52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 - Week 18 - Love Story

 My grandmother Ruth Nave Reed Pennington White must have been lucky at cards, because she was unlucky in love.

November 25, 1913, she married Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed in St. Joseph County, Indiana, probably in South Bend, where Ruth lived with her mother.  Frank Reed's family lived in Logansport, in Cass County, Indiana.  They had three children: my uncle Donald Reed, my aunt Margaret Reed, and my mother, Martha Reed.  Frank Reed worked for a railroad as a switchman.  He was killed 22 October 1917 when he was hit by a railroad-yard donkey engine.  He was 29 years old.  Frank Reed and Ruth Nave were my grandparents, my mother's parents.

Sometime after 1920, Ruth Nave married William Walter Pennington.  I don't have their marriage record yet, and haven't found it online.  A cousin of mine lives in Logansport, Indiana, where my grandma and William Pennington lived, and has offered to search for that record in local records the next time he goes downtown.  William Pennington died 4 September 1927 in Logansport.  In an awful irony, he, too, was 29 years old when he died.

14 August 1942, Ruth Pennington and Harold Blaine White took out a marriage license.  I have not yet found their marriage documents.  Harold White was an unstable person, as far as I have been able to find.  He cites himself as having several different jobs, from farming to railroad fireman to telephone cable splicer for the Bell System (AT&T).  In census records and on his World War I and II draft registration forms, his employment is spotty and, on the censuses, his income minimal.  Ruth, his wife, made up to three or four times as much as he did, and she had a fairly steady record when she was working.  She was a telephone operator.  His pattern of job-hopping (if he really held such jobs at all), the periods of unemployment reflected in censuses, and the minimal income he reported, may indicate his mental instability.  He died in 1960, in a mental institution.

Ruth Nave Reed Pennington White died in 1951.  The informant on her death certificate was her husband, Harold White.  One thing he did may have indicated some caring for his wife: she is buried next to my grandfather, her first husband, Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 - Week 17 - War

War!  Huh!  What is it good for?  Absolutely nothing!

Those who were around in the 1960s will recognize that line.

Though rational people would prefer to avoid war, one thing that comes out of it: stories.  At least it is good for stories.  Many of the stories that come out of war are, as one would expect, grim and gruesome.  Some are sad stories, some touching tales of humanity or the lack of it.  And some are just downright funny.

My father, Arden Packard, was in the U.S. Navy in World War II.  He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1934.  Having been fascinated by flight since he was a lad, he applied for flight training, and was so assigned in 1937, at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.  He became a carrier-based naval aviator and his first assignment as a naval aviator was to USS Yorktown.  One story that came out of his days afloat concerned the commanding officer of a destroyer assigned to a carrier group.  One night, after the captain had retired to his cabin for the night, one of the other ships lost control and began to drift into the destroyer's path.  The captain was summoned to the bridge and quickly briefed.  He began to give orders.  "Now, everyone stay calm.  Stay calm, like me," he urged.  Then he barked out this order:  "Two toots on the rudder; right full whistle."  Dad never mentioned whether the ships collided or managed to avoid it.

There were sad stories about friends who never got to see peace restored.  Dad had two best friends at the Academy.  Their names were Edward "Ned" Worthington and James "Jimmy" Newell.  Ned Worthington was killed at Pearl Harbor.  Dad died in April of 1954 of pneumonia.  Jimmy Newell outlived them both, and my mother and I visited him and his wife in Norfolk, Virginia, when I was in high school.  The three Navy buddies had an agreement that they would each be cremated and their ashes scattered from a U.S. Navy aircraft.  Ned Worthington's ashes were scattered off Koko Head in Hawaii.  Dad's were scattered over Glendale, California.  I don't know about Jimmy Newell, who most likely passed on many years ago now.  My father assigned the nickname "Ned" to my brother, in remembrance of his friend.

[This post is a little late.  I'm catching up.]

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - P is for Pullman Conductor

I'm jumping in this entry from my family to the family of my husband, Keys Rhodes, to his grandfather Andrew Lewis Rhodes (1882-1966), who began as a Pullman Conductor in June of 1912, and ended that career in retirement in September of  1952.  

He was born 23 September 1882 in Morgantown, Pike County, Ohio, son of Samuel H. Rhoades and Ida May Dewey.  It was during Andrew Rhodes's lifetime that the spelling of the familial surname was changed, for reasons unknown.  Andrew Rhodes spelled the surname both ways in his Railroad Retirement paperwork, finally settling on the spelling we all bear today.  I knew the Rhodes family from church since I was 7 years old, when Keys and I first met.  Andrew Rhodes had a wonderful thick head of pure-white hair in his later years.  He died 12 March 1966, while Keys and I were in college.

He began his railroad career in February of 1903 as a clerk for United States Express Company, a freight delivery company that operated from 1854 to 1914.  He alternated between Clerk and Messenger in Ohio until June of 1912, at which time he signed on with Pullman as a conductor and was assigned to Jacksonville, Florida.  Early on, he served in the Tampa area, and that is where he met Della Mae Marshall of Lakeland.  They were married in Lakeland on October 14, 1918.(1)  A year later, almost to the day, their son L. Marshall Rhodes was born in Tampa.  Their movements can be traced to Jacksonville around 1922 by an Abstract of Title for a period from 3 November 1922 to 26 March 1928.(2)  Their daughter, Della Mae Rhodes, Jr., was born 12 February 1925 in Jacksonville.  The family remained in Jacksonville.

(1) Andrew Lewis Rhodes, Railroad Retirement File. United States of America, Railroad Retirement Board, copy conveyed by letter to M. Keys Rhodes dated 11 July 2006.

(2) Title & Trust of Florida, Abstract of Title, 3 November 1922-26 March 1928, for Andrew Lewis Rhodes.  Original in possession of Karen Packard Rhodes.

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - O is for Optician

 I wore glasses from the age of four to the age of sixteen, as my eyesight went from far-sightedness to "normal."  I resumed wearing them a few years later, as my eyesight began to trend toward near-sightedness.  My eye doctor was local, in Jacksonville, Florida, where I grew up, but the professional who made my eyeglasses was in Cleveland, Ohio.

He was my granduncle, Lawrence Leslie Reed (1896-1971), my mother's uncle.  He was an optician.  He was born into the large family of Francis Harvey Reed and Florence Elizabeth McKee on 2 May 1896 in Logansport, Indiana.  No matter the degree, we all just called him Uncle Lawrence.  I never met him, but for years, I wore glasses he made for me.  My aunt Elizabeth Reed would order glasses for me every time I was given a new prescription by my eye doctor.  And when the new pair arrived, I would go around the corner to the next street, where Aunt Elizabeth, whom we all called "Sissy," as she was my mother's adoptive sister, lived with her mother, my grandma Mary Reed, and pick up my new glasses.  My grandma's nickname was "Chollie."  Yes, there's a story there.

I never had a choice of frames, and for some reason -- I guess because I was a young girl -- Uncle Lawrence favored sending me glasses with pink frames.  I never could stand pink.  I was a tomboy, a climber of trees, player of baseball, and rider of my bicycle all over the south side of Jacksonville.  My favorite color has always been blue.  But sometimes, when in my adult years I did pick my own frames, after Uncle Lawrence passed on, I would pick pink.  Maybe it was in tribute to the far-away granduncle who made my glasses and selected my frames so long ago.