ALL THAT'S LEFT OF ME

By Jo Anzalone

Epilogue:

(Very personal prologue to epilogue...I'm being fancy and using the 'gue' versions.)  First off I want to thank each of you who has stuck with me through the full 6" thickness of All That's Left of Me. Yes, that's what it is when it's all printed out and in

a very small font to save ink. You probably didn't realize you'd read such an enormous book. I certainly had no idea when

I began with the two sentences I knew about him that I would write such a tome! Anyway, more than I can ever say, I

appreciate your hanging in there with me and with Jonathon. Over the months he became steadily more important to

me and I felt constantly more connected to him.  Writing that last chapter nearly tore me apart.  Many of you have

written to say you sang Happy Birthday to him this past Monday, September 5th, and already I've heard of the shedding

of tears for him after reading chapter 97.  That means the world to me!  I have felt his watchful presence with me during

the whole period of my writing his story.  It matters so much to me that he lived, that he not be forgotten, that there are

those who care that he lived, that he loved, that he died young and left an even younger family. I think somehow he is...

pleased. On his birthday Monday I made cornbread and bacon in honor of his 23rd birthday in the camp near Leesburg.

I even stuck a candle in the middle of the cornbread. This is what that looked like:

I had no idea, either, of what Jonathon would come to mean to me. Ever since I was a child, I have loved the sound of

his name when said aloud...Jonathon James McDaniel. But he was not 'real' to me. I tended to think more about Addie

than about him because I knew how she'd lost both parents when she was only 12 and how she'd married an older man

with only one leg and then he'd died and left her at 25 a widow with 4 small children.  As a female, she was the one I

related to, the one I wondered how she felt about things. Jonathon, other than his lovely name, was pretty much relegated

to being the one-legged older war veteran. But then my good friend, Atonia, wrote the story of her great, great grandfather

during the Civil War and that is up on Libriscrowe under the title The Way It Was With Him. As I read that I began to

think more and more about my own great, great grandfather and that I actually knew nothing about him during the

Civil War other than that he'd been wounded while in the Army of Northern Virginia, had gone back to fight again,

and "lost a leg at Spring Hill before the Franklin Battle."  That was it...entirely ALL I had on him. Suddenly it was simply

not enough so I set about in November of 2010 to see what I could add to that fraction of information. The 6" thick book

is what I added.

It only took the first chapter for Jonathon suddenly to be a real person to me, and the further and the longer I went with

him into the war, the more I cared about him and what happened to him, what he experienced, where he went, what he

would have seen. My Confederate Footsteps pilgrimage in May meant the world to me because...he...was there. I was where

he had walked, where he had camped, where he had fought, where he had been wounded. All of it served to make him ever

more real, ever more vitally alive to me. I knew all along, of course, that he would die on January 12, 1876 and that date

hung there above me, a sword on a thin thread, throughout the writing. The ending of Chapter 97 I actually wrote months

ago because I could see and hear it so clearly and it would not leave me alone, and every time I would think of it, tears

would come to my eyes.  He was going there...to that day...through all the long miles he marched, through everything he

endured, through all his happy times...he was going there.  But, then, we are all going to our 'there's'. We just don't know

the date of ours like I knew the date of his. It changes everything when one knows the date, so it is a good thing we do not

know ours.  But his, it colored everything for me. He has 'this' much time left.  Addie, too, does not know he has only 'this'

much time left.

But, still, I was struck by the unexpectedness of how much Jonathon came to mean to me.  It was just...more. So then I

had to think deeply about the 'why' of that and there is a definite why. I am, genetically-speaking, a combination of my

father and my grandmother...not his mother but my mother's mother, Georgia's daughter. I look more like Georgia's

daughter than I do anyone else and she and I share much in the way of temperament and interests. She was, for the

generations around her, the family historian. It is because of her that I know what I know about the maternal side of my

family. 

The two of us together on the beach in San Diego. I think it pretty much says everything about how we felt about one

another right from the beginning. My brother, my mother, and I lived with my grandparents near San Diego the first

two years of my life while my father was stationed in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. When we would go anywhere, my

mother would take Allan's hand and my grandmother would carry me.

She was, in many ways, a mother to me and we got along splendidly and did many trips together when I was an

older teen and she in her 50's.  Some of my favorite memories are of her and me, just the two of us, walking hand in hand

down some street as we explored a city together, like New Orleans or Miami.  She had this little thing where if she went on

one side of a pole or some such and I went on the other as we walked, she would say, "Bread and butter" and my response

was to be, "Come to supper."  It was something done in her family ever since she could remember and I do not know the

source of it, but I think of it still when I walk on one side of something and, say, a grandchild walks on the other.

This is her with my grandfather, George Glass, who adored her all his life. In so many pictures of the two of them, he is

looking down at her like he is here, with such love and affection on his face, and I adore the fact of that. The picture on

the right was shortly before he died and he's still looking at her like that. I could not be more pleased that I inherited her

pure white hair.  Not until I wrote this book, though, did I look at her and think, "This is Jonathon's granddaughter!!"

I actually started out with white-blonde hair. This is me at 3 in Baltimore, Maryland. Now I am white again.

On the McDaniel side of my family there has always been this real sense of, well, family. As a general rule, they were open,

warm people, who loved easily and were easy to love, who demonstrated their love freely.  It was almost funny sometimes

because if you were in a room with them, you didn't get up to go to the bathroom without going around and hugging

everybody who was there. They were a family in which the women played the piano and the rest of the family gathered

around and sang. I grew up with either my mother or my grandmother at the old upright piano, sometimes both of them

together playing a duet, and my brother and me standing behind them singing, my grandfather there with his arm around

me and his extra deep bass baritone voice. That is how my grandmother grew up, with Georgia playing the piano and her

husband and children all around, singing. It is a McDaniel thing. I, alas, am a blip in the long tradition as the way I make

music is with my words, not on the piano. But my daughter plays and her daughter Melanie plays just about any instrument

that can be found. It seems to have come to some sort of fullness in her. I do, though, still have my favorite pieces of sheet

music from the days of my childhood.

My father's family was different, very different. His parents had three children, of which he was the oldest and the least

favorite. All three made grandchildren and my father's children were his parents' least favorite of those. I didn't see my

paternal grandparents very much the first 12 years of my life because they lived in Spartanburg, South Carolina and they

stayed there. My other grandparents were always on the road, always driving long distances to wherever we might be

because they simply could not go all that long without being with us. I have come to understand that it is the adult who

determines the relationship with a child. I always had a lot of love to give and for some months when I was in the first

grade, we lived in my paternal grandparents' house in SC. We were moving from San Diego (having lived there a second

time) and heading for the Naval Base in Charleston, SC. My father was at sea and would be joining us in Charleston, but

my mother was getting us across country. All our things were in storage waiting for Daddy to get to Charleston and Naval

housing to open up, so we stayed in Spartanburg with his parents. I had been through kindergarten and part of the first

grade in San Diego, then we had stopped by Dallas and stayed some with family there, which included Georgia's husband,

who was still alive, and I had done 2 or 3 more months of the first grade there. But in SC they said I was too young to go

to school and so while my brother finished the second grade, I stayed home all day at my grandparents' house. Everything

I had was in storage and all there was for me to play with was a life-sized stuffed Scottie dog (I later bought a real Scottie

just because of that stuffed one) and a tiny little brown teaset on a little tray no more than 4" long. It was china and it was

chipped and so I was allowed to play with it. As an adult, for a long time I collected little tea sets, a direct result of that, too.

