A Witness to Life (Ashland, 2)
Page 13
Toledo: Say hello to Father and all the gang for me, and write me sooner than I did you. Try and forgive me for not writing sooner—cause you know how a fellow slips once in a while.
Bucyrus: Let me know how Father is getting along. I've lost his address.
Ashland: Say Hello to Father for me.
* * *
Edwards Investigation Services
212 Spadina Avenue, suite 100
Toronto, Ontario
May 22, 1946
Martin Radey
238 Gilmour Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Dear Mr. Radey:
Pursuant to the discussion in our office yesterday and your acceptance of our fee structure, we are agreeing to undertake a search for your son, John Francis (Jack) Radey. We would, however, like to state a few facts as a matter of record before beginning.
As I told you, an estimated 1 million people are reported missing—in both the United States and Canada combined—every year. More than 150,000 of these never return home or contact family again. It has been our experience that most of them want to be missing, that this is their choice. As you can imagine, the recent war in the Pacific and Europe has only complicated matters further.
If this is the case with your son, we can offer no guarantees other than our assurance as professionals that we will pursue each logical avenue of recourse at your specific direction.
As mentioned during our discussion, we believe the United States military is the logical place to begin a search.
Sincerely;
Simon Paul Edwards
(President)
* * *
Edwards Investigation Services
212 Spadina Avenue, suite 100
Toronto, Ontario
May 25, 1946
Martin Radey
238 Gilmour Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Dear Mr. Radey:
I am sending you a copy of the letter that was mailed, as per your instructions, to the Regional Offices of the Veterans Administration for the states of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Connecticut, Virginia, Massachusetts and California (sixteen states in all).
In the event that John F. Radey may still be in the armed forces, I have also sent slightly modified copies of the inquiry to the following agencies:
* US Army Personnel Service Support Center
Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana
* Air Force Military Personnel Center
Randolph AFB
San Antonio, Texas
* Navy Annex Building
Washington, DC
* Marine Corps Headquarters
Washington, DC
* US Coast Guard
2100 2nd Street, SW
Washington, DC
* Retired Military and Civil Service Personnel
1900 E. Street, SW
Washington, DC
* General Services Administration
National Personnel Records Center
9700 Page Blvd.
St. Louis, Missouri
* * *
Director, Regional Office
Veterans Administration
(regional office address)
(date)
Re: John Francis (Jack) Radey
Date of Birth: April 30, 1911
Place of Birth: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Dear Sir:
I have an urgent reason for contacting the above individual. If he is in your file and you have a current address, would you please forward to him the enclosed stamped, unaddressed postcard. If you have no record of him, would you please return the postcard to me for my records.
Sincerely,
etc.
* * *
[POSTCARD]
DEAR JACK:
I ASKED THE VA TO FORWARD THIS CARD AS I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE YOU ARE AND WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU. PLEASE WRITE (238 GILMOUR AVE, TORONTO) OR CALL COLLECT (LY 6027).
FATHER
* * *
Edwards Investigation Services
212 Spadina Avenue, suite 100
Toronto, Ontario
July 8, 1946
Martin Radey
238 Gilmour Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Dear Mr. Radey:
As it has been six weeks since the first steps of our investigation into the whereabouts of your son, John F. Radey, and since we have had no positive response as yet, I recommend that we proceed with the next phase of the search. To this end, I have enclosed a copy of the letter we discussed over the phone, addressed to the US Social Security Administration.
* * *
Director, Locator
Service Social Security Administration
6401 Security Blvd.
Baltimore, Maryland
Re: John Francis (Jack) Radey
Date of Birth: April 30, 1911
Place of Birth: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Dear Sir:
I have an urgent humanitarian reason for contacting the above individual. If he is in your file and you have a current address for him, would you please forward to him the enclosed, stamped, unaddressed postcard*. If you have no record of him, would you please return the postcard to me for my records.
Sincerely,
etc.
(*postcard will be a modified version of one previously used)
* * *
Edwards Investigation Services
212 Spadina Avenue, suite 100
Toronto, Ontario
September 18, 1946
Martin Radey 238
Gilmour Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Dear Mr. Radey:
In response to your written query of September 15/46, in order to request a death or marriage certificate it is required to know the state or county of the individual's residence at the time of death or marriage. Since we do not know your son's residence, this would prove a very inefficient and costly way to proceed with the search, with no guarantee of success.
American Federal Records are the ones that we can pursue with the greatest possibility of discovery of some sort. Consequently, we recommend the following sequence:
1) US District Court, which handles civil and criminal matters, and which has retrievable records;
2) Bankruptcy Court, which contains public information which is accessible by mail;
3) US Marshal, in conjunction with the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) in Washington;
4) Prison Records.
