Editor’s Note – It came near the end of my decade long run living in the Washington, D.C. area and covering our federal government with democracy in peril and the world seemingly on fire. A Facebook friend request from a cousin I didn’t know, John Sansom of Marietta, Georgia. He found me on Ancestry dot com, and had a hint from other relatives that I had years back searched for the Love family tree. There I had given up, hitting a dead end because another cousin, Rick Love in North Carolina who I heard had done some Love family research, had died. Long wondering if a dabble of Cherokee genes might exist in our lineage, since the native Americans had an encampment on the Coosa River where most of my dad’s kin were from and books about the Trail of Tears reveal that many Cherokee natives – hiding out from state and federal officials on the hunt for them and integrating into society as farmers through churches and schools – took the name Love.

Through a Cherokee genealogy organization and website, a researcher had answered my questions with part of the family history of my grandmother, Edith Love Wilson from St. Clair County, Alabama. Her family were of English lineage, and arrived in Alabama by way of South Carolina.

But when John contacted me and sent the Love family tree Rick Love had put together going all the way back to the American Revolution, it was intriguing to learn more about our family history. He was focusing on the heroism of my dad Eschol Wilson’s oldest brother Curtis, and another uncle of ours, Ross Love. They both died on Okinawa in the final big island battle of World War II in the Pacific Theater only weeks and months before the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August, 1945, leading to the Japanese surrender and the end of the war. I knew basically that Curtis had died there. But not much was ever said about it and I never saw his Purple Heart or Silver Star. I did end up with a Japanese rifle he sent home. My dad only told me about it once that I recall, one day in my grandfather Lother’s wood shop on his farm in the country near Asheville, Alabama, when they pulled a chest down from the rafters containing his belongings sent home by the Army. I did not know about the heroism and the commendation for bravery of Uncle Ross (see below). It will break your heart to read it.

So we should all appreciate the research that has been gathered here and the effort to reach out and tell us about it, and take heed of what cousin John is saying about his mom and the upcoming election. This is a critical time in our history and we hope and pray the wrong people do not take our country in a bad direction, toward the kind of fascism all those brave souls sacrificed their lives for fighting the Nazis and Imperialists in the great world wars of the 20th century. This time the threat is not from abroad, but from within our own ranks.

– Glynn Wilson

Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024

Dear Love Kin
From John Sansom
Most of you knew Nancy Kate Love Sansom as Aunt Nancy, Cousin Nancy, Granny, or as just a good friend who liked to catch up and tell stories over a hot cup of coffee and a piece of homemade pound cake. She was a late-in-life addition to her big, Pell City, Alabama family.

On a late spring day in 1933 my grandmother, Dollie Gardner Love, wasn’t feeling her best. She couldn’t quite put her finger on her malaise, but it was something that her usual remedies, a “little pill” of Vaseline or a small glass of prune juice, hadn’t touched. Perhaps it was, at the age of 44, the beginnings of the change of life every woman faces.

Regardless, “Miss Dollie”, still feeling woozy, set off down the sidewalk further into town for a visit with Doctor Martin and hopefully some relief. And it was there she learned the news that she was “indeed in for a change of life, Mrs. Love,” (Dr. Martin’s words) “because you’re going to have another baby!”

The long span of ages between the six living children, 21 years from the oldest, Kathleen, to little Nancy Kate, with two brothers (Buddy and Ross) and two sisters (Frankye and Madge) scattered in the middle, meant that her niece Frankye Ann, who was just three years younger than Nancy, always seemed like her sister. And though she was my cousin, Frankye Ann always seemed more like an aunt.

The formal connections of our family tree, complicated by a wide span of ages: aunts, uncles, cousins and such, make for interesting conversations at family gatherings but in the end, they don’t really amount to much. We are all, young and old, far and near, “Love Kin” no matter how the family lineage claims we are connected. And it’s probably also true that if you “love a Love” then you, too, are embraced as Love Kin.

My connection with Nancy is clear enough: I knew her as “Mom.” All of us who knew and loved her knew something else about Nancy: She was a steadfast Republican.

I once asked Mom, out of curiosity, how she got to be a Republican and she said with a nod of her head for emphasis “Ohhhh! Daddy was always a Big Republican. BiiiG! Daddy said even over in the Valley, his parents, Grandmother and Grandfather Love (Richard Patton and Annie McGuire Sumner Love), were always Big Republicans even way back then.”

