Knox County TN mail list

knoxcotn-digest Sunday, July 2 2000 Volume 01 : Number 104

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Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2000 11:45:13 -0700

From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org>

Subject: [KnoxCoTN] 28 May 2000: Sunday Afternoon Rocking

"Redefining Family" (from the "Sunday Afternoon Rocking" series)

Afternoon All,

Those whom my messages reach seem to have one thing in common...the search

of family. Endless hours we pour over email, on lists, searching websites.

Endless hours we spend pouring over books, documents, haunting courthouses,

libraries, historical societies, cemeteries. We rejoice as we add to our

family files and we enjoy the cousins we meet descended from the same long

ago roof. There are not words to describe what this "bringing together of

family", this "documenting of a heritage" has meant to us.... We hold many

of the same reasons for the search in common, and then each of us has

uniquely personal reasons as well. Yes, family is important...but it has

long been in the back of my mind to define more fully "family". You see,

there are so many who are "family" but not in the way that we document in

our genealogy software, on our family group sheets, in our lineages... and

yet they are so very important, and they are so very truly "family". There

are those we DO document in our family trees, but which have no blood ties.

It comes to me that family is a bit of a "state of mind", and always has

been.

Like you, I have many friends who are actually closer to me than some

blood relatives. In truth, they have earned the right to be "family",

and they have influenced and sacrificed for my family in many cases,

earning a spot in some manner of speaking in the family tradition.

Stories of them have been told and repeated, those

who have left this earth, and although there is nothing to connect them in a

family tree...they WERE family. Of those who surround me now, there are

more than a few I could ask at the drop of a hat for a favor and they would

willingly oblige. If I am sick they are there, if I am in poor spirits they

cheer...and they are family. My descendents may never realize it...but in a

way they will have been molded and carved into the people they will be by

the touch of the friends of a family of the past...just as I might have

been, just as you might have been.

There are aunts and uncles by marriage that we love as surely as we love the

"blood" aunt or uncle, that we treasure our memories of. There are in-laws

that have accepted us as surely as if we had been raised with them. Our

ancestors knew the same sort of relationships, and undoubtedly felt the

same. And though these folks may not be "blood", they too have placed an

indelible mark on our family lineage, our descendents, our legacy to follow.

I know of more than a few who were "adopted" into a family, but I do not

believe that makes them less family. Indeed my own husband bears a surname

not because he is actually descended of that family at all, but because a

many greats grandfather was accepted into it. No one has ever gone

searching for the long lost family that was biologically his ancestry, and I

am not sure they could find it if they did. But does it matter? This was

the family that raised a great grandfather, the family that accepted him,

gave him their surname and a given name from their ancestors, the family

that called him "son", and the family that claims his descendents. It is

the family that molded the descendents of which my husband is one, and the

ancestry that placed the mark of its experiences on their molding. Not

providing the biological "ingredients" that brought that long ago

grandfather in the world, they did something far more. They gave him all

they had to give, and made their legacy the legacy of his descendents. So it

is that this surname is the one my husband claims, and I have traced its

ancestry for him...it is as surely his ancestry as if a different biological

beginning had never occurred. This is family.

In truth, who among us can claim that the ancestors we have documented are

truly our own? We might take a lesson from the Native Americans there...for

honestly the only lines we can be absolutely assured of are the maternal

ones. That perhaps is not a popular fact to state, but it is a true one.

<smile> Family is who we claim.

I am a stepmother. My children have a stepmother. I know more than a few

"step grandparents". Though there be no blood ties, does this make less of

family? It certainly can, and does in many instances, but only if a person

chooses it to be so. Only if even one member of a relationship chooses to

keep those "not of blood" at bay. Family, I have always thought, has far

more to do with choice than it has to do with blood. And I have wondered...

does not choice make for more of a REAL family than blood? When a

relationship is based on more than the accidental placement of birth, when a

relationship comes because two or more open and willing hearts make a

choice, when they earn that privilege of closeness and love...is this not a

TRUE family? I think of the many many stepparents of the past. Unlike

today, where many of these families evolve because of divorce, in those days

it was more likely to happen because of the untimely death of a parent. My

ggg grandmother married a widower, herself a widow, children needing a

family..and this is a story undoubtedly repeated in your own family lines.

