Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets
Speaker 2: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 2: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today
Speaker 2: is Dina Gashman, journalist and author of the recent essay
Speaker 2: collection So Sorry for Your Loss. Dina's is a story
Speaker 2: of the long reach of a buried family secret through
Speaker 2: the generations, and the desire of one tenacious woman to
Speaker 2: understand what really happened and how to make it right,
Speaker 2: or at least as right as possible.
Speaker 3: I was born in Fort Arts, Texas. We live to
Speaker 3: Euston when I was in third grade, and my parents
Speaker 3: were high school sweethearts, so my family goes back in Texas,
Speaker 3: you know, generation. So my childhood was actually pretty wonderful.
Speaker 3: I was outside all the time. This was pre technology,
Speaker 3: so you know, my sisters and I were all was
Speaker 3: outside making mud pies. And I had very loving parents,
Speaker 3: and I was close with my both sets of grandparents,
Speaker 3: and we were all pretty physically close together, so I
Speaker 3: was spending the night with them all the time. But
Speaker 3: it was it was actually very happy and wonderful, and
Speaker 3: I don't think. There wasn't much that I knew about
Speaker 3: my grandparents except that they were just wonderful people. I
Speaker 3: didn't really, obviously as a kid, pay attention to their stories.
Speaker 2: And you were the oldest of four yes, yeah, oldest
Speaker 2: four girls. So growing up in the first the Fort
Speaker 2: Worth area and then the Houston area, what were the
Speaker 2: expectations of the kind of prison supposed to grow up
Speaker 2: to be?
Speaker 3: I think the expectations were I'd be a cheerleader beyond
Speaker 3: the drill team, you know, a very kind of Texas
Speaker 3: view of the world, and I was not going in
Speaker 3: that direction at all. I was very creative, wanted to
Speaker 3: be a writer. You know, I always loved school, but
Speaker 3: I just rebelled by you know, wearing combat boots and
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff. But I think the expectations were,
Speaker 3: you get married, you have a family. And my parents
Speaker 3: knew pretty quickly that I was probably going to go
Speaker 3: in a different director, maybe even leave Texas, and they
Speaker 3: they didn't discourage me from that. But I think in
Speaker 3: general it was more just like, you get married, you
Speaker 3: have children. Women didn't necessarily work that much. Honestly. My
Speaker 3: mom was a stay at home mom, so that was
Speaker 3: kind of the world that I was brought up in,
Speaker 3: and I think I rebelled against a probably around junior high.
Speaker 2: And you know, even though you adored your mom, you
Speaker 2: also had that adolescent rebellion feeling was I don't want
Speaker 2: to grow up and have your life.
Speaker 3: At the time, yes, I very much saw my mom
Speaker 3: as this woman who who had never really left Texas
Speaker 3: and who had kind of I viewed, I guess her
Speaker 3: life is small, and I feel terrible saying that, but
Speaker 3: as a teenager I did. I just thought, I want
Speaker 3: to go to Paris, I want to go to New York.
Speaker 3: I want to, you know, have this big life. And
Speaker 3: I remember getting in a fight with her when I
Speaker 3: was in high school and I said, you know, you're
Speaker 3: just a housewife. And I apologized for that probably literally
Speaker 3: until her dying day, and she would always laugh it off.
Speaker 3: But I felt horrible. But at the time I meant
Speaker 3: I was very much steering myself away from being like,
Speaker 3: quote unquote just a housewife and living in the suburbs
Speaker 3: like that seems horrible to me, so I definitely rebelled
Speaker 3: against it.
Speaker 2: Hovering Over Dina's childhood was a story, well not exactly
Speaker 2: a story more like family law or a legend something
Speaker 2: about a fire. Though the details were super hazy, it
Speaker 2: was always there in the background, part of the music
Speaker 2: of her life. As a teenager, some of the details
Speaker 2: began to emerge.
Speaker 3: At some point. I think in high school, I heard
Speaker 3: the story of the fire and it just took shape
Speaker 3: in my imagination. And I never asked about it. But
Speaker 3: I had heard the story of a fire that happened
Speaker 3: on my mom's side, and I knew a woman had
Speaker 3: committed arson, but I didn't inquire any further. And also
Speaker 3: at that time, when I was in high school, I
Speaker 3: remember my mom telling me that my great ants on
Speaker 3: her side had traced our lineage and this is before
Speaker 3: twenty three and me, this is you know. So it
Speaker 3: was literally typewritten pages that she handed me, and I
Speaker 3: was so excited because I was sure in the pages,
Speaker 3: I was like, you know what, there's going to be
Speaker 3: some woman that like fought in the front lines with
Speaker 3: battle dressed as a man, or like marched for women's
Speaker 3: rights in the twenties, or I just was so sure
Speaker 3: that as opposed to the housewife that I didn't want
Speaker 3: to become, that there'd be some woman that I could
Speaker 3: maybe like hinge my identity on. And so I got
Speaker 3: the papers and there wasn't anything. There wasn't anything. It
Speaker 3: was very basic stuff.
