Elaine’s Background: the Jacksons, the Quiggles, and the Rocheleaus

Elaine’s father was Loren Darvel Jackson after whom she would name her first son (Norman Loren). Loren’s parents were both born in Ohio (1910 Census). Norm remembers how Loren, as a child, played with a local kid in Detroit whose father liked to tinker with motors. The child’s name was Edsel Ford.

 

Loren was an independent, colorful man who owned his own barber shop. Norm remembers hearing that during the Depression Grandpa Loren broke down at the dinner table, saying that the barber shop hadn’t made enough to heat the store that day, let alone feed the family. He decided to give haircuts on credit – customers paid what they could, when they could. For men going on job interviews he provided a free shave and haircut. He was paid in everything from eggs to chickens to sacks of beans. His customers were exceptionally loyal and he retired to Florida in 1955 after selling his prosperous barber shop.

 

Norm remembers his grandfather Loren very fondly for creeping into the children’s room at 3 a.m. dressed as a ghost with a sheet over his head to scare the bejeebers out of Norm, Diane and Tom.  After his move to Florida he drilled holes in his Florsheim shoes (to make them cooler to wear) and took pinking shears to turn his suit pants into shorts, all to Lucy’s horror.

 

One day Loren came to Hillsdale and took Norm to A&W for lunch. They sat in the car eating chili dogs and drinking root beer and talking about the war. Loren served as a mounted soldier in the U.S. cavalry in WWI stationed in France. He told Norm about learning that the cavalry was a good way to die quickly. He started working in the motorized ambulance service instead. He described seeing horrors, growing up fast, and doing the awful things that are done in war time. He told Norm things that he’d never spoken about in his hearing, leading by example. He didn’t have to say that it was also Norm’s duty to lead his life by example.

 

 

The Quiggles

 

Elaine’s mother was Lucy Mabel Quiggle. Lucy’s parents were born in New York and Michigan (1910 Census). Lucy’s mother was Allie Bursee. Allie’s mother was named Amelia and according to fellow genealogist Arleta Galloway, a descendant of Amelia Bersee, Amelia’s maiden name was Hart.

 

Lucy Jackson was a doting mother and grandmother. She would line up Norm, Diane and Tom for breakfast and make each of them whatever they wanted – three different breakfasts for three children. She also made them chocolate chip cookies as large as dinner plates. Norm recalls that his grandmother Lucy taught him to cook (it’s not a science, but an art!) and to sew – he still has a great whip-stitch. In Florida, where she and Loren had retired, she helped to raise Stanley’s children, Delphine and Wayne.

 

 

Lucy’s father was Henry Quiggle. He was a captain of ships on the Great Lakes. Norm’s special memory of him is of being taught nautical knot tricks on the stairs of the family home. Henry held several patents, including a sailboat that folded into 2 suitcases.

 

 

 

 

Norm, Diane and Tom’s great-great-grandfather Quiggle, born circa 1830, fought in the Civil War and was honorably discharged from a Michigan regiment. Norm still wears his photo on his suit lapel for family occasions. Their grandmother Lucy’s ability to produce his discharge papers got Norm two semesters of scholarship at the University of Michigan when he was in great need of it.

Loren and Lucy retired as relatively young people; Loren feared that he would die before he saw old age and wanted to experience retirement in a warm climate. Yet on his 85^th birthday he found himself trimming a tree which he unceremoniously fell out of. Only his pride was wounded.

 

He married a second time after Lucy died. The woman disliked Elaine and in turn was roundly disliked by the family. Loren’s advice to his grandson Norm was that there was no reason to rush into a marriage.

 

 

Elaine had two younger brothers, Stanley and Duane. Her mother Lucy very much wanted a larger family but she had an incompetent cervix and there was a seven year gap between the births of Stanley and Duane. She got pregnant again when Elaine was 18 but lost that baby early in the pregnancy.

 

 

Stanley

 

Due to mental health issues, Stanley was initially passed over during the draft for World War II. Eventually, he was drafted anyway and trained as a tail-gunner, a high-stress position. One day he awoke in a military hospital with no memory of what had happened. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and discharged. Elaine remembers that he had trouble related to his mental health as a child and young man.

 

Stanley had a troubled first marriage that produced one son, Steven. The couple divorced and this son lived with this mother in Detroit. Steven fell through the cracks of the Jackson family. When Loren died and part of his estate was sent to Steven, Steven returned the check unopened.

 

Stanley eventually married again, to a woman named Joanne. They had two children, Delphine and Wayne. The couple went to live close to Lucy and Loren in St. Petersburg. Due to Stanley’s illness and his unwillingness to take medication, this second marriage also ended in divorce. He was hospitalized several times for mental illness and worked sporadically. He moved back in with his parents and lived there until he died as a young man of tuberculosis while working as a dishwasher. Lucy and Loren were very good to Joanne, Delphine and Wayne.

Duane

When Lucy became pregnant with Duane, her Catholic doctor recommended an abortion – he said it would be safer then having her miscarry at an unknown time and place, as he was sure she would. She told him to go to hell. Lucy went home, got into bed, and stayed there until Duane was born, premature, but alive. Someone remarked that he was so tiny his head could fit into a teacup. One was fetched one and sure enough, his head fit into it. Duane spent the first year of his life in the kitchen, the warmest room in the house (due to the wood burning stove). Being born prematurely had no negative effects on his later health.

 

Duane joined the army at 17 with his father’s permission and fought in the Korean War. His duty was to go in ahead of the troops and build trenches.

