A History of Windsor Ray Mark

By Jesse Mark and his brothers Herschell, Dale, and Don, and his sister Beverly

September, 2001

Ray, Dale, and Mom (Jessie Mae), 1928 or so

Ray was born of Isaac Tensley Mark and Jessie Mae Edmonds Mark, July 14, 1924 in Ohio or Indiana. He was our mother's second child; her first, Leon, had died as a baby. Dale was born August 10, 1927, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Ray was five years old when I was born in Petoskey, Michigan, December, 1929. Don was born in Charlevoix in December 1930. Ray probably started school there and attended through part of the third grade. Ray was a precocious child who learned to read well before Kindergarten. I remember him as an avid reader of the Sunday comics.

At this time Naomi Virginia, Isaac Herschell, and Floyd Boone were either at home or at the point of venturing out on their own. They were children of Dad and his first wife, Blanche Wages, who had died of influenza after World War I. So Ray would have been the baby in the family. I remember being told that Ray had learned to drive when he was seven or eight years old in Charlevoix and that he stripped the gears. Naomi married John Terpstra and settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Herschell and Floyd picked up work where they could in Indiana, sometimes working for their Uncle Alley Jones in New Castle (Alley was the husband of Isaac's sister Jessie). Both Herschell and Floyd eventually settled in Muncie, Indiana, where Uncle Chester lived (Chester was Rachel's father and Isaac's brother). Herschell, who at the time of this writing is 86 years old, reviewed this section and said that it was substantially correct.

Isaac, known as I.T., was a preacher and writer. He was classified as a preacher-evangelist because he pastored churches while he held revivals and tent meetings throughout Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky. He was not educated but was intelligent. He was a great story teller and common people loved to hear him preach. Being the son of a well-known preacher and writer provided Ray with unusual opportunities as well as vexing problems.

This aspect of our family probably defined all of us children for better or worse. Frequent moving made education difficult. Dad's absence placed great responsibility upon Mom and us kids.

Left to right: Herschell, Floyd, Dale, Mom, Dad, Naomi, Ray (in front). This must be in Petoskey, Michigan, in about 1928

Mom was an attractive red head with freckles. Her hair was very long, braided into a pigtails and pinned into a bun. She was intelligent and educated and liked to read. She was extremely shy but would sing in public. She had a nice soprano voice but preferred to sing alto. She said that she didn't mind having babies but she didn't know how to raise them. Her naming Ray "Windsor", I think, was indicative of her romantic expectations. Windsor was the popular British Duke of Windsor who gave up the throne for his love of a divorced woman. Also, her first born having died, she undoubtedly vested much in Ray.

We moved to East Jordan shortly after Herb was born, April 12, 1932. Ray would have completed the third grade. We all remember playing with brothers, but have no recollection of Ray in particular.

CADILLAC: My earliest remembrance of Ray was when we lived in Cadillac, Michigan. All of us brothers remember the Christmas of 1934 deep in the depression era. Floyd and Herschell had gotten work down in Indiana and bought a indoor bowling set which the whole family enjoyed. Ray and Dale received guitars and Don and I received wind up trains. Herb was a baby and I don't remember his gift. We had a Christmas tree which was decorated with strung pop corn, red and green rope, icicles and candy canes.

Ray, someone, Dale, Jess, and Don down in front. First house in Cadillac. 1935?

Ray built a snow fort in our back yard. He used an old set of bedsprings for the roof and piled snow on top of that. Ray and Dale both had aviators caps with goggles. Some of these memories are reinforced by photographs from that era.

Ray and Dale with their aviator caps, goggles, and guitars

Dale remembers Ray and Dad featured as guest speakers at the Cass School fathers and sons banquet. Dad addressed the fathers and Ray the sons. They were a smashing success. Dale was proud next day school when kids approached him asking if he was Ray's brother.

We lived in Cadillac 1934-1936. Ray attended 4th-6th grades.

DECATUR: When Ray was in Jr. High at Decatur, Michigan, he wrote a novel and sent it into one of the major magazines (Collier's I believe). It was about a woman who loved her bulldog more than her man. It was rejected.

