As John and I merged onto Route I-55 the next morning, a light drizzle misted the windshield of our rental car. By the time we pulled into Farmington ninety minutes later, the rain was coming down in sheets. Gusts of wind threw water up onto the windshield and rippled the puddles accumulating in the street. I had hoped to be able to get a feel for my grandfather's birthplace by taking a walk around the town, but in this weather a leisurely stroll down Main Street was out of the question.
Fortunately, we had also made indoor plans. According to my trusty researcher, Mariah Cooper, Farmington Public Library maintained a significant archive of historic local documents. Perhaps one of these documents would shed more light on my grandfather's early life. At the very least I hoped to find proof that John Bird had married either Susie Douthit or Lena Murphy while in Farmington.
After finding a space for our car in the library's parking lot, we sprinted through the rain up a short flight of stairs, stepped breathlessly into the main reading room, and stopped short. A small group of children sat in a circle around their teacher at one end of the room. On the other side, in a small corner, stood a few bookshelves holding general books on Missouri history.
“I don't know that we're going to find much here,” I muttered half under my breath. “This place is tiny.”
“Don't give up yet,” John replied. “Remember, I used to be a librarian myself. Looks can be deceiving. Let me talk to them and see if I can get a sense of what they've got.”
While I stood by the front door dripping water from my raincoat, John bustled off to find a librarian. A few minutes later he was back with a young man in tow. “What we want to see is in the library's genealogy room,” John announced triumphantly. “Carolyn, meet Travis. He'll take us down there now.”
Travis Trokey, a dark-haired man who looked to be no older than thirty, smiled obligingly and led us around to the back of the building and down a flight of stairs to the basement, turning on the lights along the way. In the basement's small foyer stood a card catalogue, several drawers of micro film and two micro film readers. Stopping at a large glass door, Travis produced a key and unlocked the door with a flourish.
“This is our genealogy room,” he announced. “I think you will be able to find a lot of information about your Farmington ancestors here. Be sure to let me know if you need any more help.”
The room was spacious, and the walls were lined on three sides with books about Farmington's history. Against the fourth wall, a librarian's work desk was piled high with papers.
“We have editions of the Farmington News going back to 1883, as well as many county probate documents and census records,” Travis told us. “We even have some slave schedules.”
After making sure we were properly settled, Travis took a seat at his desk and began to tap away at the computer keys. Except for Travis, John and I had the room to ourselves. It was time to go to work. Spreading our things out on the large wooden worktable in the center of the room, I consulted my list of questions:
(1) Among all the Farmington histories that lined the shelves, was there any mention of either John Bird or J. Ernest Wilkins? What about Susie Douthit or Lena Murphy?
(2) Were there any records that could prove that John Bird Wilkins had married either Susie Douthit or Lena Murphy in Farmington?
(3) What had life been like for black folks in Farmington in 1894 when my grandfather was born? Where did they work and play? Where did they go to church and to school?
(4) Was there anything I could discover in J. Ernest's early life that might help me to understand him better? Perhaps if I could truly understand his childhood, I might be able to comprehend why he had driven himself so hard and why he felt he had to resign his position at the Labor Department.
As had become our pattern, John and I divided the research work between us. He scanned the library's holdings for references to African Americans, and to Wilkinses in particular. I concentrated on learning about Farmington's history.
William Murphy, the town's founding father, was a Kentucky native who led a party of four across the Mississippi River in search of new land in 1798. After landing in St. Genevieve, the men traveled west and staked their claims in the location of present-day Farmington. Murphy died on his way back home, but his three sons returned with their families to settle permanently in the area in the spring of 1800. When the United States bought Missouri from the French as a part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the town of Farmington became the seat of St. Francois County. In 1851 a plank road was built right through the center of Farmington to connect the river town of St. Genevieve to the ore-rich mountains to the west.1
Despite its favorable location, Farmington's population remained small. In 1885, when John Bird Wilkins lived there, the town had less than fifteen hundred inhabitants. The town did not get its first automobile until 1900 and did not build its first concrete road until 1919.2
As I pored over the history books, I couldn't help but notice that they barely mentioned the town's slaves. Frowning and beginning to grumble to myself, I plowed on. The next book on the shelf was a book put together by the staff at the library called Farmington, Missouri: The First 200 Years. From the census data I'd read, I knew that roughly one Farmington citizen out of ten had been African American at the turn of the last century. Surely this hefty volume would contain some useful information about what life was like for the town's black population? There were scores of vintage photographs, a beautifully reproduced town map from 1880, a time line of significant dates in Farmington history, and pages of detailed information about the town's citizens.