Speaker 2: And this would have been in the.
Speaker 3: Nineties, yeah, early nineties.
Speaker 2: So those pages just sort of sat around for a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 3: It was a dead end, yes, and I actually still
Speaker 3: have them. I somehow held on to them through all
Speaker 3: moves all over the country, and but it was it
Speaker 3: was a dead end. And at that time, I don't
Speaker 3: I think I was just looking for some kind of
Speaker 3: heroin and it just was you know, your family goes
Speaker 3: back to the Mayflower and you know that kind of stuff,
Speaker 3: and so but I held on to them for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: What do you think that was about the feeling of
Speaker 2: you know, wanting, hoping, you know, needing for there to
Speaker 2: be a role model in a way sort of within
Speaker 2: your family tree, someone that would maybe help make sense
Speaker 2: to you of you.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it maybe was just that
Speaker 3: I did feel very different where I grew up, because
Speaker 3: when we moved to Euston, it was all about the
Speaker 3: status quo, very homogeneous, like everyone has the same person everyone,
Speaker 3: you know, it just felt like everyone had to follow
Speaker 3: in this Why that just felt so wrong to me.
Speaker 3: I couldn't even imagine doing that, and I and I
Speaker 3: wanted to push against it, because I could very easily
Speaker 3: fall into that right. And so I think it may
Speaker 3: have been about like, if maybe if I can find
Speaker 3: someone you did something different, then it'll free me up
Speaker 3: a little bit. Maybe it would help me understand myself.
Speaker 3: And you know, my other sisters went in with cheerleading
Speaker 3: and did all that kind of stuff, and maybe it
Speaker 3: would help me understand, like why was I the one
Speaker 3: that was like I want the arts and something bigger
Speaker 3: and something wilder, And maybe it would have made me
Speaker 3: understand myself in that way.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting the way that I think so often
Speaker 2: we feel the need to place ourselves within a narrative,
Speaker 2: you know, as opposed to just doing sometimes what you
Speaker 2: know we have to do, which is just make the narrative,
Speaker 2: forge the narrative, start the narrative. But just that feeling
Speaker 2: of sort of already being part of a story that
Speaker 2: has begun before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wanted out of Texas, the South, so I
Speaker 3: left for UCLA and I loved it, and I thought
Speaker 3: I would never leave, and I certainly thought i'd never
Speaker 3: come back to Texas. That was not even an faint idea.
Speaker 3: So I went to school, I studied English, stayed in
Speaker 3: California for many years. I had, you know, all kinds
Speaker 3: of jobs that would hopefully get me to that writing
Speaker 3: life that I always wanted and so waited tables, had
Speaker 3: temp jobs, but always wrote. It was always kind of
Speaker 3: part of what I was doing. And then I lived
Speaker 3: in New York for a little bit, back to LA.
Speaker 2: And all of those years when you moved around, you
Speaker 2: moved across country, you kept with you those pages, the
Speaker 2: you know, typewritten pages of family history, genealogy. They never
Speaker 2: got lost. They were important enough to pull on to.
Speaker 2: Did that story also sort of reside in you somewhere,
Speaker 2: just as like this sense of this mystery that you
Speaker 2: hadn't been able to solve it? Did?
Speaker 3: I mean that story of the fire? I loved how
Speaker 3: it was in my imagination, honestly, And I've asked myself
Speaker 3: all the time, like why did I not ask my mom,
Speaker 3: you know, I had plenty of time, or my grandmother?
Speaker 3: Why did I not sit them down and say, okay,
Speaker 3: what happened? Right? Because I knew that there was this
Speaker 3: story of a fire. But I'm my only answer, I
Speaker 3: guess is that I just I liked the way it
Speaker 3: was in my mind, but I did. I carried that
Speaker 3: with me for years, and every once in a while
Speaker 3: I would kind of think about it and imagine. I
Speaker 3: think when I was in college, actually I saw Terrence
Speaker 3: Malick's film bad Lands, which in that film, there's this
Speaker 3: very cinematic, operatic fire scene, and it's you know, the
Speaker 3: main character's father is horrible, so she burns down the house.
