Beth Sherman Of Cloverdale, IN

I read this wonderful story today:

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and it reminded me May 7, 1993: the day that Uncle Finley passed away during by-pass surgery.

I guess that none of us (except for Uncle Finley) actually realized at the time that this was a last-ditch situation.

Sure, we knew that he needed the surgery in order to survive, but we just didn't realize how slim the odds were that he would even survive the surgery.

I remember feeling mostly confident about the surgery--even though, that afternoon, I noticed that apple blossoms were floating down from the tree under which his car was parked, and seeing that inspired a crying-jag in me.

I was mostly staying home to receive calls from my folks re: how Uncle Finley was coming along so that I could pass any important news on to other people who would be interested., but I DID go out to run errands between when they would be calling, and it was during one of those times that I noticed how the apple blossoms from the tree where our long lane bends had fallen like teardrops onto Uncle Finley's Spectrum.

The last call that I received was one where my mom reported that they were sewing him up, and it looked as if everything would be okay. I told her that I was going to go to Yip's Chopstick House to eat a celebration meal.

That night, I was on the phone with Aunt Kate, and we were both talking about going down to visit Uncle Finley together as soon as he had a couple of days of bedrest.

She was saying that, since we were both fat (and she was blind on top of that), the two of us could probably do a lot of damage in there by knocking over a bunch of his machines, instrument trays, bedpan, etc.

We were giggling like a couple of schoolgirls, because we were two people celebrating the surgery that would give our uncle and brother a new lease on life.

As it turned out, he ended up with the BEST new lease on life--but that didn't make saying goodbye to him any less heartbreaking.

I remember that I was watching Family Matters when I saw the headlights of a car reflecting on the east wall of my living room--meaning, no doubt, that my folks and Uncle George had returned.

I couldn't get to the door fast enough to hear the latest on Uncle Finley.

Had he come to and talked to them some? Or was he still asleep?

"Well?" I asked, expectantly. "How IS he?"

My mom began to cry.

Even then, I'd thought that, perhaps, he'd had some kind of a stroke--but I felt assured that this, too, would pass. After all, he'd totally recovered from a very serious stroke back in September of the previous year--something that had really amazed his doctor!

"He's gone!" she sobbed.

It took me a minute or two to grasp what she was saying--especially, in the light of the good reports that had been coming to them all day.

It turns out that there had been some sort of misunderstanding, and that the reports had been wrong.

It's hard to say a long goodbye to someone, even when it's expected--but it's especially difficult when it isn't..

That night, I lay in bed wondering how I would ever get to sleep when, all at once, I felt myself being hugged. To this day, I believe that those comforting hugs came from both Jesus and Uncle Finley--and, after I felt those hugs, I drifted off into a peaceful sleep.

Here's a link to a piece I wrote at PearlSoup.com that's related to what was going on in my life at that time. Not only had I lost my uncle but my goddaughter waxmaker was going through some really difficult times. This story gives their stories a beautiful connection:

The Leg-Iron

http://www.pearlsoup.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=pearls.view&pearlID=4574

By now, you're probably a little bit confused because the title doesn't match the story, so I'd better explain that it actually DOES.

You see, Beth Sherman was Uncle Finley's high school sweetheart!

For part of each year after their retirement and move away from San Francisco, Uncle Finley and Aunt Marce lived in their own apartment on the north side of my house. The rest of the year was spent close to various ones of Aunt Marce's relatives.

They finally had a beautiful storybook cottage of a home built in El Paso so that Aunt Marce could spend the bulk of her time close to the big sister who had become a parent to her after the passing of their parents. This became their main home base after that with trips to visit various ones of us at different times.

Aunt Marce would visit for a shorter time and go back to be with Justina, but Uncle Finley would stay with us into September until the time came that Aunt Marce was diagnosed with cancer. At that time, he stayed in El Paso to care for her.

After Aunt Marce's passing and the sale of their El Paso home, Uncle Finley returned to Indiana for good. This took place in the summer of 1990.

Uncle Finley and I were uncle and niece, and I was his "Little Bruiser."

But, even though I was more than 30 years younger, he not only gave me advice but, also, came to me for advice--or when he just needed somebody to talk to.

I often told him, "The teakettle's always on for you!" referring to our little chats over steaming cups of the various kinds of herbal teas I keep in stock.

There were many times when he would talk about Beth and wonder what she was doing, and he often told me that I reminded him a lot of Beth--which I took as a very high compliment.

Although I'd never met her, I grew up knowing about Beth Sherman, and she was a sort of hero to me and someone I wish I'd known.

In a lot of ways, I think I identified with her. After all, she had been kicked out of high school (more details on that in a little bit)--just as I had been kicked out of tap-dancing school at the tender age of four for biting my teacher on the bottom (a story in itself--I'll tell it to you sometime!).

She was also artistic and more fun than a barrel of monkeys--and her bedroom was the place to gather (as my mom well knew) for experimenting with new make-up and other fashion items.

Beth had grown up in Cloverdale, Indiana (a small, friendly village a little ways south of Greencastle) but had left there for a time. When she came back, she was up on all of the latest trends, etc. and excited to share them with her friends.