And just like that, Mom became, forever, a “Big Republican.”

There is plenty to tell, much of it big news, about these Big Republican Loves originating from Shoal Creek Valley, Alabama. This is our story.

You see, times were different then, and almost everyone knew, except the Love Kin maybe, that you couldn’t be a red-blooded Southerner and proud Alabamian while being a Republican. The two just didn’t mix. My cousin Joyce even remembers feeling a little sheepish in grade school at Ashville in the 1940’s when the teacher would ask for a show of hands of Democrats and Republicans around the classroom. Joyce said there were very few hands held up for Republicans, and most of those hands belonged to Love Kin.

And thinking of back then and thinking of today Joyce supposed, showing her big, thoughtful smile and bright, friendly eyes “I guess we were like the Democrats now,” acknowledging the difficulty of being a political party minority.

I asked Joyce the same question I had asked Mom decades earlier, about how the Love Kin got to be such Big Republicans, and she said, “Oh that was from Grandmother Love. She was always a Big Republican and taught her children to be too. None of us knew any other way to be.”

Now our Grandmother Love, this matriarch of the Love Kin Big Republicans, was born in 1861, just two years before another Republican, the very first Big Republican, would proclaim to a solemnly gathered assembly at Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery for Civil War dead,

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” [Abraham Lincoln. The Gettysburg Address. November 19, 1863]

Grandmother Love turned 21, the age when men could vote, in 1882. But she didn’t vote Republican – or any other way. Remember, women couldn’t vote until 1917!

Grandfather Love had died years earlier in 1911 after a scaffolding accident, and left Grandmother Love with her hands full – eight children (Russell, Harry, George, Elbert Ross, Ed, Edith, Betty and Carroll), to raise on the family farm and precious little time to think about anything else. I like to believe she thought about politics, though, and dreamed of the day when she might be able to, finally, cast her vote too as a Big Republican.

Grandmother Love had lived through, in her very clear memory, all the hope and progress of emancipation and black men getting to vote during Reconstruction. These were Big Republican ideals. She also lived the Jim Crow terror years for black families in the South.

I recently asked my cousin Sara Ann if she knew why the Love Kin are Big Republicans and she said she certainly did: She remembers crawling up into her Daddy’s (Buddy’s) lap as a young girl and asking confidently and smartly, “Daddy, why are we Republicans?”

Pulling her close in Uncle Buddy responded, “Well Sweetheart, we believe that everybody should be able to vote and have a voice, not just the ones who’re well off and can pay their poll tax. Every man deserves to have his voice heard, not just the rich man.”

And that is, dear Love Kin, how we got our start as Big Republicans.

Nancy came along just before Christmas in 1933, the little doll which Santa brought to a delighted Ed and Dollie Love family. Her next older sibling was her brother, Ross Gardner, who was 13 years old. He quickly became her idol and she, his pet. Little Nancy Kate enjoyed her friends and all the attention of her older brothers and sisters, extended family of Love Kin and all manner of adoptive aunts and cousins. They all gave her a good spoiling. For all the sorrow she was to face later in her childhood, I wouldn’t dare take that spoiling from her.

World War II was in full swing by 1942, when Nancy was just 9, the surprise attack on America at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Navy the previous December still an aching wound. Families everywhere, both Southern Democrats and Republicans, in Pell City, Shoal Creek Valley and across the country, were sending their strapping young sons off to war.

The Big Republican Love Kin were no exception, and it is my proud and passionate honor to tell you the story of two cousins, our proudest Love Kin. They were two handsome and popular young men, proud Alabamians, and cousins on the Love side. One was my cousin, Robert Curtis Wilson from Shoal Creek Valley. The other was my uncle, Ross Gardner Love from Pell City.

Uncle Lother and Aunt Edith had stayed near the family farm in Shoal Creek Valley to raise their two sons, Eschol and Curtis, while Ross’s parents, Ed and Dollie, had moved to Pell City, on the other side of the county, to build their lives in town. Both boys were raised as Big Republicans in the tradition of Grandmother Love. They were taught loyalty to these United States of America, to love their big Alabama family and their fellow Americans of every race, creed and place in life.

