My dad was originally born Donald William Caman, Jr., the son of Donald Caman and Wilburta Love. He was born at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina while his dad was training for his deployment to the European Theater in WWII.
Willie Love and Don Caman - circa 1939
Willie and Don - 1943
While Don was in France, he met a girl named Eliane (pronounced ee-lee-on) and fell in love with her and when he returned home he told WIllie he didn't want to be married to her anymore, so they were divorced.
I had a conversation with my Gpa Caman in October 1998, a few years before he died, and I asked him to tell me about what happened.
"Don was eighteen months old when I went to Europe. All three of us were living in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and when I got orders for the division to go overseas [Willie] came out to [California], and I don't remember, did she live with her mother and dad, or my mother and dad? Although I know that when Willie went to work that my mother and dad babysat for Don. They were more close to Don, even so than I was. Anyway, and of course, when I divorced Willie, you know that I divorced Willie, Willie didn't divorce me, and I told Don some time ago that if there is any blame to be placed, the blame is for me, not for Willie. I'm the villain in this case. My mother and father were really, really, really upset. They got over it."
I asked him how he met Eliane.
"About two weeks after the war ended, I was laying on my bunk - we were in Geislingen, Germany, starting the occupation, and about mid-morning a runner came down and said that the Old Man wants to see you. So I went up to see the Old Man, and he said, here are your orders. The Old Man and I did not get along. The Old Man is the Commanding Officer. Prior to this time I had been the, for about three of four months, I was the Commanding Officer temporarily. Of course, I was hoping to get to be the Commanding Officer and get promoted to Captain. When these guy came in, and there was no love lost on my part. And it turned out he wasn't really that great a commander. But anyway, so when he had an opportunity to get rid of me, I got the orders to go to Marseille. I thought I was on my way to the Pacific, but when I got there, there were forty-two first and second lieutenants, forty of them got assigned as hotel officers, mess officers, transportation officers, on the Riviera, and Cannes, and Nice. Two of us got assigned to build a base headquarters and I was stationed in Marseilles, and the other fellow was stationed in the staging area out in Marles (?), so in Marseilles I was put up in a crummy little hotel on the Canner Villa and I was in a section with a warrant officer who had been with the Delta Base section since Africa and Italy and all of that, so he knew everybody in the Delta Base headquarters, including the billeting officer, so he got himself and I and another lieutenant an apartment on Cessan Rue Paradie. Well, we had the apartment on what we call the second floor, Europeans callout the first floor, and Eliane and her sister Colette and Nanan, the mother, loved in the apartment above us. So, that's how I met her, and one thing led to another."
On the 29th of March, 1947 Willie Caman married Richard Marshall. She had Don and he had a son, Darryl.
Don Caman and Darryl Marshall - 1946
I have been told that at that time it was more "presentable" if you didn't have a family with a lot of last names, so Richard adopted Don and he became Donald William Marshall. And, a few years later, they had a daughter, Lindi.
In an interview with Richard Marshall in June 1999, I asked him how old [my] dad was when he and Willie were married and he adopted him.
"About two. From the time he was born, until the time we moved to Fresno, he was three years old when we moved to Fresno. That time your grandmother worked all during the war and lived with her mother. We were getting reestablished in several ways. First of all, I was an integral part of opening a new business, and my first priorities were getting that business running, being somewhat of a workaholic, and wages were not all that great. About $200 a month. I wasn't able to bring too much with him. Willie had absolutely nothing. I had to put the down payment on the house. It was my ambition back then to give him the best home that I could have, that I could afford, and live in the best neighborhood that I could afford. See to it that they went to summer camps and stuff."
So my dad is a Caman and a Marshall, hence the parentheses. There are interesting twists in every family story. To me it means that I have more family history to do! Woohoo! : )
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