Annie & Jennie
Years Mind. Three years ago this morning, my mother slipped away into whatever God has in mind for us. We don't know what that may or may not be. There are all sorts of hopes, but we can't see it from here, so it comes down to hope. Hope and faith. By the mercy of God may all the faithful departed rest in peace.
A&J. Some weeks ago I was working down in the lower part of my front yard when a man from Atlanta stopped his car to chat. His name is McKenzie, a descendant of Panama City's pioneer family, and his family lived here in my house after WW2, from the middle 1940s to the middle 1950s. Yesterday's mail brought a package from him with some pictures, a copy of the Deed for when my grandparents sold this house in 1923, a copy of the document when the McKenzies bought the house in 1946, and copies of the local newspaper St. Andrews Bay News for January 8 and January 22, 1908, reporting the wreck of the fishing vessel Annie & Jennie, on which my Uncle Alfred lost his life at age 18. I have blogged about this previously here. Alfred's death brought inconsolable sorrow to my grandparents. The loss of the vessel and Alfred's death that night is in my mind as the basis of my own existence; had that tragedy not happened in my family, my grandparents would never have left St. Andrews as they tried to run away from their grief, my parents would never have met, I never would have been conceived, and some local history, including the local seafood industry, might have been different.
I have typed the two newspaper reports, am printing the first below today, will run the second and longer one another day, perhaps tomorrow.
Life is made up of forks in the road, isn't it. Robert Frost mused about it in a poem that I heard him read at UFla the spring of 1954. We choose and, except in our minds and memories, cannot go back and take the other road; and the fact that we cannot go back and choose the other fork can weigh heavy on our minds. USA Today had a short article on that just this week. Thinking of this I remember my grandmother telling me, years later, that she had asked Alfred not to go by boat but by train and that he had chuckled at her worry. She said that he came upstairs to take a nap before they left after midnight on the voyage to Carrabelle. She said the weather was bitter cold, and that as she fixed him a cup of hot coffee to drink before leaving, she wanted to let him sleep and not come upstairs to this room that is now my bedroom, to wake him for the trip. Mom's life after that night was an eternal "if only" until the January 1947 day when we laid her to rest next to him.
We are all here because of choices. Being here because of the death of one who was loved as Alfred was loved has given me a strange sense of obligation about my own life, the choices I make, and the forks I take in my road.
Tom Weller
I have typed the two newspaper reports, am printing the first below today, will run the second and longer one another day, perhaps tomorrow.
Life is made up of forks in the road, isn't it. Robert Frost mused about it in a poem that I heard him read at UFla the spring of 1954. We choose and, except in our minds and memories, cannot go back and take the other road; and the fact that we cannot go back and choose the other fork can weigh heavy on our minds. USA Today had a short article on that just this week. Thinking of this I remember my grandmother telling me, years later, that she had asked Alfred not to go by boat but by train and that he had chuckled at her worry. She said that he came upstairs to take a nap before they left after midnight on the voyage to Carrabelle. She said the weather was bitter cold, and that as she fixed him a cup of hot coffee to drink before leaving, she wanted to let him sleep and not come upstairs to this room that is now my bedroom, to wake him for the trip. Mom's life after that night was an eternal "if only" until the January 1947 day when we laid her to rest next to him.
We are all here because of choices. Being here because of the death of one who was loved as Alfred was loved has given me a strange sense of obligation about my own life, the choices I make, and the forks I take in my road.
Tom Weller
St. Andrews Bay News
VOL. 3. St. Andrews, Florida, January 8, 1918. NO. 32
APPALLING DISASTER
Smack Annie & Jennie Lost At Pass
Captain and Three Men Lost. O.T. Melvin and Dewey Bishop Only Survivors
The well-known fishing vessel, Annie & Jennie, owned and operated by the Bay Fisheries Company of this place, left here yesterday at 2 a.m. for Carabelle, where she was to have gone on the ways to undergo repairs to her rudder which was partly torn away by a Gulf storm a few weeks ago. A makeshift affair had been rigged up to steer her on the trip to Carabelle.
Capt Manuel Caton was in charge, and with him were Alfred Weller, son of A. D. Weller of the Bay Fisheries Co., O. T. Melvin, Dewey Bishop, Leonard Stevens and Charles Acker.
About 3 a.m., when this side of the bell buoy, before entering the Gulf, the boat struck on the flat on the east side of the channel, and in less than an hour had broken up, and the wreckage was swept away.
When the ill-fated smack first grounded, the men had taken to the rigging, where they clung, lashed by angry seas and bitter cold wind, until the masts gave way and threw them into the icy breakers.
Melvin states that he saw Captain Caton and Alfred Weller clinging to a piece of wreckage from which they were soon swept away by the raging sea.
Melvin and Bishop clung to some of the wreckage until they were washed out upon the beach at Crooked island about one o’clock yesterday afternoon. They walked to the home of L. Raffield, on East Bay, reaching there about nine o’clock last night, in a state of exhaustion.
Everything was done by the Raffields to revive them, Bishop being scarcely able to walk when he reached there.
Cullen Raffield brought them down from there this forenoon, reaching town about ten-thirty. Melvin had some bad bruises upon his head requiring surgical attention. The other survivor, Bishop, was apparently little the worse for his terrible experience.
Early this morning. C.C. Raffield and many others in his neighborhood proceeded to the scene of the disaster to search for the bodies of the drowned.
As soon as the news reached here, Mr. Weller, with others, took launches and boats and started for the wreck.
This appalling disaster comes home to every citizen of St. Andrews, being a personal grief to all. Ours is a fishing town, and such a loss is keenly felt. Especially is the loss of Alfred Weller, a source of deep grief to his many young companions and his numerous friends -- all who knew him were his friends. He was preparing to go to Birmingham on the first of the month to open a retail fish business.
Such are all the particulars the News is able to give up in the hour of going to press. The relatives of the lost have the heartfelt sympathy of the entire News force in their grievous affliction.