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A Eulogy for My Father

I’ve been MIA for months now, primarily because my father started showing signs of illness in March 2023, ended up in the ER on May 3rd, and passed away on July 3rd. Wrangling with my own grief (starting after his diagnosis of aggressive lymphoma), the aftermath of his relatively sudden departure, and helping to pick up the pieces of my mother’s life has consumed me for 5 months now. We’re still in the midst of it, really. But one of my cousins suggested I post the eulogy I gave at my father’s funeral — months ago now, on July 12th — and I finally have the energy to do it, in part because today is my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. We all told Mom it was okay to round up and say they had been married 60 years.


Charles John McLaughlin III (Jack) (14 May 1931-3 July 2023)

Our McLaughlins are tale-tellers and family historians, and so we know the value of stories as bricks in the edifice of memory. Stories are what everyone uses to build their own mythology of a given person – mythology not in the sense that the stories are not true, but in the sense that this conglomeration of stories by necessity represents only part of the truth of that person.

Dad at his and mom’s 50th anniversary party.

Today, I’m not going to recite Dad’s life story as I know it. Instead, I would like to share a few of my own favorite building block stories about him.

One day in 1940-ish, Jack McLaughlin, age 9 or 10, decided to walk along the railroad tracks. Suddenly he noticed a strange ticking noise from behind him and turned around just in time to see a train sneaking up on him and a conductor who had climbed out onto the front of the locomotive about to tap him on the shoulder.

Dad’s father Charles, Dad’s younger brother Paul, Dad; and, in front, Dad’s mother Marion.

In 1952, Jack enlisted in the Air Force, hoping to become a pilot. He was not allowed to get flight training because he had hay fever, so he became a medic. During the time he was stationed in Alabama, he was not only sent out to administer polio vaccines at local elementary schools, but also administered vaccines to the people on base. On one vaccine day at the base, he overheard an officer blustering at his men for being afraid of needles – so when it came the officer’s turn, Jack turned around with a surprise: a massive spinal needle that had been wound into a corkscrew around a pencil. As I recall the story, the man fainted.

Dad’s Air Force portrait.

Jack was later stationed on Guam. In addition to telling stories about the extremely large spiders in the barracks, his unit’s pet dog, and the remarkable storms that blew over the island cutting sharp lines of rainfall across the road in front of his perfectly dry Jeep, he also once mentioned encountering a small World War 2 memorial, which consisted of a pile of American GI helmets, each, he carefully noted, with a hole in it.

Dad while stationed on Guam.

Importantly: in 1963, Jack and Doris got married. They drove down Skyline Drive in the Appalachians to enjoy the autumn colors on their way to their honeymoon in Florida. In Florida, they visited Sea World, where Jack was surprised by a large wet ball smacking him in the chest. When he looked around, the dolphin who had thrown it laughed at him.

Dad and Mom departing from their wedding reception.

In 1968, Jack and Doris became parents. Apparently, during the final stages of Mom’s labor, Dad argued with the doctor about whether I was a girl or a boy. Eventually, to everyone’s – especially Mom’s – relief, I emerged fully into the world, which also settled the argument in the doctor’s favor.

In my early childhood, Dad taught me how to find the North Star and one night woke me up to watch a total lunar eclipse. I’m not sure he was prepared for the onslaught of astronomy that the rest of my childhood brought him, but he rolled with it, taking me to Mount Cuba, getting me a subscription to Sky & Telescope, and doing the research to find the best night to show me the four visible moons of Jupiter with his trusty binoculars.

During the summer between 4th and 5th grade, I wiped out on my bike. The only part of that entire event that I remember clearly was Dad sitting on the couch with me, ever so gently wiping the sand and grit out of the road rash on my face.

As many of you know, Dad and Mom bred and showed Airedale Terriers for some 50 years. While I was involved with caring for the puppies from second grade until I went to college, I most vividly remember the first time we had a puppy not thrive. I have a lasting image of Dad sitting in the dog room, the failing puppy cuddled against his chest in one of his big hands, bottle-nursing the puppy with warmed formula.

Many people know the grooming tools that Dad designed and produced, employing nearly every teenager in our family in that production process over the years. But you may not know about his other engineering accomplishments, such as being involved in the development and testing of Dupont nylon-based products for irrigation and construction, designing other grooming tools that didn’t quite pan out, and building an incredible volcano for my end of year project in 7th grade social studies. The volcano could not be tested because it was a one-shot eruption, but because Dad had an incredible talent for thinking through a project, it erupted perfectly, to the envy of my classmates.

In the early 1980s, Dad introduced me to computers. He was an early adopter of computers of all sorts, got me my first Commodore 64, and encouraged me to take programming classes at a time when I was the only girl in the room. I also had email and computer games before pretty much any of my peers, thanks to Dad.

During my first driving lesson, Dad taught me that it was my responsibility to ensure that my passengers were safe and comfortable at all times in my car. Then one of the tires blew out, and then the skies opened in a drenching deluge. So Dad taught me how to change a tire in the pouring rain, standing in next to me while I did the work. Practical, hands-on training, which oddly came in very handy not too many years later.

Dad became quite the legend to my cousins when they worked for him in the basement workshop. “Uncle Jack is a ninja!” was the way they rationalized his uncanny ability to appear at their elbows when they least expected him. He claimed he never tried to startle anyone, but he always had a pleased little smile when he said it. And then there was the Christmas when he showed Pegeen’s family a rope magic trick, and both the boys spent an hour or more trying to replicate it while the rest of us giggled ourselves sick, and Dad just sat there grinning.

In 2008, Dad had a double heart bypass surgery, and it was a rough recovery for him, in part because he had a heart attack on the table that left him with heart failure. However, after his 6 months of cardiac rehab were over, he joined a gym and continued to go 3 times a week until the pandemic put a stop to his workouts. He reversed his heart failure diagnosis and kept himself going well past the expectations of his cardiologists. He was determined to stay as long as possible for Mom.

Dad ca 2011, when he was about 80.

Last year, Mom ended up in the hospital and rehab for a month, and Dad and I spent all that time together, making the best of a bad situation. We discussed her care and made all the phone calls and figured out everything we needed – and probably more than we needed – to bring her home safely. We drove into the hinterlands of Bear for medical equipment and went to visit her at least once a day in rehab. But we also talked about our lives. He asked about my job and some of my more colorful employment adventures, and I heard more about his work with Dupont and his time in the service than I ever had before. I’ll always be grateful for that time with him.

I inherited his hair cowlicks, his McLaughlin build, and his big gentle hands. I learned from him the creative knack for solving problems for my friends and family, his ability to pass along knowledge in a number of ways, and the determination to be present for my loved ones no matter what. 

I am not the daughter he expected, but I know that his support and love was unwavering. He always told me that I could do anything I wanted to do. And he was right, as he often was.

My father was my most steadfast rock, as I know he was for Mom, and my greatest example of generosity and kindness. He gave me the moon and the stars, and stories upon stories upon stories. 

