James 1:17 (Every Good and Perfect Gift)

{Prompt: How would you describe your grandfather}

Retired Professor and Grandpa

By the time I was born, my grandfather was about to retire, or he had recently retired, from his job as a chemistry professor. I was born in 1964, at the beginning of the space age. He was born in 1897, at the beginning of the machine age. He was over 65 by the time I had any concept of the world around me — by the time I discovered that he was my grandpa.

Now that I am in my sixties, and recently retired myself (5 years ago at the time of this writing), I think I understand him a little better than I did during his lifetime.

I think he enjoyed his solitude and he enjoyed the quiet country life, but he needed to be productive and he enjoyed a challenge. After retirement, he moved back to his family’s farmhouse, and out of the city. He created a garden and a woodworking shop on the family farm to occupy his time.

For me the woodworking shop was a mysterious place. I only saw the dimly lit interior from the rustic, aging wooden porch, and even the interior was obscured by sawdust floating up into the rays of the summer sun, moving around in a gentle swirl, like the floating misdirection of a magician’s handkerchief. I was too young and timid to venture inside, and had probably been cautioned not to. I was too young, at that time, to be a carpenter’s apprentice.

He worked methodically on wooden frames, wooden stools, and miniature windmill-style wooden weather vanes. His woodworking shop became a replacement for his chemistry lab. Instead of chemistry beakers, condensers, burners, and flasks; he had woodworking saws, planes, lathes, sanders, and shellac.

In the garden, he worked just as steadfastly, to grow all the vegetables that he brought to the table. I imagine he spent a lot of time learning how to amend the soil, control the weeds and pests, and produce fruitful crops. Once he retired to Virginia, he had a lot more time and space for the wonderful vegetable garden than he had before while working as a chemistry professor in Columbia.

I imagine that those two hobbies (woodworking and gardening) were his new occupation, filling his time and stimulating his mind. And they yielded tangible rewards — wooden furniture that could be admired and gifted to family, and an abundance of foods that could become a source of sustenance and communion at dinner time.

Willard and Mary at their 50th anniversary in 1976.

My memories of my grandpa (as I called him), were of a no-nonsense, professorial man with small silver, wire-rimmed glasses and a bowtie. He wore short-sleeved, button-down shirts, and he had strong sun-tanned arms with visible veins.

I never knew him to joke around or play around with children, but from time to time he would enlist the grandchildren in helping with food preparation or helping in the garden; or I should say, I think he did, because I was among the youngest of the grandchildren, and was never very helpful.

On at least one occasion, he brought out a sizeable watermelon, and… whap, whap, whap… he sliced it up, lickety-split. There were fresh watermelon slices sitting outside the side door, between the canning room and the garden. I think he sat back and watched the bedlam that ensued, as we all tried to eat it down to the rind, getting pink watermelon juice all over our baby cheeks.

He must have been amused as we tried to nibble around and dribble out the black watermelon seeds without ingesting them. And someone had the idea of a seed-spitting contest. He probably set that affair in motion with an idle remark. “I wonder how far you could spit a watermelon seed…” I think that’s about when I first heard the expression, “within spittin’ distance,” meaning not very far.

On one occasion, when I was older, he found me mesmerized by the flames of the wood in the fireplace, and he tried to draw me into a discussion about the chemistry of burning wood. Different elements in the wood create different colors of flame in the fireplace. I, unfortunately, had nothing to say. I was just enjoying the ephemeral movement of the flames, as they licked around the crisp, splintery split-pieces of firewood. Neither of us was very talkative. So the conversation died.

Thanksgiving Dinner and Church at the Farm House

But clearly he cared about the family. He made Thanksgiving dinners possible, placing an unbelievably long row of tables in the middle of the farmhouse addition, with stained, black walnut wooden stools pulled up at the corners for the littlest children.

Possibly my first conscious memory is of sitting in a baby seat at the corner of that Thanksgiving table, surrounded by family. As I got older, I learned to take a little food and pass it along. I’m pretty sure that grandpa was the one who encouraged the good table manners. I learned to politely ask for someone to “please pass the butter beans.” (You could never get enough of them.)

I loved the butter beans and the corn pudding, but I didn’t like the okra, even though I was encouraged to give it a try. And I did give it a try, but I had the sort of unpleasant, visceral reaction to okra that I’d never had before. Something about the slimy texture and the fuzzy surface was repulsive. Although I’ve heard that fried okra can be really delicious, I don’t think I will ever get past the smell and memory of the well prepared, but truly revolting, baked okra that I had in my childhood.

Unfortunately, my experience with okra at the farmhouse, made me fearful of the rhubarb pie, which I refused to even try. I had never, ever, heard of okra, much less rhubarb; so after my difficulty with okra, I was understandably cautious about rhubarb. I thought, “You won’t fool me again.” “Even if you put it into a pie, to feed it to me, I won’t be deceived.” There was no way I was going to eat a pie with cut-up stalks of a vegetable, even if it came with strawberries and whipped cream. It was a shame.

Dinner at the home of Cora and Rev. Wm. Whitesell (center).*

Grandpa (and Grandma) were very religious, and in the setting of a Methodist service, I felt more at home. I knew the Lord’s Prayer, and the Doxology. I even knew most of the Nicene Creed. I enjoyed attending the little church in Stanley — a change of pace from our big city church in Raleigh. It was a charming chapel, with dark wooden pews and lofty beams, sunlit stained glass windows, and a piano in front of the altar — all packed within a space the size of a classroom. It had a small vestibule at the entrance, below the bell tower, where there were people to greet you when you arrived, and the pastor would always wait to meet you as you departed.

Inside Stanley United Methodist Church.

I was somewhat versed in the parts of the Bible, and a number of passages, but I knew nothing compared to my cousins, the Minyards. Their father had insisted that they read the entire Bible. I don’t know if they read it from beginning to end, but I was more than content to get my biblical lessons abridged for me — from children’s Sunday school, from radio evangelists, from The Upper Room, from study aids, or, best of all, from allegorical series like The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis.

Whenever we went to church with Grandma and Grandpa, I would observe him preparing for Sunday School, like he must have prepared for chemistry class lectures in his past. He studied the Bible verses and referred to the cross-references in the Bible concordance. He put notes in the margins of his Bible, and created his own annotations. He led the senior Sunday school class, standing in front of the pews in one section of the tiny church to give the reading, solicit opinions, and steer the course of discussion.

It was clear, from his actions, that grandpa had had a whole other life before he retired, before his children, and his grandchildren. He was comfortable leading a group in study, even if only on Sundays. He owned a farm, but had no cattle. He had a garden in the front yard, but he tended it in the fashion of an organized researcher. He had a woodshop, but he didn’t make crafts for sale. He gave them away to his family.

Willard Whitesell - Circa 1923.

Grandpa’s Other Life

Today, through genealogical research, I know that my grandfather (Willard) lived in three or four different towns before he graduated high school. He was the son of a Methodist minister, whose job took him to different places in the Virginia mountains. Willard was the preacher’s kid, never staying very long in one place before moving to the next parish.

Willard was born at the end of the 19th century, and he was two and a half years old when the 20th century arrived. His family lost two children at a time when child mortality was high. Children frequently died from pneumonia, diphtheria, or other infections. (These were the days before the advent of vaccination or the discovery of antibiotics.)

Willard was two when his sister, Lucille, was born. She survived. He was four when his second sister was born, but she died less than 6 months later. Willard was five when a brother was born, but this brother died before he reached two years of age. Another brother, Edwin, was born when Willard was twelve, and Edwin lived a long, healthy life. But by age twelve, Willard had already lost two siblings, and must have been at least a little wounded by the misfortunes that he and his family had faced.

