STARDUST IN THE GARDENS

                (As always, unapologetically unedited.)             

Santa Clara University's The Redwood - 1976 page 217

"In-yun" (Korean) suggests the interactions of people are due to their interactions in past lives.

(Authors note: After reading the account of an interaction between a dear friend of mine and the subject of this post on a Hawaiian golf course I realize that I may have given the said subject too much credit - nevertheless, we are all human - all too human. You be the judge. ~)

                                                                 *****

Okay. We all know I spend way too much time playing the old Bacon game of six degrees. Chalk it up to the leftover indulgences of my precocious adolescence, an utterly benign sense of nostalgia, or my general sense of being a nosy mother-fucker. Whatever works best for you. What can I say? I get curious. I have those damn fading images that pass through my brain which say, "What about this? What about that?" or the worst one, What ever happened to...?"  These images generally eat at me until I investigate them as much as possible or at least until I give the Hell up and go back to watching a decent soap opera on the telly.

And no, I don't have too much time on my hands so you can forget that notion. Nice try.

You should know me well enough by now to know that I enjoy the interconnectedness of things when it comes to life. It's the existential genealogist in me who's always trying to see how one person might connect to another. It's the old "what lies beneath" the surface that keeps me Googling and moving forward to try and blow a little bit more dust off the old ashes pile. And hey, I like to investigate everything within reason. There are though, a few things that I would rather avoid looking into, say for example like finding a connection to those cheesy Personal Injury lawyers you see hawking their bellicose wares on television, or worse, any connection to (in my humble opinion) useless reality TV. (Puke.)

But man I gotta tell you - I did not see this one coming. How did I not know that I was gonna eat those words?

The Redwood 1976 - page 204

It all started with Chris. Christopher Brian Nance. I'd thought about him - no more so in that I had remembered him for years. I mean he wasn't really a friend of mine, but we certainly weren't enemies. In fact, we started out together as Poli Sci majors/comrades during the turbulent early 1970s - that is until I let Plato and Aristotle steal my heart and shed any hankerings of wanting to re-hash the Cuban Missile Crisis for the umpteenth time. Chris felt differently though. He hung in there with Poli Sci, and in the end, I truly believe it worked for him. He was in some ways a natural diplomat.

We did know each other. Yet we moved in different crowds. However, there was little more than that "collegiate acknowledgment" that passed between us. You know that look of passing someone in those hallowed university halls or in the Mission Gardens. It was the one that said, I wish I had more time. Catch you in the next lifetime?  Then there was a smile exchanged and we moved on. We were too different. It was all good. It was In-yun karma if you will. It just wasn't time.       

So yeah, I thought about Christopher Nance. I saw his rather meteoric rise during our college years. He was no dummy and he was ambitious but in a good way. He was in most ways a quality individual. He was ambitious in an "I don't want to be like my ancestors" sort of way, and moved in a way that said, "I want to make the world a better place." He got there too - and yes he made his share of mistakes even during our college years but he knew what it took to succeed. Don't get me wrong. He was no Gavin Newsom or Shemar Moore  - although like those other of our alums he certainly might have given either one of them a run for their money. He had many of the talents of each. 

He just played the game differently, though make no mistake - he was good at what he did and he worked hard at it. He went on to become a solid journalist and television news weatherman for a couple of large California television stations. He worked in this field for years. It was great to watch him succeed from the vantage point of my humble periphery. After all, we didn't really know each other. We were only "Poli Sci" comrades-in-arms passing under the wisteria of those Mission Gardens from back in the day.  

And yes, maybe he had a somewhat controversial career (and life) at times. He was after all a human being. However, there is absolutely no way I am going to spend any time judging Chris. Like all of us, there were many sides to Chris Nance - not to mention the fact that he was battling something most of us never have to and was just plain old deathly sick.

     You may be able to tap the image to make it larger...                      