One of my favorite authors, Sir Terry Pratchett, wrote, “Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” Today, I would ask you all: tell the Jack stories. Pass on the things he taught you, with attribution. Gift forward his dad jokes and his immense generosity, his trickster games and his deep sense of wonder, his sense of responsibility and his abiding, if occasionally curmudgeonly, love.

Ad astra, Dad. To the stars. I love you.

Dad and Mom at their 50th anniversary party.

Arborvitae: A Tree Possibly Pruned by Tuberculosis

Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Johann Peter Albrecht came from a family who had been in Walldorf, Germany, for at least 5 generations. He was born on October 13, 1836, which made him a subject of the Grand Duke of Baden.

The Grand Duchy of Baden. Image from Wikipedia.

He sailed from Le Havre, France, on the ship Helvetia, arriving in New York City on November 28, 1853. It appears that he may have sailed with a cousin or uncle’s family, since he was 17 and listed in his own entry separate from Georg and Catharine Albrecht’s family on the same ship.

There was a revolution in Baden in 1849 and in 1852, the Grand Duke died, leaving his second son ruling by regency in place of his apparently incompetent eldest son. Meanwhile, the Potato Famine of Ireland was also happening in Germany. And Peter’s mother died in 1850. I could see it all combining to make 1853 a good year to bail out for the US.

Barbara Gaebel, was born on July 14, 1839, in Großbockenheim, Bavaria — the larger of 2 small town subcenters, apparently, of a municipality currently known as Bockenheim an der Weinstraße. Her parents were Carl Gaebel and Jacobina Kennel. I found 2 possible courses for Barbara’s early life:

  • her mother remarried in 1841 and went on to have 9 children with that man, with the presumption of the era that Carl Gaebel had died
  • Carl and Jacoba Gabel arrived in New York City with 1-year-old Barbara on July 20, 1840, aboard the ship Elisha Denison, having sailed from LeHavre

I’m opting to consider the latter the canonical version at this point. In the late 1830s, Bavaria became much less friendly toward Catholics; it might not be unreasonable, if the Gabels were Catholic (which later evidence suggests), to think they might have hightailed it out of there with their infant.

Both the Helvetia and the Elisha Denison appear to have been 3-masted square-rigger ships that traversed the Atlantic regularly. The Helvetia was a newer ship, built in 1850, able to make the trip in between 38 and 53 days, apparently. We can probably expect that the Elisha Denison took somewhat longer, though I can’t find any immediate stats on that.

An example of the immigrant ships of the era.

In any case, Peter and Barbara married sometime before 1860 and were settled in Philadelphia by 1860.

Philadelphia 1876. From the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Their first child, Charles, was born on August 3, 1860, in Pennsylvania, and they went on to have at least 11 children:

  • Charles (1861–1897)
  • Catharine (1866–1896)
  • Peter (1867–1867)
  • George (1868–1902)
  • Oliver (1868–1868)
  • Clara (1869–1870)
  • Emma Regina (1871–1946)
  • Elizabeth (1872–1941)
  • Anna Maria (1875–1903)
  • Margaret (1876–1956)
  • John (1880–1928)

You’ll notice a few things in their list of children:

  • There’s a gap between Charles (born 1860) and Catharine (born 1866) which is, in most part, explicable by Peter spending 3.5 years in the Union Army. He was a private in the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry, Company A, and was apparently the surgeon’s assistant by dint of his training as a butcher. (Yes, surgery in the Civil War was exactly that horrifying.)
  • 3 of the children didn’t make it out of infancy, which is not unusual at all. Peter Jr and Oliver each died a few hours after birth, Clara died of teething and pneumonia (likely an infection from teething that spread to the lungs).
  • There is an interesting cluster of 4 children dying between 1896 and 1903.

It is this last that I find especially fascinating. Hang on, let’s put the deaths in order, add in Peter and Barbara, and add causes of death.

  • Barbara, 13 April 1896: inanition
  • Catharine, 18 October 1896: acute myelitis
  • Charles, 4 January 1897: pleuropneumonia
  • George, 27 April 1902: pulmonary phthisis
  • Anna Maria, 20 September 1903: tuberculosis
  • Peter Sr, 15 April 1904: cancer of the throat and face, with the contribution of “effusion on the brain”

Parts of Philadelphia in the late 1800s were so densely populated that tuberculosis ran rampant. I also note that all the Albrecht children were still living at home as of 1896 — 8 children and 2 parents living in a corner house either behind or above the butcher shop on South 8th St. That made for pretty crowded conditions.

Barbara’s cause of death, as we know from previous death certificate adventures, is thoroughly unhelpful. She stopped eating. It could have been cancer. It could have been any disease at all. Her obituary is unhelpful too.

ALBRECHT. On the 13th. BARBARA, wife of Peter Albrecht. nee Goebel, aged 56 years. The relatives and friends of the family are respectfully invited to attend the funeral, on Friday morning at 7.30 o’clock, from her husband’s residence, 1401 South Eighth street. High Mass at St. Alphonsus’ Church. Interment at Holy Cross Cemetery.

Here’s our evidence that Barbara’s family may have been Catholic (while Peter’s was not — he was baptized in a Protestant church in Walldorf): St. Alphonsus Church, once located at 4th and Reed Sts in South Philadelphia, 4 blocks from Peter Albrecht’s butcher shop at 8th and Reed. From the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Catharine died 6 months after her mother. This could be terrible luck — she developed acute myelitis — inflammation of the spinal cord as a result of… something? Some infectious disease, most likely. It could have been typhoid (there was a sizable outbreak in 1898-1899), or polio (an up and coming disease), or influenza (there had been a pandemic in 1890, but there’s always the yearly flu). It could also have been tuberculosis. Now, we have no evidence from the documents that TB was knocking about in the Albrechts’ crowded house yet.

But less than 3 months later, Charles died of pleuropneumonia (pneumonia complicated by pleurisy, or inflammation of the tissues around the lungs). This is a really odd cluster of bad luck. I mean, it could be just bad luck. There could’ve been a flu outbreak that took out both brother and sister that winter. Especially because we still don’t have proof of TB. But pleurisy is one of the first symptoms of TB outside the lungs, and the doctor may have been simply literal. I have also seen this diagnosis crop up in another family in a mother whose child subsequently died of TB, suggesting that the mother had had it as well.

But then George died of pulmonary phthisis — the unnecessarily unpronounceable 19th century medical term for pulmonary tuberculosis. Granted, he died 5 years after Charles, but TB can have a long latency period. He might have caught something else that compromised his immune system — another round of flu, perhaps — and that allowed latent TB to become active. Or possibly the previous deaths were not TB at all and he just picked it up at work sometime.

A year and 5 months later, Anna also dies of TB. Did she also have latent TB, or did she avoid it until George got it? It’s impossible to know now.

