Sisters

Long ago, there were three sisters, Virginia, Doris, and Alice. They lived in the small town of Piqua, Ohio north of Dayton, Ohio. Alice was the youngest of the three girls. Virginia was the oldest of the three with Doris being the middle sister. When Alice was about six months old, her mother, Carol, contracted the pandemic Spanish Flu and died. This meant that Alice’s father, Sam, was left to raise her. He very quickly discovered that he was incapable of raising a baby girl. Primarily a result of his alcoholism and that he was usually drunk. As a result, he contacted Emma Cline and told her of his plight. Emma and Carol were sisters. Sam and Emma had an affair while he was still married to Carol. The affair was a torrid affair but didn’t last very long. The outcome of the affair was a baby girl, Helen, that Emma was forced to raise on her own. He begged her to take Alice and raise her because he was not capable of doing it.

Emma, who realized that Sam could hardly take care of himself agreed to his request and she took Alice in her arms and bid farewell to Sam, who was never heard from again. Emma had a daughter, Helen, of her own who at the time was five years old. Emma took Alice and her own daughter, Helen, to a small town in northern Ohio and Alice went to school there along with Helen. While there, Helen cultivated her musical ability and she learned to play the piano as well as the organ. As a result, she gave music lessons and played the organ on Sundays in the church she attended.  She eventually met a person, Charles, whom she married. She and Charles did not have any children and as a result they never socialized with Alice and Richard. In many ways that seems like an unreasonable result but at the time, just like being a homemaker was the expectation for women, it was also expected that women would bear children. Charles was employed by the home office of a large oil company whose office was in a nearby city. He and Helen were also active in the social life at the company.

Alice, while going to school, met Richard, and shortly after graduation, the two were married. Alice graduated valedictorian of her class and worked at the local newspaper after graduation. She enjoyed working for the newspaper because it gave her an opportunity to meet people and write articles. She enjoyed writing very much and was very happy working for the newspaper. Unfortunately, when she married Richard, he told her that she needed to quit her job and become a homemaker. At the time, married women were not supposed to be employed in the workforce. They were supposed to stay at home and be a dutiful homemaker, taking care of the home and their husband and raising their children. As time went on, she and Richard raised a girl, Ann, and two boys, Rick, and Bob. As it turned out Ann, when she was older, was a compulsive cleaner. Eventually, Alice had the ask, Ann, to stop cleaning the house as much as she did because it was becoming distracting. Rick also was a worker as he grew. One of his duties as a boy was to crawl into their coal-burning furnace in the summertime. The purpose of doing that was to take a hammer and chisel and remove the burned goal that was plugging up the grates where the coal came into the furnace. Eventually, the coal-burning furnace was replaced with a natural gas furnace and as a result, Bob the younger boy never had to crawl into a furnace to clean it. Alice truly had little interaction with her older sisters and occasionally got letters from Virginia and Doris.

Doris continued to live in the Piqua area and infrequently visited Alice. When she did visit it was very pleasant and her husband, Mike, was very friendly and playfully interacted with Ann and Rick.  Not much else is known about Doris as she continued to live and died while living in Piqua. Virginia was the oldest of the three and she also went to school and graduated from Piqua high school. While living there she met a person, Keith, whom she later married. Keith loved fishing and it was the primary reason he left Ohio and moved to Florida after he and Virginia were married.  Virginia and Keith had four children, two boys, and two girls. One boy, Tom, was the oldest and was the same age as Ann, the girl that Richard and Alice had.  They had two other girls and the youngest girl, Karen was the same age as Rick, the oldest boy of Alice and Richard. The other girl, Mary, was the second oldest, and the other boy, Mike was the third oldest.  

Fortunately, Virginia stayed connected with Alice over the years and she and Keith would periodically travel to Ohio and visit Alice and Richard.  When they visited, Keith, who loved baseball, would listen to baseball games on the radio. Richard, who didn’t care for baseball at all, would sit with Keith and listen to the game with Keith.  Unfortunately, Keith died at an early age in Florida, doing what he loved, fishing in the Everglades. The circumstances of his death are unknown, but it is thought that while he was in the Everglades, he had problems with the boat he was fishing in, and it capsized while fishing.  As result, he drowned, and his body was never retrieved. As a result, the oldest son of Keith and Virginia asked

Helen, who was known as a person who always looked for answers wanted to know more about her stepsister, Alice. She discovered that Sam, Alice’s father, had an affair with Emma and as a result, Helen was born. As part of her investigation, she obtained her DNA as well as the DNA of Alice. Obtaining a person’s DNA was not available when they were growing up but was available when Helen performed her investigation. The DNA indicated that Alice and Helen were related. They were not sisters but they both had the same father. As a result, Alice and Helen were closer to sisters than they thought.