Speaker 3: And somehow that scene in that movie, which I loved,
Speaker 3: became part of this family bore in my imagination. So
Speaker 3: I told myself that it was my grandmother that did it,
Speaker 3: and she burned her childhood house down to save her
Speaker 3: and her sisters and her mother because my great grandfather
Speaker 3: was an acol what she was, but I don't know
Speaker 3: if he was a bad guy. I just knew he
Speaker 3: was an alcoholic. So I just created this thing of
Speaker 3: it's kind of like bad Lands, and it's this big
Speaker 3: operatic fire and my grandmother did it and no one
Speaker 3: was hurt, but you know that she was the rebel.
Speaker 3: And so I just kind of let it sit there
Speaker 3: in my mind for years, but I thought about it often,
Speaker 3: and I thought about writing about it Auten, but I
Speaker 3: never did.
Speaker 2: When you saw bad Lands, did it fit together with
Speaker 2: the vision of the fire that you had already been
Speaker 2: carrying around with you? Was it already sort of this
Speaker 2: in your imagination in your inner life. Was it this
Speaker 2: big operatic thing or did it sort of supplant that
Speaker 2: in some way?
Speaker 3: I think when I saw the film, that's what it became.
Speaker 3: It just gave me a visual that I could cling onto.
Speaker 3: And Terrence Malick is from Texas. Like there were, you know,
Speaker 3: sort of things that overlapped that felt like I could
Speaker 3: kind of hold onto it, and they just blended together
Speaker 3: in my mind. But I do think the film probably
Speaker 3: influenced what was going on in my head.
Speaker 2: Eventually, Dina does find herself back in Texas. Her grandmother
Speaker 2: passes away, followed by her great aunts and then her mother.
Speaker 2: It's during this period of grief and loss that Dina
Speaker 2: feels a pull to return to Texas. The irony is
Speaker 2: not lost on her. She has become the very thing
Speaker 2: she had judged and run away from a suburban Texas mom.
Speaker 2: In taking on this role, Dina rethinks her own mother's
Speaker 2: life also. She misses her terribly.
Speaker 3: You know, my mom died in twenty eighteen, and that
Speaker 3: really was, you know, the poll for me to come back,
Speaker 3: and I really needed my roots. But I think losing
Speaker 3: my mom, and I think most people that have lost
Speaker 3: someone they deeply love, one of the things that's really
Speaker 3: hard for me is realizing that when you lose someone,
Speaker 3: then you lose their stories, right. You can't ask them
Speaker 3: ever again, and that's just hard to live with. And
Speaker 3: I know I never asked my mom, I never asked
Speaker 3: my grandmother about this story, and I just think to myself,
Speaker 3: like why didn't I, Like, now, if they were here,
Speaker 3: I would sit them down and just say tell me everything.
Speaker 3: So I think losing my mom really pushed me to
Speaker 3: look at this story closer and say, like, let me
Speaker 3: just figure this out because I can't ask her anymore
Speaker 3: of that. The stories are gone. Like basically, I'm the
Speaker 3: oldest female on that side now, I think, which is
Speaker 3: a strange thing to realize, but they're all gone, that
Speaker 3: whole line of women, And so I think that really
Speaker 3: kind of kicked me into gear to say, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: maybe I need to ask the question. Finally. You know,
Speaker 3: I asked my dad first, because he knew my mom
Speaker 3: and her family since he was a teenager, so I
Speaker 3: figured he'd be reliable. But his you know, his response was,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure it happened. And he was like, I
Speaker 3: think it was your great aunt. I knows, but that's
Speaker 3: kind of all I got from here.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. With few details from her father,
Speaker 2: Dina starts to dig. She gets in touch with all
Speaker 2: sorts of family members, determined to get information about her
Speaker 2: great aunt Ana's. In her excavation, she finds out about something,
Speaker 2: or rather someone she hadn't known existed. Aunt Anas had
Speaker 2: a son, Steve.
Speaker 3: Oh Man. Well, you know, first I'd ask my cousin,
Speaker 3: and you know, nobody knew anything. My cousin didn't know anything,
Speaker 3: my uncle didn't know anything. Some distant relative in Arkansas
Speaker 3: that I called didn't know anything. And then when I
Speaker 3: found out about Anas's son, and I thought, after all
Speaker 3: of these years and then all of this time digging,
Speaker 3: I thought, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get his number
Speaker 3: and when it makes sense to just call him immediately.
Speaker 3: But I got the number and I just kind of
Speaker 3: froze and I put it in my desk and it
Speaker 3: took me about two weeks to make the call. I
Speaker 3: was very nervous because I didn't know the guy, and
Speaker 3: to call somebody up and say, hey, you know, did
Speaker 3: your mom commit Arsen? It's extremely awkward. And as a
Speaker 3: journalist I ask questions all the time, but with the
Speaker 3: hard questions, I have to really get myself into that zone.