And lastly went Peter, 7 months after Anna and 8 years almost to the day after Barbara died. Cancer of the throat and face is not necessarily directly linked to TB, though TB does increase chances of it. Apparently, laryngeal TB can masquerade as cancer, forming a sizable mass. But the involvement of the face argues against that misdiagnosis. The era suggests that this could have been tobacco use, of course, or perhaps some horrific chemical exposure that only butchers might experience. But at this distance one can never tell.

Certainly it could be terrible luck. Bad luck continued to dog this family even after this horrific cluster of deaths left only 4 children behind.

  • Emma Regina (1871–1946)
  • Elizabeth (1872–1941)
  • Margaret (1876–1956)
  • John (1880–1928)

It is worth noting that Emma got the heck out of Dodge in 1899 when she got married and moved out, which probably kept her from having to be potentially infected by TB (assuming there wasn’t an earlier outbreak that she survived). Elizabeth married in October 1902, after George died and before Anna. This left Margaret and John in the house when Anna, then Peter died. Margaret went into service, living in a home with a family with a small child in a middling-wealthy part of Philadelphia, while John moved in with Elizabeth a few blocks down South 8th St, in the house next-door to Peter’s first butcher shop.

John died first, in 1928 of gangrene of the right foot due to diabetes. Emma, sometime in the early 1940s, also experienced complications from diabetes that resulted in amputation of one of her legs.

Elizabeth, who was married but never seems to have had children, died next, the evening of October 26, 1941, in Philadelphia, age 69. She’d been struck by “a car that failed to stop” at 17th St and Passyunk Ave, just 3 blocks from her house.

Emma died on January 10, 1946, age 74, having been the only one of her siblings to have children, and having lived to know her 5 grandsons and even met at least one great-grandchild. Margaret died in February 1956 at the age of 79, and was buried near Emma (and Emma’s husband) and John.

I have a photo of this grave somewhere, but this one’s from Findagrave.

I continue to have deep suspicions about the entire death cluster that comprises 8 years around the turn of the century, though I don’t have any proof. It’s sort of like another, smaller cluster in another branch of the family that is extremely suggestive that the family suffered a Helicobacter pylori infection. I’ll never know the answers, but the evidence is tantalizing and I’ll just keep speculating as long as I work on these family trees.

Arborvitae: Cousin Oscar’s Surprising End

As you know by now, it’s the people who die surprisingly young who most often surprise me on their death certificates or, in states failing to have useful records that Ancestry or FamilySearch have managed to wangle out of them, news stories. And they’re the ones I generally go hunting for in terms of cause of death. In the case of women, it’s usually sadly predictable; for instance, in a tree I’m working on, I recently spotted a woman who’d died in 1944 in her 30s. Then I found that a child of hers was born in 1944. I compared his birthday to her death day and… yeah, she’d died 2 days after he was born. Puerperal fever got a LOT of women before the general availability of really effective antibiotics. Now, I don’t have her death certificate — thanks, Michigan — so it could have been eclampsia, since there were antibiotics at this point that generally put down puerperal fever, and eclampsia is harder to put down; or it could have been a hemorrhage, or any of a handful of other causes of mortality in new mothers.

When men die super-young, it’s either disease or something more interesting than puerperal fever. For instance, I’ve got one guy who died within a month of his wedding of meningitis. That said, it’s often worth hunting for news stories if there’s no death certificate, because small towns and the demise of a promising young man often equal Big News (see also Cousin Frank’s Sudden Death).

As it was in the case of Oscar Beauregarde Russell.

Disclaimer: O B Russell is part of a tree that is not mine, but that I’ve been working on. Permission granted by the person whose tree it is for me to write about interesting things I find in the tree.

Oscar was born on August 31, 1861, in Verona, Mississippi, just a few months after the opening of the Civil War (and he, of course, lived in a place that probably refers to it as the War Between The States, but this is my version of the story, so you get my [accurate] Yankee predilections for terminology). He was the ninth child of George Daniel Russell and Emily Menville Stovall, grandson of George Russell, who was a close friend of Davy Crockett and played by Buddy Ebsen in Disney’s Davy Crockett television series.

Buddy Ebsen as George Russell

On May 18, 1882, in Bell, Texas, Oscar married Leila Eubank, daughter of John Thomas Eubank and Julia Jackson Eubank. As he proceeded into what was apparently a promising career in the dairy business, he and Leila had 7 children.

On March 20, 1897, however, Oscar made a Bad Choice.

BAIRD STAR – FRIDAY Mar 26, 1897, CRUSHED TO DEATH: There was a horrible accident in the railroad yards here last Saturday night in which Mr. O B Russell, brother of our County Attorney, B L Russell, and partner with Mr. H G Parker, dairyman, was instantly killed.
Mr. Russell came up town after supper on some business and returning in company with Arthur Waldrou they went down through the T&P Ry yards on their way to the dairy farm just south of the depot. There were several freight cars standing on the main line and they walked to a point just east of the telegraph office where they found an opening between the cars. Arthur Waldrou crossed the track in safety, but the space between the cars from some cause closed up suddenly and caught Mr. Russell between the draw heads and crushed him to death instantly; a coupling link having passed entirely through his body just above the hips. Mr. Russell had a lamp chimney in his hand when struck and when found the chimney was still in his hand unbroken.
Mr. Russell leaves a wife and seven children to mourn his loss, besides several brothers and sisters and his aged mother who lives at Putnam. Two sisters, Mrs. M E Surles, of Putnam and Mrs. R Day of Abilene, came in Sunday to attend the funeral at Baird Cemetery. Mr Frank Russell of Sipe Springs was telegraphed the sad news at once but did not receive it until too late to be present at the funeral; but came in on Monday.
It was a sad affair and THE STAR extends sincere sympathy to the widow and orphan children so suddenly robbed of husband and father. Mr. Russell was born in 1861 and was therefore about 36 years of age. In the mourning of life, while the shadows still falling towards the west, suddenly and without a moments warning the summons came and he passed over the river.
Mr. Russell we understand carried a small amount of life insurance $1000 in the Royal Union Co. of Des Moines.

Yes, you read that correctly: he walked through a train yard as a short cut. He walked between 2 train cars that his friend had just successfully walked between. One of the cars moved for an unknown reason and he was transfixed by the coupling between the cars, instantly killed, and found still standing with his lamp in his hand.

For more information on how dangerous railyards were at the time, check out this Atlas Obscura article.

The United States was in transition between train couplers at that point. Originally, they used link-and-pin couplers, which required a human to be between moving train cars in order to lock those cars together, and maimed or killed a LOT of railway workers.

By Ben Franske – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6359889

In order to address the safety concerns, the US mandated a transition from these link and pin couplers to automatic knuckle or Janney couplers over the course of about 5 years. So there were transition couplers that could accept either type.

By Huduuthink – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32241707

And then there were just the knuckle couplers.

