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Friday, October 26, 2012

Death In The Family



Everyone I might have offended with this post is dead, except my mother who doesn’t have a computer, and there’s something I’d like to get off my chest. I’ve always been suspicious of the manner in which my uncle died.
      
This happened when I was two years old so I’ve had to piece together a picture of the event from various relatives, mostly my mother who was not actually there when the tragedy took place.
      
My mother’s boisterous Portuguese family had gathered at Anderson Reservoir, a recently opened man-made lake along Coyote Creek in California’s Santa Clara County.  As the story goes, five or six family members, including my Uncle Laddie, left the picnic area and rented a motorboat.  They sped off across the lake, but when they returned a few hours later Uncle Laddie wasn’t among them.
      
Evidently, he fell out of the boat and drowned. His body, tangled in the flooded vegetation cluttering the bottom of the newly created lake, wasn’t recovered until a full year later. By that time an autopsy was unable to ascertain the cause of death, which the police deemed an accidental death by drowning.
      
I’ve always struggled to believe what I was told about this. I admit to having an overactive imagination, but I doubt what I was told. Why? You be the judge.
     
 Seven men rented a boat for a spin on the lake. Oddly, no women accompanied them. A coincidence? I understand this was a small boat, a tight fit for seven men. Alcohol was no doubt involved, prompting the driver to throttle the boat into high gear. According to another uncle, now deceased but present on the boat, Uncle Laddie simply vanished; one moment he was there, gone the next. They’d been traveling at high speed and it took a while for the boat to slow down—the precise spot of his disappearance unknown—but several of the men reportedly dove into the water to look for Laddie. Witnesses said Laddie was not seen struggling in the water, apparently having never surfaced after falling into the lake. Heart attack? It’s possible, but Laddie was young, in good shape and without a family history of heart illness.
      
Perhaps I’ve watched too many CSI-type programs but here’s what troubles me. How do six men, sitting knee to knee in a cramped boat, not notice someone vanishing overboard? No one heard a splash? No one saw a man in distress? No one noticed anything odd until suddenly the boat was less crowded?
     
 As a writer, it’s easy for me to envision a conspiracy to eliminate Uncle Laddie, one that would necessarily include everyone on that boat, including two of Uncle Laddie’s brothers, but I have no evidence of a conspiracy. No motive. Still, The Godfather comes to mind, that scene of murder on the water where Michael Corleone orders the death of older brother Fredo.
      
I have no reason to believe Uncle Laddie’s friends and relatives were implicated in his death or that they were anything other than grief-struck by this incident. Laddie was quite popular from what I’ve heard. A carpenter and handyman, Uncle Laddie was generous with his time, always available with a smile and helping hand. He build a screen door for our kitchen and helped my dad pour the cement walkway beside our house.  
      
Uncle Laddie’s disappearance happened on a warm summer day nearly sixty years ago. No one aboard that boat is still alive. I wish I had more memories of him, but I was just a toddler at the time of my uncle’s death, too small to remember him clearly. But I do recall a smiling man in a bright Hawaiian shirt, holding out a cookie jar to me. And I remember Uncle Laddie’s dress army uniform, left behind in a closet when my aunt sold the home she’d shared with my uncle and stored her furniture in our spare bedroom, later my bedroom. I would take out that uniform and fill it with my imagination, running my fingers over the brass buttons and concocting fantasies about an uncle who’d single-handedly defeated Hitler.
       
I’m glad to finally get these concerns off my chest, but I wish I could close my eyes without picturing all those men on that boat and wondering what actually happened.

 Any strange occurrences in your family you care to share?


43 comments:

  1. That does sound like quite the mystery. My grandma used to tell a story about her brother or someone being killed with a shotgun to the face. I forget the exact details. It was a long time ago and she's dead now.

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  2. That is an odd story. The problem with stories that happened so long ago, it's hard to get all the facts that might clear up the details of it. Why did it take so long to recover the body? Didn't they drag the lake as they do today?

    I totally see why you would question this. How can 7 men be in a small boat and no one see one fall out??? Strange!!!

    Yes, there are a lot of strange things that have happened in my family as well. I keep thinking I will at some point do some posts but I fear that people would find it more stupid than interesting.

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  3. Hmm, unless they were all very drunk and then it would be possible that your uncle fell out of the boat and no one noticed, or they did but no reacted fast enough because they were drunk and he drowned. Pretty tragic whatever.

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  4. Wow- very interesting. Could he have hit his head on the boat when he fell over, knocking himself out> Odd, though, that no one saw it.