Your suggestion that we contact the US Internal Revenue Service is a sound one, but in order for them to retrieve information they require a Social Security Number, which we have been unable to obtain.
I await your written instructions before proceeding with the searches named above.
Sincerely,
Simon Paul Edwards
(President)
* * *
Edwards Investigation Services
212 Spadina Avenue, suite 100
Toronto, Ontario
December 12, 1946
Martin Radey
238 Gilmour Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Dear Mr. Radey:
It is with deep regret that we close the file on our professional association, bringing to a halt our unsuccessful search for your son, but we do so at your instruction. You are indeed right when you say that it is a process that could go on for years, and that one must be realistic about the costs involved.
Since you may wish to pursue the issue further by yourself while naturally minimizing costs, might we suggest contacting the Salvation Army. As well as its better-known services, it also has a Missing Persons Service. We recommend using the same letter-of-inquiry and postcard tandem that we have used on your behalf
There are four headquarters to which you might write:
1) Eastern US: 120 W. 14th St., New York, NY
2) Central US: 860 N. Dearborn St., Chicago, Illinois
3) Southern US: 1424 NE Expressway, Atlanta, Georgia
4) Western US: 30840 Hawthorne Blvd., Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Our very best wishes for success in your search. I wish we could have had a successful conclusion to our endeavor. If we can be of further assistance, do not hesitate to contact us.
A final invoice is being prepared and will be issued shortly.
Sincerely,
Simon Paul Edwards
(President)
3
STAFF NEWS, January 23, 1948
Martin Radey of the seventh floor receiving department was the center of attraction recently when the members of the staff gathered to present him with a handsome smoking stand, cigars, and a hassock on the occasion of his retirement from the Company. Mr. Radey had been with the Company over 30 years and retired under Simpson's Retirement Security Plan.
Ann Disapproves of my cigar, but I light it anyway, strong aromatic smoke filling the air. The Saturday Evening Post rests on my lap, the cover a Norman Rockwell painting of a neighborhood scene—kids playing tag, laundry hanging on lines, a man hammering shingles onto a roof.
Ann Jackson, who once worked on the switchboard at the Bell with Evelyn, now lives with us as live-in help. Evelyn's needs are more than I can handle, and Joan, herself working full-time at nineteen, cannot be tied to her either.
Joan has ended up, much like her mother, exactly like Evelyn and Ann, working switchboard at the Bell too. Even so, Joan and Ann do not get along. Ann does not understand Frank Sinatra, jukeboxes, roller rinks. Joan is strong, smart, with a mind of her own. Like Gert.
I let a stream of blue smoke float toward the green- patterned wallpaper that surrounds me. I do not know how much more time I have. Jack, I think. Jack.
I see him cross the room of the apartment atop the stores on Roncesvalles, see his hand on the doorknob, see his eyes, blue, accusing me, hear his footsteps on the stairs.
The atlas lies open on my lap, the United States stretching across two pages, topography of greens, oranges, yellows at my fingertips. I push my eyeglasses down on my nose, peer through the bottom of the lenses.
So many places. He could be anywhere.
I do not know how to start. It is overwhelming.
Detroit. Toledo. Bucyrus. Ashland.
Heading south. Disappearing like winter runoff into soft loam, sinking into the earth.
I do not understand Jack. I do not understand anyone who can travel so far, so freely. Yet I try to make the leap, try to imagine the places named before me, however ordinary they may be.
I am sixty-eight years old, past the age of discovery and experiment, born in another era, another world. Nevertheless, I am intrigued by the litany of names that Jack has evoked: Detroit, Toledo, Bucyrus, Ashland.
Ashland. Kentucky. The source of his final words.
Simon Paul Edwards and his Investigation Services have checked these places out, found nothing.
And yet.
And yet; when I close my eyes I can see Jack in some mythical Kentucky, by the side of a road, in a diner with a cigarette and coffee, leaning on the hood of a Chevy, that smile, so white, so wry.
There is a story surrounding everyone, some traces of information that are part fancy, part fact, a tale that gets passed around as casually as discussion of the weather. Her father was a drunk. His sister committed suicide. Their mother went mad. He's worth a quarter of a million dollars.
After mass on Sunday, the new young priest, Father Morrison, stops me outside to introduce himself. He has been at St. Cecilia's for more than a year now, since Father Colliton died, but this is the first time we have spoken. And as we talk I come to realize that there is a story surrounding me, of which I have been unaware. He tells me that someone has mentioned that I have a son living down in the States, and he asks how he is.
I see Jack smiling, cigarette in hand, the Ohio River behind him wide and deep.
He's in Kentucky, I say, surprising myself.