Speaker 3: So I sat on it for about two weeks and
Speaker 3: it was scary. I mean, my heart was racing that
Speaker 3: he was so sweet and so gracious, but you know,
Speaker 3: I said, I heard this story that your mom maybe
Speaker 3: committed arson. Did you know anything about that? And he
Speaker 3: had no clue. And he told me that he didn't
Speaker 3: even know that his mom had been married before his
Speaker 3: father until he was eighteen and they told him. So
Speaker 3: that just shows you that even her being married before
Speaker 3: was a secret. Yeah, a secret. And so you know,
Speaker 3: I asked his permission. I said, are you okay if
Speaker 3: I kind of dig further into this. It was a
Speaker 3: scary thing to ask and kind of surprising that you
Speaker 3: wouldn't know about this huge thing in his mom's past.
Speaker 3: So he did give me permission to kind of dig deeper,
Speaker 3: which I appreciated.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm interested to in making the distinction between
Speaker 2: like Yes, you're a journalist and you're used to asking
Speaker 2: hard questions and you have to kind of gear yourself
Speaker 2: up to ask them in the line of work. But
Speaker 2: I would imagine that it would have felt different to
Speaker 2: be asking these questions when you're dealing with something that
Speaker 2: is as personal as a family story.
Speaker 3: Yes, it adds a whole other layer of For one thing,
Speaker 3: I don't want to bring something up for this guy
Speaker 3: that I don't even know, you know, this guy in
Speaker 3: North Texas who, yes, he's related to me, but you know,
Speaker 3: it's I don't want to call him and then just
Speaker 3: dig up things that maybe he doesn't want to think
Speaker 3: about or what you know, doesn't want to have in
Speaker 3: his life. I guess I had to feel like it
Speaker 3: was worth it to even go there. And I think
Speaker 3: that's when my dad, who had told me he thought
Speaker 3: it was I know, is when I told my dad this,
Speaker 3: he said, maybe you should just kind of leave this alone.
Speaker 3: But I just couldn't.
Speaker 2: I you know, I had his permission, and was your
Speaker 2: dad's feeling let sleeping dogs lie kind of why stir
Speaker 2: up something that is ancient history kind of feeling?
Speaker 3: I think it's that and then just be you know,
Speaker 3: my dad's a pretty sensitive person, so I think he
Speaker 3: was probably thinking of and as his son and just
Speaker 3: you know, maybe, yeah, maybe you don't want to do
Speaker 3: this to somebody that is not asking these questions, and
Speaker 3: that that is the hard thing about finding out a
Speaker 3: secret or being a journalist or you know, trying to
Speaker 3: look into these stories as you almost have to think like, okay,
Speaker 3: well is this my story to tell? And I did
Speaker 3: grapple with that. When my dad said, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: you should leave it alone, I thought, okay, is this
Speaker 3: my story to tell? This is this other guy's mother.
Speaker 3: It's not my mom. But I just felt like, you know,
Speaker 3: these are the women in my family that eventually came
Speaker 3: to the conclusion that it is it is my story
Speaker 3: to tell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of That makes a lot
Speaker 2: of sense to me. I mean, both the grappling with
Speaker 2: it and the questions and it sort of fell on you.
Speaker 2: He just simply didn't know. But that didn't make the
Speaker 2: story not a true story. It didn't erase the story.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Dina is at this point a working mom with a
Speaker 2: young kid. She's living a rich and busy life in Austin.
Speaker 2: Still she doesn't lose her drive to solve the mystery,
Speaker 2: to close the chapter, to understand what happened the night
Speaker 2: of the fire and in its aftermath.
Speaker 3: The other thing that really pushed me is that I
Speaker 3: pitched this to some editors at Mother Tongue magazine. I
Speaker 3: had never met them, and we just had one of
Speaker 3: those meet and greet kind of zooms, and they asked,
Speaker 3: you know, the question, is there anything you've been burning
Speaker 3: to write? So it was just the perfect.
Speaker 2: Timing, interesting choice of words, too right.
Speaker 3: Exactly, And you know, editors don't often ask that, so
Speaker 3: it's a magical question to get as a writer. And
Speaker 3: I hadn't prepared a pitch. I just started going off
Speaker 3: about my great aunt and saying like, this is what's
Speaker 3: going on. And I always thought about it, and I
Speaker 3: don't know what the outcome is going to be. I
Speaker 3: don't know if I'm gonna really find any true evidence, but
Speaker 3: I need to go on a road trip. And they
Speaker 3: were like, go for it, and so then I sort
Speaker 3: of had. Then I had to do it, and you know,
Speaker 3: from that on it became extremely important. And I you know,
Speaker 3: I've never really done investigative work before, so I mean
Speaker 3: I had like a little bored with pictures up and
Speaker 3: things like that. So it became a huge part of
Speaker 3: my days for sure.