By ArnoldReihold – En:Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1481469

Because 1897 was squarely in the transition period, we can’t know which type of coupler went entirely through Oscar above the hips, but we can be… pretty glad he apparently died instantly. And very sorry for Mr. Waldrou, who presumably turned back when his friend wasn’t immediately behind him and found some serious nightmare fuel instead.

The obituary notes that his sudden death left his widow and 7 children… but actually it was 8, because Leila gave birth to their last child 6 months later. Those 8 children were:

  • Edith Mae Russell (1884–1974)
  • Oscar Burton Russell (1886–1954)
  • Emily C Russell (1888–1913)
  • John T Russell (1889–1925)
  • William Stovall Russell (1891–1972)
  • Robert Lee Russell (1893–1951)
  • Clarence Tatom Russell (1895–1964)
  • Eunice Vivian Russell (1897–1980)

Leila took the children and presumably the insurance settlement away from Baird, Texas, to Lampasas, Texas, where her father lived. They were living in a house she owned in Lampasas in 1900. However, her father died in late 1900, and perhaps there was a motivation to move closer to her husband’s family again, since she moved the family back to Callahan County by 1910. By 1920, it appears that all her children had moved out to their own lives, and she moved back closer to her roots, to Bertram, Texas, where she lived with one of her nieces. While I can’t find her in 1930, by 1935 she was living with her youngest daughter Vivian and her family in Forth Worth, Texas, and by 1940, they were in Arlington, Texas, (near Austin). Leila lived until 1953, and died in San Luis Obispo, California, age 88, still apparently living with Vivian and her family (since Vivian’s husband died in the same city in 1960).

Some new things over at Glitter Collective

Hello, all!

If you haven’t had a chance to take a look at my new web serial MOTHER[UP]LODE, now is the time! The first six episodes are up and are a good solid introduction to the story and the characters.

In addition, I’ve posted an exploration of an historical ghost story that’s fascinated me for years now: the Phelps Mansion Haunting in Stratford, Connecticut. If you’re a fan of my genealogy stories, I added a dash of genealogical research to this one, nailing down some names and dates that other folks have gotten not-quite-right.

Arborvitae: Cousin John’s Trip to Sing-Sing

Image text: STATE OF NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION SING SING PRISON receiving blotter

It was pretty startling in the case of someone named John to find something so definitive: it identified him by name, birthplace, and date of birth, as well as including his mother’s name and her home address. And here he was, being received into Sing Sing Prison in New York, far from his Philadelphia home.

For being so definitive, it raised a lot of questions: alias was listed as “Mason.” Was he just called Mason? Was he also known as John Mason? His plea was listed as “confession” and then we see his crime: murder 2nd degree. And that brought me up short, especially in a 19-year-old.

Fortunately, I wasn’t left in suspense: there was a description of the criminal act: “while armed, shot and killed a man [illegible]”. This took place on July 24, 1935, in New York City. He was sentenced on April 15, 1936, and received at the prison on April 16. His sentence? 20 to life. However, he became eligible for parole on March 13, 1949.

Of interest, he had 2 accomplices — Timothy Curran and James Hanks — both of whom are listed as deceased. Well! Were they deceased by the hand of the law, or by other forces? A Timothy Curran was received at Sing Sing on February 6, 1930, for attempted burglary, with a sentence of 5 years (eligible for parole 2/19/34), though there’s no sign of James Hanks in the available records.

John’s only apparently legitimate employment was for a week in 1934, working as a clerk at a wage of $5/week. Other interesting bits and bobs of information are available from this intake: he could read and write, he was Catholic but did not attend church, and he was living at 1 Convent Avenue, New York, when he was arrested (an apartment building that is either in Manhattanville or Harlem, it’s hard to tell on the map, and I’m not well-versed enough in NYC geography to determine).

This rather surprising bit of history made it easier to chase down John’s particular rabbit hole. Interestingly, by 1943, he was apparently back in Philadelphia, because he’d registered for the draft there. Time off for good behavior?

And then, in another Ancestry family tree, I found that John married his sister-in-law’s sister Theresa, who was on her second marriage. I poked a little deeper into her family and she married her first husband, Hugh, in 1945. But then he vanished in 1950 and turned up as skeletal remains in a car in the Delaware River when a dredge picked the car up in 1955. The car went into the river at Vine Street in Philadelphia, which appears to be right where the Ben Franklin Bridge is (I’m from the MidAtlantic and much of my family is from Philly, but I don’t have a good mental map of Philly, so I resort to GoogleMaps).

Image text: Bones in River Linked to Bodies of Autoists Missing Since ’50

Bones in River Linked to Bodies Of Autoists Missing Since ’50
Delaware Yields Car At Vine St.
Pieces of human bones found by divers on the riverbed near the point where a 1947 Pontiac sedan was dredged from the Delaware River Wednesday appeared yesterday to have solved the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of two Philadelphia men missing since 1950.
Capt. David Roberts of the Homicide Squad reported that his men, late yesterday afternoon, sent to the morgue several bones and fragments, believed to be those of a human being, which were brought to the surface by divers of the Motor Harbor Police.
BOTH REPORTED MISSING
The divers were sent to the bottom of the river, about 30 feet off Pier 17 at Vie st., after a search of the mud-filled interior of the sedan had disclosed no sign of its occupants.
Patrolmen Norton Stevenson, Bernard Corcoran and Edward Roman, the three divers, brought up two humerus bones (those of the upper arm); one femur, one ulna, one radius, one scapula, and eight rib bones in the course of their search. Sgt. John McBridge of the Homicide Squad said the bones were definitely human. He said the divers would return to the scene this morning to search for skulls, so that positive identification might be made through dental work.
The occupants, at the time the automobile apparently plunged into the river in December, 1950, were believed to have been George Hubbard, 30, then of 2136 S. Lee st., the owner of the car, and Hugh Gillespie, 28, of 2312 N. Colorado st. Sgt. John J. McBride of the Homicide Squad said records showed that Hubbard’s wife, Mary, reported him missing Dec. 15, 1950, and that Gillespie’s wife, Theresa, reported him missing Dec. 20.
The two men, both employed on the loading platform at the Mid-States Freight Lines, Inc., were last seen, police said, leaving a taproom near 5th st. and Columbia ave., a short distance from the freight lines platform.
FIND PIECE OF CLOTH
Detective Edmund Repsch and Samuel Powell of the Homicide Squad, the first ones sent to investigate the wreckage of the machine after a city Department of Commerce dredge brought it up, arranged to have an engine company hose out the interior of the car yesterday. All that they found in it was a rotted piece of khaki cloth, similar to the material of the trousers Hubbard was wearing when he disappeared. Captain Roberts ordered divers sent down upon learning that the top of the car broke loose as it was being hauled to the surface and that some of the contents might have spilled to the bottom.
Hubbard’s widow, now living with her mother and three children at 2143 S. Lee st., became hysterical upon learning of the discovery of her husband’s car, and required sedatives from a physician.