Kentucky? Really? What's he doing?
Operates his own business.
Father Morrison's eyes crinkle in the morning sunshine.
Hotel business, I say. Ashland.
He nods, looks around, thinking.
Ever been to Kentucky? I ask him.
As a matter of fact, I have. There's a Trappist monastery near Bardstown. Gethsemani. I was on a retreat there during my novitiate. Beautiful place. Lovely. Acres of countryside.
He looks at me.
You should go, he says. They have a guest house. A wonderful way to renew inner resources, make peace with oneself.
As I pull my hat low over my eyes, look into his face, try to determine what is there, see only concern, honesty, I hear myself talking to Gert in the restaurant on Dundas Street, that Sunday morning, more than twenty years ago. I'm thinking of being a monk . . . It's not such a bad deal.
You never know, I say. A pause. Nice talking with you, Father.
Same, he says, and we clasp hands.
At night, I spread the letters out on the kitchen table, touch them, reread them. Then I study the map of Kentucky that is open in the atlas beside them. Ashland is in the northeastern part of the state. Bardstown is about a hundred miles to the west, maybe thirty miles south of Louisville.
But Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery, is as invisible on my map as it must be silent. I touch the map, feel for it. I listen.
I have never had so much time alone. Retired less than six months, I wonder what I have done with all those years. They are gone, a blur.
Gethsemani, I think. I know the name from the Bible: the garden where Christ went to pray before He was crucified.
Somewhere in Kentucky.
July 1948 is humid, even sultry. The house traps the heat, especially in the upstairs bedrooms. As I lie in my bed, hands behind my head, staring up into the darkness, I think about my resolution for the first week of August. I am planning what I have never done before. At my age, I am undertaking a trip by myself, out of the city. Five days.
I am going to Gethsemani. One day to travel there, one day to travel back, and three days at the monastery. I have phoned ahead, made the arrangements to stay in the guest house. The bus from Toronto will take me through Detroit, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Louisville. At Louisville, I transfer to a bus to Bardstown, and from there the short last leg of my journey.
When the bus rolls through Detroit and Toledo, I imagine Jack walking the streets that I see through the window, his hands in his pockets. When we pass a roadside diner outside Troy, Ohio, I conjure him up at a booth inside, a sandwich and coffee in front of him, cigarette burning in a glass ashtray. On the platform in Louisville, I see him leaning against a telephone pole, reading a newspaper. In Bardstown, he floats, for a fathomless moment, behind the wheel of a Dodge roadster that has pulled into the gas station across the street. Smiling that smile.
4
Within the walls are a silent herd of men, young and old, white cowls, brown capes. At a large desk in the entranceway I am greeted by an older man in monk's garb and signed in, all talk at a minimum.
There are twenty rooms in the guest house. My room is as one might imagine: a single bed, a chair, a writing desk, two lamps. A crucifix is the sole adornment on the walls. My second-story window opens onto a closed quadrangle.
I set my bag down on the uncarpeted floor, sit on the bed, read the card that was handed to me:
A MONK'S DAY
3:00 a.m. - Rise
3:15 - Choral prayer of Vigils
Personal prayer
Breakfast
5:45 - Choral prayer of Lauds
6:15 - Daily Eucharist
Thanksgiving/Meditation
7:30 - Choral prayer of Terce
8:50-11:50 - Work
12:15 p.m. - Choral prayer of Sext
12:30 - Dinner
Rest/Reading/Personal Prayer
2:15 - Choral prayer of None
Reading/Personal prayer/Work
5:30 - Choral prayer of Vespers
6:00 - Supper/Reading/Personal Prayer
7:30 - Compline (Choral night prayers)
Retire
Guest are invited to join in any of the above activities, but are completely welcome to structure their own time to avail themselves of any of the monastery's facilities. We also encourage exploration of the natural beauty of our acreage as an aid to silent contemplation.
Standing in the monks' cemetery of miniature white crosses, there is a clean smell of pine and cedar that blows from the nearby woods. The fields are green, dotted with birches, poplars, the valley lush, hemmed in by the low, distant mountains.
At night the sky is cool, then there is thunder, forked lightning, rain. I lie in crisp, white sheets, see Jack digging in a garden, stop, wipe his brow, look up at the sky, and know that memory is a fiction that I can write.
I am sitting on a stone bench in an enclosed garden of pinks, whites, purples, the sun behind a cloud, when a young monk in his thirties strolls near, book in hand. I understand silence, but am not sure that I understand these men.
"Good afternoon," I say, reflexively.
He looks up, nods. "Good afternoon."
I am a bit surprised to hear him speak. "I understand that Trappists take a vow of silence. I'm sorry if I invaded that."