The following is an excerpt from the May 8, 1925 edition of the "Fayette Falcon" (still the newspaper of record in Somerville, TN) describing the recent acquisition of the paper by Duncan Anderson and a Mr. Rufus Hardy- pictured here with an unknown employee of the paper. (Duncan's the one with ink on his hands).
"We are turning The Falcon into perfectly competent hands. Duncan Anderson was born into a newspaper family; his father owning a weekly paper at Walnut Ridge, Arkansas at the time of his birth. He grew up in the business and except for the years of the world war, has been in newspaper work all his life; coming to The Falcon very soon after the close of the war."
Duncan Anderson was my maternal grandfather and, until recently, no one in our family knew much about him. My grandmother, Julia, became ill and died when my mother was only three. Duncan remarried within a matter of months and, at his new wife's insistance, sent my mother and her older sister, Wini, to live with their maternal aunt in Memphis. After a few more years of sporadic contact, Duncan ultimately withdrew from their lives forever, leaving them to spend a lifetime trying to recapture from their memories some essence of who he was; and undoubtedly wondering what could drive a man to leave behind two little girls who had already faced tragic loss at such a young age.
Duncan would eventually divorce and then marry again, settling into a new life in Waco, Texas. There he raised two more daughters while working as an editor for the Waco Herald-Tribune. In 1951 Duncan, who had endured chronic health complications resulting from mustard gas exposure during World War I, suffered a major stroke and passed away the following year. It would be many more years before my mother would even learn of his passing, or that he had attempted to write her several more times throughout his life (his letters were found, unopened, in a trunk among her aunt's estate).
I have a photo of Duncan, taken by a colleague on a visit to the Herald-Tribune offices shortly before his death. In the photo, he is sitting with his body slumped awkwardly in a chair, his face partially paralyzed by the recent stroke. His eyes, however, are clear and kind. Yet they also reflect a resolute sadness, as if in confirmation that this was indeed a man who lived a lifetime confronting the poignant consequences of his decisions.
This week, on a business trip to Dallas, I drove down to Waco and located Duncan's grave. I feel certain I'm the only person from our side of the family to have ever visited the site.
