JAD: This is Radiolab, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: And I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Our show today is about finding clues to the past in the weirdest places, and there is no weirder place to find the past than in the story you're about to hear. Comes to us from Laura Starecheski, who herself likes to get into old things.

LAURA STARECHESKI: My—my mom kind of fostered that. Like, when we were little, one of our outings that we would do would be to go to this toxic dump near my house where I grew up. It's, like, on top of a mountain. They sealed off this mountain and they made all the people move off of it, so you're just walking along a trail and then you see all these old abandoned houses full of stuff. So we would go into the houses and we'd find pay stubs, we'd find dishes, we'd find paintings, and we'd try and figure out why—like, even though we knew really why the people had left, we would try and make up other stories about why they left, like, maybe they were fighting in the middle of dinner and they just had to leave all their dishes on the table.

JAD: All right. Fast forward many years, Laura's in New York, and one day she gets a call from her sister who tells her, "I just heard the most amazing story. I was at my writing class and the teacher told us this story. You should call him, Eric Gordon is his name. Take your tape recorder over to his office in Manhattan, make him tell it to you." So that's what she did.

LAURA: I just said at first, you know, I just want to record you telling this story.

ERIC GORDON: Hey, how you doing?

LAURA: Hey, how's it going?

LAURA: How he had found all his letters and photos and created a character. I had no idea that I would become so involved.

ERIC GORDON: Okay.

LAURA: So do you want to talk about that day, like, that the story took place?

ERIC GORDON: Sure. That day, let me see if I can put myself back in that day. So I was living in Oakland at the time.

LAURA: This is about 1994.

ERIC GORDON: And decided to go on a weekend camping trip with a friend. And we're driving south on Route 101 through the central part of the state, and my friend starts to frantically shout. "Look! Look!" And she's pointing out to this field. She can't even get the words out. She's saying "Look! Look!" And she's shouting.

LAURA: So he tries to look ...

ERIC GORDON: And I turn my head very quickly.

Laura: ... and he can't see because his view is blocked by an overpass or a hill, and he just has no idea what she's talking about.

ERIC GORDON: And she is stuttering her words and she says, "Th—th—there's" and she's still stuttering. And she says there is a goat standing on a cow's back.

Laura: And she's like, "There is a goat standing on a cow's back in that field."

JAD: A what?

LAURA: A goat standing on top of a cow.

JAD: A goat standing on top of a cow?

LAURA: Yeah.

ERIC GORDON: And, you know, of course my reaction is—is that's absurd. And she's saying "Pull this truck over. Pull over!" And she's getting really angry. And I said, "I'm not backing up three quarters of a mile on 101."

LAURA: So they argue for a little while, and Eric finally relents. 20 minutes later they arrive back at the field.

ERIC GORDON: So we pull over, and she just gets the hugest grin on her face. There is, in fact, a goat standing on a cow's back.

LAURA: Still there.

ERIC GORDON: We sit in the truck for a minute watching this cow, who's close enough to the fence that we've got a very good view of it. And every time he takes a step to graze, the goat kind of shifts from side to side balancing.

LAURA: So they're kind of this unit.

ERIC GORDON: It was, I mean, really amazing. You actually could see the goat's hooves kind of bunch up in the cow's skin.

LAURA: And they slowly get out of the truck to get a better look.

ERIC GORDON: And right as I shut the door ...

LAURA: The goat jumps off.

ERIC GORDON: The goat jumps off. And it just—you know, we're standing there kind of dumbfounded. We move up to the fence and just ...

LAURA: Believe it or not, the story gets weirder.

JAD: Really?

LAURA: Yeah. So Eric and his friend are standing totally still hoping that if they just wait maybe the goat will jump back onto the cow. And all of a sudden, Eric's friend notices something at her feet.

ERIC GORDON: She bends down and picks up a letter.

LAURA: A letter.

ERIC GORDON: Right in front of the fence.

LAURA: And it's old.

ERIC GORDON: And it's kind of ...

LAURA: Like 50 years old.