Leaving a taproom, alas, is suggestive of a terribly mundane reason for the car ending up in the river. I do find it interesting, though, that it took Theresa some five days longer than her counterpart to report her husband missing.

So John seems to have done his time and married a grieving widow (seriously, how awful must that have been, 5 years missing and no idea what happened?), and they went on to have 2 more kids together. Happily ever after!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.

I had gotten distracted by John! I proceeded to go hunting down the other sibling in the family who wasn’t amenable to easy location: his older brother Charles. Everything proceeded normally enough until the 1940 census, when where did I find him?

Image text: Eastern State Penitentiary

If you’ve seen any ghost hunter shows or shows about Al Capone, you’ve seen Eastern State Penitentiary, the infamous Philadelphia prison built as a showpiece of “modern” correctional thought in 1829, constructed to provide solitary confinement for up to 300 prisoners. The guards and administrators also imposed further tortures on the prisoners for various infractions, and by the early 20th century, overcrowding collapsed the solitary confinement scheme. There were a number of notorious inmates, though Capone was the most famous.

All right then. Some Googling ensued and turned up a doozy of an article on a Find-a-Grave for a police officer who had been killed.

Policeman David H. Wiley
Philadelphia Police Department
Pennsylvania
End of Watch: Sunday, April 10, 1932
Biographical Info
Age: 31
Tour of Duty: Appointed 1924.
Badge Number: 3245
Incident Details
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Sunday, April 10, 1932
Weapon Used: Gun; Unknown type
Suspect Info: Charles A. […]
Policeman Wiley was shot and killed as he and his partner investigated a suspicious vehicle parked in front of a the Petkov Co. tobacco firm on Market Street near 4th Street that he and other officers suspected contained burglars who had robbed the business. After observing two men exit the building, place bundles in the car, and then return to the building, the officers approached the vehicle. Without warning, the driver, Charles […], 19, fired point blank at Wiley and sped away. One of the four shots he fired punctured the policeman’s lung.
Four males were arrested and confessed to the incident. Angered at [Charles], they implicated him as the shooter and explained they thought the shooting of Wiley was “unneccessary.” Instead of shooting, they said, [Charles] should have given an agreed signal and then driven away. By blaming [Charles], police said, they were hopeful of avoiding trial on a murder charge. Four others were held on charges of receiving goods stolen by the robbers.
All were convicted and two were initially sentenced to die in the electric chair, including [Charles]. The group of burglars was suspected in the murder of Policeman William Henderson one month earlier, but were never charged due to a lack of evidence.
[Charles] and Danny Piccarelli got new trials that spared them death sentences. [Charles], who faced tough times in the old Tenderloin District, pled guilty in his new trial and only got 10 years. After getting out, he was picked up repeatedly – a jewel robbery, an extortion case, an assault and battery case in which he allegedly sat it out on the curb while a woman neighbor got cut 24 times. Twice guns were found. But [Charles] always managed to beat the charge and kept walking about on parole.
In 1936, during one his stays in prison, [Charles] received a letter from his brother John, also a criminal, that a Judge Carroll called “a classic”:
“Why did we do these things we are in prison for? Why did we turn out bad when our three brothers kept honest? What will happen to us after we are dead?”
Charles […] and his brother John were the sons of a crane operator, who, before he was crippled by polio, “never let us go hungry.”
“It wasn’t until after my father died that all we had to eat was potatoes.”
“The first time I got pinched I was only eight years old. A big Irish cop pulled me in and a woman hit him over the head with an umbrella. But everyone got arrested every once in a while in the Tenderloin. It was a tough neighborhood. You saw flashy-dressed men getting out of big cars in front of bum-looking houses. They were gunmen and the houses was where they lived. It didn’t add up. And I should have seen it but didn’t. All the money those men had they pulled a gun for. But I didn’t think about that. I just thought about making money – any way I could. The boys who shot it out with the cops [Patrolman Harry Cooper was shot and killed] in the Olney bank holdup [May 4, 1926] were a couple of years ahead of me. I remember when they brought their bodies home from the penitentiary after they were electrocuted [March 7, 1927]. A bunch of us kids went to the wakes. The whole neighborhood was down in the mouth about it. But I was still making honest money then – hustling newspapers and shining shoes for maybe a buck an afternoon after school. I was a choir boy and my mother took me to church every Sunday.””What happened to the faith our mother learned us? Why did you and me throw it away when our brothers kept it? I don’t know. I wish I knew. It was the biggest mistake either one of us ever made.”
In 1955, the 42-year old Charles […] was arrested for a safe-breaking burglary. [Charles] was held in the 12th and Pine street stationhouse which bore the plaque in memory of Officer Wiley who [Charles] murdered in 1932.
Wiley was a six-year veteran of the force. He had been commended for meritorious service several times. He was the youngest of ten children of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen H. Wiley. At the age of 15 he enlisted in the Naval Reserves for service in the World War. He joined the police in 1924. He was unmarried and lived at 1624 Oregon av. His father, retired at the time of his son’s death, was a city fireman more than 30 years.
Sources:
1. The Officer Down Memorial Page, Inc. http://www.odmp.org/officer/14179-policeman-david-h.-wiley
2. Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
3. 1930 U.S. Federal Census
4. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania Veterans Burial Cards, 1929-1990; Archive Collection Number: Series 1-13; Folder Number: 534.

Well! Both John and Charles were clearly casualties of poverty and opportunity, only where John managed to find his way out, Charles got stuck in doing what he knew how to do (which seemed to be quite a lot, really). Charles also seemed to be pretty good at getting himself out of prison, despite being a career criminal.

Despite a lot of hunting, I couldn’t find out what had happened to Charles after the information about being picked up for safecracking in 1955. I eventually found one of John’s children on Facebook, and she told me that Charles had been killed in a bar on Christmas Eve, 1975: shot 3 times in the chest at age 63.

We can hope that Charles was as happy in his life as brother John seemed to have been in his. John lived until 1991, dying at age 74. Theresa passed away in 2004, age 79. They seem to have been well-loved by their family.

Affordable Genealogy

Boosting Your Start for Your Family Tree

It’s hard to get started in genealogy, especially if you’ve never done it before, and an Ancestry membership is expensive. Also, finding a professional genealogist can be a baffling challenge. Who to pick? Will they understand what I want? Can I afford them?

So here’s the deal:

  • I have almost 40 years of genealogical research experience and an Ancestry membership I’d like to have help funding.
    • I’m also a big ol’ queer, if that makes any difference to you (and yes, I do think of queer things when I look through family trees — that cousin in the 1920s who lived 40 years with another woman? mmm-hmmm).
  • You have a family tree you might be interested in, whether you want to know some of your ancestors’ names for religious purposes, your kids/siblings/parents/other relatives are asking questions, or you’re just curious.

Let’s help each other out!