Anyway, my grandmother was an avid gardener and I was really interested because I loved flowers, but she never wanted to

show me anything about it. In my entire life, my grandfather spoke to me once, and that was when I was already the mother

of 3 children and had stopped by for a visit.  I was wearing a necklace and he thought it was it was something it was not and

made some very unpleasant remark about it. I am named after him as it was expected I would be a boy named Joseph.  When

my father retired from the Navy when I was 12 and we were living in Norfolk, we moved to upcountry SC where Daddy had

bought a farm. I lived there the rest of my growing up and he raised black angus cattle. Anyway, because we now lived only

15 miles from his parents, we saw them more often. I still adored gardening but my grandmother had no interest in sharing

anything about that with me.  The two of them were an entirely different experience than my mother's parents. I was ready

to love them because that was what I knew of grandparents, but they were not interested and I have not a single memory of

any warmth from either of them.

My father in Hawaii. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor. And a little later.

Skipping over the years to about seven years ago, my father died. My mother had died earlier at the age of 73 back in

1993.  Four weeks before he died, my father changed his will, disinheriting me entirely for reasons his somewhat deranged

mind thought were sufficient. I did not know this until a couple of weeks after he died. When he was in the hospital in

Union SC I talked to him on the phone shortly before he died and my last words to him were, "I love you." His last words

to me were, "Ok," then he hung up. He could not tell me he loved me because, well, he did not love me. As his mind had

started to go, he had begun to blame me for everything that had ever been unpleasant in his life, sometimes calling me by

his sister's name and not mine, and centering in on me as the cause of every bit of anything that he considered bad. His

mind created scenarios about me in which I came into his house and stole his furniture and he began to remember that as

a girl I'd come home from my friends' houses with all sorts of loot stuffed under my jacket. He believed it entirely. The

result of the way he left the world was that he made me feel totally cut off from my paternal roots, absolutely severed. This

was harder on me than it might have been for many people because I have always been so family history minded and loved

the stories of my SC ancestors in the Revolutionary War, etc.  In April of 2010 my husband Carl and I went to a conference

in Charlotte's southern suburbs, so much south that it was actually across the border into SC.  I had not returned to SC

since my father had died. Always before when we would drive down the lanes of SC I would imagine my ancestors on

horseback or in buggies, riding around. They had lived in upcountry SC since the late 1600's and I felt such a connection

with them when I was there.  This time I sat in a big conference hall that first evening, desperately trying to hide the fact

that I was dissolving inside because I felt so cut off from all of that, from all of them. I did not cry when my father died.

I did not cry until somewhere over a year later and then I cried because there had been no need to cry. I cried BECAUSE

I had not cried. Me being me, I even wrote a poem about it. I have no idea where it is anymore, probably in some old computer somewhere, but just a bit ago I suddenly thought of it and the first two lines of it came clearly back to me:

"My father's dead, I have not cried,

There is no need since he has died."

There was such a loss of paternal connection for me, but I lived quietly with it...until Jonathon. This is what surprised me

about him.  I had rather let myself feel cut off from all my forebears after what Daddy had done and no longer did research

on any of them. Then Jonathon came along...or, rather, somehow returned. And with him he brought back to me my sense

of 'family' that I'd lost. He gave to me a male, whose genetics I bear, who was someone I not only cared about, but came to

love quite deeply. He stepped with his one leg into a big gap in my life and he let me love him. Right as I began this, knowing

nothing, I prayed for guidance that I would be able to make the story as true to him as possible. Everything I needed just

seemed to fall right into my lap. I read about Spring Hill, totally unacquainted with that battle despite having taken a full

semester of Civil War history in college. Hood's Tennessee campaign was just shunted to the sidelines. It was the Army of

Northern Virginia one learned about; it was Atlanta. When I first read about Spring Hill, I didn't even know where he

would have been in the battle, which unit, which general...nothing. But I looked at a map of the battlefield and I decided

I wished he were in Lowrey's Brigade, serving under Patrick Cleburne. Only later did I discover that was exactly where,

indeed, he was. Things like that happened all through the writing of the book. But that last page was always there and

always I teared up when I would think about it.  Then when I wrote it for Chapter 97, I almost broke in half with the grief

of it.  He was so real that his death was entirely real, entirely felt. I went to bed with a cold cloth over my eyes because I

had cried for him so much. Only in the morning did it hit me that it was the opposite of "I have not cried."  Jonathon has

redeemed something important for me and I am more grateful to him than I can say. And I needed to say that here and

explain the why of that because it is the foundation of the entire book.

Now...on to the actual epilogue:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"She thought of Adeline's nine years without George and wondered how many she would live without Jonathon."

It would be 30 years and 6 months. Addie never remarried. When Jonathon died, Addie was 25, Lily was 8, Audra May was almost 6, Georgia would turn 4 a week after his death, and Colby was 8 months old.

Nothing is at all certain in the records of just what happened to the farm. It seems at least

some of it was in Addie's name and somehow Mr. Patty, who has been mentioned in the book,

ended up with her portion.  I wish I knew how Billy and Lewis fit into that.  The story came down that she was "deprived of it by unsavory persons."  However it happened, she left Louisville and went back to Montgomery, taking her sister Ann with her, along with the four children.

I have no idea what became of Lewis, as there seem to be no records of him other than the

1870 census, which lists him in Jonathon's household. I am presuming Sarah married as she,

too, leaves no records after the 1870 census. Billy, however, does, thank goodness! He must

have married sometime around 1879 to a young woman named Arabella (sometimes spelled

Arrabella, but census spellings were often terribly wrong ), who was born in Mississippi,

and whose father was from Virginia and mother from North Carolina. She was four years

younger than Billy and in December of 1880 they had a daughter, Annie S. McDaniel, who grew up to be a schoolteacher. In October of 1883 they had a son, Ethel, who was a farmer like his father. I checked and, yes, Ethel was used as a boy's name back then. It might possibly have been short for Ethelbert, but I don't know for sure. In February of 1886 they had a daughter, Lilly

L. McDaniel. Billy was still a farmer in the same area through the 1910 census.

Above is the 1900 census because it is easier to make out the names than on the 1910 one.

Below is the 1870 census and at the arrow you can find William listed. Adeline is listed as

Ann, sometimes as Elizabeth, but that's who that is. In all my family histories recorded by

my grandmother, she is called Adeline Eugenia, not Ann Elizabeth. Interesting that the

initials are the same. But I've chosen to go with the things my grandmother passed down,

which is not to say that there could well be something to Ann. You may note, though, that

Jonathon, which is how his military records spell his name and I have a LOT of those, is

spelled Johnithan, which is absolutely incorrect. Lewis and Sarah are there. The Adeline is

Addie. Lily is listed as Nina and Audra May as Andra. Then there's Ann Supple, Addie's

sister, who was part of Jonathon's household. Georgia and Colby were not yet born.

