could think about was you. You kept me going on and I want to thank you. I want to thank you for loving me and being so beautiful and caring. I want to thank you for allowing me to enter your life and having you in mine. I love you so much and I will do what ever it takes to be with you. I’ll always be by your side, no matter what happens.
Your true love,
Ryan Allen Michaels
After reading that letter, I cried. I cried for two reasons, the first being that he was okay and safe. The second reason was because I missed him and loved him unconditionally. For the past two years it was hard for me to be away from him but I had to deal with it. And when he was drafted, I had to move on with life and think of my family. It was a relief to know that he was okay, and now I had to work extra hard to get him to Danville. I knew that it wouldn’t be easy, but that letter made me more determined.
May 3, 1921- Danville, Virginia
It has been almost three years since the war ended and this was another happy day of my life. My brother, Albert, and I were waiting at the train station anticipating the arrival of a very special person. The train pulled up and I stood up from the bench and smiled so greatly. When the train came to a stop, people where getting off and Albert and I were searching through them, trying to seek out the person we came there for. And then I saw him. I stood there waiting as his eyes met mine. My stomach filled up with butterflies and I started to tear. Albert didn’t wait, he ran to him and when he reached him, Ryan grabbed him and hugged him tightly. I walked slowly towards him. Ryan let go of Albert and then said, “My how you’ve grown. You look like a grown man.”
Albert giggled and said, “I’m fifteen years old. I been a man.”
Ryan laughed. “You bet you’re a man.” Ryan rustled Albert’s hair. Ryan then threw his glance at me and I was standing about a foot away from him. He looked at me and I looked at him. Neither of us moved for a while, and then tears fell down my face. That’s when he walked to me and picked my up off my feet and kissed me ever so passionately. Our kiss lasted a while and we didn’t even notice that the train left and we were the only ones still there at the station. Albert had to tap Ryan to get his attention so that we would stop kissing and go home. We became aware and helped Ryan with his things and then headed home
When we got home, everyone was waiting for us. Ryan was surprised that everyone was excited to see him and he was welcomed with lots of love. He sat in the living room and chatted with my mom and my aunt for a while and then we all ate dinner. It was late and I took him upstairs so that he could get settled in my room. I helped him unpack his things and then he joined me on my bed. Or I should say our bed since he finally moved in with us. It took us three years to gather enough money for him to give to his family for safekeeping and for him to move down to Virginia. Now that he was finally there, I never wanted to let him go. He held me in his arms and it felt right. I didn’t realize how muscular he gotten until he held me. He kissed my hair and then my ear and then my cheek. I turned over so that I could see his face and then he kissed my forehead. He then kissed my nose and finally my lips. We kissed an ever-lasting kiss and no words were said that night. We made passionate love that night and it too was ever-lasting.
For the next seven years, Ryan and I moved out of my Aunt Louise’s house, and bought a house of our own, which was only a couple houses away. I wanted to stay close to my family. Aunt Louise, passed away in 1926 of pneumonia, and left the house to my mother. Momma needed a big house to raise six boys and girls. She also got a job as a seamstress and my brothers and sisters were all in school. Albert, who was the eldest of the six, got a part time job washing cars and Ryan, my husband since the summer of 1922, sold cars at a car dealership. I was a stay at home mom and took care of our two baby boys. My oldest son, Ryan Jr., was five years old and my youngest son, Max, was only four months old. Life was great for a while, and then the depression happened.
April 19, 1931- Danville, Virginia
It was Max’s second birthday and I threw him a great party. My family was there and Ryan’s family came down to see Max and Ryan Jr., and to celebrate with us. It was a good day, until Ryan got a phone call from the office. He got terrible news from the dealership and he didn’t want to tell me until all of our family was gone. It was Sunday, so our family left early and then we cleaned up the house. I didn’t want to rush him to tell me the news so I just waited and busied myself until he was ready to tell me. I was in the kitchen washing the dishes and he was sitting at the dinning room table. He got up and walked into the kitchen and stood by the window that faced our backyard. I looked at him, but he just stared out that window. And then he talked to me. “You know that was the office that called here today, right?”