Speaker 2: And you brought in a genealogist slash genealogical detective in
Speaker 2: a way, right, I had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I had looked on you know, ancestry dot com,
Speaker 3: which you don't really find that much there. And I
Speaker 3: talked to a lot of small town historians because I
Speaker 3: knew that I had lived in Fort Worth and then
Speaker 3: also in which it's a falls, which is North Texas,
Speaker 3: and so I talked to small town historians up there
Speaker 3: who were very helpful as far as census records and
Speaker 3: marriage records and things like that. So they were sending
Speaker 3: me those kinds of things. But I just we weren't
Speaker 3: finding any a news story or anything about a fire,
Speaker 3: and so I was about to give up. And I
Speaker 3: remember there's this group called the Texas Genealogical Society. They
Speaker 3: do a conference every year, and so I just thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: let me find somebody on their board who's in North Texas,
Speaker 3: and let me just give it one last shot. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was about to be write the article and say
Speaker 3: I didn't find out anything. But it was a great try,
Speaker 3: you know, and that was going to not be a
Speaker 3: great article. So I emailed this woman in North Texas
Speaker 3: and I just sent her everything I had. I said,
Speaker 3: here's marriagereckers, here's social security, here's an address that she
Speaker 3: lived in. And I sent it off one night, just thinking, okay,
Speaker 3: this is this is kind of my last shot, right,
Speaker 3: this is kind of my hail Mary. I don't know
Speaker 3: what else to do. And then I woke up in
Speaker 3: the morning to like six emails from this woman. The
Speaker 3: subject lines were like found it, She's guilty, she did it.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was crazy. And so I opened these
Speaker 3: emails and it was news clippings that she had found
Speaker 3: from nineteen forty six with the most film noir kind
Speaker 3: of headlines like Brunette burns out, Blondet rival bibles house.
Speaker 3: So they were basically framing my great Anna as this
Speaker 3: like Brunette fe fatale, and there it was. It was crazy.
Speaker 3: It was right in front of my I mean, I
Speaker 3: still get chill's thinking about it, that this thing that
Speaker 3: had lived in my mind for decades, it was right
Speaker 3: in front of my face in the newspaper that she
Speaker 3: had burned down a house.
Speaker 2: And until that moment, were you sure that it was true?
Speaker 2: And Were you sure that it was her? Because my
Speaker 2: sense is that there was some question in your mind
Speaker 2: from early on when you first heard word of this,
Speaker 2: the lore of this fire, of really just not even
Speaker 2: being sure A that had happened, and B who said
Speaker 2: it if it did? So that moment, what was that like?
Speaker 3: I was not sure at all until that moment. I
Speaker 3: thought it was one of those things, you know, because
Speaker 3: sometimes we just create stories in our minds, you know,
Speaker 3: I think whilst people do this where you have like
Speaker 3: a memory and you're like, did that actually happens? I
Speaker 3: make that up? And so I really didn't know. I
Speaker 3: didn't know it was her. I didn't know if a
Speaker 3: fire happened or if this was just some family legend
Speaker 3: that somehow, you know, just endured over these years. So
Speaker 3: it really wasn't until that moment that I thought, Wow,
Speaker 3: this actually is part of my family story and part
Speaker 3: of my story. And you know, it was several clippings,
Speaker 3: and you know, the more I dug in it was
Speaker 3: that there was so much more to it. I mean,
Speaker 3: that she had been married to this guy, they divorced,
Speaker 3: he was abusive, that she didn't just try to burn
Speaker 3: the house down once she went back three times that
Speaker 3: she was sent to the North Texas State Hospital.
Speaker 2: When it is the first time that you actually saw her,
Speaker 2: like saw an image of her as part of the
Speaker 2: clippings and the lurid headlines.
