My Funny Valentine
Page 5
“It’s not over. We’ll write. I’ll try to come back to visit.” He reached out to touch her hand on the armrest.
Her skin heated at the contact, uncoiling tension inside her. “Frank, I have to tell you. Maybe it’s too late, maybe you don’t care. But I can’t let you go without telling you—I’m in love with you.”
“You are?” His face grew very still, almost stern. It seemed he withdrew from her, but his hand still rested over hers.
She nodded.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. A long time, I think. It grew on me so slowly that I just didn’t realize it. I’m sorry. You don’t have to do anything about it.” Her voice came out sounding choked—she could scarcely get the words out over the tears that spilled out.
“I’m afraid I do.” He gripped her fingers almost painfully, and leaned toward her.
“No, really. I’ll be all right. You know me. I’m tough.” She didn’t feel so resilient now.
“Like all the other times?” His eyes, full of doubt, searched her face.
She turned her head aside. “This isn’t like those other times.”
“Why not?”
“I was in love with the idea of being in love, not with the person. Please, don’t do this. I’m humiliated enough. I should never have said anything. I just thought maybe you’d like to know.” She tried to pull her hand away, but he held on.
“I did—I do. I just need to know this is real. I’m in love with you, too.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Since when?”
“When we first met, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. And when I got to know you better, I realized how talented and caring you are. I was a goner from that moment.” He gave her a tentative smile.
“I never knew a thing. Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Norma reached up with her free hand to touch his jaw, stubbled with the beginnings of a dark beard after the long hours flying. It felt wonderful against her palm.
“You made it pretty obvious I wasn’t the kind of guy you were looking for. And even if we never got together, I valued our friendship. I didn’t want to risk losing that. I told myself there wasn’t any hope for me, but I couldn’t give up. You’ll think I’m terrible, but every time you dated another man, it killed me.” He turned into her palm and kissed it.
“Oh, Frank, you’re exactly the kind of guy I want. You’re fun and loyal and strong and kind. My biggest flaw is I’m so stubborn. I get an idea in my head and you can’t root it out with dynamite. I was so certain that my knight on a white horse would be a particular type of person that I couldn’t even see you at first. But being stubborn is an advantage too. Because now that I see how perfect you are for me, I’ll be just as stubborn. You’ve got me for forever. You’re my own special hero!” She leaned into him happily.
“I’ll try to live up to that designation. It’s a tall order.” The plane touched down, bumpily, and began taxiing. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. I don’t know how long I’ll have to live in Montana.” He brushed his fingers through her hair.
“I know. Maybe you don’t want me to move there, near your folks.”
He pulled back, looking into her face. “Of course I do. Would you be willing to do that?”
“If you’re there, you couldn’t keep me away!”
“It’s not an easy life, Norma. It’s hard work.”
“Maybe this tour gave me a taste for adventure. I’m game to take it on. I won’t quit on you, Frank.” The plane rolled to a stop. “Could we try out some kisses, real ones, not like the ones in your performance?”
“Sure thing.” As Frank bent to kiss her, she melted into his arms and returned his kiss passionately. She’d found the man of her dreams at the USO, after all.
The End
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Copyright
Copyright 2014 Judith Laik
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
MY FUNNY VALENTINE
Historical Notes
The USO
The USO played an important role in World War II, not militarily, but in morale building for the troops. USO clubs dotted the United States, providing homelike hangouts for young men—and some women—far away from home and facing the uncertainty of war. In addition, many popular and less-known entertainers sacrificed considerable time to tour and present shows to US troops overseas.
In Tacoma, Washington, during the war, there were two main USO clubs, one downtown at 13th and Fawcett and the other in South Tacoma. I debated which to use for my story.
My heroine, Norma, still lives with her parents, as most single women did in those days, and her father is a music professor at the College of Puget Sound (now the University of Puget Sound), located in North Tacoma. So, this neighborhood is where I set the McIlroy family home. During the time My Funny Valentine takes place, the North End was an upscale area of lovely homes built in the latter years of the 19th century and early 20th. I felt Norma would find the downtown USO more convenient for her volunteer service, and especially so since she teaches first grade at Central Elementary School, just a few blocks away from the downtown USO.
During the Second World War, Tacoma was the closest major city to three military installations: Fort Lewis, an army post; McChord Field, at that time home to a wing of the US Army known as the Army Air Force, which later became a separate branch of the military; and Bremerton Navy Yard, in Bremerton, across Puget Sound.
Lance Logan is his own, fictional, self, but I took my inspiration for him from Bing Crosby, who was born in Tacoma (but grew up in Spokane), and who was voted by US troops at the end of WWII as the person who did the most for their morale. The USO tour made up of amateurs recruited by Lance was my own invention, and I don’t know of any actual tour groups of a similar type.
