Down to the sea...

Sometimes the things that you do in the daily toil bring you back to the things that you like to do when not in the daily toil. Recently, as part of my job, I accompanied an elderly lady to a veteran’s event at a school. Every year people who served in any of the Forces are invited to the school, speeches and presentations are made, there is a lunch, an exhibit of war documentation and memorabilia, and the students talk with the veterans about their experiences.

A volunteer was unable to be there in the morning, so, not wanting to disappoint, I stepped in. I’m so glad I did! I got to march in the parade behind a 40 piece military band, meet the Lord and Lady Mayor and the local MP, snarf as many sandwiches, pieces of Victoria sponge, scones and strawberries as I could manage, and talk to a really interesting group of women veterans as you are ever likely to meet (average age about 82).

Something that caused great excitement among the veterans was the presenting of the first Arctic Stars, given to Royal Navy veterans, merchant sailors, airmen and soldiers who served on the convoys delivering aid to Russia between 1941 and 1945. Over 3000 personnel and 100 ships, both civilian and military were lost. It’s reckoned that between 200 and 400 sailors, now in their late 80s, survive from the campaign. The medals were struck for the first time in March of 2013.

A very interesting document that I own is my father’s complete Navy record. He joined up in Boston, Massachusetts on September 8^th, 1927. It never ceases to amuse me that my father was in the Navy before there were talking pictures. I can follow his progress from ship to ship, from one port to another, sometimes travelling overland across the US to get to his next posting. Some clever people on Wikipedia have posted the history of every ship in the US Navy, so I know when each ship was built, commissioned, decommissioned, where it went, what action it saw. Just amazing.

He even served on the USS Constitution, a wooden sailing frigate, originally launched in 1797, (you can still visit it in Boston, and it’s still in active service).

Where does this connect to the Arctic Stars? From 1939 to 1944 he was a Storekeeper on the USS Ellis, a Wickes-class destroyer built slightly too late to be involved in World War I. In September 1941 he was based in Reykjavic, Iceland. A check of the Ellis’s record shows the ship being a part of a large number of “screens” in Task Force 19, one of the Neutrality Patrols escorting transports of Marines from Newfoundland for the occupation of Iceland prior to America’s involvement in World War II, replacing British troops on the island. The American warships also assisted the Royal Navy in protecting merchant shipping across the Atlantic after war was declared.

Was my dad’s service considered to be part of the Arctic campaign? Or at least the western leg of it? His record doesn’t indicate if he was awarded a ribbon for this, though he did have a respectable collection of medals for his time in the Navy (he retired when I was four years old, with 30 completed years).

The ladies at the veteran’s day seemed to think that he would be eligible for the Arctic Star, but as yet I haven’t pursued this. We know our parents as older people (in my case quite a bit older), it’s hard to imagine them young and vigorous and dashing about the world having adventures. But there it all is in black and white in a little green folder. Our history makes us bigger than we are and takes us places we never imagined we could go.

(Music and tea rooms will return soon…!)

The USS Constitution, beautifully restored, in 2012. My dad served on this ship in Boston through most of 1937. The sailors kept it in perfect condition then, but when we visited it when I was small it was in a shockingly bad state, rot everywhere. I saw it again in 2009 a year before the current restoration was completed. The young sailor who conducted the tour didn't quite believe me when I said my father had been on the crew.

 My dad's Naval record, found in a box of papers after my mother died in 1979.

Dad on the USS Ellis during the time of the Neutrality Patrols.

 My dad, Joseph Leo Arseneau, in uniform on one of his ships.

Tending the family tree...

Families, past and present, are interesting concepts. Many of us define ourselves by our nationality, by our culture, by the configuration of our immediate families – number of siblings, birth sequence, presence or absence of extended generations. For me family was a pretty tight little island – two much older half-sisters (one gone now), only one grandparent alive during my very young childhood, parents gone much too early, and then I left America nearly 30 years ago and haven’t been back to visit very often since.

Things I regret: Not asking my parents more questions about their backgrounds – though I have the feeling that there were some topics they really didn’t want to discuss; not staying in better touch with cousins, aunts, uncles – though many of them died when I was quite young. We were not a family of letter writers. Well, I was in my day but with penfriends, not family members. And I’ve moved house so many times in the past 40 years that I’ve discarded or lost papers and mementos along the way.

In 2008 on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas Day for my non-UK readers) we were in a café in Kenilworth after watching a duck race (that’s another story…) and started talking about family history. My sisters had a different father who I never met – the family story I had heard was that when they were very small he was struck by lightning in a rowboat on a lake at a church picnic. Was this true? I wanted to find out more. I also knew very little about my grandparents and no knowledge of any of my family beyond my parents parents. On New Year’s Day 2009, still in our pyjamas, we sat on the sofa, fired up the laptop and discovered the joys of Ancestry.com’s free two week subscription.

Things I learned: It’s good to have an unusual name with multiple spellings; Canadians are mad about genealogy; old census records are a fascinating read; California is much better than other states at putting up its birth and death records (more on this in a moment). When you find an interesting document or bit of data you react just like the people on the TV programme Who Do You Think You Are, except no one is filming you (thank goodness, considering the pyjama aspect) and you’re not famous.

I’d forgotten my father’s mother’s maiden name, but I found a Californian death record of his sister Rita. She had been a country music performer with her husband, who I remembered had an Italian name. The death record pulled all this together and also pointed me to two birth records, a daughter and son. The son was born the same year as me, I’d never heard of him. A search of his name revealed that he was also a musician. I contacted him through his MySpace page and discovered that not only had he played with Johnny Cash for a number of years, he also occasionally toured the UK with a singer, Eve Selis.

Eve visited the UK in 2010, but without her full band. We met her in a little village hall in Tingewick, Buckinghamshire. She is a powerhouse singer, a real force of nature. She is also one of the most outgoing, positive people I’ve met. If you haven’t heard her, you must do so now.

Finally last year in July my cousin Jim was on the tour and one of the gigs was in Oxford, near enough for us to go. And the band had an evening off in Stratford upon Avon, just down the road from us. We joined them for an Indian meal with lots of chat. I brought some papers and info about my father, the uncle Jim never met. Eve took a photo. Having so little close family, I’m not used to looking like other people. The resemblance is striking (see below).

Eve and band were in the UK this month and we got to see them again at The Stables in Milton Keynes (super venue, you must go there sometime). It was great to have the opportunity to chat with Jim again and the band was astounding, as usual.

Things that amaze: One of Alun’s early jobs in the 1980s was with the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, which took the area from countryside and villages to a modern urban centre. He hadn’t seen it years and we were agog at the huge-ness and “American-ness” of it; the amount of genealogy information available now on the internet – not only was the lightning story that started this search true (on-line newspaper archives, bless), but eventually I was able to go back through even more generations and the number of people I’m related to has increased exponentially. 

Does an interest or ability come from nature or nurture? I would have thought the latter, but my parents were not especially musical (OK, they would burst into song now and then, but neither ever played an instrument or performed), and I've flitted around the edges of the music world most of my life. We people are complex little pumpkins, aren't we?

Eve Selis and me, Tingewick Village Hall 2010

 

Title song from "Family Tree"

Cousin Jim Soldi and me, July 2012

We were at this gig in  2012 in Oxford...