The Hunt for Melanie and Bill Smith – Our Cousins. By Mark Smith
Hunting for living relatives can be just as difficult, or even more so, than for deceased ones. Privacy requirements often mask vital statistics information so as to make finding and identifying very frustrating. But perseverance and creativity can produce successful results. It's detective work at its finest.
In the case of Melanie and Bill, their father (William Melvin Smith, son of Robert Warren Smith and Violet Louie Worsley Smith) had died in 1948 while on a commercial flight to Chicago. (Melanie would later tell me that he may have suffered coronary thrombosis while disembarking.) He had married their mother, Jean Easley, in 1942 and the children were not much more than toddlers when he died. He had joined the Army Air Corp about the time he married during WWII and left active duty after the war. But he later reentered the Corp in 1945 which later became the Air Force and was a Master Sergeant at the time of his death. He may have been working on highly classified projects as it took three days for the airlines to identify him. He was buried in Roosevelt Memorial Park in southern California. So his life ended early and now not very much is known about him.
He and Jean had two children, Melanie Jean born in 1943 and James William in 1944 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Jean had gone there earlier with the children to care for her mother. At the latter end of her life, Jean lived in McNeil and Magnolia Arkansas. She died in Magnolia in August of 1985. Melanie and Bill did visit Smith family members in California about 1960, including an evening in Chinatown. And Don and Virginia Smith visited Jean and Bill in Little Rock in 1961 and then to Houston to visit Melanie who was attending high school there. Bill and his family visited Smith relatives in California in the 1970s. Melanie's daughter, Lydia, visited her grandfather's grave site about 2005, but didn't know how to connect with any family there.
So the communication had broken down and we all lost contact with each other for nearly 40 years. It became an unbearable frustration for me to not know where they were or how they were doing. Remembering my dad's fondness for Mel, I just had to find them to bring the family back together.
I couldn't seem to find any birth or death records for any of them and census records for Jean as a child seemed to have been miss-extracted and didn't seem to include her as an adult. The children were born too recently to have any record that I could find. Then I started searching some of the genealogical websites.
On www.ancestry.com I found an extract of Mel's WWII Enlistment Record that states "born 1907, married, 3 years of college, civil occupation of painter and railway station agent, enlisted on 19 Nov 1945 from Pulaski County, Arkansas, in the Air Corp Branch of the Army as a Master Sergeant, for the Hawaiian Department." Attempting to obtain a copy of his service record from the Military Records Center in St Louis, I learned that a fire had destroyed his era of records. Although I couldn't find his grave site listed on www.findagrave.com, I did learn how to contact the cemetery where he was buried but they had only headstone information.
At www.rootsweb.com I found the birth, marriage, and death dates of Jean and the full names of her children. I was ecstatic with these new clues. I started calling all the Melanie and Bill Smiths in Little Rock and even Houston that I could find in the online phone book. That long-shot effort proved fruitless.
Then I emailed the three contributors to the Easley line on rootsweb. Sandra Steele told me about genforum.genealogy.com/easley where I posted a notice about my search. She also gave me an email address for a Virginia Easley Demarco who didn't have useful information. John Easley said that he would be in touch when he had a chance to get to his records. But pay dirt came when Larry Taylor referred me to his source, a cousin of the two children, Betty Waggoner. I actually got very nervous and delayed calling for a little while. I wanted so badly for this to be a good news call for them. Betty is now 80 and the one who Melanie had lived with in Texas while attending Sweeney High school. She spoke nothing but the praise for Mel that had been expressed in earlier years by her mother, Ruth Branch, who is Jean's sister and had passed in 2006 at age 100. It was an emotional moment for me as she shared their family's love for Mel and I shared how badly we wanted to include Melanie and Bill in our family circle.
Within a few minutes I was on the phone with Melanie and then Bill. They were both so pleased that we have finally re-connected with them. They want to attend our next family reunion, with their families if at all possible. They want to know more about their father – stories, pictures, and anything that would help to understand who he was since they were so young when he died. And they would be happy to hear from any of us Smithies.
