A CHRISTMAS GIFT

As usual, I received a “gracious plenty” of gifts this Christmas. My favorites were two treasures popular with me during my childhood – a facsimile of the original Raggedy Ann doll and an edition of Raggedy Ann and Andy stories given to me by my youngest daughter, Elizabeth.

Approximately 15 years ago, the series of Raggedy and Raggedy Andy books from my childhood was complete when I transported a boxful across country headed for California and the home of my grandchildren, only to have them stolen out of a locked van in Albuquerque, NM. I’ve avoided that city ever since, and the loss of those treasures remains an unpleasant memory. To assuage the memory of that loss, Elizabeth, the purported recipient of the books, gave me the doll and book on Christmas Day.

These children’s books were read aloud by my mother for years, beginning when I was three years old. Each Christmas I would receive a new adventure of the rag dolls from my aunts, or my grandmother, or my mother. Johnny Gruelle, the creator of Raggedy Ann, birthed the doll when he retrieved an old rag doll from his attic in 1915 and painted a face on it for his daughter Marcella. He then sent a hand-drawn illustration of the doll to the U.S. Patent office and three years later, P. F. Volland Company, published Raggedy Ann stories, a series about this doll (and, later, her counterpart, Raggedy Andy) who came to life in the nursery after Marcella went to bed each night. The stories were fanciful and featured a doll imbued with qualities of kindness, generosity, friendship, and love. Raggedy Ann bore the legend “I love you” painted on her chest, but the original doll contained a heart made of candy.

Raggedy Andy, on the other hand, was mischievous and adventuresome, downright impish at times, and I have to say, a bit more entertaining than his sister. The adventure stories of these two dolls are peopled with a Camel with Wrinkled Knees, Hookie the Goblin, Uncle Clem, The Snitzdoodle, Snoopwiggy, and other colorful characters who made our bedtime reading a time of fun and fantasy. My mother was probably more enchanted with the stories than any of us – as I wrote about her in “Their Adventurous Will: Profiles of Memorable Louisiana Women,” she flew in the heavens long before Mary Poppins opened her magical umbrella and levitated!

Johnny Gruelle also worked as a journalist and cartoonist, and his illustrations appeared in “McCall’s,” “The Ladies World,” and other notable publications, bringing him fame throughout the world. I’m among those whose childhood was graced by the rag doll stories during a time when we were easily enchanted by a doll with cheerful mien and a disposition toward kindness and love.

Here’s a poem I wrote about the enchanting dolls in “Grandma’s Good War,” published this year by Border Press:

RAG DOLL MORALS

On winter evenings when we came indoors
from playing games of “Tin Can” and rubber gun wars,
my mother would tell us to bathe and dress
in flannel pajamas for her nightly address,
the “read aloud” hour with Johnny Gruelle’s latest book,
a wartime luxury brought home from Claitor’s nook,
the adventures of two rag dolls, Raggedy Ann and Andy,
whose hearts were made of delicious red candy
with “I love you” inscribed upon them
and who spent each night creating nursery mayhem
when Marcella, their owner, settled them for the night,
and upon her departure would stand upright,
raid the pantry, smearing jam across their faces,
forgetting to wipe their mouths of all traces
and hearing Marcella approach, would scramble away,
leaving crumbs, spilled cream, and jam along the way.
Marcella would soap the dolls down until smiles became dim,
hang them out on a clothesline where they became grim
listening to her advice: “Never take anything without asking
what you can always have just for the asking.”
She’d set her own tea table with sugar cookies and lemonade,
take down the dolls and feed them, undismayed;
Always the morals with their deep impressions,
my mother reading stories as if they were lessons,\
platitudes for us to follow toward goals easily reached,
modeled by rag dolls practicing what Marcella preached.
The strongest lesson the cotton-headed dolls did impart:
“be unselfish, reflect sunny music in your heart,”
my mother’s voice resonating with a final chime:
“The heart’s music will make your lives sublime.”

WRITER ON THE BAYOU

During Christmas holidays, Morris Raphael, New Iberia writer and long-time friend, invited a few people over for a soiree, and I enjoyed my annual Christmas visit with him, his wife, Helen, and daughter Roseanne who had come in from Berkeley, California. Morris is now 91 and still writes a column for “The Daily Iberian,” an upbeat commentary that highlights people and events in Teche country. Through the years, he has been one of my most ardent supporters in this writing venture we share, and he always tells visitors about our mutual admiration society as we “scratch each other’s backs” about the books and newspaper articles we’ve written.

Morris has published thirteen books, ranging from Louisiana history to several mysteries based in Cajun country. One of his novels entitled “Mystic Bayou” is about Hitler being transported in a German sub to the swamps of south Louisiana and hidden there at the end of WWI. It has always been my favorite of his books, and I think it’s worthy of a movie version. His “Battle in the Bayou Country,” concerning a Civil War battle near Franklin, Louisiana, has been his biggest seller and is in its fifth printing.

Morris and Helen fell in love while they were stationed in Brazil – he served as a construction project engineer with Copebras and Helen as translator with the U.S. Information Agency, and they met in Santos, Brazil. Helen, a Californian, was on her second tour of duty; Morris, a native of Natchez, MS, was on his first assignment to build a carbon black plant near Cubatao, Brazil. His memoir about the Brazilian years is another of my favorites and encompasses the Raphael storybook romance on the beaches of Gonzaga in Santos and Copacabana in Rio. In 1985, 27 years after living in Brazil, the Raphaels visited old friends and former Copebras officials in Sao Paulo. As Morris is a Civil War enthusiast, he visited Vila Americana, located northwest of Sao Paulo, which is a place established by Confederate expatriates who left the USA because they didn’t want to live under Yankee rule. Morris found several graves of former St. Mary Parish Louisiana residents who had settled in Vila Americana and includes a chapter about this visit in “My Brazilian Years.”

