Bud (Click most images for larger versions.)
Halloween night 1929, was the night I met Bud.
We both attended a party given by my friend, Rita. I can't remember whether Rita knew Bud or whether he came with someone else. I just know that sparks flew.
Robert Ivaney "Bud" Simmons was born about five months before me on March 31, 1913 in Marion, New Jersey, a suburb of Jersey City. His father, Robert Alan Simmons, was an immigrant from stout Newfoundland shipwrights who had scraped out a living in a severe land, while keeping no record of ancestors or family history.
[The picture shows Bud in a christening gown; I don't know what Protestants call it. Click.]
Bud's mother, however, Olive Edna Mills, or Ollie, was born and bred in Brooklyn to one Homer Carhart Mills and Christiana Edna Russlend. Ollie could delineate an American lineage going back before the Civil War, and relatives who had established towns: Lewis Henry Carhart's Clarendon, Texas, for example.
Lewis Henry Carhart was an uncle of Homer's. Lewis was born in Albany County, New York, and fought in the Civil War. Then, after the war, he became a Methodist minister and eventually settled in Texas. It was there, on the Texas Panhandle, that he grew interested in establishing a Christian colony which would discourage liquor consumption and other "impure" activities. He christened the colony Clarendon after his wife, Clara, but he spent his final years in California, just like me.
The Newfoundland Simmons tribe, on the other hand—as far back as I can find—began with a Robert Simmons, whose son, William Edrick Simmons, Bud's grandfather, was born in Labrador on July 21, 1857. Labrador lies on Canada's east coast and has belonged to many different peoples. But, following the war between England and France and the subsequent English Conquest of Canada, Labrador came under the jurisdiction of the island of Newfoundland, then a British colony. Following the conquest, English merchants and adventurers began to occupy Labrador's coast.
It's very possible that the first Robert Simmons was one of those merchants or adventurers, but considering that most of his descendants worked on boats, it's more likely that he came as part of a ship's crew and stayed. At any rate, when he grew up, William settled in St. John's and married Amelia Mary Ivany. St. John's Great Fire of 1892 destroyed all the local government and most church records, so there's not much information about the Simmons before that date.
Bud's father, Robert Alan Simmons, was born in St. John's on November 23, 1888. He was one of five children, the others being: Annie, William Jr., Edith, and John—born sixteen months before Amelia's death.
[This is a photo of St. John's harbor taken at the turn of the century. Click.]
Bud's middle name was originally "Ivaney," but he didn't like it. So, when he was older, he took it upon himself to change it to "Alan," like his father's. I assume "Ivaney" referred to Grandmother Amelia's maiden name: Ivany (that's how it's spelled in the records of the Gower Street Parsonage of the St. John's Methodist Church)—"Ivaney" probably being another phonetic approximation. Personally, I liked Ivaney or Ivany, at least better than Alan, which seems fairly mundane.
At any rate, on July 13, 1895, at the ripe old age of 37, Amelia died. Nothing else came to light regarding her, except that her maiden name, Ivany, is of Austro-Hungarian origins, specifically the area known as Czechoslovakia, and that it is a common surname in Newfoundland.
Not long after Amelia's death, undoubtedly needing someone to watch over his brood, William married Julia Ann Clarke, a widow from a fishing settlement on the north side of Conception Bay, in the district of Carbonear, called Crocker's Cove. It was May 4, 1896, when the ceremony took place at the Gower Street Parsonage, performed by Reverend A.D. Morton, the man who administered most of the Simmons family's religious rites. It took place in the parsonage because the "new" Gower Street United Church was still under construction. Completion wouldn't happen until Fall, 1896.
It would be St. John's fourth Methodist church on the same spot in less than a hundred years—the first three all consumed by fires. Today, the "fourth" church still stands and is a registered heritage structure of Canada.
[The picture is of the 'fourth' Gower Street Methodist Church as it now stands. Click for a larger version.]
