The following story has been a difficult one to write, but I felt strongly that it was time to remember the boy name David, and define him by his life rather than by his death. This is a story very close to my heart as it was a member of my own family. The devastation resulting from his death has affected all his siblings. My grandparents were not able to continue their lives fully functionable and had difficulty being parents to their surviving children. Blame serves no purpose where healing takes place. It is time that he is remembered and his memory lives in the hearts of his siblings, not to bring pain, but to finally bring peace to those who loved him.
Thank you to my Aunt and  my Father for their help with editing and sharing. Thank you to Uncle Phil also.



 Saccarappa Cemetery, Westbrook, Maine                            David Walter Roberts




            We have all heard of the ‘elephant in the room’. Generally, it refers to a common knowledge regarding a situation or event. This common knowledge is something that sits while everyone tiptoes around about the subject. Maybe it is an embarrassment, or a subject of pain. Whatever the reason, it evokes great emotion. I think I am safe to say that everyone has some elephant.
             The fire was at 32 Vesper Street on Munjoy Hill in Portland, Maine. A fellow that worked with my grandfather had slept over that evening. He fell asleep in a chair at the foot of the stairs. There may have been drinking, as the fellow fell asleep with a lit cigarette. My Aunt in later years said she had heard that the adults were all passed out in the Living Room. My Uncle Phil and his brother David woke them up. The chair and then the curtains ignited until the entire stairway was consumed with fire leading to the second floor and gutting out the entire side of the duplex. The guest ran into the street, engulfed in flames and died later that evening. David and his brother, my Uncle Phil, shared one of the bedrooms on the second floor. The date was early Saturday morning on February 13th, 1943. The temperature was one of the coldest on record for that date.
             Some of my earliest memories involve my father talking of a brother he lost in a house fire. David was nine when he died. His mother had run back in to save my Aunt who was seven and my father who was two. Both were in the other bedroom on the second floor. David ran back inside to find his mother, and siblings. Later, my grandfather could see David looking out of his bedroom window. Grandfather begged him to break the window and jump but he would not break the window and then disappeared from view. Grandfather tried to get up the flaming staircase and got his hands badly burned and had to retreat. David was found wrapped up in a blanket either on the bed or under the bed. Grammy and the two little ones were found in the other bedroom. Grammy, my Aunt, my father, and David were all brought to the hospital having no life signs. All were revived except David. What had made a difference was that Grammy had closed the door to the little kid’s bedroom.
              Since I was interested in family history early on, I queried relatives about the boy we called David. My brother may have been named for him. Lately, I have been thinking about him quite a lot, mainly because of my lack of knowledge about his life. I wonder how someone can live nine years and seemingly his memory erased as well. Was there no reason to celebrate his short life? Today it appears to be the trend to celebrate someone’s life rather than remember their death. Of course, we have had many years between then and now. The only thing I know of the boy named David was that I have been left with an extreme fear of fire. A few years ago, I was talking with my cousins and they also confirmed heightened anxiety regarding fire. 
             My grandmother Roberts barely spoke of him, as it caused her great pain. Unfortunately there was no counseling then, and she did the best she could. Throughout the years, my grandparents drank heavily. My father says as sometime during the evening, and argument would erupt about the fire and who was to blame. When I asked her to tell me about him, she always felt guilty about the time she had taken a switch from a tree and beat him in front of the neighborhood kids for something he had not done and this was one of her last memories of him. It was a very cold winter and his interment had to wait for warmer weather. It weighed heavily on my grandmother when she went to the cemetery to witness the interment and realized her son’s body had been interred the previous day. 
             We only have a very few scattered pictures of him. Today I am going to attempt to celebrate his short life. I often wondered what kind of boy he was and what he enjoyed doing. My Aunt, who was closest to him in age, went to the movies with him often. Back then, the movies were affordable for kids and they stayed there for a good part of the day. My father was only a baby and my Uncle Phil was fourteen at the time of the fire.
             Little bits of information are all that I have regarding David. Whenever I asked my Uncle, I was always told, “I had him out, and then he ran back inside.” Lately some of us have wondered if my Uncle carried that guilt with him all his life. When I asked him to tell me more about his brother, his reply was, “He was just my kid brother, a pain in the neck.” This was all I knew of David from my Uncle. My father also relayed a story from his youth when he was about ten years old and my Uncle was nearly twenty-three. The two of them went fishing with their father. They were crossing some piles of log across a river, when my father lost his footing. He quickly slipped into the fast moving river and right behind him was my Uncle lunging like a leap frog to rescue my father. My father was not certain he was in any danger but his brother reacted quickly, perhaps because he did not want to be “responsible” for another tragedy. My grandfather joked that they could have retrieved my father downstream.
             My Aunt Marietta suffered a great loss. David was her best friend and confidant. I was told she would later hold a seat for him at the theater by leaving popcorn on the seat. Following the fire, the family was split up and stayed with family and friends for awhile.  Once, my Aunt showed me an old composite doll, which she had kept all these years. It was given to her after her brother’s death. The school children had done a collection for flowers and the money left over was spent on a doll for my Aunt. It was meant to comfort her. There was no counseling.
             Then my father told me that his parents, not careful with their words would remind my father that it would have been easier had it been him and not David who perished in the fire as he was only a baby. Alcohol did not really lessen the pain. The only artifacts left behind by David are a small collection of cigarette cards and baseball cards. I have a couple of things with his signature as well as a partial book of ration stamps from the war years. As tragic as the whole episode was, nobody has really recovered after all these years. It is still an open wound, though it has been sixty-five years. I think it is time that we honored his memory and celebrated his life and how much he was loved.
             My original reasons for writing this were to honor David’s memory and let it be because it was sixty five years ago. I visited my Uncle, who now has dementia. I saw him on my lunch break on Friday. It was the first time I had been to the residential memory impairment unit where he lived. He was glad to see me though he never called me by name. He asked me what I had been doing. I told him I was writing a lot of stories for my web page. Then I decided I would ask him about the fire, once again, knowing I would probably hear the same story he tells almost word for word. He said, “I had him out, then he ran back inside”. He shook his head, and said it was a crazy day. I asked how he got out. His answer surprised me because I had never heard this detail. He said there was a trap door on his bedroom ceiling and he climbed up there with his brother and together they climbed onto the roof. Then he motioned with his hands to show me how they both inched their way around a side of the house along the gutters, until they could drop in a safer place. I only had 15 minutes to spend with him. I learned more about that day in fifteen minutes, than I learned in my whole life about David.
I was curious why he would tell me the details in his state of dementia. Did he feel less mental anguish now? I hope that is the case. It makes me curious about the wonder of the human brain. Maybe now I can begin to think about the boy who lived once and find some pleasure in knowing a little about him.

 

Philip, David and Marietta

front-David, Marietta----Back-Philip, Evelyn Walsh Roberts circa 1937



My father, John, was a baby, and as far as I know there are no pictures of him with all his siblings



David and Philip, most likely in Portland



Marietta, David and Philip (Johnny slept on a blanket, right corner) taken in Houlton


I will be adding another story soon regarding the memories of my Aunt along with some of my father's thoughts regarding their brother, David.

To read what transpired as a result of this story, read, "The Dialogue: A Story of a Boy Named David" posted under the same category as this story.