Les Green Archives - Page 16 of 20

F is for Family

I was 51 when I had my daughter, only a year younger than my father was when he had his first GRANDCHILD. So who IS this old man with this little kid?

Rose wrote, in response to my post P is for (Helicopter) Parenting, that it was the first time I had written about family. This surprised me, initially, because I’ve gone on about my daughter every month on the 26th of the month, without fail. In fact, it was one of the two purported reasons I STARTED this blog back in 2005, the other being to tell the JEOPARDY! story.

I’ve written about my wife at least twice a year, on our anniversary and her birthday. My late parents I’ve discussed on the anniversaries of their births and deaths, and my sisters on their respective birthdays.

It’s true, though, that I’ve seldom written about them for ABC Wednesday. Here, then, a summary.

My parents both grew up in Binghamton, New York, a small city near the Pennsylvania border. They were both only children, so I have no direct aunts, uncles, or first cousins. Anyone I have called cousins are either my parents’ cousins, or their children. So we have a very small tribe.

My parents met cute, with my father delivering flowers to 13 Maple Street when they were intended for 13 Maple Avenue in Binghamton. Though Trudy initially thought Les was a bit full of himself – probably accurately, from what I’ve been told by others – they ended up getting married on March 12, 1950.

My mother had a miscarriage in April 1951. I always thought that was why my father was a little…distant…when I was born five days shy of their third anniversary. I was named for no one; my father just liked that my initials, ROG spelled out a shortened version of my name.

I found it interesting that when my sister came along in July of 1954, my father named HER for him, Leslie. (This caused me all sorts of complications. People knew my family had a child named Leslie and assumed that it was MY name, and some guys in church called me Little Les, which WAS NOT MY NAME, and to which I refused to respond.) It was also confusing when we’d get phone calls; my father was Les, and my sister became Leslie Ellen.

My sister Marcia was born in May 1958. We all went to school at Daniel Dickinson, staying at my maternal grandma’s house at lunch.

My parents and Marcia moved to Charlotte, NC in 1974. Leslie and I kidnapped my grandmother and brought her to Charlotte by train in January of the next year. She used coal for heat in Binghamton, and going up and down those rickety cellar steps in her mid-70s was not an option. She died in Charlotte on Super Bowl Sunday, 1983, but is buried in Binghamton, less than two blocks from her former home.

My father died of prostate cancer on August 10, 2000, less than 18 months after he arranged the flowers for my marriage to Carol Powell. I’ve long been sad that he never got to meet my daughter Lydia, who was born about three and a half years later.

Once I figured out how to put pictures into Blogger – I READ THE MANUAL and still couldn’t figure it out – I used to put pictures of the Daughter all the time. At some point in the past two years, though, my wife expressed concern about my daughter’s pictures appearing in this blog. It’s for that reason, not my own, that I’ve limited the number of her photographic appearances here.

Frankly, I don’t agree. I thought by having her picture out here it would make her well enough recognizable that she would be LESS likely to…well, whatever scenario the Wife was envisioning.

At the same time, I also thought it was better for ME – some public photographic proof, or at least indication, that she was my daughter, in case the cops ever stopped us. MY paranoia is a function of the fact that I was 51 when I had her, only a year younger than my father was when he had his first GRANDCHILD. So who IS this old man with this little kid?

I remember the utility worker who first asked if she were my granddaughter. I used to be miffed, but now accept the reality.

My mom died, reasonably suddenly, in February 2011. I got an outpouring of caring, from Jaquandor, Arthur, plus many in the ABC Wednesday community. Oddly, it wasn’t a post about my mother’s passing, but a post about going down to visit my mom after her stroke that triggered the comments, which, even as I write this, make me teary-eyed, not just with missing my mom, but of all the support I received at the time.

