Getting ready to go out

Throughout the day, she couldn’t shake the out-of-place fellow from her mind. He seemed to be haunting her, not so much through his appearance, as she was never one to focus on looks, but through a general feeling. It wasn’t his eyes, for she didn’t really see them, the room, as most bars, was rather dark. It wasn’t his clothes; she couldn’t even remember what he wore. Perhaps it was his gait, how he came into the room strongly, but then almost immediately paused, not so much to survey the room—she knew that act—but to get acquainted with where he was and what he might be doing there. Then he immediately walked over to the farthest bar stool from her and sat down. From then on she couldn’t see him, and although she was very curious, she resolved to continue the conversation she was having with the banker.

With the stranger still on her mind, she drank her morning coffee, had toast with the blueberry jam that she made with her daughter and read the newspaper. The toast was only mildly satisfying. Before too long she would have two poached eggs and more toast. Without realizing it she thanked God for the man who invented the toaster. Rising, at last, she stretched, washed and put away her breakfast things and began to clean the house. Saturday was always her cleaning day, and she needed to do something to clear her head. Work always satisfied her, so she swept the floor, filled the bucket and got down on her hands and knees to scrub. She scrubbed hard, working herself into a sweat, but try as she might, she could not get the fellow out of her mind.

She decided she wanted strawberries with her eggs, quickly washed and fixed her hair, put on a clean dress, gathered her purse and headed out the door to the produce market down the block. The morning rain still hung in the air, although the sun made an occasional appearance, and she knew that the night would be cool. The streets were relatively quiet, for which she was grateful. She was in no mood for the pleasantries of being neighborly.

By the time she arrived at the market, she was hungrier than she realized and knew that eggs, toast and strawberries would not be enough. She wanted a proper meal, and so she bought a steak, potatoes and green beans. While she was walking home, feeling the every growing damp in the air, she thought for a moment that she saw her fellow from the previous night, but she was mistaken. The walk was entirely different, more diffident, less self-conscious. But this excited her. She definitely had to meet this man.

That evening found her again at the bar, only this time she had no banker to distract her. She nursed her first beer slowly, scouring the room every time the door creaked. She had just ordered her third, when he came in. She knew instantly. He was dressed exactly the same as the night before, but he had more confidence. He was becoming accustomed to the place, and she liked that. When the bartender came up to her with the draft, she waved him away. The bartender knew: She was not yet ready to have her beer provided by someone else.

Kids

"Having kids was the hardest thing I ever did in my life," she told me one afternoon when I was visiting. She was in a mood, and when she was like this, anything could come out of her mouth. The nursing home staff and practically everyone else called it dementia, where she concocted some incredible stories or scenarios that I am pretty sure she believed at the time. My favorite was the one where my older brother married an Indian and either moved into a teepee or lived on the streets of Calcutta. (She had been to the latter on a tour, and occasionally raved with privileged American Christian disbelief at the state of living.) Of course, as my brother was extremely involved in his own complicated life, he hadn’t been to see her for years. Despite my mother’s keeping her regularly updated on the health and activities of all her children, the absence of presence encouraged Grandma’s imagination to create any scenario that suited its fancy in the moment. She also held onto the stories and scenarios like memories, because she would repeat them later, when she was in another of her moods. And when she wasn’t, she would sometimes pause, struggle in her mind for a moment and double-check just what was reality. “Now, your brother’s going to college, right?” she’d inquire, just to be sure.

Her imagination, her stories, her dreams, even her ravings had to be incredible. When I think of her life—all that she lived—her imagination had to be big and broad, if only to achieve equal footing with her real life. It’s one thing for someone who went to high school, married, worked until kids, raised kids, joined a few garden and card clubs, devoted herself to her grandchildren, did a little travel, retired, living a life of quiet, dedicated love, full of graciousness and friendliness—for someone with that life—to dream of going to Europe or worry about an illness. It’s quite another to live the kind of adventure and even danger that my great-grandmother lived. The fears, nightmares, imaginings would need to be bigger, or they couldn’t compete with reality.

I think about this sometimes when I’m watching a play, at the movies or even reading a book. If it’s not as interesting or exciting as my own life, why should I bother? I could just live instead.

