“God doesn’t love ugly” and “Don’t care won’t have a home.”13
VIRGINIA AS A BABY
© 2016 The Arnold Adoff Revocable Living Trust
Virginia’s older sisters and brothers were off to school at the break of dawn. Little Virginia tagged along with her mother while she took care of household chores, including tending to six hundred leghorn chickens.
As chicken was a staple in their evening dinners, Etta knew how to “ring a chicken”—taking hold of the bird’s neck and twirling it around and round until the body separated from the head. The sight disturbed Virginia’s brothers and sisters.
Virginia didn’t mind.
“It sounds cruel, I know. But chickens were the food we ate, like vegetables. What we didn’t grow or raise, we didn’t eat.”14
Etta also grew tomatoes and cucumbers and sold them, along with the eggs, to the local grocery. The money she earned from the sales she called “Extra.”
“And Extra money meant new Easter coats or new school clothes for the children,” Virginia said.15
Her mother would fill her little ears with tales that made their way into her heart—folklore such as “Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby.” Whenever she finished a tale, Etta would say, “Be it bowed, bended, my story’s ended.”16
Virginia’s father was the one with “the Knowledge,” stories of African American heroes. Virginia’s father opened up the world to her, by teaching her about others who came before her and accomplished great things.
Kenneth would take off his white work jacket from his job at the Tearoom, loosen up his tie, and share his wisdom. Virginia sat on her father’s lap and listened to his soft, modest voice teach her about baseball player Jack Johnson, who played for and managed the Kansas City Giants in 1910 and 1911. And, as Virginia liked to sing, he’d thrill her with stories about Florence Mills, a cabaret singer, dancer, and comedienne, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, a blues and gospel singer.17
Kenneth told her stories about Paul Robeson and William Edward Burkhardt Du Bois, otherwise known as W. E. B. Du Bois, two men she would write biographies about later in her life.18 Paul Robeson was a handsome and talented athlete, actor, and lawyer who was an international activist against racism. W. E. B. Du Bois was the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard in 1895. He wrote about racism and became one of the cofounders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Kenneth was well read and subscribed to the New Yorker and The Crisis, the NAACP magazine. Virginia’s father had many coverless, old, and musty periodicals stacked around the house. She discovered a picture of the Watusi people in one of the magazines. The Watusis are the tallest people in the world. The image stayed with her for many years, and ultimately served as the basis for her first novel for children, Zeely. Her father also read the Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Virginia got caught up in the stories, and learned how mysteries were written and plotted as a result. These books were early inspiration for Virginia’s The House of Dies Drear, a mystery.19
Of all her siblings, Virginia was closest to her older brother Bill, a dreamer. She stood by while he tried to dig a hole to China. He was certain to get to the other side of the world. She played up in the tree house he created, looking up into the Ohio sun-filled summer sky, taking in the scent of sweet, country air.
Bill had a paper route in Yellow Springs. In the winter, he pulled Virginia around on a sled as she held his papers for him. He shared his dreams for the future.20
Virginia played with siblings and cousins so hard that some days she was plumb tuckered out. Her cousin Marlene was her best friend and the two of them ventured through all the neighboring family farms.
“Memories of all those years, of summer days and winter nights, storms and sunshine, have given ample food to my imagination all my life,” she wrote.
Words from her female relatives filled her world. “Whether while resting from the hot summer heat and enjoying sassafras tea, or warming up by the fire in the parlor on a cold winter’s evening, tales were told. Tales of nature’s power, about ourselves in the world, where we came from, and who we were.”21
And, there were amusing stories told, too. There’s the one about an uncle who apprehended the bandits who robbed a nearby bank. To the culprits, her uncle looked like a madman, with wild hair, dressed in his pajamas and shooting two pocket pistols at them. To avoid him, they dove into an empty well, breaking their arms and legs. The uncle was beside himself and fell into the well after them.
Then there was the one about how, back in 1938, Virginia’s Aunt Leah was listening to the radio on Sunday, October 30. Orson Welles was on the air. His broadcast of an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds was in progress. Wells’s story tells of an invasion of Earth by Martians. The radio play suggested that the invasion was actually taking place. The show created panic all over the country, including in many of the Hamilton and Perry households. Aunt Leah, being very superstitious, roused family members “in three counties.” She, along with many male relatives, policed the skies throughout the night, shooting at anything that moved. Virginia’s family was much more reserved in their approach. They sought shelter for hours in Grandpa Perry’s root cellar.22
There were stories, always stories, being told by and about the many characters in Virginia’s extended family.
But, just as a firefly’s light dims, so too can stories that are passed on through word of mouth.
Virginia didn’t remember telling stories as a child. She did not spin a yarn as her relatives did.
Virginia’s gift was capturing the essence of her family’s storytelling magic in her writing. She began putting her stories down on paper from an early age.
When she was nine she began “The Notebook.” This journal included secrets that her parents and other family members whispered about. Little Virginia was not expected to understand the gossip shared among the elders. She took notes, hoping to comprehend the mysteries when she grew older. Sadly, she lost her journal a year later. The family secrets remained as such in Virginia’s mind.
. . .
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD AND ELIZA HARRIS
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD was a secret network of homes, churches, and farms throughout the North and South that provided safety and shelter to the thousands of runaway slaves seeking freedom. Slavery was legal in the United States from 1619 until 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished it. In the early 1800s abolitionists—people who wanted to eliminate slavery—began a network of “stations,” safe locations for runaway slaves. Ohio, Virginia’s home state, had more than two hundred safe houses.26
Just as Virginia’s great-grandmother escaped slavery with her young son, so too did a woman named Eliza Harris. Eliza lived in Kentucky, just south of the Ohio River. Eliza was left with just one child after her other two children died very young. When she learned that her slave owner was going to sell her and her baby to two different owners, Eliza decided to try to escape. Eliza took her baby in the middle of a winter’s night and walked to the Ohio River. Some winters the river froze solid. However, as Eliza discovered
