Pop

School is out for Thanksgiving Week, and every year's end as we go into the holiday season my memories stir. It's interesting to be an age that my grandfather was in some of my memories, and think about him at this age thinking about his grandfather at this age. But then his Weller grandfather was an Episcopal priest who died during the 1847 yellow fever epidemic in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he was rector of Christ Church. I know nothing about Pop's other grandfather. Like death itself, generations slip away into oblivion.

Though I held Pop somewhat in awe as an old man all my life, he was 63 when I was born, I enjoyed and loved my grandfather, and too late as for so many who get to this age and wish thinking back, I could have done so much more with him, because at this age he lived right here in StAndrews, and I grew up here. I was in college when he was my age, but even then I was home frequently. and could have visited with him more; I had time, and at 84 he had eight more years to live. It would have been so easy, and my treasure chest of memories would have so much more in it now, stories to enjoy. At some point, stories are what one has. But when Pop was this age, I was thinking mainly about myself.

Pop was born in 1872, in Jacksonville. His father, Reginald Heber Weller, was an Episcopal priest and rector of St. John's Episcopal Church there. There are family stories, of that era just after the Civil War, some of which I remember, some I've told here or to others over the years. Pop was the twelfth of his father's thirteen children. His mother had died at or just after his birth, and some time later his father remarried. Pop knew her as his mother, in fact I have a Book of Common Prayer she gave him about 1898 that in the front she inscribed "love, Mother." She had a child with my great-grandfather, a little girl who was that thirteenth child, who died as a toddler. 

Two of Pop's brothers were Episcopal priests too. His favorite, closest and next younger brother, Charles Knight Weller, my Uncle Charlie, whom I knew and remember, had his own history. Instead of seminary like his older brother, Charles had "read for Holy Orders", served several parishes, one in Atlanta, I think St Philips and was ordained there. Also, St Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church, Anniston, Alabama that along with the town itself was founded by the Noble family, Linda's great-grandfather and his brother, and their business colleague, and was named, Annie's Town, after a daughter of that associate. My father's brother, my uncle Alfred went up there to study at St Michael's Parish School while Uncle Charlie was there, in fact, I have here, that I keep under my replica of the Annie & Jennie, his textbook "An Outline of Greek and Roman History" that Alfred wrote his name in, and the name of the school. The story I was told was that Alfred, perhaps not a strong student anyway, did not continue long at the school, very likely terribly homesick. 

Anyway, retiring to Pensacola, Uncle Charlie served as priest in charge at Christ Church, Pensacola temporarily during World War Two while the rector, the Rev. Dr. Hodgkins, Henry Bell Hodgkins, whom I remember from my high school years, was away as a Navy chaplain. In my memories Uncle Charlie was living with his second wife, my Aunt Grace, my grandmother Weller's half sister, in Warrenton and serving at St. John's, Warrenton. His first wife, Aunt May, who had died years earlier, was also a relative on Mom's side. Both Pop's wife and Uncle Charlie's wife and maybe wives, were from Bluff Springs, Florida, as indeed was my own mother's family. 

I have a red leather bound Prayer Book that Uncle Charlie signed and sent me on my 14th birthday, an early time in my life when it was known in the family that I also planned to go to seminary; but as well documented, my sophomore year at Univ of Florida I changed my mind and went another way in life altogether. This blogpost was not meant to be about Uncle Charlie, but, he was a memorable character in my Time. While I was in high school, Aunt Grace died, and Uncle Charlie soon married again, Daisy. I never met Aunt Daisy, but my teenage best friend Jack Dennis served as acolyte at their wedding at Christ Church, Pensacola, and was amused at Uncle Charlie, leaving the wedding reception, dashing across Palafox Street by himself to get in the driver's side of the car and leaving his new bride to make her own way across and around to the other side and open the door for herself! Uncle Charlie died when I was a freshman at UFlorida 1953-54. Though there's more to tell, including about his Willys car from the 1930s, I'm done for now.

My memory this morning is again of my grandfather Pop, A D Weller, one I've recalled here before, but it's winter and the holidays, and my memories are stirring, and it's my blogpost. 

Pop's other brother who was a priest was Reginald Heber Weller, Jr., who after serving a parish or two in Florida was called to a parish in northern Wisconsin. Uncle Heber must have grown fond of Wisconsin while he was in seminary at Nashotah House. Pop was a boy then, and he told me about the year he rode the train up to Stevens Point, Wisconsin to spend with Heber. In those days, as in Bible times, visits were long, in part because the travel itself took so long. Pop was sixteen or seventeen, so 1888, and he stayed months or maybe nearly a year. It may have been, and I'm just speculating, but it may have been 1889 after Pop's brother Frank was murdered, and maybe Uncle Heber came down to be with the family in Jacksonville and invited Pop to go back with him. 

That winter was cold, lots of snow, Pop's first experience of snow, but the family had a horse-drawn sleigh, and Pop had a sweetheart, a Wisconsin girl his age or a bit younger. Maybe he met her at Uncle Heber's parish church. This was a dear memory when Pop shared it with me long ago. A Sunday afternoon he drove to her house and they went for a sleigh ride. At a moment, he pulled the horse to a stop, turned and kissed her. His first time kissing a girl, and maybe hers being kissed. And although to me it was at the time Pop told me, a story from long, long ago, I'm about the age when Pop told me that story, and looking back, I know that I was seventeen not all that long ago; and I remember too.

As I recall, Pop didn't tell me her name, his first sweetheart. But I remember watching his face as he remembered her. Not too many years later he had returned to Florida, and moved to Pensacola, and met and married Mom, my beloved grandmother, Carrie Lee Godfrey, who was from Bluff Springs, north of Pensacola on the Alabama line. Over the years, Mom and Pop had six children. Carrie, who died before Alfred was born. Alfred, Sep 1899 - Jan 1918. I remember Alfred here now and again.

Moved to StAndrews in 1908 or 1909, where my grandfather established Bay Fisheries, which was located on the Bay where now is Landmark Condominiums. Evalyn Godfrey Weller, whom we always called E G or "Eege". Ruth. My father Thomas Carroll Weller, who was born in Pensacola and when a few days old brought home to StAndrews aboard SS Tarpon. And Marguerite. In 1912 they built the Old Place, and Alfred had the best bedroom (which was our bedroom in our Time) sold it in 1923, five years after Alfred died, and moved to Ocilla, Georgia. By then, E G was in college at Tallahassee, and my father remembered the day the family loaded up their two cars, a Hudson touring car and a Model T Ford touring car, and headed off through the winding, wooded, rutted, seldom-marked dirt roads for Georgia. Mom's chicken coops full of chickens strapped to the running boards and fenders of both cars. Pop driving the Hudson with Mom and Marguerite; Ruth and my father eleven years old driving the Ford. A couple months later, my father turned twelve years old. Both he and Pop told me stories of life with the Ford garage in Ocilla. 

More attention and Time with Pop, I could have a lot more to study as I get to where he was when I knew him best and wonder whether at this age he ever thought about his own grandfathers.

T

pictures StAndrews