ERIC GORDON: ... like a crisp brown. Then we looked at the postmark and it was 1952. I open this thing up and read it, and it's almost about nothing.

ERIC GORDON: "My dear, I wrote you a card after receiving the first one."

ERIC GORDON: Yeah, see some of these were so tough to read. So I look down on the ground and there's another letter.

ERIC GORDON: "I've been slowly getting on my feet again."

ERIC GORDON: And another.

ERIC GORDON: "Ed is so much better."

ERIC GORDON: Looks like that's her looped F.

ERIC GORDON: And another.

ERIC GORDON: "Albertine sings very well indeed, since you ask. She took ..."

ERIC GORDON: They were blown, literally, in this line down the side of the highway. And we looked at each other and frantically started gathering these letters, filling our arms with them. Letters from the 1920s, I see a 1937 postmark. And then she shouts from a couple feet away, "1897! 1890!" I'm gathering, my arms are getting full, I run to the truck and grab a garbage bag and I start filling it up, and then I start to notice: Ella Chase. Ella Chase. Ella Chase. Ella Chase. These letters are all written to the same woman.

LAURA: Over 300 letters all written to one woman, Ella Chase.
ERIC GORDON: You know, forget the goat and the cow, now we're standing in the middle of somebody's whole life correspondence spread out on the side of Highway 101. And we just read. And we read and we read into the night. Let me see if I can find—it's a really old ...

LAURA: So that day back in 1994 began a 12-year obsession with Ella Chase. These letters are maybe Eric's favorite thing in the whole world. He keeps them in this big archival box in his closet.

ERIC GORDON: Now what's really interesting is there are a ton of letters that are written to her as "Mother," or "Mom." And ...

LAURA: First thing Eric pulls out is a big stack of letters written to Ella during World War II.

ERIC GORDON: Probably have 40 letters from boys in the Navy to Ella Chase with that "Read By Censors" stamp on the letter where they're calling her "Mom." I'll read you one, and this is one that I—April 2, 1941, from a GI named W. Murphy. And he writes, "Well Mom, I hope you don't mind me calling you this, 'cause you were swell to me and just a mother to me and I hope that I can be seeing you again. And keep writing to me if you will. I sure enjoyed hearing from you. Hope you received the letter that I wrote a few days ago, but mail is a little slow going and coming out here. I'm feeling fine, only a little tired, but that's nothing unusual as we are pretty busy all the time. Oh, ma, I better close and say a prayer for me if you will and God bless you. Love, W. Murphy." August 3, 1945. Somewhere.

JAD: Dear mom. Were these her kids?

LAURA: No, they're not her kids. They're boys, 18-20 years old who are so attached to her just by writing to her that they started to call her "Mom." And there were like 40 of these letters.

ERIC GORDON: And a number of them from what I can tell in the letters have never actually met her. So she became this matriarch to all of these men in the war.

LAURA: I had never seen anything like that before.

ERIC GORDON: Yeah, there's so much. Something like this. I mean this is ...

LAURA: I was just amazed by the reach of her personality. You know, he showed me dozens of letters thanking her.

ERIC GORDON: You know, you look at this, "I am so very grateful ..."

LAURA: "Thank you for what you did for my husband."

ERIC GORDON: "He is ..."

LAURA: "Thank you for changing the way that I think about my life."

JAD: Whoa!

LAURA: And these seem to be from people who had only met her once.

JAD: Really?

LAURA: Yeah.

ERIC GORDON: The reverence that—that people just speak to her, and, you know, I can't figure out when she was married, I can't figure out where she was married. She ran for political office. I mean, this is a fascinating woman. She ran for political office in the 1940s, but I don't know what office.

LAURA: And that's where the story ends.

JAD: That's where the story ends?

LAURA: Yeah.

JAD: What do you mean?

LAURA: Eric has never tried to find out anything more. Remember how I told you he was a teacher before?

JAD: Yeah.

LAURA: He started bringing all these letters into his classroom, and ended up designing this whole curriculum around them.

