Memories of Life and Death in Tidewater Virginia - Conclusion

Memories of Life and Death in Tidewater Virginia - Conclusion

While our husbands were on a cruise to the Arctic, my friend Mae and I, with my two small children, lived next door to each other in beach cottages. Across the street was another small group of cottages, and beyond that the incoming waves of the Atlantic Ocean. In the other direction across an empty field on a main street, was a strip of nightclubs, tattoo shops and liquor stores. The bouncer from the Checkerboard Club lived just behind us in our beach cottage complex.

One morning as I was fixing breakfast for my children, I heard screaming. I ran outside to find that black smoke was pouring from a cottage across the street. Mae had heard the commotion too, and had come running out.

. The young woman who lived in the house was also a navy wife to a sailor on the Midway. She had two babies;a two-year old and asix-month old boy. She paid another woman to keep them while she worked as a barmaid. She often partied after work, and the woman kept the children all night. We learned later that this particular night she had come home about 4 A.M., and had taken the children home. After putting the kids to bed, she fell into bed in a deep sleep. Apparently the two-year old boy was apt to play with matches, and this morning his mother was too fast asleep to stop him. Somehow he started a fire.

When the smoke woke the mother, she ran out the door in a panic, leaving both babies inside. She ran over to the cottage where the bouncer lived, and it was her screaming we heard as she pounded on his door. The bouncer and two other men ran  to the burning house, and tried to get in, but the door wouldn’t open. They broke windows in back and  front, causing a draft that put the whole building in flames. One man crawled in to save the children, but couldn’t locate them in all the smoke.

By this time a fire engine had arrived, and the firemen soon put out the flames. They found that the body of the two-year old boy had blocked the door where he had died of smoke inhalation. The baby was found dead in the bedroom, but when firemen brought him out and laid him on the doorstep beside his brother, we saw his arm move. When the ambulance came, they pronounced him dead.

I had to move away. Out in the country I found a two-bedroom house. It was little more than a shack that had only exterior doors. Inside I hung heavy drapes where doors should have been. There was a small cast iron wood-burning stove to heat the place, and a kerosene stove to cook on. Mennonite farmers lived nearby, and a Mennonite man charged me only $5 to plow a big garden.

 It is a good thing I had that garden, because about the time it began producing vegetables, my allotment check stopped. Fouled up is what they call it. The Midway was on a cruise in the Mediterranean at the time, so it took at least two weeks to inform my husband what happened, so he could see his paymaster to have my allotment resumed. It was four months before that happened.

Meanwhile with the few dollars I always kept in reserve, I bought eggs from my neighbors for .20 a dozen, and they gave us all the free skimmed milk we wanted. Another man told me I could have the wood from a shed if I would tear it down. I used my husband’s tools and tore down the shed, hauled the boards home in our luggage trailer, and sawed the boards up to feed to our pot bellied stove. I cooked on that stove during our emergency so I wouldn’t have to buy any kerosene. To make matters worse, the property was sold, and the new owner began sending me eviction notices, but I had no money to move. After three months the Navy Relief came to my rescue with money and an apartment in navy housing.

Meanwhile, Mae and her husband had bought a new house when they found out she was pregnant. She was lonely there, and each time she drove out to see the children, and me, I could see she was not acting normally. She paced the floor and couldn’t sleep. About that time her husband was transferred to a Navy airfield in Norfolk and he recognized that she needed medical help. The Navy didn’t seem to have mental health facilities for dependents, and as Mae became more unmanageable, her husband couldn’t control her well enough to get her to the doctor. Once it took him eight hours to drive about six miles while trying to get her to the clinic by himself. We were told her problem was brought on by her pregnancy.

Finally, Mae was sent to the Virginia State Mental Institution in Williamsburg. Her husband was able to visit her regularly from his base in Norfolk, but the powers that be decided to transfer him to Jacksonville, Florida. Even at a requested Captain’s Mast, they refused to change his orders.

 The doctors at the mental hospital delivered Mae’s baby boy by Caesarean section at seven months. I visited her the following week, and she was far from well. She could communicate, but she was very depressed, and kept saying that God wanted her to die. One morning between shifts, while the nurses were reading the night reports, Mae pried the wire from the workings of a window shade, and hung herself. Her husband gave the boy to Mae’s married younger sister to rear as her own. He continued a career in the Navy, and years later he married an English girl in London

With all the wonderful places of historic interest to see in Williamsburg, the mental institution is not what you think of when visiting the place. But that is the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the name of the town of Williamsburg.