This is how a Circuit Court citation dated March 13, 1876 reads:

"The Court met pursuant to adjournment at 9 o'clock, Monday, March 13, 1876, and after organizing and the delivery of the charge to the grand jury, the following order was made:

Whereas, it having come to the knowledge of this County that since the last term thereof,

J. J. McDaniel, former Clerk, and Capt. John L. Conner, late Sheriff of Winston County,

have both departed this life, it is therefore ordered by the Court that as a token of highest

appreciation by the Court of the upright and honorable characters of the deceased, and

the faithful and efficient manner in which they both discharged their official duties, that

this Court do now adjourn until nine o'clock tomorrow morning. It is further ordered by

the Court that a copy of this order be furnished the Louisville Banner for publication, and

also, a copy to the families of the deceased."

Evidently one of Addie's cousins had died, leaving two motherless children, and when she

went back to Montgomery, she took care of them along with her own children. They were

little girls named Ara and Emma. So Colby was in a household with many girls. I do not

know what happened to Ara or Emma. They are only mentioned the once in the account of

Addie taking care of them.  In the 1880 census, Addie is counted as part of Walter John's

household.

This is Lily and Colby, in the only picture I have of them.

This is Audra May and...

this is Georgia, looking very serious.

This is Georgia from an old tintype made when she was 7 years old and all wrapped in

a serape.

And this is...Jonathon, probably in his early 30's. In the corner someone has put a smaller

picture of Addie, taken in her 50's. I'll put that up further along.

No one knows exactly when, but Addie took her girls and left Montgomery, going about 35

miles south of the city along what is present-day highway 331, and opened a boarding house.

There was a small co-educational college there called Highland Home and her boarders

were mostly students there. I don't know about the other girls, but Georgia went to college

there and studied to be a teacher. It is highly likely that Addie's sister Ann was also with

them at the boarding house. Addie had grown up on a big plantation, child of a wealthy

father, but after Jonathon's death she had to work to support herself and her children.

The reason I think Ann was probably still with Addie is that Ann at some point marries

a Mr. Durden and Addie's daughter, Audra May, marries a Cornelius Durden, who's

nickname was 'Teal'.  It seems likely the two Mr. Durdens may have somehow been related.

I intend to dig more deeply on Walter John and Joel as I know nothing about them. Of Addie's

younger brother Henry, I do know that he died on December 9, 1886 at the age of 31, but I

don't know the circumstances surrounding that.

Lily went to Waxahachie, Texas to visit a friend and, while there, came down with typhoid.

Addie left Alabama with Audra May and Georgia (and possibly Ann) and Colby, and went

to Texas to take care of Lily. Addie liked it so much, she decided to move there, which she did, and opened a boarding house. Lily married William Spencer in Waxahachie and they had

four children: D.B. (I only have the initials, alas), who fathered D. B., Jr.; Aline,  who married

a Mr. Helland; Colby, who never married; and W. J., who fathered a Nathan.

Georgia had met Leander Dale, a seminary student at Highland Home, and, yes, he was named

after the Greek hero. He had no middle name and later adopted the initial 'A' and would sign his papers Leander A. Dale.

The college is gone, but there is this plaque to mark the location.

Leander (Lee) was also one of the residents at Addie's boarding house and it was there he

and Georgia fell in love. Lee was from Stone County, Arkansas. His father, John Daniel Dale,

owned a grain mill, where Lee helped out as a teen. He always wanted to be a preacher,

though, and delivered his first sermon at their local church when he was just 16. The church

sent him to Highland Home. His mother was Lucy Elliott Hope, already a mother of two,

whose husband had been killed in the Civil War and his body never recovered. She was 25

when she married John Daniel Dale in 1868, when he was 35. She had bright red hair, the

palest of blue eyes, and with her new husband, produced five more children, Leander being

the oldest. John Daniel had been born in White County, Tennessee, and was 28 when the war started. I must try to find out his role during it. Eventually they made a home in Winters,

Texas and in later years when John wanted to retire to Florida, she didn't want to go, so they separated. Their youngest daughter, Ida, had moved to Florida and that generated John's interest in the state. When Lucy wouldn't go with him, he went anyway, dying there around

the age of 68. Lucy lived in Winters till she was 81, dying in 1924. She was sitting on her potty next to her bed, leaned her head over on the bed and died.

Leander Dale, my great grandfather, at age 23. He was just over two months older than Georgia, having been born on November 5, 1871.

This is the silver service Addie had at the boarding house. The item on the left with the ruby

glass is a pickle jar with a pair of clawed tongs to reach in and grab your pickle. In the

middle is a syrup pitcher, which has always been my favorite piece as my grandmother used

to love telling me how Leander would sit at the breakfast table and eat the pancakes Addie

would make, pouring syrup out of this pitcher on them. I took it with me on my pilgrimage

this past May (2011) following in Jonathon's footsteps during his time in the Army of

Northern Virginia, putting it in many photographs. The round butter dish in front still has

its original cut glass insert. Behind them are the sugar and creamer. These are all my

grandmother had. I figure there must have been a coffee or teapot at some point. These

have been mine since my grandmother died in March of 1986. They are the only things

left that belonged to Jonathon and Addie. I don't know what the year was, but sometime a

long time ago, my grandparents were traveling and stopped for the night at her Uncle

Colby's house (Jonathon's son). Colby had married Blanche Gilliland (they had no children

so there are no direct McDaniel offspring with the last name from Jonathon) and while my grandmother was at their house, she commented on the silver service as Blanche was using

it. My grandmother didn't ask for it, just admired it, but Aunt Blanche immediately gave it

to her. She was using the pickle jar to hold jelly and she dumped it out, washed it up, packed

the set in a box, and when my grandparents left the next morning, they had the box in their

car. That day Colby's house burned down and everything he had from Jonathon was lost, as

the silver service would have also been lost but for some extremely propitious timing.

Here the pitcher is on the Manassas battlefield, for instance. The full set of pictures may be found at:  CONFEDERATE FOOTSTEPS

While Georgia was teaching school in Waxahachie, Lee was preaching and doing evangelism

back in Mississippi. He missed Georgia terribly, though, and after two years went to Texas

and asked her to marry him. The preacher in the local Christian Church, who was named

Chalmers McPherson,  said he would marry them if Lee preached the Sunday service for him that morning. He did and they were married that night, January 28, 1894,  He took her back

to Alabama, this time to Phoenix City (now Phenix City), which is on the border right across from Columbus, Georgia. While they were there, Lee went to another town to hold a meeting and became very ill with some sort of unnamed fever. Georgia was pregnant and not feeling

well herself, but she went to the town to take care of him. Before the baby was born, the

church sent Lee to Longview, Texas, and a daughter was born to them, who was named Audra May after Georgia's sister.

