|
a.
|
Note: as place of death Saddlebrook, NY. My father had never been told that he died, until the lawyers for the estate of a third cousin of their mother's hunted him down along with other descendants of common great grandparents. He died young by mixing sleeping pills and alcohol. Apparently he had a weekend sort of drinking problem, though he was successful in his career. He inherited his father's intense temperament. Neither he nor his father were the first in the family to have hidden drinking problems that only people close to them knew of, despite success in a career and respect. His daughter Lisa expressed concern to me that this information is hardly a complete nor fair portrait of her father. Lisa was particularly worried, even frightened, about how her mother would feel about what she had told me. I was left wondering what kind of a woman her mother is. I never knew Stephen, of course. I possibly met him just once, at his father's funeral, when I was 14, and the man I met impressed me as a nice, earnest, and constitutionally worried sort of a person. I liked him, and wondered if he worried about things as much as my father did. Stephen's pleasant aspect and concern for other people were probably genuine, particularly as his daughter shares those traits. Lisa overlooks her own place in the picture she painted of her father. Lisa demonstrated a distinctly familial trait of telling the truth even when she does not want to. She does this because she cares. Particularly since I have on four occasions gotten the impression that her mother really does not care about anything, and my mother got that impression as well, Lisa must have learned this trait from her father. But since Lisa's father died when she was young and he had little interest in his own family and family background, and her mother no interest in his family at all, she has been cut off from any way to learn that Smiths have always been honest people who care. The only thing Lisa was able to convey that she had learned about Stephen's father from her parents, was that he was an intense man with a terrifying temper. It sounded as if whatever she had heard scared her. That was in the space of a ten minute conversation that she probably had no chance to prepare for. Maybe given more time she would have recalled more. However, she seems to have not known Willard, and she said that her father never handed down anything at all about his own family; neither information, nor pictures. He resembles my own father in that. Maybe she would have loved to have known her grandfather and will never know it. There may have been a family bible that Stephen's children should in the course of things have had. My mother said that Willard's widow, who was his second or third wife, gave my mother the Smith family bible because Stephen's wife doesn't care about things like that; a statement that agreed with my mother's own negative impression of Stephen's wife. I have to wonder how many Smith family bibles existed, because my father writes in his autobiography that Aunt Mayme gave my mother the family bible, with papers and photos. After my mother's recent death, we found only one Smith family bible, and a second family bible from my mother's mother's mother's family. Two stories about Smith family bibles should yield two bibles, but I myself heard my mother tell the story about Willard's widow giving her the family bible. My father was in failing health when he wrote his autobiography, and conceivably he remembered something wrong. His Aunt Mayme apparently gave him quite a pile of family historical material. If the Smith family bible that my mother said Willard's widow gave her was the Smith family bible that I saw, it had no genealogical information in it at all but photos of Mary Emma Thompson's parents and the son of her eldest son as an infant. My brother got the Bible, and my sister (a good amateur photographer) helped me take snapshots of the photos in the bible. They are in this database. I'm afraid I think I might have liked Stephen, had I known him, and I’ve got a very poor impression of Lisa’s mother. Stephen and my father had some kind of break in their relationship that more than likely has become part of how Stephen's widow and Lisa's mother feels about my family, though not necessarily. There has been a long consistent history of mutal disinterest on all sides. This long history of lack of interest between my father and Stephen and his wife probably has atleast as much to do with the break as the following story. What one must understand is that while my father wanted little substantive to do with his family and even with two of his three children, it was of absolute importance to him to keep up various forms and pretenses of a relationship. If that wasn't done my father was mortally wounded and bitterly hurt. So for instance my brother had to show up at the famly home for Christmas to get looks from my father, in his words, what are you doing here? You aren't of my hearth and home. I wasn't there because I tired of the nonsubstantive and roller coaster relationship I had with my parents and broke with them for ten years. What my father had with Stephen was an annual or bi-annual exchange of cards. At some point, before