Paul Collis
Walter Jarmain was my only uncle. Born at the beginning of the Great Depression, he grew up alongside my mother, Patricia, spending his teenage years in a Britain under siege. His father, an army Sergeant and a weapons instructor, was stationed in Dover during the Battle of Britain, and in Newcastle when the shipyards were bombed. Evacuated to a town far from the air raids, he soon ran away from his host family who, he said, treated him less than kindly. So my mother brought him back to his loving parents and the close-knit camaraderie of the married quarters of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. Where, some time later, he was passing under the bedroom window of another boy, a pal who called out his name. Wally looked up, and the boy pretended to shoot him – he had just discovered his father’s target rifle, illicitly kept in the house. Unfortunately, the rifle was loaded. Luckily for Wally, and for us, Wally’s ready smile revealed two front teeth strong enough to deflect a .22 bullet.
No wonder he took ship for America.
He and Joan left London when I was 5, but he wrote regularly and kept us all informed of his life in Ohio. They visited when they could and, in accents that were no longer 100 percent English, they told us tales of highballs, color TVs, cars with fins and roads with four lanes in each direction. At a time when our coal was still being delivered by a horse and cart, it seemed to me that Lakewood must be another Hollywood.
When I eventually made the trip to Cleveland for the first time, for Thanksgiving in 1978, I saw that Wally had truly embraced, and been embraced by, his family in America. Queenie and John and their four daughters are a dynasty in themselves, and Wally and Joan and Tim have a wider circle of friends than I can imagine. He seemed to know everyone on the street. (Then again, my mother once said he’d talk to a floorboard if it creaked.)
He was blessed with Joan, a wonderful wife and partner, and Tim, a gregarious and dutiful son. I don’t really know if there is such a thing as The American Dream but, if there is, I think my uncle must have lived it.
I’ll miss him.
Paul Collis.