Speaker 3: Well that was interesting because the clippings that the genealogist
Speaker 3: sent me were just you know, headlines, and I didn't
Speaker 3: see a picture until one of the historians, like that
Speaker 3: same week, because we were all kind of emailing a
Speaker 3: lot during that week, and one of the historians email
Speaker 3: me and she's like, I'm sure you've seen this. I
Speaker 3: found this on eBay and it was the actual crime
Speaker 3: photo I think that you know on hebeo was for sale,
Speaker 3: like true crime photo. It was a black and white
Speaker 3: photo of Inez in what looks like prison clothes and
Speaker 3: she's sitting there and she has a black eye and
Speaker 3: she's kind of smiling and it said, you know, I
Speaker 3: Na's Burger, which was her married name at that time,
Speaker 3: arrested for arson. I mean, that was the first time
Speaker 3: I saw her face and she looked like my grandmother
Speaker 3: was just crazy and my mother seeing her there, but
Speaker 3: it's then with a black eye and with this almost
Speaker 3: like a little bit of a triumphant smile. It was
Speaker 3: just it was unbelievable to see that. So I bought
Speaker 3: it for like nineteen dollars on the spot. But that
Speaker 3: was the first time I saw an image of her
Speaker 3: at that time.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 2: Dina does what so many of us do when we're
Speaker 2: trying to figure something out. She gets into her car
Speaker 2: and drives. She heads out on a road trip to
Speaker 2: Wichita Falls and Fort Worth to visit the North Texas
Speaker 2: State Hospital where Ainez had been sent. The visit is
Speaker 2: powerful and illuminating. It's a very different place today than
Speaker 2: it was back then.
Speaker 3: So when she was there. I think it opened in
Speaker 3: the twenties or thirties, And yes, it was created to
Speaker 3: be one of these places where they're like milking cows
Speaker 3: and making carrots. And that's not to say that it
Speaker 3: was a you know, idyllic place, because when I went there,
Speaker 3: in the lobby, they have the electric shock machines they
Speaker 3: used in that era. They had you know all this.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're showing the history of the place. So
Speaker 3: it was meant to be, you know, let's rehabilitate these people.
Speaker 3: And I can only imagine what it was like for
Speaker 3: her there. And I know that she was sent there
Speaker 3: because I don't know for sure, but in the newspaper
Speaker 3: articles or the news articles, it would say that nine
Speaker 3: people testified that she was not of sound mind, and
Speaker 3: one of them was with my great grandmother that said that.
Speaker 3: And I imagine, and this is one of those things
Speaker 3: I'll just have to, you know, keep in my imagination,
Speaker 3: but I would think that they said that so that
Speaker 3: she would go to a state hospital instead of to jail.
Speaker 3: That's just my thinking of why they would do that.
Speaker 3: But so, yeah, she was sent there, and I don't
Speaker 3: know for how long is I can't get the records.
Speaker 3: But going up to this place, I mean, it's these
Speaker 3: old brick buildings. I mean half of them are condemned.
Speaker 3: It's a pretty sad place.
Speaker 2: Well, and she was released on bail the first time
Speaker 2: that she was sent there, right.
Speaker 3: So this is where the story it's it's almost becomes
Speaker 3: like a dark comedy in a way, because I mean,
Speaker 3: no one died, so I could say. But so she
Speaker 3: went to his house and I did go visit the
Speaker 3: house or that the house that's you know on that
Speaker 3: site now, So she went to the house and tried
Speaker 3: to burn it down the first time and it didn't work.
Speaker 3: She went a second time and it didn't work, but
Speaker 3: she and she got arrested and she was released on
Speaker 3: bail after that second attempt, and supposedly, from what the
Speaker 3: newspaper said, after the second attempt, she'd got in a cap,
Speaker 3: went straight back at Birningtown like she was determined. She
Speaker 3: was not happy. And so after that third attempt is
Speaker 3: when she was arrested and then send that's to the
Speaker 3: state hospital.
Speaker 2: And so would it have been after the third attempt
Speaker 2: that she a photograph was taken of her with the
Speaker 2: black eye and the kind of small triumphant smile or
Speaker 2: there's no way to really know that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was after that third attempt when she
Speaker 3: was officially arrested and then.
Speaker 2: Put on trial, and the smile was she had done it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's the crazy thing. I mean, I
Speaker 3: still have that picture in my office. You know, I've
Speaker 3: stared at that picture a lot because it's such a
Speaker 3: mysterious thing. But yes, I think you know her quotes.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you've ever looked at nineteen forties newspapers,
Speaker 3: they're horrifying and hilarious. This just the way that they
Speaker 3: phrase things unbelievable. But some of her quotes were that,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't regret it at all. My ex
Speaker 3: husband beat me, and wouldn't you do the same thing?
Speaker 3: And I could only imagine that, yes, she she didn't
Speaker 3: want to kill him. I actually have. I actually also
Speaker 3: talked to some forensic psychologists and they say it's significant
Speaker 3: that every time she went nobody was there. Like, I
Speaker 3: don't think she was trying to kill him. I think
Speaker 3: she just, especially being a woman at that time, that
Speaker 3: was kind of all she had. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: they didn't have a lot of money. She's not like
Speaker 3: she knew powerful people. Her only way to say, this
Speaker 3: guy is abusing me and I'm pissed is to turn
Speaker 3: his house down. And it's pretty sad when you read
Speaker 3: the papers, you know, the guy wasn't really made us
Speaker 3: to be a bad guy at all. Which it's not
Speaker 3: perfect now, but it's so different now that I don't
Speaker 3: think he would just be painted as you know, some husband,
Speaker 3: that poor guy, I got his house burned down. But
Speaker 3: at the time she was the bad which is crazy.
