Post by Stu-E Price on Jul 23, 2007 15:16:14 GMT -5
My mom's father, Harry Smith, was an Olympic long-distance runner who ran for the United States in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. His roommate on the boat going over to Stockholm was another legendary athlete, Jim Thorpe.
Thorpe, a 24-year-old American Indian, won the two most demanding events in track and field: the pentathlon and decathlon. And he did it with ease.
"You sir," said the Swedish King Gustav V at the medal ceremony, "are the greatest athlete in the world." To which Thorpe is said to have replied, "Thanks, King."
My mom's mother, Elizabeth or Ellie Poulis, was Greek and her parents had immigrated to the United States to become hard-working poultry farmers. Ellie's mother would kill the chickens with her bare hands by wringing their necks because her husband couldn't bring himself to do it. This started one day when they were starving and he was stalling. She impatiently grabbed the chicken from his hands, scolding, "Here let me!" She plucked the chickens and got them ready for sale. Tough lady.
Ellie grew up in New York City and was an excellent dancer. She danced with Arthur Murray when he was still Arthur Teichman. She was a saucy, attractive woman who would eventually fall in love with and marry Harry Smith. My brother Owen talked about going to New York to trace our roots and find out more about Harry and Ellie Smith, but never got a chance.
We do know that Harry ran in the Boston Marathon and in the Mardi Gras Marathon in New Orleans. He used to run all day. He was tall, about five foot eleven with terrific runner's legs and his deep blue eyes always twinkled with kindness. I'm told Owen looked a lot like him. They had very similar features. Owen had Harry's “crescents,” as my mom calls them, under the eyes like crescent moons. I have them too. When we were kids we heard, "Oh boy, you guys don't get enough sleep."
Like Owen and me, Harry had very blonde hair, though used to put grease in it, which Ellie hated. She wanted him to wear his hair in flowing blonde locks, not the greased-back look that made his hair dark and slick.
Ellie had been dating a very wealthy, respected doctor who was in love with her. He said, "Ellie I want you to marry me." She had the confidence to say, "Well I don't know if I want to marry you." She had seen a handsome young Irishman named Harry Smith and fallen in love with him instead.
When she told the doctor suitor of hers, he protested.
"I'll prove he's not worthy of you! He's a playboy! I'll hire a private detective and we'll follow him."
But after two days, the private detective was exhausted because all Harry did was run. They didn't have many cars in those days and Harry ran about 20 miles a day. The detective couldn't keep up with him.
The private investigator came back and told Ellie's boyfriend that Harry was not a playboy, but in fact one of the nicest guys around. The detective followed him around New York City shaking hands with people and helping them out. He'd help old ladies with their groceries. He even helped lost animals. Everything about him seemed genuinely good. What could the doctor say? He admitted to Ellie that Harry was a good man and gave up.
Harry Smith grew up in the Bronx, which at the time housed some of the upper-class people of New York. Harry was from a very good family, but they had some pretty lean years during and after the Depression.
He discovered he was a runner while playing craps in the alley with some of his friends at the age of 12. A policeman spotted them and yelled, "Hey, you can't be doing that! Gambling is illegal!" The kids scattered like a flock of startled birds when the cop fired his gun in the air.
The officer was fast and caught all the kids except Harry. He had never seen anything as fast as Harry in all of his days as a cop. He could not believe the speed of this boy. He spotted Harry a few days later and before he could bolt, the cop grabbed him by the collar and said, "I'm not trying to catch you because you were gambling. I'm trying to catch you to tell you that you should pursue running. You're gifted. I have never seen anyone run like you." It was that experience that inspired Harry to begin practicing. He went on to the Olympics and was a true hero in New York City.
After the Olympics he became the city treasurer. But Harry had a bipolar disorder like his brother Frank. They could be having a great day and then just one thing, one thing that no one else would notice, could send them spiraling down, unable to lift their heads for the rest of the day.
I have noticed that trait in so many people in my family. I see it a lot in my brother Bret. He'll be having a great day with everything going his way. Then a relatively small thing will really disturb him and it may take days to bounce back. I've seen that happen with my mom, and I see it happen with me too. People think, "Oh, what is it now? What's bothering you this time? Do you ever quit complaining?"
But it isn't because we want to complain. It's just that we look at things differently. We over-analyze everything. A psychiatrist once told me it's called cognitive hurt. That is, we focus on the negative things people say and do to us and it is hard to see the positive things. It is an illness.