    I do havea family mystery from several generations back. In reading family history and matching up the dates, I have real questions about the paternity of a certain ancestor. I've told no one in our family, though, and won't unless I have definitive proof.

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  5. Sorry to pull some air out of your mystery baloon but having substantial experience with boats of many sizes and my husband having saved a life of a drunken man in one instance and watching another fall off a boat and almost drown due to too much alcohol, this could definitely have happened. Engines are noisy and you cannot hear and when people are trying to keep their balance if a boat is racing they face forward and hold on tight. Alcohol has no place on the water.

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  6. That is indeed odd, but without a motive....a family feud of some sort, for example....I can't imagine what really might have happened.

    In doing some family geneology I found out that a relative back in the 1700's, some sort of English nobility, backed the wrong side in a revolution and was murdered by a nephew (there was a bounty involved). But this was obviously way before my time.

    S

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  7. Wow, this is a mystery!! I too would have wanted to know more circumstances about it. No strange occurrences in my family like this. I wonder if the men were embarrassed about something that happened with him falling out of the boat and they decided to cover up the actual events; if so, what a secret to keep for all those years. Very interesting!!

    Have a great weekend!

    betty

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  8. I had an Uncle accidentally blow his brains out while cleaning his pistol which had a hair trigger. That is the families explaination, and we are sticking with it.

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  9. My family is nothing but strange. That's why I blog. Any reason to believe Uncle Laddie was a pedophile?

    Love,
    Janie

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  10. That does sound fishy. But when there is alcohol involved, who knows what can happen.

    I don't know what you did to your post this time, but I can comment on it... Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

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  11. Well, I think truth is almost always stranger than fiction. I think a group of drunk men in a boat is a bad idea that happens all day long everywhere. I think a fight and collusion could have happened as easily as he just fell off and then they realized he was gone, could happen to a group of drunks. I think you'll never really know and that you're blwessed to have a vivid imagination.

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  12. Sounds like you'll need to recreate the events in order to get to the bottom of this. Grab six of your buddies and a case of your finest and see what happens. Then please blog about it.

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  13. I suspect foul play. Same thing happened in my extended family. A man with an invalid wife that he was forced to care for ended up dead at the bottom of a ravine. He said she fell, and he was never prosecuted. But the ravine had a very sturdy rail. No witnesses saw it. And the woman would never have climbed over the rail. I think she got pushed because the man (husband) was tired of being a care provider.

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  14. And then there were seven . . . but seriously, it is kind of weird, and obviously still disturbing you all these years later - - as a lot of old unresolved family stories do. I've got nothing that specific in my family, just vague rumors of alcoholism, wife beating, desertion from the military, illegal immigration. You know, the usual stuff.

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  15. Oh, I think there's a story there somewhere. Unfortunately it died with all of the men who were present on that boat. I've got a boat load of stories about my wacky family that I hope to pen in a book someday.

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  16. What a great story. You can have whatever ending you want to have with this. I do agree that it's odd that no one say anything on such a small boat. Very odd.

    Have a terrific day and weekend. :)

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  17. Of course it could have happened the way they claimed--the authorities believed me when I told them the same story about Charlie! Oh, wait, there's no statute of limitations on murder, is there? Never mind...

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  18. I can see that the story would have happened as told. Sixty years ago, motor boats were probably noisier and had a more bumpy ride than the motor boats of today. Of course, your theories are much more intriguing and make for a better story!

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  19. Hmm..now you also said that Uncle Laddie helped your Dad with some concrete work around your house. Are there any other relatives strangely missing? Could there have been another person who mysteriously disappeared before Laddie and then, since Laddie knew too much, had to be eliminated? Very curious.

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  20. That is bizarre and troubling, especially since he was so well liked. And why would it take a full year to find his body? Did they not report him missing? I don't watch CSI, but I'm very curious. It sounds as "accidental" as Natalie Wood's death (not accidental at all, in my opinion).

    xoRobyn

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  21. I agree that the story raises suspicions. If he fell overboard, somebody saw it. My guess is that a couple of them were taking silly chances or else having an actual fight when he went overboard, and they all agreed on this "innocent" story.

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  22. Most likely as mentioned above, the boat overcrowded at high speed and he lost balance and fell out, all parties were drinking and trying to keep their balance and looking directly into the path they were traveling, I bet they were slowed down and on their way back in before they noticed he was gone.

    Friends of my Step Dad went camping by the river one weekend, yes alcohol was involved here also, next morning one of the men was missing, thinking he had wandered of to go fishing they all had breakfast and packed up the camp to leave, this is when they noticed his gear was all still in place and his sleeping bag was never unrolled, found his body in the river next day.

