Isaac Shelby and the Big Blue Whale: Being the True Story of Jeremiah's Cove and the Untimely Demise of Its Only Resident

By G.D. Rhoades

Their community slowly wasting away, a small group of Missouri farmers decides an attraction is needed to stimulate the local economy. What they create is Jeremiahs Cove, a phenomenon so singular, so beautiful as to enchant the entire world.

And then disaster!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477283400

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© 2012 by G.D. Rhoades. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/08/2012

First Edition: July 2012

The characters, events and locations in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author or the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8342-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8341-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8340-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012919874

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Introduction

1: Trials

2: Into the Stream

3: Passages

4: The Right of Responsibility

5: Family

6: The Tribe

7: The (Really) Big Idea

8: Jeremiah’s Cove

9: Taking out the Trash

Epilogue

People

Families

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all those who participated in this project, including Phyllis Cove-Clancy, Carol Dirks, Priscilla McReynolds, Anna Farrington and Kathryn Blackford.

Especially Kathryn Blackford.

You took the time to help this old guy get a new start; I couldn’t have done it without you.

G.D. Rhoades

Prologue

"Oh, lonesome, windy, grassy place,

Where buffalo and snakes prevail,

The first with dreadful looking face,

The last with dreadful sounding tail!"

Thus lamented an eastern gentleman who visited northeast Missouri in 1825, but returned home in disgust.—History of Monroe County Missouri, 1884

Happily, others were less disappointed.

Migrations

In 1830, James Kincaid, age 45, was married to Connie Bristol, 43. They had three sons, John, 23, James, 19, and Thomas, 11, and two daughters, Elizabeth, 17, and Cynthia, 15. They possessed two saddle horses, four mules, two cows, a crate of chickens and two wagons, one containing farm equipment and seed and the other containing personal belongings. They had travelled north from Simpson County Kentucky, to St. Louis, where they crossed the Mississippi, and then north again to the prairie and woodlands country that would one day become Shelby County Missouri.

They had deed in hand and they had come to claim what was theirs.

The similarly-outfitted Samuel Donaldson, 43, and his wife, Elizabeth McAdam, 39, had accompanied the Kincaids on their journey north. They traveled with three children, Alexander, 20, Samuel, 18, and Anna, 14, and three slaves, Barnebus, Sally, and Sally’s daughter Nancy. Samuel and Elizabeth had been the Kincaid’s neighbors in Kentucky and they too, deed in hand, were determined to succeed in this new, rough country.

Like many of the families that migrated to Missouri during this period, the Kincaids and Donaldsons were the children and grandchildren of over-mountain men, Scots/Irish immigrants who settled west of the Appalachians in the eighteenth century. After the Revolutionary War, some would remain in Kentucky and North Carolina but most would move on to Illinois, Missouri and beyond. Daniel Boone, the most famous among them, would arrive in Missouri in 1799 and live there until his death in 1820.

Among those following the Kincaids and Donaldsons to the area a few years later was my own family, along with the Eckle, Mann and Yost families. They were primitive baptists who’d been migrating together from one home to another for over two hundred years, first from Switzerland to Germany in the 17th century, then to Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kentucky, Illinois and now Missouri, and they, too, were determined to make a home—a permanent home—in this wilderness.

By contrast, my mother’s ancestors were among the German families who immigrated to the Midwest commencing around 1840. Many of those families had been propertied in Germany and the wealth they brought with them allowed them to supplant some of the English and Scots/Irish settlers who’d earlier claimed the prairie and built the first towns. The Germans were superb custodians of the land and they brought with them farming techniques that were superior to those in local practice. By the late 19th century it was they who were realizing the area’s real agricultural potential.

The migrations didn’t end with my ancestors, of course, but continue to this day. Since 1830, thousands of families have moved through northeast Missouri, making it a true ‘gateway’ to the West. A few stayed but countless others moved on to new lands and new opportunities. It would not be a stretch to suggest that there are millions of people living west of the Mississippi River today who have roots in Shelby County Missouri.

Towns and Villages

The revolutionary forces at the Battle of King’s Mountain in North Carolina in 1780 were led by two colonels, John Sevier and Isaac Shelby. When it came time to carve out a new county in northeast Missouri in 1835, the founding fathers, many of whom were descended from men who’d fought in that battle, had wanted to name it Sevier. That name was unavailable, however, and they very reasonably made Shelby their second choice.