But like everyone else I seem to look for these days, I found out that Christopher Nance (by the time I got really serious enough to look for him) was indeed, very much quite dead. Chris Nance died from what appears to be causes related to sickle-cell anemia. My understanding is that he was one of the oldest and longest survivors of the disease.                    

So I looked a little further...

And then the news blasts started coming through the Google ether. What the heck was going on in Ye Olde News Feed? What is all this??? Christopher Nance, my old Poli-Sci comrade-in-arms from freshman year had a damn love child? (Some guys have all the luck) Some young lady named "Noella" was his daughter and she was/is all over the internet? Say what???  

The name certainly didn't mean anything to me. 

Who the Hell is Noella?          

         

What? Wait a minute. I don't watch that "stuff." (Not exactly a fan of that genre.)

Are you kidding me???

So my poli/sci comrade-in-arms from back in the day was the father of an illegitimate girl who is now a reality TV star?

Dang, who scripted this shit?                          

Well, it sure looks that way. The details are a little vague but Chris was a little "randy" back in the day and fathered "Noelle Nance" in the early eighties. Wild huh? From what I read she didn't (couldn't or wouldn't) connect with her father Chris until a few short years before his death. I guess these days the literally lovely and allegedly talented Noella is a big deal with followers and influencers and other such malarkey and her full name is now "Noella Nance Bergener."             

                      Noella bottom right

As I sat down to digest all of this information about Chris and his daughter Noella I saw that Noella's now former husband is a man who they referred to in several posts as "Sweet James." For some reason that sounded really familiar to me. It was then that I remembered the other thing that I really have no interest in researching much or in finding a connection to:     

Yeah, that's right. "Effervescent" personal injury lawyers. You know, the type we get inundated with on television sometimes one right after another. How annoying is that? I

 suppose they are a good thing if you ever (God forbid) need one but Lord oftentimes their advertisements feel like some sort of silly doggerel.

So Chris's illegitimate daughter Noella, the reality TV star from The Real Housewives of Orange County, married a famous billboard attorney and TV "ambulance chaser" (I use the term with all due respect) named "Sweet James" ? 

What the flock?

Okay, I'm not gonna go down that road insofar as all of this seems really damn weird. I mean I liked Chris well enough and can't possibly know what it must have been like to walk in his shoes - or in Noella's stilettos - or to gaze out at motorists from the eyes of his son-in-law's placard on a passing bus. 

Nah, but you know me. I wanted to know if other than all of this hoopla - if Chris and I didn't have some other connection - you know, an ancestral one that might lie just beneath the surface. I'm a big believer in that we all come and go in and out of each other's life with or for a reason. I don't think that's just because "this tale" is about me and The Weatherman that things would be any different.

I mean this story just seems like one wild ride, right?

Yet try as I might I have found no genealogical connection to Chris. And yes, I know he's Black, but I thought maybe just maybe somewhere back in my perhaps large and more disreputable root pile of possible slave-holding ilk I might see something we shared ancestrally in common - but so far if there is - I cannot find it.

So I decided to broaden my search. The rules of ancestral Karma don't necessarily exclude others in my "interconnectedness" to Chris. 

Looking at Noella's mother hasn't gotten me very far either. If a connection is there it's still shrouded in mystery. Then I realized I had better check that ambulance chaser. Could the ancestral connection that I was looking for - the one that somehow tied me to Chris be here?

And there it was. "Sweet James" the father of Chris's grandchildren grew up LDS. While I don't always 'ken' or understand their tenets and ways, the Mormon folk really do great crowd-sourcing. I mean even if they're wrong the Mormons usually give you a proper avenue to research for an ancestral connection. And there mine was to "Sweet James."

Now I'm not going to bore you with the genealogy of it all. I will only say that (according to our Mormon friends) "Sweet James" is a distant cousin of my mother's making Chris "The Weatherman's" grandchildren cousins of my own grandkids.

