When my father died suddenly in 1996 he had only possessed the box for a short time. The box was his by default, being passed on to him after the death of my great aunt Viola, Edward's youngest sister at the age of ninety-six. I did not know of its existence until my mother told me to take it. She said the contents were old photographs and postcards belonging to my father's family. Do what you want with them, no one else took them which is why they ended up with your father she told me.
It was sometime after my return to Texas that I was able to look through the contents of the box. Indeed there were many photographs and postcards. I sorted through the material, realizing I had seen them many times before. Family treasures kept by those that found meaning in the images and words. I was a former curator having worked in museums and archives. How many times had people brought these very same photographs and family bibles to my desk. How many times had I told them to keep these treasures. They were the story of family, not the genealogy of the begotten. The wedding pictures, the infant pictures, they gave a life line to connect the generations which someday would be forgotten if not for the pictures. The museum could not keep them, they belonged to the families who knew better then to discard their stories.
Now I sat with those very same pictures. There were wedding pictures, tin types, a handsome young man labeled "mother's brother, John Westphal" Dakota Territories, a small child hauntingly beautiful posed dressed in fur coat and hat, a happy young family, the center of which was the same little girl only now a baby. Sailors, ships, lighthouses, lighthouse keepers, families posing with lighthouse keepers, the piles and piles of pictures kept falling from the box. Some were labeled, a few had dates, most were simply unrecorded images of people I did not know. My mountain had now become a Himalayas of history.
Every piece of history has a beginning. Indeed, the best chapters in history are the ones not yet written. But where was I to begin? My degrees were in design, anthropology and religion. They had nothing to do with naval, lighthouse or military history. And certainly not aviation history. Aviation? Yes, this is where my chapter would begin. It was here that I was led on a path of discovery that would allow me to learn all about the contents of this box and the people in the photographs. Ironically, part of that first chapter would remain still a mystery and is waiting for its story to be told.
A BOX, A LIGHTHOUSE AND A BI-PLANE
Ten years had now passed. It was a new century. One picture from the box had stayed in my mind the past ten years. It was of a bi-plane. The photograph was very faded. The plane was flying over water and the Marblehead Lighthouse was in the background. This was not just any bi-plane. It resembled the first Wright brother's plane. The structure itself was primitive, as though a child had constructed it using tinker toys. If you looked closely through a magnifying glass the person flying the plane was dressed in a suit using a bicycle inner tube for a floatation device. My curatorial instincts told me it was probably important. Everyone who looked at the photograph told me they thought it was important. No one could tell me who it was. I began my assent. This was the mountain I would conquer. After mounds and mounds of research, the only thing I could say definitely about the photograph, it was not one of the Wright brother's planes.
In the meantime, I took out the box again. Once more I sifted through the contents. This time it would be different. There would be an important piece of the puzzle I had not noticed earlier. Why had I not seen it before? History has its own time. The process can not be hurried. The research and the researcher will suffer for it. I had only seen an impossible mountain before me. Since my first look at the box I had learned much. Now, I would not be disappointed. Neither would all the people I was soon to encounter.
The small brown cover was plainly in sight. It must have been there all along, maybe stuck between envelopes. It was for me my Rosetta stone. Edward's day book sat in my hands! Now I just had to interpret the contents. Who were these people-Rosedale, S.C. Baldwin, A. Stewart and M. Putnam? What did SS,Scho,Prop mean next to these names? The answers would come later. Further down the pages were dates. It was the documentation I needed written in the script of the Edwardian and Victorian centuries beginning with 1899. Over time the handwriting, the pens and inks had changed for the recorder of this day book. But, Edward had continued recording it all, even to the last day of his United States Lighthouse Service,1943.
Just as unlocking the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians gave birth to an understanding of events so did Edward's day book to the box before me. I could now match the names, dates and correspondence. While doing this the term "scientific research" would be replaced by "the serendipity of happening to be at the right place at the right time" approach to my research. My box would become every one's box. My history, and my story would become their history and their story. Events would unfold leading me to people and answers in the most unlikely places. And, they would be connected to me long before I met them. After a time I came to believe that my childhood pursuit was being acknowledged and returned. I was guided by the last lighthouse keeper. This would be made all the more apparent the day I stepped into the National Archives in Washington D.C. and opened up the first of the Marblehead Lighthouse Keeper's log books.
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