BUCKY DALE WILLIAMS
Some Brief Remembrances by His sister, Hazel Alice Williams-Robbins-Gravel
(Dictated to her daughter, Tina Robbins-Coonce)
Marion, Illinois 2001
Bucky and I lost our mother when Bucky was only six years old. Without her stabilizing influence, our father, Jack Williams, lost the ranch, and moved us children into an old house in town. But it was far from being a home. My dad’s heavy drinking left us virtual orphans. Being older, I was more fortunate in being able to stay at a girlfriend’s house much of the time. But Bucky was dependant on the kindness of neighbors for an occasional home-cooked meal.
Eventually our grandparents came and took us, but poverty kept us passing from one relative to another. It was during Prohibition, and our grandparents were bootleggers, sometimes operating their “speak-easy” in empty houses. Little Bucky earned money by dancing on the bar as amused customers threw money at him. I still remember the day the law finally caught up with them. Bucky was scared but sat quietly on a hill with me watching the government men destroy the still.
On one occasion, our dad rode a horse from Idaho to Klamath Falls, Oregon, to see us. But Grandmother Annie hid us from him. During the fight that ensued, he broke a beer bottle over her head and spent six weeks in jail for it.
They were grim and terrible times. Money and food were scarce. Medical treatment was nonexistent. Even as an adult, Bucky vividly recalled sitting on a rock in the hot sun, hungry and stark-naked with a paste of baking soda on his naked body for the severe bedbug bites.
For a time we were taken by our aunt, Violet Edwards-Hays, and her husband, Monte Luther “Skeeter” Hays. During the Great Depression it was difficult enough for them to feed their own four children, let alone three more. I entertained the small children and carried water to wash dishes by lantern. Little Bucky had to carry logs for the fire, and had splinters all over his arms so bad that a teacher thought it was impetigo.
Finally, three years later, our dad remarried. We got to go back to live with Dad and our new “Mama Marie.” She gave us the dignity of being a family again, but survival was still a daily challenge. We lived in various places out of Grant’s Pass, Oregon for four years in the meanest of circumstances - sometimes in one-room cabins or crawling into a pup tent at night, and cooking on a campfire during the day.
Bucky was always a good and responsible boy, who liked to work. He kept a herd of turkeys and would go up the mountain with dad and Mama Marie to the hard work of cutting wood to making cedar shakes. Even as a teenager, I wasn’t strong enough to do that kind of work. Though living in poverty, Mama Marie was a good example to us, and Bucky and I enjoyed those few years when Dad wasn’t drinking.
About the time for Bucky to enter high school, we moved to Greenville, California. At first we had a relatively decent house – at least for those days – on a corner in town. But the owner, “Old Tex Bigby,” lost it in a card game, and we had to move to a little cabin out of town.
Bucky had no time for conventional adolescent behavior, as he worked in the woods with Dad after school and on weekends. But Dad had started drinking heavily again, and deprived our family of normal things we should have had, even as poor people in those harsh times. With hardly any clothes, Bucky had a very difficult time in school.
But he did have one best friend, a good young man named Terry Lockhart. He spent a lot of time at Terry’s house, and enjoyed the company of Terry’s 14-year-old sister, Jeannie. Though too young to date, she was mature for her age, and fun to be with. She was also diligent and responsible beyond her years, keeping the house while her mother ran their family logging business after their father died in a logging accident. This exceptional young woman was also very devout, and seriously considered joining a convent.
Bucky wanted a better way of life than the grinding labor of logging in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The day after he graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force, but at the age of twenty-one, he came back to marry his beloved Jeannie.
He became a Master Sergeant, fighting for his country in World War II, and served as a crew chief on bombers over Germany. As with so many soldiers in action, he had war experiences that he never talked about. While in Italy, he nearly died of malaria.
Bucky and Jeannie would have ten children together. Supporting their large family was never easy, but they were fiercely committed to it. He was a dedicated family man, usually working a second job for extra income. While stationed at Hamilton Field in Marin County, he drove a cab in San Francisco at night. Jeannie also supplemented with jobs she could do at home or at night, such as selling Tupperware or Avon. They were creative in finding economical means to entertain and inspire their children, such as camping, hiking, picnics and free educational events. Once they literally camped their way across the country, turning a lack of resources into a fun time for their family.
Though his childhood and teenage memories were not pleasant, Bucky never blamed Dad for the deprivation. He had a great respect for his father, as a man who did the best he could with a limited education in very hard times. Unfortunately, he was never comfortable with his stepmother, Marie, even though she loved him and was good to him. However, he was wise enough to designate Marie as the beneficiary of his first military insurance, because he knew what his father would have done with it. (Interestingly, Marie was related to the theatrical Barrymores, but her fundamentalist part of the family would have nothing to do with them.)
