CHAPTER 1
FOREWORD
I am dedicating this book to my grandchildren in the hope that someday they will read this and have an idea of what kind of people they came from and be proud of what we are and where we have been.
With divorce and remarriage creating either single parent or "multi-parent" families, kids often miss the closeness of the complete family unit we used to know in the "old days". They don't always know exactly who their family is or where they came from and more often than not, they don't care. A prime example is when we first moved to Austin, Texas we saw another Leibbrand in the phone directory. Since there are very few people with that particular spelling of our name, my husband Don contacted him. This particular gentleman had no idea where his parents came from, who his grandparents were and had no interest whatsoever in finding out about his past.
So I am writing this for my grandchildren Andrew, Nicholas and Ashley and for myself. I had a great life. I want to share it with them and the rest of the world. Hopefully some day they will read this and feel like they know their grandparents and perhaps the rest of the family.
I read an article once that contained this pertinent bit of information: "As annoying as memory lapses can be, there is a positive side. If our brains store all that we saw, heard or read, we'd be overwhelmed. Our ability to splice together bits of necessary information and throw out the rest is essential for sound thinking". So much has happened in my life that it would be impossible to remember everything in detail. That would make a very thick book, so all I can do is to relate the highlights.
This book may not be totally correct as far as dates are concerned. I don't think that is imminently important although I try to be as accurate as possible. However, I'd like to emphasize that the events related in this book are being written as I remember them. Many of the people I am writing about are dead. Others still living will have completely different versions of particular events. It is immensely entertaining to have our two sons give their renditions of some of the events in our life, but this is MY story...... and this is how I remember it.......
TIP A CANOE
Double date picnic to the Minnesota backwoods,
Four wet kids and a dumped canoe.
The girls were cold, they only brought a blanket,
The boys were wishing they'd brought two.
Tip a canoe and see what it gets you,
Two sons and a loving wife.
Your sentence for gambling,
Flipping for a blanket,
Got you Fifty Years To Life.
You made a career, chasin' oil for a living,
Poking holes in foreign grounds,
Crossing oceans on almost a daily basis,
But the biggest prize you ever found was by......
Tipping a canoe, just see what it got you!
A rocking start to a married life.
One you'd share with a girl named Missy,
Who'd spend it all as your wife.
Fifty years might seem like a long time,
Unless you are loving someone true,
And you are lucky enough to find a girl named Missy,
Who'd spend it all with you.
Tip a canoe and see what it gets you,
Two boys and a loving wife.
Your sentence for gambling,
Flipping for a blanket,
Got you the biggest win of your life.
This song was written by Robert M. Inks (Copyright 1999), who is the son of our long-time friends, Mickie and Chuck Inks. Bob called up Robin and asked him for some information on our courtship and Robin told him about us renting canoes on our first date. Bob wrote this song and sang it as a surprise at our 50th Anniversary party in December, 1999. He also sang it, per my request, at Don's Memorial in October of 2001. I have been so touched by this song, and would have loved to use Tip a Canoe as a name for my book, but Bob has the Copyright, so I settled on "Full Circle", a suggestion of Robin's.
I would also like to give thanks and kudos to my dear friend, Barbara Phillips, who is the only person who helped me with this book and she was my editor.
CHAPTER 2
PROLOGUE
THE BEGINNINGS
I was a lucky little girl. I had two parents who loved me and I loved them. That was enough for me although we were very poor. I also had two older brothers, Edward and Robert, whom I worshiped and tried to emulate. My father was a wonderful man: handsome, loving, compassionate, dedicated, religious and hard working. He also had an infectious laugh. People loved him...... I adored him. I have often said that he came closer to being a saint of anyone I have ever known.
Julian Walter Nave, my Dad, was the second youngest of a family of eleven children. His grandfather, William Franklin Nave, migrated to Southern Illinois in the middle to late 1840's. I remember a story Dad told me long ago about Will and his family that I have never forgotten. I have never been able to verify it, but nevertheless, it caught my fancy.
William came from England to America on a sailing vessel, leaving behind his pregnant wife Elizabeth and two children. When he was financially able, he sent for Elizabeth and the children. During their journey, also by sailing vessel, across the Atlantic, smallpox broke out. Several of the passengers died, including the two oldest Nave children, but the baby girl survived. Elizabeth also contacted smallpox.