With increasing desperation I paged through the book hunting for some mention of the town's black history. I read about P. T. Pigg, the founder of the Farmington News. I read about the family that founded Tetley's Jewelry Store and saw pictures of Laakman's Drug Store, the Burnett Meat Market, Lloyd and Mayberry Stables, and the Brown Hotel. There were photos of the Farmington High School football team, the 1902 offices of the telephone company, and a great 1900 photo of downtown Farmington's Washington Street. With the exception of a few sentences on slavery in the book's Civil War chapter, it seemed Farmington's first two hundred years had occurred without the contribution of a single African American.
Paging through the book with increasing urgency, I came across a small profile on Ethelean Cayce. During slavery, Ethelean's family had belonged to one of the county's largest slave owners, the merchant and mill owner Milton P. Cayce. Her grandfather, Jeter Cayce, had somehow managed to save $450 while he was enslaved. At the end of the Civil War, Cayce used his savings to buy a large tract of land near what is the center of Farmington today. On this land he built a homestead for his family. In her interview for this profile, Ethelean Cayce spoke with pride of her family's roots. When asked whether she had ever experienced racism in town, she replied, “Farmington has always been good to colored people.”
While still a young girl, Ethelean began to work as a domestic servant. At first she hated the work and wanted to quit. But her mother told her, “Go back. You'll learn to like it.”
The article went on to describe with a surprising lack of irony how Ethelean subsequently “went on to help many families with various household chores.” The article concluded, “It's people like Ethelean who continue to demonstrate the characteristics of the men and women who first settled the area.”3
I am a child of the 1960s. I find it difficult to believe that Ethelean Cayce was being absolutely candid with her white interviewers. And I couldn't help wondering why my grandfather—a Farmington native and the first black Assistant Secretary of Labor in U.S. history—was not mentioned in this book. Granted, he had not lived in Farmington since he was a teenager, but he had been a native son, with accomplishments at least as significant as Ms. Cayce's.
I continued to roam the shelves. I was searching with increasing urgency for a book that could tell me the story of Farmington's black folks. John, meanwhile, was busy checking the St. Francois County marriage records.
“There are no marriages listed for 1885–1900 under the name of John Bird Wilkins, Bird Wilkins, or Howard Wilkins in St. Francois County,” he reported, removing his glasses to massage the bridge of his nose. “I've checked and double-checked.”
“Thanks, hon. That's what Mariah Cooper had suspected. Now we know for sure. How are you feeling?” By this point, we had been at it for over three hours, and I was beginning to despair of finding out anything useful about my grandfather's early life. My husband, however, when he is doing research, has the tenacity of a pit bull.
“I'm fine,” he smiled, replacing his glasses. “I'm going to scan the newspapers on microfilm and see if they have anything useful.” He ambled out to the foyer and began loading microfilm into the reader. I hadn't said anything to John, but truth was, I was getting tired.
“If I don't find anything in an hour,” I told myself, “I'm going to give up.” I shot up a quick prayer to the ancestors. “Please help me find what I am supposed to find here,” I whispered. “We've come such a long way.”
I got up to take one more look at the books in the Local History section. Then I saw it. Tucked away at the end of a row of books I had already gone over at least twice was a thin sheaf of Xeroxed pages, looking more like an eighth grader's term paper than an actual book. Its typed cover read, “African American History in Farmington: This material has been compiled and donated to the Farmington Public Library by Faye Sitzes.”
Bingo! I'd hit pay dirt.
“John!” I shouted, forgetting for a moment where I was. (Fortunately Travis, our helpful librarian, had long since vacated his desk.) “I've found it! A book on the black history of Farmington.” I rushed to the Xerox machine and carefully photocopied every page. Then, as the rain splattered gently against the small window over Travis's desk, I sat down at the long wooden table and began to read.
When she arrived in Farmington in 1802, Sarah Barton Murphy brought two African Americans with her. In Marcus Kirkland's 1965 article “The Early History of Farmington,” the pair are described only as “a Negro woman and a boy.”4 Since the Murphy family had roots in Tennessee, where slavery was an established part of life, it's likely that the pair were Murphy's slaves.
