Getting to know my mom and dad

More events coming for `The Last American Editor’

The Front Page

Morning Update

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

By Ken Tingley

My brother looked across the table at me Monday and reminded me it was December 27 and the next day would be the 20th anniversary of our father’s sudden death from a heart attack. My mother hung on for another 12 years. That helped keep my father and his memory fresh and alive.

But over the past eight years, those stories have faded away.

Over the past months, I’ve been trying to get to know my father and mother all over again. I’m hoping to write a book about their romance.

My father was a blue collar kid whose father worked in the local factory. They had a small plot of land where they raised chickens, had a goat and planted a big family garden during the depression and World War II. After high school, my father worked for his builder uncle hauling wheelbarrows of cement and later moving furniture.

My mother was a city girl born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, went to Catholic school and told stories about the Germans bombing her city during the war.

They met on a blind date in Belfast after my father joined the Navy during the Korean War. It was a whirlwind courtship. My father asked her to marry him and gave her money to cross the Atlantic to be his wife. He was 23. She was 27.

While my parents left me with many stories from those days, there are also gaps and inconsistencies so many unanswered questions. So for months now I have been trying to get the answers. I’ve reviewed old documents, scrolled through newspaper microfilm, read my father’s old letters and interviewed aunts, an uncle and several cousins.

I was shocked to read the mushy letters my father sent to my mother just before they were married. My father was never one to show his emotions, but he did in those letters.

They were married in Mobile, Alabama with only two strangers as witnesses. One aunt told me that when my father’s mother learned he had married a Catholic, she tossed all his belongings out his bedroom window.

They were different times.

I came along 10 months later, the families reconciled and life went on. My parents were married 45 years before dad left us at age 69 after one final Christmas together.

Over the past months, I’ve learned that my parents were complex and flawed and sometimes not the people I thought they were. I still marvel at the bravery of my mother to cross the ocean to be with a man she barely knew.

I’m still trying to piece it all together.

The reality is that I am the union of two very different worlds and two very different people. I’m hoping I can find out how they did it.

So today, I will not mourn the loss my family suffered 20 years ago, but instead look forward to getting to know them all over again. I think it will make a great story.

Final interview

Vonnie Tingley, the wife of my father’s youngest brother, died on Christmas Eve. She was 82.

This past summer I interviewed her in hopes she could give me some insights into my parents and who they were.

She was in a nursing home and I was told she was not doing well.

I spent a couple hours with her and my cousin Dawn. I found her memories to be sharp, her demeanor feisty and full of opinions about people from the past.

My cousin later told me, it was really a great day for her.

It was a reminder that if you want to know about your family’s past, don’t wait. Write it down, tape record it. And do it now.

My Aunt Vonnie had a difficult life in some ways. Her husband died when he was 50 living her with three children to raise. That was more than 30 years ago. From what I can see, she did a pretty good job.

My Uncle Bob and Aunt Vonnie.

“Last American Newspaper”

McFarland Books, which is publishing my second book, informed just before Christmas that the editing process has been completed and production on the book has begun. I’m hoping the book will be released sometime in the spring.

“The Last American Newspaper” is a memoir about the great work done at The Post-Star over the past 20 years. I went back and reviewed the in-depth journalism the reporters and editors did and interviewed many of them about their experiences.

I’m proud of the book and the work we did.

But the underlying message for the book is who will do the journalism that communities depend on in the future.

It is a question we all should continue to ask.

Greenwich event

If you are looking for a night out in January, you might want to check out the Greenwich Public Library. WAMC radio host Joe Donohue will be interviewing me about newspapers, life and my first book “The Last American Editor.”

I’m also hoping we can talk a little about my new book “The Last American Newspaper” and the future of community journalism.

The event is scheduled for Thursday, January 13 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Attendance is limited to 25 people, so you might want to make a reservation. You also have to provide proof of vaccination.

You can pick up a copy of “The Last American Editor” at the event or purchase one at Battenkill Books in Cambridge or Northshire Books in Saratoga before the event. I will do a signing afterward.

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