or after the great argument, they stopped sending my father cards, and he deeply took this to heart. I tell the following story in some detail because various aspects of it do not add up, and I strongly suspect that there is a key detail that has never been told to me. When my father was at fault for something, even in a minor way, he rarely admitted it, preferring to blame his problems on other people. Sometimes the ultimate outcome evolved from a small thing that mushroomed from the way it was handled, as minor disagreements often do, and sometimes it was something stinky my father did, but usually my father had a substantial amount of blame for whatever it was that simply didn't come out in the stories that he and my mother told. In this story it comes across that my father has a guilty conscience about something, though knowing my father it is less clear than one would think what that might be - though in this story it is not actually clear that anyone felt cheated, nor that such a perception had anything to do with the outcome. My father often worried as much if someone perceived him to have done something wrong as if he in fact did something wrong. My father was very honest and scrupulous in his business affairs, but there are none among us who have never taken unfair advantage or taken something we weren't entitled to. My father and I nearly ended up in tax court because he claimed me on his income tax for years after I left his house and ceased to be dependant on him, not only because he wanted the money, but because he wanted to believe I was still his dependent child, and he actually never forgave me for setting him straight on that. Like I said, my father was not always someone a dependent child wanted to know, and I moreover suspect that a tendency like that went right around in his family. It must be said that Stephen having undiagnosed bipolar disorder and my father upset at the apparent termination of a nonrelationship would by themselves explain much of the following story. The story of a prolonged, pages long, letter that made no sense, written in pencil, is consistent with bipolar disorder. I've done that sort of thing repeatedly. Of course, I thought I was making perfect sense until I regained my senses, but when my mother threw fits like that, she never got over them, and never admitted she'd formed an irrational conclusion. My mother's and my ten year break was instigated by my mother screaming at me hysterically a whole bunch of completely imaginary ideas that never happened nor were likely to. Unfortunately, she shrieked at me that I wasn't part of the family, and this matched my own increasing perception of my place in my family. Over ten years, this imaginary story only grew rich in detail. Eventually my brother, a passive but decent man who was way too close to his mother, decided I really needed to be confronted with all the damage I'd done. When my mother was finally confronted by proof the story was imaginary, she told my brother she'd never said any of it. If this sort of thing went on in both my family and Stephen's, in a context of a nonsubstantive relationship and little real contact between them, this alone would be sufficient to explain an outcome of complete chaos. Bipolar disorder is strongly genetic, one of its most common symptoms is alcholism, and there are many signs that bipolar disorder has probably run in the Smith family for generations. Bipolar disorder is often mild and vague, its symptoms often resemble other mental health problems, and it can be very hard to diagnose. People who even carry its genes have a characteristic type A and a half temperament. This is one of the most critical things Stephen's children need to know about their family history. A first cousin with bipolar disorder is something their doctors need to be made aware of, NOT an unpleasant family tale, no matter WHAT in the Devil's name their mother thinks. My mother told my brother, that while settling some estate in which they must have both stood to inherit, some time before 1978, Stephen, who lived in southeastern Pennsylvania, came to Glens Falls in upstate New York, and he and my father met in a lawyer's office to take care of business. The business included the settlement of some inheritance, from which Father got the money with which my parents built our house. My mother seemingly did not want to be more specific about what that was about than that. House was built between 1973 and 1975. At that time, Stephen "cried on my father's shoulder " - in a mocking singsong tone. I actually overheard my mother relating part of this story at some point around 1975. Lord knows what he cried on my father's shoulder about. My mother didn't handle emotion well, and emotional displays typically annoyed her. My mother didn't care for my father's brother's family for a variety of reasons. At some point later, for some reason my father allegedly could not understand, Stephen wrote my father a long, furious, ranting letter, in pencil. My brother was apprarently never told what the letter said my father had done to anger Stephen. This seems to have been the last contact he and my father had, but that must be understood in the context of the fact that they had never had much