So there you be: my family. Well, except for my two nieces, Rebecca, Leslie’s daughter, and Alexandria, Marcia’s daughter. Oh, my mom’s three granddaughters are each separated by about a dozen years – Becky, Alex, and Lydia, in that order. Glad Lydia got to meet my mom, and vice versa.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

That Big Box of Vinyl

Tosy and Cosh is a blogger that I used to enjoy reading, before he went on sabbatical back in 2009. I just discovered that he is back writing. Somehow, though, I missed his brief return from March to May 2011, during which time he did this piece That Big Box of Vinyl. It was really depressing, because it was subtitled “music you remember your parents listening to.” It included songs such as Colour My World by Chicago, which was his mother and father’s wedding song; it was also the song of my high school prom. Talk about feeling old.

I’ve previously shared some of the singles in my father’s collection. So here are some albums.

Harry Belafonte, as noted, was a huge influence on my father’s time as a singer of folk songs. From this Belafonte discography, I discovered the albums Dad owned. The album links have 30-second clips of each song.

The most important album for him had to have been My Lord What A Morning, from 1960. He performed most of the songs, especially Buked And Scorned. In fact, it was SO important that, just this year, I bought copies of it for the older of my sisters and for me. From Streets I Have Walked (1963), he got the arrangement of This Wicked Race. Dad also owned An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba (1965) and In My Quiet Room (1966).

I noted, a long while back, the importance of Pete Seeger’s “We Shall Overcome” album “recorded live at his historic Carnegie Hall Concert, June 8, 1963″. I found a four-song EP, featuring If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus; Little Boxes; I Ain’t Scared of Your Jail; and We Shall Overcome. I also discovered a too-trimmed version of Tshotsholosa (Road Song). I own a version by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and just this summer, I heard a performance by Peace Train, a South African pair of women, one white, one black, singing this tune.

Finally, Joan Baez, and specifically, the oddly-named Best of Joan Baez, from the early 1960s, was huge. Here’s So Soon in the Morning, with Bill Wood, which my father, sister and I used to perform together.

Random Memory of My Father: Gregory Hines edition

The common theme: both Darlanne Fluegal and my father really needed to get out of Binghamton.

Back in 1988, my sister Leslie (who was visiting from California) and I (visiting from New York State) were in the car with my parents and my sister Marcia, traveling from Charlotte, NC to Raleigh, NC for some event when the issue of the NAACP Image Awards came up. I hadn’t watched them, and I don’t think Leslie had either. But my father had done so, on television, and he was VERY upset with actor Gregory Hines (pictured). His failing? He was wearing an earring to the event, showing an intentional lack of respect for the NAACP and for the proceedings.

Leslie and I spent about an hour unsuccessfully trying to convince my father that this was not a slight, that Gregory Hines often wore an earring, that actors are just different, and that we seriously doubted that the NAACP was upset about this (for the aforementioned reasons).

I think I remember this, and that we argued about it for so long at the time, because it seemed so…parochial, narrow-minded, and that wasn’t how we viewed our father AT ALL.

It only recently occurred to me to wonder WHY Gregory Hines was getting that Image Award in the first place. Actually, Hines had been nominated a total of four times and won twice, the latter in 2002 for Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special for Bojangles (2001), but my father had passed away by then, and Hines would, too, the following year.

The award in question was for Running Scared (1986), for which Hines was Outstanding Lead Actor in a Motion Picture. “Danny [Billy Crystal] and Ray [Hines] are two street-wise cops in Chicago. When they are almost killed on a case, they are forced to take a vacation by their captain. Key West offers a substantial change over frozen Chicago. They decide to quit and open a bar in Key West. Upon returning, they find that Julio [Jimmy Smits], the drug dealer who nearly killed them has made bail and is trying to complete a giant drug deal.”

Of particular interest to me: Darlanne Fluegel played the Crystal character’s wife, Anna. From this 1986 story about her appearance on the TV show Crime Story: Actually, Fluegel never intended to be a model. Raised in Binghamton, N.Y., she was a tomboy who felt more kinship with her three younger brothers than her two older sisters. When she was 16, her father, a chiropractor, died suddenly of a brain tumor. Darlanne turned to modeling “not to be a burden” on her mother, who worked with the Department of Social Security, and “as a quick way out of Binghamton.” Darlanne attended Binghamton Central High School for a time, and I knew her vaguely; I knew her sister Donna better.

In any case, the common theme: both Darlanne Fluegel and my father really needed to get out of Binghamton.

My father would have been 86 tomorrow.

