her book.
Last night I saw a side of my brother that I hadn’t seen before and never will again.
My brother Jeff died two months ago from a heart attack at the age of 57. In his recent years, he had taken up dancing. He told me when he signed up for a country line dancing class at a local community college. I was surprised, to put it mildly.
My brother was a “loner.” He lived alone and never married. He suffered for decades from depression which doctors didn’t seem able to treat successfully. He was an alcoholic, probably because of the depression. And he had myasthenia gravis, for which he received a military disability pension because it was diagnosed while he was in the Navy. After years of being an angry drunk, my brother stopped drinking, took anger management counseling, and began living.
The last two years of his life may have been the happiest in all his 57 years. What accounted for the change, I don’t know. He didn’t say and I didn’t ask.
He told me that line dancing was hard for him–I would have described him as clumsy–but, with the encouragement of the dance teacher and some of the other students, he persevered. Then he added social dance classes. At the time he died, he was about to start another class. He was looking forward to learning the tango.
My “loner” brother had even gone so far as to dance in some demonstrations and shows that his classes put on at retirement homes and communities. He didn’t invite me to any of them, but he told me about them afterward. Last night I saw one of the shows where he would have danced. His dance teacher invited me. This one was held at the Life’s Garden Retirement Home.
I love amateur shows–the participants do what they enjoy only for the pleasure of sharing what they enjoy with other people. This one, as you may imagine, was especially poignant. As the couples waltzed, rumba-ed, and tangoed around the room, I imagined my brother among them, with his arms around an ethereal partner.
Dancing for eternity is how I want to remember him.
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