Searching for Alberti: Rumors, Facts and Rabbit Holes

**Disclaimer** this is a blog takeover. Uncle Danny invited me to write about my recent trip to Italy and my recent family research. This is VERY long story – but if you're interested in Alberti family history this is worth the read.

“The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well.”

Alice in Wonderland has been a favorite story since I was a little girl. No matter what mysteries and impossible challenges were placed in her path, she found a way through. She met tricksters and villains but always persisted on her missions. What does Alice have to do with the Alberti family blog, you ask? Uncle Danny has awarded me and my genealogical research skills, the moniker of Alice. Stay with me here and I promise you won’t be disappointed…

Until a few months ago, the solid facts about Great Grandpa Alberti were pretty foggy. Uncle Danny has done an incredible job of taking what crumbs we know about him from “the box”: vague scribblings from Grandma Godfrey, tales passed down through generations, a few inflated newspaper stories and two passport applications. He traveled down his own rabbit holes of research to build fabulous and plausible accounts of what his life might have been like growing up in Italy and immigrating to the United States.

While I was totally enthralled with the grand tales of Great Grandpa Alberti’s life, I couldn’t let go of the fact that there was really no solid evidence to back them up…and well, that just won’t do. I am a realist. I want evidence. Uncle Danny’s blog motivated me. I wanted to know more about the Albertis of Florence.

So off I went down my first rabbit hole at the beginning of this year - starting with a trip to Italy with my cousin Kara (because every great adventurer/sleuth needs a sidekick right?) The journey to Italy via Newark, NJ was packed with fascinations and signs. We had a few hours to kill before our flight to Rome, so upon arrival in Newark we decided to hop on the ferry and cross the Hudson to Lower Manhattan.

This was my first time seeing Lady Liberty. It was extremely moving to begin our ancestral journey this way. It created a meaningful and introspective energy for Kara and me as we crossed the river. We disembarked the boat and found ourselves wandering through Battery Park. After walking a few miles we happened upon a large rock, somewhat hidden by tall weeds, with a plaque on it. The plaque read: Pietro Cesare Alberti  1608-1655.  The first Italian American Immigrant settler in the colony of New Amsterdam. What is now known as New York.

I would describe the look on our faces as something between astonished and inspired. Before you get too excited…remember that I am a facts girl. We have zero evidence of any relation to Pietro Alberti. It was just a really cool coincidence that on a trip looking for facts about our Alberti, we found our first Alberti. It had to be some kind of blessing on our upcoming travels.

A quick backstory for some clarity…see I told you this was a rabbit hole. In 1969 Uncle Danny and Aunt Sharon made a quick trip to Florence attempting to find out more about our mysterious Alberti ancestor. They visited what is now the Firenze National Archives and submitted a genealogy request. The response came in a letter to Uncle Danny confirming that there were in fact many Albertis in Florence, some of which were nobility (however our family could not be directly connected to them). The letter also contained the approximate location of the Alberti family crest located on the side of the Alberti Tower near the Via dei Bardi.

Armed with these directions, upon arrival in Florence, Kara and I dropped our bags at our Air BNB near the Boboli Gardens and immediately set out to find two things: Espresso and the Via dei Bardi.

Imagine, two jet lagged cousins speed walking the narrow streets of Firenze, following 49 year old directions to the location of a 700 year old building. I wouldn’t say we were lost exactly. Lost feels like a permanent situation. We were more finding our bearings in an ancient city… and just like we stumbled upon the Alberti memorial in Battery Park, we happened upon the Alberti Tower. The Alberti crest is a shield with two crossed silver chains. Nothing intricate, but standing on the sidewalk staring up at the symbol of my ancestors, bathed in a golden sunset, was magnifico! Ready for another coincidence? The Alberti Tower is now a mixed use building that houses a café in the bottom and offices and apartments upstairs. One of those offices belongs to the Medici Archive Project. The Medici Archive Project is an organization dedicated to digitizing old Florentine genealogical records from the time of the Medici’s.

Another sign. With only three nights left in Florence, I figured that I needed to work fast to get anything discovered on the ground. Later that evening I began Googling like a madwoman. Reading the Medici Archive website directed me to the location of the Firenze National Archives and further instructed me to make a research request. Like all things Italian, this place was on its own schedule. Due to a national holiday there were no appointments available until after we left Italy.

That didn’t stop Kara and me from chasing the golden Florentine light all over the city. We wandered down narrow streets, drank wine and cappuccino in cozy cafes and daydreamed about walking in the same place our ancestor’s might have walked over 200 years ago.

I returned home relaxed and more inspired than ever to know more.