 

Duane told Norm several stories about his horrific time in Korea. Duane was in Japan on occupation duty when the war started and he was sent to Korea without winter clothing or training, as happened to many American men at the beginning of the Korean War.  He was caught behind the lines during the Pusan-perimeter defense and spent a month living with a fellow soldier in a railroad car full of Campbell’s tomato soup. The soup kept him alive, but he never ate it again. They got out when the U.S. army broke out of Pusan. He wrote Norm a letter saying “You are so lucky to be born and live in America!”

 

I remember Tom saying to Duane that he must have done a lot of walking. He nodded slowly. “Walked north. Ran south,” he said.

 

Upon returning home, Duane married a woman he adored named Ruby and with whom he went to live in California. They wisely invested in apartment buildings. Duane was a draftsman by trade. Duane and Ruby could have not have children as she had had an emergency hysterectomy as a young woman. She had been deeply scarred by the Depression during which her family was destitute. She banked half of every paycheck Duane brought home.

 

Duane designed steelwork for California’s stadiums and high-rise office buildings. Tom remembers that when there was an earthquake during a game Duane would panic, envisioning newspaper articles about shabby engineering should a stadium fail when full. At 53, a nervous wreck and having suffered a heart attack, he received disability benefits under Social Security and retired.

 

Duane and Ruby sold the apartment buildings and moved to Missouri, near her family in the Ozarks. After Ruby died he became lonely and stopped caring for himself, satisfied to drink too much and play his guitar. A favorite song was “California Sunshine Girl.” Diane became close to him at that time, calling him regularly. Finally, he burned a hole in a lung and was found by a neighbor. Although a wealthy man, he was living in a tiny house with almost no food in the refrigerator. He went to live with his sister Elaine for several years.

 

As an older man, he became ill with dementia and moved to a nursing home close to his niece Diane. He helped support me, his great niece, through college.  He sent money every year to help cover tuition and room and board. Although I worked 2-3 jobs through college I would not have been able to attend Michigan State University without his assistance. When I graduated I sent him the cords I wore during commencement to signify that I had graduated with honors; he modestly returned them. I knitted him an afghan of cream, forest green and chocolate brown.

 

He distributed his estate in the last years of his life in order to keep it in the family. He gave his car to Diane and bought a home in Arizona for Jack and Elaine. Later, the rest of the estate supported Elaine when she was in a nursing home.

 

The Rocheleaus

 

Elaine had two cousins who grew up in part with her nuclear family. Lucy had a younger sister named Esther, born in 1903. She married Simeon Rocheleau, a French Canadian. They had two boys, Donny and Richard. Simeon was a barber like his brother-in-law. He had a shop and the family lived in rooms behind it until they could afford a separate house.

 

Simeon was Catholic and Esther converted to Catholicism before the marriage. The priest cordoned off our family in the back of the church; Elaine was 5 at the time of Esther’s wedding and wasn’t allowed to be her flower girl. Esther lived close to her sister Lucy with their respective families. When Elaine ran away from home at the age of nine because her mother Lucy asked her to beat an egg (an intolerable, slavery-level request to the nine year old), she ran straight to Esther. Esther and Elaine were always close.

 

Esther had heart problems and died of pneumonia at the age of 35. Her two sons went to live with Lucy and her family.

 

Esther was young and she hadn’t had time to acquire objects to pass down. Her sons got her wedding ring and what little jewelry she possessed for their wives and daughters. The rest of the family got her dishes: the items she had chosen for her home which could be handed out and down one at a time for the relatives who wanted something to remember her by.

 

My grandmother Elaine received Aunt Esther’s syrup pitcher. There’s nothing extraordinary about it, except that it was chosen by Esther and it was hers. It was in my grandmother’s china cabinet all of her adult life. When my grandmother gave away her china to the rest of the family, I asked for and received Aunt Esther’s syrup pitcher. I get it out for special occasions such as the holiday favorite my husband and I share of French toast made on pecan bread. Here’s a photo of the pitcher the Christmas of 2007.

 

Don’s wife Geraldine remembered the story of Lucy and Esther this way in May of 2009:

 

“My husband’s mother, Esther Quiggle, died when he was about 4 years old so Esther’s sister, Lucy, took Donald and his older brother Richard into her home. They spent most of the week with Lucy’s family and then weekends often with their father or Lucy’s mother Grandma Quiggle. Lucy did an awful lot for my husband while he was growing up with her family. She would take them to shows and plays and museums, shopping and doctors – everything a concerned parent would do. Your Grandma, Elaine, was like a big sister to Donald and Richard also. When Donald’s brother, Richard, was in the air force in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Donald, who was eight years younger, missed him very, very much so Lucy took Donald on the train to the air force base area so he could visit his brother. They were gone about a week and Elaine was left at home in charge of her mother’s place. He often told me how Elaine was the older one who often had to put up with his and Duane’s behavior. Lucy used to read to the boys at bedtime and Donald and Duane loved the stories about the Knights of the Round Table. Donald and Duane used to go together out to Ralph Quiggle’s place also for visits.”

 

“Fran died I believe shortly after Don and I were married. Everyone told me how intelligent he was. He is buried in the same cemetery where my parents are buried. Don and I were going to be buried there also but then we decided on the Great Lakes National Cemetery.”

 

“We kept in touch with Elaine and enjoyed family get-togethers with her at an Ann Arbor restaurant when she came to Michigan and we exchanged notes up until a few years or so before she went into the nursing home. We were unable to visit her or Duane because my husband was having various treatments for a long time. He had cancer for the last 13 years.”