Lester Smith Kingsley, by E. Daniel Kingsley

I told you I was going to start putting this in some kind of order. Here is the first stab at it... #1 Kingsley, Lester Smith... The lowest spot on my genealogy chart not living. Written by my father, his son.

August 20, 2008 Lester Smith Kingsley by E. Daniel Kingsley

Lester Smith Kingsley was my father. He was born 31 Aug 1924, to Ernest Daniel and Grace Smith Kingsley on a farm uphill from Wyoming, county of Wyoming, New York. All the following information came from him or noted references.

Lester attended school there in Wyoming, NY, and worked the farm of his Father his entire life until he left it to buy another farm in Erie County.

Lester worked hard, but his parents had no tolerance for some of the modern world. He did well enough in school. He loved to play basketball, and was hurt during a game. The muscle over the right femur was crushed by the knee of another player, and his parents simply let him get over it. According to Dad, the muscle never healed properly, and when WWII broke out, it disqualified him from enlisting as category 4F. I have heard this may not be quite so, as he was also eligible for a farm waiver from the draft. Lester limped around on that leg but did OK.

He married (living) Marsh of Marilla, Erie County, NY in 1946 and attended Cornell University in order to pursue Veterinary Science, but ran out of money. He did however get medical treatment for his leg… they wrapped a hot wire around his leg and kneaded that muscle over months, according to him, until they finally got it to sort of grow back together. He limped the rest of his life, but he always got around well.

My Father and Mother bought an old farm up on Fish Hill Road outside of South Wales, Erie County, NY, and he turned it into a good farm. Dad had arthritis badly, and according to him, he could not always get up off the floor without help in the winter.

They had two boys there , Myself, Ernest Kingsley and (living) Kingsley.

He sold that farm and moved to Phoenix, AZ in 1955.

Sparing you a lot of details, Dad opened a tiny restaurant in Phoenix, and that little business failed quickly.

After the restaurant folded, Dad took a job as an employee at Imperial Valley Hardware, in Somerton Arizona. He worked there and quickly opened a refrigeration business (Kingsley Refrigeration, Somerton, AZ) . They stayed there 12 years.

Dad opened Kingsley Refrigeration and ran a gangbuster business for several years. My sister, (Living) Kingsley was born around there.

The business went bust around 1965 and Dad lost the business, the house and all in bankruptcy between 1966 and 1967. Dad and I packed up and sent Mom and the kids north to NY, stayed the summer and we drove there in August 1966.

We moved to South Wales, and Dad went to work for Mullinburg & Betz in Buffalo, NY as an ammonia refrigeration specialist. He remained there for several years, divorced and went to work for Rich Non-Dairy products. They moved him out to California, where he died in 1978 of cancer of the pancreas. He was always a heavy smoker and drinker, and his untimely death at age of 54 was a direct result.

This summary misses the essence of his life. Dad was a good man, trapped in his habits. He was abusive in his nature due to a brutal upbringing, but he worked very hard and his failure in business left him a broken man. Nothing he did after that showed much success, and in fact he had a nervous breakdown in Buffalo around 1969, and soon after divorced Mom and lived erratically the rest of his life.

I flew my family out to see him before his death, and he did see my two oldest children (Living). He was very sick then, not really interested in my family but only in me and my uniform.
Dec 1978

I wrote an article about Dad’s funeral… see below.
Copyright 1992 ONE TIME NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS ONLY Article # 92-08-Q

E. Daniel Kingsley

From MOBY DAD: Tales of the Great White Father by Dan Kingsley

The Day Dad Died…

I had a peculiar relationship with my Father, and I suppose I will always remember him best because, as a father, I have a terrible inability to relate to my children. I often compare myself to him. I look so much like him that sometimes I want to reach into the mirror and slap him… or hug him… or something…

He was an alcoholic, but not a bad man. He loved his family as well as he could, and gave us as much as he was capable. He worked like a Trojan, and cared about many good causes. But as with all alcoholics, there was a lot of fantasy and untruthful things about his life.

For all of that, I was serving in the Army as a Warrant Officer at Fort Rucker, Alabama in 1978 when my Father called and told me he was dying. I had dearly loved him as a child, but had become terribly disillusioned by him later in life. I didn't believe him. I think my feelings were a coping mechanism… children of alcoholics will relate to this baffling feeling…

I was not able to react to his announcement, though he was clearly expecting me to be upset. I had become completely numbed by our relationship, and pondered over his fate for several days before calling back. He had been "dying" for 20 years, and I didn't see how it was any different now.

