A Dark Family Secret

Hidden somewhere in the closet of family history can be found dark secrets of individuals from which the rest of us feel repulsed and ashamed. But just like the inspiring stories of family heroes, these shameful stories are a part of the fabric of our whole family. And as time goes by historical perspective helps us put these dark stories into their proper places, not something to be featured on the front page and glorified, but something worth knowing about … because it is a part of the truth of our whole story.

This is a story of which I knew basically what had happened, but since it was seldom ever mentioned in family circles, no one had ever fully revealed the details of what happened on that fateful day of April 27, 1979, in San Antonio, Texas. So I went looking for the whole truth and this is what I was able to compile from numerous sources - books, magazines, newspaper articles, online articles and blogs, including several first hand accounts as well as my own personal knowledge of the events leading up to that awful day:

Ira Attebery was born April 29, 1914, the second son of a hard working farmer in the flat bottom lands of Clay County, Arkansas. When he was about 6 years old his family bought a farm of their own just across the state line in the Buncomb community near Naylor, Missouri. Growing up as a farm child is hard work with lots of chores. Long and hot summer days were spent working in the dusty fields hoeing grass and weeds. School was started in the hottest part of August so that it could be dismissed for a few weeks each fall to allow all the farm kids to join their families picking cotton.

Learning to shoot a gun was a normal part of growing up in those parts. Most of their farm acreage and hundreds of acres surrounding their farm was still in timber. Mass clearing of the land for farming did not come until about fifty years later. Wild game was abundant.

His father was a believer in education and he served on the board for the community school. Like his one and one-half year older brother, Ira was sent to town to attend high school. They would go into town and board there during the week and return home each weekend. But Ira, who has been described as headstrong, temperamental, and frequently fighting with his father, dropped out of school to begin an independent life of his own.

During World War II Ira served in the U.S. Coast Guard and as a member of the Merchant Marine which during peacetime is operated by private companies, but becomes part of the U.S. Navy during wartime to deliver troops and supplies for the Navy and in accordance with the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 mariners are considered military personnel. Although seemingly “safe on home territory,” this was hazardous duty during WWII with the highest rate of casualties (1 in 24) of any branch of service due to so many ships being sunk by German U-boats along the Atlantic coastline.

After the war Ira bought a long haul freight truck of his own and drove coast to coast delivering his loads. From time to time as the routing of his loads allowed him to do so, he would stop in on various family members who were by the mid 1950's scattered from Rockford, Illinois, to St.Louis, Missouri, and back to the remaining family in the Naylor, Missouri / Corning, Arkansas area. He would frequently bring news of other family members including his aunts and uncles would lived in various towns and cities the whole length and breadth of Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. He lived the solitary life of an independent trucker, but kept in occasional touch with various family members.

Then one night in 1961 (or 1971?) three nuns failed to stop at a stop sign along a stretch of highway where at that very moment Ira was driving his truck loaded with paint. He didn't have time to stop his big rig and the heavy truck smashed into the nun's car instantly killing all three (or two?) of them. Ira was trapped in the twisted wreckage of his truck cab and paint was spilled all over the highway. Even after months of recovery in a Veterans Administration hospital Ira never regained the ability to continue earning his living as an independent long haul truck driver and received disability checks for the rest of his life.

Instead Ira returned to the area of his family home a few miles south of Naylor, Missouri near the Arkansas state line and took up farming on 80 acres of newly cleared ground given to him by his father. At a time when surrounding area farmers were still using two row equipment, Ira used the insurance money he collected as a result of the accident and bought all new top of the line (for that time) farming equipment including two D-17 Allis Chalmers tractors (one diesel and one gasoline powered), a four row planter, four row cultivator, 12 foot wide disks, and a gleaming silver four row Gleaner combine. He lived in an AirStream trailer parked on the farm.

But farming didn't go well for Ira and after a very few years he gave it up (sometime before 1965). He then parked his AirStream in his father's barn lot right next to the chicken house just across the driveway from the back door of the main house. Using that as his home base, Ira began his nomadic years of wandering across the country in his car – sometimes visiting relatives and usually just seeing the varied sites all across these United States. A combination of his savings, a pension, his disability checks, and rent from his farm financially enabled Ira to live and travel as he chose.

A few years afterward Ira switched his mode of transportation to a 1972 Ute Liner motor home (although one writer claims it was a Winnebago) with an International Harvester engine, a one piece fiberglass roof, a spacious king-size overhead bed over the driver's seat, and an adjustable tilt steering column – considered to be the most highly regarded and strongest motor home then available. He would come back to his home base and stay for a few days or weeks, and then be off again … sometimes for months at a time.

In 1975, around the time that his younger brother Cecil Attebery died, Ira bought his own grave stone. Ira had it placed in the cemetery in Polar Bluff, Missouri, where his older brother, Bill Attebery who had never married as well, lived and worked. Poplar Bluff was the largest city in the area and located about thirty miles northeast of the family home place south of Naylor.

(That is the background for our story. From this point the story begins to get darker and darker. If you really want to know the whole disturbing story click on this link, but I warn you, this is not for the faint at heart.)

2011-09-18 17:28:01 RBaxter

See additional information on the Individual Data Info Page for Ira Theadore Attebery.

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