Christine Carter seemed like a typical English woman, growing up in Southampton, England, marrying and raising children, but for 60 years she felt a part of her was missing.
This summer, Christine found the missing pieces to her life and discovered much more than she expected -- Scherry Byler, a cousin who is like a sister, and a heritage she never imagined, reaching back to the earliest days of northwest Arkansas.
In the beginning
It was March 1947 and Christine's father, Ezra Taylor, an Army private, was returning home to his family in Garfield, Ark., after serving in Europe in World War II.
His parents, Mary & Alma Taylor, and his sister and brother-in-law, Vivian and Colyn Byler and their children, Scherry and Colyn Lee anticipated Ezra's homecoming for months, eager to spend time together as they had before the war, working on their land, hunting squirrels and deer in the woods, laughing and enjoying each other.
Vivian, quiet and serious, idolized her older brother, who loved to joke, laugh and "pull little tricks and shenanigans."
"To know him was to love him," the family said.
He liked to have fun, but when it came to work around the place, he knew how to work hard.
Around Garfield, Ezra was known for two things -- his happy disposition, always greeting his friends with a smile and a "jolly exclamation" and his talent for playing baseball. In the two years before going off to war, Ezra had been a standout pitcher for Gateway baseball, a regional team. Everyone said he could have played in the big leagues if World War II hadn't intervened. But it did and he went to war instead, volunteering as a paratrooper, surviving 28 days in a foxhole, being wounded at Aachen, Germany, and spending four months recovering at Netly Hospital in Southampton, England.
His first words to his mother as he greeted her on the front porch of their home that cold March day were "God was with us. He returned me safely home."
Ezra's happiest news to share with his family that day was his marriage to a pretty, young English woman named Joan Russell.
He met Joan while he was recuperating at Netly Hospital, when she had come to visit a friend. During his convalescence there, they fell in love and in the summer of 1945, during his last tour of duty in France, they married and were soon blessed with a baby boy, Ricky.
Coming home
Upon his discharge from the Army in 1947, Ezra came home. A few months later, 23-year-old Joan packed up 20-month-old Ricky and new baby Christine and set sail on the Marine Falcone for the long journey across the Atlantic, entering the United States at Ellis Island. She and the children then rode the train from New York to Arkansas to be reunited with her husband in Garfield.
Independent and strong, she was excited to begin a new life with her husband's family in Arkansas. When they stepped off the train, Ezra met his baby girl, Christine, for the first time.
Ezra and Joan settled into life in Garfield, renting a small house near Alma and Mary. Ezra got a job working at the same lumber mill as Alma, his father, in Seligman, Mo., on the other side of the state line.
Having been brought up in the city in England, life in the country was different for Joan, but she grew to love it. Most importantly, she and the children grew to love Ezra's family. Mary cared for Joan like she was her own daughter and the cousins spent hours together, playing in the yard of their grandparent's home and riding the horse with the help of their grandpop Alma.
Jokes and laughter and fun filled the Taylor's home. And joy filled their hearts as another baby, Joanne, was born on June 18, 1949.
Life was not easy, but it was good.
Until the warm summer evening of September 9, 1949.
Tragedies strike
On his way home from work, Ezra stopped to buy a generator for Joan's gasoline iron. Arriving home about 5 p.m., he saw that it didn't fit the iron. The family had plans to go to Alma's and Mary's the next day, so he decided to take it right back to the store. Since he didn't have any lights on his car, he knew he would have to hurry to get back before dark. As Joan later wrote to his aunt, "You know how it is when one goes to town. There's always so many people you know, so I guess that's what happened in his case and before he knew it, it was almost dark."
In the growing dusk, Ezra started on the road back home. Suddenly coming toward him was a big truck. Looking back, he saw another truck coming up behind him. For a moment he was blinded and so he got off the road to let the trucks pass. He made too sharp a turn as he got back up onto the blacktop. The car rolled. Ezra was thrown out of the vehicle and died almost instantly.
War couldn't take Ezra Taylor, but a dark road on the Missouri state line did.
Ezra's death at 29 years of age devastated the family.
To be continued.
Editor's note: The story of the reunion of Scherry Byler Lee of Garfield and her cousin, Christine Carter, from England, is being published in three parts, Dec. 18, Dec. 25 and Jan. 1.
General News on 12/18/2013