Although Missouri fought on the side of the Union in the Civil War, it remained a slave state. By the time of the 1860 census, slaves represented an important part of Farmington's labor force, providing manual labor for the local farms, mills, and lead mines. Slaves assisted the local doctor on his rounds and worked in town as clerks, handymen, and domestic workers. The buying and selling of human beings was a common sight in Farmington.5 Estate sales at which slaves were auctioned were held on the courthouse steps at the beginning of each new year.
By the time my grandfather was growing up in 1900, slavery had been abolished, but racial segregation was the norm in every aspect of daily life. In 1870 the town built an elementary school for its white students, and in 1896 Farmington High School graduated its first class. But although Farmington's 358 black citizens constituted roughly 10 percent of the town's total population, these facilities were off-limits for black students.
Along with the rest of the town's African American children, my grandfather attended the Douglas Street School, a rough two-room schoolhouse on the far side of town. When Dayse Baker, one of the school's two teachers, began at Douglas in 1903, seventy-five pupils were being taught in two rooms. Grades one through four had class in the first room, while a second teacher taught grades five through eight in the other.6 As a teacher myself, I couldn't begin to imagine trying to function in such a crowded environment.
Fifty years later, Baker described what her job had been like to a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. How was she able to attend to so many pupils, the amazed interviewer asked. “In multi-grade schools in those days, the grade ahead taught the one behind,” Miss Baker responded.7 The fact that anyone learned anything at all in this environment is a testament to the remarkable nature of Miss Baker's teaching skills and to the value placed on education by Farmington's African American community.
When J. Ernest was growing up, Farmington's black community provided plenty of role models for the qualities he would later exemplify. These were hardworking people with a stoic sense of self-reliance. They didn't whine, they didn't complain, nor did they let racism faze them. If Farmington's black community wanted something done, they didn't wait for outsiders to do it for them, they simply handled it themselves.
Sometime in the mid 1870s, a charismatic pastor named Christopher Tayes began to talk to blacks in the area about building their own church. Legend has it that Tayes walked as many as twenty miles daily, soliciting funds for his cause. Tayes's dream was realized in 1877 when St. Paul Methodist Episcopal Church was built on a small lot purchased from Jeter Cayce.8 St. Paul's congregation took pride in their church, having built most of it themselves. They sat on pews made by local carpenters and took communion from a table covered by handmade cloth. The windows were framed by lace curtains that had been sewn by church members. My grandfather would have spent many an hour inside the church during his childhood, warmed by a potbellied stove in the winter months.
In an extensive interview given in 1998, church member Ethelean Cayce recalled, “My family always was strong in faith. When I was a child we went to church three times on Sunday. Sunday school, then 11 a.m. services and again for the evening service at 7 p.m. That's all we did on Sundays.”9
Many of Farmington's black citizens attended St. Paul's. Dayse Baker, the elementary school-teacher and author of weekly “Farmington News” columns in the Argus, taught in the Sunday school. Ethelean Cayce, whose grandfather had sold the land to the congregation, played the piano and organ there. My great-grandmother Susie's father, Hilliard Douthit, was one of the original founders of the church.10 J. Ernest's older brother Charles would go on to become a Methodist minister. I am sure my grandfather's deep and abiding connection to the Methodist church springs from this early formative environment.
Susie lived in different locations around the Farmington area during her lifetime. When she was a child, her parents rented a home near the edge of town. While raising J. Ernest and his four siblings, she lived in a house on Cayce Avenue. Later still, she owned her own home on West Street.11
Now that I had read up on Farmington's black history, I was ready to get out and see some of the town. As I stood up and stretched, I took a peek through the window. The rain was beginning to lighten. It was still drizzling, but the clouds were breaking. Armed with an umbrella, I would be able to take my walk around the town after all. When I stepped into the foyer, John was rewinding a roll of microfilm.
Over the gentle whirring of the machine, I called out, “Babe, I'm tired and hungry. What do you say to a change of scenery? I'd like to grab some lunch and then drive around town a bit. I need to take some pictures before the sun goes down.”
“Sounds good,” John replied, slipping the rewound reel of microfilm back into its box. “I've scanned through the newspapers here. There's very little about black people in here, though.”
“I know. I think the most important articles are in the clipping file I copied. Let's get some lunch.”