Leander, Audra May, and Georgia

Meanwhile, the first Audra Lee had married Teal Durden, who died in 1894 at the age of

37, leaving her with two babies, one a newborn. Two months after Audra May was widowed,

she was coming home from church, already having a bad cold. She got caught in a heavy

rain and three days later died from pneumonia at the age of 24.  Audra May is buried in

the Spencer plot of Lily's husband there in Waxahachie. When Audra May died, Addie took

over the raising of the two orphan grandchildren. She was 44 at the time. Audra May's

son, Colby Cleo, was nearly two years old and Georgia Lee was now 5 months old. Georgia

Lee had been named after Georgia and Lee, rather obviously. Georgia's sister, Audra May,

had already died before Georgia gave birth and so it was then that Georgia's first baby got

her name. I think about Georgia Lee's life, one of Jonathon's grandchildren, and the entirety

of it seems such a tragedy. Her father died when she was two months old, her mother when

she was five months old, Addie, who was her surrogate mother died when she was 12, and

she married a man, Billie Earl Parks, who gave her syphilis from his unfaithful trysts with

other women. He died from it then she died from it when she was 31, leaving orphaned a

seven-year old daughter, Willie May.  Georgia Lee's brother, Colby Cleo, took Willie May

for a while but somehow she ended up in a Catholic boarding school even though they were

not Catholics.  When my own mother was 14 and living briefly in Albuquerque, they went to

Santa Fe and visited Willie May, who was about my mother's age. My mother wrote, "She

was so glad to see any family. I don't know what happened to her and I used to wonder."

My mother also saw Georgia Lee before she died and wrote, "I saw her one time but I do

remember it clearly. I was old enough to be told what it was and I never forgot it. Her

appearance was so shocking, wasted and thin, lying in bed."  Colby Cleo married a woman

named Gaby Lovett, but they never had children.

Georgia's first two children, Audra May and Homer.

After Longview, Texas, the church sent Lee to Ennis, Texas, where Georgia gave birth to

a son, Homer Lee Dale in August of 1896. From there they were sent back to Alabama, to

Opelika, where my grandmother was born on June 28, 1898. Her name was Lucy Merle

Eugenia Dale. She got two middle names. She was always called Merle (my paternal grandmother was Pearl...so I had rhyming grandmothers!) and the Lucy was for Lee's

mother and the Eugenia for Addie's middle name. When she married George Glass, she

became Lucy Merle Eugenia Dale Glass, and I can still hear her voice and see her smile

as she would quickly say all five names. Addie came to visit them while they were in

Opelika.  I would imagine she stopped by Montgomery on her way to visit her brothers.

Lee on the left with two of his fellow preachers in Phoenix City, Alabama.

When Merle was three months old, Lee was sent to Lake Charles, Louisiana. There was

no bridge across the Mississippi and they had to take the ferry. It was very swampy around

Lake Charles and Georgia got very sick with malaria. She was so sick that her doctor told

Lee he had to get her away from Lake Charles, and so they moved to Abilene, Texas in May

of 1899.  They lived in a small house near town where Georgia's 4th child was born, whom

she named Lily after her oldest sister. She didn't just name her after her sister's first name,

but included her married last name and so baby Lily's whole name was Lily Spencer Dale.

They moved further west out of Abilene to a nice white frame house with a big fenced-in

yard.  Colby Cleo and Georgia Lee would come and stay for long stretches of time. Lee put

in a huge vegetable garden. The street in front of their house came to be known as Dale

Avenue, but the name was changed many years later. When Homer was five, he got diphtheria

and nearly died, but Georgia managed to pull him through. He didn't grow as tall as it

had seemed he was starting out to be, and Georgia always thought it was because of the

diphtheria. While they were in Abilene, Lee took Homer with him and went to visit his

father, John Daniel, in Florida.

When Merle was five years old, Lee was sent to Big Spring, Texas, where he was pastor of

a white church with a big square steeple.  She loved the house she had been living in and when they were leaving and she got out to the front gate, she ran back and kissed the house good-bye. It was 1903 and in Big Spring, Georgia gave birth to a second son, John Daniel Dale, named after Lee's father. Addie came to visit, somehow not knowing Georgia was expecting a baby.  John Daniel had been born on October 5th, Addie's birthday, and when she came into the bedroom, Georgia pulled back the covers, revealing the baby, and said, "Here is your birthday present!"  Addie stayed for a long visit, but John Daniel died the day he was four weeks old. Merle was 6 and remembered both the day he was born and the day he died, and how the

doctor held him up in his hand and proclaimed, "Insufficient heart."  She also remembers during those 4 weeks, Addie trying to get her and little Lily to play more quietly than they tended to do. He was put in a tiny white casket and  I have the pressed flowers that were atop

it. Lee drove the casket to the cemetery in his own buggy.  His son had died 3 days before Lee would turn 33. Just eleven months later, in September of 1905, Georgia gave birth to another son,  Cecil McDaniel Dale, using her maiden name as his middle name.

The next year Addie developed severe Bright's Disease of the kidneys and died at the age

of 56 in June of 1906 at her daughter Lily's house. Merle remembers seeing her casket in

the lower hall of the house. Addie is buried in the Spencer plot in Waxahachie. In May

Georgia had been informed her mother was very ill and she took her children and went to

Waxahachie. Addie lived only a few days after Georgia got there. They never left Addie

alone and one night during supper, Merle was assigned to sit in her bedroom with her

while the rest of the family ate. Merle was still 7, would be 8 at the end of the month, and

she remembered sitting there in the darkened room and how her grandmother looked lying

so sick on the bed and she felt rather frightened and could hear the family down below.

This is Addie as an older woman. I've always thought she has a sadness about her.

Lee had a new house built a mile and a half north of Big Spring with a lot of land around it,

including 14 acres of cedars. Lee liked watermelon and planted a whole lot of it. There

was too much sand, though, in Georgia's mind and she hated that. There was a red picket

fence around the yard but no grass, just sand...and lots of wind. Some men came to the

house and refinished Georgia's piano. While it was still wet, a huge sand storm came up

and after that Georgia referred to her "pebble dash piano."

The Dale family in 1905: Merle, Georgia, Lily, Audra May (behind), Lee, Cecil, and Homer.

Lee's hair was already starting to turn white. It was he who passed that to my grandmother,

who passed it to me. He looks a little wary of the photographer in this picture!

Lee had been studying law while he was preaching and in 1898 passed his bar exam. In 1914

when Georgia was expecting her 8th and last baby, he went to Washington DC and took some

special bar exam that licensed him to practice law in all the states. When he came home, he

brought the kids acorns he'd picked up on the Capitol lawn.

Lee had a full plate: five living children, the pastorate of a church, was the superintendent of

schools, practiced law and was County Judge of Howard County, Texas. He was a brilliant

man, knew both Hebrew and Greek, but at the same time managed to be a good father.

Georgia would play her pebble dash piano and Lee would stand next to her and sing while

the children sat around on the floor close by and listened. Or Georgia and Lee would sing

duets together and then the whole family would sing. He would take them in the buggy to

a river, tie enough ropes around his waist so that one went out to each of his children, around

whom he would tie the other end, then they'd all go in the river together.

He had a surrey that he used to do the visiting his jobs required, but the horse he bought to

pull it, Charlie, was a former race horse and if another buggy came along beside Lee's,

Charlie would never let it get ahead of him, which rather embarrassed Lee.  Lee bought a

smaller, one-seater buggy for his own use. There was also a regular saddle and a side saddle,

Merle remembers.