Well imagine my excitement when I heard that cousin Trisha and her husband would be traveling to Florence and Pienza just a few months later. I sent her all the Alberti information I had and crossed my fingers for her success. That success came in April. I would even venture to call it a major breakthrough in my research.

Before we can continue with the story, I need to make a list for you to recap what we think we know about Albert Alberti’s early life in Italy. Because this is what I do. I make lists.

 

What we think we know about Albert Alberti’s life in Italy 1855-1870

-       Born in Florence in March 11, 1855 (from his passport application)

-       Born in Pienza in March 4, 1855 (passport application – hmm two birthdays eh?)

-       Placed in a Monastery at age 3 -17 which he ran away from (family story)

-       Worked as clerk in a town called Galluzo (from a newspaper story for his retirement)

-       Father: Joseph  Mother: Siena (passport application)

-       Had two sisters, Assontina and Anntonina (notes from Grandma Godfrey)

-       Spoke Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Hebrew possibly more languages (notes from Grandma Godfrey)

-       Parents were a Count and Countess with a large estate in Florence (G.G. notes)

There. Now we are all on the same page with the “facts” about Albert. Moving on. I promise we are about to get to the really good stuff!

Trisha received an e-mail a few weeks later from the Archivio Di Stato Di Firenze. It was the “Nato” or birth record for Alberto Alberti. It was of course, written in Italian. Apparently Albert was a better first name than Alberto to use in America.  

 

I will translate the Nato here for you:

Alberto Alberti born at 9 in the evening, on March 11, 1854 to Guiseppe di Gaetano, a pharmacist and Fioravanti Maria di Serafino, a landowner (or blacksmith *I’ll explain this more later on) Living as part of the population of the Pienza Cathedral. Baptised on the 13^th day of March. Godfather, Progaj Gaetano

*(Progaj is listed on the record as the god parent’s second name, but this must be a typo as there is no J in Italian. Perhaps it’s Primo or Proggio. This record has been translated for us and the original is not online for me to see. This person could be Guiseppe’s father or perhaps this is a word in Italian I am not familiar with yet. I’ll keep researching this one.

Italian birth records are arranged a bit differently than ours. You often have the name of the fathers of the parents listed as well. So for research purposes that is a goldmine. It gave me two more names to search for in history *Gaetano Alberti (Alberto’s dad) and *Serafino Fioravanti (Maria’s dad). Tuscan records pre 1861 were organized by the Parish, so this birth record also told me exactly where to look – Pienza Cathedral Parish in Pienza.

If you have been following along with Uncle Danny’s blogs you have to be sitting with your mouth open right now. This tiny paragraph of information is monumental in the hunt for Alberti. It confirms a few “what we thought we knows” and in my mind, makes them cold hard facts. Remember? I love facts. I start with identifying everything that I know as true and work backwards or sometimes forwards from those truths. Like Alice in her Google Wonderland I set off to find more.

Ready for a new list? Thought so.

What we now know as fact about Alberto Alberti

-       Given first name is Alberto

-       Born Pienza, Italy on March 11, 1854

-       Father: Guiseppe Alberti di Gaetano   Mother: Maria Fioravanti di Serafino

-       Father was a Pharmasict, Mother a Landowner/Blacksmith

-       Alberto’s paternal grandfather was named Gaetano Alberti

-       Alberto’s father in law was named Serafino Fioratanvti

-       Sister: Assontina

To date, I have read over 500 Italian birth records and census pages. All in Italian and all written in scrolly, faded and hard to read script. So, while the Tuscan government was kind enough to scan birth, death, marriage records and some census books from 1808-1865, they are not searchable documents. The reader must virtually flip, page by page, for the names they seek. My labors did not go unrewarded.

I was sitting at my desk at 4pm, waiting to leave the office at the end of a pretty boring day. I decided to spend an hour searching for Great Grandpa Albert(o)’s father – Guiseppe Alberti di Gaetano. On the website for the Tuscan Atenati, I found the 1841 censimento (census) for all of Florence. Pienza is a town within Florence so this seemed like a very good place to start. Page 1…lots of Italian names: Brunori, Formici, Sagnome, Vegni. Page 2….more Italian surnames names, members of the household and occupations...farmers, laborers, maids, smiths and their families.

Page 3…first entry lists – Serafino Fieravanti, age 52, widowed, Catholic, a Fabbro Possidente. Fabbro Possidente translates to Master Blacksmith. This is a tricky one - as Possidente means Landownder and Fabbro Possidente means Master Blacksmith. The census takers of the time weren’t very good at capturing accurate occupations in Southern Italy. Some political and economic situations happening in Italy at this time encouraged census takers to list the least the important occupation or to combine occupations. Not so important in 1841 perhaps, but puzzling for the 7x great granddaughter in 2018. This means Alberto’s future father in law might have been both a Master Blacksmith and a Landowner.

