“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” – Oscar Wilde
I started my family research project by talking to – of course – my grandma. She’s the real story-teller of the family, and even though she insists that she can’t remember what she had for breakfast, she hasn’t forgotten a single family event, story, or drama. So, only a few days after arriving home for the summer, we sat down, I with a pen hovering over my brand new “research notebook”, and she started outlining her family history.
I’m not sure what it says about our culture, or even just human nature in general, but it seems to be the tragedies that stand out to us in our memories, so it’s fitting that this blog start off with one of my family’s tragic stories. My grandma’s maternal grandmother, Mary Bradley, was a seamstress, and worked tirelessly to support her five children. As far as I can tell, her husband Thomas Gorman was hardly ever in the picture, and was drunk whenever he was. My grandma’s mother, Marion, worked hard as well to help her mother keep things together, even harder after her older sister Georgia left home. Edward, the youngest of the children (born 1917-ish), was mostly Marion’s responsibility, and so always had a special place in her heart afterward.
When Ed grew up, he wanted to be a journalist, and so study journalism in college. However, he was strongly encouraged to attend Fordham University instead, mostly by his sister Georgia and Marion’s husband (himself a Fordham graduate). Edward relented, and attended Fordham. For reasons that are still today a complete mystery, he was expelled, and enlisted in the army in 1942 (by the way, I don’t think I need to tell you how badly I’d like to find out why he was expelled… not sure if it’s possible, but I’m looking into it). He was engaged to a girl named Florence, but while stationed in San Francisco fell in love with another girl. He’d planned on leaving Florence to marry the second girl, but Florence told him that she was pregnant. So, Edward went through with the marriage for the sake of his child.
Florence turned out to be… eccentric, to put it extremely nicely. The baby, named Thomas, was eventually taken into foster care. According to my grandma, Florence reportedly drank the baby’s urine, claiming it was good for her teeth. Florence and Edward had four or five more children after Thomas, however, and her mothering skills didn’t seem to improve. My grandma can specifically remember one day when she and her mother drove to Ed and Florence’s apartment (they lived in a Welfare Housing project in Flushing, New York) to deliver Christmas presents. When they entered the room, they found one of the children, then just a baby, sitting on top of the radiator, where Florence had left him.
Edward ended up an alcoholic for the majority of his adult life, like all his siblings except Georgia. He remained very close to Marion, though, and she often mentioned him, his letters, and his phone calls in her journal as the highlights of her days. Edward died in 1996, and was buried at the Calverton National Cemetery as a 1st Lieutenant. Interestingly, in 1993 my grandma’s husband had lunch with Edward’s first son Thomas. They’d discovered, quite by accident, that they worked for the same company, and made plans to meet for lunch during one of my grandpa’s business trips.
(A word about family legacies. Marion always said that her son Frank reminded her of her brother Edward. Edward was the favorite of his mother, and Frank was often viewed as the favorite of Marion. My grandma, Marion’s daughter, has often mentioned that her youngest son reminds her of her brother Frank, and there are often claims amongst her children that this youngest son is my grandma’s favorite as well.)
No comments:
Post a Comment