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  23. Family mysteries, we all have them I guess. In my family it's my grandfather. None of us know who how really was, and when I went to the National Archives to find out more, I found out that his records are sealed ... permanently sealed.

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  24. Fascinating story. It DOES remind one of the Godfather. There are some mysteries in my family but I don't think anyone ever lost their life.

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  25. If they were all sitting down in the boat, it sounds suspicious. If they were standing, not so much. Maybe he stood up to relieve himself of some of that alcohol. I don't find the part about only men on the boat ride to be odd. That's how things were back then. The men did their thing, the women did theirs.

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  26. you'd think that if someone fell overboard it would be noticed. or a splash would be heard. maybe they were all really drunk and making noise or something. sounds fishy i agree. indeed it's a mystery.

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  27. If alcohol was consumed, possibly the men on the boat were loud, laughing, and were too intoxicated to realize your uncle was missing. I would have been suspicious too. Even though this was a tragic story, hopefully writing about it helped in some little way.

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  28. maybe since you were only 2 you did not get the whole story.

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  29. That does sound mysterious. How sad!

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  30. My mother's parents had two children who survived to adulthood. They also had several miscarriages and a couple of babies and young children that they never would talk about. We figure SIDS with the babies, and some kind of sudden illness with the older one, but both of my grandparents would tear up and refuse to speak if anyone asked.

    There's also the mystery behind my husband and his twin's adoption. We've solved some of it (his biological parents were married, but she was only 16 at the time), but the only people who could clear up the whole thing are gone.

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  31. That is a mystery. Alcohol probably had the most to do with it, I would guess. You have the writer's questioning mind.

    The only strange occurrence I can think of was my grandmother was hand sewing and as she whipped the needle and thread up in the air the family parakeet flew by and she stabbed it right in the heart and it fell dead to the floor. She had never liked the bird. ;)

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  32. You're dealing with closure here. Maybe writing this will bring some closure.

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  33. Oh wow! I'd have to say I'd struggle with that one as well if it were me. You speak so fondly of him, I'd hate to imagine there was any fowl play, but I'm with you. How can he just vanish suddenly and no one knows. How mysterious a story! Something similiar with our work place, our boss drowned in one of the popular lakes. Left a few of us mystified and his parents were certain there was something to it, turned out to be a case of carbon monoxide poisioning. Very sad!

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  34. Anything can happen when alcohol is involved!

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  35. The idea of six men carrying a fatal incident with them for the duration of their lives is an intriguing aspect and line of pursuit. How did their lives play out? A conspiracy, if indeed there was one, would be challenged by so many participants. Someone in a group of that size would be a weaker link in keeping a secret. Alcohol though could have been a major factor in the event and the recall of details.
    Sharing this story is hopefully a healing process for you.

    After WWII my army veteran father worked for the government in a job and for an agency which were never clearly defined. That period of my childhood did indeed prompt mysteries in my youth.

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  36. Your concerns make perfect sense to me. But I am a mystery fan too. Like some of the other comments, I think alcohol was a contributing factor, and perhaps Uncle Laddie was dead drunk.

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  37. Males of the species are not the most observant, particularly after they have had a few beers. A friend of mine once told me, he only noticed his youngest son was missing from around the meal-table when there were two sausage left over.

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  38. The timing was ripe for this catharsis. My own mystery will have to stay that way, as many of the people it effects are still living. I insert a lot of it into my personal stories, so I do get it out in a way. I'm glad you still have a fuzzy memory of your uncle, Laddie. That's very rare.

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  39. Wow, that story could definitely leave one to wonder and imagine a lot of different scenarios. Alcohol and boating do not make a good combination.

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  40. What a distressing thought to carry around with you. My guess would be that it was an accident, and that drinking played a large part in it. I would hope that your uncle's death was not intentional but more a matter carelessness. I like that you've shared a connection with him through is room and uniform.

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  41. This is a fascinating/tragic story. None like that in my family. Just fallings-out with different reasons why, etc. When you've got a vivid imagination and no certain answers, it's easy to let your mind wander to some really odd scenarios. Not a great thing to wonder about your entire life.

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  42. What an intriguing post. Just wow. Something similiar happened to a great uncle, nearly 80 years ago, but it was a train. Just vanished. I've been reading all of your posts the last several weeks, but not able to comment. I was glad to see the comment box enabled on my phone this time. I dont know what happened on the last several posts. Great writing.

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