This is a photo of Perry Haughton Nelson, my mother's father. The family started out in Adams-Friendship, Wisconsin, and moved to Cocoa, Florida, where my grandfather set up his dentist's office in his home. My grandmother sold real estate and drove her own car which apparently was scandalous at the time.
Equally scandalous was my grandfather's love of alcohol and gambling. That's scary when you think about it. A dentist who is imbibing. I never knew the man. He died when my mother was 18 years old. In fact, that was the catalyst that sent her to the North and her destiny, my father.
I only know about him through my mother's view. In her mind, he was the best father on the planet. When her mother and father divorced, my mother wanted to live with him. It seems like that happened for the most part because my grandmother was eventually locked away in a mental institution.
They had the means to build wealth. Both were intelligent, well-educated people. They seemed not to be able to live with each other or without each other. They were married and divorced to each other twice. During the first marriage, my uncle, Perry McConnick Nelson, was born and during the second marriage my mother, Gloria Marilyn Nelson.
I don't know about the triggers or other factors that went into the way the family disintegrated. I only know the after affects and what came after.
My sister took my mother to Cocoa on a visit in the ten years preceding her death. During one of the visits, they stopped at the home and asked to go in and look around. My mother recognized her old room but of course much remodeling had taken place and everything had changed. The current owner of the house told the story of doing a remodel and during they dig they had unearthed multiple empty beer bottles and they always wondered why.