At age eighteen, Willard went off to college, first to Bridgewater College in Rockingham, VA, close to home, and then to Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, in central Virginia. (It was an all-boys school.) In October 1918, shortly before the end of World War I, he served in the US Army at Fort Washington, on the Potomac, near Alexandria, Virginia. Fortunately, he wasn’t required to serve active duty in the war, and he was able to leave the Army and re-enroll in college in 1919.

He went to Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, just a little bit further from his family in the Shenandoah mountains. He earned a Ph.D. in chemistry in the next four years. By the time he graduated in 1923, chemistry was a burgeoning but still developing field. This was before the development of modern methods of refining petroleum or the creation of plastic polymers. The nature of the atomic nucleus was only starting to be defined, and it was years before the structure of DNA would be worked out by Watson and Crick (and Rosalind Franklin).

Willard went even further from home, to work for the University of South Carolina (USC) in 1923. He became an associate professor of chemistry in a new USC department. That same year, Mary Atkinson, a recent graduate of Emory University (with a master’s degree in chemistry) also moved to South Carolina, to teach chemistry at Columbia College nearby. Mary also attended graduate school at USC from 1924 to 1925, when she and Willard must have met.**

Within two years, they were married in Mary’s hometown, Newnan, Georgia.

Mary and Willard - circa 1926

They must have enjoyed the roaring 20s together: radio broadcasts, telephone communications, moving pictures, and the advent of modern automobile transportation. They endured the Great Depression with their first two children, and by 1941, amid the years of World War II, they had a full contingent of four children in their family.

So far as I know, Willard and Mary were busy raising those four children — Billy, Mary Lou, Margaret Ann, and Frank — until Frank graduated from high school in 1958. Willard worked as a chemistry professor at the University of South Carolina, from 1923 to 1962 — almost forty years! I never heard much about those forty years, and the paper trail for those years is sadly lacking.

Memories of a Fruitful Life

By the time I had much interest in my family tree, my grandparents were quite old. My grandfather passed away in 1991, the same year I was married and completed my medical degree. Somehow, I was able to take time off and drive up for the burial at Graves’ Chapel during my medical rotations.

My grandmother passed away in 1993, a little less than a year before her great-grandchildren, Jasmine and Samantha, were born in Columbia, South Carolina, the same town she lived in with Willard for about 35 years.

I didn’t really know much about Willard or Mary, although I knew I had their love and support. I imagine that they knew all about me and my brother, since my mother (Margaret) lived with them during the twilight of their years, staying with them from 1986 until the day that each of them passed away. Then she stayed in Stanley, Virginia, and took their place.

My memories of my Grandpa, Willard, are relatively few, but they are beautiful, nonetheless. For me, he is that shadowy figure inside a woodshed, working on a thick wooden stool, while sawdust swirls in the doorway, and a farm cat looks for shade in the crawlspace underneath.

He is that slightly bent-over fellow out in the garden, with the suntanned arms, putting a watermelon into a wheelbarrow, and bringing it back to a shady spot where he and the grandkids can cool off and enjoy the fruit of his labors.

He is that fellow with the small round glasses and bow tie, standing in the prismatic, colored light of the church’s stained glass windows, with a Bible in his hands, holding forth on the blessings we are given by God.

****************************************

*Also pictured - Mary, Frank, Willard, Virginia, Jim, Carolyn, Cora, William, Margaret, Bill, Mary Lou, Lucille, (picture possibly taken by Edwin)

** Mary Atkinson also attended graduate school at Bryn Mawr in 1923, and the University of California in 1925. 

My Dream Car

{Prompt: What car did you dream of having one day?}

Growing up in the 60s and 70s, the roads were filled with station wagons, VW bugs, muscle cars, and Cadillacs.  We had a Plymouth Barracuda when we were young. It was jet black, had chrome barracuda logos on both sides, a sizable sloping rear windshield and a sporty tail — its distinguishing feature.

A 1969 Barracuda with the “fastback” roofline.

It was one of the first cars to have back seats that could lay flat with an opening to access the trunk space. If you were small and you put down the back seats — on a trip to Virginia, for example — you could lie flat and fall asleep. I don’t think we ever really did that, but I think we might have pulled over once, on the side of a dark country road, and put down the seats, to lie down and look up at the stars through the rear windshield.

Mike and I in front of the barracuda - circa 1970.

The barracuda had manual windows and manual door locks, which were just fun to play with. But you could also get fresh air by opening these little triangular windows/vents that were right behind the windshield and next to the side mirrors. I would ride shotgun whenever I could just to play with these swiveling vents. I don’t think the car had AC. I don’t think we could afford it.

Iconic side mirror and window vent of a Barracuda

Once I rode in the back of a big, expensive sedan, when I was in middle school. It was some other parent’s car — maybe a Cadillac, like the Cadillac Seville. All I know is that when we got inside — three or four of us in the rear leather seats, it made so little road noise, and had such an amazing shock-absorbing system, that it felt like riding in an airplane… at least I imagined that’s what it felt like.

I think my dream car at that time would have been anything with a hood ornament.  Rolls Royce was the gold standard, but a Mercedes was much more likely to be seen in the real world.  I think my favorite, though — my favorite car with a hood ornament — was probably a Jaguar.  There was nothing quite like a leaping jungle cat made of shiny, silvery chrome to inspire my adolescent imagination.

My favorite hood ornament.

I also held out hope, for many years, of owning a Jeep — ideally, an army-issue Jeep, but I would have settled for a Wrangler. Of course, I didn’t know what notorious gas guzzlers they were, and I had no concerns about their service record when ownership was just a pipe dream.

When the time came when I was actually old enough to drive, and I had enough money (from working at Arby’s or the Pullen Park pool) to pay for gas and repairs, my mother bought me a small, used, Honda Civic. Not nearly as sporty as a Civic today, but this Honda Civic — my first car — had the great advantage of being a beautiful shade of lemon yellow.

My first car - a yellow Honda Civic.

Back then, the Iran Contra hostage crisis and the gasoline shortage of 1977 were affecting gasoline prices, and fuel efficiency was the deciding factor in many a purchase. The American market was seeing an influx of far more fuel efficient cars from Japan, including the one that I got.

I’d still love to have a Jeep or a Land Rover; a Jaguar or a Mercedes, but these days I find myself dreaming about vintage cars from the ’40s or ’50s. Maybe something that suits my age.

Or maybe I should get a souped-up 1969 Plymouth Barracuda… this time with air-conditioning.

Or maybe I’ll just keep dreaming, while I drive around in my Subaru Outback — the station wagon of the 21st century.

My Agent

{Prompt: What early memories do you have of your brother}

There is a ripple in the water. It isn’t an eddy — a water current. It is a ripple… from a critter.

“It’s a crayfish!”, my brother says, excitedly.

My brother is looking in the creek intensely, to see which way it goes. I’m not watching ’cause I didn’t even know there was a critter in there.

He’s focused on a good-sized, slimy, moss-covered rock.

“We gotta turn it over,” he says.

“Why?” I ask.

“Cuz it’s under there!”

A sizeable crayfish, in plain sight.

He Knew Things

I realize now that this is when… more or less, this is when I discovered that my brother had a store of knowledge… advanced knowledge… superior knowledge… that I could not imagine. He knew how to find a crayfish in a creek. He knew how to climb up into a tree house. He knew how to ride a bike, and more importantly, how to use the brakes.

He knew how to take a piece of unmown, seeding grass, in the Spring, bend the stem back on itself, and shoot the seedhead into the air. He knew how to take a rubber band, wrap it over the tip of his thumb and shoot it across the room. He knew how to shoot a BB gun. I guess he knew how to shoot just about anything. He was the ultimate source for practical knowledge.

Backyard (top). Front yard (bottom).

Of course, I had my parents, to teach me right from wrong. I guess they had practical knowledge, too. And I had TV, where I could watch the Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau to learn about creatures in the sea, and I could watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom to learn about creatures on the land. And we had umpteen volumes of the World Book encyclopedia, the Bible, and the Dictionary. We had a ton of written reference material.

