My Father’s Favorite Stories

I published an appreciation of my father, Ivan D. Thunder, on these pages on November 1, 2010, three days after he had passed at age 97. He was a native of California and I called him “our California redwood,” straight and true. He was a veteran of Iwo Jima and my siblings arranged for the publication of his memoir posthumously. The Pacific War and Battle of Iwo Jima: Recollections & Essays: by a Seabee Lieutenant.

As I reported in my appreciation, I had asked him a few years earlier what sort of movies and stories he liked. My father replied that he liked stories about honor, truth, duty, romantic love and devotion, fidelity — and then he rattled off the names of a number of movies released over the decades of his life, which my six siblings and I then bought him for his birthdays and Christmases. The sort of movies and stories he liked described the sort of man he had become: a man of honor, truth, duty, devotion and fidelity.

In February 2006, my father attended a reunion of his battalion, the 133rd Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) in New Orleans. He made it a point to take some of his relatives 130 miles to St. Martinville, Louisiana, a place associated with one of his favorite love stories, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847). One sibling informs me that he first heard of the poem (or read it) during his one and only year, his freshman year, at Bellarmine Prep, 1928-1929, then located in Santa Clara, California. The story meant so much to him that, at a gift shop in St. Martinville, he bought copies of the poem and gave them to each of his children.

Evangeline is based on a true story of an engaged couple with the fictional names of Evangeline Bellefontaine and Gabriel Lajeunesse, who became separated when the British expelled the French from Acadia (which became New Scotland, or Nova Scotia) during the French and Indian War. They reunite many years later but he is on his deathbed. She dies soon after he does.

What’s the association of Evangeline with Louisiana? Marie Elizabeth Oliver wrote a piece in 2018 on a website devoted to traveler Anthony Bourdain about how Evangeline became connected to St. Martinville, Louisiana. In A Cajun Myth, an Oak Tree, and a Search for Meaning, June 13, 2018, she tells us that, “Continuing the legend [of Longfellow],” Louisiana Judge Felix Voorhies published Acadian Reminiscences: The True Story of Evangeline in 1907. In Voorhies’ story, the couple of Longfellow’s poem are the real life couple of Emmeline Labiche and Louis Arceneaux. The lovers reunite under a big oak tree next to the Bayou Teche, St. Martinville’s Evangeline Oak tree. Moreover, there is a statue of “Evangeline” near the town’s St. Martin de Tours Church, a statue paid for by, and depicting, the actress Dolores del Rio who portrayed Evangeline in a 1929 film.

There were two stories on my father’s list which involved San Francisco. One was the love story of Russian Count Nikolai Rezanov and his Spanish fiancée, Maria de la Concepción Argűello, the daughter of the commandante of the Presidio. As a youth, my father would play in the Presidio. In 1806, the Count had sailed into San Francisco Bay seeking supplies for the Russian outpost of Sitka, Alaska. The 40 year old Count and the 15 year old daughter became engaged, subject to the approval by the Pope, the Spanish Crown, and Russian Czar. The Count left San Francisco with plans to obtain the approvals and return in two years. He died in Siberia, however, and Maria learned of his death two years after he had left. She would care for her parents after they were transferred to Baja California. She was noted for her care of the poor. After returning to Alta California she became a nun. (See her entry online in Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia 55-56 (2006)). The gravesite of Rezanov has a white cross bearing on one side the inscription “Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov 1764-1807. I will never forget you,” and on the other side “Maria Concepcion de Arguelio 1791-1857. I will see you never more.” Their story was told by two Californians: Bret Harte (1936-1902) in his poem “Concepcion de Arguello” (in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 29, May 1872, pp. 603-605) and Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948) in the 1906 historical fiction book Rezanov.

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The second story involving San Francisco is a work of nonfiction which has no love story, other than the love of the sea. It is one of the few books my father kept. Two Years Before the Mast is a memoir by Richard H. Dana, Jr. (1815-1882), about his two years at sea, 1834-1836, written while he was attending Harvard Law School. It was published in 1840, the same year he was admitted to the bar. Dana had traveled from Boston around Cape Horn to California as far as San Francisco, and back. At the time, California had been Mexican (since 1821), not Spanish. The story presumably prompted my father to take a job aboard a ship transiting San Francisco to Hawaii the summer before starting high school in 1928 at age 14, lying about his age. That experience in turn prompted him to join the Navy Reserve while in college in the 1930’s and then again in 1943.

