Uncle Art: Everybody's Favorite

I don't know much about GG's younger and only brother, my uncle Art. I know he was about four years younger than she, that he drove logging trucks for a living (and other trucks later on when logging died down), that he was a Marine during World War II, that he married a woman named Alice and raised four children, and that he had a warm, charismatic personality.

In this picture, he must be about fifteen. He is thin as a slat, always was, even later on when he was much older and better fed. Born in 1925, he was a child during the worst of the Great Depression, years he and GG refused to discuss. Neither of them found anything romantic or dramatic about those difficult times; they remembered them as humiliating and degrading, traumatic beyond description.

We know that Grandpa Deeds held the family together, that he sent your GG and her mama and sisters home to the Young family farm in Fruitland and took Art on the road with him, travelling from town to town in search of work, often in exchange for a meal and a place to sleep.


This picture may have been taken the following summer.  Or the previous summer, it is difficult for me to tell. I have asked Cousin Diana to take a look at these pictures and tell me what she knows of her dad at this time. We always promise ourselves that we will write information on the back of a picture so that others will know who the person is in the picture, and when and where it was taken. But we don't always do that, and so it is left for those who come along later to guess at these things. That's what I am doing now, and I am not such a good guesser. Cousin Douglas, Art's oldest of three boys, says he does not know much more than me, so we will have to hear from Diana. She has an interest in family history and geneology, and I am thinking she will get around to sharing what she knows one of these days.

It is my understanding that Uncle Art ran away from home to join the Marines when he was seventeen. Cousin Douglas tells me that these dress uniform pictures are taken soon after enlistment. He looks seventeen or so to me, handsome but very, very young.

This is a picture that came from your Aunt Neva. It appears to have been taken in the South Pacific where he was stationed during WWII. Cousin Douglas tells me Art was wounded with shrapnel in his face, hospitalized and contracted malaria (same thing happened to Douglas when he went to Vietnam, although it was his arm that took the shrapnel). I know Art returned with gifts for everyone, your GG still has a beautiful silk scarf he brought her. Art and Neva were close, and they may have discussed some of his experiences, but for the most part, WWII was another part of his life that he declined to discuss. I never saw any lingering after effects, but it was generally agreed he saw a lot of action and endured some difficult times. He never said.

This may have been Uncle Art and Aunt Alice's wedding picture. Isn't she pretty? And she was even better looking in person, all her life, a very pretty and gracious woman. Alice was raised on a sheep ranch, sheltered somewhat from the worst of the Depression years, but she and Art were a good match. Their family, three boys and a girl, survived and thrived, and their marriage always seemed happy. They loved to square dance, and Alice made their costumes. Grandpa Deeds was gone before they started dancing, but it would have tickled him to be the one to play the fiddle and call their dance.