When the draft notices came enlisting them to fight the enemies of freedom and democracy on the other side of the world in the early 1940’s, they responded with all the courage and enthusiasm they could muster. The send-off parties were raucous affairs lasting for as many days as the boys had before boarding a bus or train heading off to “Basic.” Curtis joined the Marines in May 1942 and Ross enlisted with the Army the following October. Aunt Edith and Miss Dollie hugged their fine sons and sent them off with Big Republican ideals: to defend Liberty and fight for the continued freedom of the nation.

Uncle Ross stayed in touch, writing his first letter home from Fort McPherson in Atlanta within a few days:

October 14, 1942 

Dear Mom, Dad, and All – 

We are just about through up here and I probably won’t be here much longer, but they keep some of the boys up here two or three weeks. I hope that I’m not one of them. 
While I’m thinking about it this fountain pen is sorry let me tell you. 
There really isn’t much to say except that they are running us all over the place.
Love, Ross

Through 1942, 1943, 1944 and 1945, without a furlough, Ross stayed in touch, writing of his boredom, his complaints, his joys and adventures. He asked about his friends, his big Love Kin family, Alabama football, and always about little Nancy. Sometimes she had her own letter or postcard addressed sweetly to Miss Nancy Love residing on Howard Avenue.

November 12, 1942

Hi Good – Looking – How is my Darling? Did Miss Jones spank you, today. She should have.
Love Ross

Imagine how Grandmother Love must have beamed when the family read to her Ross’s letter as he finished his basic training at Fort Sill, a place in an earlier letter he deemed ‘“lost” in the “Badlands” of Oklahoma.”

Good Ole “E of the 29th”
Sunday

Hi Folks – I’m on the shipping list so on receipt of this letter stop all correspondence. I will notify you the minute I “arrive“ wherever I do arrive. In the Deep South, I hope. Where I can come home. But in case I don’t do not worry. We all can’t get close to home. One thing – I’m due for a furlough and I should get one after I move.

I have really enjoyed my training here. I was lucky – I got in a swell battery – under an allright gang of officers and “Non-Coms“. I like them all and I’m super proud to be in our Army. I wish I was in North Africa this afternoon. I’m rarin’ to go and take a crack at them.

It is hard to brag on yourself but I’m going to. I have stacked up a real record here in our Battery. All the officers and Non-Coms like me. They have been really swell to me. I’ve met guys from everywhere. Oilfield “Rough Necks“, from Tulsa, Damn Yankees from Ohio, Jew Babies from St. Louis, Italians from Chicago, and Cow Punchers from Texas. They are all great guys. I like them lots.

I love you
Ross

That was HER fine, Big Republican grandson, off to fight with swell guys from everywhere, fighting for America. And more than 80 years later, we Love Kin can beam with our own pride as we continue the cousins’ story.

Ross stayed focused on his job as an infantryman (Company E, 184th Infantry Regiment, 7th Division), anxious and ever prepared, waiting for his chance to “have a crack at ‘em. We’ll never win this war fooling around here in the United States.” Ross would get his chance in the Pacific Theater of the War.

He wrote home telling, with as much detail as the military censors would permit, where he was that day “somewhere in the Pacific Islands”, detailing a few skirmishes, praising the friendly natives “who keep us well supplied with bananas, coconut, chickens, pineapple, eggs and sweet potatoes.”

Year after year his letters came home across land and sea. I am sure that fierce, proud Marine Curtis Wilson also wrote home and stayed in touch with family and friends, but his letters, as far as we know, don’t survive.

Ross’s letters continued to come until March 1945 when an uncharacteristic silence between letters went on too long and the Love Kin’s worry began to gather like dark, ominous clouds from the west.

In the early morning hours of May 10, 1945, there was a knock at Dollie and Ed’s front door. It was the Thursday before Mother’s Day when a Western Union Telegram broke the long silence.

5:59 a.m. The secretary of war desires me to express his deep regret that your son PFC Love, Ross G died of wounds in Okinawa 20 Apr 45.

Edith and Lother received a similar telegram several weeks later about their son, Curtis, U.S.M.C., 1st Marine Division.

The secretary of war desires me to express his deep regret that your son CPL Wilson, Robert C died of wounds in Okinawa 14 Jun 45.

