by Janet Dawson
Finally I pushed back my plate. “Oh, my, that was good. Nothing like homemade waffles. I’ll have to go for a nice long walk to work off all these calories.”
“I recommend the Lee Vining Creek trail,” Carl said. “You can pick it up across from the Lakeview Lodge, and it goes all the way to the visitor center.”
“Are you going to stay for the Bird Chautauqua dinner?” Pearl asked.
“I don’t know. It’s Friday,” I said, thinking out loud. “I don’t have anything so pressing that I need to do back in the office until Monday.”
“It’s a shame to come all this way and head back the next day,” Carl said. “Especially when there’s so much to see around here.”
“Might as well stay awhile,” Pearl said. “I’m enjoying your company.”
“And I’m enjoying yours,” I said. So I stayed another day. I took Carl’s suggestion of a long walk on Lee Vining Creek trail. Later I went to the South Tufa area with Dan, walking and talking as we watched seagulls waddle through the clouds of alkali flies with their beaks open.
Chapter 28
Early Monday morning I unlocked my Franklin Street office in downtown Oakland and made a pot of coffee to go with the chocolate croissant I’d purchased from a nearby bakery. I checked my messages, returned some phone calls and switched on the computer. I spent the next hour or so working on reports for current cases.
Then I took a break from paying clients and turned my attention to my own personal investigation into the mystery surrounding Jerusha and events in Hollywood, back in 1942. I renewed my search for information on Byron Jasper, known as Binky. When his name first came up in Jerusha’s letters to Dulcie, I’d done a background search. With all the interest in genealogy these days, there are plenty of resources. Through one of my many subscriptions, I was able to access United States census data. The seventy-two-year privacy mandate on these records meant that records for the 1940 census were not yet available. I had looked at the 1930 files and found that the Jasper family in Mobile, Alabama consisted of two adults—Earl, occupation businessman, and Martha, occupation housewife, plus four children, two boys, two girls, including Byron Cade Jasper and Sylvia Lucille Jasper, both born in Mobile. The records didn’t tell me whether Earl was Sylvia’s birth father or stepfather, just that six people with the last name of Jasper had lived as a family unit in 1930.
Byron Jasper arrived in Hollywood late in 1941. During 1942, he worked briefly in the movies as a bit player and extra. After that, I had nothing. If he were still alive, he’d changed his name, but he wasn’t using Byron or Cade or any other variation of his birth name. Binky’s paper trail was as empty as that of Henry Calhoun.
Now I had another clue. Late in 1942, Pearl overheard Binky talking about his draft notice, saying he was due to report to Camp Roberts, the big training base in central California. On the National Archives website there’s a searchable database of World War II-era Army enlistment records from 1938 through 1946. The disclaimer notice on the web page says the database is by no means complete. And it contains only Army records. If Binky’s draft notice had prompted him to join another branch of the service rather than the Army, his name wouldn’t be here.
I typed Byron Jasper’s name into the space provided for a search. I got fourteen hits. Some of the people whose names came up had Byron as a first or last name, and several had joined the Army while living in Jasper County, Missouri. There were two men with both names. Byron A. Jasper had enlisted in January 1946 in New York City, his race listed as Negro. The other, Byron C. Jasper, white, had enlisted in Los Angeles in January 1943.
This had to be Binky, I thought. Here, then, was a small paper trail, and I could think of one reason why the trail had stopped and I couldn’t find anything more recent on Byron Jasper. What if he’d died during the war?
I looked through the resources available on the National Archives website and found state summaries of casualties from World War II, listing service personnel from the states, territories and possessions of the United States. These documents from 1946 had been scanned and put on the website, two pages at a time. First I looked at the Alabama listings, since Binky had been born in that state. I clicked my way through web pages showing a county-by-county listing of casualties, but I didn’t find the name Byron Jasper. Then I looked at the California listings. Binky had been living in Los Angeles at the time he enlisted in the Army. There were twenty pages of names for Los Angeles County alone. I clicked through more web pages, looking for the last names beginning with J.
Jasper, Byron C. The name was followed by his Army serial number. Then came a three-letter abbreviation, PVT, for private. There were three more letters in the last column, reading DNB.
I clicked the back button on my browser, which took me to the list of counties. At the top of the list were links to an introduction and the document’s foreword. As I read through the foreword, it cautioned that the names of people listed were those who had died in the line of duty only. I found the abbreviations and their definitions. KIA meant killed in action. M was for missing. Of the others, DOW translated as died of wounds while DOI meant died of injuries. FOD was finding of death. DNB meant died, non-battle. This category included deaths due to sickness, homicide, suicide, and accidents outside combat areas, including training or maneuvers.
I sat back in my chair, frowning. My hunch that Henry Calhoun was Binky Jasper had just run into a very large roadblock. It appeared that Binky was dead, possibly since 1943, the year he went into the Army. Died where? And how? The casualty roster didn’t list the dates or location of deaths.
My cell phone rang. I looked at the readout. It was a number I’d recently added to my contact list, while I was in Lee Vining. I flipped open the phone, said hello, and heard Pearl Bishop’s voice.