Among the visitors at the Raphael Christmas party was Will Chapman, publisher of “The Daily Iberian,” who commented that he had given Morris carte blanche to write about anything he wished in his column because he had increased the readership of “The Daily Iberian” tremendously since he launched his column several years ago. I can understand Morris’s popularity because he recognizes the accomplishments of many Iberians in his stimulating column. Each time I publish a book, Morris gives me a “puff” in “The Daily Iberian, and it’s usually a glowing review. He has friends throughout the U.S., and many of his books are distributed abroad.

Morris is past president of the Attakapas Historical Association, the Iberia Cultural Resources Association, the New Iberia Kiwanis Club, and the Jeanerette Rotary Club. He served on the Council of the Shadows-on-the-Teche at New Iberia, and has served on the board of the St. Mary Chapter of Louisiana Landmarks. He has been a long-time member of the Louisiana Writers Guild, the Louisiana Historical Association, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He was one-time city editor of the “Franklin Banner-Tribune,” and received the Jefferson Davis award from the United Daughters of the Confederacy in recognition of his historical works in 1979. In 1985 he was inducted into the Iberia Parish Second Wind Hall of Fame, and in 1991, he was honored with the Cajun Culture Award for his efforts to advance Cajun culture.

Helen is Morris’s best reader and supporter – she’s an omnivorous reader with an encyclopedic mind honed at Monmouth College in Illinois and at UCLA. In addition to her stint with the U.S. Information Agency, she once worked as an engineer at North American Aviation, as well as taught math at Mt. Carmel High School in New Iberia. A gourmet cook, Helen sets one of the best tables in New Iberia. I’ve never seen the Raphaels perform on the dance floor, but I’m told they’re really dazzling dancers, especially when the band strikes up a Latin American tune called “Quando, Quando, Quando!”

Recently, Morris fell and broke his arm while he was delivering his column to “The Daily Iberian,” and I understand he wrote a column at Christmas, despite his handicap, and had his daughter Roseanne email it – a “first” for him. He’s a role model in stamina and dedication to the writing craft, and I hope he finds time to publish a collection of Civil War stories, accompanied by his original drawings of battles in Teche country, during the New Year. Salud, Morris!!

WEDDING BELLS

On Jan. 16, my grandson Martin Romero, age 29, will marry Kristin Tusa Walker, and I’ll deliver the wedding homily at a Roman Catholic Church in Baton Rouge. It’s the second largest church wedding to occur in the family, and it seems that the grandchildren in our family have become the first to celebrate getting married in a grand way. For years, Martin has vowed to be cautious about getting married because he said, “I don’t mean to hurt the feelings of anyone in the family, but I don’t want to continue the family tradition of divorce.” No hurt here…we’re just glad he waited long enough to be certain that he had found a compatible mate.

This morning as I was writing the homily for this forthcoming event, I kept thinking about C.S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist, who had to reverse a lot of his thinking when he met Joy Gresham and married her in his late 50’s, then enjoyed only three years of wedded bliss before she died of cancer. Lewis’s literary companions in a group called “The Inklings” were astonished that Lewis would finally marry…and to a divorced woman. C. S. Lewis held some strong views about divorce and, for years, had stood by the Anglican Church’s teachings that a divorced person could not be given a church marriage. However, when Lewis met Joy and married her in a civil ceremony, he soon wanted the Church’s sanction of the marriage. He was disappointed to find that the Church, with its strong laws against divorce (in the 1950’s) wouldn’t fulfill a higher law – the law of love! When the Bishop of Oxford refused to allow a religious celebration of the marriage to take place, C. S. Lewis felt that the Church had slammed the door in his face. Finally, Fr. Peter Bide, a friend of Lewis, who had the gift of healing, agreed to represent the Church and marry Lewis and Joy. Lewis, who had held fast to Church canons, told Bide that Joy’s first marriage had been to an already-divorced man and therefore, in the eyes of the Church, her first marriage wasn’t really legitimate. According to one of Lewis’s biographers, Bide later wrote that Joy desperately wanted to solemnize her marriage before God and to claim the grace of the sacrament before she died, so he married the two in a bedside religious ceremony.

The story doesn’t end happily since Joy Gresham died, but C. S. Lewis declared to the world that he didn’t know why he waited so long to get married as he enjoyed every aspect of the union for three happy years…to the extent that his strong grief following her death led to indifference about keeping up his health. Three years after Joy died, on the exact day Pres. John Kennedy was assassinated, C. S. Lewis died. I’m just romantic enough to think that C. S. Lewis’s marriage was indeed a marriage made in heaven. I agree with Gibran’s words defining a good marriage in “The Prophet,” in which he writes: “You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.”

I’m not relating this story about C. S. Lewis to cast a shadow on Martin’s forthcoming wedding, but perhaps to assure Martin that waiting until his match appeared and he had matured was a wonderful idea, and I pray he will avoid the “family tradition,” as he calls the several divorces that have occurred in our family. And to inject a little of the lightheartedness that characterizes Martin’s future bride, Kristin, how could a match between two chauvinistic LSU Tiger fans be anything except a marriage made in heaven?