One summer Ray had a birthday party at our house. The surprise was a huge box within a box within a box within a box et cetera. Finally the last package was a box with his old baseball cap in it (his friends had snatched it earlier in the summer). He was an enthusiastic sports fan and active player in spite of his small stature.

Clockwise from top: Ray, Dale, Don, Herb, Jess. 1937, maybe, in Decatur, Michigan

One of those summers, Ray went to Kellogg's Summer Camp, returning with a broken arm. All his friends wrote all over it. It seemed to me that a broken arm was great fun.

Ray taught me how to swim. He swam out to a float on barrels and called on me to come out there. I did, dog paddling. Diving was taught in similar manner. None of us drowned. He also made a checker board and taught me how to play checkers. He won.

At this time we were four brothers who generally paired up in stairstep fashion: Ray and Dale, Jess and Don. Herb was still the youngest and the baby of the family. While my memory is full of activities which we did, I can't distinguish between Ray and Dale. Don and I were in the same grade through grade five, so my memories are related much more to him.

Work was very scarce. Ray weeded celery, sold gladiolas house to house in the summer and home made donuts in the fall. We were often with him on these door to door trips.

He also went with the rest of the family to the little peninsula north of Traverse City to pick cherries. We lived in a migrant camp during the season. Mom canned cherries on a camping stove. These were packed into boxes and loaded on the side board of the car. We looked like the famed Oakies of the dust bowl. I'm not sure when the cherry picking ventures began, but probably it was when we were at Petoskey or Charlevoix which were nearby the cherry orchards of Traverse City. We all worked and got some spending money. We visited the Old Mission Lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula. In Traverse City there was a park which had a large automated train set which could be coin activated and a zoo. The lighthouse and the park with the train are still there. There was a café which sold milk shakes. Dale remembers Dad preaching here. Out at the orchards there was a beach and a dock where the cherry boats came in. The cherry boats took the cherries to the canneries across the bay. We swam at the beach.

We have a copy of a brochure which was mailed out by Dad regarding him and Ray, who was 14, being available for speaking engagements. The brochure looked like this:

Rev. I. T. Mark, Evangelist 118 W. St. Marys St. DECATUR, MICHIGAN This form letter I am sending Pastors, informing them that I am available for Revivals. I have had several years experience as pastor, five of which I spent with one of our largest congregations in the north. I have conducted by 69th revival, the majority of them in Michigan and having proved myself in my home state, I desire to go into other states as the Lord leads. My fourteen year old son, Ray----who has been speaking in public since he was seven years of age, is available to work with me, when desired. He speaks before me each evening, the two of us requiring about fifty minutes time. He is especially good in getting the people out to services. I will be glad to serve you now or in the future.

While being a preacher's kid was a mixed blessing, Dad's affliction of arthritis which occurred at this time caused grief for all of us. Ray was the first to become Dad's personal valet, followed successively by Dale and me. I remember Ray trying to assist when Dad would have a spasm. Ray also did most of the driving. From this point on, he had a lot of responsibility.

We lived in Decatur 1937-1939. During that time Floyd married Sadie Armstrong and stayed with us for a short time when Bernice was born. Beverly was born there November 9, 1939. We moved to Antwerp, Ohio, for the winter and spring of 1940. I remember Beverly crying all the way to Antwerp.

ANTWERP: Don remembers Ray being on the school paper staff and bringing home a typewriter. He taught us all how to type.

It was a damp, cold, miserable winter. We had to walk to school from the edge of town where we lived in a farm house near the Maumee River. We hiked along the river to play but also to collect fire wood, Dale remembers, a daily chore. We played in the hay loft in the barn.

We were only there for a few months. We packed up for the drive to Roosevelt, Minnesota. We visited friends and relatives along the way. When we went through Charlevoix, Ray visited his old neighborhood friend whose last name was White.