Every summer Georgia would take all the children by train to Waxahachie to visit her sister

Lily. Lily had a big, 2-story house out from town and Georgia's five children would play with

Lily's four. Lily's husband, William, had been married twice before and had a daughter, Betty,

by his first wife. They would stop by Hawley, out from Abilene, to visit Georgia's brother,

Colby and his wife, Blanche (the one who later gave Merle the silver service), then go on to

visit Lee's mother, Lucy, who lived with her son, William, from her first marriage (to Mr.

Hope, who died during the war). My grandmother remembered one time on the train as

they were going back home, it poured rain and the train leaked and all the passengers put

up their umbrellas.

Lee as a preacher was not paid very much and sometimes the church would give them a

'pound', in which the members would bring to his house a pound of something: coffee or

sugar or whatever. Once when I was a young mother living near Washington DC our church

gave our pastor a pound and I thought it was so neat because it was so old-fashioned.

Lee, however, was wearing out from trying to do too much and a new pastor was sent to

take over his church, a Rev. Bledsoe, and Lee retired from preaching. In the History of

Central and Western Texas there is this paragraph:

"Judge L. A. Dale is county judge of Howard County. He was elected to this office in 1906

and was re-elected in 1908. As county judge he is administrative head of county affairs, and

for this reason deserves much credit for the most important county undertaking in recent

years. Reference is made to the building of the large and handsome Howard County

Courthouse, which was erected during the first term of Judge Dale, and was dedicated in

1908."

This is the courthouse built while Lee was judge. The cornerstone had his name on it and

inside the cornerstone he put a dime for each of his children, along with their names. In

1953 it was torn down and replaced by a more modern building. (I had never seen a picture

of it before and just this minute found it on a web search!)

This is the new courthouse, and the map shows where in Texas Howard County is located.

In 1908 Lee bought a Reo Touring Car, but he didn't like to drive. So starting at the age of

12, Homer, who adored driving, would chauffeur his father around.

Where they lived there was no refrigeration, so Lee had a milk house built, which was fairly

tall and had shelves around three sides, more troughs than shelves, and water was pumped

through them. Georgia kept cloths over the crocks in the water, dipping them frequently in

the water, then pulling them back over the heavy crocks. They kept fairly cool. He also had

a windmill built and then decided to raise pigeons. The pigeons, however, multiplied like, um,

rabbits and soon were taking over the place, roosting in the buggy house and becoming a

noisy and messy nuisance and so he got rid of them.

Georgia's cooking stove was a regulation iron one that burned wood with a compartment

along the side to keep water hot. It threw out a lot of heat as Georgia cooked and in the

Texas summer, it was just too hot, so he bought her a 3-burner kerosene stove. One Saturday

morning it caught on fire and, thank goodness Lee was home. He grabbed it and threw it out

in the yard...and that was the end of that.

The children liked to play anti-over, throwing a ball to each other completely over the house.

One time when they were playing, the ball went behind a trunk on the back porch (the porch

was unscreened and went all the way across the back of the house) and Merle reached behind

the trunk to get it. She heard a rattle and pulled her hand back. A big snake was curled there

in the shade. Lee came and killed the rattler then hung it on the fence, telling them that they

should stay away because its mate would come. It did and Lee killed it, too.

Georgia liked to shoot and had her own little .22 rifle. Colby Cleo was there enough that he

went to school with Georgia's children, but often played hooky and the principal would send

for Audra May and ask her where Cleo was, which always embarrassed and disturbed her.

Georgia was pregnant again in 1909 but didn't tell her other children for a while. One day

she asked Merle and Lily to stop by a department store and bring home a package. They

were told not to look in it, but they did, and found it was baby undershirts. On Thursday,

May 5, 1909 when the children came home from school, Georgia showed them their new

baby sister, Helen. Lee gave her the middle name of Princess just because he liked it. The

morning before she gave birth, Georgia put out a huge load of wash. A practical nurse came

out to help, but she was a stern woman and the children didn't like her and she pulled Lily's

hair so tight when she braided it she made Lily cry...then Georgia would come and redo it.

The children would come home from school (it was very near) for lunch and Lee came home,

too. He would tell them wonderful stories he'd make up while they ate. (That makes me feel

very related to him as for my grandchildren, I would sit and make up stories on the spot into

a tape recorder for them to listen to when they went to bed. I made fourteen 90-minute tapes

and for years the older of them couldn't go to sleep unless it were to the sound of my voice.

Their father, though, has thrown them all away and as the stories were never written down,

are gone.)

Georgia made molasses candy for her children and she'd set it out for them on a huge platter

to find when they came home from school in the afternoon. Sometimes on Sundays as they

were coming home from church, they would go by the railroad where a car was on a siding

with a load of bananas. Lee would always buy a whole stalk of them for his family. One

Saturday Audra May was going to have a party. Everything was ready but no one showed

because the word had spread "on good authority" that the world was coming to an end

that day.

Lee was appointed to the position of Assistant Attorney General for the state of Texas and

on Lily's 9th birthday, July 29, 1909, they moved to Austin. They had a nice house on the

corner at 610 West 18th Street, on a street car line, not far from town, and a short distance

from the University. One night Georgia took her children there to hear former President

Teddy Roosevelt speak. They lived in that house for a year, then Lee bought a 2-story white

house almost in the country on an acre of ground, out East 19th Street. The children loved it.

They had to walk 9 blocks to school and close to the school was the insane asylum. Georgia

took her children there a few times. They went all through it once with a group and a

number of the patients (whom my grandmother refers to as 'inmates') were standing around.

One man didn't take off his hat as they passed by and a woman patient grabbed it off his

head, threw it across the room and announced, "We are ladies even if we are crazy!" They

had dances there every Friday night for the patients and sometimes the family would go and

sit in the gallery to watch. My grandmother remembers there being quite a crowd of dancers

and she thought they danced beautifully.

Across the street from the school was the blind institute and sometimes they would go over

there and play with the blind children. There was also a big cemetery across from the school

and they would go and wander around in it. She remembers Governor Hogg's grave. Hogg

had two daughters, whom he named Ima Hogg and Ura Hogg. I bet they loved him for that!!

When they first moved into that house, Lee had to tear out the old bathtub, which was made

of wood and quite rotten. Merle watched him tear it out and saw the big leeches coming out

of the wood. The children played 'run sheepy run' with the neighborhood children. Again

Lee had a huge vegetable garden. After dark Lee would take his children out on the steps

of the house and teach them about the constellations. There was a big peach tree in the yard,

and Lee would pick them, dividing them among his children. In the summer, when it was very

hot, rather than giving them baths, Lee would take them into the back yard and turn the hose

on them...which they loved. There were a lot of wild grapes growing around and Georgia

would make jelly from them for the family. Lee's hair was quite white by now (if you have

that gene, it turns early...Merle was white by 28) but Georgia's was still almost black with

chestnut highlights. One Sunday when they visited a church they'd never been to before,

people there presumed he was Georgia's father, which rather upset him as he was, after all,

only two months older than she was.