When Harry Smith's daughters were young adults, he tried to kill himself. He tried to hang himself in a room from a light socket, but someone came in and found him before he was dead. All he said was, "I can't even do that right." He was so upset about it. He really did want to die. I can understand that, due to my own experience in the ambulance on the way to the hospital after taking an overdose of pills.
My dad says that Harry was one of the sweetest men you could ever meet. He was like the father my dad never had, and my dad was the son Harry never had.
Harry and Ellie married and had five daughters: my mother, Helen Louise Smith, Patricia, nicknamed Patsy, Elizabeth, shortened to Betty, Joanie and Diana. Ellie was crazy about boys. She wanted a son so much and Harry did too. So when Smith was born to my dad and mom their first grandchild, a boy with blue eyes they adored him. They doted on their big, healthy half-Greek, half-Irish grandchild.
Ellie was demanding and temperamental like her mother, the one who killed the chickens. Harry was the opposite. This worked for them for a long time, his sweetness and passiveness and her aggressive willingness to call a spade a spade. I see that with my own sister Ellie. In fact, I see it in most members of my family. No one pulls punches.
My cousin Harry Forest, Aunt Patsy's son, is a lot like that too. Aunt Patsy's husband Jack Forest was a great, great, great-nephew of Nathan Bedford Forest, founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Nathan's contribution to the army was strategy in combat. He was one of the great leaders of the Civil War.
Of course people primarily remember him for founding the Klan. According to my Aunt Patsy, his diaries and letters demonstrate that the Klan of today is not what he intended it to be. He had envisioned an order dedicated to upholding the highest principles of American heroism and justice. He was disappointed when the Klan veered off course into racist attacks on blacks and other minorities.
My uncle Jack Forest was a highly decorated general who was one of General Schwarzkopf's superiors. I am close to his son, Thomas Harry Forest but his friends mostly call him Tom. He is the tenth of 11 children and the second last in his large family, as am I. Harry and I are soul mates. I haven't seen him in a long time, but know that when we next get together, we will pick up as though we haven't missed a day. He is another family member who I think suffers from depression and is very hard on himself. Extremely talented, bright and handsome, Harry is a male version of me and one of my best friends. I haven't spoken to him in a while because I'm ashamed of what's happened with my husband and my marriage.
I think our grandfather Harry Smith was an obsessive/compulsive person. He would run and run and run, sometimes up to 30 miles a day. When he wasn't running, he was washing his hands and worrying himself sick, often about the state of the country. He was brilliant in math. He could add up a list of numbers as long as a grocery bill in his head. He was a genius. And in my opinion he suffered.
I bet he was good natured like my brother Owen was. I know Owen falling from a harness 90 feet above a wrestling ring in Kansas City in 1999 was an accident. And even though my brother Bret has threatened to kill me and burn my house down for saying this, I still maintain that Owen was like a son to WWF boss Vince McMahon because that's how Owen was. Just like Harry Smith, Owen was so damn appealing and endearing. His humor and his work ethic and his talents carried the whole team.
When my mom was in her late teens, some teenage driver knocked my grandfather down and left him lying on the road. He and his wife Ellie were so destitute they couldn't afford the proper surgery for his leg. The doctors said the best thing to do was amputate, but he wouldn't let them. Instead he let his leg atrophy and it was so damn painful for him, all he could do was lie around.
He spent his life on a couch and became an alcoholic. He could hardly stand the pain and Ellie had little patience with him. It hurt her to even look at him. She became angry with everyone. Why did this happen to her? Why did the Depression happen? Why did they go from rags to riches to rags? She was so upset and critical of him that he couldn't handle it and stayed drunk all the time.
Their five girls tried their best to act like nothing was wrong. They were among the five most beautiful, charming, intelligent, sexy girls in the whole city, but Harry's decline took its toll on all of them. During the Depression, my mom weighed less than 80 pounds, because there was little food. They ate from a big pot of never-ending stew that they kept warm on the stove 24 hours a day. They just kept adding water and vegetables and whatever meat they could get their hands on.
Mom and her sisters were all thin and would share each other's clothes. They'd have one outfit for each girl and they'd mix and match. To this day my mom worries sick about money and always fears that she and my dad are going to go broke. They don't throw anything away. Everything is recycled, wrapping paper, ribbons, old tires, cars, everything. Like many others, my mother is a child of the Depression and that never goes away. All these crazy fears that she has, are now mine.
