Uncle Bub

by | Feb 4, 2023 | Don, Pat

I was extremely lucky growing up.  I had three families, not two, to be a part of.  I had the usual mother’s family and father’s family, but also my sister’s other family, that of her mother Dorothy Adams Goddeau.  (You’ll note that whenever I refer to Pat, it’s as my sister not my half-sister.  For a long time growing up I didn’t know that she was my half-sister and, even after I realized that, it never changed the fact that she was my sister – period.  That is true today and will always be true.)  While young, I never knew I had more than the usually allotted number of families, I just felt all the love of a large group of great people.  One of these people was “Uncle Bub”.

Uncle Bub was Milton Adams, Pat’s mother’s brother.  The reason he stands out is that when I was very young growing up, during the 2nd world war, he was my American hero.  He came to visit us a couple of times on Danker Avenue, where I lived until age 4 or so.  When he came, he was usually in uniform.  What young boy, during that time of great American patriotism, wouldn’t have thought he was somebody very special.  On top of the uniform, every time he came he would bring something special; a small, but very important gift.  (This habit was probably in his genes – every time his mother, Grandma Adams, came to visit she always brought her shopping bag, filled with goodies for each of us kids).  The one gift I especially remember was a postcard sized plasticene compartmentalized envelope with  every denomination of French coin plus a one franc note.  What a treasure!  It still is.  A couple of years ago I gave it to my grandson, Jack, with the understanding that it must be jealously guarded because of it’s great importance.

Uncle Bub always stayed in touch with our family, especially with Pat, making sure that she stayed a part of her mother’s family.  But I wasn’t left out.  In 1968, not long after Grandma Adams passed away, I received a letter from Bub with a check inside.  He explained that shortly before Grandma Adams died she asked him to make sure I received something from her estate.  She told him that she had set up savings accounts for each of her grandchildren, but had never gotten around to setting one up for me – she wanted to make sure that each of her grandchildren were treated the same; he didn’t forget.  That’s MY Uncle Bub!