Speaker 2: And nothing is made of the fact that she has
Speaker 2: evidence of being hurt.
Speaker 3: No I mean, I think one article mentioned it, but
Speaker 3: not even in a you know, it was just kind
Speaker 3: of like, why not it's with the black eye said this.
Speaker 3: So that was another thing that really struck me, especially
Speaker 3: seeing the photos and reading those quotes, is just women
Speaker 3: at that time, I mean, had very little recourse when
Speaker 3: it came to that kind of abuse. And you know,
Speaker 3: the other mystery that I'll just say that I may
Speaker 3: never find out is they had been divorced and he
Speaker 3: had been remarried, yet he was still abusing her. So
Speaker 3: like were they having an affair? You know, That's something
Speaker 3: that I don't know how I would ever find that answer.
Speaker 3: But that's another sort of part of the mystery, is well,
Speaker 3: why were they still well what was going on with
Speaker 3: those two? And then the state hospital was I, you know,
Speaker 3: got a tour and I talked to the president at
Speaker 3: the time, and he told me that women in that
Speaker 3: era would be dropped off for much less than ourson.
Speaker 3: And one of these one of the things he said
Speaker 3: to me was, you know, things like menopause, which it's
Speaker 3: just you know, husbands would just literally drop women off
Speaker 3: at the gates at this place.
Speaker 2: Well like okay, dear, you know, spend, spend the next
Speaker 2: eighteen months here and I'll pick you up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't take your mood. So, you know, just
Speaker 3: go into this mental hospital place.
Speaker 2: There's no way of knowing how long she was there.
Speaker 2: And I mean you do know that when she at
Speaker 2: some point after she got out, she remarried and she
Speaker 2: married Steve's father and they had a long, happy marriage
Speaker 2: and they had you know this son. There's so much
Speaker 2: that is available to us now in terms of being
Speaker 2: able to ask institutions for records to understand, you know,
Speaker 2: what happened. Do the records exist or are they lost
Speaker 2: to history?
Speaker 3: Well, if they do exist, I mean that's the part
Speaker 3: where I did hit a dead end. Is the story
Speaker 3: still stays. I mean I feel like there's more to tell,
Speaker 3: the more to find out, like how long was she
Speaker 3: there or what the records would say. And I reached
Speaker 3: back out to her son. Well, the first time I
Speaker 3: reached back out is when I the articles came out,
Speaker 3: and I just said, I said, you know, I did
Speaker 3: find some things out. Do you want to read this?
Speaker 3: And I sent it to him before publication and he
Speaker 3: said no, not right now. He said, when it comes out,
Speaker 3: maybe you could send it to me on the side
Speaker 3: of them, but it's like he just didn't want to know.
Speaker 3: And then when I did send it to him, he
Speaker 3: did read it and he just said something like, you know,
Speaker 3: this is a different kind of read for me, and
Speaker 3: he said he has very mixed emotions and I'm pulling
Speaker 3: at the email. He said, I will consider her a
Speaker 3: person of courage, and he you know, I said, I
Speaker 3: appreciate your writing and research. And then I reached out
Speaker 3: to him pretty recently because I wanted to see if
Speaker 3: I could talk to him farther and maybe because he's
Speaker 3: the only person that could get the records released. And
Speaker 3: he just said out. He was very sweet and he
Speaker 3: just said no, And from there, I can't really do
Speaker 3: that because he's the only person that could unlock that.
Speaker 2: There can really be a point in life where it's
Speaker 2: too much, where the idea of re understanding or re
Speaker 2: ordering or rethinking your history when there is nothing to
Speaker 2: be done about it, there's no conversation to be had.
Speaker 2: That kind of reckoning is just more than somebody wants to,
Speaker 2: you know, it feels that they can bear It doesn't
Speaker 2: if we go back to the idea of narrative, it
Speaker 2: does not fit into the narrative of you know, this
Speaker 2: was my life, this was my mother, this was my father,
Speaker 2: this was our history.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think he's probably in his seventies now,
Speaker 3: and yeah, he probably just is like, you know what,
Speaker 3: I don't need to go there. I don't need to
Speaker 3: unearth sayings. And you know, my motivations are very different.
Speaker 3: I mean I'm thinking about you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: it is about women and what women have endored, and
Speaker 3: you know, going back to even when I was in
Speaker 3: high school and searching for that kind of specifically female heroin.