My great grandmother was a mere child herself when she married her husband,

to give his orphaned younger brothers and sisters a home...that story too,

is a common one of the past, and one many of you have found in your own

family lines. However it occurred, it takes a great deal of self sacrifice

and patience to mother or father children you did not choose to bring into

the world. It takes a great deal of maturity and leadership from adults for

children to accept mothering or fathering from an adult who did not bring

them into the world. But eventually...there is a choice for all involved.

To open a willing heart to family...and to redefine what the word "family"

really means.

And so I think, there is a place in our family files and archives for all we

consider "family". No matter how they touched the family lines, in some way

they left an indelible mark upon it, sacrificed for it, cheered it,

comforted it, cared for it, nurtured it. And if they assumed the role of

"family", so should they be claimed. Not just in honor of those gifts, but

also respecting that those gifts have actually in some way touched the

manner in which blood descendents looked at the world, grew, became.

Perhaps we should take time to include those pictures, those stories, those

names. For these people indeed, are family if ever one of us considered

them so.

just a thought,

jan

.________________________________________________

(Note: Afternoon Rocking messages are meant to be passed on, meant to be

shared...simply share as written without alterations...and in entirety.

Thanks, jan)

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Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2000 11:46:35 -0700

From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org>

Subject: [KnoxCoTN] 21 May 2000: Sunday Afternoon Rocking

"Sunday Afternoon Rocking Series"

Note: this story was not originally written for the Sunday Afternoon Rocking

series, but due to the nature of Memorial Day approaching, it seems apt to

share it at this time. -jan

Pride Won - Patriot Lost

Sgt. Judson W. Dennis was a resident of Tip Top, Tennessee. He was killed in

France on October 17, 1918. The following article by his great-niece,

details how, after seventy eight years his marker finally stood in the

National Cemetery in Dover.

For seventy six years, the letters had lain in storage, waiting for someone

to recognize the lessons contained in words written decades ago by a young

man far from home never to return. A thousand wonders they had survived the

years at all. They had lain at the bottom of a trunk through the raising of

five children in a farmhouse deep in the hollows of Tennessee, they had

lasted through the "selling out" of the family farm to T.V.A., found their

way into the top of a storage closet in Kentucky, and at last...at my

father's death, they passed into my hands. The letters were written by my

great-uncle, a man my father had never known. Sgt. Judson Dennis, aged 26,

was killed in action one month before the end of The Great War in 1918.

I knew the family legend, though I really knew very little about the man.

Judson's picture hung on the wall of my grandfather's farmhouse throughout

my childhood. I was told he was "Pa's brother, killed in France". Later, as

I grew older I was puzzled that he did not seem to rest in the family's

cemetery. And that too was explained, "They never found his body". That

mystery piqued my curiosity, but oddly I can remember none of my aunts, nor

my father elaborating further, or seeming to know much more...and so Judson

was just a picture, "Pa's brother, killed in France, who never came home".

In 1984, I was a grown woman with three children of my own when Jud's legacy

came to me. I found the box of "letters home" when I finalized my late

father's estate. There were some twelve letters, tracing Jud's first

experience as a young soldier in training in South Carolina to his last

letter written some ten months later in France. I sat for hours in another

time and another place as I read the words of a young man suddenly tossed

from the hard but simple life he and all of his family before him had known

into a world that except for some dramatic political upheaval in a faraway

place would never have been of his experience. I read his wonder as he

discovered the countryside he passed through on the train that carried the

Tennessee battalion from Nashville. I heard his delight at the books and

"picture shows" that were available at Camp Sevier. I heard the sadness and

acceptance in his words as he told about the "soldier boy they killed

because he would not obey orders and refused to work." I heard again and

again in his words the newness in his experiences and felt the range of

emotion in the letters, one after another, as they chronicled not only a

journey of miles, but a journey of experience and growth. There were some

ten other letters from various government officials indicating that my

grandfather had gone to as great a lengths as a poor farmer with little

means of influence or communication could go in trying to retrieve his

brother's body. And there was the telegram. As I held it, I could almost

feel the shock and grief that must have flooded my grandfather when he

received it almost a month after the actual date of his brother's death, and

after the ending of what would become known as the Great War. How shocked he

must have been, probably believing that with the war ended his brother would

soon be home, to farm with him, to raise livestock with him, perhaps to

settle down with his "sweetheart" nearby. And in all of that time he had not

known his brother was dead. The recent grief I had felt was all too fresh

and that, coupled with the multitude of responsibilities that faced me, was

the reason at last that I carefully boxed up the letters and set them upon a

shelf to wait for yet another ten years.