Isn't it weird how all that stuff works from two people just passing each other to say hello in the Mission Gardens of some California school?

 I'm not gonna say too much more about Chris Nance. I'm sure you may have a lot of mixed feelings about him and maybe even Noella and "Sweet James." But consider only that Chris left behind a whole series of children's books and I think you will get a sense of the kind of good dude he truly was.

I mean how utterly flocking cool is that?

Rest in peace, Chris Nance. Catch you on the flip side.

                                    

THE ELECTION

    

                My grandparents Kitty and Jack 

As always unapologetically unedited.

Some of this is fact some of it is speculation.

I have always been curious about "the why" or "the how" of the people who pass through our lives. I'm not referring to your mother or father, or any close friend or relation. What I'm referring to are the people who affect our lives in even the smallest way; ways that amount to something both mundane and pivotal. I like to think of them as those cursory folks who somehow connect all of life's events together. They may not be the fabric of our lives but they certainly helped to sew it together. Most often, these people go without mention in our tales or remembrances. They get lost in the telling of any family history and become fragments of someone else's time and memory. 

This strata of influence in our lives also held true for our ancestors. It wasn't that they (our ancestors) didn't remember certain people or anyone in particular, or that they necessarily excluded them from their recollection any more than you or I might. It's only that as "the mention of anyone" begins to fade from the family's collective consciousness so do their names. Their names fade alongside who they were, where they came from, and perhaps most importantly, how they came to be known (by any of us) at all. 

Was it a friendship? Was it a business relationship? Did society form that friendship or association?

This became more apparent to me the other day when I was asked to verify where in 1934 my grandparents, Howard Jack Record and Katheryn Ogle Record were married. I was pretty certain that they'd been married in the bucolic town of Paola, Kansas, but I wanted to re-verify my facts. (It's always important to re-verify genealogical facts as memory tends to skew what we might otherwise believe to be true.) In this case, memory served me well and the place of my grandparents' wedding was where I'd thought it to be. 

    

However, as I began to look over the record of their marriage I saw the name of one of those people who had passed through their lives. It was the name of someone who no doubt was remembered by them, but a name that had long ago slipped into the family's past collective consciousness. It was the name of the man who married them.

                               

      Rev. Honorable David Cole Doten 1906-1978

           

His name was listed in the newspaper announcement of their marriage and on the marriage record as the "Rev. David C. Doten." I was curious just who the heck "D.C. Doten" was. How was it that my grandparents had known him? Was it only a church affiliation?

 There were a few things I did not expect to find.

I naturally assumed that the verbiage in the wedding announcement that is that "the ceremony was performed at the Christian parsonage" meant that they were married by the church's minister at his residence, and further, that Rev. Doten was in fact that the church's minister. And while this appears to be true on the surface, after researching The Good Reverend there seems to be a lot more to his story. Some of what I'm about to put forth is speculation and requires more research, all of it is certainly curious. 

                  

Let's start with my grandmother, the former Katheryn Ogle. As evidenced by her mother's obituary (image below) and that of her own, Mrs. Daniel S. Ogle, came from a long line of Presbyterians. 

 Does a "Christian parsonage" sound like the home of a Presbyterian? Not so much...

            

Now let's consider my grandfather, Howard "Jack" Record. His parents were "Christian" in a more non-denominational sense, like say, "First Christian Church" folks. It sounds like the term "Christian parsonage" fits better with that sort of religious sect than with the more staid Presbyterians of my great-grandmother Mrs. Ogle.

If so, this would imply that "The Reverend D. C. Doten" was perhaps an acquaintance of my Grandfather's and not of my Grandmother's. 