But my brother knew things, and he was always around. He was like my handler… my agent. Or my personal bodyguard. He would walk with me to school, to the end of Wayland Drive, and across the crosswalk. He would take me along (or maybe he just tolerated me), when we went up the road to hang out with his friends. He was there to go to the swimming pool with me in the summer. If I ever went anywhere in the world besides my home and my school classrooms, it seemed like Mike was there to secure the ‘scene’.

When there was nothing else to do, Mike was in charge of the entertainment. He would come up with a game for every surface in the world. We played marbles on the patio, which was made out of cement. We played “World War III” with green, plastic army men on the oak tree roots and pine straw covered clay, in the back yard. And when there was nothing better to do, we went exploring the creek at the bottom of our neighborhood, after school.

Me, Mike and Grandmother, Emily Gallup - May 1971

Exploring the Creek

Let me tell you how water got to the creek, and what we would do, along the way. If it rained at our house, the water would wash down the gravel drive into the street. (The gravel driveway was one of the few places that we weren’t allowed to play. At least, I think we weren’t allowed. I just don’t remember ever playing there.)

The stormwater would run down the curb on the side of Wayland Drive. That’s where we sometimes would float a makeshift raft after a summer thunderstorm, and sometimes even during a summer thunderstorm, water coming down in buckets.

The water would wash into the opening of a heavy iron street gutter on the lowest part of Wayland Drive. If you were small enough, you could crawl into the street gutter, through the 2-foot round cement drain pipes, and out into the empty lot at the corner of the neighborhood. (Crawling into a street gutter is easy as pie when you’re a little kid. It gets harder as you get bigger.)

From the empty lot you had to walk through a probably tick-infested acre of brush before you got to the creek. After sunset, on the return journey, it got a little harder to find your way back through the empty lot to civilization. You had to look for the street lamps or listen for the sound of Daddy’s whistle, or his yelling, if he was getting impatient.

When we got to the creek, we always headed upstream. I guess the most interesting “rapids” were upstream, as the creek passed through a bed of limestone. The back of the shopping center — Glenwood Village shopping center — was also upstream, and if you went far enough (and started early enough) you could even trace the creek up to the cultivated lawns of the Raleigh Country Club Golf Course. (I felt like kids weren’t truly welcome on the golf course. Or maybe I just didn’t like to be so out in the open, in the middle of “fine” society.)

But we usually turned around well before we were out of earshot of our house. We mostly spent time looking for crayfish, or watching the water spiders, as they skittered across the surface. We kept a lookout for water moccasins, especially in deep water, but there wasn’t much deep water — really, practically none, in the heat of the summer.

We dug around in the pea gravel, or we poked around in the tree roots. At least once, we blew up a Hot Wheels car with the gunpowder from a cap gun… or with a firecracker… or something. I was only an innocent observer. It wasn’t me.

Naturally, we got into trouble, but mostly there was a policy of “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” Our parents didn’t ask, and we didn’t tell. At least it seemed that way. Whether or not our behavior was condoned, I’ll never know.

I fell into the creek once or twice. Usually I just got my shoe or my socks wet, but once I fell in completely, and I had to walk back home with my t-shirt and my shorts sopping wet. Mom thought it was hilarious.

Making Mischief

As we got older, we went exploring the city, and we got into different kinds of trouble.

One time we got run off from Glenwood Village shopping center, because we were peeking into the back of a strip club, trying to look at the strippers through the spinning blades of a ventilation fan. Someone saw or heard us and came out to chase us off, and we ran for cover, back to the woods. We were too slippery. At least I like to think of us that way.

We broke into my elementary school once. But it was entirely for a good reason. We were playing basketball on their basketball courts, which were open to the public. We got hot… and sweaty… and thirsty. So the logical thing was to go get some water from the water fountain in the hallway. I guess we were able to jimmy open the locked door, walk down the vacant school hallway, and have a sip of water. But we were caught, and we were detained.

I think Mike was forced to call our Mom by the administrator. Either that was our punishment, or he thought that we were hoodlums and vandals. It was all very innocent, and it got blown way out of proportion. I was just thirsty.

Mike took most of the blame. I reckon that was the cost of being the leader. Although in this case, I guess it was really my idea. But still… Mike should have known better. Why would he listen to me, a little kid? And why didn’t we have water in the first place? Sometimes I wonder if my brother was properly qualified to be my handler.

Another time, we got caught sneaking into the back door of a theater in broad daylight. We wanted to see the R-rated movie, Amityville Horror. Mike was old enough, but I wasn’t. So we hatched this simple plan. Mike would buy himself a ticket, and I would go around to the back of the theater. Then I would sneak in when he opened the fire exit door. As it turns out, opening a door in a dimly lit theater in the middle of the day is like shining a searchlight on an escaped convict at night. It was obvious to everyone in the theater what was happening. Although we sat down, only a minute or two passed before an usher came and escorted us out the door and off of the premises. Maybe a manager was involved. I don’t know. I was only an innocent pawn.

Getting Along

As we got still older, and a little bit wiser, we did a lot of things together that we couldn’t do as equals in the past. I was still new to the game in most cases, but I became a fast learner.

We started to play Avalon Hill strategy board games (like Blitzkrieg and Formula One). We were among the first wave of gamers to play this new game, called Dungeons & Dragons. My brother played in actual games with other players, while I mostly spent time creating characters, character names, and dungeon prototypes. I went on only one or two campaigns. I remember that the subtle downward slope of the dungeon walkways had a disproportionate importance, and every brick of a wall had to be inspected for secret doors or magical treasures.

We were in the Boy Scouts together. We learned to camp and set up a tent, split wood and start a fire, hike down a trail, and never, ever, take a turn that wasn’t clearly marked or found on the trail map. We learned to march stoically, for hours if necessary, to reach the top of the trail and reach the viewpoint. There was no turning back on a trail until we reached the lookout. At least that’s the way it seemed.

And the stuff in our backpacks. It was all so bizarre. A pack of aluminum eatingware, with an aluminum mug, that all fit together in a small metallic bundle. Rolled-up, blue foam bed mats and rolled-up sleeping-bags, wrestled into a bundle of fabric, above or below the central storage of the pack.

We developed an interest in medicine and veterinary medicine from our shared experience with pets at home, and visits to the Shenandoah Valley, to see our grandparents at “The Farm”. Mike expanded his understanding of animals, from the cats and dogs of our house, and the newts and the crayfish of our creek; to the raptors and livestock of the “Valley”. He went on to attend NC State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and became a veterinarian.

I ended up studying human anatomy, physiology, and pathology. I went to Duke University Medical School and became a family doctor.

We experienced the unimaginable; the death of our father together. We made the phone call to 911 together. We waited for the paramedics together. We grieved together.

We sat in the front pew at the funeral service. We stood out on the cold hillside at Raleigh Memorial Gardens for the burial. We spent our fury at the loss by splitting wood in our front yard.

A cringeworthy picture of our “family” in the early 80s

Everything Changes

That’s about the time that we went our separate ways. Shortly after his death, Mike went off to college in Louisburg, North Carolina, and I went off to a public residential high school, newly established by the state of North Carolina, the NC School of Science and Math.

We were back in Raleigh together briefly, when I transferred back to NC State University from Vanderbilt (where I had considered, and reconsidered, a major in Engineering.) We were both at NC State University in the Spring of 1983, when the Men’s basketball team went on a miraculous run to win the NCAA tournament. We watched some of the games together — I’m pretty sure that we watched the final together (when the “Cardiac Pack” faced the “Phi Slamma Jamma” team of Houston.) When the game ended in the perfect alley-oop “pass” from Whittenburg to Charles, we had a few minutes of unbridled celebration and then we headed for Hillsborough Street together, to be a part of the city’s biggest unsanctioned crowd of troublemaking youngsters to ever assemble.

