DAY 63 - MICHAEL EVANS ROE

Last week while I was in Oakland, I took flowers to the Mountain View Cemetery where my brother Mike is buried. It’s a beautiful cemetery, nearly 250-acres of gorgeous rolling hillside, and over 150 years old – the oldest cemetery in Oakland.

   There’s a darling little flower shop on the road that leads to the cemetery, so I stopped. Every March they sell 4-leaf Clover plants, but didn’t have any this time of year, so I bought a pretty little bouquet and went to the cemetery. As I drove through the cemetery I noticed the headstones, new and old – the names, the dates, the tributes. Mike is buried under a tree, on the first row of the Infant Section – along with hundreds of other young children. These little child-size graves only 2-feet wide, and less than 4-feet long.

   Very few of these tiny graves are visited anymore. Most of these Young Ones died over 50 years ago. They never had any descendants, and by now very few of their parents are alive to visit them either.

Mike on one of Grandpa's Shetland Ponies

   I sat down on the grass, my legs tucked under me because the little rows are so close together. It’s been 10 years since I’ve been to Oakland, since I’ve been there – so I brushed the leaves away from the tiny headstone marking the tiny grave. I talked to him. At one point, when I was a teenager, I even wrote my Journal to him. I read the blogpost I wrote about him on his birthday to him. Tears streamed down my face for my brother – this brother I never knew. His life tragically cut too short.

   Today is 64-years since the day his life ended. Since the day a woman got behind the wheel of her car after having too much to drink. She sped through the neighborhood that day, and this little 4-year-old wearing a cowboy hat and shoes a little too big for him – well, I don’t even know if he saw it coming.

   Mom ran to the street. Neighbors gathered to help. One called for an ambulance. A couple of the men tried to administer First Aid. A few of the women held Mom back. Another drove Mom to the hospital as the ambulance drove away. Mike died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

From the Oakland Tribune, Nov 3, 1950
"A cowboy gun and a shoe lie in the curb
where they fell. Police Sgt. Don Heaton
holds the other things which marked
the last "round-up" for Michael Roe, age 4."

   And the Woman Driver – was never charged. It was 1950 – there were no breathalyzers, no blood alcohol tests. She was 51 years old when she killed my brother. There were no legal or financial consequences for her. Dad said she never even apologized – and I could tell from the way he said it that he thought that was the LEAST she should have done.

   But there are consequences in this life – and in the life to come. Decisions we make and lives we impact – we are accountable for our actions. Although this woman didn’t face any consequences in this life, I have no doubt that there are consequences for her on the other side. And she lived the rest of her life knowing that her actions had taken the life of a 4-year-old boy.

DAY 55 - CHILDREN'S FAIRYLAND and the Love Story that Never Was

Gena Roe at Children's Fairyland October 2014

There is a charming children’s amusement park in Downtown Oakland called Children’s Fairyland. It is nestled along the shore of Lake Merritt, and is based on Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes – and I spent a million hours there as a kid. Built in the 1950s, it definitely has a Retro feel to it. And today I spent a lovely afternoon wandering through Children’s Fairyland and remember the times I enjoyed there growing up.

   When I was a kid my dad was President of the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club, the sponsoring entity for Children’s Fairyland – so I got the opportunity to be a Character at Fairyland. Each year a few dozen kids are selected to be Characters, which means that we got to be special volunteers for the year – but primarily during the summer. What started for me as a 10-year-old, continued for years to come.

   Back in the early days of Fairyland, PoPo was a permanent fixture. Count PoPo de Bathe (yes, Popo was really his first name) started in a circus at age 15 and remained a circus performer for many years, and eventually became a Magician – later in life he was an Ambassador for Unicef. Few people ever saw PoPo without his clown make-up – and I remember the first time I did, because my dad had to point out that it was PoPo. PoPo was at Fairyland 7-days-a-week, did at least 5 shows every day, and always had a pocket full of balloons for making balloon animals for every kid that he met. As a man that lived a life of service and bringing joy to children, PoPo also often visited children in the hospital.

   Although PoPo spent his entire life making children laugh and bringing joy to others, PoPo actually had a very sad life early on. He was an orphan, left on a church doorstep in a shoebox as a newborn, in 1900. Even his adoptive family abandoned him – asking the neighbors to watch him for an hour, and then never returned. I remember one of PoPo’s birthdays, I wished him a Happy Birthday – and he told me that he didn’t actually even know when he birthday was, but this day had been someone’s guess when he was little so that was when he celebrated it. Because of this he decided that he could never marry. He planned to spend the rest of his life alone.

