Before They Were Your Parents

Clarence and Carol Stolt wedding picture



 

They were young once, just like you. Like you they had hopes, dreams and passionate desires – things far removed from their later world of retirement, Medicare and remembering to take their daily medication. They were your parents, and hard as it may be to imagine, there was a time when they were living, breathing, young people.

I bring this up because of a small black and white photograph that a cousin sent me a while back. She found it going through a pile of old photographs, and she mailed it to me after writing a simple note on the back: “Your parents.”

And sure enough, there’s my father as a young man, fresh-faced and confident, dressed in a double-breasted suit no doubt quite the style in the 1930s. He’s standing beside a woman wearing an equally fashionable dress of the period. One small problem. The woman in the picture is not my mother. 

It's wisely been said that every good photograph holds a secret, a story behind the image that is mysterious and tantalizingly untold. Then again, it's also been said that photographs can lie and deceive like no other.

So what to make of this?

Before I go any further, let me state for the record that my parents met in 1945 when Dad was 29 years old. They married two years later and stayed together faithfully until he passed away in 1976. That much I know without a doubt. However, as there’s no one left who can provide any answers, the woman in the photograph will have to remain a mystery.

Not that any of that matters now. Sometime before he got married Dad had a girlfriend. So what. Well, in my mind this triggered an intriguing, if playful, thought: What if the relationship between Dad and this woman had gone differently? What if it had led to them getting married and raising a family?

I certainly wouldn’t be who I am now. I guess I wouldn’t even be here writing this. So needless to say, I’m glad things worked out the way they did. And I can’t overstate the fact that I could never have wished for better parents. This is not about regret.

But my point still stands. Nothing calls to wonder the convergence of fate and family more than thinking about how one’s parents got together.

Following that train of thought, and with the aid of some surviving family archives, I decided to do a little digging into my past.

In 1945 my father Clarence Stolt was working for the Veterans Administration in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. More specifically, he was working in that agency’s Vocational Rehabilitation Department. World War Two was nearing its end and it was his job to help returning veterans find work or vocational training so they could begin to get on with their civilian lives. In light of the numbers of men coming home from overseas and the newly signed GI Bill, this was no small bureaucratic task.

He started working for the VA in August of 1944 at an annual salary of $2,600. This was after he had volunteered to join the Navy right after Pearl Harbor, but a serious case of rheumatic fever waylaid those plans and he had to take a medical discharge. The next best way for him to serve his country was to work for the VA.

One morning in the Spring of ‘45 his newly assigned secretary (that’s what they were called back then) walked into his office and introduced herself. A shy girl with a pretty smile, Carol Thompson came from a small town in Wisconsin schooled in dictation, typing and stenography. Along with her sister she moved to Milwaukee looking for office work and the chance to see what life was like beyond the farm.

It was a far simpler time in the workplace in those days, and Clarence and Carol worked together for a few months, gradually getting to know more about each other, until one day shortly after V-J (Victory over Japan) Day he slipped a note into the ‘Incoming’ basket on Carol’s desk. Would she like to go out for dinner with him?

She said yes, and their first date was at a downtown American Legion club overlooking Lake Michigan. Right away the sights and sounds of the place impressed her: the tables draped in crisp white linens, the clinking of glasses and buzz of conversation coming from the bar, waiters dashing back and forth from the kitchen.

Together they spent the evening talking, eating, probably dancing to the orchestra band playing there that night. And after that first date, well, things went well from there. By the end of 1945 they were dating steady. Two years later they were married in a country church outside Carol's hometown, and the eventual means of my coming to be were set in motion.

I think about that when I feel stuck in my own day to day life. I think about that picture of my father and a girlfriend, and then I think about my parent’s wedding portrait, and I feel a sense of purpose again.

Because you can pretty much count me in the camp of Sigmund Freud and others who say there are no accidents in life. Certainly not when it comes to who your parents are and how they met. But wherever you happen to fall on that subject, remember this: 

·         We are each quite literally one of a kind. A lot of people from generations past helped make you who you are today.

·         Find inspiration from your past. See above.