BOCA INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY

Monday, January 2nd, 2012, 3:40 a.m.

Today's story is about the missing sister. Gladys was her name and she was born on about October 1st, 1914. Fortunately, she was born five days before her parents were married. Many a young woman found themselves in a family way just after their boyfriends had departed for boot camp. Both of the young people knew that they might only see each other once more before the young man went to war. They were in love and it was enough for them to make a family out of a disaster. Married on October 5th, 1914 at St. Aubins by her family minister where he was at boot camp,, Wilhelmina Degerlund did not see him again until after WWI was over. By then, James Leonard was a changed man and four years older. Returning home, he moved in with his wife and resumed family life. My own mother was born in 1920. 

Throughout the war Wilhelmina Degerlund cared for her daughter and worked as a social worker for her church. I am guessing that part of her job was to visit the poorest of the poor in St. George in the East, part of the London Docks area of the city in England. While her husband was away working in the stock brokering industry she c ontinued with her work, not knowing that at some point she had contracted TB from somewhere. It would take her life in 1926 at age 30, too young an age at which to die. This left James Leonard with two young daughters, a job and no one to care for the kids. That task was taken over by his stepmother, a once-widowed mother of nine kids. I recall my mother saying that there were three daughters and a bunch of boys around all the time. For a period of about five years, my mother and her sister lived with the grandmother. Along the way they met the various women hoping to capture the heart of this up and coming stockbroker. Gladys came to care for one potential stepmother while her father decided to marry another. Home with her father, she had taken over the house and was acting as the housekeeper in absence of a mother. After they married, he found that his eldest daughter, then fifteen, was too much to handle and he sent her off to work and to live with one of her aunts.

My mother was ten years old when she last saw her sister around 1930. It was on a road trip with a friend. Her sister followed her home on the bus to see that she made it okay but that was the last time because her job as a assistant to a greyhound trainer took her away from the city for the most part. Eventually, in 1838, she would marry this Irish trainer but all my mother knew by then was that she had not seen her sister for eight years.

In 1990 I decided it was time to start looking for my aunt. My mother had mentioned her on occasion but never said much. The war came along in 1939, she signed up as a WAAF in 1940, was posted to Scotland after the Battle of Britain as an officer in 1941 and met my father. They were married in 1942 and my brother was born in 1943 in Harrogate Yorkshire where he had been posted next. I came along in 1944 and by early 1945 we were all living in an apartment in the village Pendleton, Ontario, where he was the Station Adjutant and commanding officer of the RCAF No.10 Early Flying Training School. Two more kids came along in 1947 and 1948 while we lived in Cartierville, a suburb of Montreal. Thoughts of the sister were put aside for the future.

I first did a bit of genealogical research to verify that there were actually four Degerlund bothers as she suspected. Sure enough, the records of births for St. George in the East produced results. I then thought to myself that if the family was still living in London I should be able to find one of them. After all, I was now looking for a grandson, and with uncles, I should be able to find at least one. I contacted my mother's step cousin and asked her if she would be kind enough to see if there was a Degerlund listed in the London phone book.

Yureka! She wrote back with two names and addresses. I wrote to both of them immediately. A few weeks passed and I received a lettler from on of the individuals. I will never forget the line that began with " I have contacted your aunt through your cousin....."

 From that moment on the correspondence began. Little had I thought about the fact that her life went on too. She had married, had two sons and was living in Eagle, in Lincolnshire in Northern England, the same shire out of which my father flew Lancaster bombers on raids over Germany. During the week of my parents' 50th wedding anniversary I stayed at the lake with the parents making preparations for the family gathering. ON the Tuesday before the weekend event, I decided I would stun my mother then with the news, not knowing what it might do to her at an event organized in their honour. She was absolutely dumbfounded. Part of the surprise gifts for the evening of the special event was the presentation of a cheque that would allow them to go to England that fall and visit with the sister and her family. The following summer, the sister came to Canada and stayed at the lake. They would correspond for the next decade and family would occasionally meet but nothing was more satisfying to me than knowing I had come full circle and filled in the blanks for my mother. I knew not knowing what happened to her sister always bothered her. As she left the room that evening with letter in hand, she turned to me and said, "you always knew." I just nodded.