What she told me
With much prodding I am continuing the story. Funny, I actually started this just to tell you how I met Alan, and it has turned into a bigger story.
What my mother told me what that my father was never really divorced from his first wife. Both being Catholic, his wife Grace was not going to agree to a divorce. Of course she and their 5 children were in Washington state so they really didn't know what was going on. I am still not clear on all that actually went on but I will tell you what I know.
My father seemed to have a fetish for women with handicaps. He wanted to be able to help them and such. They met at a club in Somerset Kentucky, I think. At a Dorcus Club meeting. This is a support club for people with Polio which is what my mom has had since she was 5. She knew through the grapevine that he was married and therefore wouldn't have much to do with him. She had been married and had my older sister and that relationship ended due to abuse, so needless to say she was actually being cautious. From what she tells me he courted her for 3 years. I think she got pregnant with me and that is what finally made her decide to marry him. And he did have "divorce" papers. Come to find out he had had someone in the Army, where he was a retired Sergeant Major, forge them. WOW!! My mom has never admitted to me being the reason they got married but she did tell me that I was a month early - People I weighed over 7 pounds - I don't think so.
If I am not mistaken they got married in October or November of 1967 and I was born May 1968. By this time my father was very sick with cancer and it was moving, that is what they called it back then. Not long before he passed away and he was in the hospital very sick my mom got a call from his brother who to this day lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They met in the parking lot of a White Castle and he told her about Grace and his children. I mean she knew about them but found out about the not being divorced part. Grace showed up at the hospital and confronted my mom and told her she was taking him back with her to Washington state so he could be cared for in a veterans hospital. My mom fought her, and after his death fought the insurance company, and the life insurance company and social security. I was 5 months old when he passed away, they had watched the cancer metastasize up his neck and into his brain.
When I went to college I continued to get Social Security benefits and I also got V.A. benefits. I was a wealthy college student due to those monthly checks. And I had gotten financial aid that covered everything else and I had money left over from that. The benefits for one of them would stop when I got married and my mom didn't want me to loose that money. What is really funny is that up until Katey was a year old, I made payments on a wood burning insert they had in their house. Because I "had the money to do it". Sometimes I wonder what my family was thinking.
posted by Liz at 8:17 AM - permalink - -
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books i like
Here are some books I suggests if you are looking
to homeschool or just for information. I gleaned a lot from them. Our
church gets credit if you buy through these links.
In
their Own Way
by Thomas Armstrong
Seven
Times Smarter
by Laurel Schmidt
How
to Talk So Kids Can Learn
by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
Teen Proofing
by John Rosemond
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