Looking through the family albums recently I came across my father’s Brownie snapshots documenting his deployment to Guam just before the Korean War – 112 two inch, black and white photos, a sampling follows. The year was 1946, Dad was 18, and had just enlisted in the Navy. How wonderful to see him here so young.
He didn’t talk to me much about his service experience so I know only two things for certain about this time in his life. The first is that he was miserable and wrote sad, complaining letters home to his parents. And the second is that after a while his older brother Clem wrote back telling him to knock it off. “Cut it out, you’re worrying Ma.” as the story goes – the stuff of legends, the phrase that has lived in infamy as a laugh line in our Luke household. I still use it today when circumstances permit, and sometimes for a laugh, even when they don’t.
By 1952 Dad was home, married, and working as a civilian at the Navy Yard – the Boston Naval Shipyard. He began as a pipe fitter, installing and maintaining pipe systems in ships, and by the end of his career there had graduated to designing them. Predating CAD software, he drew large detailed maps by hand and to scale. The work suited him. I know because it appeals to me too. I am my father’s daughter.
We collaborated on several projects over the years. In the 70’s we made clogs, of all things. He cut the wood for soles and I shaped the leather uppers. A few years later we built a floor loom, and in the mid-90’s we partnered again on our Luke family tree. It was the last project we worked on together and a suitable swansong. While I provided tech support, he and Marlene trekked to east coast archives searching for documentation of our heritage.
Out of the blue the other day, my cousin Jerry (youngest son of infamous Clem) texted, asking if I had a copy of what Dad had compiled. I dug into his boxes and found his paperwork, all neatly organized – copies of birth, marriage, divorce, and death certificates, a large hand-drawn tree-chart, and galleys of the 125 page booklet he distributed to family members. It was impressive, complete with the following Introduction.
I love that he wrote this, that he had a good time on our project, and that he spelled my name Debby with a Y. Only a few people do, from my childhood. In these past 24 years since he’s been gone I’ve continued our work on family records, keying his hand-drawn charts, incorporating Marlene’s tree line, and tapping ancestry.com for new leads. I printed an updated family chart for cousin Jerry from my Epson.
For the past few years I’ve been using our research as source for my sweater names, and each time I go there I find something new. My Johanna design is currently on my list for reworking. I’ll change its knit direction and add metrics. Experimenting with its stitch pattern has led me to two new designs that I’ve now got underway. I’ll be publishing these next and they’ll be needing names.
Taking Jerry’s request as a sign…
Don’t worry Ma and Debby with a Y, two knit designs, coming soon. I’ll text and tweet upon their release.
Update:
Debby with a Y, published 4/1/2020
Don’t Worry Ma, published 5/12/2020