1940 to 1943: Hard times

By G. Wayne Miller, Journal staff writer

...Frank Beazley turned 12 on Dec. 13, 1940, without knowing that another birthday had passed. The nuns who raised him never told orphans the date they were born.
... His foster family, the Henns, celebrated Christmas with a tree the boys cut from the woods out back. Santa Claus brought apples and oranges, but no toys.

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... The holidays passed and Gertrude Henn’s drinking did not abate. On nights when she ran out of beer, she crossed the hall to Frank’s room.
... Francis? she said, Francis, wake up! Could you go down and get me half a dozen bottles of beer?
...Frank couldn’t refuse: Gertrude would hit him or threaten to send him back to the orphanage. She didn’t know he would have been happy to return if he could.

... The boy threw off his covers, dressed, and left the house with a canvas knapsack. He went to the barn and greeted his favorite dog, the Newfie. Frank set off down Prospect Road with the dog at his side, their breaths vaporescent in the frozen night. Legend held that a man had hanged himself from a tree by the side of the road, and when Frank approached it, he ran like crazy past its leafless limbs.
... He reached the home-brewer’s house and knocked on the door. The light came on and the man greeted the boy.
... Mom sent me for half a dozen bottles, Frank said.
... The man filled his knapsack.
... Put it on the cuff, Frank said. Gertrude had a running account with the man, settling her debts at the end of the month.

"Northern Lights", a painting by Frank Beazley.

... Some nights, the northern lights lit Frank’s way. Their iridescent beauty mesmerized the boy, portending brighter days. It won’t be like this forever, he thought. Things will get better. Decades later, Frank would recall those midnight excursions in a painting and this poem:

...But better days were a fantasy. Frank passed his first year at the foster home and alcohol continued to consume Gertrude. She beat the housemaid when the young woman announced she was quitting. She beat her adopted daughter when the girl, terrified of the home-brewer, refused to get beer. She beat Frank when his coat caught fire after he hung it too close to the schoolhouse stove. She beat him when he fell into a well and had to be rescued.

Frank's foster brothers, Ronnie (top) and Willy Henn. Photo credit: Marion Oakley

...Gertrude didn’t need cause. Nothing pleased the woman when she was drunk. All it took was a wrong look and she exploded.
...In 1942, the year that he turned 14, Frank learned of a job opening on a construction crew that was clearing land for a reservoir near Goodwood. Frank was beginning to realize that someday he’d be on his own. He remembered another of Sister Rita Marie’s admonitions: If you’re going to have responsibilities, Francis, you better have a good job.
...Frank signed on as a water boy for the reservoir project. Every day after school, he shouldered a yoke and carried buckets of water to the laborers who were felling trees around Big Indian and Little Indian Lakes. Frank earned a dime an hour.
...Gertrude took his wages, telling him that he owed rent.
...She did not excuse him from his chores — his job merely lengthened an already long day.

...YET EVEN HERE, as at St. Joseph’s Orphanage, Frank drew strength from his philosophy: Take what’s there for you, enjoy what you can.
...He liked helping Ronnie tinker with the older boy’s Model T. He fished and hunted deer and snared rabbits, which Gertrude in her sober moments made into a tasty Sunday stew. He gardened. He ice-skated. On Saturday nights, he watched the grownups square-dance to banjo and accordion music in a neighbor’s barn. He visited the general store, where his foster father treated him to lollipops and ice cream.
...Freed from the orphanage’s cloistered existence, Frank craved adventure. He followed trails deep into the woods, snapping twigs as he went so that he could find his way back. He took his first taste of moonshine from a neighbor, whose house he was helping to build. He and his classmates launched attacks on their school, flinging cow chips as weapons. They wrote their names with their pee on the gravel. They upended outhouses on Halloween and built snow blockades across Prospect Road in winter. They played baseball, using a stick for a bat and a ball of yarn borrowed from one of the girls.

Franks's school. Photo credit: Marjorie Young

...Gertrude was keen on country-western music, and listening to her records on her hand-cranked Victrola, Frank developed an appreciation for American singers Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, and Nova Scotia native Hank Snow, a Canadian sensation before becoming a star in Nashville. The radio acquainted him with Bing Crosby, Perry Como, and comedian Jack Benny. But Gertrude tolerated no interruptions when she was listening to Pepper Young’s Family, her favorite radio soap opera.
...Get out of here! the woman would shout if Frank intruded while Pepper Young was on. And her parrot would echo: Get going! Get going! Get going!
...Marion Henn, the foster daughter, became Frank’s dear friend. He saw in her the needy vulnerability that many of the St. Joseph’s orphans had shared.
...Like Frank, Marion was the child of an unwed mother.
...She was born in 1935 at the Ideal Maternity Home, located on the ocean an hour southwest of Halifax, a private facility that claimed to provide discreet placements of illegitimate children. In truth, the owners, a chiropractor and his wife, sold many of the infants for as much as $10,000 on the American black market. But they murdered untold hundreds of other babies who were deemed unmarketable — children born with illness or deformity, or with dark-colored skin. The owners burned some of the babies in their furnace, and buried others on their property or at sea in butter boxes: small wooden grocery containers in which dairy products were merchandised.
...Marion was luckier than many: she survived the Butterbox Babies tragedy, as it became known when the police later investigated.
...In winter, Frank took Marion skating. In summer, they walked barefoot to gather strawberries from a nearby farm. They picked blueberries and huckleberries, which Gertrude used for desserts. Marion sometimes ate the berries on the way home, but Frank claimed he was responsible when they returned empty-handed. His fibs brought him beatings, but they spared the little girl.
...He remembered Sister Rita Marie’s counsel: You know, Francis, you’ll always be rewarded one way or another by helping people out.