My father’s favorite book was Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. (We were sending him a transcript of the Diane Rehm Show on this book when he died.) It ends with a supremely selfless act. Undoubtedly, my father saw the 1935 film, when he was 23 and living in Chicago (having moved to that city with his family in 1929), starring Ronald Colman (one of his favorite actors) and Basil Rathbone. Let me add that another Ronald Colman film he liked was Random Harvest, a 1942 film, also starring Greer Garson. It is the story of a World War I veteran who has lost his memory. He marries a woman but, on a business trip, regains his old memory while losing the memory of his life with his wife. I’ll leave the rest for you.

My father’s favorite musical was Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein’s The Desert Song which he saw on stage in San Francisco in the 1920s. My research reveals that the initial production was in New York in 1926 and was staged at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre in 1928 when my father was 15. He did not see it live again until I escorted him to its staging in Milwaukee in 1992. Yes, our family had a vinyl record of it when we were growing up. It is the story of a hero who conceals his true identity as an unassuming character, like The Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro and Superman. The hero loves a girl with spirit.

My father also enjoyed another Romberg musical, The Student Prince, which opened on Broadway in 1924. He knew the music well before Mario Lanza’s soundtrack of the 1954 film. The storyline is that a royal heir is disguised as a commoner at university and has a jolly good time as a student. He falls in love with a barmaid but is forced to withdraw from university and return home to his betrothed. He becomes king and the barmaid lies about being in love with another, so that he can freely marry his betrothed.

Another favorite musical was The Vagabond King. Although my research reveals this 1925 operetta was staged in San Francisco in 1927, my father never mentioned seeing it live. Most likely he was introduced to it through the 1930 film version with Jeanette MacDonald, or the 1938 nonmusical version, If I Were a King, starring Ronald Colman. The protagonist braggart thief becomes “king for a day” and, in 24 hours, defends France against the invading forces of the Duke of Burgundy while successfully wooing a woman the King was courting. My father particularly liked the following song:

Someday you will seek me and find me
Someday of the days that shall be
Oh, surely you will come and remind me
Of a dream that is calling for you and for me
And someday when the winter is over
Someday in the flush of the spring
My soul shall discover the soul born for my lover
The girl who can make me a king

My father was 22 when the 1935 movie Naughty Marietta was released, starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald. It was about 40 years later when I saw it for the first time. I was a newlywed and I remember the strong emotions, in the singers and stirring in me, of the duet “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life.” The love story is between a French princess who, trying to evade an arranged marriage, disguises herself and escapes to Louisiana, and a mercenary. My father liked as well Rose Marie, a film released the following year also with Eddy and Macdonald. My parents would sing a song from that film, Indian Love Call. The love story of Rose Marie is between a French-Canadian soprano and a Mountie charged with capturing her fugitive brother played by James Stewart.

Green Light was a 1937 film starring Errol Flynn based on a novel by Lloyd C. Douglas, who also authored Magnificent Obsession (made into a 1935 film) and The Robe (made into a 1953 film). Errol Flynn’s character is a surgeon who refuses to name the person responsible for a fatal result. He is fired from his position and goes out West to find a new life. He is given good advice by an Anglican priest and finds his true love.

The 1938 film Three Comrades was based on a 1936 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the author of the 1928 All Quiet on the Western Front. The screenplay was by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the stars were Robert Taylor, Margaret Sullavan and Robert Young. It is the story of three German war veterans and a woman, her illness, and their impoverishment.

The 1944 film The Keys of the Kingdom was based on A.J. Cronin’s 1941 novel. It is the life of Catholic priest played by Gregory Peck and his experiences as a missionary to China. Before he became a priest his love interest was Nora who died giving birth to Judy (not his child). Upon retirement to Scotland, he hopes to care for Judy’s son, an orphan.

Francis of Assisi was a 1961 film based on a 1958 novel by Louis de Wohl. The stars were Bradford Dillman as St. Francis and Dolores Hart as St. Clare (who joined the convent in real life two years later).

Monsignor Renard was a four-part TV miniseries broadcast in 2000. It starred John Thaw of Inspector Morse fame (1987-2000). Renard returns to his French hometown in 1940 twenty years after he had left it. It is occupied by Nazis and he is drawn into the resistance.

These, then, were the stories, told in film and in print, which formed my father into a man of honor, truth, duty, devotion and fidelity.

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