My brother taught me back in the ’60s or ’70s, before the 1974 NC State national championship, that I needed to choose a college to root for, NC State or UNC. He knew that I should be an NC State fan, and he seemed to know all the reasons that State was historically the superior team. I took him at his word. And it finally paid off.

Somewhere in the Ether

{Prompt: What television programs did you watch in your childhood?}

Broadcast Television

In the sixties, we had exactly four TV channels on our TV set. Well… that’s not exactly right. We had a channel knob with about 13 channels, but only four of the channels had an actual broadcast.  The other 9 channels were grayscale versions of two-dimensional static.  I think that we got TV broadcasts on channels 2, 4, 5, and 13. Channel 4 was WUNC; the PBS station. Channel 13 was NBC; and the other two were WRAL and WRDU, the ABC and CBS channels. At some point WRAL changed their network affiliation, but that’s another story.

Some time in the seventies or eighties, it became possible to get a cable attachment, and then you could get 25 to 50 channels.  I don’t know how many there were exactly, but there were so, so many, that you couldn’t remember which channel was which any more.  Newspapers started publishing daily TV channel program guides, and the “TV Guide” digest was in its heyday.

Now we had more interesting TV static, because some R-rated channels, like HBO and Showtime, were intentionally scrambled to keep the little ones safe from profanity and nudity and adult content.  However… if you were lucky… and you adjusted the antennae just right, you could sort of make out the moving pictures within the static, and you could hear the dialogue.  But I digress.

When I was Very Young

Some of the most inspiring TV of my young existence occurred during the race for the moon. We all watched and listened on Christmas Day in 1968 as the crew of Apollo 8 — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders — circled the moon, reading from the book of Genesis. It was an unforgettable moment. I was only four.

A photo of the “Earthrise” — William Anders, Dec. 24, 1968.

I was five; six and a half months later, when Neil Armstrong took the first step on the moon, proclaiming it “one small step for man… one giant leap for mankind.” Just for a moment, the whole country was united by wonder and pride.

Neil Armstrong’s footprint on the moon—July 20, 1969

That feeling of pride and solidarity faded, with the U.S. entrenchment in combat in Vietnam. Though the conflict and the counterculture movement were graphically filmed and featured on the nightly news, my brother and I were quietly discouraged from watching that television content. We probably would have had too many questions — questions that would have been hard to answer.

Instead, we watched shows on PBS, and we watched the Saturday morning cartoons.  I would watch Sesame Street, which was “brought to you”, that day, by the letter “P” and the number “4”, or some similar combination.  The Muppets started appearing on Sesame Street in 1969, when I was five, and they became so popular that there were spin-offs — a prime time Muppet Show (from 1976 to 1981) and several Muppet movies.

Kermit singing Rainbow Connection in the first Muppet Movie.

I watched Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood often, each show starting with a rendition of It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, as Fred Rogers removed his jacket and his church shoes, putting on a sweater and some slippers. Looking back, I realize that I learned (and accepted on faith) so much about the world from Mr. Rogers — about the essential worthiness of all people, and the essential goodness of mankind — that it is practically a fundamental part of my character today.

At the time, I acquired a stuffed animal that was Daniel the Tiger. Daniel, on the show, was essentially an avatar for the scared child in each of the preschool viewers, and he helped to dissipate the fear each child had from witnessing the world of adults. My stuffed tiger, created, curled up in a circle, was so loved, that he was smushed nearly as flat as a pancake by the time I entered kindergarten. I had all but forgotten his television origins when I donated him to Goodwill thirty years later.

Mister Rogers and Daniel, the tiger.

On Saturday morning TV, we had all the Hanna Barbera cartoons (too numerous to list), the Looney Tunes, and Scooby Doo, to name a few.  At some point in the 70s, the cartoons were augmented with little infomercials by “School House Rock”. These tunes were widely disseminated, quickly memorized, and often regurgitated at the lunch break or free play at elementary school.  (I’m Just a Bill and Conjunction Junction being the classics.)  I could quote the preamble to the Constitution thanks to these little music videos. Possibly this was my first exposure to the power of pop culture.

Two beloved characters from Schoolhouse Rock.

The Age of Great Opening Title Sequences

Cartoons were also available after school on the weekdays. I’m pretty sure that The Flintstones and The Jetsons were on in the early afternoon. (I just had to get mom to turn off Julia Child or the Galloping Gourmet, and let me have the TV.  There was only one TV, you know.) The cartoons led into some equally cartoonish family shows, like Gilligan’s Island and the Brady Bunch.  Those title songs will be stuck in my head until I croak! I guess a good opening was the key to capturing audience share in the 70s. Maybe this is where my love of opening credit shots began.

“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…”

As I grew older I preferred more masculine adventures like the Wild Wild West and Star Trek.  On the Wild Wild West, Jim and Artemus (yes, Artemus) would routinely find themselves held hostage and in really deep doo-doo, and that’s exactly when the image on the screen was “captured” and added to the title shot just before the commercial break. After the ad break, Jim or Artemis would come up with some clever trick, or use a hidden piece of gadgetry to extricate themselves from danger.  Cue another commercial break. And then there would be a nice epilogue, in which they give themselves a pat on the back for a job well done, and President Ulysses Grant would send them off to another adventure.

Screengrab of a part of the opening for The Wild Wild West

The original Star Trek was fantastic theater, with the impetuous but clever Captain Kirk; the logical half-Vulcan, Mr. Spock; and the perpetually exasperated but faithful, Doctor McCoy.  The special effects were campy, by today’s standards, but the real drama was the character development (within the constraints of their various prototypes) and the interpersonal dynamics.  The plot and the effects were somewhat secondary. Although… there probably is no better opening theme and monologue ever, in TV history, then the opening audio track of Star Trek.

You always could depend on a few things from the original series: The characters getting into a jam, and then out of it again. An ensign with a red shirt, unfortunately, lost, before the crew became aware of their peril. Scotty pushing the dilithium crystals to the limit. Phasers or shields lost during deep space combat. Monsters popping up where you least expect them. And Spock and Jim locked in a verbal battle over the merits of logic versus instinct.

“…To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

In the evenings, we would often watch TV shows as a family. Remember, there was only one TV.  So we usually had to agree on something that everyone could enjoy.  Some of the most memorable were Room 222, The Flying Nun, Mission: Impossible, and All in the Family. My dad loved to watch The Rockford Files with James Garner — a tough but perpetually abused and misused private eye. He was usually getting the short end of the stick, even when he solved the case. My mom loved to watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show, back to back — dry comedies with ensemble casts.

Just before the group hug in the season finale.

There were also some procedural dramas that would alternate within the same time slot — McCloud, Columbo, and McMillan & Wife. All three were about various characters — one with a cowboy hat, one with a trench coat, and one with his wife — who were a lot smarter than they appeared.

Sunday evening was the night for us to enjoy Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, and The Wonderful World of Disney.  We would all gather to watch shows inspired by the environmental movement, and than one or two hours of pure fantasy. I always loved to hear… and watch… Jiminy Cricket singing When You Wish Upon a Star. I guess that’s why I’m the eternal optimist, today.

Tinkerbell, opening The Wonderful World of Disney

Back then, there were still Westerns, like Ponderosa and Big Valley (which made me a fan of Barbara Stanwyck) — shows that had conflict, dialogue, and conflict resolution. There were other “wholesome” family dramas, with less life threatening conflicts, like Little House on the Prairie and the Waltons, and yes, I think we saw every episode.

Changing Times

Networks didn’t realize, initially, that they could air a rerun and people would watch it.  Early on, TV series had a new show practically every week and no reruns.  I don’t know when, but maybe around the time that cable channels started competing for viewers, the shows started airing reruns. Gradually, the number of new episodes per season began to shrink.