After packing up and thanking Travis Trokey for his help, we left the library and drove to Burger King. By the time we finished lunch, the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing. Small shafts of sunlight poked their way through the clouds. It was time to go exploring.
The first thing we discovered was that all three of the houses where Susie Douthit once lived had been torn down. The street numbers on Cayce Street had been changed, and a large nursing home now occupied the entire block. West Street, where Susie had owned a home in 1930, was little more than a back alley. Large houses faced away from West Street toward the parallel streets on either side. When Susie lived here, she was working as a laundress. Perhaps her employer occupied one of the larger houses nearby?
Feeling thwarted, I suggested to John that we drive out to the cemetery to look at my great-grandmother's grave. As we drove through the peaceful, winding streets to the eastern edge of town, the scenery became more rural. The lots and the houses were larger, the satellite TV dishes in their backyards giving mute testimony to Farmington's distance from the big city. Horses grazed in the late afternoon sunlight. Now that it wasn't raining, the air was soft and vaguely tropical. Perhaps because it was still only the middle of the day, the streets were empty. It felt like John and I had the town to ourselves.
After we had driven for several minutes, John eased the car onto the shoulder of the road.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” he asked.
I pulled out the detailed map that Travis had given us in the library. “Yep. It's on Old Colony Road. It says so right here.” I poked my index finger on the paper. “Let's just keep driving. If we don't hit it in the next fifteen minutes, we'll turn around.”
Looking dubious, John started the car and pulled back on to the street. Though I said nothing to John, I was really enjoying our cruise in the country. Even if we never found the cemetery, I could gain a valuable sense of what living in this small town might have been like in 1894. The vista was beautiful and must have been truly amazing then. Rolling hills and green farmland stretched in all directions, and when I rolled my car window down, the air outside smelled like clover.
John, however, was getting frustrated. He's a goal-oriented guy and hates to get lost. To keep him distracted, I told him the story of how Colored Masonic Cemetery was created.
In 1902 twenty-three of Farmington's black Masons formed a graveyard association to purchase land for a cemetery. They raised money and purchased the site on Colony Road. They even built the road that led to the land. Among these men were the town's most prominent black citizens, including several members of Ethelean Cayce's family and Lewis Murphy, Lena's father. According to the association's by-laws, the wife, children, or direct descendants of any person buried there could also be buried in the cemetery free of charge.12 Susie Douthit Wilkins, three of her brothers, and J. Ernest's brother Byrd are all interred there.
“It always blows me away how self-reliant these people were,” John remarked after I had told him the story.
“I know what you mean,” I replied. “In those days no one expected anyone to do anything for them. They knew if they wanted a decent place to bury their families they'd have to do it themselves. So they raised money, bought the land, built a road, and gave themselves a cemetery.” As John continued to look out for road signs, I shook my head in admiration. “You don't see too much of that sort of thing anymore,” I told him. “Nowadays, people complain and wait for the government or someone else to fix the problem.”
“At least now the government feels some responsibility to help African Americans. Back then, few white people cared if blacks had access to services.”
I sighed. Of course, John was right. As usual. “Look,” I cried. “That's it, on the left.”
At the top of the next rise stood a small plot of land surrounded by a chain-link fence. John pulled over and turned off the engine. As the car ticked down, the only other sound I could hear was the sighing of the wind. Looking for a way inside, I walked around to the front of the cemetery. The front gate was locked, but there was a hole in the chain-link fencing along the side. Clutching the bouquet of flowers I had brought along, I wriggled through.
A rutted dirt road led straight through the cemetery, lined on both sides by modest headstones. The grass was wet from the recent rain. It had been mowed recently and smelled sweet. On the right side of the graveyard, not far from the entrance, stood a headstone inscribed “Wilkins.” Susie, her son Byrd and his wife, Mayme Swink, were buried there. I couldn't help but contrast the condition of this cemetery to the one where John Bird was interred. There were definite signs that this place was still being cared for. The location was beautiful and imbued with a deep sense of peace.
As I laid my flowers on the grave, I said a prayer. “Dear God, bring peace to my ancestors. Thank you so much, Susie Douthit Wilkins, for the life you lived. I know you struggled against many obstacles and must have felt abandoned and alone on many occasions. But now you are at peace. From across the years I salute you and thank you for being my ancestor. You have not been forgotten.”
