Elmer Lee Chandler
Elmer Lee Chandler at 18 -- about 1912.
This is the story of my maternal grandfather, Elmer Chandler. He died when I was four months old, so these are not my memories of him, only the things my mother told me.
He was the only child of Gabriel (Gabe) and Stella Chandler, although he had three half siblings. His father had been married before and he had a daughter called Reenie (spelling may be off) and two sons. I don't remember their names.
Stella left Gabe after catching him in bed with her sister, taking Elmer with her. I'm not sure how long they were separated, but Stella was having a hard time trying to support Elmer and to control him. He began running the streets and doing whatever he felt like doing at the moment. He was arrested by the police for vandalism and sentenced to the reform school at Prunytown until his eighteenth birthday. He was nine years old at the time.
During the years he was in the reform school, his mother and father went back together. His sister, her husband, their two children and Elmer's half-brothers all died. Reenie died of what was called the "quick consumption". Her husband, who worked for the government, was killed when he was sent on assignment up into the hills during the Hatfield and McCoy feud. Hill people didn't care for government interference. I don't know what the others died from.
Elmer became very upset when he learned of his sister's death and escaped from reform school to go home, knocking a guard in the head. The guards went after him with the blood hounds, so he went into the river and began swimming to lose them. This happened in the middle of winter, so the water was very cold and even had ice in some places. He finally came out of the water and when he came to the switch tracks where trains were parked, he crawled into a boxcar to try to warm up. He was nearly frozen the next morning when a railroad worker found him. The man took him home with him, fed him and gave him some dry clothes. Then he talked him into giving himself up, telling him his punishment would be less that way.
He was sentenced to solitary confinement for thirty days and fed bread and water. There was no light at all in the room and he always said that if it had not been such an overcast day, he might have gone blind when they let him out because the light hurt his eyes so bad. He was eighteen when he got out and had a high school education, something not many poor boys managed to get back then.
He was a handsome young man, at least six feet tall with curly black hair and blue eyes. He met Leona Smith, a five foot two, blue-eyed, strawberry blonde, a few months after his release. They married when they were both nineteen. At the time he was running a gambling boat on the river. Actually, I imagine it was a houseboat.
Eleven months later, their first child, Viola, was born. Viola is my mother. Eighteen months later, a second daughter, Evelyn, was born. They lived in Charleston, West Virginia, at the time. I don't know if he was working or he was still running the boat at that time.
They moved to Tennessee for about two years and then came back to Charleston. During those years in Charleston three more children were born: Louella, Estill (called Bide and I'm not sure of the spelling of either Estill or Bide), and Orrie (called Bus). Bide died at eighteen months of the bloody flux (dysentery).
During this time Elmer was gambling, making bootleg whiskey and he may also have had a few legitimate jobs. A still, for making whiskey, was found on his property by the police and he was afraid he might be sent to prison. But at his trial the judge told him "Go and sin no more!". Those were the judge's actual words.
After that, they moved to Huntington, West Virginia, where he began working as a machinist. Everything went pretty well for a few years and then he quit his job and went back to gambling and making whiskey. He was also having an affair with another woman. Her name was Gertrude Edens. He had several affairs during his married life, but I think this was the most serious.
Elmer and Leona's last child, Isabel, was born while he was still working as a machinist. For a few years, things didn't go to well in the Chandler household, because of gambling, drinking, bootlegging and chasing women. Finally in his late thirties, he settled down, went back to work as a machinist, quit drinking and his extramarital affairs. Everything went really well for a time. Then he went crazy. Or, to be politically correct, I suppose I should say he became sanity deprived. He began talking about a line, with the red on one side and the black on the other and nobody was supposed to cross into the red zone. He was becoming quite violent. Leona asked my mother to go to sign papers to have him committed, because she was afraid of him.
He was sent to a mental institution in Spencer, West Virginia. My mother said sometimes when they visited he seemed quite sane and other times he wasn't. His friends said they could not tell there was anything wrong with Elmer when they visited. He was released once and, before they even got home, he began telling his son-in-law Jim to get over, he was driving in the red zone. (Jim was my Aunt Louella's husband). He had to be recommitted. He stayed at the hospital until they found out he was dying. He had what the doctors called "silicosis of the lung". Nowadays, doctors say that most of that and also "quick consumption" was probably lung cancer. They brought him home and the disease consumed him quickly. He was buried on his forty-fourth birthday.
My mother said he was a good man in many ways. He never cursed and even though he wouldn't go to church, he drove them all to church and would come back and pick them up. One Christmas when my mother was small, Leona told them there was no Santa Claus. They didn't have any money for gifts. Elmer had a friend stake him in a poker game and after the game, the stores were closed. So he talked the store owner into opening up so his children could have presents. Mother said it was a wonderful Christmas and that they hadn't believed their mother anyway about no Santa. Another time, though, he lost the family milk cow in a game. Gambling was his big weakness in life. Judge ye not, lest ye be judged. Or, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Written by Iona Yvonne Bruce Jones, August 1999, in Kenner, Louisiana.