Nielsen ratings were a thing back then, too. They were gathered from a sampling of American viewers to determine the ranking of the various shows. I think that our family was chosen, once, to complete the form for the Nielsen ratings, and we took our viewing responsibilities seriously. We carefully completed, in pencil, the ledger of the shows that we watched, and returned it in the self-addressed, sealed envelope. It was on a par with the completion of the US census form.

Back in those days, people worried that children (and parents) would become addicted to TV, that TV would destroy the fabric of society, and that violence on TV would lead to unfettered and unhinged violence in the young and susceptible viewers.  They had all the same fears that we have about the internet today.  I can’t say that they were wrong, but for all the mindless TV and the morally bankrupt programming, I can think of an equal number of shows at the other end of the spectrum — compelling and life affirming — such as One Day at a Time, Good Times, and M*A*S*H.

Naturally TV has evolved. Cable TV allowed an increase in sports-related and political programming.  Pay-per-view and cable accounts allowed increased adult-themed programming (both good and bad).  

Flat screen technology allowed huge TVs to dominate, and even usurp the hearth and fireplace in the living room.  MTV changed the entire musical landscape, and reality TV made “real people” the focus.

Now we find ourselves in a transition to streaming services, and the changing boundaries of our viewing domain are a source of consternation and ire. We can bond in our shared angst and confusion, but we can also talk, with our friends and family, about what we’ve discovered, somewhere in the ether that excites and touches us—that makes us think—that makes us imagine another world.  Just like those shows we saw when we were kids.

The Yelling in the Other Room

{Prompt: What things did your parents argue about when you were little?}

What did my parents argue about when I was little? That’s a great question. It’s harder to answer than you might imagine.

Undoubtedly, they did argue. Many times my brother and I heard yelling in the other room. But what was it about? That is hard to say.

Usually the other room was the master bedroom, in the corner of the house, across the hall from the bedroom that we slept in. The substance of the altercation was hard to make out from that distance when the door was closed.

Let me explain. The size and layout of our house is important. Our house was pretty small. It had two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. There was a square-shaped hall in the middle of those four rooms, with access to the furnace below and the fold-down attic stairs above. And there was a one-room addition on one side, that my father used for a workroom, which had a connecting door to the kitchen and our bedroom.

My dad, at his enormous desk in the “office.”

If you wanted to run in circles in our house, you could do it by running through the kitchen (avoiding the linoleum-covered countertops and the dangling cord of the phone on the wall)… running through my Dad’s man-cave (scooting around the sizable vintage wooden desk)… taking a hard right into the children’s bedroom, and straight through to the next door (watching out for Legos, Hot Wheels cars, or unsorted clothing)… another hard right into the central hallway (being careful not to slip, or stub your toe on the 3-by-5-foot metal grille of the floor furnace grate)… then through the slatted, folding doors to the living room (where it was best to pass slowly beside the TV set, or risk the retribution of the parents)… one last hard right at the front door, and back into the kitchen. Clockwise always seemed like the best way to run this route.

It’s even better when you are being chased.

(Credit: Getty Images/istockphoto)

But notice that the parents’ master bedroom was never a part of the circuit. In fact the master bedroom had a single door (to the central hallway), and it was usually closed. At night, if there was yelling, it most likely came from that mysterious chamber — untouched by the scampering feet of circling scoundrels.

But what was the yelling about? I honestly don’t know. It was muffled and inaudible. And as the youngest child, I wasn’t really trying to find out. I guess I took a better-off-not-knowing approach to family arguments.

And I don’t think that we were meant to know. I think if an argument was brewing, it either took place in our absence, or it was put off to the evening, after our bedtime.

I would guess that most arguments were along these lines:

Mom - “You play with them too much. They need to do their chores.”

Dad - “Aw… come on. I’m tired. I just want to relax.”

Or this:

Mom - “Why did you have to spank him?”

Dad - “What? I barely touched him. He needs to behave.”

But I really don’t know. Usually the argument sounded like the teacher on a Charlie Brown special:

Mom - “Whaa whaa whaa-whaa?”

Dad - (in a lower pitch) “Well, Whaa whaa whaa-whaa-whaa.”

Clearly they agreed, at least on one thing; which was to keep the arguments out of earshot.

There were disagreements, of course. For example, my mother didn’t like to be around my father’s cigarette smoke. Consequently, I only saw him smoking at his hobby shop or in his car. He had that talent for flicking a lighter and holding it to the end of the cigarette, while shielding the flame from the wind. It’s not easy to do. At least not without a bit of practice. And he could roll down the car window a crack and flick the end of a cigarette so that the ashes fell out the window. So, even though he didn’t smoke in the house, he smoked enough to know what he was doing.

Perhaps they argued about his smoking.

Close up of a cigarette break.

My father probably wanted some time on his own. Of course my mom probably did too. But my mom had gone to college to be a teacher, and she had experience with children in elementary school. She expected to take care of the children.

My father, I think, had less experience with young children, in comparison. Don’t get me wrong. He was there to help with Boy Scouts and other activities. He enjoyed drawing (calligraphy, in particular), leathercrafting, model-building, car-mechanics, and home-repair, and he was happy to share those things with us.

But he also found ways to be away from home. Besides his regular job, as a draftsman at Stackpole Electrical, he opened a military-themed hobby shop (The Armoury) as a side gig, probably to spend a little time out of the house.

Perhaps they argued about how much time to spend together… or alone… or with the kids.

The Yamaha— a great way to get away.

My parents came from different backgrounds. My Mom grew up in the South, in Columbia, South Carolina. She enjoyed grits. She cooked with plenty of salt and butter.

My Dad grew up in the North; in Baldwinsville, New York. He enjoyed bagels and Dunkin’ Donuts. He put pepper on his eggs. Perhaps they argued about their food preferences. Or the merits of the different regions where they were raised. Perhaps they argued about the reasons for the Civil War!

You see, they met in Wilmington, North Carolina; while my father was serving in the Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune, and my mother was working as a teacher for the schools in Wilmington. My father, the ‘Yankee’. My mother, the ‘Southern Belle’.

They were married in 1959, and had their two children in the next five years. North Carolina is famous for welcoming folks from both north and south of the Mason-Dixon line, so when they bought a home it was in Raleigh, the capital city.

Their families were quite different in social class, as well. My mother’s parents both had a college education. Her father was a college professor and a lifelong Methodist Sunday school teacher. He could tell you what elements made the colors of a wood fire as it burned. Her mother had a degree in chemistry and enjoyed crossword puzzles. She knew the names of all the rivers in Europe and Asia that could be found in a crossword puzzle.

A grainy photo of Willard & Mary Whitesell and their first son.

My father’s parents both simply finished high school. His father was a foreman in the test and maintenance department of General Electric, and he was working in a studio called “Designs for Listening.”. He enjoyed recording vinyl records in his free time. He died in 1953, when my father was only 17. My father’s mother worked for the New York State Department of Civil Service, and she had received awards for her stamp collecting skills. She died when he was 40.

A grainy photo of Emily and Leonard Gallup

So my mother and father were really from different places, geographically and socio-culturally. Somehow they made it work.

They probably agreed on most matters, far more than they disagreed. They kept the arguments (mostly) under wraps, out of sight, and (usually) out of earshot. To be fair, the arguments were really quite few, and far between.

They were obviously in love when they married (after a relatively short period of courting). They were in love when they had two children. And they loved one another enough… cared enough… to argue over a problem until they reached an agreement.

They showed their love, too, in hugs and kisses, in conversations at the family dinner, in participation in games and activities, and in child rearing.

So, even though I remember the muffled sounds of angry parents on a few occasions, I don’t really remember what the fighting was about. And for me, it didn’t matter. It always seemed like a part of the process; a brief tempest in a season of sunny Spring weather.

