Looking back on a 1937 locket inscription: Can we tell if its golden promise was tarnished?
I don’t care to become a Mr. Fixit, but this space does have reach, and sometimes the chance to link the past to the present and solve some old mystery is irresistible.
“Please permit me to unload upon you what has become an emotional burden to me,” writes Nancie Ausmus of Thousand Oaks. Mrs. Ausmus relates a mystery that may or may not have a happy ending.
In 1972, she bought a house on Burbank Boulevard near Shoup Avenue, in Woodland Hills. She was hosing down the inside of the garage when a small gold locket washed down from the rafters.
“I was deeply moved by the inscription and by the snapshots it contained, and felt it must be so very important to someone, somewhere.”
Mrs. Ausmus enclosed the locket in her letter. It is rectangular, about 1 by 1 1/2 inches in size, and appears to be of gold, perhaps 18 carat.
On the front the name Frances is engraved in an oval. Inside there are two frames. One contains a picture of a handsome young man with dark curly hair; the other a picture of the same young man with a young woman, four or five inches shorter, with dark hair showing under the brim of a floppy white hat.
The inscription on the back reads: Your loving and ever faithful Arthur . . . 5/24/37.
“I checked with the former owners of the house and with neighbors,” Mrs. Ausmus says, “but no one had any information about Frances and her ever faithful Arthur.
“Such a handsome couple! Are they still living? Still together? Are there children, grandchildren, who would cherish this memento? How to find them?
“I don’t know. I do know, however, that they will never be found as long as the locket remains anonymously in my possession. This situation has bothered me for the past 14 years, so I’m passing the locket on to you. Do as you wish with it--at least it is no longer resting in a box at the back of a drawer in Thousand Oaks.”
May 24, 1937. That was 48 years and one month ago. Let’s assume that Arthur was 20 when he gave the locket to Frances, and Frances was 18. That means Arthur would be 68 today and Frances would be 66, if they’re both alive.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since 1937, including three devastating wars. Arthur looks like a healthy young fellow. It seems probable that he was drafted in World War II, or volunteered. The odds are that he survived the war, but maybe not.
If he came back did he and Frances start a family, as so many wartime couples did? Or did he leave Frances pregnant, and fail to come back? In that case, did she remarry?
If he came back and they started a family, did it hold together? Or were they torn apart by the disillusionments of the postwar era, and divorced. Perhaps each found another mate.
I think that’s what happened, the probabilities being what they are. Arthur went off to war and came back--not a hero, but wearing a ruptured duck on his lapel. Arthur got a job at Lockheed Aircraft and they bought the house in Woodland Hills on the GI Bill. (We almost bought a house in Woodland Hills on the GI Bill, but the developer was a crook and went to prison and the deal fell through.)
The first two children were 18 months apart; a girl and a boy; then, two years later, there was another girl.
When the oldest child was 7 years old the marriage began to fall apart. Arthur was not as faithful as he had promised when he gave Frances the locket. He was dropping off at a nearby bar after work and keeping late hours with a series of bimbos.
Frances felt neglected and betrayed. Arthur was spending so much of his paycheck on booze and floozies that she couldn’t pay the bills. She begged him to come home and restore the old love and harmony, but he had changed. The war had left him unfulfilled; he had to prove his manhood, as he saw it, while he was still young.
Frances got a divorce, but kept the house. She got a job as a bar waitress and tried to support the kids while Arthur went his way, not even caring.
Arthur finally married one of his girlfriends, but she couldn’t take his boozing and philandering and quickly split. Frances married her boss, who was steady and reliable and good to the kids, and he moved in.
By now, of course, she’s a grandmother. Rick, her husband, has retired and they are living on Social Security. Rick found the locket and told her to get rid of it, so she hid it in the rafters of the garage. When they moved, she forgot it.
On the other hand, I suppose it’s possible that Arthur came home and they bought that house on the GI Bill and had a family and stayed together, loving and faithful, for all those years; Arthur developed managerial skills and by 1960 he was making enough that he and Frances sold the house and moved up to Sherman Oaks. The children all went through Cal State Northridge, and married well and have children of their own.
In that case I don’t know how the locket got in the rafters.
Whatever happened, if Frances reads this, and wants her locket back, all she has to do is drop me a note.