Yet not so fast...It wasn't like my grandfather hadn't ever spent time with "The Presbyterians." Check out this long ago Christmas performance - at a Presbyterian Church containing the names of nearly all his siblings:

(I have tried to enlarge the image as best as I can. You may be able to tap on it twice on your device to enlarge it or maybe view it on the link below:)

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-greeley-advocate/145597978/

                

    However, this post in the Greeley, Kansas newspaper I found to be the most telling or interesting of all:

                          

I suppose it could be said that my Grandfather had simply taken a job working to sell tickets to the Chautauqua. It would have been entirely possible. However, consider that the 1926 article above regarding a 17-year-old man called JACK RECORD indicates someone looking forward to social changes, entertainment, and education - and was someone who was involved in putting on the event itself. Here is a sample image of a "Chautauqua event:"

                 

 My Grandfather looks to have had quite the social conscience.

However, as usual, I digress.    

 

How did all this come to pass? And again, just who the heck was D.C. Doten?

We know that "D.C" Doten was "David C. Doten" by his signature on my grandparents' marriage record. So it seemed easy enough to look for a David C. Doten in Paola, Kansas, in 1934, right? However, easy wasn't necessarily the case. I was surprised to find out what did. 

I have shared with some of you already that David C. Doten became Paola's Democratic Representative for Miami County. From what I can tell, he was Miami County's state representative from 1934-1936. But for some reason, I have had difficulty locating him as actually having "lived in" Paola or Miami County. While I don't doubt that he lived in Paola, I suspect he lived there only briefly - that perhaps things didn't work out too well there for him. Outside of his brief and popular career as Miami County's Democratic Representative in the state legislature, and as mentioned in the newspapers of the day, I could not find him listed in the city directories. In fact, the only quasi-official record of him in Paola beyond the newspaper accounts is in the 1940 census where his ex-wife states she lived in (you guessed it) Paola, Kansas in 1935.

Now like you, I don't doubt that Davis C. Doten lived in Paola.

I can't doubt that he was their state representative.

But just for how long?

Not very. What caused him to leave?

He probably pissed off one heck of a lot of...you guessed it...Presbyterians??

Or worse - Republicans.

In point of fact, the first place I find David  C. Doten living is here - in Kansas City, Missouri:

  

The year is 1929 and the directories show him living in Kansas City through 1932 - but by 1932 he is listed as a bookkeeper for the KC Chamber of Commerce and not as an assistant pastor any longer. If I had to guess, getting a congregation was a tough job and he had to look elsewhere. Maybe he heard from a young transport driver about a church down in Paola looking for a pastor...

You see, look who else lived in Kansas City about the same time...

 

The question I have is: At some point (and I know the years here may be a bit vague) just how close did my grandparents - especially my grandfather - live to The Good Reverend?

Was he my grandfather's friend?

So I did what we all do. I Google it. It looks like they lived within walking distance of each other. It looks like they probably lived (at least at one time) in the same neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri.

                          

BUT for now, put on hold "the whys and hows" of how HOWARD JACK RECORD came to know the Reverend David C. Doten. (One thing's for certain though - The Good Reverend doesn't look to have been a friend of Mrs. Ogle or the Presbyterians.)

Let's just look back and see just who the heck was old D.C. Doten?  I think the clip below tells a lot about him - and certainly in an unusual way.

                 

David C. Doten looks to have been damn active in the Kansas Democratic Party. 

             

                      

                           

  From what I have pieced together, Miami County (District 2) State Legislator David Cole Doten grew in his political aspirations. In 1936, he ran for Congress on the Democratic ticket - and lost to his Republican opponent. 

Hey, it had to happen, right? 

Good guys often finish last - and I have no reason to believe that this champion of 3.2 beer was anything but a good guy. (Oddly enough, he was advocating for 3.2 beer as a "temperance measure!")

            

          David C. Doten left Paola shortly after his loss in the 1936 election. He also appears to have left his religious calling behind along with his political aspirations. He bounced around a bit, but by 1938 he is at the University of Tennessee where he was a thirty-two-year-old law student. It's unclear if he and his wife Amy Martin Doten have separated, but by 1941 he is living in Arkansas and suing her for divorce. At this point, and with his new legal diploma, he joins the military to fight in the war efforts of WWII.