Now, there was just one more place I wanted to see. According to the articles I had just read in the library, Colored Hall and the first site of St. Paul Methodist Episcopal Church were both located on Jefferson Street, close to the center of town. Much of Farmington had changed in the 115 years since my grandfather was born there. But perhaps at least one of these buildings was still standing?
According to one of the articles I had read, “Professor” Bird J. Wilkins had organized a group called the Colored Working Men's Association to build a community center in 1885. Known in the community as Colored Hall, the building became home to the black Knights of Pythias, the black Masons, and three different black churches at one time or another. Another article written about the building in the late 1990s included a picture of a small wooden structure and stated that the building was now the home of the Native Woods Gallery.13 But as we pulled the car up to the curb, all that remained of Colored Hall was a flight of concrete steps and a railing. It was a sad sight. I deeply wished someone had at least put a historical marker there to mark the spot. Boston, where John and I live, is littered with historical markers. They help to put things in context, to remind future generations that although time has moved on, history happened here, on this very spot.
Kitty-corner to the ruins, however, was the building where the St. Paul Methodist Church congregation had once met. The Knights of Pythias had purchased the building, and it seemed in relatively good condition. Although it had been remodeled several times, its distinctive sloped roof and hexagonal side windows still gave it a church-like quality.
After walking around and taking some photos, I got back in the car where John sat idling the engine and contentedly puffing his pipe. It had been a long day, and we were both very tired. Soon it would be dark, and we still had a two-hour drive to get back to our hotel. It was time to hit the road. As we pulled away from the curb, I took a last look at the ruins of Colored Hall. I had only spent an afternoon here, but after my visit to Farmington I felt connected to my Wilkins heritage in a deeper and more intimate way. Although there had been occasions in my life when people mistook me for a white girl, I was now feeling a lot more certain about who I really was.
It was rush hour. The closer we got to the outskirts of St. Louis, the thicker the traffic became. Hemmed in by a sixteen wheeler on one side and a mammoth SUV on the other, we inched our way along Route I-55, peering anxiously at each road sign to make sure we hadn't passed our exit. John hates driving in heavy traffic and was mumbling profanities under his breath. I was doing my best to pretend I didn't hear them when my cell phone rang. It was Chris Wright, Ethel Porter's grandson. The day before, I had made tentative plans to get together with him some time this evening. I had gotten so wrapped up in my Farmington trip I had completely forgotten our appointment.
“Hey Carolyn, are we still on for tonight? I'm running a bit behind at work, but I could be at your hotel by seven.”
I was exhausted and had been looking forward to a long hot bath and a night of mindless TV. But the opportunity to meet Chris and look over the old family pictures he had was not to be missed. He was a busy guy and if I cancelled, who knew when or if we would be able to get together again.
“Sure, Chris. That would be great. We've been in Farmington all day but we're just passing the airport right now. I should be back at the hotel in plenty of time to meet you.”
Promising to call me if he got delayed, Chris hung up. From the little he had told me about himself, I gathered that he worked at St. Louis University Hospital. An emergency surgery had been scheduled for the afternoon, and he sounded at least as tired as I was. As John eased the car down the exit ramp toward our hotel, I had to smile to myself. Those ancestors, I thought to myself. They will really get you in some unusual predicaments. In the past three days I had spent several hundred dollars to walk around graveyards and look at the ruins of old buildings. Now, despite being totally exhausted, I was about to meet with a total stranger.
Chris Wright arrived an hour late, but I didn't mind. For at least an hour I had been able to lie on my hotel bed and stare blankly at the TV without thinking about anything. I had known that the trip to Farmington would be important. I'd had no idea how emotionally draining it would be.
As Chris and I approached each other in the hotel lobby, we appraised each other cautiously. We were, after all, total strangers. In this age of identity theft and random violent crime, one can't be too careful. But as soon as I got up close, I could see that Dr. James Christopher Wright was no stranger. In some strange way, although we had never met before and might never meet again, we were family. After an awkward hug, Chris and I settled ourselves at a cocktail table in the corner of the hotel lounge farthest away from the TV. While a motley crew of inebriated businessmen munched peanuts and stared fixedly at the Cardinals game, Chris opened a large plastic storage crate filled to the brim with pictures, each one individually wrapped in a Ziploc baggie.
