If there is one thing I would love to change about my childhood — and there are certainly many things — I wish I had been more interested in other people.
I was probably at least a few steps on the good side of sociopathy, which is not a term I throw around lightly, I certainly didn’t think I was the only real person in the world, but I didn’t have a whole lot of interest in anybody else’s stories.
I had to laugh when I heard the line Mandy Moore’s character said to Hugh Grant in “American Dreamz:”
“I’m not physically attracted to other people …”
I never asked my grandfather about his experience in World War I and I never asked my dad what it was like to be fighting in World War II at age 18.
And most of all, I never learned anything about the half of my family that vanished in 1952.
My grandparents on that side of the family all died before I was both — my grandfather Whitcomb, my grandmother and my step-grandmother.
Charles and Blanche Whitcomb were born in the 19th century. They married young and had one child. They divorced in 1934 and their son Wesley attended boarding schools, mostly of the military variety. Charles and his second wife Dora died in an automobile accident in 1947, and Blanche died in Chicago in 1948.
Wesley married my mother in 1949 and abandoned her and her two young children in October 1952.
With two exceptions, I never had any contact with that side of the family again. The picture at the beginning of this piece is from my parents’ wedding, and the other two people in the picture were Wesley’s maiden aunts, Elgie Northam and Grace Northam. They were his late mother’s younger sisters.
Elgie died in 1958, and we went to Chicago for her funeral. I’m reasonably certain that was the last time I ever saw my Aunt Grace, although she sent me birthday cards for the next 10 years or so.
So that side of my family was been gone for more than 50 years, and there are so many things about them I will never know. The man pictured above is almost certainly Charles, but other than the years he was born and died, and that he fought in WWI, I know almost nothing about him.
I know even less about Blanche, and I just learned that I missed a chance to find out a lot more.
When we went to Virginia two weeks ago for my mother’s funeral, I came across a few papers that were interesting. One was the photo of my grandfather’s enlistment in the army and another was a small card showing a 1948 claim my father made to the Veterans Administration.
.Then there was a small piece of notepaper, the last page of a letter to me from Aunt Grace. I don’t know how much of the letter is gone, but what there is starts in the middle of a sentence.
“… the Veterans of the Civil War.
“You, by the way, have a very interesting ancestry on your Grandmother Whitcomb’s side, who was my sister. You and Laura Jean are the seventh generation in the United States which dates back to the year 1687. Some day, Michael, I hope to tell you about your ancestors.
“I have the history, and I want you to have it some day.. You and Laura Jean will cherish it when you are older. This is miserable writing — blame it on this finger of mine.
“Love, Aunt Grace”
How’s that for irony?