On William's and Julia's marriage certificate her birth date is giving as 1864, and her father as John Harvey. Also, the witnesses were George Morris and Zipporah S. Simmons. I've found no reference to a Zipporah anywhere else, so I don't know her relation to Bud's family. But, her name intrigued me, so I looked it up.
Zipporah is Hebrew for "female bird." One Zipporah was the daughter of Jethro in the Bible, and another the wife of Moses—the pretty one rescued at the well by Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. A painting of her leading her "children" out of Egypt is in the Sistine Chapel.
At any rate, on February 21, 1898, William and Julia produced Hazel Simmons, their first and only child together. And the Simmons family held their last religious rite in Newfoundland at the new church: Hazel was baptized there two days later.
Eleven months after that, on January 21, 1899, William arrived at Ellis Island on board the ship "Silvia." Nine days later he filed his "Declaration of Intention to become a Citizen of the United States" with the Supreme Court of New York in Brooklyn. In it he renounced "...all allegiance and fidelity to the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland." For his residence he put down 70 Vandyke Street in the Brooklyn community of Red Hook, a street right on the Port of New York's waterfront. I could not find any record of the Sylvia's arrival at Ellis Island, just the mention of the date and name in William's naturalization papers. So, I don't know who else immigrated or was living with him then.
[The S.S. Silvia steaming out of St. John's harbor. Click it.]
I did discover, however, a record of Julia, John, and baby Hazel all going through Ellis Island on November 22, 1903, sailing out of St. John's, also aboard the S.S. Silvia. Although William was not yet a citizen, all three of the "new" arrivals said they were U.S. citizens on the ship's register.
[This is S.S. Silvia's register listing Julia and the kids. Click it for a large, readable version.]
But, I don't know if this was the threesome's initial immigration or whether they had traveled back to St. John's, perhaps to visit some of Julia's family, and were merely returning. The residence of William, at the time, was listed as 414 Van Brunt Street, two blocks east and around the corner from 70 Van Dyke in Brooklyn.
On July 7, 1909, William's "Petition for Naturalization" became subscribed and sworn to, and he became a citizen. By then the family had moved to 290 9th Street in the community of Gowanus, Brooklyn, a mile or two from the waterfront. The "Petition" also listed all of his children, with their birthdays:
Annie, born May 17, 1884
Robert, born November 23, 1888
William, born November 4, 1890
Edith, born March 12, 1892
John, born March 9, 1894
And Hazel.
The document said everyone resided in Brooklyn, except Edith who resided "...at Massachusetts." Since, when William became a citizen, Robert Alan—Bud's father—was 21 and married to Ollie, plus working in the shipping industry (although I don't know at what capacity), it's safe to assume he was no longer living with William. And Annie, being even older than Robert, was undoubtedly out of the house, too. Yet, it seems they were all still living in Brooklyn.
The petition also reflected a change on the world's stage: William had to renounce all allegiance and fidelity to "Edward VII of Great Britain and Ireland," the eldest son of Queen Victoria who died in 1901.
What about William? Well, he would live to be 87, arguably the longest lived male of his family, even to this date. Unfortunately, his final years were riddled with illness and dementia until, mercifully, he passed away in 1944, the same year my first boy, Bobby, was born.
I know very little about the rest of the family—except for those directly affecting my life—but Bud's mother, Ollie, wrote in 1964 that William's mother died of consumption when Ollie was 8 years old (I'm sure Ollie wasn't aware of the death when she was eight—not yet related—so why she put it that way, I can't say). At any rate, the year would have been 1897, while the Simmons family still lived in St. John's, but I've found no record of the mother's name. Might she have been Zipporah?
Something I do know about Ollie's ancestors I learned recently from a distant cousin. It's regarding Ollie's Grandmother Christiana's side of the family, and it might explain the Simmons' sweet tooth—although, it certainly doesn't explain the Guy's...except through osmosis?
