I have, in the past, written about my "honorary"
Aunt Bea.
Aunt Bea was one of my paternal Grandmother's friends - she grew up "around the corner from the church" they both attended. Later on,
when my dad served his 2 weeks a year in the Army Reserves, my mom stayed with my dad's mom with my older brother (who was a one year old) and got to know Aunt Bea too - and the three of them became "best buddies" and they all went shopping together. Aunt Bea moved out west to California with her second husband (the first one died suddenly) and has lived out there for more than 40 years (the second husband died too, of cancer). When my parents had their 50th wedding anniversary she came back to the east coast to join the party and has become very active once more with our family.
This June, she turned 90 years old and asked me to locate her second husband's younger brother. I have tried a number of times to "find him" but have had no luck so far. His name is (or was) Richard Donald Kane, born July 19, 1930 in Chester, PA.
While I was searching for him, I rummaged through the box of stuff my grandfather left behind and found this photograph, dated circa 1941..
It shows my dad between two recently made US Sailors. The man on the right is an "unknown" but the man on the left is Philip Lewis Hallworth (Jr.); MOMM2 (Motor Machinist 2nd class) US Navy World War II (22 Oct 1919 - 13 Oct 1963), my Aunt Bea's first husband. My eye was caught by the navy hats (you may recall my recent "acquisition" of my great-uncle
Marshall's WWI sailors hat.)
I was just a toddler when Philip passed away - and do not recall ever having met him. Everyone that knew him (that remains with us today) speaks very highly of him, and recalls he went deaf while working in the engine rooms of the various ships he worked on. Today he rests in the Beverly National Cemetery, in Beverly, NJ (Section X Site 3315). My Aunt Bea plans to join him there someday.
The mystery man seems to be hauntingly familar, as if somewhere in my past, I encountered him - but nothing more that the vaguest of shimmering thought surfaces to the forefront. Perhaps, some night, it will come to me - that elusive memory. Looking at the photograph, he seems to have been a nice guy. My dad has no memory of this "photo op," and says the events of the time (the outbreak of the war) and his um... unfortunately timed, flying of a Japanese Flag out his bedroom window and its aftermath are all he can recall.
Another photograph sends me down memory lane...