In his household is also Maria Fieravanti, age 12 and a servant, Marianna Tamagnini, age 48. No mention of Maria’s mother. Perhaps she died in childbirth. Another rabbit hole to go down on another day.    

Now before you point out of the variation of the last name, remember those Italian census takers. They were probably underpaid, facing regional language barriers and had sloppy penmanship. My guess is the researcher working for Trisha in Florence read the cursive “e” in Fieravanti as an “o”.

Even though I sat, gob smacked, looking at proof of Alberto’s mother living in Pienza in an 1841 census....remember...facts. That small variation of the surname left a tiny seed of doubt in my mind. Well, only 55 more pages of the census to read. I couldn’t help but wonder if I might find Guiseppe Alberti living in the same town as Maria. Maybe he was a neighbor boy and they fell in tweenage love under the Tuscan sun. Wait, I think that’s a movie. Nevermind. Back to census scanning. Towards the end of the census, halfway down the page is all the proof I need. I found Alberto’s Mother and Father. I could hardly believe what I was reading - Giuseppe Alberti, age 29, unmarried, Catholic, occupation: Pharmacist.

You might have noticed that Guiseppe had a good 17 years on his future bride in 1841. That is a bit puzzling. By the time she turned 20, he was already 37. I am currently on the hunt for their marriage record. I don’t know the exact year they were married. Working backwards from the year their first son was born (Alberto in 1854) and her age at the time of the census, and also assuming she was around 20 and they were probably married for at least one year before his birth, I estimate they walked down the aisle between 1849-1853.

I also found what I think is Maria’s uncle living in Florence at the same time. Antonio Fieravanti, age 58, a Shoe Shop owner and his wife, Maddalena, age 46. They had one son, Caiimer who is listed as a Clerk. Antonio must have been a patient man. Also listed in their household was his mother in law, Barbera Ciolfi, a widow, age 80. I found it interesting that they listed her as “Impotente” or powerless under the occupation category. I wonder if Antonio felt that way about her at the time.

With confirmed names, locations and the beginning of a timeline taking shape, I started the search for the next family members. The mysterious sisters of Alberto: Assontina and Anntonina. These two ladies are enigmas. They are only mentioned twice in the documentation I have from Uncle Danny. Once, in a letter from Assontina’s husband. Antones wrote to Grandma Godfrey from Firenze. He shared they were married for 60 years and she died in 1947 after suffering with illness for 30 months. Another mention of the sisters is in Grandma’s notes about the Alberti family. They are mentioned as having disappeared/died during the Nazi occupation of Italy during WWII. The fact that there are no photos of them and no other information about their lives was puzzling and I love a good mystery.

The letter from Antones is enough proof for me that Assontina existed. However, there is still no evidence of Anntonina at all. Except for one tiny clue. In 1940, the Kansas City Star published Alberto’s obituary. In that write up, it states he is survived by two sisters living in Florence, though neither one is named.

I return to the digital treasure chest of the Tuscan Atenati records to begin my search for Assontina Alberti. The Pienze birth records for 1861-1865 are available online. Time for more math – if she was married for 60 years and died in 1947, she married Antones in 1887. Subtract another 20-25 years from that and it lands us smack in the middle of the available birth records for Pienza.

While searching through all five years of records I found not only Assontina (which I assume was her nickname), listed as Assenota Sactona, born June 6^th, 1863, but also her brother who was lost in history until now – Gaetano Serafino Alberti, born February 27^th 1865. Both children born of Giuseppe Alberti and Maria Fieravanti.

 

Assenota’s 150 year old records are very hard to make out, but you can see that Alberto Alberti is listed as her god parent. A person named Dolci Annunziate is listed as the god parent of Gaetano Serafino. If you aren’t completely bored out of your gourd with reading this genealogical novella I am writing, then you will have noticed that Giuseppe and Maria named their second son after their fathers. Probably a great honor to them.

Wow! That was a lot of research rabbit holes! This Alice has a brain cramp. 1861 is the next census that occurred in Florence. The 1861 census should show Alberto’s entire family living under one roof. It would prove if the stories about Alberto living in a monastery from 1857-1871 are true. It would prove if Anntonina existed and if that was, in fact, her name. Unfortunately the only way to view these documents is in person, at you guessed it, the Firenze National Archives. Perhaps Trisha’s research contact in Florence can help us out via e-mail. If not, then another trip is in order.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have about 1,000 birth records from 1809-1813 to read through on the hunt for more details of Alberto’s father, Giuseppe Alberti. He was born during the French occupation of Florence. A very interesting time in Italy for you history nerds. My hopes are to find his father and continue to trace the Alberti lineage as far back as I can. Who knows, maybe we really were nobility. Remember, I am a facts girl. So off I go…in search of Alberti.

