Easter Bonnet Curse Words

By Vivian Fulk January 26, 2003

Easter time in Pensacola, Florida was stunning with the azaleas and daffodils blooming. Birds and bees were out in their full regalia as was I in my yellow Easter Bonnet, fluffy fanny bloomers and yellow puffy Easter dress with the big yellow fanny bow. The Easter outfit was completed with my black patent leather strapped shoes with matching yellow frilly socks. My mother curled my long strawberry blond golden locks into sausage curls that cascaded down my back from under my Easter bonnet that tied under my chin in yet another big yellow bow. I was all of three years old with four older brothers age eight, ten, twelve and fifteen that completely adored their living doll little sister. I also had the adulation of my father that posed his picture perfect family in front of the azalea and daffodil clad yard. My mind’s eye remembers the vivid yellow and fuchsia but the pictures as I look at them now are black and white. Something other than the color is also missing.

Even at age forty-three as I look at these four decade old photos, I can only think of the family decimation and spiral of chaos that ended with complete upheaval in my fragile third year of life. But by God I knew how to turn a head. And I knew a lot of sailor cuss words because my father was a sailor and talked like one to my mother and my brothers that year. But he never talked to me that way. I was his golden child, a golden thread of sanity, the breadcrumbs left in the woods he would use to find his way back home. My father was court martialed that year.

John Guy Groves was an athlete and boxer in college and he used his body’s skill as a lethal weapon against his commanding officer, his wife and sons. But he had a good reason. There’s always a reason and only time revealed it. The details I share with you one short story. My father was a Navy pilot. He was Top Gun incarnate. He recanted this story to me with fire in his eyes and belly: He was Lieutenant Groves as first co-pilot and his commanding officer was the flight engineer during a crash landing in fog and icy conditions with 36 men in the cargo bay of a Super Constellation, ‘Super Connie’, C-121 cargo plane landing in Argentia, Newfounland April1962. During the landing, they could not get the plane to stop on the slick runway and it continued to the end and nose flipped at the end of the runway. The flight engineer kicked out the front windshield at a fissure and ran away from the soon to be inflamed plane. But instead of following his commanding officer, my father went into the rear of the upside down plane to assist the crewmembers to come forward and out the front windshield to safety. Several weeks later, back in the states, all were celebrating their luck and good fortune. They drank too much and the infamous flight engineer commanding officer must have said something and my father called him a coward for the coward he was. So these two officers started fighting: Not a good idea. My dad went to Rice University in Texas on an ROTC and boxing scholarship. He was on the Navy’s boxing team and stayed in good fighting shape the 18 years in the service. He was indignant, self-righteous, drunk and in his men’s and his own eyes- a hero. He beat the bloody pulp out of that flight engineer--almost killed him if it were not for someone that stopped him. So, we were court martialed.

In a strange twist of fate and ultimate irony, my mother has a newspaper clipping of my father in a business suit receiving the Medal for Heroism on board the USS Tweedy awarded by President Eisenhower for heroism in 1963. It reads, “Mrs. John G. Groves Jr., pins the Navy-Marine Corps Medal on her husband during ceremonies aboard the USS Tweedy at Pensacola Naval Air Station Friday. Groves, a Pensacola insurance man, was awarded the medal by President Eisenhower for heroism in connection with emergency landing of his aircraft at Argentia, Newfounland, last April 2. Groves was a navy flier at the time. The citation read …” Lieutenant Groves as first co-pilot… aided in the removal of the flight engineer” from the burning plane and “returned to assist a crewmember” from the plane “seconds before the aircraft exploded.” (U.S. Navy photo)

For eighteen years my mom had been the loyal navy wife going to every port of call. She had his sons without him while he was away for six month’s duty at sea. She caravanned four boys across this country and finally had her precious little girl that she could dress up at Easter. Then he had to go and blow it and get court marshaled. He could have retired in two more years. He received a general discharge with no military benefits and became an insurance salesman. It was very deflating to say the least to go from a hero to an insurance salesman in one year. My mom said his manhood left him that year. I didn’t know what that meant then. I do now. Mom went back to nursing and I went to day care. It broke her heart and it was entirely his fault according to mom.

Three years later, I celebrated and shared my sixth birthday cake with my brothers and my divorcee mother on a new kind of plane--a new commercial jet plane going to live with mom’s sister in California. The last plane my father flew was designed in the mid 50s and that ‘Super Connie’ C-121 class airplane had a short service life too due to the fact that the jet age came along. My father’s service to his country had made us who we were and like the airplanes of the era, we too had to move on.

I left my daddy, the azaleas, the south and my Easter bonnet. But by God, it was the Age of Aquarius, the jet age 60’s, my mom was a modern, liberated divorcee, I knew how to turn a head, and I knew a lot of sailor cuss words. Evolution is painful. By today’s standards, my father was a chauvinist, my mom was naive, I was a modest child and my rude cuss words seem tame compared to the horror, sex and violence seen today. In spite of it all, have I grown and evolved the past 40 years? Sometimes I don’t think so and sometimes I do. I know I forgive easier, understand more and love in spite of outward circumstances. Oh shit yeah, I’ve evolved. Rest in peace, daddy.

p.s. Dad died March 2, 1997. His burial viewing was in Pensacola, Florida on March 4th but he was from Texas and like all good Texans wanted to be buried there. So my brother, Naval Officer Lieutenant Commander Gary Otis Groves and I trekked across the south on highway 90 to Houston to bury dad. My favorite clean joke has ALWAYS been - “What day of the year commands you to do something?” March 4th.