Christiana's mother was a Catherine Meyer, born in Bristol, England on March 7, 1848, the daughter of Johann Meyer and Elizabeth "Betsy" Harrison Emery, who married on May 29, 1842 at the Parish Church in the parish of St. Leonard's Shoreditch in the county of Middlesex, England (picture). Their marriage certificate gives Johann's occupation as "Sugar Refiner," but I'm afraid Betsy's is listed as a "Servant."
Be that as it may, through a distant relative on that side of the family, Jane Force—a great grandchild of Catherine's—I learned that Johann Meyer almost created a sugar fortune.
In 1868, Johann received a patent for a magnetic sugar refining process that, had he maintained control, could have been worth millions! But, the details are obscured, and no one is sure what really happened.
[Picture is of Johann Meyer. Click it for a larger version, or click HERE for the Meyer family photo gallery with more information about Johann and his clan.]
The way I heard it, in 1807, two bothers, William and Frederick Havemeyer started what was to become by 1891 the American Sugar Refining Company (ASRC). It produced nearly one hundred percent of the country's sugar by the turn of the century, but up till then, sugar was only shipped in awkward wooden barrels and customers bought it by the scoop from merchants—not exactly a formula for mass sales. It wasn't until ASRC began producing sugar cartons for direct sales to consumers that profits took off; and a brand name seemed logical.
ASRC made their first shipment of the distinctive yellow cartons of Domino Sugar in 1900. It is still a well known sugar brand, particularly in the East. I remember one of their huge refineries on the Brooklyn side of the East River near the Williamsburg Bridge, in the Williamsburg section of town. The refinery was one of the landmarks of industrial New York, it's large stacks belching smoke into the skies 24-hours a day.
(The bridge, however, only qualified as one of the ugliest bridges in the world—although for me it served a very noble purpose: relieving congestion on the Brooklyn Bridge, my artery to Manhattan.)
It was never clear to cousin Jane how John lost his "sugar money," but the supposed loss was a point of constant regret for her family. In a recent letter, she had this to say about the "sugar house," as the locals referred to the refinery in Williamsburg:
"When I was a kid, every time we would go over the Williamsburg Bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan, my dad or grandmother would point to the Domino Sugar Company, on the Brooklyn side just before the bridge, and say 'That should have been ours.' I think John Meyer owned part of it. Somehow the partners got the business."
No one knows exactly what happened, but it appears, even though Johann invented the extractor before leaving England, that it was claimed by ASRC because he was working for them at the time the U.S. patent was issued. It is thought, that once Johann—his first name was Americanized to John when he immigrated—realized this, he sued, but apparently lost the case. So, it seems he left ASRC over the dispute and took work in Portland, Maine, as a sugar refinery superintendent, overseeing construction of a new plant.
Despite these sugar blues, Ollie married Robert Alan on March 5, 1907. To her parents, however, it was not a marriage made in heaven. The blushing bride and rawboned groom were eighteen and nineteen. But, Ollie came from staunch American WASPs: conservative, class conscious, and very respected. Robert Alan, essentially, was fresh off the boat, without prospects or a future, and decidedly offbeat by Mill's family standards. To prove it, there's a picture of him in American Indian garb—naked, except for an Indian blanket "skirt" and a feathered head band—sitting
cross-legged on the Mill's parlor floor in a Thanksgiving Day family portrait. (I think he felt the Indians should be represented.) Everyone else in the photo is wearing respectable Protestant attire, and varying degrees of amusement.
(Robert Alan was no stranger to theatrics, having already done some stage work at the Prospect Theater, where Homer or "Pops" also worked, even though papers say he was a book binder. Perhaps the theater was an avocation for them both. I do remember Robert Alan being in a play, which might have been at the Prosect, after Bud and I got together.)
I haven't learned much about the Simmons's early years in New York—Bud didn't talk about his family and never wrote down memories. When the government conducted its 1920 U.S. Census, the Simmons family lived at 59 8th Street, Kings County, Brooklyn. Robert Alan's occupation was a bondsman in the shipping industry, normally a very prosperous position. But sometime after 1920, he was in an industrial accident which drastically altered the family's situation.