Lee and Georgia like to play dominoes with each other while the children watched. Georgia

always...always...won and Lee would pretend to feel sorry for himself. Lee had an attack of

appendicitis and stayed home in bed a few days and it seemed to go away. His term of office

was over after two years and the family moved to Temple, Texas. My grandmother didn't

recall exactly why. Lee went there first, establishing a law office, and stayed at a boarding

house. While he was there alone, the appendicitis came back. Someone in the boarding house

heard him moaning in his room and he was rushed to the hospital where he had surgery.

Georgia took Helen and went to Temple to take care of him. The house in Austin was sold,

everybody was together getting ready for the move, and the night before they were to leave

there was a huge downpour and the ceiling of the living room fell in. No one was hurt but

they were all miserable because they thought the sale of the house would fall through, but

the buyers went through with it anyway. Later they heard the house burned down. Georgia's

sister Lily had died while Georgia was living in Austin.

The family only lived in Temple for nine months then a Mr. Claude Hudspeth, an attorney

in El Paso, asked Lee to come out there and become his law partner. Lee accepted and took

his family there in April of 1911. He rented a whole boxcar to take their furniture...and their

cow Daisy (all their cows were always named Daisy, which is interesting because when we

moved to the SC farm when I was 12 and my father bought a milk cow, knowing nothing of

that tradition...not that it would have meant anything had he known...he named her Daisy.

She was the only cow I ever milked. My hands weren't strong enough, though, to do it very

well, but my brother had big strong hands and became the milker. This is our Daisy with

her calf, March.)

Homer was 15 in 1911 and he rode in the boxcar with Daisy and the furniture. Lee and Georgia

were very concerned about him during his trip, but he managed beautifully. Lee thought the

furniture would be slow getting all the way out to El Paso, which is as far west as you can go

in Texas and still be IN Texas, so he rented a furnished house on Brown Street, right at the

foot of Mount Franklin, the desert mountain that juts out into the city of El Paso.

This is me at the age of 19 on the steps in front of Georgia's daughter Helen's house in El Paso,

where I spent some time that summer. You can see Mount Franklin there in the distance.

The house Lee rented was only a block from the Hudspeths. Alas, the boxcar of furniture

arrived as soon as the family did, so all their furniture was packed in with that already in

the fully-furnished house. There were two pianos, one already there, and Georgia's. The

kids didn't go to school because it was so near the end of the term so in September they

started over in the year they'd been in. They entertained themselves by climbing up the

mountain.

Thank goodness they only had to stay there one month and then moved to 500 E. Rio Grande,

a big 2-story white house only a block from the high school. It was also within walking

distance of downtown El Paso. They joined the First Christian Church, where Rev. Perry

White was the pastor (I've been in it). Lee became his superintendent of the Sunday School.

It was while they were living there that Audra May decided she simply couldn't go to school

any more, and Homer quit soon after. They lived there for two years then moved to 1127

Magoffin Avenue, across the railroad tracks on the south side of town, in the summer of

1913. This was a 2 1/2 story red brick house across the street from the Magoffin's house.

They had been pioneers in the earliest days of El Paso. Merle had to cross the railroad tracks

and walk several blocks to get to the high school, by herself since both Audra May and Homer

had quit. Lily and Cecil went to San Jacinto school, a few blocks away, which at the time was

mostly Mexican.

Audra May was so pleased not to be going to school, that she energetically set about keeping

the big house clean. There was one large room on the top floor and she would start there,

sweeping her way down. There were two staircases, the main one in front that led to the

entryway, and a narrower one in back that led to the kitchen. On the main floor there was

the big entrance hall, a large living room, dining room, and the kitchen. On the second floor

were four bedrooms. Audra May had the large room on the 3rd floor. One night she got up

to use the bathroom and fainted at the top of the stairs, falling down them headlong. Everyone

heard her fall and came running. She was in bed for a long time and the doctor wasn't sure

she would live, but she gradually pulled out of it, though she never seemed quite the same

afterwards.  She was 18 or 19 at the time.

Audra May at 19.

They got a Chihuahua, whom they named Chico. One day Helen and Cecil had been outside

playing when they both came in, saying they didn't feel well. It was scarlet fever. Georgia

moved Audra May out of the 3rd floor room and turned it into her hospital. The entire

family was quarantined for a month, the children missing school. Georgia kept a sheet hung

over the doorway to the top floor, and it was soaked in disinfectant constantly. Food, the potty,

all such were slipped under the sheet. Georgia didn't come out for three weeks, then Lee

went in. At the end of the month, the quarantine was lifted, and Lee threw the mattresses

out the back window and burned them.

Then Georgia became pregnant again. She had a terrible summer and was sick much of the

time. Georgia Lee came out and stayed a long time. In September Lee bought Georgia a new

piano. He also bought two big heavy chairs and a Krit car. On the first day of October, Bobbie

Velma was born. Homer and Audra May picked the other kids up at school and drove around

for a long, long time until finally they went home to meet their new sister.

The house at 4300 Pershing, taken by me when I was 19. It was only a half block from

where I am in the picture in front of Helen's house. My grandmother, Helen, and Velma

always yearned to see what it was like and one day when I was alone, I just marched right

up to the front door and knocked. It had been turned into an apartment building, but the

manager took me all through it and later when I told the three sisters about it, they were

amazed. A couple of years later when my grandmother had made one of her pilgrimages

to El Paso alone by air, she and her sisters took heart from what I had done, and went up

to the door and knocked and were also shown all through. I'm sure it was a different

experience for them since they had lived there.

When Velma (my grandmother and mother always called her that, but she called herself

Bobbie) was one or two weeks old, they moved to 4300 Pershing, which in 1914 was waaaay

out of town and a long way from the street car line, and was actually called Fort Bliss

Boulevard then, only a little later being changed to Pershing).  Before they moved Lee had driven Audra May, Merle and Lily out in the new Krit to see the house. When they were leaving, he backed across the street and over the curb. He DID hate driving! Downtown at the corner of Kansas and the street that goes in front of the post office, he stalled the car and a

street car was heading toward them. He got out, said, "Take the damn thing!" and stomped

off. Audra May had little experience with driving, but she got the car off the street car tracks

and drove her sisters home. Lee never drove again. Homer drove him where he needed to go.

Homer also taught Merle and Lily how to drive.

Poncho Villa, the classic Mexican bandit with the crossed cartridge belts on his chest and the

big sombrero and bigger black moustache, was terrorizing northern Mexico and the United

States sent the cavalry after him on what was known as the Pershing Expedition.

Poncho Villa and his gang of outlaws...

Riding with Pershing was a young cavalryman named George William Glass, who was to

be my grandfather. George had been born on January 24, 1897 in Lamar, Missouri. His

father, Fred, had gone to Oklahoma for the land rushes but had died there from typhoid

when George was only 9 months old. His mother, Rachel Winter Glass, took her four sons

out to Rocky  Ford, Colorado, with her father, William Winter. George's oldest brother,

Albert, died in  1899 at the age of 9.  Rachel bought a farm there in the irrigated country

and raised sugar beets, cantaloupes, and different fruits. George was 9 when his mother

died. She had been aware of a tumor for several years, but let it go as she was afraid she

would die during surgery and leave her three remaining sons orphans. Finally she could

put it off no longer and as she faced the dreaded operation, on February 3, 1906, she wrote

this to her brother- in-law: "Dear Brother, I write this asking you to please see after my children provided I never get well. I want you to take them to the Presbyterian Orphant

Home. I want you to keep 75 dollars for them and after your expenses and all other expenses

are paid (she means including her funeral) I want you to pay the rest of my money to the Orphant Home for the purpose of keeping my boys there until they are men--and then I will know they will be raised to love and serve their God. And, Henry, if the boys live to be one

(she means 'a man') I want you to always advise them what to do and how to do. I would like

to live to raise my children-but God's will be done and I will be happy to meet my loved ones

on yon bright shore. With love- Rachel E. Glass"

As it was all she left, the letter became her will. Henry, however, did not do as she asked.

