EVERETT — She sees a soldier back from war and his bride in blue.
Over the years, Nedra Gallagher, 59, inherited belongings passed down through family. Among them were her grandfather’s wool uniform from World War I and her grandmother’s blue bridal jacket, wool with silk embroidery, from their wedding in 1921. Gallagher keeps the items in storage at her Silver Lake-area home, not sure what else to do.
A few years ago, she and her husband, Paul, went to an estate sale in their neighborhood. Seeing all that stuff being sold made them think. Their parents have passed. Their granddaughters are toddlers. What do they want to leave behind? What will matter and what might be lost?
Every generation faces the same questions.
“It’s so hard to say,” Paul said.
High school sweethearts, he and Nedra have been married 37 years. They have a son and a daughter.
Nedra’s grandfather, John Scott, survived being gassed in World War I. He and Agnes, the bride in blue, had three sons, one of whom was Nedra’s father, Deane Scott.
Paul also has inherited items of family history. His dad, Bernard Gallagher, was a special investigator for the U.S. Army during World War II. Bernard Gallagher used to snap 33 millimeter black-and-white photos while flying to China over what was then called Burma, but is now known as Myanmar. A few years ago, Paul took his father’s negatives to a camera shop. The material was too fragile for the shop’s equipment, he was told, so he started digitizing the negatives by hand, but he got stalled. It’s so easy to lose track of things like that.
Nedra Gallagher, a teacher, has found use for her grandparents’ clothes in lessons, also loaning them to colleagues who taught history.
“I love history. I recognize the value,” she said. “These are primary sources in a way that really help us to just put reality on the people, the flesh and blood, who did the things that put us where we are today.”
Still, sometimes letting go of stuff is part of “reconciling life,” she said.
She wonders if a museum might want her grandfather’s uniform. It’s Army green with brass buttons and a matching cap. The cap has a single moth hole.
“Wool is the softest. It will last forever,” she said.
Her grandfather’s coat bears medals from battles he lived through. In one of the pockets are the strips of wool that soldiers used to wrap around their legs for warmth. She also has his canteen and gas mask, though the hose and rubber lining are disintegrating.
John Scott died in 1966, when Nedra was 9. She remembers sitting on his knee at his dining room table, the same table that’s now draped in lace in her home.
Every Christmas, Nedra brings out the music box that was her grandfather’s wedding present to his wife. During the holidays, it used to play “Silent Night” from atop his smoking table.
As a girl at her grandparents’ house in Spokane, she was encouraged to eat all the biscuits she wanted. Her grandmother made them from scratch every morning, along with bacon and eggs. Her grandparents let her cover her fingertips with black olives for snacking.
Her father’s saying was, “If you leave here hungry, it’s your own fault.”
He served his country, too. She has his U.S. Navy uniform, her mother’s first Bible and the eyeglasses that her mother’s father, a minister, wore.
For Nedra, the belongings provide a connection to the past, something she can touch and feel and think about, and yet, maybe they wouldn’t be so special to someone else, even her granddaughters.
In her collection of family history, she has a black-and-white photo of her father and his two brothers as young men. A headline in their local newspaper read: “Three Scott Brothers All Go To War.” That was World War II.
They’re gone now, the children of the soldier and his bride in blue.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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