One criterion for founding a new county at the time was that the county seat must be located within two miles of the county’s geographical center. In Shelby County, suitable land was acquired, cleared and consecrated, and the county’s leading citizens opted to name the new town Sevier. That name might have been allowed to stand if not for the observation of one more prescient citizen who suggested that those unfamiliar with the town’s charms might be inclined to refer to it as ‘Severe, Misery.’

Colonel Shelby rode to the rescue once again and the county seat was named Isaacson in his honor.

Once a prosperous and very pretty community of about 1,500, today Isaacson consists of only a few dozen homes, a few churches, a bank and a town square surrounding a stately old courthouse. Many of the buildings on the square are hidden away behind aging wooden awnings that give the square a furtive look and that relieve the buildings’ owners of any responsibility for the upkeep of their facades. So successful are the awnings, in fact, that they obscure the names on the windows and the identities of the goods and services being proffered therein. The overall impression is one of a town that is trying desperately to disappear.

Isaacson currently has a population of about 550 largely sedentary citizens.

The railroad came to Shelby County in the late 1850’s and a number of small communities sprang up along the line. Originally watering stops for steam locomotives, some would eventually attract enough people around them to be chartered as towns and villages. Jeffry, Evanston, Palfry/Paltry, Lakewood and Missing Spring were all created this way.

Palfry/Paltry and Missing Spring are of particular interest.

Image26933.JPG

When it came time to name their little community in 1859, the locals selected Palfry in honor of one of the town’s founding fathers. Due to a clerical error in Jefferson City, however, the name was recorded as Paltry. Some diehards who live there today still refer to the town as ‘Palfry’ but to the rest of the county it’s ‘Paltry’. Palfry/Paltry is located eight miles south of Isaacson at the junction of US 36 and Missouri 15, and has about 1,700 inhabitants, many of whom would never dream of actually speaking to each other.

Missing Spring, population 220, was inadvertently named by a railroad surveyor in 1857. Expecting to find a fresh water spring in the area but unable to do so, he entered the notation ‘missing spring’ on his map, a description that was subsequently taken to be the name of the community. Dubious or not, that was just about the only distinction the town was to earn for the next 140 years.

On the ‘up’ side, however, Missing Spring sits at the intersection of U.S. 36, a major east/west corridor across northern Missouri, and county roads Z and V, both of which are paved. About five minutes north on County Road Z is Missing Spring Lake, a quietly beautiful state park and nature preserve, and about 20 minutes south along County Road V is Mark Twain Lake, a major water attraction.

At the risk of appearing daft, one might think that Missing Spring is well-positioned for greatness.

Tribal Country

History teaches that strong interdependencies can form between families living in close proximity for long periods of time. On this basis alone, the combined families of Bob Kincaid, Al Donaldson, Paul Eckle, Isaiah Person, Sinah Marie Mann and me, highly-interdependent sixth- and seventh-generation Missouri farmers, may be thought of as a tribe.

The Kincaid, Donaldson, Mann and Yost farms are comprised almost entirely of rich, tillable soil and are very productive. The Eckle farm is forty-five percent tillable, forty percent pasture and hay ground, and fifteen percent woodlands. The southeastern corner of the Eckle farm is relatively unimproved and is used for hunting and as shelter for stock during winter. My own farm is roughly seventy-five percent tillable and 25 percent pasture and hay ground. And, the Person property is covered almost entirely with very old, very well-tended oaks, maples, walnuts and elms.

It is around these farms—this tribal country—that our story will unfold.

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G.D. Rhoades

Introduction

Most of what has been written about Jeremiah’s Cove is incorrect, incomplete or just plain wrong. As one of the few living witnesses to its creation that still possesses most of his faculties I have decided that it’s time to set the record straight.

I’ll give you the short version first.

Bob Kincaid, Al Donaldson, Sinah Marie Mann, Isaiah Person and Paul Eckle and I were responsible for the creation of Jeremiah’s Cove. The six of us conceived the need for an attraction that would breathe life into the local economy, Al came up with what seemed like a workable—if not entirely brainless—solution, and the very beautiful Sinah Marie jumped onboard just for the hell of it.

Bob managed the money and Al took care of the legal issues, Paul and I shared responsibility for engineering and development and Sinah handled strategy and communications. Isaiah gave us the land we needed and the six of us commissioned the now-renowned sculptor Dr. Hakeem Aggie Taj (aka Barker Dood) to execute the work.