ERIC GORDON: I collaborated with the history teacher. The kids would each get a photograph. They'd have to put it in a plastic sleeve. Each one of the kids whenever they handled them had to put on the surgical gloves. And history—the students would research that time period, and then ultimately they'd bring that work back to my classroom, my English classroom, and they would start writing historical fiction.

LAURA: Eric would ask each student to create a ghost biography of Ella Chase.

ERIC GORDON: This woman's history.

LAURA: Using her letters as a springboard.

ERIC GORDON: And some of the—you know, some of the pieces were wonderful.

LAURA: He ...

ERIC GORDON: Just incredible.

LAURA: He even had them title their papers "My Ella."

ERIC GORDON: And that's what's been much more meaningful to me.

LAURA: So the way Eric sees it, the real Ella was abandoned, and he's given her new life. 

ERIC GORDON: You know, I feel like a guardian of this person's moment on the Earth. 

[ARCHIVE CLIP, airport announcement: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, this is a pre-boarding announcement for flight number 169 to San Jose, California.]

LAURA: So here's the thing: I was already going to California to visit a friend, and I couldn't leave things the way they were. Like, the whole time when I would look at these letters and look at the pictures, I would feel like there's more here.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, airport announcement: And our flying time to San Jose will be approximately five hours and 56 minutes.]

LAURA: How did someone who reached out to all these people end up with their life on the side of the highway?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Airport Announcement: In-flight crew members prepare for arrival.]

LAURA: I really wanted to know.

LAURA: Do you wanna see some of this stuff? 'Cause I brought it.

MARINA COLE: You brought some?

LAURA: I knew I'd need help, so I contacted this friend of a friend, Marina Cole. She's this amateur expert in genealogical research. And I showed her the letters.

JAD: Wait, you had the letters? Did Eric give them to you?

LAURA: Yeah, even though he was convinced that they were abandoned. He told me, you know ...

ERIC GORDON: I would love to find family that this would truly mean something to.

MARINA COLE: Dear mom?

LAURA: It's—it's not her son. It's one of these letters from the World War II soldiers who all called her "Mom."

MARINA COLE: Oh, wow!

LAURA: Soon as I started showing Marina the letters her face kind of lit up.

MARINA COLE: Wow, she is amazing!

LAURA: The first thing we decided to do is to go to a historical society.

MARINA COLE: This woman, we know that she lived in Lomita Park.
MARINA COLE: Since this is for Daly City, I assume ...

MARINA COLE: So I went back and looked at census records to find out a little bit more about her.

LAURA: We found out that Ella had two granddaughters who were still alive, so we sent letters to her granddaughters but they'd never respond.

LAURA: Day two.

MARINA COLE: Stay straight to go onto Napa Valley Highway.

LAURA: My idea, my fantasy this whole time has been we'll go to her house—the address that's on the letters.

MARINA COLE: Well, it's worth a shot.

LAURA: Yeah, why not. Maybe bring one of the letters?

LAURA: It was a single story house, little rose garden. I think houses have a strong history. Someone there will be able to tell us something about her.

MARINA COLE: Are they coming?

LAURA: I don't know.

MARINA COLE: Huh.

LAURA: No answer. So we tried a neighbor.

NEIGHBOR: What is it you want?

LAURA: Hi, I'm sorry to bother you, I'm looking to find information about a woman who lived in this house ...

NEIGHBOR: I have no idea, we're new here in Napa.

LAURA: Okay, well thank you so much. Ugh. The missing husband?

MARINA COLE: I can't find anything on him at all. He's a complete mystery.

LAURA: I mean, there were a lot of unanswered questions, so we knew that we had to find Ella's obituary. Day three, the Napa Public Library. We're in front of the microfiche and we're scrolling through dates.

LAURA: It's August 22nd.

LAURA: This was kind of our last hope.

MARINA COLE: Look!

LAURA: [gasps]

LAURA: The death notice comes up on the screen.

MARINA COLE: Chase in Napa. Monday, July 4, 1955.