 

Atypical Planet, The "Ferry Command," and "Wrong Way Corrigan"

In this media driven age that celebrates fame and fortune it’s easy to think we mere mortals are insignificant in the brief flicker of our existence. If you’ve entertained that thought from time to time, as I have, zoom out for a bigger picture, and remind yourself that you are extremely rare phenomena on a very small atypical planet in a cold vast universe.  Nothing remotely like you exists as far as our powerful telescopes can see.

I have to remind myself now and then that our stories are just as exceptional as we are as individuals. They may not make it to film or a library shelf but some social anthropologist from a far away planet might find this blog circling in space someday and take notes of what life was like  for an average family on planet earth in the twentieth century.

I have only faint recollections of that first year of life on earth when these letters were being written.  I’m sure that everything I smelled, heard, tasted and touched is stored in some locked box of my memory.  There are vague fleeting images of being carried through a narrow hallway, sitting in a high chair at the dining room table, a brown teddy bear covered with rough cloth that had a torn abdominal seam that I stuffed unwanted food in.  Memories of a one year old are undependable.  I try to remember my little pedal powered jeep and the pedal powered air-plane. I apparently owned and operated both.  Only the jeep was allowed in the house, where, according to the letters, I inflicted a great deal of property damage as I pedaled recklessly through the length of the house. The metal airplane was relegated to the circular landing strip that doubled as our backyard patio. Both the jeep and the plane disappeared mysteriously.

The one solid early memory I have is being bounced on my mother’s knee that went something like this;

This is the way the ladies ride

The ladies ride, the ladies ride

(Easy bouncing)

This is the way the gentleman rides

The gentleman rides, the gentleman rides

(A little more bounce and speed)

This is the way the farmer rides

The farmer rides, the farmer rides

Hobbledy-Hoy  Hobbledy- Hoy

(A much exaggerated uneven bouncing from leg to leg

Then she would let you drop between her legs

Catching you just before you hit the floor)

There was another knee bounce routine called “Trot Trot to Boston to buy a loaf of bread” that I can’t recall completely.  These memories come from somewhere in my toddler stage.

           

            My older siblings will have more solid memories of those years near the end of World War 2.  The letters talk about school, the neighbors, church, and only peripherally about the war.  America entered the war late and our family wasn’t impacted like families in England that were being bombed daily. 

           

There were blackout drills at the airport in Manhattan, Kansas where my father was stationed, and at airports in Kansas City, where they practiced extinguishing airport runway lights and radio tower lights.  I remember my mother talking about blackout drills in our neighborhood, where she would take all of us into the basement, and mask the small ground level basement windows with black paper.  

            In 1944, when these letters were written, America was nearly fully mobilized for the war effort. Many items were rationed or in short supply.  The Office of Civilian Defense called each American family to become a “fighting unit on the home front.”  In one letter from my mother she says “the paper problem is getting worse.”  I assume she’s referring to the paper shortage in the country caused by the war, and not her inability to find usable stationery.  She mentions in a letter that my brother Dale was stacking paper in the back hallway, doing his part in a Cub Scout paper drive in support of the war.

That is not me out of uniform

 Everyone was asked to collect cans and scrap metal to re-work into weapons. Children were the most avid collectors.  Their efforts helped gather 22 million pounds of metal.  This might be what happened to my pedal powered jeep and airplane?  If that was the case I approve the patriotism of my mother or brother, or whoever made the decision to donate them to be melted down into armaments. In one letter my mother jokingly refers to me as “General Daniel Winfield Sherman.”  In looking back I think that one year old General would have approved of his toys becoming part of the turret or barrel of a Sherman Tank. If at all possible in this imagined scenario, the grease my mother was saving in the large metal can beneath the kitchen sink was used in a high caliber shell that was shot from the barrel of that Sherman tank.  I’m not sure my mother knew that the glycerin in her bacon grease was being made into bombs and gunpowder.

           

             One letter from my father reveals that he was enthralled by the tales from a Civil Aeronautics Authority supervisor from New York that visited the Manhattan base.  Joseph Lyons was a Jewish pilot with a storied past. He had operated an air field in Palestine, flown war sorties in Africa, and Egypt, and flown with the Russian Air Force against fascism in Spain.  I suspect this fascinating character with jaw dropping tales was at the Manhattan Air Base recruiting pilots for the “Ferry Command,” and came very close to reeling my father in.

