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The Memory Artist

Thoughts about The Memory Artist by Katherine Brabon

A glorious book about writing and memory and the Soviet Union and glasnost and Russia…

A period that I almost didn’t want to think about because of my own activist background… as if somehow I had personally been betrayed by Stalin and the Soviet Union.

The Memory Artist is a gentle, beautifully written novel that carries the reader along, not allowing the reader to fall into the depths of despair despite murders, disappearances and suicides.

Some quotes:

“There’s a moment, I’m not sure how long, one of those never-ending seconds, and whichever hour it is or whatever station I’m in, the words and numbers have no meaning. Then I think of somewhere I’m supposed to be or the next thing I have to do. I cling to those things, and I find myself again. ” p. 213

“I can attest that I’m here, as a man, with a body right now sitting on this seat, but I cannot say I am sure what I’m made up of – what is going on inside. ” p. 222

“Our inner life, consciousness or whatever, made the apartment a place where that manipulated and censored world couldn’t get in.” p. 223

“Looking at those malformed statues, I told myself that if I could make some kind of shape out of the memories of the men and women of my life – then somehow, impossibly, the broken past could be given form. Not put back together so much as refashioned into a kind of warped, fragmented sculpture. But nonetheless it would be something that I could hold, at least in my mind.” p. 243

 

Disinherited

Having gone to Tulsa Oklahoma to find out about the death of my grandfather, I was shocked to learn how he had died. On January 14, 1925, in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, my grandfather, E.S. Hutchison, age 43, had his brains blown out by a jealous husband, Charles Eugene Purdy,  (see Blog 18: Love Pirate Murder).

To try to find out more about my grandfather, I went to the annex on the outskirts of Tulsa where probate records were kept.

                                           Tulsa County Annex Building

I shook my head in disbelief at what I found in the probate files. I was astounded that the estate of my grandfather in 1925 was worth over USD $200,000!! A fortune in those days.

There were pages and pages of disputes about who should get the money – the children of his first wife, my grandmother, who had three children, (the first born was my father, W. Lon Hutchison), his second wife, who had four children and was living in Arkansas or the woman Helen Purdy, who was with my grandfather when he was shot and killed  by her estranged  husband, Charles Eugene Purdy.  A  handwritten will left specific sums to his mother, sister and children from both wives, and made Helen Purdy his executor.

The story became more complex reading through over 70 pages of charges and counter-charges, mainly between E.S. Hutchison’s second wife, Mary Hutchison and Helen Purdy, who had been his employee and personal secretary prior to his murder.  In the depositions included in the files, Helen Purdy is accused by Mary Hutchison of conspiring with her ex-husband Charles Eugene Purdy to defraud my grandfather of his considerable fortune.

The issue of why Charles Eugene Purdy shot my grandfather, despite the “Love Pirate” stories, became less clear because the documents state that Purdy had filed for divorce from his wife some months prior to the shooting.  Also at one point, according to the probate documents,  he had received tens of thousands of dollars from my grandfather because Purdy had somehow contrived to have my grandfather  briefly put in jail.

The probate files included a copy of my grandfather’s  hard-to-decipher handwritten will that I forced myself to read and re-read. My grandfather wrote that his firstborn son, my father, W. Lon Hutchison, would get $100 from his estate, but only if my father never returned to Tulsa until after his father had died!

My father, the firstborn child, had been disinherited by his father. Decades later he did the same to his firstborn child – me. I was beginning to get the picture. The more I found out, the more I wanted to try to stop the passing on of rejection generation after generation within this family.

Have you found a pattern of rejection in your family?

What have you tried or are trying to do about it?

Your comments are most welcome!

 

 

In the wrong place?

 At the archives of the Tulsa Public Library, I found the shocking news that my grandfather E. S. Hutchison had his brains blown out by a jealous husband in front of the post office in down town Tulsa Oklahoma in 1925. Then a few days later in a speech at the Tulsa City Club, his brother, L.L. Hutchison denounced my grandfather as a womanizer and said he got what he deserved. As Ye Sow So Shall You Reap.