At one point they gave her up for dead and had sewn her up in a canvas to throw her overboard when someone detected a movement in the canvas and checked it out. Elizabeth was still alive, and she recovered. When they reached New Orleans, Elizabeth and her little girl boarded a steamboat for the trip up the Mississippi to St. Louis. During the trip, the little girl disappeared, and Elizabeth searched for her frantically. Eventually, she found the child hidden under a shawl in a woman's lap. Elizabeth, a redhead with a temper to match proceeded to tear apart this woman as she retrieved her child.
When they finally arrived at William's doorstep, he did not recognize Elizabeth. Not only had she lost a lot of weight, but her face was scarred from the smallpox. However, by recalling events and intimate moments that only they could have shared, William realized that this indeed was his wife and little daughter. They finally settled in Equality, Illinois proceeded to have seven other offspring, including my grandfather, William Franklin Nave II, better known as Frank.
Frank married a lady of Pennsylvania Dutch heritage called Olivia Stallings in 1874. I don't remember much about Grandma Olivia, but photos depict her as a tiny woman who was almost as round as she was tall. She was four foot, eight inches tall. She died not long after we arrived back in the U.S. from India in 1935. Her one great vice was to go out on the porch after supper and smoke her long-stemmed white clay pipe. The family knew never to disturb her at that particular time. Grandpa was fairly tall for those times, rather thin and with a handlebar mustache.
I remember sitting on his lap and "anointing" his mustache with cheap perfume that I had received for Christmas. I didn't know him very well, but like all kids, I loved my Grandpa Nave.
I remember Dad telling me that at one time Grandpa was a fairly prosperous farmer, and an old family photo shows a lovely big house with lots of "gingerbread" decorations and Grandma, Grandpa and all eleven kids lined up in front. My Dad, the second youngest of those kids was born in 1893. A couple of Dad's older sisters married, had kids and their husbands either died or deserted them, because Grandpa ended up supporting them all. At one point in his life he was caring for 22 adults and kids. That was a drain on the family resources from which he never fully recovered. He died a financially poor man in 1940 at the age of 86 in Eldorado, Illinois, five years after Grandma.
Dad's youngest brother, Henderson, died of heat stroke at the age of 19 after working all day in a hot cornfield. All of his other older siblings survived as far as I know. The ones I remembered best were Aunt Emma (my favorite), Aunt Flora and Uncle Ellis. Aunt Emma lived in Pasadena, California with her daughter and the others lived in Eldorado. Aunt Flora took care of Grandpa until he died. Uncle Will and Uncle Eph I met a few times. They had numerous offspring, most of whom I didn't know or just met briefly.
When Dad graduated from grammar school, he had to abandon the thought of high school because Grandpa needed him to work on the farm. When he was fifteen, he went to Grandpa and told him that he had a call to the mission field and he wanted to be a preacher and a missionary. Grandpa gave Dad his blessings, but was unable to help him financially. Dad worked and put himself through school, working first as a janitor and then starting his own dry-cleaning business. He could press slacks or a suit coat to perfection throughout the rest of his life.
He graduated from high school in three years, and then went on to McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois and graduated from there in three years. One of Dad's proudest moments was years later when he received an honorary PhD from McKendree. While he was in college, he started courting my Mother. Dad had known Mom and her family for several years as they had gone to the same church. Mom, who had graduated from Illinois Normal School (now Southern Illinois University) in Carbondale, was teaching school in Equality, Illinois at the time. They were engaged the same year WWI was declared. Dad liked to joke that there was war ever after!
Dad did not serve in WWI because he was accepted as a student at Yale Divinity School. He and Mom got married and headed east to Yale. Mom worked as a secretary to put Dad through the seminary. In 1919 my brother Ed was born. When he graduated, Dad presented himself to the Methodist Board of Foreign Missions in New York City and said he wanted to be a missionary in China. This was in 1920 and China was in considerable turmoil. The Boxer Rebellion earlier in the century had left China in a state of upheaval, where warlords were vying for power after the end of the Ching Dynasty in 1911. The Board of Foreign Missions was not sending any new missionaries to China at that time. They told Dad, however, that there was a need for him in India if he wanted to go there. He said yes and never looked back. He and Mom never got closer to China than Hongkong and when Don and I went to live in mainland China in 1984, I wished they had lived long enough to know about it. Mother died just three weeks before we found out we were being sent to China. Somehow I think they knew!