The car was loaded on top, on the running boards on the driver's side, and on the back bumpers. Again, we looked like Oakies. We parked on main street in a town to buy bread and lunchmeat for sandwiches. Some woman walking by looked at the car and all of us kids and exclaimed loud enough for Mom to hear, "Oh my Lord!" Mom burst out laughing and couldn't stop. She knew how silly we looked even for the depression days. The car broke down at International Falls. Men from the church in Roosevelt came to take us to our new home.

ROOSEVELT: Ray went to High School in a town east of Roosevelt named Williams. He wanted to play football, but hockey was their only winter sport. He made the team and played at least one game. His "W" is in the family. Dale remembers the title of a short story, "Blueberry Hill", which Ray wrote and submitted to Liberty magazine.

Irene and Robert were young people in the church. They were both very bright. Ray and Irene were boy and girl friends some of the time in Roosevelt. We lived in Roosevelt about 16 months, late spring of 1940 through late summer of 1941.

Swimming in Lake of the Woods was summer sport. Ray taught me how to high dive. Ooooh, that belly flop still hurts. At a summer fair Ray discovered he could run when he got first prize. In spite of his stature he was always a sports enthusiast.

Ray ran a homemade ice cream stand in the summertime with generous assistance from all of us (in helping ourselves to the ice cream).

Plumbing was nonexistant; we had an outdoor toilet at our house. One night I started out for the last trip of the evening but came back in saying I heard someone in the cornfield. Ray laughed and went out to check. The neighbor's cows had broken through the fence and gotten into our corn field.

Ray had appendicitis but the hospital was in Roseau, thirty-three miles away. The local constable drove him there in the middle of the night. Ray almost died because the icy roads were hazardous.

I remember once when Ray was driving between Roosevelt and Warroad, about twelve miles away, that Ray was distracted by a bumble bee. He went off the road into a broad, deep ditch; kept on going until he got back on the road. We were all shook up, but no accident.

And then there was the long move to Auburn, Washington, on US 2, the northernmost highway across the United States. Ray drove all the way. One strange thing occurred when we started climbing the Rocky Mountains. He said the car was pulling awfully hard even when we were on a downhill run. We all looked and agreed. Dad told him to pull down a little farther to an obvious downhill slope. This time he stopped on the roadside and the car started backing up hill. Dad thought it was divine intervention and told him to turn around and go back to the last junction, that we would take the southerly route around Glacier. This phenomenon occurs when traveling west across the plains. The inner ear adjusts to that gradual climb; when you get to the mountains, it distorts one's plane. But Dad liked the divine intervention theory. As a matter of fact, the 1936 Graham car which we drove shimmied, so we stopped at a garage and had it fixed for the rest of the journey.

AUBURN: Ray was a Junior at Auburn High School. He was poor at math so the school let him take extra English and composition classes and skip the math. Ray didn't attend his senior year. Don remembers that he had been appointed Student Body President because of an essay he wrote; he had entered a national contest of some sort and came in third in the nation. No money prize, just a certificate or ribbon or something. So the faculty at Auburn appointed him student body president for his senior year. He also wrote a column for the local paper. But the big money (80 cents an hour) beckoned, and he heeded its call. Mom must have been shattered about that. Dad must have thought an education wasn't worth 80 cents an hour. Ray never graduated, and never attended school after that.

Beverly and Ray, Auburn, 1942

Ray got his first job in Auburn working at May's Furniture Store and as a driver for the owner. He surprised Mom and Dad with a lamp table and end table with magazine slots on the end. This would have been Christmas, 1941. The lamp table still survives. Mom and dad took it to Muncie when Dad, Mom and Beverly moved there in the late 50's. Herschell inherited it after Dad died and Mom and Beverly moved back to Portland. When Herschell went to the rehab center, he divested himself of all his possessions and gave me the lamp table. It is the one which Ray bought in 1941. He also worked at a gas station and the Post Office. He worked at the ship yards in Tacoma and for a short while, Dale remembers, at Boeing with Dale.