However, sometimes in the midst of some of her wildest stories, Grandma would put forth an understanding of life, experience and the human heart that would take my breath away.

In our conversation that afternoon, which included a combination of coherent give-and-take, my own rattling on to keep her interest and several outlandish understandings of her own, she started talking about her children.

She had two—a boy and a girl—with her first husband. While three of her subsequent six husbands also had children, she felt no particular connection with them. As for her own, she had a particularly stressful relationship with them.

Leda and the Swan

I love my great-grandmother's name. Leta. According to my book of names, Leta is a Latin name meaning joy. The name always reminds me of two significant women from Greek mythology: the mortal Leda, and the goddess Leto. Both were beloved of Zeus, king of the gods, and as such, had a difficult time of it.

According to the myth, Leda was queen of Sparta. Zeus was so enamored of her that he transmogrified himself into a swan and ran to her for protection from an eagle. She protected him, and they had a tryst—one night only. She also had sex with her husband that same night and became pregnant by both simultaneously. Leda laid two blue eggs. When the eggs hatched, two sets of children appeared: Helen (of Troy) and Pollux (or Polydeuces) from one egg, and Clytemnestra and Castor from the other. The first set were the children of Zeus (therefore, half-god), and the second set the children of her husband. Each of these children has her/his own tragic story, and these tragic lives so devastated Leda that she killed herself.

Leto’s story also features Zeus. She was the daughter of the pre-Greek gods, called the Titans. This generation was overthrown by their children—Zeus and his siblings. While some of the Titans faded from history, others figured into the various Greek religions. Leto was a revered Titan, because of her children. She was one of her cousin Zeus’s wives, but not his first wife. That role belonged to his sister Hera, the goddess of marriage. (Yes, the Greek goddess of marriage was married to the most philandering of all the gods.) Even as her husband Zeus took other wives, concubines and had dozens of others, Hera held tightly onto their marriage bond. This seems to have been her job, and woe to nearly all the others Zeus liked.

Leto was already pregnant when Zeus and Hera married. This infuriated the Hera: she pushed Leto out of Olympus, and ordered all of the lands in the world to refuse her shelter. Hera even sent the dragon Python to destroy her rival, but Zeus intervened on that one by having the North Wind carry Leto out to sea. She ended up on the floating island of Delos. As it was not yet affixed, it was not required to follow the orders of Hera. Leto could rest there, but not give birth, because Hera had also forbade Ilithyia, the goddess of childbirth, to allow it. The other goddesses stood up for Leto and presented Hera with a beautiful necklace of gold and amber. This and their protestations convinced Hera to relent. Leto gave birth to twins—the gods Artemis and Apollo.

Although she finally gave birth, Leto’s struggles were unfinished. Python was still following its orders to kill her, so she had to take her babies and flee to Lycia. There her fast-growing children (they were gods, after all) with their bows and arrows from their father became expert archers and their mother’s protectors. When he was only four days old, Apollo slew Python. Eventually, Leto returned to Olympus, as the mother of two of the great Greek gods.

As for my great-grandmother Leta, she was neither beloved of a swan no titan, but extraordinary, nonetheless.

Aaron and June

Remember Leta's brother Aaron? He was 12 years older than she. Aaron married Florence Burrel. They had two children, both daughters: Lucille (1915) and June (1917). When June was a child, Leta lived with them for a while. I suspect that this was after Leta’s marriage to Freeman. By that time, Vivian was in high school, and June was an adolescent. During her high school years, Vivian and her brother Dale lived with their father and grandmother.

I had one opportunity to speak with June before she passed away. Briefly (and I know this is confusing), June is my sister Michelle’s husband’s grandmother. From the top, Aaron and Leta are siblings, their children Vivian and June are first cousins, their children Don and Margery are second cousins, their children Michelle and David are third cousins (I think). Michelle is my sister, and David is her husband.

From the time my sister married her grandson, June lived in Arizona, and I lived in northern California. However, there was a time when we were both in Ohio for the Christmas holiday. My father, stepmother and step-grandmother also joined us from their home in Las Vegas. My sister threw a family New Year’s Eve party, where I played Yahtzee with her and my step-grandmother. They were tough Yahtzee players, and as we played, she talked intermittently about her Aunt Leta.