I don't know how, but one day at the docks Robert Alan lost his right arm up to the elbow. The accident happened before 1910, because that year's census states Ollie and Robert were living with the Mills, and they didn't move in until after Robert lost his arm. Unfortunately, following his recovery, he could only find work with the Goodwill Industries. The resultant drop in income was why the family moved in with Homer and Christiana, or Mother Mills, as everyone called her. They had a huge, four-story brownstone at 456 7th Street in Brooklyn, and Ollie and Robert remained there through the weddings, births, and deaths of two generations—when she passed away in 1951 at the ripe old age of 85, Mother Mills left the brownstone to Ollie.
As if Bud didn't get enough unique qualities from his eccentric father and mother (Ollie loved theatre of all things!), during his years residing in her large brownstone, he learned even more from Mother Mills.
Mother Mills behavior was the stuff of family legend, and many years later, helped me with the behavior of my own children. For instance, whenever my children complained that a nickel was nothing, I'd tell them how Mother Mills walked from her house, across the Brooklyn Bridge and into lower Manhattan just to save a nickel's carfare. At dinner, if one of them told a joke while someone else had their mouth full, I'd remind everyone of the time Mother Mills came to the dinner table with an umbrella, meaningfully placing it by her chair. Of course, my children knew she did so because their father, when he was a lad, sprayed the table with mashed potatoes the night before when his father told a funny story. But, Mother Mills legacy covered more than mere antics and frugality, or dining room tablecloths.
Mother Mills was also the Whig in the family who gave Bud the idea to register as one in protest over cross-filing: primary candidates registering in more than one political party. This form of individuality intrigued newspapers and radio stations and, again, Mother Mill's spirit moved through our house.
The crocheted curtains that Mother Mill's made graced our beach cabin, giving a serene, Quaker-like feeling to its interior. Her gold and purple classic books collection sat on the shelves of our foyer, their Victorian covers gleaming. On the margins of their pages she jotted down her thoughts as she read, revealing her insight and questioning mind:
"Turner and Shelley had wonderful eyes."
In answer to Shelley's ode To a Skylark, she wrote: "You want the rainbow—he could only give the colors."
From Pope's "Essay on Man" she questions the line: "An honest man's the noblest work of God," and writes: "Why not reverse the line and say: 'An honest God is the noblest work of man.'"
My first born bears her name, Christine. My second born, June, arrived on her birthday, June 9. And I gave her name to my last born, Barry Mills, although he subsequently changed it because he didn't like the initials "B.M."
Mother Mills also taught me a more personal lesson. As I look back on the day decades ago when we met, I remember a feeling of grayness, of a gray oblong person. My youthful eyes saw a drab, cold chunk of flesh, whereas now my mature eyes, like those of a sculptor, detect hidden veins of goodness and individuality. Now, when someone makes a snap judgment of a person, my snap judgment of her haunts me. For, not only did I judge her unfairly, I also criticized her unkempt home and dress, only to find out later that she was going blind. She had kept her failing eyes a secret for as long as she could, not wanting to trouble anyone. I've never forgotten my shame when I learned that.
Mother Mills husband, Homer, died in 1930, so she lived alone in her big four-story home, losing her eyesight, and hoping for company. After Ollie and Robert Alan moved in with their three young children, I wonder if Mother Mills ever thought: Be careful what you wish for.
The brownstone, however, was perfect, with more than enough room for everyone, including a space for Ollie's dance studio. Not only did Mother Mills get a family of five to contend with, she also had dance students traipsing in and out of her house, but she never complained. Ollie said Mother Mills kept a sense of humor about the whole situation, a trooper until the end. It's a good thing, too, because with her husband relegated to working for the Goodwill, Ollie's income became all the more important; the use of the large, second floor parlor a blessing.
