Page 41 - Always Virginia

Always Virginia 29

and we moved from Kampsville to Jacksonville, we, of course,
brought Teddy; but in Jacksonville we thought Teddy was dying
of homesickness, so we gave him to people in the country, but he
was back in our yard the next day. We never gave him away again.
He liked us better than he liked the country. We liked that dog and
his name. My sister Norine named her first child “Ted.”
My brother, Harold, the youngest of all five of us, got his big
toe stuck in our high porch swing one afternoon. Mom tried and
tried to get it out, but to no avail. When Daddy came home, he
managed to free Harold’s toe. Harold also got scarlet fever and we
were quarantined. Harold was named after one of Mom’s favorite
writers she read and liked, Harold Bell Wright, who wrote The
Shepherd of the Hills and The Winning of Barbara Worth. While
Harold had scarlet fever, they boarded my brother Jimmie out across
the street, but he got the flu, most likely homesickness, just like
Teddy, and I can remember Daddy and the man across the street
carrying him home. During the scarlet fever, we were in Harold’s
room playing games every day, and none of the rest of us got scarlet
fever though we all had every other childhood disease, I believe, at
different times of course. Harold died at age fifty-five of a stroke
while taking a shower. Rosemary said she heard him call out: “Oh,
dear God, take me to heaven or get this pain out of my head.” (All
three of my brothers died when they were 53, 54, and 55.)
In those days they quarantined you for everything. John was
already away at school going to the seminary, so he didn’t come
home during the quarantine period. He was studying to be a priest
and my Mom said she heard three knocks on her bed one night
and a voice saying, “I want John.” It scared her so she had Daddy
call the school to see if he was OK and he was fine. Mom always
believed that if your son had a calling for the priesthood, God
would let you know and she always believed that the priesthood
was John’s calling.
John made a wonderful priest til the day he died of a massive
heart attack stepping into the shower to bathe before saying early