While Leta lived with Aaron and his family, she went out regularly. According to June, she would “get all dolled up, and she was beautiful.” The men would pick her up and off they went. No one ever spoke about what occurred on her dates, but when they “dumped her on the front porch” after a day or two, she looked like she had been “dragged behind the car through the mud.”

Ironically, her relationship with her sister-in-law Florence was rather strong. Florence was a church-going teetotaler, devoted mother and suffering wife. While Aaron was a good provider, he also possessed what I am interpreting is a Scott family wild-streak. Relatively close to where they lived was the Flat Iron Bar known for dancing, fast women and backroom poker. Aaron was a dealer in the backroom and quite a drinker. Leta also spent time in the bar, as she too enjoyed a few beers. At other times, she was Florence’s champion and would charge down to the Flat Iron to urge her brother to return to his highly distressed wife. June noted that brother and sister “used to give each other hell” quite often and yet got along as somewhat kindred spirits.

As for June, she adored her Aunt Leta, who seemed elegant, beautiful, charming, vivacious and strong, quite unlike her mother, and rare for women in the 1930s. While in her own life, Leta was adventurous, she supported Florence’s strict upbringing of her nieces.

Leta's Children

When she married her first husband Ralph Chetister on April 19, 1913, Leta Scott was 19 years old, and he was 21. In fact, they were just those ages, since both were born in April. While I suspect that neither knew she was going to have a baby, she was pregnant. Their first child—my grandmother Vivian Faye—was born on December 29, 1913. They had a second child—Dale Louis—not quite three years later, on October 13, 1916.

Leta & Vivan in 1914

Although she was only about 31 years old when she and Ralph divorced and her second husband Albert Mohr, was only about 40 years old, she had no other children.

This would hypothetically enable her to focus all of her motherly attention on Vivian and Dale. However, there is conflicting information about that.

“She never really knew she had a daughter,” her son-in-law Ed told me. Everyone in the family knew they didn’t really get along. He was never specifically hostile to her, but cool, more a respectful dislike. He recognized that she was his wife’s mother, but when it came to how his wife was treated as a child, he was a bit unforgiving. While Vivian was in high school and for many years after, she seems to have little direct relationship with her mother.

Vivian and Ed married in 1936 during the Depression. At the time, she was living with her father and grandmother. (After divorcing from Leta, Ralph moved in with his parents and lived with them until their deaths.) Ida Chetister, my great-great grandmother, supervised Vivian, and while she did not disapprove of Vivian’s dating Ed, she did nag a bit that her granddaughter was a drain on his meager financial resources. This is what Ed remembered.

Leta & Vivan (ninth grade)

Vivian’s elementary school report cards from second to ninth grade tell a different story. They are all signed by Leta, except one, which was signed by Albert Mohr. This indicates that Leta most likely raised her children until at least sometime during her marriage to Freeman (husband number 3). When Albert Mohr was shot in 1927, her son Dale was a witness and is quoted in the newspaper story of the incident as saying, “You shot Daddy!” So it seems that Vivian and Dale seem to have lived with their mother throughout their childhood, or at least until Vivian was in high school.

Even when they were adults and independent, she seems to have spent quite a bit of time with them, particularly Vivian. During World War II, while Ed was employed by the military and gone and their son Don was a very small child, Vivian and Don lived with Leta and her husband Bob Fields. In fact, one of Don’s earliest memories, at about age four, is that every Friday night, they would go to a local bar for a few beers, and he was able to drink all the root beer he wanted.

So why would Ed say that Leta never really knew she had a daughter?

Seven husbands - #2

Last time, we made it to husband number four. To recap, Leta Scott married Ralph Chetister on April 13, 1913. They had two children, Vivian (1913) and Dale (1916). They divorced in 1924 or 1925. She almost immediately married Albert Mohr, and stayed married until he died in June of 1927. By January of 1928, she was married to a fellow with the last name of Freeman.