There isn't a lot more to say here about David C. Doten - the man who married my grandparents. He did go on to be a federal Bankruptcy judge and an advocate for consumer rights about credit cards. Oddly enough, his son by the same name was prominent in the Mayflower Society as David C. Doten has proven Mayflower ancestry that links him as distantly related to both Mary Ogle and Opal Young!!! 

I think his obit tells it best:

       

   

                    

                      

That pretty much says it all, right?

If you're bored, you should stop by and say "hello" to him here:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/167718578/david_cole-doten

By way of summary, I guess we will never know how it was that David C. Doten came to marry my grandparents at the First Christian Church parsonage in Paola, Kansas. Maybe it was just a random chance that he was the pastor there (briefly) in April of 1934.

Somehow I just don't think so. 

It just doesn't feel random.

I'm told in somewhat "excused whispers" that my grandfather Howard Jack Record was of all (said to be misguided) things, a dang "Democrat." I've really never thought that much about this seemingly erroneous piece of information as partisan politics aren't my thing. What I've come to see though in discovering the life of the man who married my grandparents is just how much of an old-fashioned Democrat my grandfather may have truly been.

I get the sense of this with my grandfather as a young man selling tickets to a Chautauqua. I get the sense that he is associating (even if only on the periphery) with the Miami County "YOUNG MEN'S DEMOCRATIC CLUB" - led by none other than David C. Doten - the man who married them.

After Doten lost the election in 1936 - things started to change for my grandparents.

California must have REALLY looked a lot better.

Doten's election loss in 1936 would have felt personal to them. 

Honestly, I find a new sense of immense pride in my grandfather. I guess the only side of him I ever saw was the hard-working older guy who had been given so many lumps of coal in this life. It wasn't that he ever gave up on life, only that he had moved on from Chautauqua, from Young Men's Democratic Clubs, from Paola and his friend's Congressional aspirations, and maybe from his dreams - all the while working hard to oftentimes just survive.

           

I REALLY like seeing this young idealistic side of HOWARD JACK RECORD - a young man full of dreams and ideas about social change. It makes me think that maybe he and I weren't so different when we were twenty years old in that we imagined a better world. I think he counted "Judge Doten" among his friends. He may have even idealized the Reverend/Judge/Congressional nominee. Judge Doten was one of those people whose name has been lost in the collective consciousness of my family's memory - but my what an important one it was!

The Reverend /Judge David Cole Doten was worthy of all of our respect and gratitude.

(Even that of the Presbyterians...) Wink!

And certainly so was my grandfather!!!

REST IN PEACE.

    

FOR SALE: ONE GENTLY USED CHARIOT

                                                 

"If you can't get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance."

         ~ GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

"... There is one thing about my ignoble lot. They have always been wise enough to marry better than they might otherwise have been, and indeed, wise enough to always marry well...

Such is the case with my own family line ...

Okay, you family history slackers, it's about time we had some fun. Yeah, no trips to the Ferris Wheel, County Fair, or even Disneyworld.  I'm not giving you any more war heroes, pilgrims, or Salem witches either. I thought instead we'd look at a notable connection we might have otherwise missed amidst the "genetic mix" of it all. Let me just say however (without giving too much of it away in the first paragraph) that this particular genetic connection isn't to the somewhat zealous fellow in the picture above - though the fellow in the picture bears an old family name of ours - a Quaker one - and only that it's a reasonably close connection. Go figure, right?

And no it's not frickn' Moses.

So how is it that we are related to someone who bears one of our family names but to whom we are also not related?

Nah, I'm not saying just yet. Nice try.

Is that guy in the picture above starting to look a wee bit familiar?

