“Things always turn out for the best.” — Pangloss, Candide, Voltaire, 1759
My great uncle Roy was a very wealthy man. He owned the main business in a community. He did not demonstrate the compassion that Lynn Mandaville’s (“One Small Voice”) grandfather and great uncle showed for the less fortunate.
I read and enjoyed her beautiful account of her grandfather and great uncle. My guy was cut from different cloth. He was wealthy, and he was influential. He was the president of the country club. He was a big deal in the local parish. He lived with my great aunt, in a big beautiful home on the lake. He had many very nice things.
Next to the property line there was an unimproved dirt two track that served as public access to the lake. Uncle Roy didn’t really care for the public access. People who were not fortunate enough to have lake property came to the public access to swim, fish, and maybe eat a picnic lunch. They drove modest cars. Some had children, and perhaps they were noisy, as children sometimes are.
Uncle Roy formed a plan. As the calendar crept deeply into autumn, he hired workmen to put topsoil down on the two track and plant it with grass seed. He had them also plant shrubs and small trees. It worked perfectly! He was so pleased.
In spring, people could not find the public access to the lake. They’d go to where they thought they’d remember it having been, but came away frustrated. “I thought it was right here,” they may have thought, “but I just can’t find it.” By his scheming, and by use of his monetary resources, he got away with his plan, and eliminated the inconvenience of having common folk using his lake.
As a teen, my father told me this story as an illustration of just how nasty people could be. We were common folks. Though I must note that my father received a very nice formal recognition for humanitarian service he provided children. He downplayed it, but it was a big deal. Had we lived in that same area as Uncle Roy, w
e might have been the ones using the public access – except that we had connections. We went often to the house on the lake, but we were family, and welcome visitors.
My great uncle suffered some business downturns, and hanged himself when I was only 3. I don’t remember the man. My great aunt found the body, swinging in the basement. He left her with a very fat bank account. It was enough to provide private pay nursing home care not only to the widow, my great aunt, but also to her two siblings, when they needed it. And in time, they did.
My grandmother lived to 89. Her sister, the widow, lived to 97, and her brother lived to be 99. That used most of the estate. But there was one other expenditure that I found interesting.
Because my great uncle’s death was a suicide, he could not be buried in the cemetery of The Church of the Holy Assumption, or whatever the Catholic church in town was named. But my great aunt donated and donated and donated, to an amount believed to be in the neighborhood of $10,000, back when that represented much more spending power that it would today. After the passage of some years, with donations and attentions from the church, it was determined that my great uncle’s remains could be disinterred from the public cemetery, and moved across the street to the Catholic cemetery, with all attendant rites and rituals.
In summary: Money will buy some nice things, but not peace of mind. While there are good men like Lynn’s grandfather and great uncle, there are some nasty SOBs too. By telling me that story of Uncle Roy, my dad taught me an important lesson regarding the dignity and self-satisfaction of living in a way that is fair to others.
How interesting.
My Grandfather was born in 1898, the youngest boy in a family of 8. He was a sickly child and as a result he was kept from the grueling farm work that his brothers and his father had to do. Instead he was the only boy in his family to graduate from High School. His father died when he was 12, his mother immediately changed the family last name to one that sounded more Scottish. Not because she disliked Irish people but because everyone else did and she didn’t want her Scots-American children confused with a detested segment of the population. Life was hard enough in 1910.
Upon Graduation from his rural High School, my Grandfather moved to Detroit and went to work for Packard Motor Company as a clerk. His older sister helped very little, she worked for GMAC division of General Motors. They both got office jobs because they were high school graduates in a world where only 12% of the population graduated from High School. He was then drafted into The Army to be sent to Europe to defeat Germany in World War I. Fortunately, the war ended before he completed basic training and he was sent back to Detroit; without a job.
Again because he was educated and “literate”, he was quickly employed as a drafting trainee at General Motors. He worked there another 46 years until he retired, the worst thing he ever did was try out some prohibition liquor made by his neighbor. During that time Detroit changed a lot, and after multiple mid day break-ins and home invasions, he and my Grandmother were forced to move out and sell their modest house at a massive loss when he was 75 and she was 73. They didn’t want to move, they HAD to.
In spite of that, he and my Grandmother never uttered a single word about the rampant crime and racial strife that led to this turn of events. Never once did I hear them call a single minority any names, slurs or epithets. What i learned was people with strength, faith and dignity didn’t blame misfortune on others or hold things against the world. They cared about people that cared about them and never uttered words of hate against people that hated them for no reason whatsoever.
What did I learn from their experience.
Everyone is not liked by someone, get over it.
Life isn’t fair for anyone, you aren’t entitled to fairness.
Opportunity is there for people who are willing to seek the keys to it, even if they are as simple as the ability to read and write in a time where the only social net was the shirt on your back.
Basura, I believe it is a wise person who learns from the short-comings of others.
My mother-in-law was not a nice woman. But my brother-in-law’s wife was the only one at the funeral who was able to articulate in a kind and sympathetic way the lessons my mother-in-law taught so many of us by way of her failings. I was ashamed of myself that I could not extend that love to her even in death. I hope I am wiser now.
Thanks for sharing your story.