Author Archives: bfialindathieman

                        

A  Lesson About American Character

By Connie Corcoran Wilson

            
When I returned home to present my family’s college scholarship to a deserving student in Independence, Iowa on May 19th, 2004, I never expected it to be such an emotional event. This small town, with its slogan “Our Fame Is In Our Name,” is, in many ways, a microcosm of America and Americans. Located at the intersections of US highways 218 and 150, this community of 5,000 people is representative of the American character. My parents, in turn, were representative of America’s true character and spirit.

Save for two trips home in 41 years to bury my parents, I doubted if I would even recognize the surname of the student chosen as the recipient of my family’s annual award, and, when I saw the student’s name on the program, that was, indeed, the case. In the 15 years the award had been given, no family member had ever been asked to attend before, so I eagerly accepted the offer when it was extended. I thought it would be a purely symbolic affair, and I would not know a soul.

Although I was correct and I did not recognize the name of the student chosen to receive my family’s scholarship, he was called up early in the awards ceremony to receive others before ours, and I noticed that he was Filipino. In a town the size of Independence, Iowa, this was unusual.  I immediately asked the woman seated next to me, “Is Gloria Martin (not her real name) this boy’s mother?”

 “No…that’s his grandmother,” the woman seated to my right in the crowded auditorium replied.

The story of Gloria Martin came flooding back. A war bride, her alcoholic abusive husband brought her home to Independence, where she and her family, a four-year-old boy named Johnny and a younger two-year-old sister, lived right next door to my parents in a broken-down rental house on the alley. Towns like Independence did not have abused women’s shelters in 1950. I would be surprised if they do now.  But physical abuse like Gloria was enduring was bound to become known quickly in a town this small, where everyone knew everything about everyone else.

Soon, Gloria’s violent alcoholic husband abandoned his family entirely, leaving Gloria penniless, in a foreign land, unable to speak the language, with no marketable skills, and no way to support herself and her two small children. My parents had many late-night discussions between themselves of how best to “help” Gloria.  I knew that they both felt compelled to do so.

Faced with a “Sophie’s Choice” of sorts, Gloria came to my father, (also named John and the town banker), her next-door neighbor. He had been very kind to her when their paths crossed in the yard. She recognized that my father was a kind, loving, and generous man, and she knew that my parents had recently lost a son. Although obviously wracked with the difficulty of her decision, she begged my father to take her own son Johnny, and adopt him.

In very broken English, she pleaded for help. Continue reading →