[Aaron Purcell] That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts
but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a
composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths
and they were all beautiful. These beautiful words come from the Book of
the Grotesque, the first chapter of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.
So good evening and thank you for joining us to commemorate and remember the
beautiful truths of Sherwood Anderson. My name is Aaron Purcell. I serve as Director
of Special Collections here at Virginia Tech. When I arrived at Blacksburg about
a dozen years ago, I took an immediate interest in Sherwood Anderson,
especially his connections to the school and to the region. It took several years
to locate others with the same interest, and even more years to find original
material to add to the collections here at Virginia Tech. But as I look at this
room, I can see those efforts were not made in vain and perhaps this moment is
a reawakening of all things, or well maybe some things, all related to
Sherwood Anderson. This lecture is part of that reawakening. First, it marks the
hundredth anniversary of Winesburg, Ohio, which is his first major book.
Second, it recognizes the publication of Dr. Welford B. Taylor's Requiem for a
Wonder: Sherwood Anderson's Last Days, which was published by VT Publishing.
This is a copy, please take some from the back table when you're finished.
And finally this moment represents a wonderful opportunity to highlight the
Anderson collections and the exhibits maintained by the University Libraries
here at Virginia Tech. We have a few items on display here. Also in front of
Special Collections are a few more. If you happen to be here tomorrow and you
would like to look at more of the original material, we love to show you.
Before introducing our speaker, I wanted to acknowledge the supporters of this
initiative and this evening in particular. So there were a lot of moving
parts, especially in the University Libraries. Sita Williams, you're way back
here, she organized the refreshments and planned this event. I think the
alcohol would make Sherwood happy. Maybe more would make him happier.
Brittany Dodson, she made room arrangements for the University Libraries.
Peter Potter he arranged for the layout and the publication of Requiem for a Wonder.
Kira Dietz created the exhibits and also was the contact person for
multiple questions outside of the library. We had other partners as well.
Dr. Ashley Reed from the English department supported this collecting
area and is with us tonight. Alison Hinderliter, who is not here, is
the curator of modern manuscripts at the Newberry Library, and she supplied
content for some of our online exhibitions, so please take a look at
those which Kira helped to build. Margie Maudlin
Margie Maudlin, we were expecting her from Christiansburg, she loaned some
photographs and other material for the collection to support the exhibit and
the digital exhibit. And finally I'd like to thank Dr. Welford B. Taylor
for reaching out to me last fall about his idea for doing something with his essay.
This idea unfolded in what you'll hear tonight as well as what you'll see
in the days to come. I first met our speaker in the spring of
2015. I was on research leave and a bit more flexible with scheduling so I
visited he and his wife Carol in Richmond to discuss a lifetime or at
least his lifetime with Sherwood Anderson. From that time I've known him
as W.D. but there's much more behind those initials. Welford Dunaway Taylor was born
in Caroline County Virginia. He received a bachelor's and master's degree from
the University of Richmond and then he earned his PhD in English from the
University of Maryland. His dissertation focused on Sherwood Anderson and his
research put him in direct contact with Anderson's associates and family,
especially Anderson's widow, Eleanor Copenhaver and Virginia Tech faculty
including Dr. Charlie Maudlin and Dr. Hilbert Campbell. He spent the majority
of his career in the English department at the University of Richmond, serving as
chair of the department and as the James H. Bostwick chair of English. About 15
years ago he stepped down from that post to serve as emeritus professor of
English at the University of Richmond. Throughout his academic career he published or
edited over a dozen books and countless articles related to Anderson, woodcut
artist J.J. Lankes, and Robert Frost. His most recent publication, Requiem for
a Wonder, discusses the details that led to Anderson's unexpected death in 1941.
And you'll notice there are no toothpicks that are connected to the food.