LoLo and PoPo

   Also at Fairyland was LoLo, whose real name was Adonna Mae Houston – and she was The Old Woman Who Lived in The Shoe, which was the Ticket Booth Operator at the entrance. She also ran the petting zoo and took care of the animals. And LoLo was in love with PoPo. LoLo’s father had been a circus man in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and that’s how LoLo met PoPo. Eventually they ended up in Oakland, and the home LoLo had inherited from her father was filled with Circus Memorabilia. And LoLo let PoPo live in her house, while she lived in an apartment building next door.

LoLo and PoPo

   While PoPo lived in the main part of the house, over 100 animals lived in the basement. With the circus, LoLo had been involved with animal acts – and her love for animals stayed with her the rest of her life. LoLo definitely brought her work home with her, she had about 150 animals at Fairyland – mostly rabbits and guinea pigs – and another 100 at home. She spent her own money to feed the animals, and had arranged with a few local restaurants for their vegetable scraps too. For work, she work a costume, and her apron pockets usually had a couple of bunnies in them.

   LoLo and PoPo were best friends and spent a great deal of time together – but PoPo refused to ever get married. So these two people – so apparently in love – lived at arms distance. Both of them such kind and loving people, spending their lives bringing joy to thousands of children, and always falling one step short of true happiness in their own lives.

photograph of PoPo by Ansel Adams

   I spent most of my summers at Fairyland, and most Saturdays during the school year – for about 5-years. Most of it was helping with the animals, but I loved Fairyland, so I was happy to help with just about anything. I did the Petting Zoo, I cleaned out rabbit cages, I fed the donkey (named Pinocchio) – and I loved every minute of it. I knew every inch of that adorable amusement park, and loved going back stage during the puppet shows with Lou Mahlmann and magic shows with PoPo. It truly was a magical place, and magical people that built their entire lives around bringing joy to others. An incredible lesson in my life.

   I still remember the day PoPo died, in 1981. Since PoPo was so close to Dad, he found out early – and told me as soon as I got home from school. I started to cry, and Dad held me tight – and when I pulled away I could see the tears in Dad’s eyes too. For a man who never had any family, PoPo lived a life where people loved him as much as family. I went down to visit LoLo a few days later, but she wouldn’t open the door. She wouldn’t answer any phone calls. She was so in love with PoPo, and now the love of her life was gone. She left Oakland, Fairyland, the home her father left her – everything. Without PoPo none of it had any meaning for her anymore. She moved to Hawaii a short time later and lived the rest of her life there.

   Over the years I have often thought about LoLo and PoPo – the lives they lived, and the love they shared. I always found it sad that PoPo denied himself true love – and by doing so, denied it to LoLo too. It is a Love Story that almost was, that could have been.

DAY 54 - HOME AGAIN

Today was all about visiting my old Stomping Grounds. Redwoods Heights Elementary, where I attended all 7 years. It’s different now, with a couple of major additions, and the baseball fields are gone. Montera Junior High is now a Middle School and seems much smaller and less “crisp”. Skyline High – I couldn’t even drive up on campus, and it sure has changed, but I guess 30-years will do that to a place.

   I drove through my old neighborhood, remembered the Bybees, Tsangs, Taylors, Jack, Boggs, Ethel, Jeffries, Wilmonts, the neighbor we called “Tobacco Man” because he always had a cigar hanging out of his mouth – all gone now. The houses all painted different colors. Hedges and trees cut down. The Trout Pond no longer surrounded by wild blackberries – that we were often sent to pick for a nice dessert, but only half ever made it home.

   I stopped in front of my childhood home, and desperately wanted to go up to the door and knock – pull a Miranda Lambert to walk through the house, the basement, the backyard. But it didn’t look like anyone was home, and even just through the front window I could tell that it wasn’t MY Home anymore. Dad’s recliner isn’t in the living room, Mom’s needlework isn’t on the coffee table, Tref won’t bark when I walk up to the door. I’m sure the stain on my bedroom carpet (from spilling red food coloring) is long gone. And the doorknob I broke off when I got trapped in my bedroom closet has long since been replaced.

   And that’s what made it Home to me. It was more than the four-walls – it was what happened within them. The Thanksgiving Dinners we had in the dining room. The amazing (and absolutely perfect) Divinity candy that my mother made in the kitchen. The evenings we hosted Rook Club, and there were 4 card tables, 16 chairs, and a million laughs shared.

   Because it’s people that make a house a home. It’s the love and life shared there. And now that my parents are gone, I will never have a place quite like that again. It was a fabulous childhood – but adulthood is irreversible.

   So this week in Oakland I reminisce and remember. But I don’t really have to fly back to Oakland to do it, because I always have those memories with me. Sometimes having a good memory is a curse, because I have such a challenge of letting things go. But it also means that I can be with Mom and Dad anytime I want, because they are always with me – only just a memory away.

DAY 6 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MIKE!

