Dec. 16, 2007 will be the 55th anniversary of the death of my grandfather, Clyde Cecil Spires.
On that date in 1952, I was one year, 10 months and 10 days old. I assume that Grandpa Spires had seen and considered me, his 21st grandchild and 17th grandson, at some point during that short time, although my parents never said much about what he thought of me. Probably, at that point, I was just another in a long line of Spires boys, although I WAS the first one that my dad, Clyde's third child and second son, had produced.
In any case, I certainly have no memories of Clyde Spires, who, with another man, died from carbon monoxide poisoning one cold evening while sitting and having a drink in a car with a malfunctioning heater. Ironically, a few months after their accidental deaths, a man who purchased the deadly vehicle also died in the same way.
Clyde was born April 23, 1890 at Glen Roy, an unincorporated village in rural Jackson County, Ohio, halfway between Wellston and Coalton. He was one of five brothers -- little boys dominate the genders in the Spires clan -- four of whom survived to adulthood. His parents were Joseph and Nettie Spires. Joseph, a coal miner and lay preacher, was noted for founding "Uncle Joe's Chapel," a small fundamentalist church that still stands today. Nettie, supposedly related to the Harrison family which occupied the White House twice, was deaf and used an ear trumpet, her hearing impediment caused, according to family tradition, by abuse as a child.
Clyde, a fifth generation American descended from Revolutionary War and Civil War veterans, grew up, like most children of Appalachia during that era, in poverty and learned about hard work and hard times early in life. He was 19 years old when he married the slim and angular Sadie Hartley, who was 17, in 1909.
Clyde and Sadie lived hard-working lives, but there must have been some kind of love between them: They produced six children, who, by Sadie's death on Jan. 6, 1925, included Adrian, age 13; Mildred, 12; Clifton, 9; Ralph, 7; Susan, 5; and Roy, 3.
There would have been a seventh child, but Sadie, overwhelmed by the poverty of their lives and the stress of caring for all of those children, made a decision to, with the assistance of a local midwife, to attempt a self-induced abortion with what family tradition says was either "a penny pencil or a buttonhook." However she did it, it was a fatal choice for her and the baby, as she died, in horrible pain from peritonitis, leaving Clyde a widower and responsible for six children at age 35.
Sadie must have been a strong personality --- her son, Clifton, who by his own account and those of some of his siblings, may have been her favorite --- recalls getting in trouble with his father, who was going to punish him in the traditional manner by means of a hickory switch or a belt. Clifton ran to his mother and hid behind her long dress while she pulled out a pistol and pointed it at her husband, saying, "If you lay a hand on this child, it will be the last thing you do, mister." Clyde backed off.
Clyde, made strong from years of back-breaking work in the coal mines, was handsome in a dark, fierce way, the way many Appalachian men are. His hair was jet black, possibly from a grandmother with a Native American heritage, but his eyes were bright blue --- two traits passed on to most of his second and third generation descendants. Photographs show him with thick, slanted eyebrows, fine cheekbones and a humorless face --- something that contrasts with his own father, who, in his later years after he found religion, had a genial look of a man at peace with the world.
Clyde married quickly after Sadie's death --- what was he to do with all those kids? His second bride was Wilma Bowen, a slatternly woman with a son of her own, born out of wedlock. Wilma was a stark contrast to Sadie: She was short and squat and performed her household duties without much imagination or gentility, as compared to Sadie, who was well-read for her times and strong-minded enough to stand up to her husband with a gun in her hand.
Clyde's children, grieving for the strong presence of their departed mother, resented William and left home as soon as they could. Adrian, crippled by a fall out a second story window while sleepwalking, left school early and found work where he could. Mildred escaped by marrying a widower with a young daughter the same age as her youngest brother, Roy, who later married Mildred's stepdaughter.
Clifton, my father, graduated from the eighth grade and then basically ran away from home, even though all agreed that he was the sibling who might have gone on to high school and maybe even college to become a teacher, which was the primary option for educated Appalachian children in those days. Instead, he ran off to neighboring Vinton County, where he hired on as a farmhand for Mrs. Emma Harder, an upright woman whose husband, given to wandering across the country on various business schemes and adventures, would leave her to run their 100-acre farm and raise their eight children. One of these children was a daughter, Minnie, the same age as the teen-age farmhand Clifton. Minnie and Clifton became adults together in the Harder farmhouse and eventually married, Clifton finally finding the replacement for his late mother in Mrs. Harder.