I wanted to try to find out more about my grandfather and his murderer, so I drove downtown to the Tulsa County Court house.

At the County Court house, I tried to trace what happened to the shooter, Charles Eugene Purdy, who killed my grandfather. I couldn’t find out if he was convicted or not. Perhaps I went to the wrong department.

In a very big thick black book, that was too heavy to lift, I searched and did find handwritten references to probate records for 1925. But the records were not kept at the county court house.

To see the probate records, I was sent to an annex in a temporary building in an industrial area. Thanks to the GPS, I found it on the outskirts of Tulsa. The annex was a nondescript building with a small parking area. There were no clear signs indicating what was in the building. I knocked on a few doors and finally found the probate records annex.

After writing a request for the probate records following my grandfather’s murder, I sat down on a metal folding chair and waited. I felt isolated and alienated in the bare surroundings with no signs indicating where I was or what was the purpose of the space I was in. I controlled a feeling of hopelessness telling me to get out of there.

Just as I was wondering if I was in the wrong place or if the files no longer existed, a clerk came into the room carrying a thick book of records. Glancing quickly through the files, I shouted out in a very loud voice, What? The startled clerk opened the door to the adjoining room to ask if I was okay. I reassured him that I was.

What caused me to shout out loud and startle the clerk?

Find out in the next blog.

Family betrayal

Having gone to Tulsa Oklahoma to find out about the death of my grandfather, I was shocked to learn how he had died. On January 14, 1925, in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, my grandfather, E.S. Hutchison, age 43, had his brains blown out by a jealous husband ( Love Pirate blog).

Sitting in the Tulsa Public Library archives, I continued reading about the ongoing family saga on microfiche in the Tulsa Daily World newspaper.

To help the reader go back in time to events of 1925, here’s what was happening in the world four days after my grandfather was shot and killed in Tulsa Oklahoma.

On the inside of the Tulsa Daily World, the article on Mussolini goes on to say that Mussolini and his Black Shirts saved  Italy from a “Red Overthrowal” and that Mussolini had no “Napoleonic ambitions” and was eager to return to “Constitutional Government”.

And if you were wealthy, here’s the car you could buy.

 

 

 

 

On the same day, 18 January 1925, my grandfather’s murder is back on page one of the Tulsa Daily World Sunday final edition.

Also on page one were excerpts from a speech by my grandfather’s brother. Five days after his brother was shot and killed, L.L. Hutchison made a speech at the Tulsa City Club, as retiring president. His speech was headlined on the front page of the Tulsa Daily World , “As Ye Sow So Shall Ye Also Reap”.

L.L. Hutchison said that the sorrow his family felt most bitterly (about the death of his brother, my grandfather), was due “entirely to a wrong philosophy of life”. He went on to say, “You can’t sin and get away with it”. He claimed that his brother E. S. Hutchison got what he deserved for chasing other men’s wives. He reminded his audience that the wages of sin are death.

My great uncle denounced his own brother at a public meeting and on the front page of the Tulsa Daily World. My great aunt Jessie Hutchison (wife of L.L.) had my father committed to an Oklahoma state insane asylum. Lon Lewis Hutchison denounced his own brother saying he deserved a violent death because he was a womanizer.

How much more rejection would I uncover in this family? The more  information I found on my USA road trip, the more urgent became the necessity of working towards family reconciliation. Generation upon generation of vengeance had to be stopped.

What have you found out in your family research? Can we write our way to family reconciliation?

Please share your thoughts.  Thank you.

Love Pirate plans South Sea Honeymoon

In search of information about my father W. Lon Hutchison and his family, for my novel, Tracking the Human, I went to the archives of the Tulsa Oklahoma Public Library.

Shocking discovery: my grandfather E.S. Hutchison was shot and killed by a jealous husband on 14 January 1925 in front of the Tulsa Oklahoma post office.

The Love Pirate story (my grandfather’s nickname assigned by the newspaper) continues three days later on the front page of the Tulsa Daily World on January 18, 1925.