The fighting always ended; and my happy parents returned to their jobs with sanity and normalcy. My pleasant childhood would continue, unperturbed.

Photo in front of the fireplace of (L-R) Gerry, Mike, Steve, Meg.

(Photo of Mike in our living room, which had cabinets with honey-colored sliding wood-paneled doors, with the TV and World Book Encyclopedia volumes on top, and pottery, speakers, and record albums on the shelves above. But look at that backpack.)

Not So Solitary Confinement

{Prompt: How would you describe your childhood bedroom?}

There is little that I remember about my bedroom. Only two things really. I remember the bunk bed that I shared with my brother — my older brother — and I remember the window to the backyard — the translucent portal to the outdoor world and the insufferable heat of summer in the North Carolina Piedmont.

The bunk bed was nothing special. It was a bunk of two twin beds, built with wood too thin to withstand a modern Consumer Product Safety inspection — wood smoothly finished with a light honey-colored stain that perfectly reflected the warm amber glow of the incandescent lighting of the ‘60s.

Both of us on the top bunk - circa 1968

The bed rails held only 3 or 4 bare wooden slats. And they in turn supported a thin bed mattress with springs that showed from the underside. It was great sport, at night, to stick your feet up, from the bunk below to the bunk above, and poke the mattress springs firmly, or kick the wooden slats provocatively, to see what effect all this might have on the occupant of the upper bunk.

And I was the occupant of the upper bunk for some time — maybe more than one span of time. You see, our parents may have switched us around once or twice, hoping to find a harmonious arrangement. I think that they erred on the side of safety, by putting the smaller child in the lower bunk. Less chance of a mishap — of having the younger child roll over and off of the bed in the middle of the night. And less likelihood that a small child could reach the bunk above with his feet.

But I could. Of course I had to lift up my hips, and push my butt up at least 6 inches, to get my feet onto the slats, but once I got my feet up there, it was just a matter of leverage to keep myself inverted for quite some time. Long enough to create a disturbance. This was how a lot of pillow fights began.

Eventually rules were laid down — a decree was issued — that we should lie quietly in bed, at least long enough to give our weariness a fighting chance to overwhelm us with sleep.

No actual photos exist of the hijinks. (Credit: Xanthe Berkeley)

But sleep was so difficult when temperatures at night were in the 90s. You see, there was no air conditioning during the summers. We couldn’t sleep in pajamas, because of the heat. Even a t-shirt was too hot at times. We often slept in our underwear — “tighty-whities” — half covered, with a sheet over one leg, on those hot summer nights. We were sweaty when we went to bed, and lucky if we fell asleep at all.

The window was opened as far as possible, and a box fan was placed somewhere, elsewhere in the house, in another window, with the direction of airflow pointing outward. The reasoning was, “The fan blows the hot air out of the house, and the cool air comes in the other windows… including yours.” This seemed like highly dubious reasoning to me at the time, and I think that we successfully lobbied to have the fan placed in our window, and the direction of airflow reversed, so that the hypothetically cooler air would flow into our room, and the hot air would subsequently be pushed out of the other windows. If there was any cool air to be had, we wanted access to that cool breeze to begin in our bedroom. The condition of the rest of the house be damned!

Two particularly decorative vintage box fans.

Later, a rotating fan (instead of the accursed box fan), was introduced to the center of our room. It stood about 3 feet off the floor, and for a few seconds the fan created a lukewarm, or perhaps a cool, breeze, before the airflow passed by with the rotation of the fan.

Winters were little better, as the bulk of the heat came from a central furnace in the hallway in the middle of the house. As a matter of fact, a folding wooden drying rack was placed above the grille of the furnace on the floor at least once a week to dry the laundry! There were many mornings when I unabashedly straddled that floor grate after the morning shower, wrapped in a terry cloth bathrobe, to dry myself off and warm myself up.

Although it was toasty warm in that chamber, where all the warm air was discharged from the furnace, there was blessed little circulation of the heat from one room to another. No radiators and no floor or ceiling vents that I can recall. The door to the hallway had to be opened, at the sacrifice of your privacy, if the heat was to be enjoyed.

It looked a little like this.

Besides the bunk bed and the window, nothing memorable was found in the bedroom. I’m sure there was a dresser of clothes, and a child-sized desk. There was certainly a set of the Chronicles of Narnia, and perhaps a few other books. There was probably a children’s record player, with some 45s of children’s music and stories, and some record albums (33s), as I got older.

There must have been some games and some toys, but I think for the most part the bedroom was designed to be slept in, and for dressing. Nothing more. Play… and especially horseplay… was not in keeping with the primary purpose of our confinement, at bedtime.

A rare moment of fraternity (circa 1969)

Going Down the Rabbit Hole

{Prompt: How far back can you trace your ancestry?}

Doing genealogy is like going down a rabbit hole. Every ancestor that you find has two parents to be discovered. With every generation of the family tree, the amount of historical research doubles.

This is the story of how I became acquainted with genealogy, and how far down the ancestral rabbit hole I have descended….

The Family Tree

As a child I was aware that my parents came from different worlds. That was my first inkling that there was something interesting about the family tree. My mother was a “genteel” Southerner from Columbia, South Carolina, whose parents also spoke with other Southern accents (Virginian and Georgian, I know now). They summered at the family farm in the Shenandoah Valley to grow vegetables, craft furniture, work crossword puzzles, and read. They were Southern gentlefolk.

My father was a “disreputable” Yankee carpetbagger. …No, not really; but he came from upstate New York, from a place called Albany, which was cold and gray and dreary all the time (or at least on the one visit that we made when I was very young). His mother worked for the State of New York, she smoked, she collected stamps, and she either made or purchased a Christmas wreath made out of computer punch cards, way back in the sixties. Her husband — my grandfather — died in 1953, when my father was only 18, and, of course, since I wasn’t even born yet, I never met or knew much about him, except his name — Leonard.

Workers at desks festooned with punch-card wreaths

Let me tell you a little bit more about my parents — the first branches of my family tree. They met in North Carolina in the 1950s. My mother was teaching possibly her first lessons at an elementary school in Wilmington, after graduating from High Point College. My father was a Corporal at the time, serving in the Second Marine Division at Camp Lejeune. That is where he was stationed after completing basic training at Parris Island (in Beaufort, South Carolina). And that is where he went after he dropped out of college in upstate New York. He became a qualified electrician during his training, but he was, first and foremost, a Marine. Semper Fi!

Mom and Dad met at a dance arranged by the USO in Wilmington, and I guess it wasn’t long before they were “going steady”. They were married on August 1st, 1959, and then they moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, in “The Triangle”, where my brother, Mike, was born in 1961, and I was born in 1964.

An exciting depiction of “The Research Triangle”

I’m not sure how long Raleigh has been called a part of “The Triangle” in North Carolina, but it looks like at the time IBM opened in May of 1965, it was part of the “Research Triangle Park”. Possibly that’s when the moniker began. I just knew, at the time, when I was growing up, that I lived in “the Triangle”, a safe zone (or at least a zone of tolerance) for relocating Northerners, delineated by an obtuse triangle (geometrically speaking), that ran between Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.

It was an island of growth — of government, university, and white collar jobs — in the middle of a sea of traditional trades, like farming (tobacco & pork bellies) and manufacturing (furniture & textiles). It was a place for the mingling of classes - the working class and the intelligentsia; for the clash of politics - Democratic and Republican; and for the alchemy of relationships between people from the North and the South.

I was a bit of a chimera — a child of a Northerner and a Southerner, who had both moved to the area. I realize now, many years later that hardly anyone is really from Raleigh. Most people now, and for many years back, have moved to Raleigh from other places, for various reasons. And most of the people actually born in Raleigh are born — like me — to people from somewhere else. Many are born to Northerners who have moved south for jobs, or for the warm winters, or for the low cost of living.

