The Norwegian Black Sheep: The Shape of My Grandfather's Life

By William K. Gunderson

This small book is a chronicle of the life and psychology of the author William Gunderson's grandfather of the same exact name. It is part memoir and part history book of the author's paternal line. William Gunderson Sr. was a part Norwegian, part French-Candian-American who grew up on the streets of 1940s-50s era Brooklyn, Kings, NY. His parents and family members were complicated people who shaped his complicated character. This memoir written by his grandson seeks to understand the character of the man while providing a certain level of introspection and wondering on the struggle for identity. The subjects of genealogy, family struggles and abuse, American history, and quasi-Freudian psychology all serve to make this small book/memoir quite an entertaining read. Anyone who loves a good, short read with some history or genealogy thrown in will definitely love this one! There are definitely some twists and turns in the story, but it seeks to be fair to real-world people who lived real and complicated lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988152415

Book preview

Introduction

The baby boy that would become the man known affectionally as Bill by friends and family, was born amidst the shadows of skyscrapers, in a Manhattan hospital on March 29th, 1939 (could have possibly been Brooklyn, but honestly Manhattan sounds a bit more romantic shall we say, not to mention the fact that I tried getting his original birth certificate very recently, and there was a mess of complications, thanks to the city of New York.) What kind of country do we live in where a grandson cant even get access to his grandfather’s birth certificate?

His mother, Pauline Margaret (Crossin) Gunderson, was 34 years old and had already given birth to two other children, Paul Walter Francis, and James Joseph. His father, James Oscar Gunderson, was 51 years old, a Norwegian immigrant, and an elevator operator. Both parents had intense alcohol dependencies, or in the language of yesteryear…were alcoholics, a fact that Bill would hold with him all his life and served the purpose of keeping him, and his three sons, away from the drink. His mother named him William for the baby’s 2nd-great-granduncle William Crossin, born almost one-hundred years earlier in New Brunswick (at least that explanation makes for a far more poetic story because the only other explanation would be because William was one of the most popular baby boy names in 1939¹). By all intents and purposes, William Kenneth Gunderson was born into modest circumstances, in a city that certainly was not modest by any stretch of the imagination, during a time when the United States was on the verge of becoming a world superpower. The baby was my direct paternal ancestor, the baby was my blood, the baby was my grandfather.

On a less mellow-dramatic note, I want to say that this little book serves as not just an entertaining/informative read for readers (hopefully) but also as an important chronicle of my own family’s story. My paternal grandfather William Kenneth Gunderson was no angel, not even close, I want to say right off the bat. Nevertheless, this book attempts to be a fair analysis of the man, and how his own familial ties intersect across the generations, and vibrate down to me, my sisters, and my cousins. Let it be known that despite many failures of the man’s life, he once gave me money toward the attaining of my bachelor’s degree in college, something that is hard to forget, and he at the very least tried to show interest in the lives of me and my two sisters, Lexi, and Marissa. If he was, in the end, a completely sour, curmudgeon of an elderly man, he would have told me to take a hike. As a favorite writer of mine, George R.R. Martin once quipped: Human beings are gray. We all have aspects of good and evil in us. Robert Louis Stevenson had a remarkably similar take.²

This book also wouldn’t have existed without the tidbits of information provided by my paternal grandmother Cecelia Dorothy Ferraro Gunderson. I didn’t know her particularly well or even long, as my grandparents on my father’s side didn’t come into my life until I was a teenager. Nevertheless, she was good to me and always encouraged me to finish college. We spent long hours on the phone over the course of about a decade, where a lot of information was shared regarding her own Ferraro family. Since she lived far away, I only ended up visiting her twice at her home in Las Vegas. Thanks to her, I came into the possession of many family photos, some of which are shown below. She was the family recordkeeper before I came along with my ventures into genealogy. Sadly, she passed away this past year in January of 2022. My grandfather wasn’t exactly an open book, so her contribution remains tremendous. Her brother, my granduncle Andrew Ferraro, has also been of great help in putting the pieces together of our family, and specifically the life of his brother-in-law, Bill Gunderson Sr.

My one giant regret is that this book will always remain incomplete. I am sort-of a perfectionist by nature, and God knows that I have looked over many-a-college essay over and over again to make sure it was ok. But for a book about people in my own family, and an important story at that because it’s real and based on 99.9% factual pieces of information, I just have to take the plunge. I’m glad that I waited until the passing of my paternal grandmother before publishing this book, because I would not have wanted her to feel bad about the man that she loved. Then again, this book aims at objective truth and nothing but it. And truth, though it hurts on impact, it can soon be absorbed into a person’s psyche and set them on a new path. My own father thinks that I could have gone even farther with this book. Nevertheless, this book and its contents are the path that I have chosen. I don’t pretend to know what such a path may be like for each individual, whether he/she writes about their family or respectfully chooses not to, but each one of us is ultimately responsible for his/her own life. And each one of us, is responsible for the choices in our own story.

My father William Gunderson Jr. (circa 1970s as a boy scout)

¹ (Name Census - Most Popular Baby Boy Names in 1939 n.d.)

² (Stevenson n.d.)

One

First Impressions

I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know.

—Bill Waterson

"Oh God, my God,