Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
Many years ago, when all five of the Stalnaker siblings were gathered together, we were going through a chest full of memories of our parents. I have a coffee cup at my desk that has a picture of the five of us. I think it’s the last picture of the five of us together. I cherish it even though it’s a terrible picture of me. I think I was at my heaviest at that time at about 240 lbs. I looked like I was living in my van down by the river (some of you will recognize that Chris Farley reference from “Saturday Night Live”).
Both of our parents were gone, with my father passing at 64 years old and my mother at 79. The chest was full of newspaper clippings from around 1937, and pictures and love letters from my dad to my mom during WWII. We shared personal memories, with most of the memories coming from my two oldest sisters.
Valerie was the oldest, having been born the day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. I’m sure the stress of that day put my mother into labor. The story went that when my dad heard about what happened in Hawaii that day, he ran all the way to the recruiter’s office to join up. He was 20 years old, and he was trained to be a medic shipped off to the Philippines. That’s all I know about that; he never talked about what he went through in WWII—I can only imagine what it must have been like for him.
My sister Bethie and I are the only siblings left. Bethie was surely conceived when my dad was home on leave, as she was born before the war was over.
There were two military pictures of my dad during the war. Valerie told me that she called the earliest picture “her dad” as it was taken when he only had one stripe on his sleeve. She said the other picture of my dad was known as “Bethie’s dad” as he had a mustache and 5 stripes by then.
Valerie gave me the picture of “her dad,” and I have kept it since that day decades ago. Bethie gave her dad’s picture to her son. By the way, Bethie said she was unfamiliar with the “her dad/Valerie’s dad” story. Since she and I are the only ones left, there is no way to verify that, so we just agreed it must be true.
I was also told about a note on the back of the picture that I now possess. The note reads: “To my Darling wife, just something to remember me by darling when you get blue. Maybe Valerie will like it too. Love forever, Jimmie… P.S. Don’t put this in a cheap frame?!!!??*#&**&@” That was my favorite part of getting possession of this picture because it was in the cheapest frame I have ever seen. It didn’t even have any glass in it. I had to put it right.
That was about 2014 or so, and being the procrastinator that I am, I didn’t get the picture reframed until a couple of weeks ago. Having it framed professionally, I wouldn’t be able to easily see the note on the back of this picture. I asked that a copy of the note be made, and I placed that copy inside the raggedy old frame that the picture lived in since around 1942.
I asked Bethie if she knew why it was put in that nasty old frame, but she had no clue. So, the reason the request was ignored will have to remain a mystery. It must have been done as a joke, as that makes more sense to me than something nefarious. We will never know, but the story will live on.
I placed the appropriately framed photo of my dad on our heritage wall and the note in the beat-up frame just below it. It’s one of my favorite things, and I wish I knew the reason for it, but I’ll have to be satisfied with my imagination-generated knowledge of what characters my parents were back in the day. I’m so glad that I was lucky enough to be raised by a family that appreciated humor and passed that gene on to me. I may not have successfully passed that gene on to all my children, but I know a few of them got it, and that makes me so proud…