As the world is now most certainly aware, Jeremiah’s Cove was an international sensation on an unprecedented scale. The shimmering, gracefully swaying skeleton of a big blue whale rising nearly 100 feet out of a small Missouri lake WILL tend to attract attention, especially when its debut is preceded by an over-the-top advance.

That the skeleton was destroyed less than a week after its introduction, taking the life of a truly sorry son-of-a-bitch and destroying a perfectly good 14’ aluminum john boat in the process, was well documented as were the subsequent—and to my mind indifferently executed—investigations.

Now, a dozen or so years later, the little lake and its surroundings is a spiritual retreat, attracting thousands of visitors every year and producing millions in revenues for the Missing Spring Foundation and the little town of Missing Spring, Missouri.

What has not been revealed is what our real objectives were and whether we achieved them.

It’ll take the long version to explain that.

G.D. Rhoades

1:

TRIALS

Frederick and Dani

In the summer of 1938, a small contingent of French and North African scientists and diplomats made a fact-finding tour of Shelby County farms. Their objective was to catalog the water conservation practices of American farmers in the Midwest and West. That a tour of Missouri would yield little new information was understood but Missouri was just the first stop on a long swing through the US that would eventually take them to Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas.

The one woman in the group was a young Ph.D. candidate named Danielle Efellay. Algerian and Muslim by birth and educated in France and Switzerland, Dani was the lone representative of a small but emerging pan-African movement aimed at improving the lives of the people living along the southern coast of the Mediterranean. She’d been added to the group after a long and heated discussion—she was a woman, after all, and a Muslim—but her credentials were impeccable, her English was by far the best of the lot and her inclusion could not be denied.

The tour had taken several years to arrange and by the time they arrived in America, the participants were very familiar with the problems American farmers had experienced over the last decade. They were particularly interested in the steps the Roosevelt administration had taken, steps that were just now beginning to bear fruit.

Ever the opportunist, Lloyd Stark, the governor of Missouri, saw the tour as a chance to trumpet the advantages of his home state, something he was convinced his arch nemesis, Harry Truman, would never do. So eager was he to jump on this particular bandwagon that he set aside political considerations to tap Frederick Mann, a Truman supporter but also the owner of what was widely seen as a model farm, to volunteer his time and resources for the occasion. Stark and his entourage were in attendance, along with a contingent of local politicians.

The natives, enchanted by the idea that someone would think their little corner of the world noteworthy, put on their best bib and tucker, slicked down their hair and presented their visitors with the finest show they could manage. Two tables, constructed just for the occasion in Frederick’s front yard, were each just shy of sixty feet long and were loaded with enough fried chicken, mashed potatoes, fresh garden vegetables, sweet water, iced tea and apple pies to satisfy a battalion. Upwards of thirty housewives and other ladies, having prepared the food earlier in the day, stood by to assist and a local minister was on hand to deliver the invocation.

Local newspaper accounts pegged the ratio of politicians, hangers-on and locals to visitors at 23:1.

For his part, Frederick had decided to get this task over with as quickly as possible. The tour of his farm, facilitated by several wagons pulled by his best tractor, was a model of efficiency and his presentation, laden with as many facts as he could muster, was as brief as he could make it but was offered nonetheless with good grace and humor.

The visitors, while not outwardly surly, were chafing—

literally—from their bus ride out to the farm. Their sense of decorum bruised, their questions and comments, presented through interpreters who weren’t as familiar with English as it might have been hoped, were direct if not plainly brusque.

Neither party was particularly happy with the situation.

Dani, on the other hand, wasn’t especially unhappy. Being accustomed to second class treatment by her colleagues, she’d resolved early in the trip to ignore their antagonism and to focus on the job at hand. Like the others in the group, she’d familiarized herself with American agricultural practices before leaving France and her reading had included photos of the devastation caused by the drought that had only recently ended. Written accounts and photos, however, can only go so far and to Dani, the train ride out to the Midwest had been a true eye-opener. This country was stunning! Mile after mile of incredibly rich farmland, punctuated by white, two-story farmhouses that seemed to shout, Hey, God, I’m over here!

It wasn’t hard for her to imagine that the settlers of a hundred years earlier must have thought they’d found Paradise.

And this farm! Almost 200 hectares of gently rolling fields and grasslands, all fed generously by rainfall that could be counted on to renew ponds and streams. Encroyable!

She was particularly impressed with the farm’s productivity but she was also very pleased with the hospitality shown by Frederick’s friends and neighbors. And, while the fare was new to her, she was nevertheless delighted by its quality. For her, and notwithstanding the fact that she was female, the trip wasn’t proving nearly the inconvenience that it was to her colleagues.