Bill, who was 13, took off on his own, working in a drug store in Pueblo, Colorado and grew

up to be a pharmacist with his own drug store. Ed was sent to live with an aunt, and George,

at 9, was sent to live with another aunt. She died two years later and he was sent to another

place where he met a man, Pappy Gowan, who among other things, owned a pool hall. Before

long George was running the pool hall by himself from evening until midnight, and he became

so good at pool, he was an actual pool shark at 15, playing for the house.

When he was 16 he talked his uncle into signing the papers that would permit him to join

the cavalry. He trained at Fort Logan, about 15 miles from Denver, then was sent to Fort

Huachuca, Arizona where there were no barracks and the men lived in pyramidal 8-man

tents. There he learned how to ride...really ride. His instructor took his trainees out into

the desert for 16 mile rides at full trot with only a bridle. After several months there, the

entire 4th Cavalry was sent to Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, about 27 miles from Honolulu.

He was promoted to Corporal, trained remounts, and was troop librarian. He was so good

with horses that they sent him to advanced equitation classes with Walter Short, who had

judged at the Olympics. Short became a major general and was in command of Schofield

Barracks when Pearl Harbor was attacked. George also trained polo ponies and became

quite good at the sport. (Keep in mind he is 16-17 at the time.) They would go into the

mountains and hunt wild pigs, which they would barbecue over camp fires in the evening.

He took an active part in the 'monkey drills', which was standing in the saddle, riding two

horses abreast with bridles only, turning from front to rear, mounting and dismounting at

the gallop, and all the other acrobatics done on horseback. He won a medal for his troop

in mounted sabre combat.

His enlistment expired, he was returned to San Francisco. He wanted to go on to Chicago

or St. Louis and though he had enough money for his transportation, he would have nothing

left when he got there...so he rode the rails. He wrote, "My experience in doing that would

fill several pages, but I won't go into that." I wish he had. He did tell about the man who

said, "Kid, you may not have anything to eat when you get to Tucson," and flipped him a

quarter. In Kansas, two hoboes tried to get his money away from him by trickery. When he

got to St. Louis, he rejoined the army and was sent to Fort Sheridan on the north shore of

Lake Michigan near Chicago. He was there until word came that Poncho Villa had

attacked Columbus, New Mexico. Three days later he was in the saddle pursuing the outlaw.

He writes, "We never caught him-but we tried. My troop was an old-timer troop with an

excellent Captain in command and we roamed around on our own for many days. We went

as far south as Torreon and within sight of Chihuahua City to the east. We had a squad of

8 Apache Indian scouts. When they were sent out to capture any of the Villistas, they always

returned empty-handed with the report 'him sick-him die.' They didn't believe in taking

prisoners. There was a regiment of about 1200-1300 men of Negro cavalry, the 10th Cavalry

with white officers. Two troops of them were sent out to contact if possible the Villistas-they

did. They were ambushed and riddled, losing all the officers and most of the noncoms. They

were scattered for miles in retreat and at least half of them were killed. When word reached

headquarters, vehicles were sent out to gather them in. I had been in Pershing's Headquarters

for some time. I used to get quite a kick out of seeing Maj. Gen. Pershing go to the walled-in,

roofless 'john' for his morning's morning with Lt. George S. Patton, his aide, standing guard

outside."

General Pershing, then Lt. Patton (later the famous WWII general), and Pershing riding

on the Expedition.

Some of the cavalry..........................and the route

"The troops were down there about a year, returning to El Paso, Texas, where Pershing's Headquarters were established on the 10th and 11th floors of the Mills Bldg. in downtown

El Paso. I spent a couple of months classifying and putting in order the records of the

expedition for the Army Archives in Washington D.C.  I was promoted to warrant officer

and became the Chief Clerk of the El Paso District, which was, at that time, the headquarters

of the mobilizing army for World War I in the offing. Officers Training Schools were

established around the country, one of which was at Fort Bliss. I was assigned extra duties

as instructor in Army Administration at that school. I was 20 years old.

"I lived downtown and had a room on Nevada Street. There I met a chap called Cecil Ming,

who was engaged to Audra May Dale. She had a sister, whom he thought I would like to

know, so on a Sunday afternoon in early September, 1917, I accompanied Cecil to 4300

Pershing, where I met Lucy Merle Eugenia Dale. (When he first saw her, he was standing

just in the front doorway and she came to the top of the steps and his first thought was that

that was the girl he was going to marry.) I knew that was where the Heaven's broke loose

and she was my gal. After a couple of dates, though, I stayed away because it looked as tho

I was going to France, but on November 16, 1917 I went to the house to Audra May's and

Cecil's wedding. That was that-I was there every night after-and on December 2nd she

said yes and Feb. 2nd 1981 she said I Do. We got an apartment on Prospect Avenue.

"A telegram from the Adjutant General's Office came through that I was to report to a

Board of Officers at San Antonio 'to determine my fitness to become an Adjutant General

of the Army.' This was our honeymoon as I hadn't been able to take any time off before.

We had bought an Overland roadster-no top-for $150. In order that she could go with me,

we sold the car for $150. We stayed at the beautiful, old Menger Hotel adjacent to the

Alamo. For four days I was quizzed by the Army on regulations, Field Service regulations,

Courts Martial Manual, etc., the four manuals of the Army. Not many people have ever gone

through such a grilling--I was a damp rag. The Board consisted of two Colonels, a Lt. Colonel,

a Major and a Captain. I was rated as fitted for a Majority (to have the rank of Major), but

because of my age (21), I was recommended as a Captain.

"Soon thereafter I was assigned to the 18th Division at Camp Travis as Asst. Personnel

Adjutant of the division, and it looked as tho we were going overseas. But the Armistice

caught us and I was assigned to Fort Eustis, Virginia (at Williamsburg before its restoration),

where it seemed I discharged more soldiers (returning from WWI) than any other fort in

the United States. Train loads of them went out, it seemed, in a never-ending stream. There

were no living quarters for us at Fort Eustis, so we (Merle and their tiny daughter, Verne

Adele Glass, who had been born 10 months after their wedding day and would be their only

child as George was always afraid something would happen and he would leave orphans. He

was actually upset when his wife got pregnant after only a month because of that fear he had.)

lived in the old town of Williamsburg, 13 miles from the fort. We acquired a Ford touring

car for transportation. Williamsburg was then in its primitive state, a little town with muddy

street, ox-carts, and the Colonial Inn where we lived. Quite different now since Rockefeller

spent millions of dollars rebuilding it. After things subsided, I was returned to Fort Bliss for

discharge. This was in August 1919. We had wanted to return to El Paso in our Ford, but

the lack of decent roads and having a nine months old baby stopped us, so we sold our car

and took the train. "

I LOVE having that in his own words. I adored this man with all my heart. Never once did he

ever call me anything but Sue. I'm not sure why, but he just did. He liked to sing Sioux City

Sue to me. Going into his arms was like a little boat coming into harbor. That's how he made

me feel and I use that in my writings.  I can still hear his deep voice, hear him saying things

like, "Not only do I love you, but I LIKE you!"  I called him Granddaddy.  He was simply

marvelous at it. My father was not a very good father, but I had the best Granddaddy in the

whole world. I can hear him and my grandmother singing Side By Side, which was their

theme song. Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money. Maybe we're ragged and funny, but we'll

travel the road, sharin' our load...side by side. Don't know what's comin' tomorrow. Maybe

it's trouble and sorrow, but we'll travel along, singin' our song, side by side. They sang it

together a lot. 