The war which had begun December 7, 1941, brought about many changes. Floyd was drafted into the navy and wired us that he would be in Portland at a certain time. Ray drove us all down there to visit briefly with Floyd before he shipped out to the Phillipines. Floyd smoked cigarettes then and asked Ray to go into a store to get him a pack. Ray hesitated, knowing that in Dad's family buying cigs was a no-no. Floyd was not dressed to be on the street, so Dad relented and told Ray to go ahead.

Ray was very conscientious about social issues like war and ethnicity. Leading up to the war, Dad preached a pacifist theology based upon the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Ray wrote columns, "Mark My Word" and "Postmark", for the local paper occasionally. One which he wrote took a rather strong pacifist stance, not popular or safe during World War II. Dad advised him not to submit it, that since he was 4F he might be severely criticized.

It was in Auburn that Ray taught me how to drive when I was thirteen. There were two alleys behind our house. He checked out my knowledge of gear shifting, brake, and clutch. Check. He got out, closed the door, and told me to go. I went around the block of the two alleys. But when I turned to come back to the back of our house, I forgot to brake and almost hit the corner of the neighbor's house. I flattened her hydrangea. I still remember the look on Ray's face as he shouted at me to put on the brakes.

Ray, age 18 or so

Ray and Irene, 1943-44?

Ray wrote this on the back of the photo when he sent it to Herschell

Don remembers Ray and Dale driving us into Seattle to watch the Seattle Rainiers play baseball. Beverly says she remembers going too. Don remembers visiting the Boeing factory in Renton, where they were building Flying Fortresses, or maybe Superforts. Our home was on the flight path, so planes often flew low over us.

Ray did a lot of typing for Dad, who was contributing editor to our national church magazine. One time Dad read one of his articles and found that it had been changed considerably. Ray had edited it when he typed it. Dad did not think his changes made sense. I became the next typist with instruction not to edit his pearls of wisdom.

We sang together as a family; Ray was a bass, Don Alto, I was tenor, Mom soprano. Dale was a good baritone as well as an artist; he did "chalk talks" sometimes during Dad's sermons and sang with the rest of us. All of us boys ended up basses which terminated the family trio/quartet/quintet (depending on who was present).

Ray was very fatherly to us younger boys (Jesse, Donald, Herbert). So much so that on one occasion a neighbor boy with whom we had played for several years thought that Ray was our father, and Dad our grandfather. He was a wonderful big brother to us at that stage of our life. With Dad being infirm, Ray often was in charge.

Clyde was born January 13, 1946, in Seattle. Don remembers when Irene moved back to Minnesota. Later Ray came by to visit us, but left without saying goodbye. A few days later he sent a card from Minnesota. He did not like goodbyes. David was born in Roseau, Minnesota, January 22, 1947.

In the middle of my Junior year, January, 1947, we moved to Caldwell, Idaho.

CALDWELL: I remember Ray moving to Idaho with his family sometime in 1947 or '48. Dad, Mom, Don, Herb and Beverly went to Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky for the summer. I remember especially talking to Irene who chaperoned me while the folks were away. There is a picture of all of us boys taken at the time of my graduation, June, 1948. Christmas 1948 I was in Portland at Warner Pacific College. I flew home with the intention of riding the bus back. For a Christmas present Ray bought me a return train ticket.

Don, Dale, Jess, Herb, and Ray. This is the last time we were all together. 1948.

I have to depend upon Beverly and Don for this segment of the history. When I suggested to my brothers and Beverly that we compile a remembrance of Ray, Beverly thought she would have so many of him, but they were not specific events. She remembers him as a benevolent presence, kind and soft spoken. She had many more memories of Irene who she thought was one of the kindest people ever in her life. In Caldwell, for Dale's wedding, Irene asked her to take Clyde and David home and change their outfits after the wedding, which made her feel so grownup. She remembers being replaced as the baby by Amanda.

Clyde Warren, Amanda Lee, David Ray: Ray and Irene's children. 1949 or so.

When Ray and Irene first came to Caldwell, they lived with us - they took the back bedroom with the three kids, Beverly slept on the floor in Mom's room, Dale and I slept in the cellar. Don and Herb slept on the front porch. I don't know how long they stayed. Ray bought a little drive-in restaurant, the Inn & Out, in Caldwell, which kept him way too busy but didn't earn him much money. Dale and I went to college in Portland. Dale remembers that he and I were in Portland when we got word that Ray had been diagnosed with diabetes.