Worlds were shattered, hearts irreparably broken, church services planned, short obituaries printed, and condolences shared during those difficult weeks of 1945 as two brave, Love Kin cousins, Big Republicans, forever their mothers’ baby boys, were interred in the dirt of an Okinawa battlefield.

These courageous Love Kin cousins were both awarded the Purple Heart medal for service to America which cost them their lives. Ross Gardner’s was awarded for his service during the battle of Okinawa (killed in action), while Curtis had fought in multiple actions from Eastern New Guinea to the Palau Islands (wounded in action) and finally on Okinawa (killed in action). In addition to the Purple Heart, Curtis was awarded the Silver Star, the Armed Forces’ third-highest military decoration for valor in combat, and the Presidential Unit Citation awarded to combat units for extraordinary heroism, gallantry and determination in accomplishing the unit’s mission. Sadly, Ross’s Purple Heart is the only known medal surviving.

Later in 1945, just after Thanksgiving, Dollie and Ed received further official correspondence from the War Department, Major General Edward F. Witsell, this one with bittersweet news of their son Ross’s heroism:

29 November 1945
I have the honor to inform you that, by direction of the President, the Bronze Star Medal has been posthumously awarded to your son, Private First Class Ross G. Love, Infantry. The citation is as follows:

BRONZE STAR MEDAL

“For heroic achievement in connection with military operations against the enemy on 20 April 1945 during the Okinawa Island Operations. When the enemy began a series of infiltration attacks supported by intense frontal fire along Skyline Ridge, Private First Class Love, acting in the capacity of squad leader, deployed his men to meet the threat. During a critical phase of this attack, a gap was formed in the company’s line by the enemy mortar fire. Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Private First Class Love seized an automatic rifle and manned the open position alone. In a subsequent wave of this attack, he manned his position aided, holding back the enemy group with total disregard for his own safety. Although he succeeded in his efforts to prevent the enemy from penetrating the company line, he did so at the cost of wounds which later proved fatal. Private First Class Love displayed devotion to duty and courage which were in keeping with the high traditions of the military service.”

There was to be one more journey for Curtis and Ross, bringing their service to this great country full circle. In the summer of 1949, four years after their heroic deaths, an offer from the War Department to bring the cousins home was accepted by Lother and Edith and Ed and Dollie. Our Love Kin, courageous and highly decorated, made their nearly 8,000-mile final journey home by sea and rail, their flag-draped coffins finally arriving at the train depot in Pell City on Southern #7, scheduled for 10:18 a.m., first Ross on February 17 and then Curtis, 11 days later on February 28. It was the end of a long journey which gave our family of Love Kin back their brave, heroic sons.

Such unfathomable loss of an idolized older brother should have destroyed all the patriotism and love of country in my mother Nancy. She was just 11 years old when America’s 2nd big war overseas took her brother and cousin away. Who could blame her if her Love Kin pride in America withered from bitterness? But it did not. She remained a proud, Big Republican, voting for her party’s candidate in every election starting in 1956. Sixteen times she voted, beginning with Eisenhower and then Nixon, through Reagan, Bush and Trump and all those proud, Big Republican years.

Until she couldn’t anymore.

You see, Mom had a line that had been crossed. There is for all of us, I suppose, even Love Kin Big Republicans. For Nancy that line was a sacred place held as close to her heart as her brother Ross’s Purple Heart and Bronze Star. It’s that growing sense that you’ve heard enough and had enough – that bellyful when you finally must push away. For Nancy Kate, Little Sister and pet to one of the Love Kin’s biggest heroes, that line was trenched by continuing reports that a certain prominent Republican didn’t think much of soldiers who were captured in service to America. She gave him the benefit of the doubt at first, the disparaging words said of John McCain in 2015. Words, she imagined, likely cooked up and sensationally served for political gain by one side or the other. These many smoking embers, multiple reports of what the President said about military members when the microphone was off, that those who died in war are “Losers and Suckers”, and too dumb or poor to do any better, erupted into a raging fire.

No! Not her Love Kin Big Republican brother Ross and cousin Curtis. This was Nancy’s bellyful. In 2020, nearing her 86th birthday, she could no longer vote Republican. And with that she lost a core part of her Love Kin identity, the legacy handed down from her Daddy and his mother, our Grandmother Love. She was no longer a Big Republican, and it broke her heart.

