A memoir--Marge and Ken, my parents

My mother Mary Laura Marguerite Clark was like a lovely Southern magnolia tree, an ornamental tree of transcendent beauty and a sweet, light fragrance. Like the magnolia’s leaves, her hair was dark, shiny, and curly. Like the tree’s waxy flower, her face and hazel eyes betrayed little emotion.

Raised she was in the sadness, the darkness, the anger and hostility of drinking. Her father drank. Her mother left him, divorced him, and this in the 30s! Divorce--unheard of then. Shame--hush, hush--drinking and fighting and then the divorce--shame--hush, hush. Then more shame--her young brother Joe robbed a grocery store, was sent to the county jail. All of this made Margie more tense, uptight, inflexible, and unavailable.

But don’t talk, don’t tell about such things--keep those dark family secrets. Because Margie is a good girl--a good girl--with a dream of finding a good man to take care of her, to save her. Graduated from high school with a business diploma, she worked as a secretary in the Charleston, South Carolina, Naval Yard, where she met many soldier boys. It was World War II, and they were being shipped out everywhere. A dark haired beauty (often compared to Scarlet O’Hara), Margie had her innocent flirtations with many a young man and wrote many letters to them.

Margie was always slim like the tree's branches--reaching out to the bluest sky of all--to my father’s light blue eyes. She reached up for my father’s protection, for his tall protective illusion--protection from her father and her brother. From her past life.

Known for its strength and perseverance, her magnolia-like personality was growing like a tree, trying to attach its roots into the shifting South Carolina coastal sand. Its shallow roots didn't take hold, but its branches spread, attempting to create a veneer of shade and protection in the tropic heat of an already stormy life. But that magnolia was doomed to topple.

Another storm was coming.

Marge and Ken on their wedding day

My mother’s magnolia roots entwined with the roots of a tall South Carolina loblolly pine, my soldier and farm boy father, E. Kenneth Drawdy.  The second of nine children from a dirt poor family--five boys and four girls.

My mother thought that she had found a big family that would love her, embrace her, make her feel more alive, more secure.

They married. My naval pilot father was immediately shipped to California. On the train all the way across the country, my mother followed for a visit. She returned pregnant with their first daughter, Lynda.

Then the war ended. The tall Southern pine tree came home to his young bride and daughter, went to a naval college called the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, on the G. I. Bill. He studied electrical engineering and played football--was even captain of his team.

Ken was a manly man, who made his big family of origin proud. Intelligent, tall and lanky, and handsome.  A strong man, a take-charge man, who believed in financially supporting his family, but he had a dark side--something there was that was rotten in that tall pine. Something there was that would eat away at him for the rest of his life.

Their second daughter Laura was born the same year and month that he graduated from the Citadel--May, 1949. For a career, Ken had a choice between football and engineering. He chose engineering with the DuPont company.

Thus began a career of moving up the career ladder while moving his wife and daughters constantly around the country--about every other year--about fifteen moves in all.

The roots of the magnolia had entwined with the shallow roots of the pine, and they would keep getting uprooted until they could no longer cling nor hold.

How could this man save my mother, when he couldn’t even save himself? From the dark days ahead.

An outward success in the business and social world. At home a similar scene from Marge's earlier life--deep, dark secrets--shame--hush, hush. Don’t tell anyone. Secrets. Shame--hush, hush now.

We have to look good to the rest of the world. Like a normal family. Yet, we were anything but normal.

It is said that the strength of a tree lies in its ability to bend, and this magnolia and this pine were not trees that would bend. They could only break and break and break. They could only break each other’s hearts.