           

               History has nearly forgotten the “Ferry Command.” 3500 civilian pilots from 23 allied nations helped shuttle nearly 10,000 planes for the British war effort.  Before the U.S. had even entered the war American pilots comprised over half of the civilian pilots that flew the “Ferry Command” routes.  They were unarmed, non-uniformed, and non-insurable.  There was a low loss of airplanes but more than 500 of these civilian pilots lost their lives. In a letter to my mother my father complains about the application papers required to join the “Ferry Command” and grumbles about the restrictions for flying those government owned planes. He was definitely intrigued with the idea of flying these covert routes and might have pursued it if there had been any encouraging words in a return letter from my mother.  There were none, and the subject doesn’t come up again.

            

               Somewhere in the letter he writes, “Wrong way Corrigan, that’s me.”  I don’t know if he’s referring tangentially to being tempted to apply for the" Ferry Command," or just making fun of himself. 

           

               Douglas Corrigan had spent three years trying to get permission to fly from New York to Dublin, Ireland, without success.  On July 17, 1938, he took off from Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field in a modified Curtiss Robin plane, carrying two chocolate bars, two boxes of fig bars, a quart of water and a U.S. Map with the approved permission to fly from New York to California.  He had been given the O.K. for the flight to California, but an ocean crossing was out of the question.  It was a foggy morning, as he recounted, and Corrigan flew into the haze and disappeared.  Twenty-eight hours later, he landed in Dublin and instantly became a national hero.  He made headlines across the country, and stuck to his story that the fog was the reason he headed the wrong way and ended up in Dublin, and not California.

           

There will  be several more short blogs concerning the letters.

My great- niece Megan has persuaded me to keep the blog public despite my reservations about social media and security. 

      Postscript information - My sister Judy says there were multiple blackout drills and that officials would canvas the neighborhood to make sure you were complying.
       She also cleared up the pedal airplane I couldn't remember - it was a prop that a photographer used.  She did remember a picture of Dale in a pedal airplane so the photographer must have periodically gone through the neighborhood which explains the letter in 1944 where my mother writes that Miss Flowers (our kindergarten teacher) was bringing the entire class to our house. The kids were posing for pictures in the pedal airplane.

Predictions, Money, and Mid- Air Motor Failures

           

This photo was taken two years after the letters were written

            There are a lot of unanswered questions about my parents that I had hoped to find in the pile of letters I’ve been reading.  I find unwavering devotion exhibited in the letters that never bring up the two most common problems in a marriage; money and mistrust. The money problem actually does come up repeatedly in the letters but only in discussing some mutual resolution.  There are never any accusations on the mishandling of it. The letters unlock a narrow four month window on their lives, but money was very tight, and at one point my mother is forced to sell our chickens and the rooster for the $17.08 they brought.

My father on the left and his business partner Topper

On his personal time in Manhattan, my father is giving private flying lessons to men and women, and comments “I don’t know where they get all their money.”  I don’t think my dad squandered his extra income, or chased skirts, but I question some of his business decisions in the years before and following these letters.  I’m also thinking of some of the lame brained business decisions I made myself at his age.  I guess one of my unanswered questions is why my mother never questioned any of my father’s decisions.

           

I chose parts of two letters to share; a letter from my father that has two poems on the back side of the page, and the letter my mother writes in response.  The first of my father’s poems is a silly nonsense poem about his smelly feet; the second describes a frightening mid-air engine failure. I’ll share the second poem, but first I must digress a little:

           

The first time I set these two letters aside I was focused on the poems.  The second time I read the face page of my father’s letter, I discovered a precise prediction he made on when the U.S. would make their major assault on German Forces in Europe. He starts the letter asking about the family and his younger brother, Everett, who is home on leave from the Navy. Then he complains about the unpredictable Kansas weather that keeps him out of his favorite element, the air.  Then this:

            “I wouldn’t be surprised to see the big invasion in the next two months, from the way things are looking now.”

        As the tides of war were turning in our favor he’s writing about the anticipated assault on German forces in Europe by Allied Forces. .My father’s letter was written April 5^th, 1944. The highly classified "Normandy Invasion" was being planned under great secrecy and misdirection, and General Dwight Eisenhower was pacing and chain smoking for fear that the secrets would be leaked and the Germans would catch wind of the attack.  Before his Presidency and his heart attack, Eisenhower was smoking up to four packs a day. Under this intense pressure Eisenhower was probably smoking even more than usual.

             

            My father, on a relatively small air base in the middle of America, is watching leaves being cancelled, his pilots shuffled elsewhere, and pilots with special skills pulled out of his unit, and makes the prediction that the big invasion will come in the next two months.  Allied Forces launch the "Normandy Invasion" exactly two months and 24 hours after my father writes this letter.

