Don't Trust Everything You Read...
Especially not in obituaries, which aren't generally fact-checked
Tool: Archival Research
So, the “archive” I did this research in is the most informal kind: artifacts of my Uncle Mickey’s life that my friend Lissa Marcum has in her possession. She has these things because her grandmother, Mary Pennypacker, was my Uncle Mickey’s mistress for 40 years; a thing widely known in my family, but apparently not in hers. (Lissa told me, when we spoke this morning, that she only found out that this was even a rumor a few years ago. I was, in all honesty, very relieved not to be the person who told her first. She’s very graciously agreed to let me acknowledge the relationship in my writing, for which I am grateful.) Among the things she’s sent me since we spoke is my Uncle Mickey’s obituary, which was written by her grandmother… and which is, as you will see, not a reliable historical document.
Many thanks for Lissa for her help with this project!
The Story:
So, Uncle Mickey was known to, shall we say, “embellish” the truth a little. Or a lot. Actually, quite a lot. Anything he touched, even tangentially, became a thing he alone had done.
I remember listening to him tell me about how he and my Aunt Nancy were personally responsible for Détente, in part because Aunt Nancy had so charmed the Soviet leaders. A quick glance at the Wikipedia article will make it clear this isn’t true, as he isn’t even mentioned. I think he and Aunt Nancy were once very minor cultural attaches to the USSR, which is the grain of truth upon which he built the story, but that’s as far as it goes. As soon as he’d finished telling me this story, which he did at the reception following my grandfather’s funeral, Aunt Josie rushed over to pull me aside and tell me quietly never to disagree with him because that would be rude, but also not to believe his stories. Inside the family, everyone knew to take Mickey’s claims with several grains of salt.
But apparently Mary Pennypacker believed everything he said, because when she wrote his obituary, she made him sound like one of the most pivotal people in that moment of American history.
A Brief List of Things I Know aren’t True in this Obituary:
He wasn’t the sole founder of Zenith Optical.
He didn’t develop and advance “technical items in glass manufacturing, optics, infra-red and organic compounds,” although people who Zenith Optical did.
He did not, and I can’t emphasize this enough, “originate” the National Civil Rights Act.
He did not personally finance the building of the Marshall Medical School.
He was not the originator of Nixon doctrine.
I’m doubtful about many of the other claims, but know for a fact—because I know history—that these are false.
As a researcher, I think knowing which sources can be trusted and which can’t is important. Imagine how embarrassing it would be if I had included, as fact, these details about his life in my book? That said, I also think there is a lot of value in documents that we know contain factual errors. This doesn’t tell me very much about who Uncle Mickey actually was, but it does tell me a lot about how he wanted to be seen, and about his relationship with Mary Pennypacker. And both of those things also matter to the story I’m building.
Also, here, just as a treat, is another article I found on Newspapers.com. This one is about my great-grandfather and another man arranging to play chess with actual people as the chess pieces. I can’t find an article that tells me whether or not this ever happened, which is a shame. I would love to have pictures of that.
I think your Uncle Mickey's story is great - wish I had something half as entertaining in my family ! But seriously, Sarah, I doubt you would have ever included any of that without checking it out first - surely his name would be far better known in many circles had any of it been true, not least of which at Marshall College and in history books!
This is a brilliant observation: " but it does tell me a lot about how he wanted to be seen."
In my newspaper research, there have been numerous instances where family members' named are misspelled--and sometimes flat out wrong (this is also true of the census). It makes searching a whole different kind of puzzle.