We had to make sure that was clear. This evening however we're not talking about
toothpicks at least I don't think so he'll be speaking about what we remember
the most about Sherwood Anderson and why he deserves to be remembered. It's my honor
to welcome Dr. Welford B. Taylor. Thank you. [Applause]
[Welford B. Taylor] I'm sure you're all familiar with
Emily Dickinson's poem, tell all the truth but tell it slant. Well you're
hearing from me on the slant tonight but whether hearing the truth or not of
something else entirely. But anyway I'll do my best to convey to you some ideas
that I have come to appreciate over the years regarding Sherwood and I will also
embellish these not in the way we embellish truth many of us but I'll
embellish them with some very pleasant memories, memories that I think
are important. As Aaron mentioned to you a minute ago the as a matter of fact I
think if there is a theme to what I'm going to be speaking to you about it is
memory. Memory in various manifestations and memories that I think are relevant
to the occasion that we've gathered for this evening. First if I may be permitted
I'm going to indulge very quickly you know a private memory that means a great
deal to me and it has a certain relevance to you and that is that the
last time I was on this campus was in 1991 when even then Virginia Tech
was showing a strong interest in Sherwood Anderson. They hosted
on that in that year a conference titled Sherwood Anderson after 50 years,
of course commemorating the 50th anniversary of Sherwood's death and it
afforded an ideal forum in which to reflect on how his reputation was faring
after 50 years it gave an opportunity for people who had actually known him to
be here and to share their reminiscences of their interactions with him it also
gave an opportunity for people from various parts of America and from
certain foreign countries to come and give up-to-date interpretations of
various aspects of his work it was really very wonderful time and the
reason that I'm recalling it this evening is both because I remember it
very fondly and because it was sponsored by two of the finest gentlemen that I
ever knew in the academic business and they were Charles Maudlin and Hilbert
Campbell and so I think that in some capacity or I pray that in some capacity
they are with us as I remember them with great fondness on this occasion
it's a funny thing about reputations literary reputations in America I think
they fluctuate and change faster than they do in any other society
particularly is this true since in in this age of course of the various
electronic media we could get the word around very quickly if someone is out of
favor it's quickly known or if someone suddenly becomes relevant again that's
quickly known as well and over the years Sherwood's reputation has undergone has
undergone fluctuations that for those of us who have consistently admired him and
read him and taught him we find hard to take quite frankly when I first became
interested in the subject in the mid 1960s his reputation was really growing
in I say really growing in the sense that it would he was being revived the
first world war that the second world war had represented a kind of watershed
in American scholarship and there were a number of writers that were being sort
of rediscovered after the war. F. Scott Fitzgerald was one for example and
Sherwood was another. And one assumed that this growing interest would
continue and indeed it did for a couple of decades and then it began to fall off
and then it was more or less rekindled after another decade and then it began
to fall off again and so you never say never of course when you look at this
process but nonetheless the process cannot be gainsaid
I mean it is with us and we sort of have to live with it.
But I would like to address this evening three aspects of the Sherwood's life or
three segments of Sherwood's life which I don't think have ever gone completely
out of the cultural memory of our country and I don't think they ever will
because I think that they have a kind of literary cachet about them and because
they are so unusual and because they coalesced in a truly unique and
memorable man who did who left an imprint on American literature that I
truly believe is indelible I would like to sort of refresh our memory this
evening by focusing on them at cosmic just maybe because we have so many and
Estonians in the room this evening we have taken some of these for granted and
so I want to refresh the memory of these these three events in his life the first
that I would like to address is perhaps the least literary of all because it's
really a kind of commonplace occurrence in many people's lives in many people's
life it is the idea of crisis and the reason that I'm focusing on a crisis
here is that insurance case the most challenging crisis of his life occurred
when he was trying to make the transition from his former life as a
businessman an advertising copywriter into the career or into the life of a
writer and that is a tremendous lead no matter how you cut it it is a difficult
thing to do and it took years for sure what to accomplish it
and yet I we all know that he did quite successfully but he did it in a very
memorable and dramatic way let me explain just a little III think
that overall and the record is not for fuse on this subject but here and there
you pick up the fact that over a number of years probably eight or eight to ten
years Sherwood had really entertained the dream tried to follow the dream and
bring it to fruition of becoming a writer he had a lot of responsibilities
in life that didn't have anything to do with literature or the world of or the
world of letters but nonetheless it was attractive to him and it was a goal
number of years ago there was a gentleman by the name of Ray Lewis white
and he wrote in an introduction to one of his books on Sherwood this simple
declarative sentence I believe ingenious because one a certain night in a certain
room in Chicago an advertising executive disillusioned with his current job
despairing of what his future might be created a story that became