LAURA: We scan it as fast as we can for any new names that we haven't seen before. Almost right away we notice ...

MARINA COLE: Robert!

LAURA: Robert Lyely.

MARINA COLE: There was a grandson.

LAURA: A grandson. We had never seen this name before. [phone rings] He was listed.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: Hi this is Bob. Hi, this is Carol. We're either down at the store getting some milk or—we don't know where we're at but we're somewhere. Bye. Beep.]

LAURA: Hi, this is a message for Robert Lyely. My name is Laura Starecheski. I'm a reporter, and I'm doing a story about a woman who I believe is your grandmother.

LAURA: I wanted to hear a voice. I wanted a voice. Marina returned to Los Altos to get back to her life. And I waited. One day passed. Then another. I didn't get a call back from him. Day six. [phone rings] It was Marina.

LAURA: Marina?

MARINA COLE: Ugh.

LAURA: She hadn't been able to stop researching.

MARINA COLE: It's really sad.

LAURA: What is it?

MARINA COLE: Well, in 1938 she filed for divorce.

LAURA: Uh-huh?

MARINA COLE: And there's this series of articles where he denies that they were married.

LAURA: Really?

[VOICEOVER: She pleaded with me to marry her, Ella did. But we couldn't get along, and I refused to do it.]

MARINA COLE: She was desperate for money.

LAURA: Mm-hmm.

MARINA COLE: Needed to sell the house. She couldn't do that without divorcing her husband.

[NEWS CLIP: Trial of sensational I'm Not Married case expected in June.]

LAURA: It went on for like a year, the huge headlines. Ella said they were married. Belman, her husband, says that they never were. Ella couldn't produce a marriage certificate, and then finally the whole thing ended with her just sitting in the courtroom refusing to answer questions.

[NEWS CLIP: Ella A. Chase of Lomita Park, still adamant and defiant, but this time alone, steadfastly refused to answer questions.]

MARINA COLE: And then ...

LAURA: And that really wasn't the worst of it.

MARINA COLE: And then I found this really sad article.

LAURA: From a few years later.

[NEWS CLIP: Christmas 1942. Death took no holiday. On Christmas Eve, Belman Chase wandered along, dimmed out south of Market. He had been drinking heavily. He was separated from his wife and family. Perhaps he was trying to erase thoughts that come to men at such times. Christmas Day, sprawled on his back on a sidewalk, he died. The warm sun shone clear on the fractured nose and the blue bruise on his chin. "Looks like the bum is dead," someone said.]

MARINA COLE: Couple days later it says that his body was left unclaimed in the morgue.

LAURA: Really?

MARINA COLE: And they were not able to locate his estranged wife.

LAURA: Really?

LAURA: It suddenly made sense. It was right after that that she started writing to World War II soldiers. She probably needed them as much as they needed her. Day Seven. Holy Cross Cemetery in South San Francisco.

MARINA COLE: Oh, look. Look!

LAURA: Wow! Ella.

MARINA COLE: That's a nice headstone.

LAURA: It is a really nice headstone.

LAURA: It was gray and unpolished, and she was buried with her mother and father.

MARINA COLE: I wish I'd brought flowers.

LAURA: I know. We could go pick some flowers right over there.

MARINA COLE: We could. Yeah, let's do that.

LAURA: Okay.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Airplane announcement: On our final approach please make sure your seat backs and trays are in their upright and locked positions.]

LAURA: As soon as I got back I went to Eric's office.

ERIC GORDON: Hey.

LAURA: Hey.

ERIC GORDON: How are you doing?

LAURA: I had all these newspaper clippings in my bag and I was ready to show him.

JAD: How were you feeling at this point?

LAURA: I was feeling a little nervous.

LAURA: Yeah. Some of it is kind of sad and I—I just want to make sure that you're ready for that. It's not necessarily positive enlightenment about her family. So let me get it out.

LAURA: As I'm taking the stuff out of my backpack, he stops me right before I hand it to him.

ERIC GORDON: There's a part of me that's not sure I want to see it. Yeah, I think if there's no one that would receive these artifacts ultimately or that would have some sort of connection and appreciation to them, I'm not sure I want to see it.