The Process

  1. Send me money for what you want (see What You Get below) and the best email address to contact you: paypal.me/judemclaughlin
  2. I’ll email you to confirm receipt with a list of questions: that’s your chance to give me whatever you’ve got: names, birth/death/marriage dates, and locations. 
  3. You email me your information.
  4. I’ll email to confirm receipt, ask any clarifying questions, and provide you with approximate timing for my response.
  5. I create a locked family tree on Ancestry and go digging.
  6. I provide you with whatever level of deliverable you have paid for.
  7. You enjoy your newfound family tree information!
  8. (optional) If you want, we can talk about expanding the tree, getting more writeup, that sort of thing, and what the pricing on that would be.

If I run into challenges that are insurmountable using my normal resources, I will email and we can discuss. If I’m unable to provide you the deliverable or an agreed-upon alternative (see Caveats, below), I will refund you.

What You Get

$25: The Basics

I will spend 2-3 hours driving your family tree straight back as far as I can reasonably go. After that, I will download and send you the GED file so you can upload it to your own family tree program, as well as inviting you to the Ancestry tree for you to peruse and edit. 

$50: Names and Numbers

I do the same as I did at the $25 level, as well as sending you a text summary of the tree, with names and birth and death dates. Eg (fictional): 

Jane Smith (1857-1932)
married ca 1880
James Jones (1855-1932)
2 children:
Augustus (1875-1918)
Ophelia (1879-1970)

$100: Essential Storyline

Same as the $25 level, but the writeup is in short, readable, surface-level biographic blurbs back to the great-great-grandparents level. Eg (also fictional):

Jane Smith was born on August 4, 1857, in England. She emigrated to the US around 1880, and married James Jones in Philadelphia. They had 2 children: Augustus (1875-1918) and Ophelia (1879-1970). Jane died on February 2, 1932. James died on March 25, 1932.

$250: Whole Kit and Kaboodle

Same as the $25 level, but the writeup has more depth in that I’ll go digging into the records (back to the great-great-grandparent level) for information deeper in the documents, such as cause of death, immigrant ship name, cemetery where they’re buried, that sort of thing. I might go hunting for other sites/books/newspapers that could have more information about particularly interesting-looking people (distinctive names, startlingly short lives, death certificates that have no cause of death but clearly indicate an inquest, that sort of thing). Eg (utterly fictional):

Jane Smith was born on August 4, 1857, in London, England. She emigrated to the US in 1880 on the ship Hesperus, and married James Jones (born April 15, 1855, to James Jones Sr and Eliza Divine in Pennsylvania) in Philadelphia, at St Mary’s Episcopal Church on Broad Street. They had 2 children: Augustus (1875-1918), who died in France in World War I, and Ophelia (1879-1970). In 1920, they were living in Germantown, and appeared to still be there in 1930. Jane died on February 2, 1932, of pneumonia. James died on March 25, 1932, at the Old Man’s Home in Philadelphia, of heart disease contributed to by senility.

Want More?

Beyond this point, if you want more breadth of family and/or depth of research, we can discuss the possibilities, potential pricing, and probable timing. I do write full-blown books about family research, but these are very time-intensive and can take me more than a year to create. For instance, I started working on a new one in January and here in October, I’m at about a halfway point of a large family tree (2000 people and expanding) first draft, which translates to 45 pages of a single-spaced Word document. Then there’s a revision draft, proofing, diagrams, and layout. A book would be priced accordingly.

Caveats

My research is dependent upon the databases available. What I can find depends entirely upon what’s out there. If no one’s managed to convince New York City to license their marriage registry through 1960, then I’m not gonna be able to dig that up. Some states have better records than others. Minnesota and California, for instance, have fantastic birth records. Florida has great marriage and divorce records. Maryland? Eh. Not much there.

I also depend on the family histories of other people on Ancestry to a certain extent. I try to back this up with records and by my own judgment of the likelihood of the connections. This has led me astray in the past, but I’ve learned from those experiences what some of the warning flags are and can avoid them.

That said, if I go down an attractive garden path of someone else’s family tree or other seemingly likely records and it turns out to be wrong, I will do my best to fix it at no additional charge.

If I can’t get back to at least your great-great-grandparents’ level, I can instead go outward, pulling in information on aunts, uncles, and cousins. I’ll let you know before I do this, though, in case this isn’t an acceptable alternative to you.

My current membership is US only. I can sometimes leverage other sources to get extra-US information. If I get enough interest (and income) so that I can expand my membership to the world version, I will!

Your family’s ethnic and geographic origin will impact the available information. If your family is from a place whose records have not been translated, or is from a population that was oppressed and/or impacted by genocide (that includes within the US), there won’t be much for me to find. 

If part or all of your family arrived in the US later than 1940, the information I can find will be limited.

If your family is chockablock with common USian names and lived in big cities, I might not be able to connect up people. But I’ll do my best! Dates, more precise locations (eg, “They lived in Germantown,” as opposed to, “They lived in Philadelphia”), and middle names can help there.

When I say I’ll try to get back as far as possible in your family tree, the number of generations will vary. For some people with colonial ancestors, this can be back 6 or more generations. For most of us whose families arrived in the US in the 19th and early 20th centuries, that usually translates to great-great-grandparents. I will almost certainly not connect your family to the Scottish laird your aunt swears you’re descended from (most connections to nobility are tissue paper and wishes, and one can see that in some of the family trees out there).

And finally, if your family is white, I can 99% guarantee that the unspecified “Indian princess” your uncle swears your great-grandma told him about is a myth, especially if she’s supposed to be Cherokee. However, I will do my best to confirm or deny.

Arborvitae: Cousin Samuel and the Train

Samuel F Simmons was born in July 1877 in Maryland.  He married Hannah P Ward (born about 1877 in Delaware) on March 27, 1902, in Delaware.  They had at least one child, Samuel Ward, who was born around 1910. Samuel Sr died on June 21, 1917, at the age of 39, along with his wife and son, in an automobile versus train accident.  The family was buried in Bethel Cemetery in Chesapeake City.

Common disasters happen, as I mentioned in my last post on the subject. Sometimes, though, it takes some work to tease the information out.

I was tracking Samuel Sr. from his parents’ family record, and therefore had his approximate birth year. On Ancestry, I found his marriage record to Hannah in 1902, and then found the 1910 census record showing the pair and their son Ward, born 1910. (Probably, there were more children between 1902 and 1910, but Maryland’s death records are slim and it’s difficult to find the children who die in the gaps.) But then all records petered out.

I did what I usually do in that case: hop over to FamilySearch.org and poke around in their databases. And there I found Maryland probate records for Samuel F Simmons from 1917. Since I couldn’t find him in the 1920 census, that seemed very likely. So I popped it open.

First thing I saw was that it was filed on June 25, 1917 — so now I knew that he’d died before then, in the first half of the year. Page 2, though, was the kicker.

Page 2 was the kicker.

What do we see here?