She was also very pleased with Frederick. Tall, ruggedly built and still unmarried at 38, he towered over her colleagues and was proving their equal by parrying their questions and sometimes caustic remarks with warmth and wit. This was a man to be reckoned with.

Frederick had noticed Dani as well. This was not a small, long-waisted flower of French womanhood that he’d met in 1918. This was something else. Tall, dark, intelligent, with dark eyes and an hauteur that was nonetheless approachable, the local women seemed equally taken with her. This was a woman that deserved attention. His attention.

As the rest of the contingent was preparing for the ride back to the rail stop in Palfry, Frederick pulled Dani aside to ask if he might write,  . . .to get her impression of his farm and the trip in general. She responded unreservedly by giving him two addresses, one of the Algerian embassy in Paris and the other of her apartment near the university just off Rue Dauphine.

He wrote the letter that very night.

It was autumn before her reply arrived. In it, she expressed regret that the tour had been cut short—her colleagues hadn’t been prepared for the kind of hardships they’d experienced farther west—and the trip hadn’t produced the results she’d hoped for. For her part, though, she expressed delight with Frederick’s farm and with his friends and neighbors and she complimented him on his presentation and hospitality. Toward the end of the letter, however, she expressed concern that war was coming to France and she hoped that they  . . .would be able to keep up (their) correspondence.

Several more letters were exchanged over the next few months, each warmer and more caring than the last. An early one from Frederick thanked Dani for her kindness and agreed with her that France was at risk and a return letter from Dani in early spring, 1939, confirmed his fear that she might be in danger but that she would take steps to protect herself. A final letter from Frederick proposed that Dani join him in Missouri  . . .at least until the danger has passed.

The telegram that Frederick received barely two weeks later sealed the deal: Meet me Stockholm, it read, and I’ll return with you if passage possible.

Frederick packed a bag and made three stops before catching the afternoon train out of Palfry for St. Louis, the first at Al Donaldson’s farm a mile or so to the east asking if Al Junior would watch over his place while he was gone, and the second at Stuart Kincaid’s bank in Isaacson to make sure his financial affairs were in order and to pick up a stack of travel cheques, thereby cleaning out his savings. The third stop was at the telegraph office. Coming, his telegram said, Stay safe.

He arrived in St. Louis the next morning in time to pick up a passport and to talk his way onto a mail flight from Lambert Field to Curtiss Airport that was leaving that evening with stops in Chicago, Cleveland and Buffalo. On arriving in New York late in the morning of the 10th, he went directly to the Swedish consulate to apply for a travel visa to Stockholm and then was forced to sit and wait. So many bureaucrats and so many concerns and all the while worrying that Dani was safe and would be able and still willing to come home with him!

The bureaucratic hurdles were finally cleared and he returned to the airport and booked a seat on a Pan Am flight to Stockholm via Newfoundland, Iceland and Scotland that was scheduled to leave late that evening. Tired of Manhattan and tired of New Yorkers in general, he opted to spend the day in the airport. He was in an odd mood, not at all certain that what he was doing was right but feeling compelled to go forward with it nonetheless and he found that unsettling.

At around 5:00, two security guards appeared and insisted that he accompany them to their manager’s office. The man behind the desk, a short, burly Jew from Brooklyn named Berenbome, explained that they were curious as to why a Missouri farmer would be travelling to Stockholm at this particular time. Frederick replied that he was on a mission to rescue a lady, then went on to explain his situation. The security manager, who’d been closely watching events in Europe, was sympathetic. Such a mission! Berenbome exclaimed. You have supper with me, kiddo, and I’ll get you out on time.

He was as good as his word.

Frederick arrived in Stockholm in a funk. He’d had no further word from Dani and knowing nothing about Stockholm, had no idea where to start looking. He’d just resolved to spend the night in the airport and begin his search at the American embassy the next morning when he heard his name called. He turned to find a tall, somber man in his late 50’s dressed almost entirely in black. In thick and nearly incomprehensible English, he introduced himself as Bernard Sigismond and said he’d received a telegram from a cousin in New York that asked him to look out for a tall American who was in need of help. Bernard invited Frederick to spend the night at his house and Frederick, exhausted and with nowhere else to turn, accepted the offer.