Merle had been engaged to Will Valentine since she was 16, but broke it off when she was

18, shortly before she met George Glass. One of the things the Dales liked to do was go

out to Fort Bliss to the band concerts. They also went to the cavalry practices, watching

the young men riding furiously with their sabres drawn. Homer joined the army and was

sent to France, where he was gassed, but survived. When I was in El Paso when I was 19

(the last time I've been there, alas) Grandmama, Helen, Velma and I went out to Fort Bliss

to visit his grave. While we were wandering around the military cemetery looking for it, the sprinklers came on and we all shrieked and ran hither and yon. Colby Cleo, who was at their house, also joined the army and was sent to France. Merle and Lily had started working at

the Exemption Board in September of 1917 while Lee was the head of it. On the same night,

Dec. 2, that George and Merle were sitting on the swing on the front porch of the house as

George asked her to become his wife, Lily was in the living room being asked by Rutledge Isaacks if she would marry him. Merle and Lily were very close as sisters and always shared

a room growing up. Rutledge, too, was sent to France. We now have two Cecils as Cecil Ming, George's friend, married Audra May and was always called Big Cecil and there was Cecil

Dale, the brother. Big Cecil joined  the Navy and was sent to New Orleans, where Audra May went to join him.  Later Helen would marry Rutledge's younger brother, Bill Isaacks, so

two sisters married two brothers. Rutledge and Bill's father, Samuel, was also a judge like

Lee, and the two judges were very close friends.

Georgia had a bout with tuberculosis and Lily ran the house with her mother staying in bed.

In 1920 Audra May was pregnant and at the house with her mother and Merle when she

went into labor. All the men were gone on a hunting trip that day, August 22nd. The baby

wasn't due yet and Georgia and Merle mostly helped Audra May give birth, though a doctor

did show up. It was a son, named Dale Ming, who would only live to be seven. My grandmother

writes, "I think it was 1920 that Dad and Mother (Lee and Georgia) lost the house (I have no

idea of the why behind that). They moved down the valley to San Elzatio. It was an old, large

adobe, hacienda style. Audra May, Cecil, Dale, George, Verne, and I moved down with them.

We each had our own living quarters. We lived there for the summer then moved into town.

Mother, Dad and the kids ended up in the Brazos Apts. near town. In 1923, George, Verne

and I moved to Sacramento, California."

This is seven generations of direct mothers and daughters, starting with Addie in the upper

left, then Georgia, then Merle, then Verne, then me, then my daughter Laura, then her

first daughter Kimberly.

Below is a letter George wrote Merle when he had to be away from her on their 29th

anniversary.

Below is Georgia's death certificate:

Georgia had come out to visit Merle in George in their trailer near the beach (4275 Cass St.

Pacific Beach) in San Diego. When her mother died, Merle sat on the floor of the trailer,

rocking back and forth and crying with great and deep passion. She was absolutely overcome

with grief. And in the midst of it, she heard her mother's voice say, "Merle, you've got to

let me go." Some years later when she was riding on a train, possibly in Oregon, and looking

out the window at the beautiful scenery and thinking how much her mother would like it,

she heard her mother again, saying, "Oh, Merle, I've seen much more beautiful things now."

When Georgia died, George wrote his daughter (my mother) a letter in pencil, the last part of

which reads, "I vetoed sending you a wire-thinking an air mail letter would be a little more

gentle on you. Such is life, sweetheart, and I'm begging you to be a stout fellow and don't

grieve her passing too much-think rather of the things more pleasant in your storehouse of

memories and that she's gone into 'good hands.' God bless you, sweetheart. Your Pappy."

I wouldn't be born until 2 1/2 years after Georgia died yet all my life I've felt close to her, like

I know her. Her birthday was January 19. I was due in December but was very late in making

my arrival, deciding to come in the midst of a huge blizzard in Seattle. Mama went into labor

on January 18th and everyone was hoping since I was already so late, I'd delay a little longer

and be born on Georgia's birthday, but I was born at five minutes to midnight on the 18th.

Since most of the family was in Texas and to a Texan only Texas time counts, and since it was

already the 19th in Texas, they all insisted I was born on her birthday. I wish I had been! Now

for me she is another connection to Jonathon since he is her father and she was born in his

house on January 19, 1872 and he held her in his arms.

Below are three notes from Lee:

Below is a letter he typed on Georgia's birthday. The picture he mentions at the

bottom is of me.

Leander died 12 1/2 years later, in El Paso at Audra May's house at 3007 Aurora St. It

was January 29, 1953 and he was 81. It was one day after what would have been his 59th

anniversary to Georgia. He had not opened his eyes for a time, but not long before he died,

he woke up and said, "I went on the most wonderful cruise in the Caribbean. Everything

was beautiful! Little Mother (that's what he called Georgia after she had several children)

was with me. She looked like she did when she lived in Highland Home-beautiful! Mother's

family (meaning Jonathon and Addie) was quite wealthy. She had a beautiful home-beautiful

flowers-tall pine trees-birds, free-not in cages-free-everything was so beautiful-and beautiful

pictures hanging out in Little Mother's garden. One picture was of a ship in the Caribbean,

and a girl was dancing on the rail. Her name was Shanita. The pictures were hanging

where everyone could see them. Everyone was happy-no pain-NO pain. There were no

thieves-no crooks. Oh, it was beautiful! Merle surely would have liked it!"

A day or so before this, he had asked his doctor (Ralph Homan), "What do you think it

will be like crossing the river?" And the doctor replied, "I don't think it's going to be too

bad-for you or for me." At his funeral, In the Garden was sung. It was his favorite song.

Merle was in Alexandria, Virginia and missed his funeral, but her younger sister, Helen,

wrote, "We sent a blanket of red carnations and they covered the whole bottom of the

casket. He had such beautiful flowers. He looked so sweet and his hair was beautiful."

I think the perfect way to end this whole thing is by a little repeat of Jonathon's son-in-law's

last words:

'Mother's family (meaning Jonathon and Addie) was quite wealthy. She had a beautiful home-beautiful flowers-tall pine trees-birds, free-not in cages-free-everything was so beautiful-and beautiful pictures hanging out in Little Mother's garden... Everyone was happy-no pain-NO pain."

No pain, my Jonathon. NO pain.

I love you.