WEEK 11: Lucky

Lucky....Lucky ME

You know the meme that's been going around for some time about the dates on your tombstone, and the important thing is the "dash" between the dates?  Hunting down a history for my grandfather, Dick Leary, has been all about the dash.  It was relatively easy to discern his birth and death dates, but from the time of his birth in 1892 until his death in 1928, Dick Leary's genealogical trail has shed sparse details.  Besides a small folder of his correspondence with the Veteran's Administration, and with his employer, the Internal Revenue Service, and a few letters of reference (all attesting to his integrity and "grit"), I had little to go on in my search.  Although I could track down his mother, aunt, grandmother, and his only sister in census and other records dating back to the 1870s, Dick's name was never recorded.  I surmised from a few newspaper clippings that he did his government work under several aliases, just to complicate my search.

His army discharge papers showed he had enlisted in the Army in 1916 in Long Beach, CA, at nearly 24 years old.  My challenge was to unravel how and why in the world he traveled from Buffalo, NY and ended up on the west coast.

I ordered his military records from NARA, and at the same time requested his official (civilian) personnel folder in the hopes I could find more information about his family.  I particularly wanted a definitive answer to his father's name, known both as Patrick Leary and Edward Leary.  I hoped between Dick's military and civilian work records, I could track him across the country.

The military records were non-existent according to the form letter I received that stated they were in the section that burned in 1973.  So I waited for the civilian records.

When the personnel records arrived, I could hardly wait to come inside from the mailbox to rip open the official looking brown envelope.  Beginning at the front, I looked carefully at each page.  I was feeling disappointed as I moved from one page to the next,  looking for any hint of personal information to give me a clue about who this man was, or links to other family members' names or addresses.  But I found they were mostly standard government forms documenting personnel actions, assignments to different locales, etc.   Finally, as I turned over one form, I saw a plain white piece of paper with doubled spaced typed lines.  I could hardly believe my eyes when I realized that in the 34 pages they sent, literally the last document at the back of the folder held seven pages of a typed transcript of Dick's interview in 1924 for the position of Prohibition Agent in El Paso, TX.  At last, here was some of the information to fill in the "dash"!

In this interview, my grandfather told of running away from home when he was about 14.  (From my research, I believe this may have coincided with his mother's marriage to her second husband.)  He said he sold newspapers and shined shoes, worked as a cook and waiter.  He described becoming an apprentice show card artist, learning from reading books, explaining it was a type of sign writing for stores to highlight items for sale.  I'd never heard of show card writing, but there were plenty of links on Google.   He talked of working on various ranches in the southwest USA along the border of Mexico, learning to speak Spanish along the way.  He outlined his military experiences in the Philippines and Siberia.  (More about that in next week's challenge, "Misfortune".)

I couldn't believe how lucky I was to get this information, and especially to be able to read it in the "first person" with my grandfather's own words.  While these papers have answered some of my questions, they've also created more to be answered.  And so I will keep searching to fill in the dash.

DAPPER DICK LEARY