a landmark I'm paraphrasing obviously but there was genius there is what I'm
trying to tell you there was the spark there simply was not the means of
bringing it to a flame and this did this was what took so very very long but I
think that as a certain American politician once reminded us nothing
takes the place of persistence and sherwin wood was nothing if not
persistent and so over this period of time the he tried experimented kept
trying kept experimenting until that wonderful moment that there when he said
look something's got to give here I've either got to decide whether I'm going
to be a writer or I have to decide whether I'm going to continue as a
businessman and try to balance the two or what have you all this came to crisis
in the fall of 1912 when Sherwood experienced a kind of episode that
psychiatrists tell us is a fugue episode the the tension became so great that he
simply I guess we'd say tuned out or phased out this was indeed a crisis and
I think he knew it and I think he knew he had to make a decision after four
days of sort of aimless wandering nobody knew where he was
none of his family knew where he was he was found taken to a hospital and
brought back to sort of reality and from that point on of course he the decision
was made more or less made for him within weeks he left the place where
this episode had occurred and head for Chicago with his goal firmly in mind
now a good long time for this for this goal to be fully realized he thought he
could do it he didn't know how close he was to making it happen
but he went absolutely bound and determined to persist in his efforts to
do so and finally one evening in the winter of 1915 16 while he was living in
a single room in a boarding house in a rooming house on Cass Street in Chicago
he finally broke through he finally had that moment which is really the second
largest event of his life and the one that we remember very much along with
with the crisis and that was really an epiphany and it was a breakthrough in
which he knew that he had produced what he was capable of producing he had
believed in his own individual talent in his own individual genius he had had the
guts to pursue it relentlessly and he was finally at that moment realizing the
result I don't know that this is paralleled in the life and career of any
other American writer at least none that I can think of it to me
tempted to say it's unique if it isn't unique it's among such a few cases that
it's one we can't forget because it simply happened in that way in that
marvelous miraculous I have often thought as as a teacher
over many years that there's nothing that really can take the place of
natural talent that god-given ability to be born with something that you know is
worthwhile and that you want to exploit that you want to develop that you want
to bring to fruition and he is perhaps the best example that I can think of in
our literary culture of that happening it was as a matter of fact the
difficulties that he underwent in order to experience this epiphany are
virtually unparalleled as far as I know well this is pretty outstanding isn't it
I don't think we forget we I don't think we should ever forget a person who is
able to do this who is born with these unique gifts and then realize them as
fully as as sure we did so these are two of the components of Sherwood's life
which I think are remembered not by everybody but broadly remembered simply
because they stand out as being so very unusual
and then there is a final event and I suppose it's hard to know what to call
that mannan but I decided that I would call it catastrophe because it's what
happened at the end and catastrophe of jouvert associated cost with great
tragedy and it usually derives from a flaw some description money hubris some
weakness some retro retro bution from some past perfidy committed by either
the protagonist or his members of his family before him and he's become an
instrument of the gods and undergoes destruction at the end this catastrophe
I would say that the catastrophe that I have in mind with in the case of
Sherwood if it's right to call it a catastrophe was more or less well an
appointment in Samarra this it didn't happen because there was any great flaw
in Sherwood it didn't happen because he deserved
this destruction at the end it happened when he was experienced in life at the
very very full like the myth the merchant in Baghdad is told by his
servant that the servant has seen death in the marketplace and so the merchant
says well you should go to Samara and escape death later in the day the
merchant himself goes to the marketplace and he sees death and he said I saw a
servant early on and the other person says yes he said well a lot of surprised
to see him here because I have an appointment with him later today in
Samara well that's sort of the way it was with Sherwood what happened in the
imbibing of the faithful martini was certainly not anything that Sherwood
deserved or that he planned as a matter of fact it has ironic aspects to it if
at the very least because here he was enjoying himself looking forward to the
next episode in his life which was this trip to South America and then this
happiness
faked vato appointment in Samarra and so it is that if sure what Anderson is not
remembered for the crisis that drove him finally into pursuit of authorship or
for the Epiphany with which it was actually brought into reality he is very
often cited and remembered for the final episode in his life that ended that life
I've always thought that this final episode the catastrophe if you will was
well a very sad thing that of course a very sad thing but it was made doubly so
because Sherwood loved life so much he truly did we hear of disillusioned
authors we hear of the lost generation authors we hear authors who are unhappy
sad who live tragic lives for whatever reason but not Sherwood as a matter of
fact in the fall of 1935 Sherwood was wrote a letter to a friend of his
juergen Phillips who was the companion of the sculptor horn Eric
and he talks about several authors that he and Miriam or Mimzy caller had
discussed in the last meeting and he said I've had some more thoughts about