Women’s Roles in Mid-20th Century
A little social history: Early and mid-20th century was a peculiar time for women. Career choices for educated women were severely limited. A woman could be a teacher, a nurse, a secretary or stenographer. She could clerk in a store. But even if she chose, or was forced by economic necessity, to seek such work, it was looked upon as temporary. The only viable long-term career path for a woman was as a wife, mother, and keeper of the family home. If a young woman advanced too far into her twenties without achieving that status, she was asked by all concerned—and even some not concerned at all—when she was going to marry. And, by thirty, if that ring hadn’t yet circled her finger, she had arrived at that dreadful state of “old maid.”
It took a very strong or very driven woman to pursue any other goal in the face of that onslaught of expectation. And most women accepted this fact without question. Of course, there were outliers who defied these expectations, but I wasn’t writing about such women, but about a typical woman of her time.
The McIlroy sisters each occupy a different place along the spectrum of women’s choices.
Norma followed the path dictated by the times, her family, and her upper-middle class status. She obtained a college degree, enjoys her teaching position, but has always had a goal of marriage and motherhood. As the years passed and her dream eluded her, her fears about the odds of marital success grew.
Carmen bypassed the higher education, going straight to marriage and motherhood from high school. Now widowed by the war, she works at a job that wouldn’t have been available to a woman before the war and ensuing manpower shortage, right at the same time as the defense industry was booming. She is a welder at a local shipyard. Carmen’s story, I’ll Walk Alone, will be released later this year.
The youngest McIlroy sister, Aida (Addy), is currently a college student wit
h plans to become a veterinarian. Her aspiration stretches the boundary of acceptable options for women at the time. She will be the heroine of Easy to Love.
Music of the Era
You might be able to tell, I’m in love with the music of The Big Band era. To me, the combination of beautiful, danceable melodies and literate, emotion-laden lyrics, written and played by some of the greatest composers and musicians this country has ever known, has not been surpassed by any wave that has followed it on the American scene. That’s personal opinion, of course. But if you aren’t familiar with the music of that era, and particularly the songs mentioned in my stories, I suggest you look them up on YouTube. You’ll find recordings of most of them; some recorded back in the time and others are covers by more modern artists.
I’m sure I spent at least as much time poring over the old songs, looking for just the right one to heighten the emotion of the moment in my story, as I did writing the stories. And to my joy, there are many more songs in the canon that I can still explore in other stories!
Roping
Roping, of course, was a skill used for managing livestock on ranches and farms. It also became a contest of skills and a form of entertainment that was a mainstay of Wild West shows, as well vaudeville and other shows.
Will Rogers was a popular entertainer in the early years of the twentieth century. He was an American cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator, and motion picture actor. His folksy, modest style endeared him to audiences in every venue he appeared in. His acts often featured trick roping routines, and he got his start in show business in a Wild West show company. He was perhaps the most widely admired entertainer of his era. He died in a plane crash in Alaska in 1935, well before the time of my story. I have a link to his biography below, and it’s much more worth reading than what I can recap here.
Estonia-Russia
Estonia is a small country bordered by Russia on the east and Latvia on the south, with the Gulf of Finland and Baltic Sea to the north and west. Its territory is approximately 16,684 square miles, and its current population about 1,274,709 (2012). Its language is in the Finno-Ugric group, shared by few other nations and ethnic groups, and not at all similar to Slavic, Germanic, or Scandinavian (except Finnish). The language is considered to be highly feminine, meaning it has a large proportion of vowels. One feature of the language is the frequency of double vowels in words. Examples are two of the names of characters in My Funny Valentine, Toomas and Meeri. The effect is to lengthen the time the vowel is pronounced, not to change the sound it makes. There are even words with triple vowels, in which case, one holds the sound still longer. Ema is the Estonian word for mother.
The Estonian people are fiercely independent, a quality sorely tried over the centuries as various countries trampled and fought over it. It finally won its independence in 1918, and remained an independent republic until 1940, when Soviet Russia conquered the small nation with an overwhelming force, incorporating it into its Soviet Socialist Republic. There followed heavy reprisals, with mass deportations, executions, or forced conscriptions into the Soviet army of those who were considered to be enemies of the state. Some 10,000 Estonians were deported to prison or labor camps.
In 1941 Germany drove out the Soviets and occupied Estonia in their place. In 1944, the tides of war had turned again and the Soviets rolled over them and retook Estonia. Thousands of Estonians—intellectuals, leaders, policemen, and anyone Russians viewed as potential dissidents—were again shipped off to labor camps in Siberia. The atrocities rivaled some of the worst in Europe during that entire period.
