A Worthy Story
Learning more about my mom, her childhood, and the mysterious cedar chest
This past Christmas, my wife and I gave my 81-year-old mother a present and a task: A program called StoryWorth.
Each week, my mom receives a prompt asking her to write about a certain aspect of her life. What she writes is typed and uploaded; the essays, with pictures she selects to accompany them, will be compiled into a book for the family.
Given my mom’s sharp mind and attention to detail, I have no doubt this will be an excellent read. (Always an A student, it’s no surprise that she takes the task very seriously.) And her life story, in many respects, will prove to be a true keepsake, especially given her hardscrabble beginnings.
Ten years ago this past December, I had a chance to learn more about those beginnings as my mom and I drove across Texas toward Albany, a small town of less than 2,000 people that is 35 miles northeast of Abilene. When I was a child, at least once a year we made the 400-mile trek to West Texas to see her beloved Aunt Frances, who helped raised my mom and her brother when my grandfather enlisted in World War II.
My mom and I took our time on this journey, which had started in Austin, where my son Ben was performing on the national tour of “Billy Elliot.” What was supposed to be a joyous occasion — Frances’ son, Kerry, was coming from Albany to see the Saturday night performance with my mom — turned into a tragedy.
Kerry was killed in a head-on collision while driving to the show. When the tour left Austin the next day, mom and I headed for Albany and the funeral.
The Cedar Chest
The cedar chest in the laundry room always was a mystery when I was growing up. I knew it was my mother’s, and that she had gotten it after her mother’s death. I knew it held things precious to my mom, including the purse that my grandmother had taken to the hospital, as well as photographs and memories from times long past and rarely discussed.
What I didn’t know was whether the cedar chest held family history that I needed to hear, so I could once and for all separate legend from fact. This wasn’t tough to do on my father’s side of the family, because the Cooks were pretty much an open book. My paternal grandmother kept a diary for years and every scrap of correspondence — or so it seems — that she received in her lifetime.
Growing up, I knew little about my mom’s childhood, except that it was extremely difficult and impoverished, especially when she lived with her aunt, uncle, and other family members while my grandfather was serving in World War II.
Several years ago, I cleaned out several boxes I had gotten after the death of my paternal grandparents and turned the items into a photo collage. I asked my mom if I could do the same with things from the cedar chest.
“It’s not a lot,” my mom said. “But we didn’t have a lot.”
I knew next to nothing about my maternal grandmother, who died of complications from my mom’s birth almost 82 years ago. My grandfather, having remarried six years later, never discussed his life with his high school sweetheart, even though just before his death he insisted on being buried next to her.
“Daddy never talked to me much,” my mom told me during our trip from Austin to Albany. “As I look back, I never had any real conversations with my father. We never talked about any of it. He’d ask about my grades and point out my one B and ask me about that.”
The Story of My Grandparents
As we drove through small town after small town, avoiding Interstate 20 as much as possible, mom told me what she knew about her mother, the former Mary Louise Burch, and her father, Allison “A.T.” Vestal.
I took notes, which I found last week tucked away with papers on another person I had interviewed — Frank McCourt, who told of his difficult childhood in the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela’s Ashes.
Louise, as she was known, was born Dec. 21, 1912, and grew up in Clyde, Texas. Her mother died when she was 6 in the flu epidemic of 1918 and her father soon remarried.
As a teenager, Louise met A.T., who grew up in Baird, and soon they were a couple. Just 5 feet tall and somewhat frail, Louise also became good friends with my grandfather’s sister, Frances, who was 2 years older and later told my mom these stories.
“Her daddy forced her to quit school because he was hellbent on her getting married,” my mom said of Louise. “At that time, he didn’t think she needed a job as long as she was married. Also, she had a stepmother now, and my grandfather said he needed her to go ahead and get moving and get out.”
In August 1931, the two were married; both were just 19. They moved around as my grandfather — whose skills were in high demand thanks to the oil boom — helped build refineries in Baird, Louisiana, Arkansas, and then Longview, Texas. He decided to stay in Longview, spending all but the war years working as the equivalent of a maintenance supervisor.