Clyde and Wilma lived together through the Depression and despite the increasing estrangement from his children. The younger children had a better time of it, probably because their memories of their real mother were fewer --- Susan and Roy actually went to high school, and Susan graduated.
Clyde was a tough man throughout his life and lived and drank hard as his life progressed. My father, Clifton, recalled his father with respect but seldom with affection --- I remember him saying, "He knocked my brother Ralph across the room on his wedding day because Ralph talked back to him."
But Clyde's six children all turned out all right. None of them ever divorced and all worked hard and were religious throughout most of their lives. They valued education and this was reflected in the lives of Clyde's grandchildren, who all finished high school and some went to college. Sadie's influence had taken root early in all of them and the awful Wilma was simply tolerated and worked around.
My father said, "I supposed Dad must have loved Wilma, in a way. But the main thing was that he needed someone to help him raise the children. And she was the best he could do --- who else would have wanted the responsibility?"
I visit my paternal grandparents' graves often. Clyde and Sadie are buried next to Joseph and Nettie, with Wilma nearby. I never knew Sadie, who died 26 years before I was born, and my life only overlapped Clyde's by the aforementioned one year, 10 months and 10 days --- not much time for bonding there. But I talk to them when I visit their graves at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Jackson County, Ohio, and ask them what they think of me. I imagine Sadie being proud of me for finally being strong enough to live my life the way I was created to live it. And I picture Clyde as being perplexed, but maybe seeing that I have inherited some of his toughness inside.
Clyde was survived by his father, my Great-Grandpa Joe Spires, by two years. I DO remember him --- an old elderly man in a back bedroom, cared for by his daughter-in-law, Wilma, a dumpy, squat woman just barely deferred to by her own willowy and intelligent daughter-in-law, Minnie. I remember wandering into his bedroom once --- I must have been about three and seeing an old man lying there, his eyes blue and twinkling as he smiled at me. I reacted shyly, as kids will, and ran out. But I am grateful for that encounter, because the memory of those blue eyes --- the ones Grandpa Joe passed on to Clyde, who passed them on to Clifton, who passed them on to me --- looks back at me every time I see myself in the mirror in the morning.
On that date in 1952, I was one year, 10 months and 10 days old. I assume that Grandpa Spires had seen and considered me, his 21st grandchild and 17th grandson, at some point during that short time, although my parents never said much about what he thought of me. Probably, at that point, I was just another in a long line of Spires boys, although I WAS the first one that my dad, Clyde's third child and second son, had produced.
In any case, I certainly have no memories of Clyde Spires, who, with another man, died from carbon monoxide poisoning one cold evening while sitting and having a drink in a car with a malfunctioning heater. Ironically, a few months after their accidental deaths, a man who purchased the deadly vehicle also died in the same way.
Clyde was born April 23, 1890 at Glen Roy, an unincorporated village in rural Jackson County, Ohio, halfway between Wellston and Coalton. He was one of five brothers -- little boys dominate the genders in the Spires clan -- four of whom survived to adulthood. His parents were Joseph and Nettie Spires. Joseph, a coal miner and lay preacher, was noted for founding "Uncle Joe's Chapel," a small fundamentalist church that still stands today. Nettie, supposedly related to the Harrison family which occupied the White House twice, was deaf and used an ear trumpet, her hearing impediment caused, according to family tradition, by abuse as a child.
Clyde, a fifth generation American descended from Revolutionary War and Civil War veterans, grew up, like most children of Appalachia during that era, in poverty and learned about hard work and hard times early in life. He was 19 years old when he married the slim and angular Sadie Hartley, who was 17, in 1909.
Clyde and Sadie lived hard-working lives, but there must have been some kind of love between them: They produced six children, who, by Sadie's death on Jan. 6, 1925, included Adrian, age 13; Mildred, 12; Clifton, 9; Ralph, 7; Susan, 5; and Roy, 3.
There would have been a seventh child, but Sadie, overwhelmed by the poverty of their lives and the stress of caring for all of those children, made a decision to, with the assistance of a local midwife, to attempt a self-induced abortion with what family tradition says was either "a penny pencil or a buttonhook." However she did it, it was a fatal choice for her and the baby, as she died, in horrible pain from peritonitis, leaving Clyde a widower and responsible for six children at age 35.
