There Are Sad Stories.
Your comments are welcome and you can do that at the bottom of this page and any of the other pages in this series.

As mentioned before, this will not be some tell-all that tries to dig up lots of family skeleton's and dirty laundry, but in any family, there are always some sad stories to be told and here we'll remember one of them.



This story is so very difficult to tell because of the trauma that it caused our entire family plus the fact that it had profound effects that lasted through the years and had an influence on our relationships for some of us. For Mom and Dad, I can only guess as to how it affected them and their relationship but it surely did in some fashion. For me, it is and has been an event whose effects have lasted a lifetime, as you will see.

During the Summer and Fall of 1951 Mom was having a really tough time with her sixth pregnancy for her son, John Paul, and he would eventually be born dead on 12 Oct. 1951. Her health was very fragile during her pregnancy and this had to have placed a tremendous strain on Dad because he was having to try and take care of her and the constant care she needed, plus all of their other five children and on top of all of that turmoil there was his job in the textile mill down in Spartanburg. During those years the textile mills were in full swing in the southern states and their power over their workers was immense, so calling off to take care of a sick wife was totally out of the question.

Some of the details surrounding Becky's death are a bit hazy for me because as the years pass memory suffers to some degree, but the central event is still clear to this day and so is the pain and the guilt... Yes, guilt.
As best as memory serves I think Dad was working the afternoon/evening shift at the textile mill and he was already getting ready to go to work but Mom was really sick so he was going to go to one of the local doctors for some medication. As Dad got into his car and started to pull away Becky appeared, as if from nowhere and she was knocked over by the car and then she was run over by the left rear wheel. I was standing about 20 feet away and saw the entire event unfold and happen and as Becky was struck I began to yell at Dad. I don't recall anything of those yelled words except for, "You killed her, you killed her!" repeated several times at the top of my lungs. For me, these words have flavored my life long relationship with my dad and while we can never know how he felt, we can know how I was affected.
And this is where the guilt comes in, on two levels.

The first level of guilt comes from me making that accusation that Dad did not deserve and that should never have been added to his already heavy load of stress and grief. And it was clearly an accusation because my yelling was exactly that and the accident was really not Dad's fault. The second level of guilt comes because even though I was only eleven years old I was very much aware of the gravity of our family's situation at that time and as the oldest child I felt that the failure to keep track of seventeen-month-old Becky rested entirely on my shoulders and so it was actually my failure that caused Becky to die.

Through the years it has always been my opinion that much of the anger and hostility that Dad displayed down through the years could be traced back to that time and the same might be said about some of my behaviors during my 20's and 30's.
Useful Links:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/91506845/rebecca-coleen-kimbrell