It was my thirteen year old daughter, Heather, who next unearthed Jud's

letters. She was searching for a history fair project, something she could

research and make a display of , and none of my suggestions would do. In

exasperation, I racked my brain for some idea that would grasp her interest,

something that we could find tangible objects to display for...and I

remembered a small nondescript box that had lain in storage with first one

member of the family and then another for seventy six years. I unearthed it

from the back of a shelf, and laid it before my daughter, little realizing

that the contents of this box were in fact to set off a chain of reactions

and events that would finally bring closure to a chapter of my family's past

and provide a sense of pride for my "children of the 90's" to cling to as

they faced their future. Her eyes grew large with wonder as I told her where

these letters had come from, who the man was who had written them, and what

had happened to him. For two days I saw her immersed single-mindedly in the

letters that I had first read ten years before, and I understood that she

too, was caught in another time and another place. Then came the questions.

And I realized how very different her experience with the letters had been

from my own. I had read them with a grown woman's experience and an

understanding of the past. I had read them with the understanding of another

generation and accepted so much of what Jud said without question. For my

young daughter, there were questions. " Why did our own army kill a soldier

because he did not obey orders and did not work? Why didn't they just send

him home? Why was Jud so excited about all the books at the camp? And what

are moving pictures? And what did Jud mean when he said "Old Glory, I will

stand and die by her"? Wasn't he scared? Why did he keep telling Pa what to

do about his things? Did he know he wasn't coming back? If he did, why

didn't he ever talk about anybody getting killed? Why does he keep asking

for mail from home? Didn't anybody ever write to him? Why does he keep

saying he cannot tell his family where he has been and what is going on?

Does he really mean it when he says that the 'mothers and sweethearts and

friends' shouldn't grieve, they should be proud to have a soldier?"

The questions came in a flood and I struggled with some surprise to answer

them, realizing that this child had not indeed grown up in a world of

unquestioning patriotism, of appreciation for the means of an education, of

unwavering loyalty. The world that had begun in my own childhood, the

Vietnam era, a time of riots and assassinations, of protests and marches and

sit-ins had somehow tapered into this world, and our children are accustomed

to dispute, the fall from grace of political officials, the cynicism of a

cynical age where there are no heroes and few ideals. Somehow they have no

connection to the past that my generation, with our parents and grandparents

of another time and way of thinking, did. And so, I think, it should not be

surprising that a soldier such as Jud, such as the thousands like him, not

heroes and yet heroes just the same, came as such a shock to my young

daughter. I tried to paint his world for her, as best I knew it from the

link of a previous generation. She tried to imagine a world without media, a

world without travel, and something else, a world in which people simply

"did what they felt they had to do". She held his wallet in her hands and

marveled at the picture of the two little girls he carried in it and asked

about frequently in his letters. The tiny girls are now her great-aunts,

loving ladies in their eighties that she eagerly visits several times a

year. She read and reread the tattered letter from a comrade who had been

present telling my grandfather how his brother had died. We searched atlases

of maps of the time frame, trying to locate the approximate vicinity this

man said Jud's body had been buried, and I tried to explain to her the

impossibility of doing anything about locating him now. Then, she and her

younger sister wanted to know, why doesn't he at least have a marker? And

that question hung in the air between us, as I wondered myself.

Her project was a winner. It took first prize at the history fair. She had

traced in excerpts from his letters the simple and tragic story of a young

man, like thousands of other young men, who left a simple existence to

answer duty, and die for it. She displayed his pictures and his medals. But

it was his paper that told me what she had learned from Jud. " I found this

story of Judson Dennis (my great-great uncle) a story of heroism. Out of all

his letters, he not once complained, nor told half of what he saw. He fought

to his death for his country, not because he had to, but because he felt it

was right. He went off to war as a man with guts, leaving his family and

friends and girlfriend. Just receiving a letter seemed to probably make him

grin from ear to ear for days. I feel that in this country today we take

things that are important for granted. That's what Judson had shown me by

just reading a few of his letters." Heather's words were not empty ones. I

had watched her wonder, her emotions, listened to her questions. She truly

was amazed at the bravery and loyalty of this man. And she was in awe at the

idea that Jud was not unusual for the time. She titled her project "Pride

Won - Patriot Lost".

