Reluctant Warriors (17 page)

The next day she seemed to be herself again. She was making breakfast when I came
down. I asked her what had been the trouble.

“Baby,” she said, “I felt something terrible was happening to your Daddy.”

She hesitated,
bent a little, looked sweetly at me, and straightened. Then she had a faraway look
on her face, and her voice wavered and rose at the end. “There is such a bond between
us that sometimes I know he is in danger.”

She brushed tears from her eyes, looked so lovingly at me, touched me on the face,
and then was again lost in her thoughts. “I don't know how to describe it, but it
comes to me, and the feeling is more than I can deal with.” She slumped in a chair.
“It overwhelms me.”

“Mama, is he okay?”

“Yes, baby.” She looked up at me. “I feel the danger has passed now and he's okay.”
She teared up again. “I would know if evil came upon him.”

Later, we were to learn that on the previous day, June 14, 1943, Papa's submarine,
Mojarra
, had been sunk with great loss of life, and that by the sheerest chance he
had been spared.

My parents were not demonstrative of their love. Of course, they knew each other
very well. I know on a thousand occasions one answered the other for a question that
had not yet been asked. They kissed each other every day, sweetly, and in front of
us. Occasionally I saw them hug, but their relationship was like a fine watch, sweet
but efficient, caring but work-oriented. And so it remained, neither ever raising
a voice to the other that any of us ever heard. When Mama died of a hemorrhage in
1986, my husband and I came back to the farm to take care of Papa, who had never
fixed a meal in his life. He fell
into a state of depression, but recovered and lasted
three more years, dying in July of 1989.

Papa gave Mama the great adventure of her life. After graduating in 1933 as Valedictorian
at Dorance High School, he obtained an appointment to the US Naval Academy at Annapolis,
Maryland. I'm not sure that he was actually considering a career in the Navy; as
he later said, that his main interest at the time was poetry and literature.

But these were very bad years on the Great Plains, the terrible years of the Dust
Bowl, when year after year of drought saw top soil blown away by high winds. Dust
storms reached Chicago, hundreds of miles to the east. Many thought the region would
never be restored agriculturally. Though it was worse in other areas of the Plains
than Iowa, Papa told me he thought it was a good time to go because then there would
be one less mouth to feed. Besides, the truth was that he longed for a little adventure!
This presented Mama with a dilemma. She loved my father but had no wish to go East.
In the end, they compromised as they always did, and she made the laborious trip
to see him twice during his four college years.

A story shows the great dedication Papa felt to her despite his wish to “see the
world.” During one of her trips to see him, the two attended a Christmas ball. Mama
had taken much care in choosing new outfits, so that she looked the part of a socialite.
But because of her missing arm, she did not fit in with some of the nation's elite
young ladies.

According to a story that got back to her through a friend, a lady named Forbes,
Papa's best friend, Walter Wood, was not too sure about him marrying Mama. Having
heard of her for months before he'd seen her, he'd commented to Papa, “Dell's great,
but you need to date other women. Why not try someone else?”

Obviously, this had never occurred to Papa. He quickly responded, “Why would I want
to do that?”

Papa never talked much about himself, so I know very little else of his schooling
at Annapolis. He proved a good student, especially in mathematics. Too slight to
be much of a footballer, he made his way in track as a reasonably good miler, he
was an especially good swimmer. He had very few demerits,
I suspect because he had
no wish to see women by sneaking off campus and because he was basically a rule follower.
He graduated in the upper third of his class in the spring of 1937. My parents got
married the day after graduation in the chapel at Annapolis. For the next two years,
the young couple went from one naval educational facility to another, enjoying their
wedded bliss in a life very unlike what they had known before.

Mama returned to the farm under very unfortunate circumstances in the fall of 1939.
The following Western Union message reached her at the naval base at Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii:

FATHER IS SICK STOP COME HOME STOP

—MOTHER

She made it to the farm on November 2, never to leave again. My parents would be
separated for the next six years, except for the three times Papa made it home—two
before the war and one during.

Grandfather's death the next month and then the attack on Pearl Harbor a few weeks
later on December 7 changed much at the farm. All of us knew that Papa would not
be coming back soon, and Grandmother became embittered for many years. She worked
some about the house, but became as much of a burden to Mama as a help.

Billy sat back for a few minutes, watching some birds lazily flying in circles over
one of the fields not too far away.
I hope that was okay on my parents. Now, I suppose
I had better talk about us kids since I am the only one still around who knows just
how our mother accumulated us!
She chuckled out loud.

I came to the farm just before the war under very strange circumstances. Dr. Karnes
was well aware that Mama could not have children of her own but wanted them. On February
26, 1940, he called and then came to the house, with me! I was almost four. Mama
related the story to me a hundred times.

“Dell, I want you to take this child,” Dr. Karnes said. Then he looked at his watch
and mumbled, “Oh, I've only got five minutes.”

Mama said she was truly speechless, and mumbled something like, “Where does she come
from? Who are her people?”

