Whatever Happened to Eddie Stone?: Becoming the Teacher's Pet

By Betty Genter

WHATEVER HAPPENDED TO EDDIE STONE? makes one wonder how Eddie survived all the blows dealt hi as a teenager. Through death he loses all his immediate family and even spends time in a Boys' Home. He joins ROTC in college, rises through the ranks of the Army and retires as a Colonel. After many years of separation, he looks up his fifth grade techer, they reconnect, and he shares his past and present with her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 18, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452084862

Betty Genter

Betty Genter is a retired teacher and schjool administrator who is also an artist/illustrator. In 2001, she illustrated MEMORIES OF MANNING by schoolmte Roy Bubb. In 2003 she wrote and illustrated her own book for the Clarendon Historical Society, GROWING UP ON A CLARENDON MUCKLAND FARM IN THE 1940"s & 50"s and has recently redone and renamed it, LIFE: THE WAY IT WAS. After retiring, Betty adopted four year-old Alexandra from Russia. In 2010, she writes of the challenges of raising Alex to adulthood in, MY MAMA. Now in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO EDDIE STONE? she tells the inspiring, true story of their unique pupil-teacher friendship.

Book preview

What Ever Happened To Eddie Stone?

Nature had done its usual magical splattering of colors of red, orange, green, yellow, and purple throughout the cemetery at Mount Albion. It was always a gorgeous sight in the fall. It was October again. The brightly colored leaves seemed to hang suspended overhead as the sun shone through everywhere, making them glow even more.

Yes, it was October and many people were beginning their yearly cleaning of the family graves…readying them for winter. It would be necessary again in the spring (all too soon), to clean up winter’s debris.

On this particular day, Dick and Linda Marshall arrived in Mount Albion Cemetery and proceeded to the plot of the Stone family. Dick had been designated as the family cemetery keeper. Dick’s mother, Geraldine Stone Marshall had descended from those lying at rest; her father, Harold H. Stone, with her mother, Elizabeth Brooks Stone were there with her brother, George Stone. It was Dick’s job to tidy the site: to take out the dead flowers, clean out the urns, and turn them upside down for the winter season.

As Dick turned over one of the urns, he was surprised to see a small plastic bag with a handwritten note in it. Upon opening the bag and reading the note, he became silent and startled; a strange feeling settling over him. The note read:

Eddie Stone, where are you? Your brother George wants to meet

you. Phone me.

Lonnie Gridley

There was a telephone number.

Dick was thoroughly confused. Eddie Stone was his cousin and in the Army. The only George Stone besides his Uncle George (buried in the grave in front of him since 1963) that Dick knew of, was Ed’s brother, Georgie, who died of cancer as a teenager.

This was a little eerie…finding a note under an urn…in the cemetery, on Uncle George’s grave (Eddie’s father). Here, the eeriness continued in Dick’s mind in the form of unanswered questions.

George wants to meet Ed. Who was Lonnie Gridley? He didn’t know any Lonnie.

Why was the note on George Stone’s grave? What connection was there to Eddie, the note, and Ed’s father, George?

Dick and his wife finished cleaning the gravesites in the Stone plot at Mount Albion cemetery and headed home in silence; their heads full of questions; none of which made any sense.

At home, Dick decided to try to solve the mystery. He called the telephone number on the note and asked who Lonnie was and what she wanted with Ed Stone. Lonnie told him that Ed had a brother named George Stone (her son) who would like to meet him.

This was even more confusing to Dick. He had known Uncle George Stone had died because of a car accident in 1963 and Ed’s younger brother, Georgie had died of cancer (some thirty years before) when he was a teenager. So, who was this George Stone?

Dick would have to track down Ed Stone and get some more answers. It might take a while because Ed, being in the Army, was always moving. After much research and many phone calls…success!

Eddie Stone was finally contacted in the Virginia Beach area, where he was living at the time. Dick, in his telephone call to Ed, described being in the cemetery and finding the note. Dick said he had telephoned Lonnie, found out who she was, and what she wanted with Ed.

Dick asked Ed if he knew Lonnie and was it true what she said. Ed did know who Lonnie was, but now it was Ed’s turn to be shocked.

Lonnie was George Stone’s (Ed’s father’s) girlfriend and had been with him the evening of the fatal car accident. At the time, she was pregnant with George’s child. After he was born, she named him Quinton George Stone. No one in the family knew this. Ed remembered Lonnie, though. Ed’s first response was: What does she want? If she wants to make a claim against Dad’s estate, the lawyer got most of it…there is nothing left. It’s all gone.

A few days after having been tracked down and recovering from cousin Dick’s shocking news, that he, Ed Stone, had a half-brother, named George Stone, whom he had never met, Ed picked up the