When our dad died penniless in 1949, Bucky and Jeannie used all of their hard-earned small savings to pay for his burial, with not even a dime left to pay the minister. After the funeral, Bucky rode the train from Redding, California back to their home in North Carolina, with only a candy bar to eat.
When Bucky retired after twenty years in the Air Force, they moved to Eureka, California, so their children could have a good, yet affordable, college to attend. He went to work in the saw mill, and purchased a large, old house for the family. Every night after work, he labored at remodeling the house, until he suddenly became too ill to continue.
Diagnosed with leukemia, he was given only a few weeks to live! Jeannie tenderly recalls, “We had to say our emotional good-byes in the car, as we drove to the University of California’s Moffet Hospital in San Francisco.”
During the early atomic testing, Bucky had been the flight crew chief on plane that was used to study the after-effects of the blasts. They would fly through the zone, recording data, and then fly back to the base and wash down the plane. At that time, no one realized the magnitude of their exposure to high levels of atomic radiation.
Many of those servicemen developed cancer as a result of such radiation and some of their families eventually won lawsuits against the U.S. Government for it. One of the attorneys involved in Eureka happened to be a friend of Jeannie’s, and he included her in their suit without charge. That kindness awarded her a widow’s benefit of $800 to live on.
In spite of the intense work and responsibility of raising ten children, Jeannie never faltered as an exceptional human being. She was enormously skilled and creative in her chosen career of home-making, yet still had a vital interest in the world around her. An avid reader, she was an interesting conversationalist, always concerned for others, and a joy to all who knew her. With precious little time for herself, she still pursued artistic and intellectual personal improvement.
Her sparkling sense of humor has brought Jeannie through much pain in her life, and makes her a rare jewel to know. After her children were grown, she attended the university for four years, earning enough credit for a degree of her own. Now in her seventies, she still displays her considerable talents in the crafts of quilt-making.
She maintained a warm and loving home for all who came until her health required supervision and help. Unfortunately, she now lives with diabetes, and has the formidable tasks of injecting herself four times a day, and piercing her fingers to check her blood levels six times daily. As of this writing, she lives with Georgia, her daughter’s family in El Cerrito, California. Georgia’s husband, Tom, was kind enough to allow his mother-in-law to move in and bring a nine-foot quilting frame with her.
With ten children, in today’s world, it’s not surprising that some of the children’s marriages would end in divorce. Normally, the parents of divorced children tend to view their child’s ex-spouse as an antagonist, but with characteristic grace, Jeannie still considers each of the ex’s a friend.
Bucky’s niece, Tina Robbins-Coonce (my daughter), had only limited contact with her Uncle Bucky and Aunt Jeannie, but she has warm memories of the few times she was with them. In 1956, when she was fourteen, during a difficult time, they kept her one summer. Their kindness to her, along with their devotion to their family, and to God, made a strong impact upon her. She relates with fondness:
At the time, with five growing children to feed and clothe, on a serviceman’s salary, it was unthinkable for Jeannie to buy any new clothes for herself. With the exception of Bucky’s uniform, the family’s wardrobe consisted of eagerly received hand-me-downs, which Jeannie creatively re-made to fit each individual.
But a wondrous day finally arrived when she was able to buy five new outfits! She was so thrilled to have something pretty to wear to church. When she offered to let me wear them, I couldn’t believe such kindness – allowing a careless, ungrateful teenager to wear her precious new things!
She was also generous to me with her time and energy. Even occupied with typical teenage self-absorption, I could see that the work of caring for a large family was unremittingly exhausting. But Jeannie was always willing to listen to my pubescent concerns, gently offering words of wisdom, without a hint of judgement for my immaturity. She encouraged me to use my time productively, taught me how to do embroidery and textile painting, patiently tried to teach me how to use a sewing machine, and lovingly nursed me through a serious case of mumps.
With virtually no money for such trivial things as entertainment, Bucky and Jeannie somehow managed to scrape up enough money to give me a special treat. Bucky took their daughter Shari and me to see the wonderful new “Cinerama” movie in San Francisco!
They also took me to see a live television production in “the city.” Pretty heady stuff for those days! The program was the west coast’s answer to the New York phenomenon of Steve Allen’s late night talk show. In San Francisco’s show, the regular singer was a local talent – a young fellow by the name of Johnny Mathis...
In a large family, even today, keeping up with laundry is a challenge. But in those days, before disposable diapers and perma-press fabrics, the Williams family laundry was a never-ending process. All day long, Jeannie would keep the washer going, and then after dinner, she and Bucky would sit together on the living room floor, sorting and folding piles of diapers and clothes.
That idyllic picture of a married couple happily sharing household duties made a strong impression on my young mind. I grandly assumed that my future husband I would do the same. Boy was I in for a rude awakening!
On November 29, 1897, Eliza married George Jackson in Walla Walla County, Washington.