Ollie and Robert Alan worked well together before the accident. Not only were they doing well in their careers, but they were both humorous, eccentric and theatrical. I remember seeing him in a play.
Robert Alan had a strange role. He just sat in a chair on stage throughout the performance. Dressed all in gray with gray makeup on his hair and face, his missing arm obvious, he never said a word. Yet, the critics mentioned him and said he performed his function well, although I can't remember what that function was, much less the name of the play. Ollie performed a function in the play, too; perhaps costumes. At least, I would guess costumes, since there wasn't any choreography. I know that she was always dressing up her children in outfits, and having them perform skits, parading around the brownstone, posing for pictures. Bud's sisters, Edna and Olive or "Babe," both became professional dancers and performed on stages throughout New England and into Canada. Babe's daughter still has programs from the performances.
Bud, too, had some stage experience before I met him, but he would never elaborate, remaining aloof and mysterious whenever I questioned him—later I learned that he employed this attitude to hide "untruths" he didn't want to admit. For he, too, was a gifted "storyteller."
But, initially, his parents' theatrical leanings didn't thrill Bud. To prove it, I have a photograph of Bud at 15 months, looking very upset in his white dress with long hair in shoulder length curls. I think he got over it, however, for I have a photograph when he was a few years older in a bellhop's uniform, grinning and winking at the camera, both hands stuck in his pockets, cap at a jaunty angle, striking a wonderfully rakish air, and obviously enjoying every minute of it. The photo is on a thick postcard stock like so many from that era, and on the back is the name of the establishment that took it: "Olivier Studio Brooklyn." But, it wasn't skits or costumes, nor dresses or tresses that made the longest lasting impression on Bud. It was his father's drinking.
Robert Alan drank before he lost his arm, but afterwards he relied more and more on booze to assuage his bitterness and pain—the arm gave him trouble for the rest of his life. Bud never talked about it, but the hurt and anger I saw on his face whenever the subject came up told me all I wanted to know. And I, too, had witnessed enough alcohol-related suffering in my life to understand the toll it could take—I was Irish after all. But, for Bud it seemed to be everywhere, as several of his closest relatives succumbed to the disease.
Bud's tippling grandfather, William, before he died in 1944, became physically emaciated and then mentally deranged due to alcohol. That same year alcohol was directly attributable when Robert Alan underwent a crippling cerebral hemorrhage that left him helpless and bedridden. He would never set foot outside the brownstone again. Adding insult to injury, over the next five years he suffered eight devastating strokes until, mercifully, he succumbed in 1949, another grim example for Bud of the ravages of liquor. And it wasn't just the horror inflicted on his father. Bud also watched what it did to his mother.
Poor Ollie nursed Robert Alan continually during those harrowing years. Ensconced as he was on the fourth floor, she had to make the trip up and down those stairs constantly day after day, year after year, seeing to his every need. It was a long, arduous vigil, especially when you consider that she was in her fifties, and that Mother Mills was no help at her age and with her poor eyesight. Poor Ollie saw so much suffering and death in that house.
In 1927, her grandmother, Catherine Meyer Russlend, passed away in the brownstone—her grandfather, David Russlend, presumably died there, too, although no records exist. Ollie's father, "Pops" Mills, passed in 1930, and then Robert Alan. I'm sure she was exhausted and ready for a break, but Ollie had to start the process all over again and probably even before Robert was in the ground.
Ollie had already been a virtual servant for Mother Mills, who despite her independence and stubbornness, still needed constant attention. She died June 29, 1951, when she was 84, and Ollie took care of her right up until the end. Of course, then, she sold the brownstone and moved into the St. George Hotel, where someone waited on her for a change, and she earned every carefree day she enjoyed there.
It helps to note that, in those days, the St. George was the place to stay in Brooklyn. It was four star and very popular. There were spectacular views of Manhattan; free use of its world famous indoor, all-natural, warm saltwater pool; fine restaurants; and huge dance halls wherein big names of the day, including Leonard Bernstein, played and recorded. Ollie was very happy there, constantly extolling its virtues until the day she died: February 13, 1974.