I nodded and said, “Yes, I know. What did they want?”
“They wanted to let me know…well let everyone know actually, that the bank owns the dealership now and we all are out of jobs.”
I stopped washing dishes and faced him completely. He was looking at me and there was so much pain and anger in his eyes. I wiped my hands in a dishtowel and then walked over to my husband. I placed my arms around his neck and he hugged me tightly at my waist. I was shocked when I heard him sob, and I started to cry with him. He was scared for his family, and I was scared too. These days, it was hard to find a job if people didn’t already have one, so I understood his stress and emotions. He pulled back to look at my face and then he said, “I’m so scared for the boys, and you. I don’t know what I’m gonna do for work.”
“Well, maybe I can help by getting a job with my mother, that way I wouldn’t have to be away from the boys. I can sow right here from home or my mom’s house.” I told him. I was desperate to help my husband at any means necessary, and I knew that he didn’t want me to work, but what else was I suppose to do?
“Maybe that’s a good idea and I can try to find work outside of Dansville. Hopefully I’m lucky to find something,” he told me.
I was worried that when my husband went looking for work somewhere else, that there was nothing out there for him and that we’d be financially doomed. But I got a job as a seamstress right along with my mother and it gave me a chance to be with the sons. My husband left us to go find work somewhere else and the boys and I moved in with my mother again. We rented our house to borders and that helped us get extra money. A year later, my husband returned empty handed, but stayed with us and got little jobs around the neighborhood fixing things for people that needed fixing. He was good at it. My husband then thought that it was a good idea to raise chickens so that we could sell their eggs, so we did that too. My mother helped us as well with the chickens and she also rented her house out to some borders so that she could make money to help her and my family. This is the way my family lived until June 8, 1934, when Ryan found a good paying job at a confectionery factory. He stayed with that job and life seemed to get better and better. We still rented our house, but we got rid of the borders from my mom’s house and we all just lived there as one big happy family.
February 7, 1939- Dansville, Virginia
My mother and I owned our own seamstress business by 1937 and we were making great money. No matter how bad of a depression we were in, people still needed clothes, so we kept the business going for years. My husband was still working at the confectionery factory and my youngest brother, Johnny, got a job working at the confectionery factory as well. He was twenty-five years old and loved working. My three sisters, Heather, Abigail, and Joyce were thirty-two, twenty-nine, and twenty-eight years old and they lived with their own families. My brother, Scott, was thirty years old and he was married and had a daughter named Kelly-Anne. He lived a couple houses down from my house and worked as an assistant for a lawyer downtown. Ryan and I still rented our house to borders and lived with momma and our two boys who were now fifteen and ten years old.
This day was the day that my brother, Albert Jr., who was now thirty-three, told me that he was leaving with the Marines to Pearl Harbor. I was very upset with
him for thinking so stupidly to join the military when the world was at war, again. He always wanted to follow my father’s footsteps, so he joined the Marines when he was twenty-five when I never wanted him to. My father died trying to defend his country and I didn’t want that same fate for my brother.
“But, Marie, this means so much to me and I want you to be apart of it. You’ve always been a big supporter of me no matter what I wanted to do, so why can’t you do it now?” he asked me in momma’s living room.
I stood up from the sofa and walked over to the window and stared out of it. He was asking me to let him go with the Marines and be fine with it. That was a lot to ask of me. Out of all my brothers and sisters, he was the closest to me and now he just wanted me to let him leave just like my father did. I started to tear and when I wiped them away, he stood up and joined me by the window.
“I know that it’s a lot I’m asking of you, Marie, but this is something that I have to do for me,” he told me.
“I know you think you have to do this…” I said trying to hold back the tears, “…but you don’t have to. What if we go to war, Junior? What are you