WHO WAS HE?

WHO WAS HE?
I returned home from classes to find an obituary clipping which Mother had left on the table for me to read. “Frank A. Grady, died on November 7, 1940 at Ceres, Pa. The service will be held at Klump’s Funeral Home in Olean, Saturday, November 10 at 2:00 PM He leaves his wife, Maude and daughter, Jeane.” I felt no sense of loss, no sorrow -- nothing. His death wasn’t a surprise. Mother had always said three strokes would kill him and I was sure there had been at least four in as many years. I remembered the first one.
Dad was a carpenter who could find very little work during my growing up years, due to the Great Depression. He and Mother seem pleased when a roofing job was offered him by a friend who lived a few blocks away. I returned from school that day to find him lying in bed, unable to talk. The doctor came to the house, told us Dad had suffered a severe stroke and that there was nothing that could be done for him. Mother was “so embarrassed,” she said. “What did people think, seeing him stagger home in that condition? He passed right by the minister’s house.”
Dad recovered his strength slowly and was able to shuffle about, doing the little chores he could handle. I knew he must feel useless and angry with himself; trying to speak and walk on legs which would not cooperate; his left hand hanging loosely at his side. I have never forgotten the morning Mother responded to a question he was trying to ask her saying, “I know I shouldn’t laugh, Frank, but you sound so funny!”
For several years he had been living with Grandma and Uncle Earl, Mother’s family, helping with the chores on the farm. He liked working with the animals and talked with the cows as he cleaned their stanchions. The old horse, Dexter, whinnied when Dad came to feed him. We visited them when we could find a ride and either his speech had improved or I had become more accustomed to it, as I heard him speak clearly when he said to me one day, “Please don’t ever let your mother divorce me. Do you understand?” I didn’t understand at all, but said I did.
Was that what was happening when I had heard them arguing in our kitchen? When Mother yelled, “I thought when I married you at least we would have a roof over our heads,” and he yelled back, “I’m doing all I can.” I ran upstairs to hide in my closet during those times, waiting until I heard the kitchen door slam, then running down stairs and out the front door to the shed where I knew he would be sitting on the step. He would say nothing to me, but would share a white paper bag of creme filled chocolates as we sat side by side until the bag was empty. It was at times like that I wished for a sister or even a brother.The shed sheltered his business -- rug cleaning. He picked up rugs from customers, carried them in his Essex to the shed where he cleaned and dried them, then returned them to the customer. He had tried unsuccessfully to sell insurance at Mother’s insistence. She told me “Your Daddy will be all dressed up in a suit and tie, won’t that be nice?” I didn’t respond as the expression on his face looked anything but pleased.
There was so much about our family history I did not understand. I knew Dad’s family had come from Ireland sometime in the past. I also knew Mother wanted nothing to do with them, considered them to be “Lace Curtain Irish” (whatever that was) and never spoke of them to me other than that. Was it because they were Roman Catholic? (I knew how she disliked anyone of that religion.) Was that why Daddy seldom smiled or seemed happy? Just once he and I visited his family who lived three or four hours away. I met his sister, Hazel, and heard other people talking in the kitchen. She asked me to wait in the living room while they carried on family business. Wasn’t I part of the family? What was the business? Had someone died? Who lived there? There was no further explanation or discussion of the matter that day or ever.
I did know we had “lost our house” because I heard Mother telling friends and I rode my bike past that house at 81 Olds Court now and then, trying to remember what the bungalow looked like inside and which room had been mine; I think I was two years old when we left.
Mother and I, she in black, I in brown, attended Dad’s funeral; the minister was a man I didn’t recognize. I walked by the open casket, glanced quickly at the body which was dressed in a suit, white shirt and tie, but did not recognize my father. It was just a tired old man. Back at our seats, Mother wiped her eyes from time to time and even sniffled a bit. I did not cry. Not many people attended the funeral -- perhaps ten. Besides Grandma and Uncle Earl were two men from Ceres -- friends of Dad’s who had been with him in the store when he had the last stroke, they said, and three or four others who wore Masonic robes, although it was not a Masonic funeral, Mother said. She was always so proud that Dad was a 52nd degree Mason and I think he was too, when he dressed in his robe and hat. (You couldn’t be Roman Catholic and a Mason as well.) Where was his family? At least Hazel should have been there. Did they know he had died?
So who was he, this Frank Augustus Grady? A handsome young man, from his picture, blue eyes, sensuous mouth, black hair, slender build. I know he was skilled with his hands and made beautiful furniture. My bedroom was still furnished with the pretty blue spool bed with matching chest of drawers he made for me. I remembered his telling why he never used a carpenter’s flat pencil, “because it left a thick lead mark and I wouldn’t know which side of the pencil mark to saw on,” was his explanation. He didn’t often smile and I don’t remember ever hearing him laugh. Dad had a a strong tenor voice, although I seldom heard him singing except in the choir at our Methodist Church before he had the strokes. His life couldn’t have been a very happy one. Love or affection was never displayed, either between Dad and Mother or to me. Perhaps that was an old New England custom that came with Mother’s family. I wish we could have found a way to communicate; I had so many questions..
Surely there was more to my Dad than I knew. Such stories as he could have told me; about his childhood, his family, Ireland. How did he and Mother meet? Was there a family squabble when they married? Why? Were they happy for a while?I knew they had been married twenty years before I was born.Mother liked to tell friends how the doctor didn’t know she was pregnant until he operated to remove the tumor -- which was me. I slept in a bureau drawer as they were unprepared for a baby.
I’ve tried to locate anyone from his family through genealogy searches without success. Grady is a very common Irish name. His sister, Hazel, moved to Australia I heard someone say.
I wonder who he was?
Jeane Davidson 05/26/08



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