            At the bottom of the face page of the letter my father writes:

            P.S. on the other side of page is my reaction to the first motor failure I ever had in the air.  It was fun after I got down.

           

My dad is 34 years of age when he wrote this letter and still getting a buzz from the adrenaline rush of a dangerous situation.  There are numerous accounts and photos of him walking a bridge rail, standing atop a flagpole, which was a fad for awhile, and doing hand flips over cars.  Transitioning from that youthful feeling of invulnerability to a more sedate path was not my father’s first choice.  I enter as evidence the stunt flying he takes up after the war.  My mother was mildly encouraging the transition to a more earthbound career, but never in an overt way and she never gives voice to any fear of his flying. Here is the poem on the engine failure:

           

Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the horrible fright, of your Pappy dear

While flying today, in the clouds so high

My motor konked out, and I thot I would die

That good ole propeller, that pulls you along

Well it stopped dead still, and that was wrong

I looked in the mirror, and to my surprise

There sat the poor student, with fear in his eyes

One hand on the ripcord, and one on the door

He was going to leave me, and that’s for sure

I talked to him gently, on me he must trust

To bring him back safely or together we bust

So I must think of something, I must I must

Ah, here is the answer, the answer I’ve found

I must point the nose of the ship straight down

The swish of the air, as we drive for the ground

Should make our propeller go round, and around

By golly it’s moving, it’s starting to go

I am a son of a gun, well what do you know

The motor has started, Oh what a relief

This all happened to your dear Little Chief

Pappy

            Several days later my mother writes back in verse without directly addressing the motor failure.  Possibly she shared my father’s belief, that as a seasoned pilot with an untarnished safety record, he had little risk compared to less experienced pilots.

The children are fine and sleep without fear

Although so far from their daddy dear

Danny is fine and tough past belief

He’s afraid folks won’t know he’s the son of a chief

He jumps and he laughs as he tells of his Dad

He’s the son of a chief and that’s why he’s glad

He had a tumble and found to his grief

That the floor didn’t know he was son of a chief

As I suffer the pounding of this little boy

I really don’t care- and I murmur with joy

I’m the mate of the chief, who is Dad of this boy.

            I have no recollection of the trouble I must have been as a toddler, but I send apologies to my mother looking down from that heavenly cloud she resides on.

My mother always had an unflagging respect for a man in uniform, be it a scout uniform or a military one.  I think she was very proud of her husband in his CAP uniform and his position as Chief Pilot serving his country and training other pilots.

One of those unanswered questions is when and where did the flying start?  There was a little airport in Independence, Missouri, less than three miles from my father’s home.  It had the added attraction of a fishing lake.  The “Independence Memorial Airport” was basically two graveled runways near where the Independence Mall sits today.  It was abandoned years ago. Vesta Ailshire inherited it from her Aunt Minnie in 1945.  It had some history before that date that I haven’t been able to find. Vesta Ailshire, who everyone called “Mrs. A” was quite the businesswoman and operated a grocery, a restaurant, a small airport, an airplane repair shop and a school for pilots. I‘m guessing this is where my father, and possibly my mother, got their first taste of flying before Mrs. A took it over. Somewhere in the vaporous past I hear a voice saying that my father was part owner of this Independence airport. If he had some deal with Aunt Minnie and worked his way up as part owner by exchanging labor there was never a legal document to substantiate it. 

After the war ends my father gets involved in a similar situation with “The Heart of America Airport” in Kansas City where he operates the “Blue Valley Flying Service,” offering flying lessons and repairing planes. The repair service included shuttling the plane to the client.  My brother Dale remembers being the wingman when my father delivered an old plane to a client in Springfield, Missouri.  Dale said “it sounded like it was coming apart.” The “Heart of America Airport” was a very small airport like the “Independence Memorial Airport.”  It consisted of three graveled runways and was shut down years ago.  If there was any legally binding paperwork to substantiate my dad’s partial ownership of the “Blue Valley Flying Service” at “The Heart of America Airport” it was missing from the airport safe following the accident.  There was a lot of speculation about the honesty of his business partners. 

Getting back to the love of flying that my parents shared, here is a little prose in one of the letters that probably pushed the love buttons on my mom.

The sides of these rolling little hills are strewn with little flowers, from top to bottom. The little brooks that wind in and out between the hills are clearing up, and from the air they look like pretty blue ribbons that had been tossed in the sky and had fallen in weavy little patterns on the ground.  The wheat in the fields is growing so fast it seems to move while you are watching it, and when the wind blows it back and forth it looks like rippling waves on the ocean.  Farmers and little boys doll size are in the fields with tractors stirring up little clouds of dust as they plow and harrow the ground.  Load after load of feeder cattle are being turned out in the hills and they look like little ants as they go single file up one side and down the other.  Everyone seems busy.

