By Dean Poling
VALDOSTA — Rob Evans never met his grandfather.
Rob was born in 1960. His paternal grandfather, Herbert Leroy Evans, born May 26, 1894, had died in 1953, seven years before Rob’s birth.
Rob knew some stories but he would have liked to have something of his grandfather’s voice. This connection eluded him as he grew up, then moved to Valdosta in the mid 1980s, rose as an architect now with IPG, played as a local musician with the Valdosta band Skannyardle, and became a married man with children of his own.
Rob knew some things about his paternal grandfather. He knew they shared some personality traits, some of the same interests. Both have piloted planes. Both had been gymnasts.
Rob knew his grandfather had taught and coached in a Philadelphia school. He knew his grandfather had flown planes during World War I. He knows his grandfather is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Knowing these things didn’t translate into Rob Evans knowing H.L. Evans.
Not until several years ago when a cousin gave Rob an intriguing gift. The cousin gave Rob a cache of letters written by his grandfather to Rob’s grandmother in the late 1910s and early 1920s. The cousin said since Herb was an Evans, it seemed only right that an Evans should have them.
At the time when H.L. Evans wrote these letters, which he signed with a mix of H.L., Herb, and Herbert, he was in his early to mid 20s. He had yet to marry Rob’s grandmother, Helen Furbush, a young woman living and waiting for H.L. in their native Waltham, Mass., as he fought in Europe and then vagabonded through numerous jobs out West after the war.
Though mostly letters from H.L. to Helen, because she had saved them, the collection includes some letters which Helen wrote to him, too.
Yet, even without the letters she wrote to her “Dear Herbie,” readers quickly realize this is a different world from ours of instant communications through e-mail and cell phone. We learn Helen must have repeatedly taken him to task for not writing. Nearly each one of H.L.’s letters opens with an apology for not having written sooner, or longer, or an explanation why it’s been a while since his last letter.
In the first letter, dated Jan. 5, 1918, written from France, H.L. explains how he hadn’t received any mail for six weeks, having moved from one place to another from the front to elsewhere. He jokingly warns: “They better watch me if they send me as far as the ocean as I am liable to start to swim and catch up with a convoy.”
He then notes he likely won’t come home from being hurt. He mentions several incidents where he “smashed a plane.” He lists several minor injuries from a scraped head and shin to a bruised shoulder received from flying a plane with missing controls.
Of course, he also worried when he hadn’t received a letter from Helen in a while. H.L. wrote in another letter from January 1917: “I have been expecting a letter from you for some time but it hasn’t arrived as yet so I judge that you must be married or engaged and he won’t let you write.”
In these letters, he reminisces about home and his childhood. He notes how France “seems funny to the eyes of an American,” noting differences between the nation where he is stationed and his native country. He writes of days mixed with sun and snow. In a March 1918 letter, he writes that he just received one of her letters postmarked October 1917.
By that March, he’d been in France for a year. “Most of my original squadron have been split up and we constantly find ourselves among strangers and then when we get acquainted, there is another division and we have to get acquainted over again.”
In April 1918, he writes that his flying training seriously begins. In June 1918, he writes: “We are having pretty fine weather lately but it isn’t exactly ideal for flying as good sunshiny weather usually means that it is very bumpy in the air. Maybe we don’t get some rough bumpy rides at times as our machines are rather light and they are tossed around somewhat. It certainly does keep you awake as you have to be on the look out to keep level.”
In a July 1918 letter, he mentions the Allied drive on the Western Front. A remarkable passage given its detail from a soldier overseas to a sweetheart back home, apparently making it past censors, or perhaps its details were considered general knowledge by this time. He also notes that he wants a fast-flying scout plane, though he will have to improve his shooting for this assignment.
By August 1918, he writes: “I have started flying real airplanes now and it certainly is a pleasure after the old antiques that we used for training.” This being written less than 20 years after the Wright Brothers’ famous flight at Kitty Hawk. He signs off, noting, “I have a class in Machine Gun very soon.”
In a September 1918 letter, he describes how Helen could change the uniform he wears in a cadet photograph to make it look like the uniform of a pilot.
He writes a November 7, 1918, letter that rightly notes “it looks as though the war will soon end ...” It would four days later.
Still, Herb notes in this same letter that he and the other pilots are often called to the skies. “We have to jump into any one of a dozen entirely different kinds of planes and fly two or three hundred miles to a place at the front ... I have flown about every plane the Americans are using at the front and there is some difference as some are big as (houses or horses) and handle like trucks and others are like a trim racing canoe and you have to be part of the machine and be careful not to rock the boat although you can do anything with them — if you know what you are doing but God help the man that makes a mistake close to the ground in one of these babies.”
He shares how he once “landed” such a plane about 20 feet in the air, miscalculating due to poor visibility. “I thought the bottom of the earth had dropped out. ... I just crushed the landing gear so pretty that the wings were resting on the ground and I didn’t even get a scratch.”
Though he often shared flight details in his letters, Helen reportedly could not stand the idea of her Herbie flying.
Yet, his bigger concern in this letter was possibly having to bring all of the planes back at war’s end. Given the rains, the job would take months.
By February 1919, H.L. had returned to the United States, as he proclaims in a letter postmarked from Long Island. A doctor found he was not looking well upon his return and assigned Herb recuperation time in a military hospital in Cooperstown, N.Y.
With the war finished, one might think, Helen may have thought, that she and her Herbie would marry. They would but not for a few more years. Back in the states, H.L. headed out west. Their relationship continued through the halting delays of written correspondence.
Between 1919 and into 1921, Helen received H.L.’s letters from New York, Chicago, Moorcroft, Wyo., Omaha, Neb. He had hoped to acquire land as a squatter. He worked many jobs. And Helen patiently waited, sending him news from home.
He finally came home to Helen. They married in 1922 in Massachusetts. They had three children: Janice Evans, Phyllis Evans, and Robert Frank Evans, Rob Evans’ father.
Robert Frank Evans grew up to also go to war, fighting in Korea, as a Pagan Raider. Robert Frank was in his early 20s when he lost his father. He would have liked having more time with H.L.
So, decades later, having received a cache of letters from a cousin, Rob Evans made a Father’s Day gift of them to his dad.
“I always wanted to meet your father, what would he say ... what would his voice sound like, etc. ... Never would I have thought I would see letters from him ...,” Rob wrote his father.
With the words of his own hand, the echoed memory of a man comes alive for a grandson who never met him and for the generations of descendants to follow.