For some reason, when talking to him on the phone, I had imagined Chris to be an older man. But as I watched him over the small table, I saw he was in fact younger than me, very handsome, and like myself with a light complexion. Though cordial, Dr. Chris had clearly had a rough day. He had come straight from work and was still in his blue hospital scrubs. There were serious bags under his auburn eyes, and worry lines around his smile. I tried to make small talk, but Chris got right down to business.
“As you can see, I've got a ton of pictures here.” Carefully, he began to remove pictures from the crate and spread them out on the table. “I don't know exactly what you're interested in seeing.”
This was the magic moment I had been waiting for. But now it was here, I didn't know quite how to proceed.
“Well,” I said slowly. “I know that my Aunt Marjory was Mrs. Porter's great-niece, and that they both had Jeremiah McFarland in their family tree.” Then I told Chris an abbreviated version of the story Aunt Marjory used to tell at family gatherings. How Jeremiah had come from Africa, been brought to New York, and sold into slavery in Kentucky to a man named Robinson.
“Well, I don't have any pictures of Jeremiah McFarland. But I do have a picture of his wife, Sarah. She was part Irish and part Native American. She's our earliest ancestor. Would you like to see it?”
“Wow!” I said, my tiredness falling away. “Would I ever! Would you mind if I took a picture of her?”
Chris nodded and began to rummage through his box. He must have had over a hundred pictures in there. “Here she is,” he said, carefully unwrapping an old piece of metal. “This is what they call a tintype. They used to print pictures on pieces of metal back in the day.”
With trembling hands I took the photo. And across five generations and 150 years, Sarah McFarland looked me squarely in the eye. Unflinching she gazed into the camera, her square jaw set, her long hair pulled back from her face and parted in the center. Her hair seems to be braided, but from the angle the photo was taken it's impossible to be sure. With her high cheekbones and dark eyes, Sarah's Native American ancestry is unmistakable. She's wearing a simple dark colored dress with a high white collar. Around her neck she wears two beaded necklaces. Even at this distance in time, her strength of character comes through. Aunt Marj's great-grandmother was not a woman to be taken lightly.
For the next half hour, Chris pulled photo after photo from his storage crate. Many of them were shots of people from Mrs. Porter's side of the family whom I did not recognize. Chris did not recognize them either. In becoming his family's historian, he was honoring the request of his one-hundred-year-old grandmother. These were her pictures, and just like my Aunt Marjory, Ethel Porter was her family's griot. Chris and I, each in our own way, were merely struggling to preserve the family legacy.
Shortly after celebrating her one hundredth birthday, Mrs. Porter suffered a stroke, Dr. Chris told me. It was doubtful she would recover. With a tear in his eye, Chris told me he felt the end was near. When she received my card at her birthday party, Mrs. Porter insisted that Chris get in touch with me. And now that she was no longer able to speak for herself, Dr. Chris felt it imperative that we get together, despite his busy schedule at the hospital.
The more he told me about Mrs. Porter, the more she reminded me of Aunt Marjory. Like Aunt Marj, Ethel Porter had a long career as a teacher. And like Aunt Marj, Mrs. Porter was well-known for her generosity. After she retired from teaching, Mrs. Porter raised Chris for a time when his mother was struggling to make ends meet.
“My grandmother was just like that,” he told me. “Always helping other people.”
It was nearly 9 o'clock now, and I could tell Dr. Chris was getting tired. I had brought my camera to our rendezvous and was trying as best I could to take decent photos of some of the family pictures I recognized. He promised to scan some photos for me later on, but we both knew that, given his busy schedule, other things would soon take precedence. My mother always used to say, “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” My pictures might not be studio quality, but at least I would have some shots of Sarah to take home with me. After showing me one more wonderful photograph of Aunt Marjory as a young girl, dressed in her finest and riding a Shetland pony, Dr. Chris packed away his collection and stood. The Cardinals game was over. The businessmen had long since gone back to their rooms. We now had the lounge to ourselves.
“Chris, I can't thank you enough,” I said. “I know you must be exhausted, and I really appreciate you coming down here to meet me. Next time you come to Boston, please call me. John and I will take you out to a lobster dinner.”
After one final hug, Chris picked up his box and walked out of the hotel. Still vibrating from the encounter, I rushed upstairs to download my photos. “We are Fa-mi-ly!” I sang, startling the desk clerk as I walked past. “We are Fa-mi-ly!”