Anyway, I packed up my little family, mortgaged my good name and flew to California to visit him.

Dad looked terrible, but not a lot worse than usual. He was awful thin, and was more impatient than ever, having little interest in my wife and less in my children. He was always in pain, and I did what I could to be around without wearing him down. I still could not relate to his suffering, or his illness.

The doctor was absolutely unwilling to speak to me in reference to his real condition, though I asked several very specific questions about 'How bad' and 'How long'. Dad had a lady friend who wouldn't talk about his dying and Dad was pretty vague, except to say he would be cremated. So I left there feeling wasted, as I usually did in our relationship. But it did not occur to me that he would really die. I just could not believe it.

My poor pregnant wife and two babies had a miserable stay. I was glad to leave, and we were glad to get back into the busy flow of Army business.

Four months later he died. I happened to be enroute to Germany, so it was easy to get leave. I raced home to western New York, where he was to be buried. The entire process was a continuance of his life, as though the Great Practical Joker simply had to wring this out into one last gasp of anguish shared with all who loved my Dad.

Someone who knows me, and knows that we do not believe in cremation, asked me how I could let that happen. Without explaining, I was rude and told her to butt out. I never tinker with a dying man’s wish. And I don’t tolerate anyone who presumes to provide that guidance to me.

On the day of his funeral, I ordered flowers from a great florist who had a minor problem… one I did not know about at the time. He was a binge drinker. I arrived to find his wife frantically trying to finish my arrangement. I waited an hour, and she was in tears when she handed them to me. I told her it was OK, that I understood. I didn’t lie. I hated it, but I did understand

perfectly.

I drove the 40 miles to the place of the funeral, late, where the funeral director had not yet located the urn. It was lost in the shipping. I tried to ask how that could happen, and the funeral director treated me like any other inept moron… and was deliberately vague. But he assured they would get it there…

The funeral started late shortly after the urn arrived. When it did arrive, it arrived absolutely without ceremony, or even dignity, enclosed in the strange little pine box (like a tiny orange crate) in which it had been shipped. It was smaller than a shoebox, and came complete with handling tags, address and postage markings. Did I say it arrived without dignity??

A pale little man in a dark suit with a spade went up to the place directly in front of the stone where the urn was to be buried. He eyeballed the little box, and quickly dug out a chunk of dirt, leaving a small hole, barely large enough for the box. He placed the box in it, and covered it with the chunk of dirt. The dirt stuck up obnoxiously, and the man was in a hurry. He stepped on it, jumped once and crushed the dirt into a less formidable chunk. He then tried to smooth it down.

When that clod burst, I could feel the bones in my chest break. It was the nearest thing I had to honest pain the whole day. I felt tears rush to my eyes… I was afraid I would cry… I thought about getting that guy by the throat and inspiring his social skills… when a funny thing happened. That batch of tears stuck right behind my eyes… I couldn’t see well, but I would be damned if I was going to let this get the best of me.

But the day was not over. There was an incident with my Dad as a young man in Arizona, where a young pilot had been killed in a dust-cropper accident. The coroner had signed his death certificate with a pencil, rather than a pen, a sin about which my Father mourned his whole life. “Hope someone thinks enough about me to sign MY burial slip with a PEN…” he would quip from time to time. I had thought about this several times when the driver of the delivery truck came up to me, as Dad’s next of kin… to have me sign for it… and offered me a pencil…

I took it… broke it… ripped the receipt out of his hands and signed it with a pen… gave him the pen… and I cried. It was a wimpy, drippy, stupid flood of feelings. It was for me, to miss whatever he was to me, and it was for him, that he had swung so hard and missed so clean on the important things in life.

I loved my Dad, but nothing about his family seemed normal. There was no sorrow, no mourning. But nice people came to pay respect, lots of honest, hardworking people. What was left of his family was there… but there was no closeness. There are other indicators of unhappiness there I won’t go into, but it is sufficient to say that I have been back only once, to visit my Aunt Issie, the only person at that funeral who really loved him. And to visit his grave. I am ashamed to admit it… but when I went back, someone had to show me where it was.