UPON RETURN

In the summer of 2005, I was treated to the stories of an 89-year old Dr. Haney Cordua from San Diego, California. I noticed him when I walked up as he was having his picture taken under the Rodney Street Laundry sign which hangs in perpetuity on the side building wall. It’s not often that the laundry is a backdrop for a Kodak moment so I immediately became intrigued. I figured this had to be a certain occasion and I approached the threesome: elderly gentleman, younger female photographer and younger male completing the trio, as soon as I saw an opportunity. We were all headed into the building for the same purpose of lunch at the infamous Jailhouse Sandwich Shop and Soup Kitchen.

While we sat at our respective tables I asked if the older man was here for something special. Sure enough he was back to visit his birthplace. He was born in Helena in 1915 but moved away in 1918 and he’d only been back once since then. He readily agreed to talk to me once I explained that I was the resident writer, which he got a kick out of. I quickly saw that he had a keen mind as well as memory. I first asked him where he went after Helena and immediately realized my tactical error because it seems that the earliest memories are often more accessible and we were now starting at age 3 and had 86 more years to go. Fortunately he had a great sense of humor and could spin a good yarn. His family had moved to Florida when he was three in their 5-seat Franklin Chummy Roadster.

“This was 1918 and still close to the Civil War (which, I thought, is still pretty close to some Southern hold-outs). Kids in the neighborhood teased me about being a damn Yankee. My father told them that I had been born in the Montana Territory, he in the Republic of Texas and my mother in Canada and yes, we were damn Yankees and proud of it!”

By 1922 the family had settled in San Diego. He said that there are goofy things that happen in life that for some reason or another stick with you. For example in kindergarten a clown taught his class how to chew milk (he demonstrated and I witnessed his lips together but slightly puffed cheeks moving with the chewing motion inside his mouth). He said that he still thinks about the clown’s lesson whenever he has milk and faces the dilemma of drinking it down or chewing on it a while.

He changed topics to his mother and described how she was going to be a nurse in San Francisco but took one look at a bedpan and decided to enroll in medical school. Later she was taking exams when the great earthquake ruptured the city. After school she had a difficult time finding a job but she sent an application to a Butte mining company under the name O.B. Brazien and was hired. It wasn’t until she arrived that they found out she was a woman. Later in 1918 during the flu epidemic his mother was one of the few doctors that would make house calls.

Harney was named after his father who was named after a General Harney, a famous general in the Civil War (a name I have since run across in researching for a book on San Antonio). His grandfather was Captain May Cordua, served under the general in South Dakota, and had hopes if his child was named Harney that he would be made a major. The promotion didn’t come to fruition but the name stayed in the family.

At that point in our interview Harney’s daughter (the photographer) with a nudge from her husband (the younger man) redirected the conversation back to Helena and their sojourn that day through city and county records to find the addresses of his homes. Remarkably, after 83 years, he still remembered one of the addresses, on Lawrence. The records confirmed it. He laughed when he said that he was going to ring the doorbell of his childhood home and when the inhabitants answered he would say, “Remember me?” He also recalled his walks downtown by himself at three, almost four, where he sat in people’s cars trying to drive them. The owners would call his father to tell him to come and get him…again.

He lived his life in San Diego and, like his mother, had a long career as a physician. Still he was pulled back to his earliest roots. I could tell that he had many stories in him but his daughter and son-in-law sensed that he was tiring so they prepared to go back to theirhotel. I left feeling my life was far richer for having met him.