I'd looked at this connection once before but dismissed it as not worth pursuing. Today, however, and after checking to see the proximity of this particular connection to my great-grandfather Frank A. Record - well, I figured maybe I'd better take another look. You see, the tacit father of the man in the picture above is Frank Record's third cousin - making the guy in the picture a pretty close relation. (And, it's not "God" either...)

So to explain in modern-day terms: 

Think of the relationship between the man's father and Frank Record like the relationship between my son Justin Record's daughters Josselin and Jillian Record to my cousin Todd Record's granddaughter Sage Record - they're third cousins - so it's really pretty damn close in Ye Old Branches.

BUT again - we're really not actually related to the man in the picture (at least not to the degree of a third cousin) just to his "father." So exactly how does that work?  (You didn't expect me to make this easy for you, did you? :)

Here is a Quaker document that relates to our common ancestry:

And a small summation of the above document below:

    

   

And yes, the name is HESTON - as in the award-winning actor Charlton Heston. Is it starting to make sense yet? 

              Hey, it's me - your cousin Chuck.

Charlton Heston was born "John Charles Carter." However, his mother, Lilla Baines Charlton Carter divorced his father (the irascible Mr. Carter) when "Charlton" was a young boy and married our great-grandfather Frank's third cousin, CHESTER HESTON. 

The actor and his siblings eventually took the surname of the man who raised them.

     

   

 Okay, stop your complaining. You're just mad you didn't get that Oscars Invite back in '57. (Wink!)  Here is what the genealogy looks like below. And so that it will look more familiar to you, I have included a picture of "Cousin Charlton" with some of our own closer family members - you may recognize some of them. :)

                     

(Okay, you gotta admit that was pretty funny...)

                      

                                

Above: Hester Schooley Record whose grandmother was Margaret Heston Schooley

       

      

            

I don't know about you, but I don't see why Frank and Gertrude didn't get their invitation to attend the Academy Awards. I mean they were in Southern California that year. Maybe their invitation just got lost in the mail? Maybe "Cousin Charlton" sent the limo to pick them up in Long Beach to take them to the Pantages Theater for the ceremony and made them swear to never tell a soul. (Personally, I'm gonna go with that version of the story.)

                    

If not, well, you know, there's just no accountin' for the bad manners of some people's cousins!   

My great grandparents Frank and Gertie probably gave up waiting for Cousin Chuck's limo to arrive and figured they'd just go to the beach.

  

But did you really think that this was all there is to it? That I would leave you with some cheesy third-rate third-cousin connection to a simple Hollywood great? Boring! Nah, I'm not even going to tell you about how Cousin Chuck's wife Lydia Clarke is likely descended from the same Mayflower passenger as my grandmother Katheryn Ogle Record. 

Nah, check out the small asterisk in the genealogy diagram above next to a guy named Zebulon Heston II. Now this guy was the star. For lack of a better explanation, let's just call Zebulon Heston II my seven-times great-grandfather. 

This guy made some peace with the Indians. I don't know about you, but I think that's kinda cool. He "befriended" a guy named "Chief White Eyes."  White Eyes or Chief Koquethaqecheton was the leader of the Lenape Delaware Indians. In typical Quaker fashion, our ancestor Zebulon Heston tried to make things right with both the colonists and the Indians while adding a wee bit o'religion along the way. He and Chief White Eyes appear to have gotten along rather well:

           

                          

So for those of you who might care to know the whole story of our seven times great grandfather's peace-making trip with Chief White Eyes and the Delaware Indians - here is a good summation below:

So you've gotta admit that while having a close family connection to some legendary if not too far right-wing Hollywood icon is pretty cool, that having even a distant connection to Chief White Eyes and our peacemaking wampum-toting Great Grandpa Zebulon might even be better.

In the meantime though - do you know anyone who wants to buy a low-mile gently used chariot? (Cousin Chuck said I should as around...)

            

 Cousin Chuck Heston in Hollywood's "Ben Hur"

Until next time...?

PEACE!