Speaker 3: I mean I didn't get those pages in high school
Speaker 3: and think like where's the guy, Like where's the guy
Speaker 3: that did something great? Like it? It was a one
Speaker 3: had to be a woman. And so I think that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: for him, he's living his life, he's working, he doesn't
Speaker 3: need to know more. Whereas I'm sitting here going I
Speaker 3: want to know everything.
Speaker 2: Where does it end up sitting with you? And you know,
Speaker 2: how does it end up feeling to you? I mean
Speaker 2: you you made a piece of work out of it.
Speaker 2: You know that exists in the world, but perhaps more important,
Speaker 2: you were able to find that person, someone who didn't
Speaker 2: sit back and just contend with her lot in life.
Speaker 2: And I mean even divorce was pretty unusual in those days.
Speaker 2: Whatever the circumstances of their divorce was, she was definitely
Speaker 2: trying to get out of there. Yes, So what has
Speaker 2: that done for you in terms of just a feeling
Speaker 2: that you were right all along? There was somebody in
Speaker 2: that family tree of yours, there was a woman who
Speaker 2: walked a different path than the path of all of
Speaker 2: the other women around her.
Speaker 3: I think it's two things. It's the fact that, yes,
Speaker 3: I am related to somebody, and I'm sure the people
Speaker 3: on road that I don't even know about that I'm
Speaker 3: related to that did things like this. But a woman that,
Speaker 3: you know, she didn't necessarily do the thing that I
Speaker 3: was thinking about back in high school. Right, she didn't
Speaker 3: challenge government or right in the war. She did something
Speaker 3: very different than that, but extremely brave. And when I
Speaker 3: went to the house, and you know, we were just
Speaker 3: outside looking at it, I just thought, that's terrifying, actually
Speaker 3: walking into someone's house three times with a match. It's
Speaker 3: not a small thing to do. I mean, that's it's
Speaker 3: a huge thing to do. So it's made me look
Speaker 3: at all the women in my family. I think in
Speaker 3: a different light, and you know, it kind of colors
Speaker 3: everything my mom, my grandmother, and just realizing that it
Speaker 3: doesn't have to be some big thing that a person
Speaker 3: does to make them credible or someone that can inspire you.
Speaker 3: You know, even my mom the way she lived her life.
Speaker 3: Every human has hard things to deal with, and you know,
Speaker 3: my mom certainly did, my grandmother certainly did. And seeing
Speaker 3: those things as heroic. I think my great aunt has
Speaker 3: helped me understand that a little bit better. And just
Speaker 3: I guess elevating all the women in my family in
Speaker 3: a way is you know, just understanding that any moment
Speaker 3: in life can be hard. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 3: grand if that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful. It totally makes sense. And you're the
Speaker 2: mother of a son, but you also have nieces. This
Speaker 2: is something that you feel is part of the legacy
Speaker 2: that you are able to pass on to that generation.
Speaker 3: Yes, definitely my nieces and my son too. Like I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, he's six now, I'm not gonna tell him yet,
Speaker 3: but eventually, yes, to tell him that, Like you had
Speaker 3: this person in your family who really stood up for
Speaker 3: herself in extremely brave and bold way. Not that I'm
Speaker 3: condoning Arson, but for her to do that in the
Speaker 3: forties and say I don't regret it is a very
Speaker 3: powerful thing. And one of the things that I keep
Speaker 3: thinking since writing the piece and finding all this out,
Speaker 3: is just I wish I could just sit her down
Speaker 3: and say you're amazing, Like this didn't have to be
Speaker 3: a secret. This shouldn't have been something that was shameful.
Speaker 3: This shouldn't have been something that, you know, my grandmother
Speaker 3: and her sisters and my great grandmother felt like they
Speaker 3: couldn't share that. It's really that I admire her and
Speaker 3: I still have. You know, I still have her photo
Speaker 3: in my office and I sometimes look at it and
Speaker 3: just out loud or like you're a badass, Like I
Speaker 3: just wish she could have known that or felt that
Speaker 3: instead of feeling ashamed of it, which she obviously did
Speaker 3: because she didn't tell anybody. You know, I always do.
Speaker 3: You remember my mom saying that my grandmother we called
Speaker 3: her Mamma. She would say, you know, Mamma and her
Speaker 3: sisters they had it hard, and you know they didn't
Speaker 3: It wasn't easy for them growing up, and she would say,
Speaker 3: like they had to be pretty tough. So I think
Speaker 3: maybe that has something to do with how this all
Speaker 3: turned out.
Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccur is
Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 2: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 2: find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
Speaker 2: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 2: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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