By Joyce Caughron Rhodes
Special to the Banner
When each of us go down our memory lanes, we will all probably come to the trail of tales call ‘Secrets.’ You know, the things we call our secrets, to protect ourselves or family and friends. Some of these secrets may be shielding the guilty. It seems no matter how hard we try to keep a secret, it may finally be revealed, sooner or later.
This memory brought me back to my Great-Aunt Blanche.
“Joyce let me tell you something that happened many years ago. I knew this woman, Sarah (not real name) and she had a little girl, Marlene (not real name). Well, Marlene grew up with her siblings, thinking her father died when she was a child. When she was about fourteen, she asked her mother why she looked so different. She had beautiful black hair and eyes, different from the others. Sarah, her mother, finally told her that her father, John Doe (not real name) was still living and that he was living in (small town).”
Since Sarah knew where he lived, Marlene was able to write to him.
She wrote: “This letter is to let you know you have a daughter……”
Over the years, they did meet a few times and the letters continued. Nearly sixty-plus years had passed and in the meantime, both had died. John Doe’s house came up for sale. Now this is the weird part of this tale. Several friends and I were on our way to some event.
One of the women just happened to mention, “The strangest thing happened. Jack Brown (not real name) bought John Doe’s house and he was checking out the attic. You won’t believe what he found! There was a big stack of letters hidden in the corner of the rafters. They were written by a young girl who was John Doe’s daughter and her name was Marlene.”
As soon as she said this, I remembered my Aunt Blanche telling me about Sarah and her daughter, Marlene. I also remembered the name of the father. No wonder everyone was surprised by these letters. It was well known that John Doe and his wife could not and did not have children of their own. Can you imagine the shock and thrill for him to discover he had a daughter? I can just see, in my mind’s eye, him going up to the attic to hide the letters or re-read them. This was his secret.
I gave this a lot of thought and knew I could find Marlene’s children, if she had any. I had been working on genealogy for some time, using Ancestry.Com and I did find them. I was able to retrieve the letters and send them to Marlene’s children. They were so glad to know that part of their mother’s paternal side of their family. So, this just shows that whatever secrets we think we have, will someday be revealed and maybe before the end of time. It just seemed like it was meant for me to hear about the letters and let Marlene’s children know about their grandfather. Some things seem really weird and this is one of them.