Headline: South Sea Honeymoon New Life in New Land Denied to Mrs Purdy.   “She and Hutchison had planned to marry in St Louis and sail in a few days for South America to start life anew….A silver honeymoon upon blue southern seas. Eternal romance. In the fragrant balm of the tropics. Forgotten troubles. New friends of a new world. These were lost to Mrs. Helen Paul Purdy Tuesday night. In their stead the whisperings of a thousand gossips and the shouts of a thousand newsboys in a hundred cities came to mock her. ”

In the news story, according to Mrs. Purdy, she and my grandfather were planning to get married in two weeks and then relocate to somewhere in South America.

The events surrounding the shooting of my grandfather E. S. Hutchison in front of the post office in Tulsa, Oklahoma, would be almost unbelievable in a television soap opera.

The next blog will share more about the aftermath of his murder.

Your comments are most welcome!  Thanks for reading my blog.

Love Pirate

Searching for my grandfather E.S. Hutchison’s obituary in the 1925 edition of the Tulsa Daily World on the microfiche machine in the Tulsa Public Library archives, I almost fell out of my chair.

Bold headlines blasted out Love Pirate Killed by Jealous Husband. On 14 January 1925, while sitting in his car in front of the post office in downtown Tulsa Oklahoma in the afternoon, my grandfather, E.S. Hutchison, age 43, had his brains blown out by a jealous husband.

The next day January 15, 1925 there were three stories related to the murder of my grandfather on the front page of the Tulsa Daily World.

Both the librarian and myself were stunned to read these headlines. I almost couldn’t breathe but was captivated by the headlined story. The tale of the “Love Pirate’s” murder went on and on in the Tulsa Daily World newspaper. I couldn’t stop reading.

The Love Pirate story continued on the front page of the Tulsa Daily World for a week and several days more on the back pages.

The photos on the front page are of Charles Eugene Purdy, upper left, who shot and killed my grandfather. The man on the lower left is my grandfather, E.S Hutchison. The photo on the right is of Helen Purdy. The photos in the middle are the two children of Helen and Charles Purdy.

The text underneath the photos reads “Pure love, illicit love, hate, jealousy, despair, murder insanity and sorrow. All of these things and more in the respectable appearing pictures in this group. What a story there is in them. Think of the people in these pictures six months ago. … They seemed just ordinary people with the trials and troubles of ordinary people. ..”

The story on the right says Purdy will claim innocence due to temporary insanity. In the story below the photos Mrs. Purdy explains how she lost affection for her husband.

Shocking story!  The more I research the more outrageous  information I uncover about my family.

Still MORE on the “Love Pirate” story in my next blog.

Comments welcome! Have you discovered shocking information about your own family?

 

 

 

Searching for an obituary, Tulsa Oklahoma

The shock of finding out that my father W. Lon Hutchison had been committed to the Eastern Oklahoma State Hospital at Vinita by his own aunt in 1934 was somewhat softened with time and travel. I had never been to Oklahoma and was learning to use the GPS on my iPhone for the first time.

I drove to Tulsa from Vinita. I had an appointment with a research librarian made by email. Tulsa is the second largest city in Oklahoma. For most of the 20th century, the city called itself the “Oil Capital of the World”.

Tulsa has an exceedingly complex maze of overlapping freeways. I made a few wrong turns. I was thankful that the GPS on my phone redirected me. I found my way to the annex where the Tulsa Public Library archives were stored.

I had sent emails to the librarian that I was looking for information about my grandfather, E.S. Hutchison. Through cemetery records online, I found out that he had died in Tulsa in 1925. Although I was focusing on my father’s life, I thought that finding information about my grandfather might help me understand what happened to my father and why he never talked about his birth family.

The librarian opened up the microfiche of the Tulsa Daily World  newspaper to the year 1925 to look for my grandfather’s obituary. The librarian advised me to be patient, that it might take some time before I would find anything about him.

I sat down at the microfiche machine, rolling past the first days of the headlines of January 1925. I prepared myself for a long, patient search for information about my grandfather. What I found, within a few minutes, was shocking to me and to the research librarian assisting me.

Read about what I found in my next blog.

Please share any moments of research shock you may have had.

Thanks. See you in my next blog about the Love Pirate.