Hunting for living relatives can be just as difficult, or even more so, than for deceased ones. Privacy requirements often mask vital statistics information so as to make finding and identifying very frustrating. But perseverance and creativity can produce successful results. It's detective work at its finest.
In the case of Melanie and Bill, their father (William Melvin Smith, son of Robert Warren Smith and Violet Louie Worsley Smith) had died in 1948 while on a commercial flight to Chicago. (Melanie would later tell me that he may have suffered coronary thrombosis while disembarking.) He had married their mother, Jean Easley, in 1942 and the children were not much more than toddlers when he died. He had joined the Army Air Corp about the time he married during WWII and left active duty after the war. But he later reentered the Corp in 1945 which later became the Air Force and was a Master Sergeant at the time of his death. He may have been working on highly classified projects as it took three days for the airlines to identify him. He was buried in Roosevelt Memorial Park in southern California. So his life ended early and now not very much is known about him.
He and Jean had two children, Melanie Jean born in 1943 and James William in 1944 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Jean had gone there earlier with the children to care for her mother. At the latter end of her life, Jean lived in McNeil and Magnolia Arkansas. She died in Magnolia in August of 1985. Melanie and Bill did visit Smith family members in California about 1960, including an evening in Chinatown. And Don and Virginia Smith visited Jean and Bill in Little Rock in 1961 and then to Houston to visit Melanie who was attending high school there. Bill and his family visited Smith relatives in California in the 1970s. Melanie's daughter, Lydia, visited her grandfather's grave site about 2005, but didn't know how to connect with any family there.
So the communication had broken down and we all lost contact with each other for nearly 40 years. It became an unbearable frustration for me to not know where they were or how they were doing. Remembering my dad's fondness for Mel, I just had to find them to bring the family back together.
I couldn't seem to find any birth or death records for any of them and census records for Jean as a child seemed to have been miss-extracted and didn't seem to include her as an adult. The children were born too recently to have any record that I could find. Then I started searching some of the genealogical websites.
On www.ancestry.com I found an extract of Mel's WWII Enlistment Record that states "born 1907, married, 3 years of college, civil occupation of painter and railway station agent, enlisted on 19 Nov 1945 from Pulaski County, Arkansas, in the Air Corp Branch of the Army as a Master Sergeant, for the Hawaiian Department." Attempting to obtain a copy of his service record from the Military Records Center in St Louis, I learned that a fire had destroyed his era of records. Although I couldn't find his grave site listed on www.findagrave.com, I did learn how to contact the cemetery where he was buried but they had only headstone information.
At www.rootsweb.com I found the birth, marriage, and death dates of Jean and the full names of her children. I was ecstatic with these new clues. I started calling all the Melanie and Bill Smiths in Little Rock and even Houston that I could find in the online phone book. That long-shot effort proved fruitless.
Then I emailed the three contributors to the Easley line on rootsweb. Sandra Steele told me about genforum.genealogy.com/easley where I posted a notice about my search. She also gave me an email address for a Virginia Easley Demarco who didn't have useful information. John Easley said that he would be in touch when he had a chance to get to his records. But pay dirt came when Larry Taylor referred me to his source, a cousin of the two children, Betty Waggoner. I actually got very nervous and delayed calling for a little while. I wanted so badly for this to be a good news call for them. Betty is now 80 and the one who Melanie had lived with in Texas while attending Sweeney High school. She spoke nothing but the praise for Mel that had been expressed in earlier years by her mother, Ruth Branch, who is Jean's sister and had passed in 2006 at age 100. It was an emotional moment for me as she shared their family's love for Mel and I shared how badly we wanted to include Melanie and Bill in our family circle.
Within a few minutes I was on the phone with Melanie and then Bill. They were both so pleased that we have finally re-connected with them. They want to attend our next family reunion, with their families if at all possible. They want to know more about their father – stories, pictures, and anything that would help to understand who he was since they were so young when he died. And they would be happy to hear from any of us Smithies.