Don adds: It must have been difficult for Ray to see us younger boys go off to college, since he was the intellectual of the family. In 1948 Jess left for college. Early in 1949, Dale did the same. Later in 1949, I graduated from high school and started college. Herb, who worked at the restaurant with Ray, would be graduating from high school soon, and no doubt talked to Ray about going to college. And there was Ray, stuck in that restaurant, with no hope of going to college himself--and he had been the good student, the author and public speaker, the brains of the family (so we all thought).

Beverly doesn't remember anything about Ray himself while he was in Caldwell, but remembers the day she found out he had left. Mom and Dad were talking about it; Beverly asked what they were talking about, and Mom said, "Ray left" but didn't want to say anything else. So it was a long time before she understood what had happened. Nothing was ever the same with Mom and Dad after that; it was like a miasma was laid over them. It always seemed as if Dad especially grieved more for himself than for Irene and their children. He often commented that Ray left without knowing whether Dad lived or died (he had one of his heart episodes shortly before Ray left). Beverly doubts if a day went by the rest of her life that Mom didn't mourn him. What surprised us as we collected these memories was to realize how young Ray was when he left; we thought of him as a mature adult, but really, he was just a young man. Irene was young too and faced all of the problems he left behind, courageously raising her kids.

Mom, Dad, Don, Herschell (in front), Herb, Floyd, Naomi, and Beverly in front. 1947, in Muncie, Indiana.

Reflections: Desertion of a sibling or parent is somewhat like suicide. But with suicide there is finality. With desertion there is always the hope that the deserter will return and be reconciled with the family. There are nagging questions about why the warning signs were not seen. And for the young children there is that troubling self-doubt that somehow they were to blame.

But the fault is in the deserter - an inability to confront problems, the illusion that you can run away from your problems, escapism. We can put this incomplete story into the equation of Ray's desertion as a way of understanding his fatal choices without excusing them. But at least we now know that his troubled life ended long ago. I hope we can now be at peace.

Don asks, "Could it be that 'desertion' is too harsh a word? Here was a troubled young man, overburdened with responsibilities, with no education or hopes of getting one, in a dead-end job he couldn't escape -- and then he comes down with diabetes, a life-threatening and very unpleasant disease. Maybe in his mind he didn't 'desert' his family; maybe he felt he was affording them the opportunity for a better life. I wouldn't be too judgmental about him."

Friday, August 17, 2001, I received notice from Tom Matlock, Amanda's son, that a death certificate for Ray had been found primarily through the efforts of Clyde and him. It matches with Ray's Social Security number and is almost certainly that of Windsor Ray Mark, last heard from in December, 1949. The certificate is in the name of one Ray Windsor Marsh, born July 17, 1924, died November 23, 1963. Occupation listed as cook with 20 years in the restaurant business, last place of employment, Al's Broiler. He died of diabetic complications in Los Angeles, California. The immediate cause of death was uremia due to diabetic glomerulosclerosis. He was cremated and his final resting place has not been found.

Tom Matlock, Ray's grandson, writes: Clyde and Pat (Clyde's wife) deserve the credit for finally solving this riddle. Irene (Clyde's mother) found the Social Security number, then Pat and Clyde got the place of death from that info. They requested the death certificate in the name of Mark and I requested it as Marsh. It was a 50/50 chance and I happened to recieve the right one. Pat and Clyde spent the time and money over the last couple of years following dead ends but the Social Security number was the key.

With respect to a fitting memorial, one of the first scriptures which came to mind was from Ecclesiasticus:

Let us praise our ancestors

In their successive generations

Some were honored by their contemporaries

And were the glory of their day.

Some of them left a name behind them,

So that their praises are still sung.

While others have left no memory,

And disappeared as though they had not existed,

They are now as though they had never been.

Ecclesiasticus 44:1, 7-9.

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