From:
- The Seven Storey Mountain: An Autobiography Of Faith, Thomas Merton, 1948, 1998.
Page 28: Thomas Merton talking about his grandfather by whom he was raised after his mother died and his father sailed to France to paint and leave his two sons back on Long Island, with the maternal grandparents.
The chief reason was that he himself belonged to some kind of a Masonic organization, called, oddly enough, the Knights Templars.
Where they picked up that name, I do not know: but the originall Knights Templars were a military religious Order in the Catholic Church, who had an intimate connection with the Cistercians, of which the Trappists are a reform.
I first became of aware of the Cistercians when visiting the monasteries of Yorkshire with Pat.
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Re-Cap
A lost soul.
A very bohemian mother and father. Two bohemian artists. The mother / father: New Zealand/Australia; NYC; London; back to NYC; to England and Cambridge. His mother dies when he's about five years old and his younger brother about two years old. After the mother dies, the boys are left in the care of their paternal (?) grandparents in Doublaston on Long Island, nearer Flushing than Great Neck (Jay Gatsby). After a year or so, his dad returns and takes Thomas with him back to England but leaves his younger brother with the grandparents on Long Island.
Most of his early education was in England, I believe, and the he starts at Clare College, Cambridge University. He really doesn't know where he wants to go, what he wants to do. He is very, very conflicted. In 1933 he was about eighteen years old, so he missed WWI -- he must have been born around 1915 -- wow, wow, wow -- I'm right -- I just checked -- wiki 1915 - 1968 -- diet at age 53. His death in Thailand, near Bangkok, was suspicious. No autopsy. Cover story death by electrocution but the excessive bleeding from a wound in the back of his head was never explained. Assassination was widely thought due to he anti-war stance regarding Vietnam. This was 1968. No autopsy. Flown back to the US in a military aircraft, which, of course, raises more questions.
But I digress.
His autobiography conveniently leaves out details of an affair with a woman and out-of-wedlock child, both of whom he abandoned when he departed Cambridge after his freshman year. The child was likely one year old when he left England, never to return.
His parents were incredibly poor in his youth and it appears most of his money came from his grandparents in Long Island. Later, his father did quite well; and perhaps he was able to provide some funds for his son.
I'm about a third of the way through the book; Thomas is in his first year -- his sophomore year -- Columbia University in NYC and I don't recall any mention of his younger brother as a young adult. And nothing about his dad at this point.
As noted, he does not talk about his affair but in England -- at Cambridge, no doubt -- except in a very distant way -- page 147.
I've read somewhere that the whereabouts of the woman and the child are unknown but other sources suggest he did look her up at least once, and the mother may have died very, very young (suicide?). None of that will ever be known but I will do what I can on the internet to see if anyone else has learned something.
Reading his autobiography -- at least to this point -- takes me back to the 60s. It is simply amazing how much the 60's affected me, and particulalry how many forks in the many roads I took between my sophomore year in high school (fall, 1966) and my first year in my first operational assignment in the USAF, Grand Forks AFB, ND, arriving, fall of 1980.
Wow, I would love to discuss those fourteen years with another woman who I met later in life who was my exact contemporary, also born in 1951, on June 1, 1951. I was born two months later, August 14, 1951.
She was born in St Louis, MO; I was born in Bismarck, ND. Not all that far apart geographically and culturally..
There would be pieces of the story I would like to collect from the first love of my life, but she died years ago and we had not kept in touch after we broke up in the fall of 1976 or thereabouts.
But quickly some bullets that need to be fleshed out at a later date;
High school:
722 17th Street West, Williston, ND; incredibly busy high school; activities at school from 7:30 a.m. (band, coronet, French horn) to post athletic activities, getting home routinely after 8:00 p.m.
I slept downstairs in the basement, shared a room with my brother, four years younger, twin beds, big bedroom. Best living arrangement ever.
Maps of Vietnam hanging on the wall and I would circle geographical locations mentioned in the press; I don't recall seeing much on television. I was not home much. I do remember the moon landing in July, 1969.
Subconsciously the Vietnam War must have really affected me during my high school years but I was too busy to really remember, and somehow getting a deferral to go to college and I pretty much forgot about the war. I graduated in 1969 and that was just about the time anti-war protests had probably reached their apex. I might have to research when protests started declining. Nixon resigned in summer of 1974; he had announced the peace accords, peach with honor, January 23, 1973. So, I have to assume protests were still a big thing in first two years of 1970s, but I don't recall. Augustana College was not that "political."
McGovern - Nixon election, fall of 1972.
Kent State shootings, May 4, 1970, after the US expanded the Vietnam War into Cambodia.
Linda's younger sister was attending Kent State when that occurred.
I met Linda's younger sister and her boyfriend during the summer of 1971 (?).
Kent State was a topic of discussion but I don't recall being particularly interested. I was more than challenged with selling books door-to-door in Union County (Westfield) New Jersey, a bedroom suburb of NYC.
Because of that summer in New Jersey and subsequent visits I gained a knowledge, a love, a respect for NYC that I would not have otherwise had.
So, Vietnam, when I want to think about it, was huge for me.
But, bigger for me, the women in my life, and there were several. Not one relationship with any one woma was trivial. Each relationship was important, incredibly important. Losing my virginity was an "incredible" experience. Technically, perhaps, I lost my virginity twice. Will explain later.
Linda. Birth control before the pill. The Pill. Open Marriage.
I don't think Linda felt I could ever "adjust." My values were conservative values from North Dakota; hers were liberal values, having grown up in a suburb of NYC and then attending medical school at Rutgers / Harvard University.
With Linda, a road trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco along the Pacific Coast. Took forever. I read East of Eden, Tannery Row while she drove. We shared driving responsibilities. I assume we took the 1973 blue Chevy Nova that my dad had bought me. Wow, what a gift. I wish he and I would have had deeper discussions later in life. That's something I need to remember with Arianna and Olivia and Sophia and Judah and Levi. They will have to be written notes; it would be unlikely that any would really want to have a discussion with me on such things.
I will never know how close I came to giving up the USAF and medical school for Linda.
She never got married; never had children. I think she, too, was terribly conflicted throughout life, but highly driven, and incredibly successful at least at some level.
Then medical school in southern California. Two women. The second I married.
Medical degree, three-year residency in northern California, with first child, and then completing than residency in summer of 1980 and moving to North Dakota for my first operational assignment,and then to Germany, for my second operational assignment, Bitburg Air Base, 1983 - 1986.
May just sent me a note regarding illegal immigrants along the southern border; I no longer care. May and I are in our 70's; she closer to 80 than 70, and me only two years younger. We've had our opportunity; by all rights, we should both be dead by now. I am ready for death except for Sophia. This would be the wrong time to leave her. Seven more years.
Back to Thomas Merton.
So, although his timeline was (1951 / 1915 = 36 years) skewed thirty-six years ahead of me. He avoided the draft / WWII due to medical deferment.
I avoided the Vietnam War simply because I was in college and the medical school.
In his 20's Merton knew he would subject to the draft. As a pacifist, he had a problem. He volunteered to work for the medical corps as a pacifist. He failed the physical exam, rejected by the US military.
"I Still Miss Someone."