Frederick had liked Bernard instinctively. Inside that forbidding exterior lurked a happy sprite who loved the idea of saving a damsel in distress. Frederick told the whole story during the ride to Bernard’s house, including the fact of Dani’s Muslim heritage, at which point Bernard only grunted.

So, Mr. Mann, are you religious?

Lapsed Mennonite.

Close enough. Do you pray?

I’m a farmer, Mr. Sigismond; I pray every day.

Bernard’s house was impressive. Three stories of granite and marble fronted by broad steps leading up to an imposing entry.

Frederick followed Bernard through the front door…and straight into Dani’s arms.

You came! she declared happily.

Of course.

Bernard interrupted. Excuse me but dinner is ready. If you’re planning to remain entangled throughout the meal, let me know and I’ll have one of the chairs removed.

Frederick was stunned, a look of happy disbelief on his face. He turned to Dani with hundreds of questions flashing through his mind. Not now, she said. Let’s eat first.

Bernard’s wife, Sarah, was just as bright and lively as Bernard and a marvelous hostess. It was a splendid evening. By the time it ended, Frederick was on a first name basis with all of Bernard’s children, his grandchildren, their rabbi and most of their neighbors, and collectively they’d consumed a marvelous meal and the better part of a case of heavy, sweet wine. Frederick didn’t normally drink and regret arrived the next morning in the guise of a hellish headache.

‘All things considered,’ he thought, ‘not a bad trade.’

Mentally, he chalked up a debt to Berenbome that he resolved, someday, to repay.

They spent the next three days at the house alternately exploring Bernard’s library, Sarah’s cooking, and each other. Better to stay here, Bernard insisted. Even though Sweden is neutral, there are agents everywhere. You were both seen coming here, I guarantee, and it would be better to stay here than to provide them entertainment. They took him at his word.

Dani’s escape from France was enabled by her Algerian passport. Not yet at war, French citizens and their subjects were still free to travel and, after an exchange of telegrams with Bernard, she’d taken a train from Paris to Amsterdam and then booked passage to Goteborg on a regularly scheduled ferry, thereby avoiding recently occupied Denmark. Another train ride had taken her to Stockholm.

Dani had met Sigismond some years earlier in the context of her studies and, able to set aside their religious differences, they’d developed a deep and abiding friendship. She had spent the last couple of weeks at Bernard’s awaiting Frederick’s arrival.

To Frederick, it was easily the best three days he’d ever spent. Dani was intelligent, warm and loving and he had no doubts that he’d made the right decision. The heart can lead if the mind is willing to follow.

Dani also was sure she’d been correct in her initial assessment: Frederick was an intelligent, good-hearted man who’d be able to hold his own.

Bernard and Sarah, too, were formidable people. They had relocated to Stockholm from Berlin in 1932, knowing in their hearts that the Germany they knew and loved was doomed. An attorney, Bernard was deeply involved in a variety of activities, some of which would eventually lead to the creation of a Jewish state.

Frederick and Dani’s marriage in a civil ceremony at City Hall in Stockholm on Wednesday, May 24, 1939, was witnessed by Bernard and Sarah. The party at the house afterwards was a rousing affair attended by the same extended family Frederick had met earlier. Their marriage was consummated later that night in a room Sarah had prepared just for the occasion.

Many of the people at the party were also present at the airport when the newlyweds left for America the next day, their cheers and well-wishes following the two onto their plane.

On their arrival in New York, Frederick and Dani went immediately to the security chief’s office. Berenbome? the man behind the desk replied. I don’t know no Berenbome. Like it says on the door, my name’s Spinelli and I’m in charge here!

The Sigismond Letter

President Roosevelt’s signing of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, on September 16, brought the war in Europe home to Shelby County. By mid-October, Bob Kincaid, Al Donaldson III, and David Rhoades had all registered for the draft and their families knew it was only a matter of time before war would be declared by the U.S. and that their men would be called.

Paul Eckle, career military and an expert in close quarters combat, was assigned to the 82nd Airborne and had been seconded to Britain’s SAS as an instructor in late June. During his last trip home earlier that month, he’d told his father James and his wife Miriam that it would likely be the last time they’d see him for a while. He had no doubt that the U.S. would join the effort and that it would be a long and terrible fight.

With this as background, it was a somber group that gathered at Stuart and Josephine Kincaid’s home for dinner on an unusually balmy Sunday evening in early November. Present were Frederick and Dani Mann, James Eckle and his daughter-in-law Miriam, Al Donaldson Jr. and his wife Ellen, and my grandparents, Gabriel and Cecile Rhoades.