The Hunt for Melanie and Bill Smith – Our Cousins. By Mark Smith
Hunting for living relatives can be just as difficult, or even more so, than for deceased ones. Privacy requirements often mask vital statistics information so as to make finding and identifying very frustrating. But perseverance and creativity can produce successful results. It's detective work at its finest.
In the case of Melanie and Bill, their father (William Melvin Smith, son of Robert Warren Smith and Violet Louie Worsley Smith) had died in 1948 while on a commercial flight to Chicago. (Melanie would later tell me that he may have suffered coronary thrombosis while disembarking.) He had married their mother, Jean Easley, in 1942 and the children were not much more than toddlers when he died. He had joined the Army Air Corp about the time he married during WWII and left active duty after the war. But he later reentered the Corp in 1945 which later became the Air Force and was a Master Sergeant at the time of his death. He may have been working on highly classified projects as it took three days for the airlines to identify him. He was buried in Roosevelt Memorial Park in southern California. So his life ended early and now not very much is known about him.
He and Jean had two children, Melanie Jean born in 1943 and James William in 1944 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Jean had gone there earlier with the children to care for her mother. At the latter end of her life, Jean lived in McNeil and Magnolia Arkansas. She died in Magnolia in August of 1985. Melanie and Bill did visit Smith family members in California about 1960, including an evening in Chinatown. And Don and Virginia Smith visited Jean and Bill in Little Rock in 1961 and then to Houston to visit Melanie who was attending high school there. Bill and his family visited Smith relatives in California in the 1970s. Melanie's daughter, Lydia, visited her grandfather's grave site about 2005, but didn't know how to connect with any family there.
So the communication had broken down and we all lost contact with each other for nearly 40 years. It became an unbearable frustration for me to not know where they were or how they were doing. Remembering my dad's fondness for Mel, I just had to find them to bring the family back together.
I couldn't seem to find any birth or death records for any of them and census records for Jean as a child seemed to have been miss-extracted and didn't seem to include her as an adult. The children were born too recently to have any record that I could find. Then I started searching some of the genealogical websites.
On www.ancestry.com I found an extract of Mel's WWII Enlistment Record that states "born 1907, married, 3 years of college, civil occupation of painter and railway station agent, enlisted on 19 Nov 1945 from Pulaski County, Arkansas, in the Air Corp Branch of the Army as a Master Sergeant, for the Hawaiian Department." Attempting to obtain a copy of his service record from the Military Records Center in St Louis, I learned that a fire had destroyed his era of records. Although I couldn't find his grave site listed on www.findagrave.com, I did learn how to contact the cemetery where he was buried but they had only headstone information.
At www.rootsweb.com I found the birth, marriage, and death dates of Jean and the full names of her children. I was ecstatic with these new clues. I started calling all the Melanie and Bill Smiths in Little Rock and even Houston that I could find in the online phone book. That long-shot effort proved fruitless.
Then I emailed the three contributors to the Easley line on rootsweb. Sandra Steele told me about genforum.genealogy.com/easley where I posted a notice about my search. She also gave me an email address for a Virginia Easley Demarco who didn't have useful information. John Easley said that he would be in touch when he had a chance to get to his records. But pay dirt came when Larry Taylor referred me to his source, a cousin of the two children, Betty Waggoner. I actually got very nervous and delayed calling for a little while. I wanted so badly for this to be a good news call for them. Betty is now 80 and the one who Melanie had lived with in Texas while attending Sweeney High school. She spoke nothing but the praise for Mel that had been expressed in earlier years by her mother, Ruth Branch, who is Jean's sister and had passed in 2006 at age 100. It was an emotional moment for me as she shared their family's love for Mel and I shared how badly we wanted to include Melanie and Bill in our family circle.
Within a few minutes I was on the phone with Melanie and then Bill. They were both so pleased that we have finally re-connected with them. They want to attend our next family reunion, with their families if at all possible. They want to know more about their father – stories, pictures, and anything that would help to understand who he was since they were so young when he died. And they would be happy to hear from any of us Smithies.