Sadie must have been a strong personality --- her son, Clifton, who by his own account and those of some of his siblings, may have been her favorite --- recalls getting in trouble with his father, who was going to punish him in the traditional manner by means of a hickory switch or a belt. Clifton ran to his mother and hid behind her long dress while she pulled out a pistol and pointed it at her husband, saying, "If you lay a hand on this child, it will be the last thing you do, mister." Clyde backed off.
Clyde, made strong from years of back-breaking work in the coal mines, was handsome in a dark, fierce way, the way many Appalachian men are. His hair was jet black, possibly from a grandmother with a Native American heritage, but his eyes were bright blue --- two traits passed on to most of his second and third generation descendants. Photographs show him with thick, slanted eyebrows, fine cheekbones and a humorless face --- something that contrasts with his own father, who, in his later years after he found religion, had a genial look of a man at peace with the world.
Clyde married quickly after Sadie's death --- what was he to do with all those kids? His second bride was Wilma Bowen, a slatternly woman with a son of her own, born out of wedlock. Wilma was a stark contrast to Sadie: She was short and squat and performed her household duties without much imagination or gentility, as compared to Sadie, who was well-read for her times and strong-minded enough to stand up to her husband with a gun in her hand.
Clyde's children, grieving for the strong presence of their departed mother, resented William and left home as soon as they could. Adrian, crippled by a fall out a second story window while sleepwalking, left school early and found work where he could. Mildred escaped by marrying a widower with a young daughter the same age as her youngest brother, Roy, who later married Mildred's stepdaughter.
Clifton, my father, graduated from the eighth grade and then basically ran away from home, even though all agreed that he was the sibling who might have gone on to high school and maybe even college to become a teacher, which was the primary option for educated Appalachian children in those days. Instead, he ran off to neighboring Vinton County, where he hired on as a farmhand for Mrs. Emma Harder, an upright woman whose husband, given to wandering across the country on various business schemes and adventures, would leave her to run their 100-acre farm and raise their eight children. One of these children was a daughter, Minnie, the same age as the teen-age farmhand Clifton. Minnie and Clifton became adults together in the Harder farmhouse and eventually married, Clifton finally finding the replacement for his late mother in Mrs. Harder.
Clyde and Wilma lived together through the Depression and despite the increasing estrangement from his children. The younger children had a better time of it, probably because their memories of their real mother were fewer --- Susan and Roy actually went to high school, and Susan graduated.
Clyde was a tough man throughout his life and lived and drank hard as his life progressed. My father, Clifton, recalled his father with respect but seldom with affection --- I remember him saying, "He knocked my brother Ralph across the room on his wedding day because Ralph talked back to him."
But Clyde's six children all turned out all right. None of them ever divorced and all worked hard and were religious throughout most of their lives. They valued education and this was reflected in the lives of Clyde's grandchildren, who all finished high school and some went to college. Sadie's influence had taken root early in all of them and the awful Wilma was simply tolerated and worked around.
My father said, "I supposed Dad must have loved Wilma, in a way. But the main thing was that he needed someone to help him raise the children. And she was the best he could do --- who else would have wanted the responsibility?"
I visit my paternal grandparents' graves often. Clyde and Sadie are buried next to Joseph and Nettie, with Wilma nearby. I never knew Sadie, who died 26 years before I was born, and my life only overlapped Clyde's by the aforementioned one year, 10 months and 10 days --- not much time for bonding there. But I talk to them when I visit their graves at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Jackson County, Ohio, and ask them what they think of me. I imagine Sadie being proud of me for finally being strong enough to live my life the way I was created to live it. And I picture Clyde as being perplexed, but maybe seeing that I have inherited some of his toughness inside.
Clyde was survived by his father, my Great-Grandpa Joe Spires, by two years. I DO remember him --- an old elderly man in a back bedroom, cared for by his daughter-in-law, Wilma, a dumpy, squat woman just barely deferred to by her own willowy and intelligent daughter-in-law, Minnie. I remember wandering into his bedroom once --- I must have been about three and seeing an old man lying there, his eyes blue and twinkling as he smiled at me. I reacted shyly, as kids will, and ran out. But I am grateful for that encounter, because the memory of those blue eyes --- the ones Grandpa Joe passed on to Clyde, who passed them on to Clifton, who passed them on to me --- looks back at me every time I see myself in the mirror in the morning.
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