The First Word #5: Building Brick Walls Between You and Your Living Relatives

The week of Thanksgiving 2006, I discovered that my great-uncle, William H. “Bill” Sly of Buckeye, Arizona had died 13 January 2005 at the age of 81. That was almost two years ago! No one in my immediate family had even heard of his passing. A cousin (my third cousin once removed) who also works on Sly research, and who coincidentally lives in Phoenix, also had not heard about his death.

I happened upon his obituary while checking out a new subscription-based web site that contains a growing collection of historical newspapers: www.genealogybank.com. I thought I would check Genealogy Bank out to see if anything useful to my research turned up. I searched for "William Sly" intending to locate my great-great grandfather by the same name in Ohio. However, an obituary for "William H. "Bill" Sly" from a Buckeye, Arizona newspaper turned up first on the list. Unfortunately, the obituary turned out to be only one sentence in length and did not have much information.

I remember visiting Uncle Bill in Arizona just after I finished kindergarten during the summer of 1980. My parents packed my younger brother and me in a van (the old style, not a comfy mini- van with a DVD player) and we headed out from Weston, Ohio to Buckeye, Arizona. I don't remember much about that trip, but I do remember it was so hot that our crayons melted! I also remember Uncle Bill was a big guy to a 6-year-old, who did a lot of laughing. We visited his mother, my great-grandmother, Lucy Alice (Long) Sly. She was living in a nursing home, was very frail, used a walker, and seemed ancient to me. She would have been ninety-two years old and she passed away that November, just five months after our visit.
Lucy Alice (Long) Sly was my maternal grandmother's mother. She was born in Audrain County, Missouri to Martha Alice “Mattie” (Mitchell) and William Henry “Harvey” Long. Her father, who was born in Ohio, moved to Missouri where he met and married his wife and they had most of their children. In 1900 he moved the family back to Wood County, Ohio. Lucy married Sanford Sly sometime between 1910 and 1915. Their first daughter Alice (who was not Sanford’s biological daughter, but that’s a story for another time), had a lung illness such as asthma or tuberculosis. Sometime between 1930 and 1936 they moved Alice and their youngest child and only son, William H. “Bill”, to Arizona thinking that the dry climate would benefit her health. Their two other daughters, Marie and Helen (my grandmother) were already married and therefore stayed in Ohio.

There are at least three living connections from my family to Uncle Bill. My cousin living in Phoenix (I mentioned earlier) said she remembers visiting my great-aunt Marie but didn't remember visiting my grandmother Helen. Several years before his death she had tried contacting Uncle Bill to see if he was interested in corresponding with her about the family––he was not. However, my mom’s half-sister, who is now the oldest living relative on that side of my family tree, used to visit Uncle Bill quite often. Unfortunately, after his mother (her grandmother) passed away in 1980, she didn’t visit as much and eventually lost touch.
Several times over the past few years I had talked to my mom about getting in touch with Uncle Bill. I especially wished to visit him again after becoming increasingly interested in genealogy. Over the years I checked the SSDI occasionally to see if he showed up and he didn't. As long as he didn’t, I kept my hope that one day we could make the trip, but it was not to be. None of my family’s connections to Uncle Bill knew of his passing for over two years.
This experience has convicted me of the fact that we need to get in touch and stay in touch with our living relatives. I am not sure why my branch of the family lost touch with his branch of the family. Surely the distance had something to do with it. Possibly telephone costs were a hindrance as well. No one has said, but maybe there were some hard feelings between family members. It is sad that he is gone, not only because I never really got to know him personally, but also from a genealogical standpoint. I have SO MANY QUESTIONS for him. He may have been the only one who could have answered them ... like the brick walls surrounding his parents and his sister Alice. I have a feeling those walls may stay there for a while if not forever. My interest in genealogy makes that breaking of a family tree branch all the more poignant.