“I don’t know a lot about this time,” my mom said of the decade before she was born. “There are holes in my story because I was told all this by Frances. Daddy didn’t talk about it. I don’t know what happened to my mother. I don’t know where the other refineries were built. There are so many holes.”
Louise miscarried a baby boy before her first son, my Uncle Randy, was born in March 1933. He weighed 10 pounds and 10 ounces, and his delivery was so difficult that the Vestals were told they could not have more children.
Eight years later, on August 15, 1941, Olivia Ione Vestal was born by c-section at a hospital in Longview. A month early, the tiny and sickly baby spent a month in the hospital before she was released to a widower with two children.
On August 22, 1941, on her 10th wedding anniversary, Mary Louise Vestal died of complications from peritonitis. She was 28 years old.
Off to War and Marriage
Three and a half months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. My grandfather tried to enlist in the Navy as soon as he could, partly out of duty, partly to move away from the grief.
‘They wouldn’t take him at first because he was then the sole parent of two would-be orphaned children,” my mom said. “He was young enough that he just wanted out of Dodge. He didn’t want to deal with children.”
By June 1942, the war in the Pacific had escalated, and my grandfather was allowed to enlist. A Seabee, he helped build runways, lodging, a hospital, and a base camp in the Pacific. My mother saw him three times in three years — once after boot camp, 10 months later when he was on leave before going to Okinawa, and 20 months after that when he returned from the war.
When he returned home, my grandfather came to Baird to pick up his son with his new wife Gladys in tow. He planned to leave his daughter — in many respects, the spitting image of his first wife — behind. Gladys refused to let him even though the relationship between stepmother and stepdaughter would prove to be fractious and strained over the years.
Gladys relationship with my Uncle Randy was no better; within three years, he had left home, also joining the Navy and marrying his teenage sweetheart. Randy’s relationship with his father remained strained for the rest of A.T.’s life.
“If you couldn’t deal with something you’d pivot away,” my mother told me as she drove toward Baird, which is 25 miles south of Albany. “That was always Daddy. If you have to deal with something you don’t.
“As for Gladys…,” she said with a sigh. (Disclosure: Everyone who mentioned Gladys’ name followed it up with a sigh.)
“She loved Daddy with her whole heart and was jealous of anyone who got his attention. Consequently, I didn’t get much.”
Opening the Chest
In Baird, my mom and I visited the graves of her family, including her father, who controversially announced days before his death in 1986 that he wanted to be buried next to Mary Louise. (Gladys is buried with her family in Waco.) We then drove to Albany for Kerry’s funeral; it is the last time I was there.
For the longest time, I wanted to explore what was in that cedar chest, to see the items that were in my grandmother’s purse and look through pictures and letters. In the grand scheme, it was a minor mystery with no great revelations or secrets, just a broader understanding of the various people whose lives intersected at different points and brought me to the place where I am today.
Inside, there are pictures of my grandparents together and seemingly happy, although most are of such poor quality that you can only make out my grandmother’s general features. (It turns out that our daughter, Emma, looks a lot like her.) Most of the pictures came from my grandmother’s scrapbook, but I also found some of my mom as a baby and little girl. Mom’s first-grade picture confirms that she was as frail as she has said over the years.
My grandmother’s childhood doll, now more than 100 years old, is there too, badly in need of repair. Clear plastic containers are small coin banks advertising Premier Ranger Motor Oil; my grandfather worked for the company for more than 40 years.
The real mystery for me, however, was what was in the purse. Placed in the cedar chest and never emptied, it remained it was when my grandmother went to the hospital to give birth.
I opened it and slowly emptied the contents. Most was what you would expect: Tissues, lipstick, a small mirror, Lady Esther face powder, an empty change purse, handkerchiefs, and a pair of burgundy gloves.
What was unexpected was the folded piece of paper with the list of names and addresses. I opened it and several small cards fell out. They were birth announcements my grandmother never had the chance to write.
