My grandpa’s picture.

​I didn’t spend a lot of time with my aunt Margaret Gebhart growing up. When i learned to drive, a visited her a couple of times a month. She’d tell me stories about my grandpa that my dad was too young to remember. 

      One afternoon, she brought a picture of my grandpa Charles Otho Sutton down from upstairs. It was taken in 1917 along with a picture of his first wife. They were taken just before he left for France and the war to end all wars. 

      I don’t know much about his first wife other than her name was Maude. What I do know is she had found another man while my grandpa was in the trenches. I guess it was a common occurrence and still is. He divorced her and married my grandma Ethel Hight. 

     The two pictures of him and his first wife in the plaster frames with bubbled glass hung on either side of the living room door even after he married my grandma. I don’t know why he wouldn’t take her picture down, but my aunt remembered his refusal to remove her picture from the living room and how angry it made my grandma. 

     The ex-wife’s picture mysteriously fell off the wall whenever the front door was slammed. That’s what grandma told grandpa anyway. Eventually, the plaster frame broke and the glass shattered. The picture was placed in storage. 

     To the my knowledge the picture of Maude disappeared after grandpa passed. It wasn’t in grandma and grandpa’s things when grandma passed away. 

     When my aunt finished her story, she handed the picture to me and said that his namesake should have it. I remember my tears flowing freely, and I still don’t understand how someone I never met has choked me up on so many occasions. 

     There’s one picture of Maude that I’ve seen. It was taken after the divorce and she’s with a boy between the ages of two and four. Written on the back is one sentence. It says something like I guess you know who this is. She was wrong. None of us know for sure. 

     My grandpa died on May 31, 1953. Maude died on June 21st, 1953. Coincidences are strange sometimes. 

     This isn’t the picture I have, but I think it was taken the same day. 


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