LAURA: You don't want to know any of it?

ERIC GORDON: I don't. If there's no one to take them over, I want to live with them as a mystery.

LAURA: I couldn't blame Eric. I was even a little bit jealous of him at that point because he got to choose whether or not to look at this stuff.

JAD: So what then?

LAURA: I went home. But as soon as I got home, there was a message on my answering machine.

[ANSWERING MACHINE: Hi, this message is for Laura. My name is Bob, grandson of Ella Chase. And you called and left a message for me to try and get a hold of you regarding some pictures and letters and stuff that was found along the roadside. I think I can help fill in the pieces to the puzzle because they probably came out of my truck on the way from San Jose to Southern California.]

LAURA: I have some pretty big news for you.

ERIC: Okay.

LAURA: As soon as I got home after I talked to you on Friday, I got a message from Ella's grandson. He's the one who dropped the box.

ERIC GORDON: What?

ROBERT LYELY: It was during the course of driving down Highway 101, taking these boxes home in the back of my pickup that several of them blew out.

LAURA: And he tried to pull over and get it.

ROBERT LYELY: And I stopped alongside the road, and my wife was with me, and we picked up everything we could see.

LAURA: But as soon as he started to collect it, the California Highway Patrol pulled over and told them that he had to keep going.

ROBERT LYELY: They were gonna give me a ticket for littering.

LAURA: Because the stuff scattered everywhere.

ROBERT LYELY: Because the stuff was just blowing everywhere.

LAURA: And he has a whole bunch of boxes like the one that fell off.

ROBERT LYELY: I'm still going through the stuff, and it's been 12, 13 years now.

ERIC GORDON: I love that you actually found who dropped this stuff. And did he sound sad about it? What was his reaction?

LAURA: He just seemed happy-go-lucky about it. He was like "I think I can solve your mystery."

LAURA: When I was talking to Bob, I told him about Eric, of course, and I told him how much Eric cared about all this stuff. And he was really relieved. He didn't think it was weird at all. He just was glad that someone had cherished this stuff, and he came up with the idea right away of sending Eric kind of a replacement.

ROBERT LYELY: I have a—another group of pictures ...

LAURA: Eric sent Bob all of Ella's stuff. Bob sent Eric this mystery box full of photos that he couldn't explain.

JAD: I still can't get over the timing, though. Like, okay, so Bob passes by in the truck, the box flies out, and then what? Like, a couple hours later this goat jumps on a cow's back and causes these two people to stop and get the letters?

LAURA: Basically.

JAD: Do you think the goat on a cow was a sign?

LAURA: [laughs] What do you mean?

JAD: From Zeus? Saying "Stop. Eric, stop!"

LAURA: I think you could tell it that way, but goats like to stand on top of cows.

JAD: Really?

LAURA: Yeah. Goats like to stand on top of anything high.

JAD: [laughs]

LAURA: If there's a fence they'll jump on top of it. If there's a house they'll try and climb it. That's what goats do. Don't you think so?

JAD: [laughs] How do you know all of this?

LAURA: I've seen goats, you know? My mom used to send me up the road to buy eggs from this woman who had all these goats. And they had a little goat shack, and all the goats would be clustered on top of the goat shack, although they had a whole yard full of scraggly grass to graze in.

JAD: Did you ever say to Eric, "Um, Eric? Goats just kind of like to do this?"

LAURA: Well, no. I never said that to him. I mean, okay, goats like to stand on tall things, but since when does a cow not care? The goat's not extraordinary, it's the cow.

JAD: It's the nonchalant cow.

LAURA: Yes.

JAD: Hmm.

JAD: Laura Starecheski is a producer. She lives in New York.

ROBERT: A nonchalant cow? [laughs] Well, I hope you'll stay with us. Our next detective story begins with a drop of blood, and from the blood we discover 16.5-million baby boys.

JAD: This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad. Robert Krulwich and I will continue in a moment.

 

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