Hunting for living relatives can be just as difficult, or even more so, than for deceased ones. Privacy requirements often mask vital statistics information so as to make finding and identifying very frustrating. But perseverance and creativity can produce successful results. It's detective work at its finest.
In the case of Melanie and Bill, their father (William Melvin Smith, son of Robert Warren Smith and Violet Louie Worsley Smith) had died in 1948 while on a commercial flight to Chicago. (Melanie would later tell me that he may have suffered coronary thrombosis while disembarking.) He had married their mother, Jean Easley, in 1942 and the children were not much more than toddlers when he died. He had joined the Army Air Corp about the time he married during WWII and left active duty after the war. But he later reentered the Corp in 1945 which later became the Air Force and was a Master Sergeant at the time of his death. He may have been working on highly classified projects as it took three days for the airlines to identify him. He was buried in Roosevelt Memorial Park in southern California. So his life ended early and now not very much is known about him.
He and Jean had two children, Melanie Jean born in 1943 and James William in 1944 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Jean had gone there earlier with the children to care for her mother. At the latter end of her life, Jean lived in McNeil and Magnolia Arkansas. She died in Magnolia in August of 1985. Melanie and Bill did visit Smith family members in California about 1960, including an evening in Chinatown. And Don and Virginia Smith visited Jean and Bill in Little Rock in 1961 and then to Houston to visit Melanie who was attending high school there. Bill and his family visited Smith relatives in California in the 1970s. Melanie's daughter, Lydia, visited her grandfather's grave site about 2005, but didn't know how to connect with any family there.
So the communication had broken down and we all lost contact with each other for nearly 40 years. It became an unbearable frustration for me to not know where they were or how they were doing. Remembering my dad's fondness for Mel, I just had to find them to bring the family back together.
I couldn't seem to find any birth or death records for any of them and census records for Jean as a child seemed to have been miss-extracted and didn't seem to include her as an adult. The children were born too recently to have any record that I could find. Then I started searching some of the genealogical websites.
On www.ancestry.com I found an extract of Mel's WWII Enlistment Record that states "born 1907, married, 3 years of college, civil occupation of painter and railway station agent, enlisted on 19 Nov 1945 from Pulaski County, Arkansas, in the Air Corp Branch of the Army as a Master Sergeant, for the Hawaiian Department." Attempting to obtain a copy of his service record from the Military Records Center in St Louis, I learned that a fire had destroyed his era of records. Although I couldn't find his grave site listed on www.findagrave.com, I did learn how to contact the cemetery where he was buried but they had only headstone information.
At www.rootsweb.com I found the birth, marriage, and death dates of Jean and the full names of her children. I was ecstatic with these new clues. I started calling all the Melanie and Bill Smiths in Little Rock and even Houston that I could find in the online phone book. That long-shot effort proved fruitless.
Then I emailed the three contributors to the Easley line on rootsweb. Sandra Steele told me about genforum.genealogy.com/easley where I posted a notice about my search. She also gave me an email address for a Virginia Easley Demarco who didn't have useful information. John Easley said that he would be in touch when he had a chance to get to his records. But pay dirt came when Larry Taylor referred me to his source, a cousin of the two children, Betty Waggoner. I actually got very nervous and delayed calling for a little while. I wanted so badly for this to be a good news call for them. Betty is now 80 and the one who Melanie had lived with in Texas while attending Sweeney High school. She spoke nothing but the praise for Mel that had been expressed in earlier years by her mother, Ruth Branch, who is Jean's sister and had passed in 2006 at age 100. It was an emotional moment for me as she shared their family's love for Mel and I shared how badly we wanted to include Melanie and Bill in our family circle.
Within a few minutes I was on the phone with Melanie and then Bill. They were both so pleased that we have finally re-connected with them. They want to attend our next family reunion, with their families if at all possible. They want to know more about their father – stories, pictures, and anything that would help to understand who he was since they were so young when he died. And they would be happy to hear from any of us Smithies.
Inscription
William Melvin Smith
Son
1907 - 1948
Gravesite Details
Verified by Kathleen A McLaughlin of Roosevelt Memorial Park
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Explore more
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