Sidebar to Jaquandor: this is the same Darlanne Fluegel you wrote about here and to which I eventually replied here. Oh, and happy birthday tomorrow.

I Hired A Genealogist

It’s difficult to start a conversation about things you aren’t supposed to know.

Did you ever have so many leads to a puzzle that you don’t know which way to proceed? That’s how I’m feeling after getting some info from a genealogist. I have so many possible avenues to check about my father’s birth that I have no idea which one to pursue.

There was something called the Susquehanna Valley Home for Orphans and Industrial School for Indigent Children in Binghamton, NY. Then again, as late as 1938, 50% of births in the US were home births according to Wikipedia.

If my grandmother Agatha was sent away from home for the birth of my father, she might have gone back to Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, PA where she was born and where she lived until she was about 11 years old.

Specifically, she may have gone to the home of her uncle: Aaron J. Morris. In the 1900 census, Samuel E and his wife Mary Eugene, my great-grandparents, were living in Wilkes-Barre, PA with Aaron J. Morris.

Samuel E Walker lived in Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, PA from 1900 through 1913. He and his family moved to Binghamton probably around 1914. By 1915 Samuel E Walker is found in Binghamton at 3 Emerson Place.

Aaron J. Morris in 1900 lived at 162 N Main, Wilkes Barre Ward 4, Luzerne, PA and was a butler. By 1910 he had moved to 113 Hickory St., Wilkes-Barre, Ward 13, Luzerne, Pennsylvania and he remained there at least through 1930.
He was evidently connected to Mount Zion Baptist Church in Wilkes Barre, according to a genealogy website Genealogy of Patience, Mccloe, Tillman Family by LeRoy C Patience. That website was last updated in 2007.

Mount Zion Baptist Church in 1925 was located at 191 South Welles St. That is about 0.7 miles away from Aaron Morris’s house at 113 Hickory. Today Mount Zion Baptist Church is located at 105 Hill Street; Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania 18702. According to the 1925 Wilkes-Barre directory, the pastor there at the time was Rev. R. E. Thomas.

I have a request in with the vital records folks for the state of Pennsylvania, but they aren’t finding anything.

According to the Binghamton city directory, Agatha is listed next to McKinley, indicating that they were married already by 1932, yet living separately through at least 1940.

And there is WAY more than this.

Someone suggested that I should have asked my father, now deceased 12 years today, about his history. It’s difficult to start a conversation about things you aren’t supposed to know. His surviving cousins, who are younger than he in any case, are concerned that “digging up dirt” about our father is somehow dishonoring him. Obviously, I don’t believe that to be the case.

The teller of secrets

I muse how my life would have been if, instead of being the eldest child, I had had an older brother.

Today would have been my parents’ 62nd anniversary. But my dad died a few months after their 50th, in 2000. I always remember the date, though, because my mom always referred to me as an early anniversary present. I was born five days shy of their third wedding anniversary. Coincidentally, my eldest niece was born five days short of HER parents’ anniversary. Also, since my parents were married in 1950, it was always easy to calculate how long they had been hitched.

The odd thing about my parents. My father revealed almost nothing about his past. My mother, though, starting when I was nine or ten, would drop tidbits about her past, my parents’ joint history, and, more peculiarly, events from my father’s past at which she was not present, to my sisters and to me. So she told us stuff about him that he never told us about himself. Some were so spotty that it engendered more questions than answers. A few things fell into the category of “We REALLY did not need to know that.” Other bits were useful; WHY my father didn’t particularly like Christmas made a certain amount of sense.

One item she mentioned was that she had experienced a miscarriage in April 1951, in the second trimester of the pregnancy; it was a male. She was rather matter-of-fact about it in the telling, but she noted that my father was rather devastated by the situation. So when my mother got pregnant again, in 1952, she reported that he was a bit at arm’s length emotionally about it. It wasn’t until the baby arrived safely that he could even think about coming up with names.

This explains the frantic calculation of names he did on scraps of paper at his cousin Ruth’s house before he came up with Roger Owen Green, with the initials ROG. From time to time, I muse how my life would have been if, instead of being the eldest child, I had had an older brother.