A portrait of Beulah Brode emerges from the pieces of a genealogical jigsaw puzzle

Recently I wondered what ever happened to Beulah Jeannette Brode, a 1915 graduate of Manual Arts High School, whose diploma, encased in brown suede leather, had turned up on the trunk of a parked car in Anaheim.

Mike Welds found the diploma on his car outside a restaurant. The case contained an almost straight-A report card and an old column of mine. Because of the column, Welds sent the diploma to me.

I wondered what kind of world Miss Brode had found on her graduation and how she had fared in it.

Thanks to two cousins and two volunteer genealogists, I pieced together some of her story. Alas, it is not very happy.

Gladys Muller of Whittier, a researcher, writes that on June 12, 1917, when she was 22, Beulah Jeannette Brode married Charles Longstrath McNichols, also 22, night manager of a garage.

Evidently that first marriage was short. Harold L. Brode of Pacific Palisades, whose grandfather was Beulah’s father’s brother, writes that “after a brief first marriage, Beulah was happily married to Arthur Wood, a security officer who was killed while crossing the street in Alhambra, where they lived.”

Eileen M. Adams of Laguna Hills, whose grandfather was also a brother of Beulah’s father, confirms this sad happenstance. “She married Arthur Woods (sic), but never had any children. Arthur was killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking home one night.”

Mrs. Adams, by the way, notes that the name is pronounced like owed , without the final e .

Both Brode and Mrs. Adams recall that Beulah had failing eyesight, and in middle age, became blind.

“She had an older half-sister, Verda, and a brother, Donald,” says Brode. “Donald was an accomplished architect, although he was almost completely paralyzed by arthritis. He too died as a result of an automobile accident.”

“When you described the brown suede case with the diploma inside,” writes Mrs. Adams, “I ran to get my mother’s identical looking one--only it is from Poly High, 1915. . . . Beulah and my mother graduated in the same year. . . .”

Brode recalls that Beulah’s father, Francis Brode, was an early home builder in Los Angeles and built the home the family lived in at 947 West 34th Street, near USC.

“I can shed no light on the mysterious appearance of Beulah’s diploma,” he goes on, “but the bulk of her belongings were retained by a woman companion on whom she had been dependent prior to being placed in a nursing home or convalescent hospital. Who (that woman) was and what became of her, I do not know. Beulah and her half-sister, Verda, have been dead for some years now.”

Brode notes that Beulah’s father had no grandchildren, but a number of his brothers and sisters, including Arthur W. Brode, Mrs. Adams’ grandfather, lived in Southern California.

“All the Brodes could trace their origins in this country to one man, a Samuel Brode, who arrived on a Swedish ship that landed in Delaware in the 1830s.”

Beulah’s later years were evidently lonely. “As she grew older,” says Mrs. Adams, “we didn’t see her very much; only cards at Christmas, which someone had to write for her.”

Mrs. Adams does not remember when Beulah died. “I believe it was 10 or 12 years ago. This lady called to tell me and I sent flowers to the service, as I was unable to attend. She called me back in a few days, thanking me for the flowers and commenting on the two mourners who attended.

“I cannot answer your question of why Beulah Brode’s diploma was placed on Mr. Welds’ car. She had no children and most all of her contemporaries are gone. My only supposition is that her possessions were kept by the lady who looked after her in her last years. . . .

“What was Beulah like?” asks Brode. “I remember her only in her later life, after she had become blind, but she was a good-natured and intelligent woman who seemed to enjoy life as it was given to her. Her seriously handicapped brother Donald was most amazing to me for his great zest for living. As a child, I enjoyed visiting him because he was so much fun to talk to. He was well-informed and understood what would amuse and intrigue children. I believe that Beulah and her half-sister Verda shared Donald’s and their father’s indestructible good nature.

“Since no one of her immediate family survives, I cannot advise you as to what to do with her high school diploma. Would that we all could hope to be as well preserved as that parchment after 72 years.”

Edwin W. Coles of Studio City, an amateur genealogist, found that Beulah’s father was born in Illinois in 1859 and came to Los Angeles in 1899 or early 1900, starting out as a hardware salesman. Brode had a child by a first wife. His second wife, Adella, bore Beulah Jeannette in June, 1895 and Donald in May, 1899.

Mrs. M. W. Downs of Santa Monica writes that her husband, Bill, was a classmate of Beulah at Manual Arts and is now 92 and “doing well, other than poor memory.”

Mrs. Downs says that Beulah’s class was distinguished by such students as the future Gen. James Doolittle (who would lead the first air raid on Tokyo), movie director Frank Capra, opera singer Lawrence Tibbett, California Gov. Goodwin Knight and California Supreme Court Justice Marshall McComb.

Perhaps the heroine of this story is the woman whose name nobody knows.