On January 6, 2021, she watched a wild, lawless mob storm our Capitol, filling the halls of democracy with their own human excrement and leaving the peculiar and unmistakable stench of the ex-President hanging in the air as he watched impotently from afar. The events confirmed that she’d made the right decision. On that day she posted on her personal Facebook page

“How sad to see what is going on in our country. It looks like we live in some third world country. It hurts my heart.”

For us Love Kin voting is a right, a privilege and a responsibility, as it is for every American. We hold our vote close to our heart and for most it’s a secret vote. Speculate all you want, but this sacred, secret Love Kin’s vote is none of your d#!n business. So no, I cannot tell you who Mom voted for in 2020, her last election to vote before her death in 2022. But I can confidently tell you who she did NOT vote for.

I write this letter with pride and offer it as a humble gift during this politically charged 2024 election season, followed closely by Veterans Day on Monday, November 11, to remind us Love Kin of the valor, devotion to duty, courage, sacrifice and love for America, these Big Republican ideals indeed, coursing through our very veins and handed down to us from Grandmother Love and Uncle Ross, Cousin Curtis, Uncle Buddy and Nancy.

Mom, I hope you’ll forgive me for any confidences you didn’t want revealed. I did keep your biggest secret. You kept Ross’s letters and his story of heroism so close to your heart that I honestly, when you left this earth, knew nothing beyond “my Uncle Ross was killed in action on Okinawa in World War II.” There were no school essays, history projects, show-and-tell or book reports along the way. It sure seems like a Love Kin, Big Republican story which needs to be told.

And another thing, Mom: forgive the Republican party for somehow running off the rails and getting stuck in Donald Trump’s mucky ditch, leaving you and so many Big Republicans behind. Given time I hope they’ll pull out of the ditch, get back on track and make you proud again. Wayward political parties, like sons and daughters and all manner of kinfolk, have ways of finding their way back home. And Love Kin certainly know a thing or two about being welcomed back home. After all, Love is what makes us Loves.

With all my Love, John

PS: Upon my mother’s passing in 2022 I found in the cedar-lined chest constructed by Dad, two carefully preserved scrapbook albums related to her brother, Ross Gardner Love’s service in the Army, including more than 100 letters written by him between 1942 and 1945.

I knew the letters existed but had never given them much thought or attention. I am grateful that my mother preserved them, and I believe she did so in hopes that someday Ross’s story, our Love Kin story, would finally be told. I hope to be able to share these letters with all the Love Kin and a wider audience soon.

I am also grateful to my cousin Richard “Rick” Timothy “ Love who so carefully researched, documented and preserved the Love family lineage before his untimely passing in 2018. I am indebted to cousins Joyce Love Sanders, Sara Ann Love Rast and Kate Alexander for the hours of answering questions and sharing memories as we poured over the legacy of stories, photos and research which Mom and Rick left behind. And to my cousin, Glynn Wilson, storyteller and writer at NewAmericanJournal.net, who helped fill in some important blanks in his Uncle Curtis’s story and provide encouragement in my endeavor to tell our family’s patriotic and courageous story.

THANK YOU, COUSIN.

Thank You, John, for reaching out.

In one of our conversations, I related one story I remembered of our Uncle Charlie Wilson, the big funny uncle in the family to me and a successful farmer and construction company owner of Wilson and Son’s Construction. It was a scene that took place over an elaborate country meal among a large gathering of relatives, including Wilsons, Sanders and Loves. In saying the Thanksgiving prayer, and telling a story in place of a toast, I recall Uncle Charlie saying something like this, as certain relatives were far away and could not make it back home for Thanksgiving and Christmas that year, and others had returned just in time.

“Many of those in our family seem compelled to leave this valley for one reason or another, in search of something,” he said with a quizzical smile on his face. “But they always seem to find their way back home.”

And with that he lifted his sweet iced-tea glass to the room and we all chowed down on country fried chicken, green beans, sweet corn, potato salad and all manner of pies, my favorite being apple. Maybe we will find a way to return one day in the not too distant future. I imagine many would be amazed at how far flung and accomplished our family has become. In recent years I discovered three amazing sisters on the Wilson side in North Carolina, many who taught English and were into writing, and one, Bonnie Wilson Carlson, who also worked as a newspaper staff writer before becoming an English teacher. Must be something in the genes, I say, thinking of Uncle Charlie’s sense of humor.