Gail Deemer
Eilia
Mom would stand at the ironing board for hours, ironing our clothes and telling us stories of her childhood in the small coal mining town of Appalacha, PA. Because of a shotgun accident and a bout with scalding water, Grandma, Jane King , walked with a slight limp on a badly mangled foot and scarred leg. Grandpa, Norman King, worked in the nearby coal mine.
She talked of walking several miles to school with her sisters, Norma, Dorothy and Lorraine (Rainbow or just Bow) and wading in waist-high drifts to get water for the house. Her favorite story was of the man she should have married, Kenneth Wright, a handsome young man with dark, wavy hair, who loved her enough to ask for her hand in marriage but Mom was fourteen and Ken, eighteen. Mom thought she was much too young to be married, though she’d been taking care of her sisters and cooking and cleaning from a young age.
Though Kenneth lived in Cleveland, Ohio, he would come to visit his cousin, Sonny Maple, who lived with his grandparents, Bertha and Frank Kastelik next door, during the summer months. Sonny was Bertha’s daughter son. I believe Bertha had remarried so they didn’t share the same last name. Mom remembers Kenneth telling her his father was a Cleveland police officer.
When Mom was fifteen, my grandparents split up and Mom and her sister, Norma went to live with Grandpa in Batavia NY. She often talked of how the kids teased her and her sister because they were expecting royalty (Kings) and got them instead. Because Mom missed so many days of school taking care of Grandma and cleaning house, the new school had her in 6th grade at the age of 16. She often talked of how humiliated it made her feel.
She’d already married Clarence Skinner and had two kids, when Kenneth, once again, came to Appalcha and found her gone. He went to Batavia to look for her, even stayed with relatives in Batavia, but didn’t find her.
Now I’m looking for Kenneth Wright.
Mom, Carrie King, eventually had seven children (6 girls, 1 boy), married twice and is now widowed. She's been through so much in her life and she's taken care of so many people including us, her mother and sisters before her family split, her mother-in-law until she passed away a few years ago and her second husband a year later.
She’s talked about finding Kenneth in the past, just to see how his life turned out. I have put long, exhaustive, fruitless hours on the internet in search of him but can’t find him. Kenneth Wright would be 75 or 76 now, Mom just turned 71.
Please, if anyone knows anything about this man leave a message in my guest book and I will get back to you.