Before 3rd grade, I didn’t know anything about genealogy, or about a family tree. I just knew that my parents were from two completely different places.

My Famous Cousin

Around about 3rd grade, my class assignment was to bring in a family tree — basically a tree that included my parents and grandparents. But being the quintessential teacher’s pet, I went home and with the assistance of my parents, I carefully drew out and labeled a two-page (fold-out) schematic of my family tree, which went back about nine generations on my mother’s side. Most of it was copied, ancestor by ancestor, from a tree that had been meticulously researched and compiled by a great aunt or a distant cousin in the family of my grandmother, whose name was Mary Cook Atkinson Whitesell. Even so, my third grade teacher seemed really impressed. I guess she was used to getting a lot of drawings that looked more like oak trees, with two or three generations at best.

Although my tree, at that time, included all my grandparents, and nearly all of my (first) great-grandparents, it was really the branch of my maternal grandmother, Mary, that was the star of the show. Her branch included names like Lucy Yates, Malinda Gamble, William Francis Cook, and John Pepper Atkinson. She had relatives that were colonists and some that lived on the American frontier.

One branch — the Yates line — went back to Colonel William Randolph and Mary Isham, who married in 1680, and had nine children. They’re sometimes called the “Adam and Eve of Virginia” because of the great number of their descendants. They also happen to be the great grandparents of founding father Thomas Jefferson, our third US president— making me his second cousin, six times removed.

My cousin— Thomas Jefferson

Another branch of Mary’s tree — the Ellis line — went back to colonial New Hampshire and Massachusetts. It include people like Ebenezer Day, who helped found the frontier town of Keene, New Hampshire, way back in 1753, when even New Hampshire was on the frontier of civilization.

Around the same time (1769), another ancestor in this line, the missionary, Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, was founding a school for the “savages” to school them in Christian theology. That school was the Ivy League institution called Dartmouth College.

My grandmother Mary’s family tree was filled with Colonists and prominent citizens, and there were dramatic emigrations, as ancestors moved to frontier lands in Georgia when the Native Americans were forced out. Some ancestors moved from coastal Virginia to Newnan, Georgia (where my grandmother was born), and some moved from Keene, New Hampshire to Eatonton, Georgia (the birthplace of Joel Chandler Harris of Brer Rabbit fame). The peopling of western Georgia, though it occurred before the Civil War, was a little bit like a land grab in historical terms. Parcels of land were given out by lottery, and it helped to have connections, if you wanted a lottery ticket.

My Mercenary Origins

In comparison, the peopling of the Shenandoah Valley was rather gradual and deliberate, as I discovered from a careful look at my grandfather Willard Alexander Whitesell’s family tree.

Many years after that first copy of my family tree, I started exploring it further. My (maternal) grandfather Willard died in 1991, and not long after that I saw typewritten records of the Whitesell family history. Rather than a bifurcating tree of names and dates (birth and death), this family history was more of a collection of stories. There were a couple of pages on each generation — the Whitesells (or Weitzels), the Huffmans, the Brubakers, and the Rosenbergers.

This little typewritten book, with its strike throughs and corrections, contained intimations that the clan arose from a Hessian (German) mercenary, Johann Paul Weitzel, who arrived near Philadelphia to fight for the English in the Revolutionary War. But subsequently he stayed in America, living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Over succeeding generations, family members moved from western Pennsylvania to Frederick, Maryland; and then to Rockingham County in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Willard Whitesell’s ancestors — all of them — had been born and living in the valley for a hundred years before he himself was born in 1897.

Glamorous depiction of a Hessian mercenary.

It turns out that Willard also had a diagram of his family tree, which I discovered later. He drew out a diagram, using graphite pencil, on what was once manila-colored packaging paper. The paper was carefully rolled into a cardboard tube that was about three feet long. When fully unrolled, the entire diagram is about the size of a closet door, and barely fits on top of our pool table. The paper is so dark with age, that it is hard to make out the pencil marks today, but when you look closely you can see the names and dates written with the precision of a lifelong chemistry professor (which is what my grandfather did for a living).

The Gallup Name

In contrast, until I retired in 2019, I had no idea how far back my father’s family tree would go. His mother’s family — the Knapps and Shaeffers — came from relatively recent immigrations from Germany. They were immigrants who moved to upstate New York in the 1850s, when there was widespread famine, not only in parts of Germany, but also (famously) in Ireland and other parts of Europe. They were poor and they were farmers or laborers, or they were the children of farmers and laborers.

The Gallup line — my paternal line — was still a mystery. My father’s father, Leonard Byron Gallup, was a mid-level manager for GE and the only son of Ira James Gallup. Ira was one of the many humble farmers and laborers in upstate New York. And that’s as far as the Gallup family tree could be traced, to the best of my knowledge.

I had hopes that the Gallup family came from good stock — perhaps Dutch fur traders who moved up the Hudson valley and settled in Albany. Or possibly Quakers from Pennsylvania had wandered past the Catskills into Finger Lakes of New York.

I knew there was a famous fellow named George Gallup, who created the Gallup Poll — a widely cited and well-regarded statistical poll that achieved recognition for a couple of days every four years during an election cycle.

And I knew there was a town called Gallup — spelled with a “U” — way out west in a state called New Mexico, somewhere in the high desert of the Colorado plateau, on the famous Route 66.

So, I thought, maybe the Gallup family has been around for a while — long enough to have had family that settled the west, and to have other family that made something of themselves. But I didn’t really know.

Vintage postcard of Gallup, New Mexico

So after I retired, I found myself with some free time in the winter — after all the holiday festivities — and I started to build a real family tree, one that included primary historical documents, like census records and vital records; and I created the tree on the Ancestry website, where I could easily put in everything I knew so far and everything that I could discover in the online documents.

Still, when I got to Ira J. Gallup, my paternal great-grandfather, I ran into trouble. I had no birth or death certificates for Ira J. Gallup and no clue as to who his parents were from the (non-existent) family records. (Remember, both Leonard Gallup (his son and my grandfather) and Gerald Gallup (my father) died in their 40s, thus leaving no records of the past for their posterity).

Sidebar: This part is complicated. I wouldn’t blame you if you skipped ahead five or six paragraphs to the next section.

I began to search for the parents of Ira Gallup, and his father, in particular. From Census records, I could determine that Ira lived with his mother, Ann Gallup; grandmother, Catherine Stiner; and siblings Clinton and Ida (his twin) in Berne, New York, in 1875 and in 1870. No father was found listed in the household.

Going back in time, I found that 29 year old Ann (or Anna Stiner) Gallup was living with her children, Byron (age 8), Clinton (age 6), Ira and Ida (age 1) in Berne, at the time of the 1865 New York census, near the end of the civil war. In 1860, before the war began (and before Ira or Ida were born), she was living with Byron (age 3), Clinton (age 1), and her mother Catherine Stiner. Again, no husband was listed in either the 1865 or the 1860 census.

An example of census records

It’s only in a single census — the 1855 New York census — before any of her children were born, that Anna Gallup is listed with her husband — as the spouse of Glen Gallup — both living at that time with her mother, Catherine Stiner, and his brother, James Gallup. In the U.S. census of 1850, Anna Stiner (age 15) is found living with her mother, Catherine Stiner, and her grandmother, Helena Schumaker. Without the 1855 New York census record, I would have no clue as to the ancestral lineage of the Gallup family before Ira Gallup.

Even with the evidence that Glen Gallup and Anna Stiner were my 2nd great-grandparents, the trail of ancestors before Glen Gallup was threadbare. There were no probate records including a man named Glen Gallup. No grave or burial records. No wedding or death certificates. Very little to go on. Fortunately a young man named Glen Gallup showed up in one other census record in 1850, in the nearby town of Knox, New York. He is 16 at that time, and living with his parents (Ebenezer and Susan) and most of his siblings (Silas, Phebe, Job, Ezra, and Sarah). His age is a perfect match for the 21 year old that was living with Anna Gallup and Catherine Stiner in the 1855 census, five years later.