The story did not end here. I could not seem to hang Jud's story up once my

daughter had unearthed it, and an unanswered question still lay between us.

I asked my aunt, the only one who can remember Jud at all, just what she did

remember. She told me snatches of memories, of being bundled up in a wagon

and trekking to Dover, Tennessee to watch Jud drill with the other soldiers,

of his final visit home before he was sent overseas. She showed me postcards

he had mailed her from faraway places. I typed Jud's letters and gave them

to my aunts, I saw the pleasure they took in these and realized that somehow

a wound existed in my family that I had not known of. Jud's body had never

been returned. And my daughters wanted to know why he did not have a marker

in his memory as did the rest of our family. Jud had been dead for over

seventy years, and belonged to another world, but somehow in his letters he

had become real to us, we felt we knew him, and somehow this did not seem

fitting that he had no place among his own, no marker to prove he had ever

been. It was a flash of inspiration and impulse that sent me to the phone to

call the National Cemetery in Dover. Was there such a thing as a memorial

section, for stones to mark the memories of soldiers never found? Yes indeed

there was. And then my heart plummeted as I heard the next words, "but it is

filled now." I have no idea what prompted this lady to speak her next words,

perhaps she sensed my disappointment, but she added, "Let me check to be

sure." And then I felt as if somehow I had been given a message that what I

was doing was for some reason what was meant to be when Judy Bagsby came

back to the phone and said, "There is space for one more." Then began the

process that more than once threatened not to come to fruition. There was

information that was needed, information I was not at all certain I could

provide. I had to furnish proof of his status as a soldier, proof of his

death, his birth date, his identification number. It was the latter two

items I feared for. Once again those things were somehow, I felt, meant to

be, because just exactly the right scraps of paper had somehow never been

thrown out. His birth date I found on a tiny torn page in my grandfather's

handwriting. I have no idea why it was written and would not have even known

what the date meant, except that beside it he had penned, "Jud's birthday",

and underlined it twice. The identification number seemed to appear on

nothing, not the telegram, not certificates expressing appreciation to the

family after his death, nothing at all. And then in Jud's wallet, I found a

list detailing the items returned to the family. There, at the top, was a nu

mber. And upon confirmation from Judy, I learned that this was the illusive

number I had been searching for.

This summer a crate arrived at the National Cemetery in Tennessee. A simple

white stone like every other white stone in that cemetery assumed its place

in a circle. My family and I made a pilgrimage to visit for the first time

what can be considered Jud's resting place. I smiled as I saw the basket of

flowers my aunts had placed there. They never miss a birthday, never a

holiday or change of season with the graves of our family who has left us.

It is important to them, this remembering, this reminding that we all, even

in memory somehow belong to each other and are a part of each other. These

ladies do not dwell in the past, they say their goodbyes to those gone, they

go resolutely on with their lives. But there is a pride and an honor among

them that says those who have left us are still a part of us. Finally, now

seventy eight years later, they were able to do the same for Jud.

The story is finished now, I think. Closure has been brought to my family.

And yet perhaps the story is not finished at all. My children learned

something from Jud, something about another time and another way of

thinking, and only time will tell if that impression will matter. I do not

want my children to be unquestioning, I do not want them not to have open

informed minds. But I do want them to understand unwavering dedication, and

loyalty, yes..and patriotism too. And I hope they learned something from me,

something intangible that has to do with family and honor and

responsibility.

Postscript:

But the story did not end at this time. Shortly after the above article and

Jud's letters appeared in the American section of a Canadian W.W. I site on

internet, a New York researcher and veteran discovered them. Something about

Jud's story caught his attention. Kermit Mercer went to great lengths to

begin a pilgrimage of discovery about Jud's war experiences and story that

would take him all the way to the area of France where Jud was killed.

Kermit's experiences and discoveries are detailed in this site. If this

story further interests you, and you wish to read Jud's letters and see

photos, as well as more information concerning his life and experience, go

to http://www.rootsweb.com/~tnstewar/judson.htm