contact to begin with. This scared my father, and my brother when he heard of it, since one has to be truly angry to write a cousin a long angry letter with a pencil. The letter allegedly went on and on and made no sense whatever. Understand that I don't know what the letter said. If it genuinely made no sense, that would be consistent with bipolar disorder. If the letter made some sense, that might be consistent with bipolar disorder, too. Conceivably the letter expressed dissatisfaction with something my father had done, expressed dissatisfaction at the general family dynamics, or conveyed some misperception that could have been straightened out. One thing that strikes me as strongly as it did my father and brother is that no matter what else was true, Stephen must have been out of his mind to a greater degree than a normal person would have been to have written the letter in pencil, and the letter suspicously sounds as if the energizer bunny wrote it. Still going... and going.... and going... A bipolar person having a fit often can't seem to stop talking. My brother confronted me with this story because my family blamed the letter on me. He told me that I was responsible for the fact that none of Father's relatives had had anything to do with him in atleast nine years, and told me about Stephen's letter as an example. I'm the current family scapegoat, as Willard was apparently the family scapegoat in his generation. However, both of my parents routinely said I was responsible for my father's problems with various people around him, even his problems in his parish church. My younger brother absorbed every word, and he believed this stuff. Since my parents and I had not contact for ten years there was no opportunity to confront and refute the story. I called up all the relatives, and learned that they had thought my parents were being their usual withdrawn selves, and would love to hear from them. As for family problems, they had always known about them and thought it went with teh family history that they knew far more about than I did, because they knew my father and his parents when my father was growing up, and saw the situation that produced my father happen. They always told me far more new information about my family than I told them. I had not myself had anything to do with Stephen or his relations with my father, because I had no idea where he was. None of the relatives had been in touch with him either. Stephen had not stayed in touch with them, and noone had had any idea where he was. My father lived in terror from the time I was in highschool, that I was making people aware of how troubled our own family life was. I for my part only wish I'd found a way to do a more effective job of that, because we desperately needed help. Since then I've learned that people in our village of 800 people could plainly see for themselives how wrong things were in our family. Things in my family were very extreme; people saw that I was literally not allowed out of my house except for church and school and scout meetings; never allowed to play with other kids, and they saw my mother go bonkers and beat me in school without any reason to be angry. That's just two examples. I've always known that people often had their own issues with my father that he didn't want to admit his own role in. My father wrote a completely different story about his break with Stephen into his autobiographical book that he wrote for his grandchildren. There may be clues to what actually happened. The long ranting letter scrawled in pencil is one detail that does not change. It is important,to consider that my father may have had some idea what Stephen was ranting about. My father very rarely admitted straightforwardly to his own role in causing problems he had with other people, whether he was having problems with me, people in his church, or Willard. He would often beat around the bush in ways that were more or less deceptive. Blaming his problems with his church on me is an example of my father's handling of moral responsibility. The matter concerned the estate of Uncle Frank and Aunt Mayme, who died in 1964 and 1968. The will left half of their estates to my father, and I guess the other half to Stephen, who was his father's only child. My father writes that he eventually received some 15 or 20 thousand dollars including the value of some Atlantic Richfield stock. "Jim Hoppner [not clear who this is] responded to my request for advice about the list of stocks that Uncle Frank had invested in. I thought I might request one of these; there were about seven or eight investments. Jim put Atlantic Richfield first, and a metal company second. I was able to receive the Atlantic Richfield shares; and Steven decided to take a utility stock, Consolidated Edison. [Steven was evidently the other beneficiary of this will.] I soon learned of the North Slope oil find in which A.R. was heavily involved. Jim must have known of this. The stock quickly doubled, and doubled again in a period of months. Both Steven and I benefitted from this gain; it took place before the final settlement of the estate. [The increased value of the stocks my father got figured in the dividing of the assets or the money from their sale. Possibly Steven