Finding Maxie Smith

Also, I have to admit I have been a little distracted with my great-grandfather, Maxie Smith.  Maxie appears to have been a vampire. I got distracted one day looking for records for him. I am not even sure what caused the distraction.  But next thing I knew, I was knee deep in naval ship records from WWII on Fold3.com.  Through those, I was able to piece together a large portion of his life month-by-month. 

Vampire. Right. You are probably still caught up on that comment. Maxie was born in 1926. He lied about his age and signed up for the Navy shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in WWII, at the ripe old age of 15-years-old.  Maxie came from a family of drinkers (ok, outright alcoholics) and I am sure being in the Navy at such a young age did not help things.  He served in the Navy two separate times, and if a photo I have is to be believed, in the Army (although I cannot find army records and I am starting to wonder if he got kicked out of the Navy the second time for stealing some soldier's uniform and taking his photo in it, but that's a different story).  In the end, he ended up out of the Navy and working as a civilian seaman on civilian ships.  In 1957, he went to Puerto Rico, spent all of his money on alcohol, missed his ship, and ended up living as a transient on the streets of Puerto Rico until he caught pneumonia and died at the old age of 31-years-old.

Enter the vampire scenario. We have no death certificate for him. The description of his body did not match his description. The family was not allowed to open the casket. And in the end all we have is a letter from another homeless man informing us that Maxie had died. That's it. Add to that the fact that Maxie's father has no death certificate (in 1958, when there were indeed death certificates) and his wife has a death certificate, but no burial record, despite us knowing where she was buried, and I have concluded that they were vampires. That's the only reasonable explanation, right?

And I love Maxie. I never met him. He was an alcoholic. He died long before I was born. I don't know why I love him so much. But I do. So I tend to get on streaks where I madly search for records on him, death, Navy, Army, arrests (yes, arrests), anything.

And that is another reason I have not posted about the Lears in a while.