But, it wasn't just Bud's grandfather and father who died of alcohol related causes; another aunt and uncle succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver. And these are only the ones I know about. Surely, there must've been others as well. Poor Bud, he felt that all the suffering—his father's, grandfather's, relative's, but especially Ollie's—was caused by drinking. It's no wonder he swore it off. It's no wonder he became a staunch teetotaler, an abstinence he religiously followed throughout his life. That is, until a doctor told him, following Bud's first heart attack, to take a shot of whiskey each night as a preventative.
Bud was mortified. After all those years, to be told that a shot of booze would actually be good for him, might actually save his life, was more than he could stand. Completely chagrined, he took it like medicine, straight and quick, refusing to put anything in it to make it more palatable; the irony sticking in his craw.
As if to help compensate for the heartache and havoc alcoholism had visited on his father's side of the family, Bud inherited a strain of lighthearted humor and intelligence from his mother's, although with it came an inclination for gags, tricks, and pranks, or what I called his "mean streak." But, I eventually came to realize that this "streak" also helped him compensate for alcohol's legacy, so I learned to live with it. Better that than a drunk...
Ollie's influence also helped to turn Bud into an avid photographer, always shooting family and friends, including a series of self-portraits. One I particularly like shows him sitting with a self-confident air in a natty outfit that consisted of white pants, shirt and tie, dark blazer and a straw hat, the kind called a boater or skimmer. In the picture, you can see the string he used to trip the shutter running from his hand out of the frame. Yes, he had invented his own remote controlled camera.
Bud was smart. I still keep his Pupil's Record card from P.S. 39 and 77 in Brooklyn. It shows classes, attendance, and grades beginning with Kindergarten in 1917, up to his commencement in 1926. His grades for conduct and work are all A's and B's, with the preponderance being A's. In all those years he was never late, seldom missed a day, tested with an I.Q. of 145, and graduated to Brooklyn Technical High School, which was no mean feat.
Brooklyn Technical was founded in 1922 to answer the call for improved science, engineering and math curriculum following World War I. And only the brightest made it in. They gave a very rigorous entrance exam, and even of those who passed, the school was still highly selective. Bud breezed through.
He had a compelling curiosity that constantly inspired him to learn, to teach himself. As he grew, that talent turned him into a dedicated Boy Scout. He loved the Scouts and stuck with them, eventually achieving the Order of the Arrow, one of Scouting's highest awards. It was that same year, although it's not clear exactly which year that was, that a worldwide Scouting event was scheduled for Germany. Boy Scouts could earn their way through various paper drives. Bud sold copies of the Brooklyn Eagle, and was one of the few who sold enough papers to go to the international conference. He set his heart on the trip—he wanted so much to see more of the world than just New York.
For weeks he planned what he would take, how he would go, who he would see, what he would do, envisioning himself in Europe! He knew, considering the state of his family's finances, that this would be his only chance to go, unless he could afford it himself one day. But, the carpet was yanked out from under him when the event was canceled! I don't know why, whether Nazi tensions—Hitler and Mussolini both disbanded the Scouts in their countries—or what, but it devastated Bud. Stricken with grief and rage, he escaped by another means: he ran away!
In true Scout fashion, Bud survived in the wilderness. He had the money he'd saved for the European trip, he had camping gear from overnight bivouacs and survival outings made while achieving the Order of the Arrow, and he had his anger to keep him warm. He made it as far as Brownsville, Texas, hitching rides, sleeping under bridges, and cooking his own food. When he confided to a person there, however, that he was a runaway, that man, unbeknownst to Bud, contacted the authorities, They, in turn, succeeded in tracking down Robert Alan, who traveled down to Brownsville and corralled his wayward son.
Bud's adventure was over, and the timing was perfect, although I doubt you would have been able to convince him of it.