His Name was Paul

I have been working on multiple family trees over the past few years.  The Ancestry site makes it so easy and it quickly becomes addictive.

I've mentioned before that my grandparents have been married a mind-boggling three times apiece.  Paternal grandfather: divorced then widowed then died, Paternal grandmother: married AT LEAST three times.  Her past is SKETCHY, wooo boy!  Maternal grandmother was married three times and outlived all of them.  The only reason my maternal grandfather was married only once is that he died young.

So, I found out in my twenties that my mother had been married before and it was a bit of a shocker to learn.  Not that the news was shocking but that why not say something anytime in the twenty previous years.

Turns out that she married a boy named Paul when she was SIXTEEN.  It was 1952, so not terribly unusual but still.  He was eighteen and went into the Navy.  (I knew he was in the service but not what branch.  It seems he was in the Korean War, as was my dad although in the Army) Sixteen, whew. I thought getting married at nineteen was too young.  I can't even imagine.  Going from second period Lit to married and living in Tennessee.

The State of California's records are incomplete. I can only find dates of the marriage certificate and divorce.  I like marriage certificates because they list the witnesses and I'd like to know WHO was there.Who in the world of Where's Waldo thought this was a good idea?

The marriage license gave me his name so I was able to look him up, including his senior yearbook photo.  How strange is that? 

Continuing the multiple marriages track was Paul.  He was married three times, once in Reno (like you do. haha) and the other two in California, my mom being the first.  He is listed as having died in 1988 but otherwise, there is no information on him whatsoever.  No obituary, no census records, nothing.  Perhaps he was career Navy but it almost feels like he just didn't accomplish much with his life. I find that very sad.

Because I have an overactive imagination I imagined if he had a family or where he lived or what he accomplished.  Did their paths every cross again?  According to the interwebs, none of that happened.  One could say that my mom dodged a bullet but I'm more thinking out of the frying pan and onto the ground next to the fire.

Not that I would have done anything if he turned out to be a pediatrician or city councilman.  It's not like his children would be my siblings in any way at all but wouldn't that be curious?

I'm not going to tell my mom what I found.  I might mention it to my little brother because I bet he would be equally as fascinated.  

Oh, the things we find on the interwebs.