My mother, Lura Eleanor Bramlet (she preferred to be called Eleanor), was a real lady...... the last of the Victorians. To her, black was black, and white was white. No such thing as grey. She was very staunch in her beliefs and never hesitated to state them. She was not a pretty woman, and in her younger years she looked enough like Eleanor Roosevelt to be mistaken for her. She had tremendous dignity, and the older she got, the more beautiful she became. Much better looking than the other Eleanor in old age!! She adored my Dad and followed him to the ends of the earth without question.
Mom was born in Eldorado, Illinois in 1896. Her ancestors migrated from England to the States in the early eighteenth century, circa 1723. Some of her forefathers fought in the Revolutionary War, so I guess technically I could be a "Daughter of the Revolution". Anyway, there are two books written about the Bramlet family, one by my Great-uncle Meeks in the 1940's and another distant family member in the 1970's. The only time I remember meeting Uncle Meeks was when he was 102 years old. He was quite a character by all accounts, and the book he wrote about the family is filled with his poems, comments and philosophies.
Grandpa Everett Bramlet was a farmer and a builder. There are still a lot of houses in Eldorado, Illinois that he built. Most of them are still in good condition. He also built the farmhouse that he and Grandma lived in and it burned down several years ago. Next to my Dad, Grandpa Bramlet was the man I adored most. He was tall for those days, six feet I'm told, and he also had a handlebar mustache. I used to perfume his mustache as well. He married Margaret Elizabeth Dumford in 1890 and they had three children: a son Luda, and two daughters, Eleanor and Nannie.
Grandma Bramlet died when I was about seven so I don't remember her very well except that she was sick a lot and wasn't always patient with us kids. I didn't like her as much as Grandpa. She was tall for a woman, and it was from her that I inherited my ample bosom.
My family got to know Mother's side of the family better than Dad's relatives. Mom and Aunt Nannie were very close. Aunt Nannie married Jimmy Coleman, an Irishman who grew up in the slums of St. Louis. He owned a prosperous wholesale food business in Eldorado. They had one daughter, Dorothy Lee, who is my brother Bob's age. Mother's brother Luda married a lady name Tula and they had three daughters: Sue who was a couple of years older than Ed, June who was Bob's age, and Mary Ellen who was a year or so older than me. Uncle Luda owned a big grocery store in Peoria, Illinois.
A WHOLE NEW LIFE
Mom and Dad embarked on their life's work Dec. 30, 1920, full of anticipation, hope, trepidation and a great deal of sadness. Sadness because in those days missionaries were required to remain in the mission field for seven years, and that meant saying goodbye to family and friends knowing they would not see them again for a long time, or perhaps never. It was probably one of the most difficult things they had to do in their profession. However, the anticipation and excitement of seeing new places and the challenges of their mission helped balance that sadness somewhat. My brother Ed was 18 months old.
They sailed from New York on the S.S. City of Benares, a 10,000 ton combination passenger and freighter ship. There were 90 passengers on board, of whom 70 were missionaries from various denominations and missions. They arrived in Bombay, India on Feb. 4, 1921 after having made stops in Port Said, Egypt, the city of Suez and Karachi, India.
It was an uneventful voyage marked by one very special event. After leaving the Red Sea, passing Aden and proceeding on to the Arabian Sea towards Karachi, they encountered what was known as "white water". It is an unexplainable phenomenon and is rarely seen by anyone. The water as far as one can see is actually white. Mom described it: "The water looked as white as snow - just a glance would make one think it was a mass of snow in all directions - or it looked like an ocean of milk. It was remarkable. We could finally see the dark water ahead and after we reached it, we could see the white water behind us." They saw "white water" twice on their trip.
I know little of their early years in India, but remember Mom telling me how they were required to go to language school in Mussoorie, a hill station in the Himalayas, as a step to helping them become proficient in the language of the area which was Hindustani. India has many major languages and a myriad of dialects. My parents were members of the Methodist North India Conference in the United Provinces (now known as Uttar Pradesh) which encompassed much of the Ganges Valley and the Gharwal, a large area of the Himalayas, bordering Nepal and Tibet. U.P. as it was known, contained such famous cities as Delhi, Benares (now called Varanasi), Agra, Lucknow, Bareilly, Dehra Dun, Mussoorie and Naini Tal.
