Monday Memories - Notes from Aunt Ree

My mom recently had a simi-interview with her father's sister, her Aunt Ree. I fed her a few questions during her conversation and we learned the answer to some questions that we had been wondering about for quite a while. All we had to do was ask and then listen.

• Q: We recently came across a marriage record for your [Ree's] father, Vernon Albea, to an Alice Budell Hooper. We only knew about his marriage to your mom, Auline. Were you aware of this marriage?
• A: Auline moved to Atlanta with Roy [her son] and Auline and Vernon got a divorce. He married "that Budell woman.". They had been seeing each other and that's why Auline left Vernon and divorced him.

• Q: He died only six months later...
• A: Vernon had galloping pneumonia. His sister, Evelina and her husband, called uncle "Dooby" Duvall and their daughter Sarah all had TB. Sarah was the only one to survive. They had come out with a medicine that would have cured Vernon's TB, but they came out with it too late. That's what cured Sarah.

• Q: We visited the Edgwood Cemetery in Greenwood last year. We saw the graves of Vernon Albea and his parents. There was also a grave marked "Infant." Do you know who this baby was?
• A: The grave was Coleman's son that was stillborn. [Q: from which marriage?] It was Shirley's brother [from Coleman's wife, Marie]

• Q: Roy Albea [her brother, my grandaddy] didn't fight in WWII. He had told me something about having a broken nose keeping him out of the war. Is this true?
• A: He was 4-F. They said that he had broken his nose as a child and he wouldn't be able to wear a gas mask. He wouldn't be able to breath with it on. If you couldn't wear the mask, they wouldn't let you go to war.

• Q: How did Roy react to this? Did he want to go to war?
• A: He wanted to go. He went down right after Pearl Harbor and tried to sign up. All the men did when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Vernon tried to sign up at the first of the war but they wouldn't take him because he had four children. At first they had so many people trying to sign up that they wouldn't take anyone with so many children. But he was 1-A.