Choices
Chapter 2
What most contributed to my personal religious doctrine of Divine Coincidence, that things happen for a reason, was the death of Jack Staub, Don’s second cousin on his mother’s side. My husband, Don, was close to Jack; they were both only children. They grew up living just a block away from each other. As boys they were inseparable, always getting into mischief and driving their respective mothers batty. Jack was a year younger than Don. He was tall and slim with delicate features for a boy but he was all boy; they often took Don’s 22 pump rifle into the woods with bottle tops, a never ending contest to see which boy was the best shot.
I begged Don not to go with Jack to the draft board on December 9th, 1941. Jack was not married and I had just learned I was pregnant with our second child. It was selfish on my part but like many young wives and mothers at the end of 1941, I was terrified of becoming a widow with two young children. I knew it wasn’t realistic though, as I watched Don drive away toward Moundsville on his way to meet Jack and volunteer, like thousands of others. I felt better thinking about Don and Jack fighting together, covering for each other, protecting each other. But that wasn’t realistic either, just comforting for me as his car disappeared over the hill to the west. I sat in the kitchen and watched little Brenda, just three, play with her doll. I was thinking about Jack, Uncle Jack as we were now calling him, when I heard a car, Don’s car, coming up the drive. He had only been gone a couple of hours. I rushed out to see Don looking dejected. I had to hide my elation when he told me they would not let him enlist, would not give him an exemption because of the severe hearing loss he suffered from a bout with scarlet fever as a child. But Jack, he was in and was soon gone from our lives but not our hearts.
Jack excelled in the Army. He fought in North Africa becoming a Sergeant and then in August 1943 received a battle field commission. Captain Jack Staub. He was home in early 1944, wearing his crisp uniform, proud of the Captain bars on his shoulders. He spent several days with us, playing with Brenda and especially little Timmy, our son. We laughed and drank. In a way I was in love with Jack, just as I was in love with Don. How could I not love them both; Don the gentle father of my two children and Jack the sweet caring and very handsome man any woman would fall for, especially in that uniform. It was so hard to see him leave again. I felt he had already done his part, cited for bravery, escaped brushes with death. Why did he have to go back, I asked? Let him stay, maybe he could train new recruits. Didn’t they deserve to learn from someone who had been through it? But it was not to be. He left and I cried.
And shortly after he left I found out I was pregnant for the third time.
Jack went to England and we learned he was among the first to go ashore on the beaches of Normandy. We were so relieved that he survived that day of sacrifice and death, and we now could look forward to Jack coming home, hopefully; the end was in sight. As I got closer to delivering my baby, we listened to the radio every evening, charting the tough progress of our boys fighting in distant lands, and we held our breath when we read the casualty lists in the news papers. On November 11, 1944, I gave birth to a boy, James Edgar Roberts. I swear he looked like Jack but I dared not say that to Don. I saw them both in my baby boy; they were cousins after all; Jack and Don did resemble each other.
I was released from the hospital after only four days, rather than the usual seven because of an impending snow storm, a storm which stranded us for over a week in the house on the hill. We were cut off, no newspapers; we even didn’t have electricity for two days. Finally, Don put chains on the Oldsmobile and set off for town and much needed supplies. When he came back he came in the house without any groceries. His eyes were red and he was openly crying. He didn’t have to say anything; I knew. I wrapped my arms around him and we cried together. Finally, I spoke Jack’s name as a question and Don shook his head. We continued to cry together for the longest time.
Jack died in eastern France, western Germany, an area really known as Alsace Lorraine, just west of Strouseborg, coincidently near where his and Don’s mutual grandfather, as well as countless prior generations of German ancestry, lived before immigrating to America in the 1850’s. Jack was shot, of course, leading his men in an assault on a German bunker, possibly manned by distant cousins. He died on Armistice Day, the day James Edgar was born, maybe at the same moment. I broke from Don’s grip and rushed up to my sleeping little boy. I picked him up, still crying, and sat with him for the rest of the day and into the evening, not eating; just crying. It was during those hours holding my baby that my understanding of Divine Coincidence solidified. I looked into the precious face of James and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that things happen for a reason; if sometimes not a reason we can easily accept or understand.
After I stopped crying, late that evening, I started calling my baby boy ‘Jack’, after Uncle Jack, the young man I loved, the one who died for me and for his country. Don did not object; he was as devastated as I, and we both felt it would honor our friend, our hero. I had no way of knowing if Jack, the dead soldier, was the father of my son. In fact, it was likely he was not; one chance encounter with a man about to return to battle after Don had too much to drink did not make for high probability. It was possible, but more likely Don was the father, our intimacy being frequent and wonderful throughout our married life, especially then. But I would never know for certain.
But that possibility, coupled with the coincidence of Jack’s death and my son’s birth happening on the same day, a historical day of another war’s end, made me consider the complexities of my doctrine of Divine Coincidence.