Michael Evans Roe in 1950

On September 6, 1946, my mom gave birth to their first child: Michael Evans Roe. Having been childless for 10 years, they were thrilled to finally have the family they’d always wanted. They lived in a tiny rented 1-bedroom house, and converted the closet under the stairs into a bedroom for Mike. There was a washtub they used for washing clothes, dishes, and the baby. This washtub saw a lot of use.

Mike loved playing Cowboy

   One day, when he was only 4-years-old, Mike was outside playing Cowboys with a few of the neighbor kids – when he was hit by a drunk driver – right in front of this house. According to the newspaper article, he was hit so hard that it knocked the cowboy boots right off his feet. By the time my dad got to the hospital, it was too late. He found Mom sitting in the hospital waiting room, clutching Mike’s teddy bear. She was devastated – and she never got over it. Never.

   Dad’s cousin Lewis drove up to Oakland to scoop up Mom and Dad and take care of them. Lew was smart enough to know that going home to that empty house should wait for a few days. Lew’s wife Alice fixed them the only thing Mom would eat, Warm Milk and Bread. My Uncle DeVoe paid for the headstone. Everyone stepped up and helped Mom & Dad through the worst time of their life. Everyone except the driver. The drunk driver was never charged (it was 1950), never apologized, and never paid a dime of the hospital or burial costs.

Mom & Mike - his 1st birthday

   Mike would have been age 19 when I was born, and Mom still couldn’t talk about him – or even say his name without crying. And 35 years later, when she died, that still held true. She was heartbroken for the 50 years from when Mike died until she passed away at age 83 – she literally never got over it. I remember once when I was about 5 or 6, Mom was crying in her bedroom – so Dad gently scooted me out to the dining room. As he emptied his pockets he told me that sometimes Mom got sad, and we just needed to be quiet and let her rest. Over the years that happened fairly regularly. I now understand why.

    When I was age 15 my now-married sister, Fran, came to Oakland to visit. For a Genealogy class she’d taken at BYU, she had ordered Mike’s Death Certificate – and on it was listed the cemetery where he was buried. Neither of us had ever been there. We snuck away and drove to the cemetery, looked in the designated location, but couldn’t find his grave. It was a small section in an enormous cemetery – a section specifically designated for infants and children. We looked at the dates from the 1940s and 1950s, laid out chronologically – and the ages, from infants that died at birth to children that died at only 8-years-old. It was a small section of the cemetery, but it was certainly filled with sadness. We found the place we thought should be Mike’s grave, but it was just a bare spot of grass – with no headstone to mark his resting place. We continued to search the area, but we were sure this was the spot – but we were also sure that something was wrong. Unfortunately it was late in the day, and the cemetery was closing – so we had to leave, with all of these questions unanswered. And because we knew it would upset our parents, Fran and I decided to just have it be our secret.

   Six months later when I got my Driver’s License, I went back to the cemetery – this time all alone. I went to the office, again looked, again returned to that bare patch of grass. So I returned to the Cemetery Office and explained the situation. A very nice woman pulled out a file, confirmed that a headstone had been purchased, and send a Groundskeeper out with me to see if a little grass had grown over the marker. He walked to that same spot of grass where I thought Mike was buried, and tapped the ground with his shovel. Nothing. More tapping, a bit deeper – still nothing. Then he stepped on the shovelhead, all the way into the ground before the “klink” of the metal shovel hitting the granite headstone. The full shovel head – about 12-inches-long. It had been 30 years since Mike died, and his loss had been so painful that my parents hadn’t been back to the cemetery in 30 years. 30 years of grass had grown over the unvisited headstone.

Mike at Lake Merritt 1949

   Mike died 64 years ago, and would have turned 68-years-old today – but he is forever frozen in time as a 4-year-old.  Almost everyone that knew him is gone now. My sister and I never got to meet him, and know very few stories about him. But for 4 years he was the center of the universe for my parents. For 50 years his loss was my mother’s deepest heartache. And forever he will be our big brother.

   And that’s the beauty of understanding the gospel and having a testimony. You get to be sealed as a family, so the amount of time that you get to spend together on this earth is only part of the picture. The loss of a child is the most heartwrenching experience any parent can go through, but knowing you will be together for eternity can buoy you through the difficult times. After my mom passed away, Dad told me of a dream he had:  Mom and Mike were walking down the big hill at the cemetery, hand in hand – together. And I know that my dad believed it, and it comforted him to know that they were finally together again.

Dad and Mike

  And that’s why Mormons build temples and do genealogy – because Family is what this life is all about. It is the reason we come to this earth, and it is the reason that we love – because we are building those bonds here that will continue long after this life ends. When you know about eternity, you want eternity. And because we have a loving Heavenly Father, we can have eternity.