Digging Up Roots
Trip Start
May 28, 2006
1
3
Trip End
Jul 04, 2006
Lima,
Ohio,
United States
Sunday, April 30, 2006
But this trip was not without purpose. We had a mission, and we fullfilled it. Unfortuntely we did not come away with quite the outcome I had hoped, but neither did we walk away empty-handed.
We came because it was in Harrod that our great-grandfather, LeRoy (Roy) Arthur Mullen, had retired to and eventually passed away. After literally years of my searching for information about him, I had come across quite a few newspaper articles which alluded to some aspects of his life and times which left me thirsting for more.
Just to give you a quick taste, he fought in both wars - in WWI he was a fighter pilot with the Army Air Corps out of France (think "Fly Boys") and when he returned to the US, took a job with the Department of State as a Special Agent (basically, he was Secret Service). His job was to "coordinate and facilitate the missions of foreign dignitaries in the U.S." He came into contact with people who were both famous and infamous, and had autographed pictures of himself with many of them - Charles Lindbergh, President Herbert Hoover, President Calvin Coolidge, The King of Siam, Premier Pierre Laval of France, Mussolini, British Prime Minister Ramsey McDonald, and the Crown Prince Gustavus Adophus of Sweden to name just a few. He was even given decorations by both the King of Siam and Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.
I was able to ferret out several pieces of data which sent me on basically a 2-year hunting expedition for his still-living relatives (who I originally didn't even know existed) and about a year ago, I had managed to find out that Helen (the woman he married after obtaining a Mexican divorce from our great-grandmother) had a will on file with the county where she had died in Harrod. In the will, it indicated that she had left all of her land and possessions to someone named Gary Richardson. I did a little more hunting around and found that there was still a Gary Richardson living in Harrod. I got in touch with the Richardsons and, after planning with Jo, we decided to take a trip to Ohio.
We visited the Richardsons, got a tour of Grandfather Mullen's house, and visited his grave. The Richardsons are just wonderful people - very helpful and thrilled to meet us. They went through the things they had from when Helen died and were able to dig up some of Grandfather Mullen's medals that he had kept in his desk including the boxes for the decorations he received from the Kings of Siam and Italy (the medals themselves are nowhere to be found).
The Richardsons helped us brainstorm a bit and try to think of what might have happened to his museum-like collection of photos, papers, and other items. Sadly, it would seem that most of them were destroyed, thrown away, or possibly even sold after he died - but we know of their existence due to newspaper articles I was able to find in various archives which mention them.
Great-Grandfather Mullen
The realization of this has been a huge disappointment. More than anything, I was hoping to find that some of his papers - especially the memoirs he was working on might have survived...but it looks as though a lot of his stories have died with him.
Regardless, it has still been a really great trip - we really enjoyed ourselves and it was so neat to be able to see some of these places and visit his grave as well. I think Grandfather Mullen would have been pleased.
