For The Uncle I Never Knew

A remembrance

Our nine-year-old grandson, Milo, has developed an interest in World War II history. There is no explaining this, just as there was no obvious reason for my sudden obsession with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt at his age. As is true for most of us, the imagination is ignited, and we follow the flame.

Milo’s curiosity has stirred up family memories.

My father never served in the military, but his older brother, Harry Leroy Schultz Jr., enlisted in the Navy in 1945, when he was 17. He had lied about his age because, as my father told it, Harry—called Junior by family—was eager to flee their violent father and serve his country. That was the beginning and the end of that story, until one rainy day in April 2006.

I had called my father from the road during my first book tour. Dad was recuperating at home after a second surgery to clear out his other carotid artery. I had promised when I said goodbye to him in post-op that I would read a 14-page letter he’d sent me that had been written in 1946 by his mother, Regie Swartz Schultz, my grandmother. During that long patch of highway, I called to talk to him about the letter.

My grandmother wrote it shortly after she had buried both her father-in-law, whom everyone called Pa, and her boy Harry, who was 18 when he died. He was flying home from a naval base in California to attend his grandfather’s funeral when his plane crashed, killing everyone on board. My father, who idolized Harry, was nine years old. Milo’s age, I just realized.

One of my father’s sisters had recently discovered the letter and sent a copy to Dad. It chronicled a series of tragic events that, sixty years later, made my father choke up in the reading. I don’t know why, but he had wanted me to read it, too. I was so moved by our conversation about it, and devastated by what happened next, that I wrote about it it in my second book, “…and His Lovely Wife.”

“I just can’t write much of a letter now,” my grandmother wrote in that letter in small and tidy script. “I am so crushed with grief I can’t think clearly at all. Never, never did I ever think that such a terrible shock would come to me.” She had begun to write the letter on April 19, but she was unable to finish it until May 8.

Her father-in-law, Pa, who lived with them, had died after dinner one night. “He died in his chair,” my father said in what would turn out to be our last conversation. “Had a heart attack.”

My uncle Harry was close to Pa and was due to ship out soon, so my grandmother sent word via the Red Cross to let him know. For the rest of her life, she would regret sending that letter.

“I only wish to God that I had never sent for him to come home,” she wrote. “But it was the last thing he said when he left for California last November: ‘if anything ever happens to Pa let me know so I can come.’”

The Red Cross had confirmed to my grandmother that Harry was on his way to Ohio and would arrive in time for his grandfather’s wake. He never showed up, and a telegram delivered the following morning told my grandmother why. In it, the Navy misspelled his name. I grew up knowing this because my father would never forgive it.

My grandparents met Harry’s body at the train station in Cleveland. “It was an awful feeling to see that shipping case removed from the train,” my grandmother wrote. “I just couldn’t believe my boy was in it, for it was a little less than eight months when I had stood at the same place and saw him off to Rhode Island after he had been home last August. I could still see him standing on the platform and waving good-bye.”

Dad and I talked for nearly an hour during my drive that day in April 2006. He kept pausing to clear his throat and take deep breaths. “This letter was really hard to read,” he said. “My mother was never the same after Harry died. I remember when she was dying, she kept calling out his name. She kept saying he was in the room with her.”

I have no memory of my grandmother, as she died when I was only two. But my father knew I had always felt a tie to her because she had wanted to be a writer, and he had given me a scrapbook full of the tiny stories she had written about her community for a local paper. Always, her byline read, “Mrs. Harry Schultz.”

A cousin shared this photo of my paternal grandmother, Regie Swartz Schultz. She was 15, living in coal country and dreaming of being a writer. She became a farm wife with 12 children and sometimes wrote school news for the local weekly. Her byline: Mrs. Harry Schultz.

“Pa died in his chair,” my father said during our call. “Isn’t that something? You can have dinner, sit down in your favorite chair, and just die.” The next day, Dad sat in his favorite chair, the recliner in front of his TV, and suffered a heart attack. He never regained consciousness and died two days later.

Last week, I uncovered another letter from my grandmother that I’d never read. It is dated March 31, 1946, written to Harry, who was stationed in California. Her cursive is more confident, larger and marching across the page.

“Dear Junior,” the ten-page letter began.

By the second paragraph, I understood that my grandmother believed her 18-year-old son to be her only confidant. “I haven’t felt well enough to write. I just don’t complain to the rest of them here at home, if I do they just think I am putting it on so I keep my ailments to my self.

“I’ll say this much to you,” she continued. “I have high blood pressure and my heart is not so good so that it takes in a lot. I get such terrible dizzy spells. I don’t know whether I am going or coming. Some thing has gone wrong with the joints of my arms, its hard to control my hands and at times the pains are awful. I hope you are able to read this letter. I’ll do the best I can.”

She had a husband and twelve children, eight of them daughters, and her far away teenage son was the one person she felt would believe her. She was 56 when she died.

The rest of the letter provided family updates, including about Harry’s beloved Pa. He’d had a heart attack and was in “very poor condition.” She offered a maternal nudge. “I know he would enjoy getting a few lines from you.”

She was sending him copies of Reader’s Digest and wondered if he was getting them. Hank the cat had given birth to five kittens, only two of whom survived. They had recently purchased 241 six-week-old baby chicks for the farm.

She had a few choice words for her son, too.

“Junior, one thing that gave us an awful surprise was that you were learning to chew snuff. I just couldn’t believe my eyes when I read it and Dad thought it was awful.

“Junior, listen to your Mother and Dad—don’t do it, it’s a terrible habit to get into and one that will be hard to break, so please listen to us and leave the stuff alone, it won’t do you any good.”

By the time the letter had arrived—the envelope’s stamp of receipt is May 4, 1946—Harry was already gone.

Two weeks ago, I was in our basement going through a bin of my father’s belongings when I unearthed a small wooden box. It is full of Uncle Harry’s belongings at the time of his death, including a cigarette tin, two long-expired tickets for beer at a hut on the base and a leather wallet engraved with his name. They tell a tragically short story about an 18-year-old farm boy who wanted to be somebody of his own making.

I am sending the box to Milo, along with the letters from my grandmother. I want to encourage his interest in history, and help him learn more about his roots. I also want him to know the sacrifices of military service. As Dad said, my grandmother was never the same after Harry died. I would say this was true for my father, too, who forever regretted that he was too young to serve in World War II and Korea, and too old to fight in Vietnam.

“I wanted to do it for Harry,” he told me in our last conversation. “I wanted to make my mother proud.”

She would never have wanted that, I wish I had told him. She would have been grateful that you are still alive.