Thorpe, a 24-year-old American Indian, won the two most demanding events in track and field: the pentathlon and decathlon. And he did it with ease.
"You sir," said the Swedish King Gustav V at the medal ceremony, "are the greatest athlete in the world." To which Thorpe is said to have replied, "Thanks, King."
My mom's mother, Elizabeth or Ellie Poulis, was Greek and her parents had immigrated to the United States to become hard-working poultry farmers. Ellie's mother would kill the chickens with her bare hands by wringing their necks because her husband couldn't bring himself to do it. This started one day when they were starving and he was stalling. She impatiently grabbed the chicken from his hands, scolding, "Here let me!" She plucked the chickens and got them ready for sale. Tough lady.
Ellie grew up in New York City and was an excellent dancer. She danced with Arthur Murray when he was still Arthur Teichman. She was a saucy, attractive woman who would eventually fall in love with and marry Harry Smith. My brother Owen talked about going to New York to trace our roots and find out more about Harry and Ellie Smith, but never got a chance.
We do know that Harry ran in the Boston Marathon and in the Mardi Gras Marathon in New Orleans. He used to run all day. He was tall, about five foot eleven with terrific runner's legs and his deep blue eyes always twinkled with kindness. I'm told Owen looked a lot like him. They had very similar features. Owen had Harry's “crescents,” as my mom calls them, under the eyes like crescent moons. I have them too. When we were kids we heard, "Oh boy, you guys don't get enough sleep."
Like Owen and me, Harry had very blonde hair, though used to put grease in it, which Ellie hated. She wanted him to wear his hair in flowing blonde locks, not the greased-back look that made his hair dark and slick.
Ellie had been dating a very wealthy, respected doctor who was in love with her. He said, "Ellie I want you to marry me." She had the confidence to say, "Well I don't know if I want to marry you." She had seen a handsome young Irishman named Harry Smith and fallen in love with him instead.
When she told the doctor suitor of hers, he protested.
"I'll prove he's not worthy of you! He's a playboy! I'll hire a private detective and we'll follow him."
But after two days, the private detective was exhausted because all Harry did was run. They didn't have many cars in those days and Harry ran about 20 miles a day. The detective couldn't keep up with him.
The private investigator came back and told Ellie's boyfriend that Harry was not a playboy, but in fact one of the nicest guys around. The detective followed him around New York City shaking hands with people and helping them out. He'd help old ladies with their groceries. He even helped lost animals. Everything about him seemed genuinely good. What could the doctor say? He admitted to Ellie that Harry was a good man and gave up.
Harry Smith grew up in the Bronx, which at the time housed some of the upper-class people of New York. Harry was from a very good family, but they had some pretty lean years during and after the Depression.
He discovered he was a runner while playing craps in the alley with some of his friends at the age of 12. A policeman spotted them and yelled, "Hey, you can't be doing that! Gambling is illegal!" The kids scattered like a flock of startled birds when the cop fired his gun in the air.
The officer was fast and caught all the kids except Harry. He had never seen anything as fast as Harry in all of his days as a cop. He could not believe the speed of this boy. He spotted Harry a few days later and before he could bolt, the cop grabbed him by the collar and said, "I'm not trying to catch you because you were gambling. I'm trying to catch you to tell you that you should pursue running. You're gifted. I have never seen anyone run like you." It was that experience that inspired Harry to begin practicing. He went on to the Olympics and was a true hero in New York City.
After the Olympics he became the city treasurer. But Harry had a bipolar disorder like his brother Frank. They could be having a great day and then just one thing, one thing that no one else would notice, could send them spiraling down, unable to lift their heads for the rest of the day.
I have noticed that trait in so many people in my family. I see it a lot in my brother Bret. He'll be having a great day with everything going his way. Then a relatively small thing will really disturb him and it may take days to bounce back. I've seen that happen with my mom, and I see it happen with me too. People think, "Oh, what is it now? What's bothering you this time? Do you ever quit complaining?"
But it isn't because we want to complain. It's just that we look at things differently. We over-analyze everything. A psychiatrist once told me it's called cognitive hurt. That is, we focus on the negative things people say and do to us and it is hard to see the positive things. It is an illness.