It’s estimated that as many as 80,000 people fled Estonia just ahead of the returning Soviets. As the war neared its end, they and other refugees who had fled from Baltic and East European countries and settled in Western Europe feared what would happen to them as Russia advanced from the east. The USSR was demanding that its allies, France, Britain, and the US, “repatriate” all refugees from territory they now occupied.
Among these refugees were my husband, a small boy at the time, and some of his family, who escaped from Estonia a few days ahead of its retaking in 1944. He, his mother, and his grandmother settled in a small Austrian village. (His brother escaped separately and wasn’t rejoined with the family until a few years after the war.) They anxiously watched the advance of the allied armies, fearing the Russians would reach their area first. They were fortunate that US troops arrived instead.
The other allied forces (Great Britain, France, and the US) did not accede to the demand for repatriation of refugees living in areas they had taken over. After a few years living in a Displaced Person Camp, my husband’s family eventually immigrated to the US.
However, those in areas conquered by the Soviets were not so lucky. The actual number of deportations from the Baltic nations (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) during the years between 1940 and 1953 may never be known with certainty, but it is estimated in excess of 200,000. Most were sent to labor camps. “Altogether 4 331 persons or less than a half of the 1941 deportees ever returned to their homeland.” (from the deportations website, below)
Many Estonians resisted, and thus, the Forest Brothers were formed. A resistance group named for their practice of disappearing into the thick forests that covered much of Estonia’s rural areas, they engaged in warfare against the Soviets for a number of years. My husband’s father, who as a police officer had remained behind in Estonia, went into the forest for a few months, but became ill and returned to the capital, Tallinn, was arrested and later sent to Siberia, where he later died.
The Forest Brothers received some assistance from British, US, and Swedish intelligence services. Unfortunately, several years after the end of the war, their activities were compromised by British spies such as Kim Philby, who gave information to the Soviets and enabled them to eliminate many of the groups. By 1956, the resistance efforts were largely broken, although a few Forest Brothers remained on the loose into the 1970s. This resistance movement, and the support from the West, was the inspiration for my subplot involving Toomas Sepp and Cpl. Kelly.
The Soviet grip on Estonia remained for the next fifty years, during which Estonians’ desire for freedom never flagged. They finally achieved their independence, which was officially declared on September 6, 1991. The inspiring story of their eventual, bloodless return to a free state was told in the documentary film The Singing Revolution.
Sources:
The USO:
Books: I found two marvelous resources on the USO:
Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses During World War II, by Meghan K. Winchell, is worth reading for its explanation of the history, organization, and operation of the USO in the US.
Over Here, Over There: The Andrews Sisters and the USO Stars in World War II, by Maxene Andrews and Bill Gilbert, a vivid picture of the challenges, hardships, and rewards of touring in embattled locales.
Websites:
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9110
History of the USO clubs in Tacoma
http://search.tpl.lib.wa.us/southsound/southsound.asp?now=28-February-2009
A photo of the downtown USO club in 1943
Women’s Roles in Mid-20th Century
Books:
Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses During World War II, by Meghan K. Winchell. Besides the information on the USO, Winchell’s book is a sociological study of women’s roles of the time.
Music
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Songbook
Roping
Books:
Ranch Roping: The Complete Guide to a Classic Cowboy Skill, by Buck Brannaman and AJ Mangum. A well-illustrated book that shows the variety of ways stockmen use their roping skills on a ranch.
Cowboy Roping and Rope Tricks, by Chester Byers, describes a number of rope tricks with accompanying photographs. I must admit, I don’t think I could follow along and become a cham
pion roper, but that’s probably more my problem than his! In the meantime, I enjoyed the humorous asides, including a foreword by Will Rogers (see below).
Websites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers
This biography puts Rogers in historical context.
http://www.juggling.org/books/lasso/
In my brief foray onto this site, I came the conclusion that it has everything about roping a person could possibly want to know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9V9l5eJCVs
Will Rogers doing rope tricks (a little over two minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR_VAirKE9I
It isn’t a real video; it’s sayings by Rogers scrolling over photos of him (six minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY1KYaCYh4M
You might enjoy this more; it’s his voice in a radio broadcast from sometime during the Great Depression (2:45 minutes)
Estonia and the Forest Brothers:
Books:
War in the Woods: Estonia’s Struggle for Survival, 1944 - 1956, by Mart Laar. I have to mention this book. It’s a fascinating history of the Forest Brothers movement. Available on Amazon currently around $25.00 for anyone who would like to learn more about this time.
Websites:
A variety of websites with information about Estonia and about the Forest Brothers
http://www.infoplease.com/country/estonia.html
http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/history/soviet-deportations-from-estonia-in-1940s.html