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| "This is a very beautiful place," Joe wrote in 1919. "Look and the trees along the street. " Courtesy Robert Ander. |
One
of the fascinating things about writing in this space is that occasionally
someone turns up a dusty cache of letters in a basement or attic – with no
indication of what became of the letter writers. It’s puzzling and intriguing.
Whatever happened to them? And why were
the letters abandoned?
Here
begins a curious story, pieced together from several dozen letters and
postcards found in a basement on Colonial Avenue in Norfolk: A tall,
dark-haired young man from Washington, N.C., Joseph F. Warren, comes to Norfolk
to work as railroad clerk; and a vivacious, curly-haired young woman from
Camden, N.C., Rubye E. Koontz, takes a job with a Portsmouth wood products
company.
World
War I comes along and Joe becomes a soldier. But apparently before going overseas,
he meets Rubye and they fall in love. Soon after his arrival in France, a
torrent of letters and postcards begins. Her letters are long and full of
endearments. His postcards are full of wonder at being abroad for the first
time.
“This
is a very beautiful place,” he writes from Paris
She
writes about a frightening outbreak of Spanish flue, part of a worldwide
epidemic, but assures him she’ll be all right. “Don’t worry about me,
sweetheart. . . .” And there’s news of a wild rampage by inebriated sailors in
Portsmouth that included gunshots and arrests.
Fortunately
for Joe, the war is almost over. Soon after he lands in France, this newspaper banners a headline: GERMAN
ARMIES IN FULL FLIGHT. By November the armistice is signed and “Jo-Jo,” is
coming home to his “Snooks.” There’s a telegram showing how anxious she is to
see him but uncertain when he’ll arrive.
But
then there’s this: “Mr. and Mrs. W.L. Koontz announce the marriage of their
daughter Rubye Elizabeth to Mr. Joseph F. Warren on June the twenty-third,
nineteen hundred and twenty, Elizabeth City, N.C.” The couple would be at home
after July 5 on Webster Avenue in Portsmouth.
Now a
gap of several years. Then in 1929 the letters resume, but this time she’s
writing to him from Portsmouth, where she works for the D.H. Gowing Veneer Co.
They’re addressed to him on Boush Street in Norfolk, then Colonial Avenue. One
is to the Atlantic Coast Line R.R. Hospital in South Rocky Mount, N.C.
Rubye
tries calling Joe from where she lives in Cradock, but it isn’t easy because
she has to walk several blocks to reach a phone. One letter, full of sorrow, is
signed “Your brokenhearted Snooks.”
Then
the trail almost vanishes. A search of census reports fails to disclose their
status, although one in 1930 finds Rubye K. Warren living as a single lodger along
with several others in an apartment in Norfolk. Now the record falls silent.
Happily,
last Sunday, while reading this column, Bud Dalby called to his wife, Patsy,
“You won’t believe this; I’m reading about your aunt.” She contacted me and here
are some of the missing gaps.
Rubye
went from being a bookkeeper in Portsmouth to a successful businesswoman in
Detroit. She was gone most of the year, returning home briefly at Easter and
Christmas – and showering her many nieces and nephews with presents. “I adored
her,” Patsy Dalby says.
“All
the kids in the neighborhood would come down to see what Aunt Rubye gave us,”
she adds. Among the gifts were the latest Madam Alexander dolls.
At
the time, Joe and Rubye had a home on the water in Wilhoughby, Patsy says. But
she was rarely there.
“All
my life, until I got older, I didn’t understand why a woman would be away from
her husband that much,” says her niece.
Social
Security death notices show that Joe died in 1967 at age 71. She took it hard.
“When he died, she just went all to pieces,” says Dalby.
She
outlived him by almost 30 years, passing away at a nursing home in Richmond in
1995 at the age of 97. The Richmond Public Library found an obituary in the
Times-Dispatch that shows she was survived by a sister, two nieces and three
nephews. Graveside services were to be held at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Norfolk.
Lastly,
from an unusual source, findagrave.com, there’s a photo of a grave marker at
Forest Lawn. Joe and Rubye are buried side by side.