“Jeri, I found a clue. It’s a picture. I mailed it to you this morning.”
“A picture of what? Tell me about it.”
“Me, on the set of the TV series Lou Grant,” Pearl said, “with the star, Ed Asner. It’s a publicity still. I was working on an episode of that series back in ’seventy-eight or ’seventy-nine. I had several scenes, a speaking role. Anyway, I was having a memory fest. I got rid of lots of things when I moved up here to Lee Vining, since I’ve got smaller digs. But I have a few file boxes with personal memorabilia, I guess you’d call it. I was looking through things from that World War Two-era, remembering living in that house with your grandma and Anne and Mildred, and this picture caught my eye. It was misfiled, you see. The stuff in the boxes is in chronological order.”
“What is it about the picture that made you send it to me?”
“The folks in the background,” Pearl said. “You see, one day during that Lou Grant shoot I saw a bit player who looked familiar. The more I looked at him, the more I thought I knew him. Finally it came to me. He had a lot of years on him, but Jeri, it was Binky Jasper.”
“I found Byron Jasper’s name in an online list of World War Two casualties,” I told her. “He may be dead.”
“No way,” Pearl said. “The man I saw in the late seventies was Binky. How did this Byron Jasper supposedly die?”
“The casualty list says died, non-battle, which means he could have died in any number of ways, such as an illness or an accident. I don’t have a date of death or any details, but he was on the California casualty list.”
“Maybe the list is wrong and he didn’t die at all.”
“It’s possible. There’s a disclaimer saying the list may not be accurate.”
“Jeri, when I saw that picture I was so sure. I had such a flashback, remembering him on the set.”
“You shot that Lou Grant episode in nineteen seventy-nine.” I was on the Internet Movie Database website now, looking at Pearl’s credits. I found the episode with Pearl and the year it was made. “You saw Binky on the set at Metro late in ’forty-two, and again in ’seventy-nine. That’s thirty-seven years, Pearl.”
“I know that. But it was Binky, or
someone who looked a lot like him.”
“Tell me everything you remember.”
“I kept looking at this guy,” Pearl said, “thinking his face was familiar. Finally it came to me. It was Binky Jasper. I said to myself, he’d aged well. It was the end of the day. As soon as I could, I walked over to where I’d seen him but he was gone. We were supposed to do some retakes the next morning but he didn’t show up for work, even though he was supposed to be there. I asked around and found out he was using a different name, similar to my first husband’s last name, Galvin, which is why I remember. Binky was calling himself Hank Calvin.”
I clicked on the episode title and read through the names in the credits. “I’m still on the IMDB, looking at the cast list for that Lou Grant episode. He’s here, Hank Calvin, playing a parking lot attendant.”
“That’s right,” Pearl said. “It was an exterior shoot in downtown LA. In the picture I sent you, I’m talking with Ed Asner in the foreground. In the background you can see Binky handing over some car keys to Nancy Marchand, another cast member.”
If Hank Calvin was really Byron Jasper, had he recognized Pearl at the same time she had recognized him? Was that why he hadn’t come back to the set?
“Thanks for the lead, Pearl. I’ll look into this.”
“I want the picture back when you’re done with it,” she said. “Ed Asner autographed it to me, bless his heart.”
I ended the call and sat for a moment staring at the computer screen. I definitely needed a copy of Byron Jasper’s death certificate.
I went to the website for the National Personnel Records Center, which contained death records of service members, and read through the information there. Unfortunately access to the files was limited and required authorization. Unless I was a relative or a researcher, forget that route. As a citizen I welcomed the new emphasis on privacy and safeguarding personal information, particularly in this era of electronic records. On the other hand, it made investigations more difficult.
I had to start with Binky’s last known whereabouts. What if he’d died at Camp Roberts, where he’d gone for training after being drafted into the Army? I was basing that theory on the definition of “died, non-battle,” a category that included accidents during training or maneuvers. I could be wrong, but it was a logical place to start.
If Binky Jasper had died in California, the Department of Health’s Office of Vital Records in Sacramento would have his death certificate on file. I did an Internet search for that website and read through the information there, considering my options. Getting an informational copy of a death certificate from the Office of Vital Records involved filling out a form, mailing that and a check, and waiting eighteen weeks for a response. To fill out the state’s form, I needed information I didn’t have—city and county of death, a date of birth, and a social security number. I also needed a date of death—or a range of dates when the death may have occurred.
The Clerk-Recorder’s office in the county where he died would have the information on file. I consulted an online map and realized I had a problem. Camp Roberts was huge, straddling southern Monterey and northern San Luis Obispo counties. In fact, the county line ran right through the middle of the cantonment, the main site for the administrative buildings. So if Binky died at Camp Roberts, which county would have his death certificate? It looked as though most of the streets on the map were on the north side of the line. There was one way to find out. I searched online for the Monterey County Clerk-Recorder’s office, which was located in Salinas. I found a number and picked up the phone. While I listened to several voice mail options, I probed the site. The county form for requesting a death certificate was less specific than the state form, but it still required a city and date of death. The county had also contracted with a third-party provider for online orders of vital records, but again, I needed a date of death and a city where the death occurred. All I had were maybes—the year 1943, and Camp Roberts, which didn’t come up in the online list of cities.