Now I knew that my likely ancestor, Glen Gallup, was the son of Ebenezer and Susan Gallup of Knox, New York, and his siblings included James and Silas (older), and Phebe, Job, Ezra, and Sarah (younger). Among the few other documents that listed a Glen Gallup in New York, I came upon a record called The Genealogical History of the Gallup Family in the United States, and it included some of these exact people. It included Ebenezer and Susan Gallup with four children (their first four) — James, Silas, Glenn, and Phebe. This had to be the same family.

The Genealogical History of the Gallup Family in the United States didn’t list the descendants of Glen and Anna Gallup — Byron, Clinton, Ira, and Ida — but it did list Glen’s ancestors, all the way back to the first Gallup in America, John Gallup of Bridport, England, who, according to other records, “sailed from Plymouth, England, March 20, 1630, in the ship Mary and John, arriving at Nantasket, now Hull, [Massachusetts] May 30th.”

In one fell swoop, I had unlocked the records of seven more generations (and 200 years) of Gallup ancestors who had settled in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and upstate New York. I was traveling down the rabbit hole with terrifying speed.

It turns out that the Gallup family is every bit as venerable as the Whitesell and Atkinson families. There is even an island named for John Gallup in the Boston Harbor. And there is a town called Gallupville — yep, Gallupville — not far from Albany, New York. 43 years after my father died, I felt like his name — the Gallup name — was finally showing it’s worth.

Confirmation

It was only a short time later that I found a record of the marriage of Glen Gallup to Ann Stynen [sic] on January 18, 1855. It was on a page of the Beaverdam Dutch Reformed Church records, found in a different genealogical website.

I also uncovered a marriage record in Toronto, Ontario, in Canada, for Dewitt Clinton Gullup [sic] (Ira’s older brother) confirming that Glen Gullup [sic] and Ann Steiner [sic] were his parents.

My connection with Ebenezer Gallup (Glen’s father) and the rest of the Gallup lineage was even further validated when I completed DNA testing that showed a definite overlap with the DNA of other descendants of Ebenezer and the ancestral Gallups listed in the Genealogical History of the Gallup Family.

An Unexpected Surprise

Although John Gallup arrived only 10 years after the first settlers in New England, I had pretty much given up any hope of tracing my family back to the Mayflower, when I discovered in 2024 that I actually did have a relative on that famous ship!

My 10th great grandparents, John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, came to Plymouth, Massachusetts on the Mayflower in 1620. Elizabeth Tilley’s parents - my 11th great-grandparents — also came on the Mayflower, but died in the first winter, victims of starvation and disease. (I have included the entire line of my ancestry, from the Mayflower to the present, in an Appendix below).

Modern depiction of The Mayflower

If you could trace all of your ancestors back 13 generations (to the 11th great-grandparent) you would have 8192 ancestors in that row alone (2 to the 13th power). Now… I have traced only one line back that far, but there are still hundreds of direct ancestors listed in the family tree that I keep archived in the Ancestry.com website — The Gallup & Whitesell Family Tree 2020. It’s no wonder that I didn’t follow the branch of my 6th great-grandmother, Eunice Cobb back to the Mayflower on my first (or second, or third) foray into genealogical research. She was only one of 256 potential 6th great-grandparents. I didn’t take any notice of her line until later. (Genealogical research is never complete.)

There may yet be more exciting discoveries in my ancestral past. Most of my branches go back only as far as the first arrivals on American soil. I have only followed the clues to other countries on rare occasions. I have one branch that follows a line of ancestors within the town of Schwanheim (by means of the well preserved church records) in Prussia (Germany), and I had to learn to read a bit of German script along the way. I have leads to many ancestors in Old England, Prussia, and Europe who have yet to be pursued.

However, at this point, I’m more interested in fleshing out the lives of the ancestors that I’ve found so far. It may sound corny, but its really true. Learning the stories of your ancestors makes history come alive. I know a little about the lives of my mother and father, how they came to meet, and how they ended up moving to the Triangle in North Carolina. I’d like to learn more about the lives of the Gallups, the Whitesells, the Knapps, the Atkinsons and all the others who came before.

I’ve included a bit of the stories of only one of the ancestral lines in the Appendix below. Take a look, and you’ll begin to see how far down the rabbit hole genealogy can take you.

APPENDIX

My lineage, from passengers of the Mayflower, to the present:

-John Tilley (1571-1621) & Joan Hurst (1568 - 1621)

Died in the winter of 1621, when nearly half the Mayflower passengers perished due to food shortage and disease, after a late arrival with inadequate shelter and provisions.

-John Howland (1592-1672) & Elizabeth Tilley (1607 - 1687)

John nearly drowned when he was washed overboard the Mayflower during a storm at sea. Fortunately he grabbed a topsail halyard, and survived. He was a servant for the Carver family who took in the orphaned children: Elizabeth Tilley, Desire Minter, and William Latham. Unfortunately the Carvers also died in the spring of 1621, making John a freeman with three young charges. He married Elizabeth about three years later. They had 10 living children, and they have about 2 million American descendants today.

-Desire Howland (1627-1683) & John Gorham (1619-1676)

Story is yet to be told.

-Elizabeth Gorham (1648-1683) & Joseph Hallett (1630-1721)

Story is yet to be told.

-Lois Hallett (1672-1726) & Henry Cobb, Jr. (1665-1725)

Story is yet to be told.

-Eunice Cobb (1693-1759) & Benedam Gallup, Jr. (1693-1755)

Story is yet to be told.

-Col. Nathan Gallup (1727-1799) & Sarah Giddens (1729-1778)

Nathaniel Gallup became Lieutenant Colonel of the 8th militia of New London, Connecticut during the Revolutionary War. He was accused of cowardice, and tried in a court-martial, when he failed to come to the aid of other Patriots who were overrun by the British (led by Benedict Arnold) at the Battle of Groton Heights. In the American rendition of the battle, the patriots at Fort Griswold were massacred (shot or bayoneted) by the British after they surrendered and laid down their guns. Colonel Nathan Gallup was acquitted of his charges, but other soldiers involved in the battle were not so fortunate.

-Sarah Gallup (1751-1799) & Silas Gallup (1749-1796)

These were second cousins who had the same great grandfather, Benadam Gallup, Sr. They helped to establish Knox, New York, a city near Albany.

-Ebenezer Gallup (1795-1865) & Susan Harden (1808-1884)

Ebenezer was the tenth child of Sarah and Silas. Both his parents died before he was five. He was probably raised by his sister, Silence Gallup.

-Glen Gallup (~1834 - Unknown) & Anna Stiner (1834 - Unknown)

Little is known of Glen Gallup, but his older brothers, James and Silas, both moved to Nebraska after the Civil War. Anna Stiner’s mother was listed as “Idiot” or “Insane” in all of her census records, and she must have been mentally impaired. Anna was born out of wedlock, and no father was recorded on the record of her baptism. She was illegitimate.

-Ira James Gallup (1864-1952) & Emma Gorham (1862-1940)

Ira’s brother Leonard Byron Gallup died in a train accident at age 35. Ira subsequently gave his son the very same name. Ira probably married twice (with no children) before he married Emma Gorham, who was already widowed with two children of her own. They had only one son together.

-Leonard Byron Gallup (1910-1953) & Emily Mae Knapp (1909-1976)

One set of my grandparents.

-Gerald Fredric Gallup (1935-1977) & Margaret Ann Whitesell (1935-present)

My parents.

 -Steven Brian Gallup (1964-present) & Dianne Shihadi (1966-present)

A screenshot of five generations of my Ancestry.com family tree