MEMORANDA
IN APRIL 1985, ALMOST THREE YEARS AFTER my grandmother’s death, my husband Jack and I, with our sons David and John, were invited to Tampa to attend a party being given by our third son, Steven, and his business partner, Tom duPont. The event was to launch their new automobile magazine, the duPont Registry.
Jack and I arrived early, and John and David were the first to meet us outside the rented airplane hangar. We were all thrilled that Steve’s concept had become a reality. Inside, glaring spotlights bounced off the polished bumpers of the rare classic automobiles. The formal party featured a million-dollar Duesenberg; I was nearly blinded by the hot lights from television crews filming the event. Steve had told us all about these plans excitedly weeks before. But what he had not told me and could not possibly have known was that a strange twist of fate that evening would pull me directly into the heart of my grandmother’s past.
Steve was waiting inside the door, along with Tom and his parents, who had also flown in for the occasion. “Sally, I would like for you to meet my mother, Kathy,” Tom said. We greeted each other warmly as two very proud mothers. Then he turned to his stepfather and said, “George, I don’t believe you have met Steve’s mother, Sally Chapman.”
There was a slight pause before he turned back to me. “Sally, this is my stepfather, George Weymouth.”
I was stunned. Standing before me was the romantic figure with the same blue eyes my grandmother had so often described in her diaries. Looking up into his distinguished face, I flushed with emotion, the power of their unconventional love so fresh in my mind from reading her words. The tall; still handsome eighty-one-year-old gentleman took my hand tenderly in his. My eyes filled with tears.
“Mr. Weymouth, do you know who my grandmother was?” I asked.
“No,” he responded softly. “Who was she?”
“Her name was Dorothy Binney Putnam,” I said.
He looked down at me for what seemed like an eternity, and then slowly turned to his wife, standing beside him. “Dear,” he said with quiet dignity, “do you remember only yesterday I told you of a woman who whistled like a bird?”
Immokolee
January 15, 1997
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PERIODICALS
Rye Chronicle
The New York Times
New York Herald Tribune
MULTIMEDIA
Sierra Club. Microsoft Encarta, Microsoft Corporation, 1993; Funk & Wagnall’s Corporation, 1993.