our conversation and about these people who sort of run off these writers who
run off the rails they become cynical they become disillusioned
they said I think what a writer has to do is he has to keep that inner laughter
by which he meant that a writer has to be happy with himself with that inner
sense of self did that about which he can be confident and which he can of
course enjoy and he said that's so very important and the last sentence of a
letter not an exact quote again please indulge me here but he said Jesus when I
think about this thing life even at its worst sometimes I wish I could have a
thousand years of it this was the man who had the appointment it's love what
and so it makes it doubly poignant it seems to me when we see it in light of
this celebration of life and so I think it important that we remember if nothing
else these highlights and I really don't think that we that we as a culture will
ever forget again sure what sure what reputation may rise it may fall but
there will always be people who I think are fascinated
by these events so unique individually that coalesced so miraculously in this
most unusual man and artist
I've been at the job a fair amount of years and I'm often past question if you
had to choose one incident in your various interactions with Sherwood
Anderson what would you choose well you know it's like the old question about
which one of your children and so I have to say well I could choose any number I
could choose dozens because so many have been memorable and so many have made a
profound impact on me so many are part of my memory and I think that there are
many other people of course who whose interactions with Sherwood probably are
superseded by but nonetheless I'd like to remember an incident that may sound a
little offbeat and occurred in the summer of 1994 and
we were in Paris that summer to attend a conference an international conference
on Hemingway and Fitzgerald and I was and I delivered a paper there on
Sherwood's connection to Hemingway that horrid incident that had to do with
Hemingway's cruel send-up of Sherwood's novel dark laughter in a book called the
torrents of spring and which is certainly Hemingway's the least known
book and for good reason I shouldn't but nonetheless there we were and so I
sort of took Sherwood to Paris that summer for the fourth time he'd been
there three times while he was alive when I thought well this is actually the
fourth time that Sherman has been brought to Paris because the first time
he went he was brought there by his good friend Paul Rosenfeld Sherwood had won
the diol award that year for his short stories and Paul Rosenfeld that said
let's celebrate I'm going to Paris won't you come and Sherwood said yes and
Rosenfeld tells the story that on one occasion ever the Sherwood was just
overwhelmed I mean Paris it was just too much more he was floored and they were
visiting the Louvre and they were crossing the court and he looked around
and Sherwood wasn't there and he looked back and Sherwood was leaning against
the statue he was crying and he said what's wrong and he said I didn't think
anything could ever be this beautiful he said and so I guess I had that in mind
that at the end of the week after I listened to all these papers about
Hemingway and Fitzgerald and I hadn't been able to inject Sherwood into the
dial into the conversation during the weekend I felt pretty good about that
because I always thought that Hemingway deserved a little retribution for what
he did after all the good things that sherbert
had done for him after the llama and so at the end of the week we decide we
gives wonderful festive week you know this Pamela Harriman was ambassador to
France at the time she'd given us a reception I mean it was a wonderful week
but we ended it in a really funny way an odd way and there were these two
Americans who had this houseboat ah and on the sand and they used it as a sort
of entertainment center I mean they catered and they a lot of people rented
it for weddings or various occasions and so that all of us went to the houseboat
and you know it's really quite a thing I mean here we were eating American
barbecue and they were pouring wine under these bladder boxes you know it
has an oh my lord I mean you know and then I said well maybe that's not so bad
I saw I remember having seen lo Gao also they know the best known scholar of
American literature in France with a huge tumbler of this bladder box wine in
each man this sort of things there's a very happy event at the end but it ended
in an unusual way that was one of the the people who participated in the
conference was a professor from Kentucky and he and his wife were sort of amateur
musicians and they traveled together quite a bit she would go with him to
conferences and they would sing together and he they had the special guitar made
a smaller version of a regular guitar which was easier to transport and so
they played and we all sang and we sang a bit circle be in Brooklyn
which a good song for Kentuckians to lead us in and indeed most of the people
there a lot of people didn't know they were the words but have you ever been in
a situation like that where you don't know the lyrics you couldn't write down
a verse if someone held a gun to your head and yet somehow you learn them as
someone who knows them is singing them everybody just gets caught up into it
and it's they're so into it that if everybody's participating
and it was one of those really happy moments where Sherman had been given his
due in the city that he loved and found so beautiful and on that beautiful late
afternoon evening in June on a sin I remembered Shirley and all the lovely
experiences that I had had it seemed to culminate for me I think for us that
evening a the shock will be on Brooke the very fact that you're here today
tells me that the circle has held fast this circle of those who loved Sherwood
and my fondest wish is that we'll all help it expand and grow ever stronger
thank you so much
I think I'm supposed to answer questions and I will try care
I have a question oh yes okay well that's good when sure what was going to
