Every year at this time, traders at the
New York Stock Exchange rededicate
themselves to carrying on the 100-plus-year tradition
of singing "Wait
Till the Sun Shines Nellie." Sung on both Christmas and New
Year's Eve, it's a yearly reminder of another story that originated over 100
years ago.
The story I have to tell begins with a little wagon – handcrafted
in 1913 as a gift by John Henry for his young son Lynn, though his son would
never see it. For years it was stowed away, almost hidden, in John
Henry's barn. When John Henry was much older, he pulled the wagon out
from under the hay in the barn loft and told the story of the wagon to the
first and only person to hear it.
He told a story of meeting and marrying a beautiful young wife,
Nellie, and how she gave birth to their son, Lynn, and then to their daughter,
Nellie May, three years later. Nellie May was a strong, healthy baby.
Her mother, Nellie, as was sadly common in those days, died a few days
after childbirth. John Henry was now a widower, left alone to care for
his two small children.
Somehow he managed, and well into the next summer, with increasing
eagerness, he began working on a wagon for his son's third birthday. As
bees buzzed and August grew hotter, a panic began to bubble, trickle, and then
roar through town – just as the river split it.
A cholera epidemic was sweeping through the community.
Reports of the dead and dying gripped families in fear. Suddenly,
little Lynn was sick and dead before his father had even grasped what was
happening – before he'd even gotten to see his wagon. Anxiously, the
father watched over Nellie May's crib, hoping she would be spared. She
was not. Within one week, he had lost both children. This meant he
had lost his entire family within the space of one year.
A newspaper article told of John Henry's "extreme
bereavement," and the story spread to newspapers around the region.
How did the grief-stricken man find the faith to survive?
Surely it was his faith in God...and eventually the comfort of a widowed
woman with whom he formed a special bond that turned into a lifelong love.
His marriage to Mina was a happy one that would produce five
children. Sometimes, though, when John Henry was especially happy, he
would forget himself and sing the song he used to sing to the bride of his
youth: "Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie." Then he would catch
himself and stop.
Though Mina knew she shouldn't, she couldn't help but feel almost
hurt when she'd hear him singing it. Since she and the children knew of
his first family and the tragedy that had befallen them, the song inevitably
formed an unspoken cloud of sadness as they were reminded of their father's loss
so many years before.
Besides the song that he'd sung to Nellie in happy times, John
Henry never spoke of his first family – that is, until one day when he was in
the barn with his youngest child, Benjamin, now a young man. Perhaps it
was because he was particularly close to Benjamin that he did it, but John
Henry went to the loft and pulled out the little wagon – and talked about Lynn
for the first and last time. Benjamin would be the only one to hear the
story of the ungiven gift and the only one to see the fine handiwork his father
had created for a half-brother he'd never known.
One day, while still a child myself, I saw a news clip of the New
York Stock Exchange and the traders singing "Wait Till the Sun Shines
Nellie." Just beginning my lifelong love of old music, I decided to
learn it and sing it for my parents.
As I began to sing, my parents looked shocked, stopped me, and
wondered where on Earth I learned such an old song. I told them about the
stock exchange...but they simply suggested that it was best I didn't sing it.
Finally, sometime in my teens, I asked why the "Nellie"
song wasn't to be sung in our house. It was then that my mother told me
the story of John Henry – my grandfather – and his first family. Then she
told me of the little wagon he had shown my father, Benjamin. Now I
understood why it was best that I not add the song to my repertoire.
My grandfather was born in 1887, and since he lived to a ripe old
age, I was blessed to know him. He visited us regularly.
Still, it seemed strange to me that an event that happened over
sixty years before still carried any weight in my family. Perhaps it was
because of the disturbing reality that if that first family had lived, my
father would have never been born. My family would have never existed!
Due to a wide span of time, my grandfather and I did not share the
Earth long enough for me to ask him all the questions I would have liked.
Even my father admitted that due to joining the Navy so young, then
raising his own family, he'd also never thought to ask his father questions
until it was too late.
For instance, my grandfather had made only one mention (that
anyone could remember) of his second cousin, Clara, who
attended the theater with President Lincoln when he was assassinated.
After all, it was a hot day, and we were all going for ice cream...so the
conversation ended short, and the subject was never broached again. It
was only just before he died – when he gave us the book of our family genealogy
– that we realized how little Grandpa ever mentioned and how little we'd ever
asked.
(Maybe, as this new year begins, we should add a resolution to ask
our older family members questions like "Where were you when...?"
We might just find out how we got where we are now.)
After my grandfather's talk with my father in the barn, the little
wagon from 1913 was never seen again. Perhaps, like the small sled
"Rosebud" in the movieCitizen Kane, it sizzled
into obscurity in a furnace where no one knew its history – and where no one
had ever heard the song "Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie."
Susan D. Harris can be reached at www.susandharris.com.