retroactively felt jipped, but he got fair value on the total estate. It isn't clear if my father and Steven each ended up with a stock, or if the stocks were sold and my father and Steven each got money.] The money that I inherited went into a Savings account. Most of the stock was sold before it went down again in a corrective reaction. During this time, I shared the papers that I received from teh lawyer in Philadelphia with Glen Caffry, a lawyer at Glens Falls. He kept an eye on the settlement proceedings for me. Steven seemed displeased that my lawyer questioned the Heyburn lawyer. A letter from Steven, written with a pencil, may be the last time I heard from him. I replied to his letter, explaining Mr. Caffry's letter which Glen thought to be justified. Glen had questioned the fees at Philadelphia. I don't think that Uncle Frank would have been disturbed at this; in fact, from what I have heard him say on occasion about this woman, he would have chuckled over it. " I wonder why my father tells us so much more about it than we want to know. It's actually far odder than it looks; it's one of the few unpleasant family stories my father has ever told in a way that made it sound unpleasant - though he did tell stories about his high strung, volatile and violent father in efforts to illustrate how things typically are between normal parents and their teenaged children. My father genuinely thought his father was normal. My father didn't characteristically tell ugly family stories for any reason, let alone to entertain people. It was his way to sweep family problems and unpleasant history under the rug. For instance, there is not one word in his autobiography, which is hundreds of pages long, about his long conflict with me. Some of the details as my father presents them don't add up - he builds a case to explain that Steven was dissatisfied with my father getting the Atlantic Richfield stock and then tells us that Steven was displeased because my father's lawyer kept an eye on the Philadelphia lawyer's accounting. Conceivably the issue was that my father didn't share the advice he got and Stephen thought he should have, and if so, an underlying issue could well have been whether the two men actually thought of each other as family. If not, then I see nothing particularly wrong with my father getting his own advice and acting on it. It would not be unusual in hte course of human affairs for Stephen to have seen the matter differently. I talked to my boss, who both is a practical and knowledgeable businessman, and possessed of a devout Roman Catholic conscience. He immediately thought that probably Stephen was upset about a combination of the stock matter, and the dysfunctional family situation. He picked up on the dysfunctional family situation immediately and began explaining to me in some detail how that sort of thing could leave Stephen wanting more of my father emotionally than my father gave him. I provided a couple of details about how my father generally handled things, my own family problems, how I came to break with my mother, and my boss quickly started explaining to me that my father's nephew was driven by feelings coming from serious family problems that certainly went back for generations. My boss does not think it was specifically wrong for my father to seek advice on his own about what stock to take, and acting on the advice, and benefitting from it. However, it is most likely that what Stephen really wanted from my father was some sort of recognition of his worth as a person, or else a strengthening of family ties. In fact, from the information given, the most obvious reason why he troubled to travel to Glens Falls was to reach out to my father. My father at first looked interested but then flat out was not, which would have left me feeling betrayed and angry, no matter what I otherwise would have thought about the liklihood that he would have responded to my overtures. My boss also said that if hte terms of the will permitted it, which it may not have, my father and his nephew should have avoided this very common sort of a conflict by agreeing to sell the stocks and divide the money equally between them instead of each person choosing a stock. That would have met acting together, and whether my father had shared his advice about the stocks or not, both would have benefitted equally. My father almost certainly saw nothing wrong with acting for himself; in fact, I had to have it pointed out to me what he might have done differently. We do not know that the will would have allowed the two men to sell the stock and divide it instead of each taking a stock. It also is not clear that the stocks were not in fact sold and the money divided equally, and Stephen felt slighted over another detail of the situation. One thing; my boss began by patting his Catholic Catechism and saying that you have to first of all put the matter in proper perspective by thinking about a human community, instead of thinking about it in terms of the moral rightnes or wrongness of one individual's decision. That would never have occurred to my father, or me. The matter looks very different when seen from that perspective.
Note: Connecticut may be where Stephen’s widow and children went. My father h
|