Thanks to the fact that, as I was growing up, I had Uncle Finley and Aunt Marce living on the West Coast, I'd also been aware of some of the latest music, etc. before it made it all the way back to Indiana.

I remwember going into Joe's Record Shop and requesting a single by The Jefferson Airplane called White Rabbit and having Joe and his crew (who usually tried to keep up on things) telling me that they'd never heard of it. I don't even believe that they'd heard of The Jefferson Airplane at that time. If they had, they were only vaguely aware of their existence.

Days later, they called me with the news that they had just seen the title White Rabbit show up in one of their catalogs.

This, I believe, was a lot the way Beth Sherman was when she returned to Cloverdale.

One thing for sure, she was a lady, because Uncle Finley--who, by his own admission, had raging teenage hormones--used a lot of self-control when he was with this classmate of his little sister's, and they had a chaste courtship.

One day, he hoped at the time, Beth would be the one he would exchange "I do!"s with on the way to Happily-Ever-After!

When she was a junior and Uncle Finley was a senior, they had a class together.

The one teaching the class was a man in his thirties who didn't like Uncle Finley very well to say the least--probably, because Beth was paying more attention to Uncle Finley than she was to him.

He was a married man but had a penchant for looking for newer and greener pastures, as would be proven later.

My mom and I even wonder if he had actually asked Beth out, only to be turned down, making him a man scorned (which, as in the case of a woman scorned, the fury of hell dimmed in comparison to).

As she was listening to the teacher lecture, she was practicing sketching.

Her sketch was of a naked woman, but there was nothing lewd about it--it was the kind of nakedness you'd find in conservative art museums.

Uncle Finley was interested in what his sweetheart was sketching and asked to take a look--and it turned out that he was in somewhat of an ornery mood that day, so he doctored the picture up some.

I never saw the picture, but I assume he might have made the nipples of the breasts more prominent and might have even drawn a few pubic hairs on the sketch.

With a mischievous grin, he passed the sketch back to Beth--and she couldn't help smirking a little.

"Hey! What's going on back there?"

Soon came the well-known, embarrassing ritual of where students have to bring the love notes they've been passing or the nasty picture of the teacher they've drawn to the front of the class to share them with others.

This time, though, the teacher deemed the picture too "obscene" to be shared with the class--and it gave him grounds for asking for the expulsion of both students.

How convenient for this scorned casanova-in-teacher's-clothing!!!

Uncle Finley would end up joining the Navy and would finish high school as an adult--after which he took several college courses, as he was a person who was always interested in learning something new.

He worked full-time as a barber, but, also, studied the stock market and made some very wise investments that not only gave him and Aunt Marce a comfortable life while they were around--as well as allowing them to be generous with friends and relatives--but, also, resulted in a considerable inheritance that was divided among their relatives.

He also studied real estate--but Aunt Marce told us that his actual selling of a home would be a rare thing, because he just hadn't gotten used to the prices of homes out in San Francisco (They rented a wonderful house from a couple--and, eventually, the widow and her family--who thought so much of them that they had kept their rent a lot lower than what they could have been collecting from them.) and was always ending up asking clients if they were sure they wanted to pay so much money for a house that Uncle Finley didn't see as being worth even half that much.

As for Beth, her family decided that it might be better just to leave the area and give Beth a fresh start, since she had been involved in a "scandal."

Back then, you didn't air your "dirty linens"--or do much (if any) talking about said "dirty linens" with those unfortunate enough to have them--so Beth and her family just kinda faded out of the picture just as if they had never been there.

Over the years, people heard rumors that Beth had possibly gone to Greencastle High School and that she had eventually gone on to college at IU.

Another person heard that she had gotten married and moved to New York.

Back in the 1930s and 1940s, there was no Internet with search engines, and there was a lot to go through to try to find someone.

But we all hoped that, someday, we would run across Beth somewhere.

We don't even know if she's still alive--though she very well could be, as she'd only be a little over 80.

But time moves on.

Just this week, my mom received the news that Helen (Wallace) Ryland had passed away.

Although she knew that she hadn't been well, it just never really occurred to her how sick she was.

Helen had been very good about trying to keep the Cloverdale High School Class Of 1939 connected, and she, too, had alweays wondered what had become of Beth.

She thought that Jane (Hunter) Peck (now living in California with her husband, Ken) might know.

When we called Jane, she told us that she had no idea what had happened to Beth--and apologized for how poor her memory had gotten. We would later learn that she had Alzheimer's and she has, since then, passed away.

It would be wonderful to be able to get together with Beth Sherman--or, if she has already passed away, with some of her relatives--because my mom, Ainsley (Jobe) Phillips counted her among her best friends; Uncle Finley once wanted to spend the rest of his life with her--and a part of him never stopped loving her; and, though I've never met her, I feel as if I almost know her.

If you are a member here and know her whereabouts, please contact me through the community e-mail system. You can do so by clicking on the envelope next to my handle.

If you aren't a member here and/or would rather use an outside e-mail system, please contact me at: [e-mail].

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Hopefully, it will turn out to be a small world for us! :)


Other helpful information: Beth's dad was named Hugh, and her younger brother was named Duane/Dwayne.