Victor Walton Wilson was born on May 29, 1908. He died June 19, 1973. We know less about Dad’s upbringing than we do Mom’s. As a kid, I would ask Dad about his growing up and he never seemed to want to talk about it. One of my regrets in life was that I didn’t have much of a chance to talk with Dad as an adult. I was 24 when he died and still a moron. There are so many things I would have liked to talk to him about.
We do know that his mother died while he was young, Steve thinks Dad was about 14. In a letter from Dad’s Aunt Carrie she talks about how Dad lived with her for awhile when he was kid. So it could be that after Dad’s mother died, Dad went to live with her. There are quite a few pictures of Aunt Carrie and Dad as a small child. When Dad graduated from High School, he listed an address in Elwood, where all the Wilson family lived, but also an address in Marion. In a letter before Mom and Dad were married, he talks of going to Elwood, Marion, or Detroit, presumably to get work. That may have been where Aunt Carrie lived.
I am not sure what Dad’s father did to support the family, but I get the impression that they were poor. Dad told me that his father worked for a time in a coal mine in Kentucky when I asked about the photo below. I am pretty sure that Dad’s father is in this picture somewhere. When we would visit Dad’s family in Elwood on the way to see Mom’s family in Thorntown, it seemed to me to be awkward. Dad’s family was pretty coarse. We generally stayed in Elwood for a few hours, but then stayed a week in Thorntown.
Steve describes Dad’s least favorite meal: During the depression everyone led a trying life. Dad was very hungry so he went to his brother Erwin’s house to try to find something to eat. Nobody was home so Dad looked everywhere, but could find nothing but oatmeal and peanut butter. He mixed the two together and said it was the worst thing he ever ate. He could not eat peanut butter since then
The only siblings I can remember were Violet, Vivian, Erwin, Walton, and Paul. Violet was older than Dad, and Vivian was a twin. Paul is Uncle Bob’s father, and got Dad on at National Twist Drill in the early 30s. He died of cancer while living in Ferndale in 1945. Walton was apparently an accomplished singer; he was on the radio some in the early 30s. He was killed in France in WWII. I believe Violet died in the mid 50s. I am not sure when Erwin or Vivian passed away.
I remember just a few things about Dad’s life as a kid. He told me that they used to brush their teeth with cigar ashes. I looked it up online, and apparently that was something that was done to remove stains. I also remember that Dad had a fondness for beans and ketchup. He called them soup beans, which is an expression I’ve seen in Southern cookbooks. He often ate pickled pigs feet out of a jar. It looked gross. It probably was a poor man’s snack from his earlier years. He also had a dog named Felix. When he told me about him, I had a feeling he was very wistful.
Dad was athletic. He ran track and played football in High School. He ran the 100 yard dash in 10.9 seconds back in the late 20s. That was very fast for the time. He also ran the 220 and hurdles. He was an end in football, back in the leather helmet days. They played both offense and defense back then, he also played a 135 pound defensive end!!?? He said he blocked an extra point with his face, no faceguards back then. He broke his nose and it never was the same; he used nose drops as far back as I can remember. Dad apparently discovered football late. In his senior year, he quit high school after football season was over so he could play the following year; he had a year of eligibility left. He also told me he played half a year of semi-pro football. He got creamed and decided to hang up his cleats. His high school year book describes him as a silent and mighty man.
When he was a youngster, he was a bit of a daredevil. He told me they would stretch a rope and walk on it like a tight rope, but they could never get it very tight. He said he used to jump off the garage roof and do a flip in the air.
We know now that Dad was married before Mom. Divorce back in those days was scandalous. I never knew about the all this until I happened on some odd letters after Mom died. These notes were between Mom and Dad while they were falling in love. I mentioned them to Steve and had told me the story, recounted below. Brother Dave also knew about this because he worked as an aerospace engineer and had to have a high security clearance which required an extensive background check. After Mom died, I offhandedly mentioned this to Uncle Asher, and he didn’t know about it. I just assumed as the youngest, no one ever told little Timmy, but apparently is was a secret.
Steve recalls:
When my first marriage was going downhill fast, Dad told me something that I never knew. He wanted me to know he would be OK with whatever might happen. He said he had been married but divorced to a headstrong woman. She was pregnant and had contracted rubella at a critical point which meant there was a high probability of a child being severely disabled in a number of possible ways. Dad thought she should have an abortion. He said the woman gave birth anyway. The child was a disabled girl.
He said that when I was very young his ex had stopped by the road when we were vacationing in a cottage in Indiana, but I would not remember. But I did remember. We were across the street from his twin sister, Vivian. I told him I saw that both he and Mom were very concerned and looked out the window. A woman in a large horse drawn cart had stopped in the road. The woman and a girl were sitting on a high bench at the head of the cart. Vivian probably told her that Dad was there. After parking at the roadside for a while Dad told Mom that he should go out and talk to her. Dad went out to the road to talk to a woman in a horse drawn cart while I pressed my nose to the window. She had a girl with her. The girl was strange, but I don’t remember in what way now. I didn’t know until our talk decades later that the girl was a half sister to us four brothers.
Dad worked at the Real Silk Hosiery Mill in Indianapolis in the early 30s. That’s where he and Mom met. See Mom and Dad, Courting.
Wilson Cones Family History 