  • Date and time of death: Thursday, June 21, 1917, at 8 pm.
  • Hannah Simmons is not listed among the heirs-at-law, nor is she the executrix — the executor is the brother of the deceased.
  • Neither is Ward Simmons.
  • Oh, and I now had the married names for the 3 sisters I’d despaired of finding. That was awesome.

Pages 3-6 are signatures and other housekeeping; page 7 begins the inventory of the estate. Beyond that was information that Samuel had been a tenant farmer, and his brother Isaac was ordered to take up his lease and fulfill the conditions of the lease, selling milk from the cows and tending and harvesting the farm, in order to benefit the estate. The original lease from 1910 was included, with all its terms. And then the final account of the estate was included with all items sold at public and private sale.

In the account were more items of interest, including:

  • Benefits due the deceased from the Patriotic Order Sons of America: $299.00
  • Benefits due the deceased from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company: $985.06
  • Benefits due from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company on death of son: $85.30
  • Amount received from sale of wrecked automobile: $10.00
  • Amount received from suit against the Railroad Company for damage to the automobile: $232.95
  • Amount received from PW&B RR (Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad) for funeral expenses: $529.35

And then in the outlay from the estate:

  • For amt paid, funeral expenses for Samuel F Simmons: $157.75
  • Mrs. Samuel F Simmons: $158.35
  • Ward Simmons: $60.25
  • Burial plot: $61.50

A common disaster indeed!

With the date in hand, I went delving into newspaper archives online, but to no avail. I did, however, discover an obliging historical society in the area, with online payment for searching and scanning their newspaper archive. I wrote them with the following result.

Cecil Whig, June 23, 1917

Shortly after 8 o’clock Thursday night, four persons were killed at the Bridge street crossing of P, B. & W. Railroad in Elkton. They were Samuel Simmons, a farmer near Elkton; Mrs. Hannah Simmons, his wife; Ward Simmons, aged about 8 years, their son, and Geo. Foster, a farm hand in Mr. Simmons employ. The accident wiped out Mr. Simmons’s entire family.
The Bridge street crossing where the accident occurred has been the scene of several sad affairs, but none in magnitude compared with the latest one.
Completing his day’s work on the farm, Mr. Simmons accompanied by his wife, child and hired man started in his new Ford automobile for the farm of Frank B. Evans, just north of Elkton, to spend a short time with the family of Joseph McKinney. Everything went well all the way to the railroad. Upon approaching the railroad crossing, the driver of the car noticed the safety gates were still up and he undertook to go across the tracks. Just as the machine was about in the middle of the northbound track, the locomotive attached to train No. 432, New York and Washington express, running at a speed of about 60 miles an hour, crashed into it, and the car, together with the four occupants, was whirled through the air. The body of Mr. Foster lodged on the pilot* of the locomotive and remained there until the train was stopped. The bodies of all four of the victims were [unreadable] mutilated, and the automobile was broken into thousands of pieces.
Coroner Herbert D. Litzenberg had the bodies removed to the undertaking establishment of Vinsinger & Pipple, and he summoned the following jury of inquest over the remains, which viewed the bodies that night and met yesterday to hear testimony: Taylor W McKenney, C.P. Bartley, Fred H. Leffler, Charles S. Boulden, Daniel Henry, Edward M. Johnson, Harry R. Boulden, A Alexander, George Potts, Alfred Taylor, Harry Buckworth, Wm. Henry Biddle.
The jury rendered the following verdict: That Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Simmons, Ward Simmons and George Foster came to the death by being struck by train No 432 on the Pennsylvania Railroad, Thursday evening, June 21; that the cause of death was carelessness and negligence of John Lotman, the gate-keeper employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, at this point, at that time, and to the criminal carelessness and neglect of the said Pennsylvania Railroad Company in its failure to secure and train competent employees to attend the dangerous grade crossings in this town. This jury wishes to point out and to emphasize the grave danger of these crossings to the traveling public an the continued indifference of the Railroad Company in failing to take the necessary precautions in spite of the large number of accidents that have occurred at these points in this town. We respectfully request that the States Attorney of this county take criminal action against the Pennsylvania Railroad Company whom we consider primarily responsible for the criminal carelessness in failing to properly safeguard the traveling public
Funeral services of Mr. and Mrs. Simmons and son will be held at their late residence Sunday afternoon at 2 o’clock; interment at Bethel Cemetery. The funeral services of George Foster will be held in the Elkton M.E. Church on Sunday at 1230 o’clock, with interment in Elkton Cemetery.
John Lotman, the watchman, was placed under arrest yesterday, Friday afternoon.

*The pilot of the locomotive is also known as the cowcatcher — it’s that plow-shaped bit on the front.

Of interest, Wikipedia supplies that the PW&B Railroad moved the line north of Elkton to eliminate the grade crossings in the town in 1934 — the original line ran on a tight curve through town, which I imagine is how the train was hidden from view as Samuel began crossing the tracks.

Also of interest, a little poking around in the newspapers online reveal that John Lotman was released from Elkton jail in July, and his case was supposed to be heard in September. An article from December 1917 shows that not only was Lotman indicted for manslaughter, but also the track foreman, Malachi Rafferty, and Supervisor English were also indicted for manslaughter for knowingly retaining Lotman despite knowing he was incompetent. Sadly, I have been unable to discover the final judgments against the three.

So that is my slightly more complicated story of genealogical detective work for the week. I’ll see if I can root out something else interesting for next week.

Where Have I Been?

I vanished somewhere around July 2017. Where have I been and what have I been doing?

The short answer is that real life ate me. The longer answer involves workplace bullying, misogyny, ageism, and queerphobia; a 6-month stint of consulting and existential crises; a second tour of duty at an old (and much much friendlier) workplace; radical positive changes in friendships; and turning 50, along with an extended wodge of writer’s block.

I’m still editing Wonder City Stories volume 3 — now titled Forgotten Heroes — but I think it will be in good shape once I’m through that. Then I have the challenge of figuring out how to fund publishing it with my altered employment circumstances (a loss of supplementary income I used to have). I might do a bit of fundraising, possibly with the assistance of Madame Destiny, in order to do so.

I have a few other items that I’ve been shopping around, but no nibbles yet. We’ll see how that goes.

What writing I’ve been managing to do has either been on my genealogical books or on the world document for a tabletop RPG world that I’ve been running for my gaming group, where the characters are all from a nation of genderqueer shapeshifters. My players all want me to write novels in the world, and one of my players has induced me to work a little bit on a short story with them. Another thing that we’ll see about.

In any case, I’m working on the writer’s block, and will let you know if I’m successful at breaking it, and meanwhile will also consider the ways and means to getting Forgotten Heroes out into the world.

A Eulogy for Tom

My cousin Tom Hogan — Mr. Hogan to his many, many high school social studies students in Delaware — died on Monday July 17, 2017. I wrote a thing about him, because that’s what I do when experiencing heavy emotional weather. Today would have been his 47th birthday.

My cousins — Tom’s brothers and sisters-in-law — enjoyed this when I forwarded it to them, so I hope that other people who knew him and even people who didn’t will likewise enjoy it.