Also present were Isaiah Person, a neighbor, his wife Delphia, and their daughter-in-law, Annabelle, the Kincaid’s part time housekeeper and the best cook in Shelby County. The inclusion of the Persons, who were black, would otherwise have been cause for a good deal of harrumphing amongst the good citizens of Shelby County but the Persons were welcome and the county had long since accommodated the families’ attitude that everybody else could go to hell.

There was a protocol. The families would arrive an hour or so early, usually at the Donaldsons’ or the Kincaids’, since their homes were large enough for such a group, and the women would prepare the meal while the men discussed farming and local matters. If weather permitted, the meal would be taken outdoors at a table long enough to accommodate everybody, otherwise they’d make their plates in the dining room and then eat in small groups anywhere it was comfortable.

Conversation during the meal was limited to gossip and stories and afterward everyone would help clean up. Such a gathering would normally include the families’ children but on this particular evening, arrangements had been made to keep them occupied elsewhere. The putative reason for the gathering was to celebrate Ellen Donaldson’s 63rd birthday but the real reason was to discuss what to do about the war and it was felt that this particular conversation was one that should be limited to the elders.

They’d been keeping up with events in Europe via radio, news reels, newspapers and magazines, the latter two providing much more detail than could be included in broadcasts. Printed media in general had two advantages: only print could relay the importance of a news item through the judicious use of different size fonts—one could scream only so loudly over the radio—and print could be set aside for later study. Television, invented but not yet in use, would possess somewhat the same limitations as radio but with pictures.

Dani had been adding to published reports with information provided by her friends in Europe, including Bernard in Stockholm. Tonight, she shared a letter with them that added an entirely new dimension to their understanding of the war. It read, in part, It is with great sadness that I tell you of the death of Ibrahim Berenbome. Friends in Lithuania say he was killed while attempting to lead a small group of Polish Jews to safety in Sweden. They were ambushed by German soldiers and their bodies dumped in a shallow grave. This event comes close on the heels of the order by Governor-General Frank in Warsaw to herd all the Jews into a small area in the city ‘for their protection.’ I fear this is only the beginning of a great hardship.

Dani added, As you say, it is not difficult to put two and two together. This man Hitler is insane in the most evil of ways and I fear he will not stop in his quest for power until he has eliminated everyone who might stand against him. This will include not only Jews but also anyone else who does not meet his notion of Aryan superiority. Gypsies will go, as will Muslims, blacks and other minorities, until he has totally cleansed the continent. He must be stopped. I know you have children that you would be asked to sacrifice and I am heartbroken to say this, but in my mind, Roosevelt must act on the side of the allies. To do otherwise would be one of the most irresponsible acts in human history.

Frederick stood to add, I must agree with Dani. Germans believe that what was done to their country after the last war put them in a terrible bind and it’s clear that the treaty of 1919 laid the groundwork for the rise of a man like Hitler. If it hadn’t been him, it likely would’ve been someone else. He gains more power within Germany and throughout Europe every day and his countrymen are blind to what he’s doing. Roosevelt must act, if for no other reason than to end Hitler.

The Right of Responsibility

The year 1941 was rough on everyone, not only in Europe and Asia where all hell was breaking loose but here at home as well. The waiting. The not-knowing. The nagging feeling that there were decisions to be made but on what rationale would they be based? They knew too little. They knew too much. Were they going to be in it or not?

The fringes knew: absolutely; no way in hell.

It was as though Roosevelt and Churchill were engaging in some sort of drunkard’s walk that was leading them haphazardly but inexorably to war.

My parents and grandparents were as uncertain as anyone, as were the parents and grandparents of my friends Bob, Al, Paul and Sinah. Frederick and Dani did the best they could to keep everyone up-to-date but they didn’t know how events would unfold either. I know it’s hard to imagine for people living today but the declaration of war on December 8, actually brought with it a small measure of relief: at least now they knew.

But vacuums must be filled and as so often happens, uncertainty replaced uncertainty. Facing them now, especially the younger generation, was the need to make a decision: do we volunteer and take charge of our lives or do we wait to see if our number comes up, thereby exposing ourselves to a disruption entirely outside our control. Which course is the right one? Each family had to make that decision itself.

Robert Kincaid was 26 years old, married to Catherine and, like his dad, Stuart, a graduate of the University of Iowa and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was working at his father’s bank and managing the family farm. He’d met his wife, the daughter of one of his father’s classmates, at the University of Iowa in 1937,