After wending my way through voice mail, I was given the option to punch a number that led me to a real live person, a helpful clerk in the vital records office. She confirmed that, for administrative purposes, Camp Roberts was in Monterey County.
“Suppose I need a death certificate and I don’t know the date of death?” I asked.
“We’ve got a computerized index here in the office,” she said. “It lists the name of the deceased and the date of death, nothing more. Whenever you come in, we’ll give you a password for one of the computers. Then you can do a search on the name. When you’ve got both the name and the date of death, you can get an informational copy of the death certificate.”
I thanked her for her help and ended the call. Salinas is about ninety miles from Oakland, two hours down and two hours back. I looked at my calendar for the coming week. It was crowded with commitments. I really didn’t have time for a road trip. Who did I know in Salinas who could search through the death records index at the Clerk-Recorder’s office and obtain a copy of Binky’s death certificate?
I pulled open a desk drawer, took out a small box and sifted through the collection of business cards I’d collected while working on cases. I filed them by location rather than alphabetically, just in case I needed help in a situation like this. Some of them were sadly outdated, though. Behind the tab marked SALINAS, I found a card for Guadalupe Hernandez, a paralegal at a law firm in downtown Salinas. I’d met her a few years ago while working on a case down in Monterey County. I reached for the phone. She was still at the firm and she was in her office this morning. We chatted, catching up on our lives and work, then I told her why I was calling.
“Oh, sure, Jeri. We’re on Main Street, just a couple of blocks from the county offices on Alisal. I’m over at the Clerk-Recorder’s office all the time. I’ll look at the index. If this guy’s name pops up with a date of death, I’ll get an info copy of the death certificate. Could you spell the name, so I’ve got it right?”
“That’s Byron Cade Jasper.” I spelled it out.
“Got it,” she said. “I’ve got your card here somewhere, but give me your contact info. When I’ve got the certificate, I’ll fax it to you, and then mail it.”
“Thanks, Lupe. I appreciate your help.” I rattled off my address and numbers, then said good-bye. I’d been sitting too long, so I stood up and stretched, working out the kinks in my shoulders.
Camp Roberts. Something about Camp Roberts. What was it? I sat down and stared at the screen on my computer, willing the memory to come.
Of course. Now I remembered. My fingers moved over the keyboard as I did another Internet search. The newspaper article had originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times, then it was picked up by several news outlets, including the San Francisco Chronicle. When I’d read it, I thought the story was an interesting curiosity. Now it was more than that, possibly a clue.
Several years ago, while demolishing outdated barracks at Camp Roberts, workmen found wallets in the heating ducts of several old buildings. The wallets had been stripped of money, but were still full of personal effects and keepsakes—social security cards, driver’s licenses, letters, snapshots, religious medals. Authorities at the camp figured the wallets were stolen from recruits—probably by other recruits—during World War II and the Korean War, emptied of cash, and tossed into the heating ducts, where they’d been remarkably well-preserved. An Army National Guard staff sergeant took on the task of restoring the wallets to their owners. He’d located some of them, still alive after all these years, and in other cases, the heirs of those who had died. Just a few wallets remained unclaimed.
Stealing someone’s wallet is one way to appropriate a new identity. The typewritten social security cards of that time could be easily altered. That could explain why Binky Jasper, whose name appeared on a list of World War II dead, could turn up in Hollywood over thirty years later.
I’d learned about the wallet thefts from the newspaper. Now I wondered about newsp
apers in the Camp Roberts area. Surely they had covered the camp’s wartime activities. In Monterey County there were two big newspapers, the Salinas Californian and the Monterey County Herald. But Salinas was about ninety miles from the camp, and Monterey even farther. King City was closer. And in San Luis Obispo County, the town of Paso Robles was only nine miles from Camp Roberts. Farther south was Atascadero and the county seat, San Luis Obispo, and its newspaper, the Tribune.
Camp Roberts probably had a newspaper, I thought, turning once again to the Internet for research. During World War II, the base had been the size of a small city. What was once agricultural land, part of the Nacimiento Ranch, an old land grant, had been turned into a major training site built to accommodate the large number of wartime draftees. By mid-1944, more than 43,000 troops were stationed at Camp Roberts, and that didn’t include support personnel. During the war, about 430,000 troops went through training there, an intensive cycle of seventeen weeks, nearly four months. The camp had a Main Garrison, where most of the buildings were located, including the main administrative offices on what was called Headquarters Hill. A smaller East Garrison was located on the heights above the Salinas River. The camp had two training centers—infantry and field artillery—plus a 750-bed hospital and internment camps for German and Italian prisoners of war. When the war ended and the soldiers came home, Camp Roberts became a ghost town, until the Korean War began in 1950.
I explored the website of the Camp Roberts Military Museum and found an article about the Soldier Bowl, the camp’s large outdoor amphitheater. Midway down the text was the name of the newspaper, the Camp Roberts Dispatch. Where could I find some copies? Other than the museum itself, I could think of one place that might have the newspaper.