It’s week 16 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and this week’s topic is Negatives. When my cousin scanned the Ladd and Turner family photos, there was a pile of negatives he also scanned. Some were pictures of our granduncle, Everett Ladd, taken when he was overseas during WWII.
If I ever met my grandmother’s brother, Everett, I don’t remember him -- I wasn’t quite four when he died. Though he wasn’t a genealogist, and I didn’t know him, he helped spark my interest in genealogy. When I was in high school, I came across a box of letters and pictures at my grandmother’s house that belonged to her mother, Blanche Laberge Ladd. Among the pictures of unidentified family members, and postcards from people I later learned were Blanche’s siblings, was a stack of yellowed letters from WWII from Everett to his parents. From the moment I slid the first letter out of its envelope and “met” Everett, I was hooked. He was an engaging writer, and his dramatic letters read like a soap opera. While he was away, his wife cheated on him and got pregnant with another man’s child. He could do nothing about it, but constantly worried about the daughter they shared, whether or not he would be able to see her or share custody when he returned (shared custody wasn’t typical in the 1940s), and if he would be stuck paying for and supporting another man’s child in an era when DNA didn’t exist to prove or disprove paternity. He wrote about the divorce his wife eventually requested, and the lover he took in Tripoli shortly thereafter. To a 17-year-old bookworm, you can imagine what a thrilling find those letters were and how they helped awaken my curiosity in genealogy.
My dad’s side of the family wasn’t as close as my mom’s side. I really knew my extended family on my mom’s side – my Nana Connie’s siblings in Canada, and my Grampy Phil’s baby sister, Aunt Diane. I grew up calling many of my mom’s cousins “aunt” or “uncle,” and was the favorite babysitter for a set of my second cousins. I even knew Grampy Phil’s Aunt Alice well enough that she knew my name. When she’d encounter most of his grandchildren, she’d sort of scowl and ask, “Which one are you? Who do you belong to?” but she knew who I was and who my parents were. I grew up hearing lots of family stories. I had the opposite relationship with my dad’s family. I was close with my grandmother Helen’s sister, Mildred, but I didn’t know her brothers, I never met either of my grandfather Fred’s siblings, and never met any of my father’s cousins on either side of his family. Truth be told, I didn’t realize I should question it. It was my normal growing up – it was just how things were. Everett’s letters changed that. He came alive for me through the words he’d written nearly fifty years before. He wasn’t a name and date on a page, but a real person who adored his mom (most letters were signed “from the boy who loves and misses you”), loved his little girl, and experienced a bunch of hurt and frustration over his wife’s betrayal. I wanted to know more about Everett, this big, sweet, ferocious, complex man who so eloquently poured his heart out on the page.
Everett Eugene Ladd was born in Westbrook, Maine on January 7, 1916. He was the eldest son of Blanche Laberge and Dana Ladd. All I knew about him growing up was that he and his younger brother, Raymond, were both boxers. They travelled around New England competing in tournaments. My dad also told me that one of his uncles – and I’m not sure whether it was Raymond or Everett – was terrified of feathers, so once when he visited, either my dad or one of my uncles chased him around the yard with a chicken, which laid an egg in the middle of the chase. That is the sum total of what I knew about either Everett or Raymond before I discovered the letters.
Prior to the war, Everett enlisted for a one-year term in the Army’s Coast Artillery Corp, so he had a year of service going in, which meant he had less time to serve. He reenlisted in the Army on June 19, 1945, and was discharged on July 5, 1946. He was part of the 365th Bomb Squadron, which was stationed in Germany from December 1945-1946, and stationed in Tripoli, Libya from January-October of 1946. This tracks with his letters. Between his questions about things at home and his justifiable rants about his estranged wife, he occasionally mentioned sending pictures home, but there were no pictures in the envelopes with the letters, and no war pictures of Everett in the first several batches of pictures my cousin scanned. It wasn’t until he scanned the last batch, which included several negatives, that I was finally able to see Everett’s WWII pictures. More than 20 years after first reading his letters, and more than 70 years after they were initially taken, those negatives were pictures on my computer screen. Hello, Everett!
Everett seemed to enjoy the Army, where he often worked guarding the gate. He wrote in a letter dated March 23, 1946: I’m at the main gate now, working until 6 o’clock tonight. There’s not much doing now, so I thought I’d write a little note. Things are about the same here. The weather is beautiful, the only thing is, I’m afraid next month they’re going to ship us to Egypt. If I could enlist and be sure of staying right here in Mellaha, I would enlist for a year, no kidding. If I could stay here for a year, I bet I could make a thousand bucks. There is rumor here that we of the 365th Bomber Squadron are leaving here the 25th of April. I sure as the devil hope they consider us 5 M.P.s here important enough to keep us here. I never thought I could like being in the service so well.
He wrote in the same letter (and please pardon the racial slur – it was 1946, after all): A friend of mine came here and took 3 pictures of me and my wog guards. One of the pictures was of me in full dress Arabian. When we get them developed, I’ll send them to you. I was always curious about the picture he mentioned of himself in full Arabian dress. Imagine my delight when that was among the pictures my cousin scanned!
In an April 8th letter, he said: I’m sending you a few more pictures. They didn’t come out very well, but it will give you an idea about what we are seeing here in Africa. Well, I’ll quit for tonight and hope you answer this letter, so I’ll know what to expect. You are the only ones that can help me. Well, my dears, take good care of yourselves, and don’t worry a bit about me as I’m getting on fine here and happy as a pig in shit. Ha ha!
Everett’s final letter to his parents is short and full of joy. He was on his way home!
I’m not sure what became of Everett after he returned from the war. He and his wife did divorce, she remarried in November of that year, moved to Connecticut, and took Everett’s daughter with her. I don’t think he saw her too often after that. I don’t know whether or not he ever remarried, but he wasn’t married at the time of his death in 1979 and had no other children. I’m grateful I got to know Everett a little bit through his letters and pictures. I truly enjoyed hearing his voice, and I hold out hope that perhaps other letters and pictures lay buried away in boxes, waiting to be discovered.
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