Whenever I see something beautiful and lovely like this I think of home and you.

I’m just completing my 75^th flight path around the Sun.  Most men on this planet circuit the sun sixty seven times before their ticket to ride expires.  Math has never been my thing, but I can read a simple longevity chart. I’ve been dragging my feet on finishing the family blog because I expected to get smarter and better organized as the universe expands. Things don’t always turn out like you expect.

I’ve been reading letters my parents sent to each other when my father was Chief Pilot and a flight instructor for the Civil Air Patrol in Manhattan, Kansas, and my mother was home in Fairmount, Missouri with her demanding clutch of four young children.  There are quite a few letters so I was surprised to find they were all written in a short span of four months between March and June of 1944. The country was in full war mode and many items were in short supply. The military used graphite as a lubricant so my parents scrounged for soft lead pencils. Good writing paper was also hard to come by so some of the letters were written on odd scraps of thin paper with such hard lead that they can only be read under a bright light.

The letters reveal that my father joined the Civil Air Patrol to do his part for the war.  He was respected by his base commander for his experience and safety record. He often complains of the paperwork and the Kansas storms that kept him and his students out of the air.  There were hundreds of pilots being trained in Manhattan and many were eventually used to shuttle military personnel and supplies.  Although Civil Air Patrol planes were unarmed they did fly surveillance flights along coastal waters.  It was a Civil Air Patrol pilot that spotted a German U-boat off the coast of Cape Canaveral that was subsequently destroyed by the Air Force.

There are interesting insights into small town life and concerns regarding the war, but the letters primarily deal with family matters.  They don’t answer some of the compelling questions I have about my parents, but they show an unwavering blind love they had for each other. The “Love is blind” proverb applies primarily to my mother who never questioned any decisions my father made though some might have appeared unwise to an objective observer.

Most of the letters start with Dear Sweetheart, Honey, My Darling Husband, My Dearest Wife, etc. Every letter reveals the pain of being separated. If my father had a pass, and his old car with bad tires was running, he would drive home on the weekends.  Several times he took the dreaded five hour bus trip.   Often the week end visits were followed immediately by forlorn letters written the following day.  I can’t imagine the trauma if my dad had been in the Air Force and sent overseas on the standard eighteen month deployment

My mother writes a note at the edge of one of the pictures of her and my father when they were dating.  “We dated four years and always behaved ourselves.” The last thing any child wants to think about is their parent’s sex life; even though that child’s very existence is prima facie evidence his parents had one.  I know that the word behave had a very narrow and specific meaning.  The word “behave” didn’t include the time they were kicked off the Independence trolley for a public display of affection.  We all know what she meant when she said we “behaved.” I won’t delve further into this briar- patch of subject matter.  I confess I did check the marriage date against Dale’s date of birth.  My mother’s integrity remains intact!  My judgment for checking could be questioned.

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The letters include interesting insights on my three older siblings. Most of the letters to my twelve year old brother Dale involved efforts to toughen him up.  Dale had decided not to go out after dark because of wild animals.  He was also terrified of the rooster, possibly warranted.  My brother might have had more instinct for self preservation in his nature though than our father. In one letter to our father he encloses a newspaper article about a plane accident and cautions him to be careful. Dale also had more gut feeling about the future tragedy than our mother, although she relates one dream where Leonard sees his grandmother and steps over a line and disappears

Here’s a short letter from my dad to Dale.

 “Dear Dale, you better get toughened up cause when I come home I got a new hold I am going to pin your ears down with.  Listen, you Pole Cat, why didn’t’ you answer my last letter, for 2 cents I would come home and give you a punch in the nose and you would probably see stars.

Maybe if you are a good boy and help your mama real well I may not be as tough on you.  I might just poke you once.

Say, did you pass in school. why don’t you write me and tell me how you came out, and what you are doing in the Cub scouts.  Love Daddy”

 I am a frequent subject of the correspondence because I’m the newest member of the Sherman household. I’ve learned detailed information on when my teeth came in, when I was potty trained, and when I was circumcised.  I find I was a biter like my sister Sherry, that I peed on objects indiscriminately, and even though there were competent Rabbi’s in my ancestry, my foreskin was detached unceremoniously by an alcoholic Presbyterian doctor.

            Halfway through July in 1943 I was one of over 3 million babies born in the U.S.  My brother Dale was born in 1933, my sister Judy in 1936, and my sister Sherry in 1938.  Somewhere in that five year interlude between Sherry and me my mother miscarried. I don’t know the details.  Last, but not least, my sister Ruth is born a year and half after me in 1945. 

