Not Forgotten

Otis Robert Cather never married. He wasn’t a father. He was a brother and he was a son. He was the youngest of six children. He was my uncle. We never met. He was a casualty of WWII. I always thought he died on Omaha Beach. Recently, I learned he was killed inland, the following day.

My father always had a picture of Otis in his Army uniform. He was younger, yet he could have been my father’s twin. I don’t remember my dad talking about him very much, perhaps it was too painful, or perhaps I don’t remember because that was before I developed an interest in family history. Now that I want to know more, the storytellers have all gone away, or so I thought.

While having a conversation with one of my uncles, I discovered my mother’s younger brother, Junior, knew Uncle Otis. In fact, they were good friends. I’m not sure how Otis’s name came up in conversation, but it did. As Junior remembered his friend, he turned to stare outside. He started talking. I listened.

Junior described Otis as a quiet, personable young man. They used to run around together when they were neighbors. Otis lived on my Uncle Rollie Cather’s farm, and Junior lived down the road on the Fort Place. Once they were riding their bicycles over to the old Cather home place, several miles away. On the way back, they stopped to cool off in Muddy Creek. Beneath the bridge, they found an abandoned boat pulled up on the bank. The boat had a hole in it, but that didn’t stop them from having an adventure. They put mud and weeds in the hole, loaded their bikes, and started off toward home. When the mud washed out of the hole, they stopped to add more. They made it to the bridge east of Aunt Lucille & Uncle Rex Starwalt’s house, tied the boat up, and rode their bicycles the rest of the way home. They planned to fix the boat and use it, but when they returned to the spot where they left it, it was gone.

It was a simple story of two young men having an adventure, but it added a personal dimension to a relative I only knew from a military portrait. On this Memorial Day weekend, I think of my Uncle Otis. There are more stories, and now that I’ve found a source, I’ll get to hear them.

We must remember to tell our stories, either verbally or by writing them down. Our children and grandchildren may not seem interested now, but someday they will want to know more about their family history.

Story ID:	3915
Written by:	Betty (BJ) Roan (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Family History
Location:	Toledo IL USA
Year:	2008
Person:	Cather