Sepia Saturday 2/27

This is my second in the Sepia Saturday series.


Peter Handlan MacVeigh, born in 1897, was the grandson of Peter Patrick MacVeigh who came to America during the great potato famine. My grandfather was a standout football player at Lindsley Academy, winning a scholarship to WVU, but the Great War broke out, and he enlisted. He was quite the rascal, running poker tables and convincing new recruits that they were required to turn in their civilian clothes, which he sold to soldiers going on leave. He got caught, busted to private and spent the remainder of his service as a ship's cook patrolling the Alaska/Russian border.

After the war, he married a volatile woman who threatened suicide constantly and one day succeeded. A widower, he met Emily Ransom, who was divorcing her first husband intending to marry her divorce lawyer. He was smitten, pursued her and they married 1929. Peter and Emily had a daughter, Judy in 1932, and a son, my father, Peter Ransom MacVeigh, 1934.





My Dad was a cutie. I'd love to tell you that his childhood was magical, and he managed to see it that way, but it wasn't. I'd love to tell you that Peter and Emily lived happily ever after, and to the casual observer it would appear so. But their marriage was tumultuous - Peter was a highly functional alcoholic in his youth, the life of every party, a kind soul who gave away every cent he ever earned. He was a brilliant businessman, who earned a great deal of money selling coal slag and lumber. He bought a farm, grew a bumper crop of tomatoes just as WWII came to a close and the bottom dropped out of the market, so he burned the tomatoes in the field, rather than lose money harvesting. He named the farm Waterloo. In the course of their marriage, Emily took the children and her father and left him; he chased her across the country, to get her and the children back. When he found her, she tried to shoot him, there was a trial, and although the charges were dropped, Emily lost custody and they divorced. But Emily was the love of Peter's life and Emily wanted her children back, and somehow, they remarried, this time for good. By the time I came along, they were this happy couple sitting on the porch steps.


If only the pictures could talk.