Now, remember I am still in the midst of my research, and I still have a gap in my history right here. As of right now, I do not know how long she was married to Freeman or how that marriage ended. I do know that during World War II, she was married to Robert Fields (husband number four) and lived in the Point Place District of Toledo, Ohio.

Leta’s daughter Vivian married Edward Metzker on September 5, 1936. Their son Donald (my father) was born on January 17, 1939, and shortly thereafter, Ed put his radio technology expertise to work for the war effort. While he was in various military locations throughout the country and world, Vivian and Don lived with Leta and her husband Robert Fields. He died of a heart attack on June 19, 1946.

The next and fifth husband information comes from Leta’s Bible. After my grandfather Edward died, this Bible became mine and has become a source of some valuable and curious information about Leta. I suspect that she acquired this Bible around 1948, because the additional fill-in-the-blank sheet about marriage lists the wedding of Leta M. Fields to Claud N. Bassett. According to my father, this marriage only lasted a few years, and they divorced.

After Claud, the next husband of record is Richard Eckman. He is husband number six. I don’t yet have a marriage date for Leta and Richard, but this was to be her last marriage. Richard died on December 27, 1963, the day before I was born. He had a heart attack.

There is a mysterious husband number seven, and actually, I don’t yet know his place. But he makes for a fascinating story. Edward told me the story, and as I remember it, it went like this:

“One day your grandmother [Vivian] got a call. Her mother wanted us to come and get her. She had married a farmer with 12 children and wanted out. That marriage lasted a week.” This currently mysterious farmer would be husband number seven.

Seven husbands - #1

Leta and her first husband Ralph Chetister were both born on the same day—April 14, but he was two years older. They married on April 19, 1913. He was 21, and she was 19. They had two children. First was Vivian—my grandmother—born on December 29, 1913.

Wait a minute!

Yes, I counted on my fingers, too: May=1, June=2, July=3 and so on. December is only eight months from April. First children are usually late (yes, I know—not always), but in all likelihood, Leta was already going to have her first baby before she married Ralph. As one of my friend says, “the first baby can come any time; the second takes nine months.” In any case, I doubt if Leta knew she was pregnant, and I doubt even more that this was a marriage of necessity because of it. I suspect it was more a case of they couldn’t wait.

The second child, lest we forget, was Dale who was born on October 13, 1916. These were Leta’s only two children, even though she was only about 31 when she divorced from Ralph.

I’m not sure that as a small child, I understood that Grandma Eckman and Grandpa Chetister were once related, even though they were the parents of my grandmother. After all, they didn’t have the same name. Although I remember him vaguely, I don’t recall them every being at the same place at the same time, like at a birthday party or for Christmas. As he died in 1971 when I was only seven, I barely remember Grandpa Chetister—Ralph—at all, just some vague visits to his house. And this enormous heavy wood desk that we acquired after he died.

So far I have not uncovered exactly when Leta and Ralph divorced, or very many of her other marriage and divorce dates. I am still working on them. However, I have put together a loose time-line based on what I know so far.

Per Vivian’s report cards, Leta and Ralph were still married during at least part of the 1924-1925 school year (fifth grade), but she was married to someone else by the time Vivian was in sixth grade (1925-26).

Husband number two was Albert Mohr. Still using report card signatures as a guide, Leta and Albert were married from sometime in 1925 until June 5, 1927.  On that day, Albert Mohr was killed in a drive-by shooting while standing on the front porch of their home.

Husband number three was a fellow whose last name was Freeman. Again, using Vivian’s report cards as a guide, this marriage began between October 1927 and January 1928. This source ends at the end of Vivian’s ninth grade year, as there are no more report cards, so Leta was still married to Mr. Freeman” through June 1929, at least.

End of Part #1. Stay tuned. 

Leta's Origins

Leta Marie Scott was born on April 14, 1894 to David Scott (1855) and Julia A. Snyder—or Snider (1858)—who were married on January 1, 1878. They were farmers in Ohio. Leta was the youngest of four “surviving” children.