South America yes it was said that he was going there for an indeterminate
period of time yes and had an editorial project in mind which we write something
especially is anything known and any detail about what he had planned it was
a general idea they had he would he was going to write the kinds of journalistic
pieces that he had been publishing for the last few years in magazines here
magazines like today The Reader's Digest Redbook I mean in other words articles
of sort of human interest interesting people interesting towns that he was
going to visit again in the last few years of his life sure would talk a
great deal about the significant difference between those who think in
the large and who think in the small and he said I'm not a man of ideas I'm not
trying to shape the thinking of Nations or introduce new political thought or
anything like that he used this example he said I'm interested in how the boy
and the girl sitting together on the back porch steps on Saturday night get
along with each other and how they communicate and so it was always the the
small detail the individual detail and I think he was that's what he had in mind
that he had pitched this notion to Reader's Digest just before going and he
said you know I would like to do as I find an interesting subject I'd like to
do it and send it on to you and he was asking them of course for an advance
which you needed and they said in so many words well we
won't give you the advance but we you will certainly perhaps have most favored
favorable unsolicited status and so I think he was confident that because they
had publishes they many other magazines at the time it published its matte work
already that they would be ready for more with that new slant with that from
that new perspective yes yes so as an editor one of my heroes is max
Perkins Oh My yes I think about mr. Perkins influence on
Hemingway and Fitzgerald yes and I wonder I don't know who with anyone who
played that role sure would
and if that made a difference in the impact yes
well well short answers no he did not I mean you have to remember that b/w
hatch who published you know some of his mood some of his greatest books
Winesburg horses and men triumph from the egg etc was just a very small
publisher and so he didn't have that kind of editorial muscle power that you
described I don't think I can't think of any other of course you did as you know
publish the play is Winesburg and others with scriveners and max Perkins very
badly wanted to get their memoirs and he and Harker brace were very much in
competition with each other and of course just a few weeks before he died
sure we decided to go not with scribblers and max Perkins but with
Harker brace and so I don't know what role are or how heavy that the editorial
and a max Perkins was on the plays that would have been in one place where
Perkins could have exerted influence but I can't think of any other editor if
it's kind of a funny thing you know after he published a book he would very
often go back to it and make editorial changes in his personal copy of of the
book he did that even with Winesburg though the book is now lost the and well
there would be a recovered incidentally it was lost in the flood but you know he
I think was tried to be his own editor and if you if you'll see the the page of
the first or the-- facsimile of the first manuscript page of the book of the
grotesque on display here you will see that even in that first paragraph he
made many he crossed out many words and did an awful lot of his own editorial
work yes
picking to be a writer instead of a businessman I think I know I have done
this sometimes I look back at that and it's like well obviously you'd rather be
a writer than a businessman because a businessman is yeah
it's not that special but a long long long long
I did a Pigman history class about Clio hi Owen
early 20th century it was evident in there that the businessman at that time
really held a higher place than we sort of put him today our
or Paris later during the Depression I the choice by Henderson was was not a
naughty giving so well no no it really wasn't a gimmick I think he grew up at a
time when the businessman was much more in freedom or appreciated than the
artist was so he was sort of going against the grain to start with its
thinking and not only that but his position as a businessman offered a sort
of security you know the the possibility of I mean particularly when he owned his
own business I mean there were good times bad times but I mean basically he
was able to maintain a very comfortable middle-class life from being a
businessman so he was launching out into the unknown no question about it and so
you know in addition to it being a most unusual process it represented a
tremendous act of courage
yes that much about Sherwood Anderson but I know that there's a political
dimension to his life as well yes for example we here at Special Collections
have a copy of a type of script to us a speech that he gave addressing the
striking workers in man in Danville I should note that if anyone years and I
was just wondering if again I hadn't thought about this before but him where
his politics and all involved in his and all in the choice to give up the life of
a businessman is there any connection then when did he become political I
don't know I'm just asking yes I don't think that he really became political
until possibly in the 20s I I just I you know I I think one one reason for that
is that when he was a businessman he more or less had bought into the
business ethos in other words he married his first wife was the daughter of
a-holes wholesale shoe dealer I mean you know he he aspired to that that
represented you know two young men of his generation the sort of horatio alger
notion that you you wanted that was your your goal you know and so as I say I I
think he believed it and followed it and but something inside him said there's
something else and so by the mid 1920s he had become really politicized in a
sense I think one of the reasons was that he had met a number of people in
New York who were very influential people he got in there Dreiser for