He responded that she was not to worry about it, and also that he could not tell
her much because he had been sworn to secrecy.

“But what about the child . . . ?”

“Dell, I'm in a terrible rush.”

He must have seen the puzzled look on Mama's face. “Dell Woodson Connors!” he trumpeted.
“I brought you into this world and have known you all of your life, from a little
bit of a thing to now, a grown woman. I need for you to take this child from me
right
now!
” He lowered his voice, perhaps not wishing Mama's parents to hear. “I need to
say this to you. If word of this ever reaches a living soul, I could lose my license.”
The gray-haired country doctor then straightened up.

“I need you to take this child this instant! Mrs. Pedderson is in labor in my office
with number, ah? What number is it? I can't think. Anyhow, knowing her, she won't
last an hour. Betty [his long-time nurse] is there by herself.”

I can imagine the shocked look on Mama's face and how weakly she must have responded.

As he handed me over, she recalled that Dr. Karnes said along the lines of, “I pledge
to you that no one has been hurt in any way by this.”

“I know you would not do that,” she said, holding on to me. Tears of joy poured down
her face as she looked down upon what she had prayed to God about for so long.

“And I promise you on the Bible that the legal part is fine. This child is now yours.
No one,” he emphasized, “
no one
will ever come here to take her from you! But don't
ever, ever ask me anything about this. I'll have to deny that I had anything to do
with it. When people ask you how you got her—and you know they'll line up to do so—just
make up something.”

“I don't understand,” Mama said.

“You want this child, don't you?”

“More than my life!” she told me she said to him and often smiled at me and repeated
the phrase again.

“Then she is yours. I think you'd better call her Wilhelmina.” He walked out the
door and toward his infamous old dark green '35 Hudson, the motor still running in
the driveway.

No doubt Mama related the story so many times so that I would understand that I had
a place in this life, on the farm, and that there was no way for me to ever find
out who my folks were. There were rumors over the years, but the old doctor kept
his word and died without ever revealing anything. So, my life started on the farm.
Sixty-five years later I am still here with Joe, my husband of forty-five years,
and the photos of our children and grandkids to keep us company.

I have only a few faint memories of my life before the farm. It was a time of shadows
and being inside. I see a man bending over me who is in very dark clothes, a suit,
I suppose. He speaks to me, but I can't understand his words. In another, I hear
muffled sounds like sobs. People are very unhappy, and I am unhappy too. And I think
there was a dog, maybe named Sparky, who was my friend. I cried when he went away.

When I came to the farm I came with no possessions of any type other than the clothes
on my little body. Of course, I never cease to ask myself questions about this: why
I had no other clothes or toys, why I was taken from my parents, and what happened
to them. I wonder how much the old doctor knew. Perhaps he knew nothing and was merely
handing me on from another person. Perhaps the person my birth parents wished to
look after me was unwilling to do so, and passed me on to the dear doctor who knew
I would find a home at the Five Brothers. I pray to God every day that my real folks
rest in peace, and give thanks that I was brought here. If I have any regrets, it
is that I have never liked the name someone in my background obviously intended that
I should have.

With work enough to do, Mama was about to take on even more responsibility. I was
six almost to the day (we decided that my birthday would be May 1) on May 10, 1942.
That was the day my two beautiful brothers, the little Granville boys, came to live
with us, stretching the money Papa was
sending to us even further. It was just impossible
for Mama to farm and look after all of us, and the last crop was '41's.

I came home from school one day, and there they were! While they always looked to
everyone, even to us, like twins, there at the table were Toby, four, and Danny,
three.

“We know who you are!” said Toby.

“You are Willa, Willa-Willa!” said Danny, and they nodded and smiled.

“Wilhelmina,” I said, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Oh,” they both said.Then they continued eating some ham, even though it was only
about 4 p.m.

“Danny and I are going to live here now,” said Toby. “He is my brother. And I am
his brother. We are brothers!”

They both nodded.

“Oh,” I said, though nothing could have been more obvious.

They were always such handsome boys! With their towheads, blond hair, and blue eyes,
they were just fun to look at.

They ate and jabbered away. Grandmother, who announced about this time that we were
to call her “Mimmi,” slowly shook her head.

Soon enough, Mama talked to me about them. She asked me so sweetly, pleading with
me, really: “Is it all right that they come to live with us? They don't have hardly
a soul in this whole world, baby.”

The full meaning of what she said eluded me. All I could see was someone to play
with and care for. “Sure, Mama. Are we going to cook for them too?”

“Yes, baby, they are your brothers now. You'll have to help your grandmother and
me take care of them. We will have to plant a larger victory garden next year, and
you will have to be the farmer.”

“Oh, yes,” I thought, “how fun!”

And it was fun.

The next morning I went downstairs to help with breakfast. Was Mama surprised! I
got the job of making the biscuits. Grandmother had helped with meals before, but
had given it up with Grandfather's death. Mama had been doing it for months. Looking
back on it, it must have been a great relief
to her to have my help, because kneading
and then rolling the dough with one hand must have been very difficult. But she never
complained.