Our Puritan forefathers, I should say foremothers, had an average brood of eight to ten children.  Today the normal is 2.5 children, the exact number attainable only if you share a kid halftime with a neighbor.  In 1944 my mother dreamed she had a set of twins followed closely by a set of triplets. The dream didn’t seem to bother her but the prospect of adding multiples drew an alarmed response in a letter from my father.

I think my three sisters would agree with me that our mother deserves a posthumous award equivalent to the Nobel Prize for her patience and physical endurance in rearing us.  I’m sure our deceased brother Dale would agree.  Our mother was always the primary caretaker, but her parenting became an even tougher solitary task after our father’s accident in 1946.

Our mother had an inherent loving nature, but there were times that we tested it.     There were times I’m sure she would have liked to abandon one or more of us on someone’s doorstep. Usually punishments for our garden variety of sins were administered by my mother in a non-corporal but effective manner but there were times she had to think outside the box. There was one isolated case of water boarding.   I think she was field testing a behavior modification technique on my sister Judy, when all else had failed.  In another incident my bare buttocks remembers being on the receiving end of the backside of a hairbrush administered by my mother with Old Testament ferocity. When Sherry was biting Judy and leaving bruises mother suggests she might have to bite her back.

With each advancing year I regret that I was such an unappreciative whelp at the time I was under my mother’s tutelage.  Only now do I realize the total dedication she had to her children.  She was the constant guiding force in our universe, a force like gravity that pulled us in and kept us from going astray.

According to the letters I’m reading the world revolved around me for about a year and a half as the newest member of the household.  Then my sister Ruthie showed up and I was bumped to an outer orbit. My older siblings had their own individual times at the center of the universe, but sadly most of those tales are not documented in the letters.

My sister Judy would have been eight years old in 1944.  Here are a few excerpts from my mother’s letters regarding Judy.

“Judy had a little skinned place on her knee this morning and tried to pretend that she couldn’t walk, but I finally got the poor little invalid off to school, much against her will.”

Another excerpt: “The last two mornings Judy has been so mad because I made her put on galoshes that she said she was going to walk to school real slow and be late.  Yesterday she started off walking as slow as she possibly could, but when she heard the school bell, you should have seen her coat-tails fly!”

This is a short letter from Judy to dad.

“Dear Daddy

I love you very much.  How are you today?  I hope you are O.K.

Danny is a bad boy.

What can we do?

Love from Judy Jo Sherman

        Talk about calling the kettle black.  I notice Judy doesn’t mention that she had broken a window in the Linhares home up the street.  Mother writes “I thought little girls didn’t do things like that.”

        My mother wished she had kept a list of all the funny and odd things that my sister Sherry would say as a child.  At least one is preserved in the letters I’m reading.

            “Sherry told me that Mr. Thurman was getting ready to burn another house –I said – Why Sherry, what makes you say that? – Well, mama, he’s a ‘sawing again.”

       

            Sherry must have thought Mr. Thurman built houses only to burn them down again.  Maybe Sherry missed her calling as an insurance fraud investigator although Mr. Thurman was probably innocent of arson.

Sherry liked her personal space and seemed to set her own agenda when it came to kindergarten.

            “The kids seem to feel pretty good, only Sherry cried and wouldn’t go to school today, but felt good as soon as the danger of school was over.”

        In another letter:

            “Sherry decided to stay home and play with dolls.  I let her be the judge of what she feels like doing.”

        Part of mother’s leniency with Sherry is because she had a cast on her arm.  While laying on his back Dale had balanced Sherry on his feet, then tried to flip her over the clothesline. The result was a compound fracture of Sherry’s radius and ulna.

        Here’s a letter from Sherry to dad.

`           “I love you very much daddy, tomorrow I am going to use my puppy pencil.”

        As for me, here are a few of the many comments from mother’s letters proving Judy’s assertion that “Danny is a bad boy.”

            “Oh, Oh Danny is in the flour.”

        “The next two years are not going to be restful in any way.”

        “Danny is a wildcat in his jeep.  He tore through the house this morning, banged into furniture, pulled out books, pulled out the bread pretzels and crackers, and the newspapers in the back hallway – all in about ten minutes.”

        In other letters: “Danny is upstairs stomping and shaking his bed.  Dale, Judy and Sherry are up there laughing at his tricks.”

        “Danny is rip snorting around here, anybody that gets in his way it’s just their hard luck.”

        My dad recommends in a letter to mother that “You may have to put the wildcat on a leash to keep him on the reservation.”

        In the next blog I will share some of the poetry my parents wrote to each other in the 1944 letters, and one poem to the family that details how he resolves a frightening mid-air engine failure.