example it was quite political Waldo Frank for example and Wilson
these people who really were really were involved in these things and also after
ww1 and into throughout the 20s Marxism was a very popular philosophy I
mean there were great many people who believed it was who signed on to it in
some degree or other there's one letter from Bob Anderson as a matter of fact
when after sure where he bought the newspapers in which Sherwood owned a
letter to 2jj Yankees and didn't have time to write and Bob for surely and he
said all of us are pretty much straight communists now here in the office but
like a great many American intellectuals by the mid 30s Sherwood was moderating
his his politics have become far more moderate there's a book of his it's not
much read and yet I think it's one of his most important on that subject and
it's called puzzled America and if you read it read it from start to finish
because it consists of a number of individual essays that had been
published I believe in Today magazine I don't think so anyway but you put them
all together and you really trace the sort of turning around of the depression
in other words the the New Deal programs are beginning to take hold things are
beginning to improve he's traveling through the south he's watching the TVA
take shape as watching the CCC boys build whatever roads camps and so his
faith in America and the American Way of doing things is becoming renewed
yes
you may have actually been a result of some sort of that nothing like coffee
now martini me yes no he said he was golfing them down you know oh no it's
sort of chug along contest no what happened was he would often get very
very animated in conversation very excited and they they started his
brother call was there you know and they were some other first were there and
they got on the subject of modern writers and he was talking and getting
excited and freaking one martini after another and Ellender tried to slow him
down and and he wouldn't take wouldn't listen and so he just on one occasion
and in all people who the one witness that we have who left the record was his
older brother call you know the artist KRL Carl Anderson and he said that he
became he was making a point very emphatic point and he just drank martini
olive toothpick and all it just went down and you know and one of the things
you know we I had a really good editor of this essay his name is Peter product
and and so he said to me one day said you can't swallow it smooth pickup not
know like what's your ivory tend to agree with
except that it happens it happens and the doctor who did the autopsy on
sure wouldn't announce it was it up was a doctor by the name of BH Keene
Benjamin Harrison Keene and he wrote a book and in the book this chapter called
the fatal martini and he goes on to cite in medical literature several additional
cases where this has happened I mean it's it has to have just right don't try
it at home like that it has to happen just right and it made it almost all the
way through and became lodged punctured the large intestine and the rest as they
say is a very sad history yes
any other question oh yes ma'am
so I guess another question I have for you as I like you that I really
appreciated the way you talked about these three major events in showing a
person's life and I wanted to ask you more about the first event the crisis
and the kind of change the choice he made interest do you know more about
what happened to his first wife in children that he left it in that
gracious act like I just I know that that's part of what happened and I'm
curious how you personally feel about that he left behind a wife and children
not exactly what well uh you know they're sketchy at best
of course the it happened in the 25th of November of 1912 anyway but the end of
November and and he simply went into
well that as I say I have a we have a good friend who's a psychiatrist and so
I asked him about this and I said have you ever had a patient that had a fugue
episode he said oh yeah this is not then uncommon uh in other words reality gets
to the point that you can't bear it anymore
and so this is the minds way of sort of shutting down and you're going to a
trance-like state using and so for four days he wondered about a suit was dirty
and torn he'd slept on the riverbank you know that sort of thing and so he they
put him in a hospital in Cleveland and as I say sir briefly brought him back
and he realized what had happened and what he was going to do he went on to
Chicago within a very few weeks one reason he went
there well two reasons I think that some of you are Midwestern see you know know
a lot more about it than not i but but Chicago is really the the Polestar city
of the Midwest of a middle America I mean it's it's the
magnet it's what draws you just the way sort of the big off of draws us
Easterners and so he went Chicago but there was a second reason for going
there and that is that his brother Carl was already there and he could stay with
Carl and so within probably a month or so I think Cornelia and the three
children moved to Chicago and continued to live there for a while and after a
couple of years Sherwood they spent a winter in the Ozark Mountains away from
everything so he couldn't work what have you and they decided on while they were
away on that retreat if you will that they would divorce and so she moved with
the three children to Michigan City which is not all that far from Chicago
on Lake Michigan of course and sure we continued to the in Chicago and they
were divorced in 1960 the fugue episode happened in 12
they devotions 16 and 4 days later he married a second time a woman who was a
good friend of Cornelius as a matter of fact
and yes he was married of course four times as we do yes I mean they're there
this war too it's not a simplistic situation at all and I think all during
his life you know I have been true to you Senora in my fashion I think he was
loyal to his children and family in his fashion but they tell some interesting
stories of father sibling you know interactions and
any other questions thank you so very much for your