When Harry Smith's daughters were young adults, he tried to kill himself. He tried to hang himself in a room from a light socket, but someone came in and found him before he was dead. All he said was, "I can't even do that right." He was so upset about it. He really did want to die. I can understand that, due to my own experience in the ambulance on the way to the hospital after taking an overdose of pills.
My dad says that Harry was one of the sweetest men you could ever meet. He was like the father my dad never had, and my dad was the son Harry never had.
Harry and Ellie married and had five daughters: my mother, Helen Louise Smith, Patricia, nicknamed Patsy, Elizabeth, shortened to Betty, Joanie and Diana. Ellie was crazy about boys. She wanted a son so much and Harry did too. So when Smith was born to my dad and mom their first grandchild, a boy with blue eyes they adored him. They doted on their big, healthy half-Greek, half-Irish grandchild.
Ellie was demanding and temperamental like her mother, the one who killed the chickens. Harry was the opposite. This worked for them for a long time, his sweetness and passiveness and her aggressive willingness to call a spade a spade. I see that with my own sister Ellie. In fact, I see it in most members of my family. No one pulls punches.
My cousin Harry Forest, Aunt Patsy's son, is a lot like that too. Aunt Patsy's husband Jack Forest was a great, great, great-nephew of Nathan Bedford Forest, founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Nathan's contribution to the army was strategy in combat. He was one of the great leaders of the Civil War.
Of course people primarily remember him for founding the Klan. According to my Aunt Patsy, his diaries and letters demonstrate that the Klan of today is not what he intended it to be. He had envisioned an order dedicated to upholding the highest principles of American heroism and justice. He was disappointed when the Klan veered off course into racist attacks on blacks and other minorities.
My uncle Jack Forest was a highly decorated general who was one of General Schwarzkopf's superiors. I am close to his son, Thomas Harry Forest but his friends mostly call him Tom. He is the tenth of 11 children and the second last in his large family, as am I. Harry and I are soul mates. I haven't seen him in a long time, but know that when we next get together, we will pick up as though we haven't missed a day. He is another family member who I think suffers from depression and is very hard on himself. Extremely talented, bright and handsome, Harry is a male version of me and one of my best friends. I haven't spoken to him in a while because I'm ashamed of what's happened with my husband and my marriage.
I think our grandfather Harry Smith was an obsessive/compulsive person. He would run and run and run, sometimes up to 30 miles a day. When he wasn't running, he was washing his hands and worrying himself sick, often about the state of the country. He was brilliant in math. He could add up a list of numbers as long as a grocery bill in his head. He was a genius. And in my opinion he suffered.
I bet he was good natured like my brother Owen was. I know Owen falling from a harness 90 feet above a wrestling ring in Kansas City in 1999 was an accident. And even though my brother Bret has threatened to kill me and burn my house down for saying this, I still maintain that Owen was like a son to WWF boss Vince McMahon because that's how Owen was. Just like Harry Smith, Owen was so damn appealing and endearing. His humor and his work ethic and his talents carried the whole team.
When my mom was in her late teens, some teenage driver knocked my grandfather down and left him lying on the road. He and his wife Ellie were so destitute they couldn't afford the proper surgery for his leg. The doctors said the best thing to do was amputate, but he wouldn't let them. Instead he let his leg atrophy and it was so damn painful for him, all he could do was lie around.
He spent his life on a couch and became an alcoholic. He could hardly stand the pain and Ellie had little patience with him. It hurt her to even look at him. She became angry with everyone. Why did this happen to her? Why did the Depression happen? Why did they go from rags to riches to rags? She was so upset and critical of him that he couldn't handle it and stayed drunk all the time.
Their five girls tried their best to act like nothing was wrong. They were among the five most beautiful, charming, intelligent, sexy girls in the whole city, but Harry's decline took its toll on all of them. During the Depression, my mom weighed less than 80 pounds, because there was little food. They ate from a big pot of never-ending stew that they kept warm on the stove 24 hours a day. They just kept adding water and vegetables and whatever meat they could get their hands on.
Mom and her sisters were all thin and would share each other's clothes. They'd have one outfit for each girl and they'd mix and match. To this day my mom worries sick about money and always fears that she and my dad are going to go broke. They don't throw anything away. Everything is recycled, wrapping paper, ribbons, old tires, cars, everything. Like many others, my mother is a child of the Depression and that never goes away. All these crazy fears that she has, are now mine.