The Letter

continued

would crisscross the ocean between the Schindler Agency and affiliates in France or Spain or England until the identification was complete: The Comte de Merveau, a.k.a. Sir Neville Burne-Williams, is one Henry Bates, born I903 in Milltown, Kansas, wanted in Indiana on five counts of desertion and bigamy.

Perhaps it was this that made Daddy's tone more confrontational than cordial when the two families met over the phone that evening. The conversation, as recalled by the four participants, went like this:

"This is Walter Schindler in New York. I want to speak to Lewis Sherrill."

"This is Lewis Sherrill."

"Mr. Sherrill, I understand that your son wants to marry my daughter.”

A very, very long silence from Louisville. Then: "I believe you are under a misapprehension, sir. My son is in Geneva, Switzerland."

"So’s my daughter."

And after we'd labored so hard over the letter, this is how John's parents got the news. Daddy's interrogation continued. "What line of work are you in, Mr. Sherrill?"

"I'm dean of the Presbyterian Seminary here. May I ask, sir, what your work is?"

"I'm a private eye."

"Are you, uh..." John's mother faltered, "that is... you and your husband, do you... are you Christians?"

"Why, of course!" said my mother, to whom "Christian" meant someone who donated clothes to the Salvation Army.

And four very relieved parents went to bed that night.

The relationship between our two fathers, which began so inauspiciously, turned out to be one of life's happy ironies. Two weeks after that phone call, the Sherrills traveled to New York to meet my family Before long a deep friendship grew between the two men -- the scholarly theologian with an alphabet of advanced degrees after his name, and the self-educated and agnostic New Yorker. It would be Lewis Sherrill, seven years later, who would officiate at Daddy's funeral.

It's the question John's mother asked during that telephone conversation, though, that tells me about the people John and I were in 1947. Even if our letter had reached Louisville before the call came from New York, she would have had to ask it. In the introductions that we thought covered everything that mattered, we'd never thought to mention religion.