I use the word “surviving” speculatively, because of what I’ve learned about David and Julia’s family. The beginning seems normal enough: Julia was 20 years old and David about 23 when they married. Two years later, Julia gave birth to Stephen (1879). But get this: Leta was born fourteen years after Stephen, and there were only two other children in between—Aaron (1882) and Louise (1890). While many married couples space their children, they usually only put two to four years between, especially when the parents are the same for all the children. And the Scotts were farmers, which generally meant they needed as many children on the farm as possible to help do the work. However, the Scott family had one rather large gap.

Here is where the speculation comes in. First, Stephen and Aaron were born three years apart. This constitutes some planning, boys being so important to farmers and of course the patriarchal American culture. But then there was the gap of eight years before Louise was born.

Did the satisfaction David, Julia or both felt with each other lapse for any number of reasons (family illness, a simple mismatch or even infidelity), and then return, making them feel like newlyweds again? Maybe they were terribly poor and another mouth to feed would have been one too many (although being poor has never been a child preventative). Did Julia really want a daughter and work to make it happen? Were their sons not turning out as they had hoped, and they wanted to try for better?

Perhaps Julia was pregnant several other times, but miscarried or gave birth to children that did not survive. This was not uncommon. The reason I wonder this one, particularly, is because my own grandmother—Leta’s daughter Vivian—had several birth complications between the birth of my father and his much younger siblings (12 and 14 years later, respectively).

Interestingly, all four of the Scott children were all in the spring. In any case, by the time Leta was five, her brother Stephen would have been all grown up and most likely on his own, and Aaron would have had one foot out the door. There are nearly two generations here (just as in my dad’s family). This would have impacted her life in some way, especially if her family circumstances were different. Or maybe it didn’t.

Seven times married is just the beginning

Throughout my childhood and into my adulthood, she was just “Grandma Eckman.” Her first name was Leta, which I always liked, but for the most part, she was just our great-grandmother—our old great-grandmother. I mean, just the words “great-grandmother” carry connotations of a wrinkled face and a sharp voice—someone who lived alone and needed to be visited and perhaps taken care of some. (My whole notion of great-anything would change when my stepsister’s eldest daughter became a mother, and I went from Uncle Jerry to Great-Uncle Jerry before turning 40.) Still, she was, Grandma Eckman, a widowed old lady that we visited first in her duplex in East Toledo, and then in the senior home—or “Old Folks’ Home,” as we called it—after she moved there. She spent holidays with us and as long as she felt comfortable, attended weddings, birthdays and special events.

Leta Eckman - 1972

She was my dad’s mother’s mother.

When Grandma Eckman died in 1985, I was a junior in college. She was just two days shy of her 91^st birthday. Although I was a little sad that she didn’t live to 91, she lived a long time and was alert and mobile for most of her last years. I wouldn’t learn until later that not only did she live a long life, but she also lived a scandalous life.

Frankly, I had no idea. I knew that she was not married to the man she had her only two kids with—my Great-Grandpa Chetister. He was her first husband and died when I was seven years old. Naturally, as a child, I never gave this unusual situation any thought. After all, my brother, sister and I had all these wonderful people around to love and take care of us—parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and great-grandparents. That was good enough for me at the time.

It wasn’t until after Grandma Eckman’s death that I started to learn more about her—well, her life before I was born, that is. I remember specifically when her son-in-law—my grandfather Ed—told me.

I realize that names and relationships can be confusing and apologize for that. But here I go, briefly. Grandma Eckman’s daughter Vivian married Ed. Their oldest son is my dad—Don. In 1976, Vivian died unexpectedly from a blood clot.

So there we were in the kitchen, my grandpa Ed and I, a few years after her death. I don’t remember how we got on topic, but I can still hear his voice quite clearly: “Your great-grandmother was married seven times.”

WHAT?!?

He had been going through some papers and found a reference to her that he wanted to share. You see, not only was she married seven times, but also one of her husbands was murdered. There was an article from the paper at the time that shared how Albert Mohr was shot on the afternoon of July 5, 1927, while he was standing on the front porch of his house while his stepson was playing nearby. From that moment on, I decided that I would one day I would put this amazing woman’s life together. Being married seven times is scandalous enough, but to have a husband murdered meant that she had lived through some remarkable experiences. And I wanted to know more. At the time I was in graduate school and unable to do much more than hold this information close and my curiosity in check. Until now.