Prologue

In which I use a possibly familiar quote, which I swear will be relevant in a few moments:

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Introduction

I’m Tom’s only first cousin on the Hogan side of the family.  I write for a living, including novels, the first of which I dedicated to Tom, describing him as one of my superheroes. And given that, I hope you will forgive the conceit by which I structured this.

Chapter One

There is a meme that circulates periodically on Facebook that says, “Our cousins are our first friends.” I love all my cousins, I really do, but there are sometimes things that preclude friendship, even in little kids — age differences, gender, that sort of thing. In my experience, the older cousins often affectionately tolerate the younger ones, and I love Mike, Bob, and Dan for tolerating me like complete champs.

Tom was two years younger than me, but I had no siblings and I apparently never learned to respect an age hierarchy. He was my first playmate and, yes, my first friend.

In the way of small children, we shared our wisdom with each other, totally uncensored.  I told him about stars and volcanoes and hurricanes, talked about my own passion for writing, and explained what I knew about the mysterious contents of our grandmother’s basement. He told me what it was like to have brothers, that I really should go see that new movie, Star Wars, how to play Monopoly — I still don’t know how to play it “properly” —  and that boys pee standing up.  

Our grandmother took us to movies, and to Janssen’s in Greenville, and made us warm egg salad sandwiches for lunch. We sat together in the back of her powder-blue 1963 Pontiac Tempest in those days before seat belt laws and didn’t poke each other. We played together in the giant metal rocketship in the park across the street from our grandmother’s house, where he convinced me to try sliding down the pole despite my fear of heights — and at his parents’ house, with his myriad toys and board games. We sat in the back of my parents’ station wagon and Tom grinned and mugged and somehow convinced a motorcyclist riding behind us to give us thumbs-ups like the Fonz.

(Not the original car, merely similar.)

He was the best kind of brother, really — the one I could have great, memorable times with, and then give back to his brothers and parents for all the rest.

I didn’t have a lot of friends as a kid: I was a tomboy, I was a nerd, I was too smart for my own good. Unlike the kids at school, Tom took me at face value with zero judgment, as a child and, later, as an adult. I was always who I was, his cousin and his friend.

Chapter Two

Tom was my benchmark for generosity.  I never knew another kid who would give things to other people so freely.  He always got tickets to St. Catherine’s carnival for his birthday — which was, as you probably know, July 30.  He always gave me some to go on rides; not even to go on rides with him, though that was great when it happened. No, just for me to go have fun.

Star Trek was our great mutual love and bonding experience. We both had the Mego Star Trek figures, and the plastic fold-out Enterprise with its spinning transporter. Tom played Captain Kirk and Mr. Scott — he had the worst Scottish accent I’ve ever heard — and I played Spock to his Kirk, cool logic to his seat-of-the-pants style.  

During one particularly destructive period of his childhood, when many of his toys were subject to cars and hammers and other methods of plastic destruction, I begged him to give me Mr. Scott. I was afraid for Scotty, you see — and, also, didn’t have a Mr. Scott of my own. Little kid, remember?  And he just handed him to me with a grin.

When I came down to see Tom for the last time, I found Scotty in my parents’ basement. I took a picture of him in the transporter of my plastic fold-out Enterprise and sent it to Tom.  

I forgot to tell him that from time to time, my wife calls me Captain Kirk now — that he taught me about doing things by the seat of my pants and succeeding despite the odds.

He continued immensely generous, giving out of some seemingly endless font of extravagant humor, love, and joie de vivre. He never stopped sharing his uncensored wisdom, though he grew a knack for turns of phrase and timing. I remember when the five of us were walking our grandmother’s coffin out of the church back in 2003. He and I were at the back and he caught my eye, patted the powder-blue coffin, and said so only I — and maybe Dan — could hear, “The Tempest!”  Nanny going out the way we most fondly remembered her.

Chapter Three

Tom was the first person who really got me as a geek. He didn’t make me feel strange about my love of science fiction — a love that has since turned into an identity and even a vocation for me. Later, he was one of the vanguard of the family who accepted other things about me.  On that first awkward family holiday when neither my wife nor I were entirely certain about our reception, he met us at the door, hugged and kissed me as usual, and just moved on to do the same with her. His deceptively simple and utterly natural act of kindness was the perfect social facilitation.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when Tom became a teacher, and it pleased me that we continued to be the two weirdos in the family with our career choices.  But I certainly wasn’t surprised that he was so good at it. Every day of the last several years, it seems, I’ve seen someone on Facebook — a colleague, a student, an old friend — tell him how much of a difference he made in their lives. When I last met him for lunch, we ran into two or three of his former students who as nearly as possible gushed over him.

He touched the lives of literally thousands of people in positive, wonderful, life-changing ways.  He was larger-than-life and possessed of amazing energy — like a superhero — and he worked hard to approach everything as an adventure, endlessly interested in everything and everyone around him.  When I last visited him, he was, even as he recalled the things we did together in the past, thinking of what was ahead.  I asked him what he thought was going to happen — thinking about time tables and such — and he said, “I don’t know, I’ve never done this before,” with a big grin.

Finale

If you want to do something today, or tomorrow, or next year, or ten years from now, to remember Tom, let me make a few suggestions:

One: Support medical marijuana. Those of you who know what I’m talking about will know what I’m talking about. For the rest of you, just trust me on this.  It’s a lifesaver.

Two: Support public schools and education. If you know anything about Tom, it’s that teaching was one of his passions, and we are all more fortunate for his involvement at AI and in the lives of so many students over the years.

Three: Be generous. Lift each other up. Love recklessly. When someone tells you what they want, what they really, really want — insert Tom singing a song here — think about the words that come to your lips: are you about to squash everything they just said with what you feel is the cold, logical voice of reason? Instead, be Tom: ask them to tell you more, ask them why, and maybe dream a little with them.

Epilogue

From my memory of the final movie featuring the original Star Trek cast:

The captain swung into his command chair and said, “I think it’s about time we got underway ourselves.”

The communications officer turned from her station and said, “Captain, I have orders from Starfleet Command. We’re to put back to Spacedock immediately… to be decommissioned.”

The Vulcan science officer looked up from his screen. “If I were human, I believe my response would be ‘go to Hell.'” Then he looked at his captain and added, “If I were human.”

After a moment, the navigator said, tentatively, “Course heading, Captain?”

The captain leaned forward in his seat, gazing keenly at the viewscreen, the stars tantalizingly close and unimaginably distant, everything an undiscovered country.  He smiled and said, “Second star to the right and straight on till morning.”

Mike, Dan, me, Bob, and, of course, Tom in front.

Fundraiser!

My long-time friend Leah has recently been diagnosed with metastatic inflammatory breast cancer, and so Madame Destiny and I are running a fundraiser to help!  Come see what kind of Tarot readings you can get!

http://wonder-city.dreamwidth.org/118031.html