...ONE DAY LATE in 1942, Frank received a visitor. A woman he had never met came to tell him about a dispute that she’d had with his grandmother.
...Muriel Beazley Mullane was Frank’s great-aunt — the younger sister of his maternal grandfather, Francis L. Beazley. Somehow — perhaps through Francis L., who felt more kindly toward his grandson than did his wife, Nellie — Muriel had learned about the existence of Frank. Muriel believed that the Beazleys should finally take responsibility for the boy.
...Nellie had resisted.
...What good could come of it after so many years? The past was behind them now, the skeletons secure in their closets. Besides, the child was in good hands. And he was almost grown up; soon, the matter of care would be irrelevant.
...Muriel was adamant. If nothing else, the boy deserved the truth.
...Frank heard his great-aunt out. He believed what she said — what could possibly motivate someone to invent such a story? And she spoke with such authority, knew so many details. She’d shone a light inside a dark secret.
...Muriel told Frank that his mother’s maiden name was Edna May Beazley, and that she had married an army sergeant named Larry Moffatt in May 1939, when Frank was at St. Joseph’s Orphanage. Edna had moved with her husband to Ottawa, Ontario, the Canadian capital and Moffatt’s hometown. With almost 600 miles now separating her from Nellie, it was a chance for Edna to start a life removed from her mother’s suffocating influence.
...A tall, thin man with brown hair and blue eyes, Moffatt was a machinist with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. He dreamed of becoming an aeronautical engineer. Two years after marrying, Edna gave birth to a daughter, Helen, nicknamed Snookie. It was the spring of 1941, and Canadian soldiers were being sent overseas for the war against Germany.
...Moffatt received orders that fall, and in late November, he embarked from Halifax. Edna remained in Ottawa with their baby girl. Christmas passed and Moffatt settled into a barracks in Aldershot, England, some 45 miles outside of London. He was assigned duties as a clerk.
...On May 13, 1942, an officer bearing an overseas cable knocked on Edna’s door. He regretted to report that Sgt. Lawrence Robert Moffatt had died nine days before at his barracks — and had already been buried in a cemetery outside London. ‘‘Multiple injuries to brain caused by fall,’’ the cable stated. ‘‘No evidence to show cause.’’ Edna would never learn more about her husband’s death. Unlike other Beazley family mysteries, this one would endure.
...Edna moved with her baby back to Halifax — into the house on 50 Creighton St. where Nellie and Francis L. still lived.
...Muriel gave Frank the address.

...THE NEXT MORNING, Frank started down Prospect Road. He walked some and then hitched a ride with a farmer who was delivering his produce to the city on a horse-drawn wagon. Frank found 50 Creighton St.
...He knocked on the door.
...Nellie opened it.
...Frank looked into the kitchen — and there, by the stove, was a woman with fair skin, blue eyes, and blond hair, just like him. She had the same broad nostrils, prominent ears, and thin face, a Beazley family trait.
...Are you my mother? Frank said.
...Nellie cut him off.
...Her name is Edna Moffatt, she said. She’s not your mother. Now no more questions.
...Francis L. was not home, could not intercede for the boy. Nellie told Frank to return to his foster home — but she did not say goodbye for good. Nellie’s father had recently died, leaving the house to her, and she was planning to sell it and move to a more respectable neighborhood. She intended to realize her social pretensions.
...After they had settled in, Nellie said, Frank could live with them there. She would let him know when they were ready.
...Why such an offer after so many years? Pressure from Muriel Mullane? Pressure from Francis L., who had told his grandson that he would give him a better life? A belated pang of conscience? Or was it that Frank was no longer Baby Francis, but a teenage boy soon to be a man. Now that he knew where the Beazleys lived, did Nellie fear trouble if she rejected him completely?
...Was it even the truth?

...FRANCIS L. BEAZLEY was at home on Saturday, Dec. 5, 1942, when he dropped dead of a heart attack. He was 55 years old. His obituary, written with Nellie’s input, mentioned his army service and the 18 years that he had worked as a clerk for Canadian National Steamships. It listed Nellie, Edna, Edna’s sister, and granddaughter Snookie among the survivors. Frank was not included.
...That weekend, Muriel Mullane called Frank’s foster home to share the news. Francis L.’s death saddened the boy, for he was the only person who’d ever promised Frank a better tomorrow. Muriel asked whether Frank wanted to attend the wake and funeral. He did. William Henn agreed to drive him into Halifax.
...On Tuesday, Dec. 8, five days before his 14th birthday, Frank arrived at 50 Creighton St., where the wake was being held. Nellie met the boy at the door and took him aside. Francis L.’s casket was open.
...I want you to go see your grandfather lying there, Nellie said, but try not to shed a tear. Everybody will know if you shed a tear.
...Frank did not cry, but his presence prompted speculation from relatives who’d never seen him. Who was this mysterious stranger who looked so much like a Beazley? But Nellie and Edna said nothing.
...The wake ended and the mourners followed the hearse to St. Patrick’s Church, where Francis L. and Nellie had married and Baby Francis had been baptized. The funeral ended, Francis L. was buried, and Frank returned to his foster home.
...Almost two years would pass before anyone contacted him again.

TOMORROW | COLD AS JANUARY

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