Play misty for me
(Author's note: Beware the unfinished business of the aging wannabe genealogist. As you read this, know that no absolutely no disrespect is intended to either the living or the dead. It's just a tale to tell.)
As always, unapologetically unedited.
Becoming an old man is no easy task. For the wannabe genealogist like myself, sometimes it’s even tougher. It isn't enough that my old man mind wanders, or that it waxes melancholy or poetic, strolling down the rabbit holes of Streisand-like painted memories. No, it's more. You see, for the genealogist, there has to be a reason why. The memories simply aren't good enough. They—the people, places, and things that ebb and flow through them like some Jules Verne kaleidoscope—have to have a reason. In the genealogist's eye, they must be proven. Often triggered by something as simple as a day or a date, the questions simply cannot go unanswered.
So, I guess it should have come as no surprise when I woke up this morning remembering Nikki. It is, after all, September 1st. Yes, Nicola Sue Danks was a girl I went to school with years ago, a troubled girl and young woman who died young, so many years ago now. Why it is that each September 1st, I recall her name or the tempestuous days of knowing this supporting character from my life, I guess I will never know. I guess Nikki's memory may always haunt me. There were so many unanswered questions surrounding her life, a young girl who seemed to run away in trying to escape so many demons. She was tragic. She was bittersweet and impossible.
And yes, she was my dear friend.
In those blustery days before, well, you know, before we could learn anything at the drop of a Google hat, all we in our precocious circle of teenage friends knew was that Nikki's father, the stalwart Linn Gordon Danks (who our gaggle of too stoned friends sometimes dubbed "Buzz"), wasn't her father. We only knew that "Nicola Sue Danks" wasn't a "Danks" at all. We knew (or sort of knew) that her mother, the effervescent and rather charming Lois Lynn Danks (whom we stoners sometimes dubbed "Judy"), may or may not have been married before, and that Nikki sometimes referred to her mother's relatives "back in Kansas." Beyond this, if there was any more to Nikki's origin story—the name of her father or even her birth surname—this 1970s Scooby-Doo stoner mystery of "Just who are you, Nikki Danks?" would remain just that - a mystery. Indeed, if Nikki ever knew more, she never said.
All the players in this story are now long dead. Nicola Sue Danks herself died on Christmas Day in 1992, and her parents in the early 2000s. Even one of Nikki's half-sisters has passed away. Because of this, or despite this, and because of the incessant memory of what September 1st and my lost youth seem to mean to me, I have returned to that Scooby-Doo mystery. I want to know who you were, Nikki. I want to know who the forces were that created your short, sweet, sad, beautiful little life. Yes, Nikki, I'm going to look. It's what your genealogist friend is doing in his old age. I am following the watercolor memories for what once lay hidden on the canvas. Forgive me, old friend. It's the only way I know to truly memorialize you, to remember you.
And so, with those memories fresh in my mind, I've decided to finally tackle my own unwarranted and unfinished business of just who you were.
II.
Now I should confess right about here. I've already had some luck at this, that is, in investigating the ancestry of Nikki Danks. I have verified through the usual sources that her mother was born "Lois Lynn Cathcart," and all that through the usual tell-tale media of Ancestry.com, and had put together that Nikki had been born as "Nicola Sue Jenkins" - and yes, born in Kansas. I'd even gone so far as to map out a provisional pedigree from the Cathcarts proving myself and Nikki to be "ninth cousins once removed" and both of us to be descended from Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins. This was all well and good.
However, for several years now, I haven't been able to answer one important genealogical question. Just who was Nikki's biological father?
I wasn't getting much further than simply "Mr. Jenkins."
And it is interesting too that Nikki's parents, "Linn and Lynn" married each other seemingly twice - once in January of 1958 in Las Vegas and once in January of 1959 in Orange County.
But as usual, I digress...
Sounds like that divorce from Mr. Jenkins didn't wanna stick??>
Oddly, though, that is today, when I got up on this September 1st, and on what would be Nikki's seventieth birthday, I was prompted to look at an ancestry hint that appeared out of nowhere through the hunts on Newspapers.com. Check it out:
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Finally, I had something more than just her biological father as "Mr. Jenkins." The newspaper clipping verified the maiden name of her mother and Nikki's date of birth. I knew I was in the right church and the right pew.
But who the Hell was this guy, Mr. O. R. Jenkins?
At first, I had little luck. The colloquial habit of referring to a man by his first two initials is a genealogical annoyance. Further, Kansas guards its vital records like Fort Knox, so a search of my usual genealogical haunts revealed nothing in terms of a marriage record for even as broad a search as "Any Jenkins married to ANY Cathcart." I mused over a couple of Jenkins family trees, played with name possibilities, hoping something would turn up, but at first nothing did. Then, lo and behold, another search on Newspapers.com brought me just what I was looking for.
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The Kansas City Star, Sunday, December 6th, 1953
Pretty sure I Gotcha.
(There was also the matter of the same name for "Judy's" father as in the wedding announcement in the old paper and in her 2003 obituary.)
Winner winner, chicken dinner....
Because of all this, I could extrapolate the name of Nikki's biological father: One Otto Robert Jenkins, Jr.
So just who the Hell are or were you, Otto Robert Jenkins, Jr.?
Getting to the bottom of Otto Robert's life wasn't especially problematic. I guess he was a good guy. It's hard to tell. It looks like he liked to dance, but maybe wasn't all that successful at running a dancing business - since he later went to work for 7-11 - of all places. It looks like maybe Nikki's mom maybe liked to dance too, but that Otto liked the other ladies at the dance studio a bit too much.
Tulsa Daily Legal News, Friday, June 28, 1963
It looks like the dance studio stuff was maybe even a family business Otto inherited...
But all that being well and good, it was the next part that, forgive me, really pissed me off for Nikki's sake:
Otto's obituary:
What's disturbing is that NONE of these family trees mentions Nikki. Few of them even acknowledge old Otto's first marriage to the Lois Lynn Cathcart - and again, none with a child who came out of it. Poor frickn Nikki! Doomed to be forgotten by her father's family. It's no wonder she had such a troubled life.
Oddly, or perhaps serendipitously, I discovered that Old Otto Robert had another daughter by his second wife - a daughter called Kimberly - who would be Nikki's half sister by her father. Very, very strangely, Kimberly Jenkins Draisey just died this past March.
There is an odd resemblance between Nikki and this half sister. (Or is that just my old man brain playing tricks on me - I hadn't seen Nikki in years when she died decades ago.) The account of her sister's life is that of a caring and generous person.
I wonder. Did Nikki ever know of this sister? Or vice-versa?
Nikki died at age 37. Would she have looked like her half sister at sixty?
Now that is some weird sh*t in my book.
So I have done what any annoying genealogical wannabe would do. I have done what any friend might do to honor Nikki - to remember who she was and who she might have been in this life. I have reached out to Kimberly's daughter. I will not allow Nikki's memory to go so easily into the dark of the genealogical night.
Will she remember Nikki? We'll see...
Because you see, I do.
I always will.
☮
PS: A brief reply was received to my inquiry by Nikki's half-niece, Kimberly's daughter. The answer appears to be: "No knowledge of Nikki." They're asking if any DNA tests were done.
Good question. Sadly, not possible.
No, ma'am, just following the paper trail.
Rest in peace Nicola Sue.
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