Christian Living

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Larry Lilly’s Letter Wednesday July 12, 2006

Eleanor Geisman!

I wept when I read of her demise as she had been the second one of my very first loves, though she was much older than me.

I recall my mother telling me, “Yes Larry, I am sure you really love her but you will get over it.” Mom had a thing with me getting over most of the things that really mattered. I was around seven and on the rebound from the discovery that ‘Mrs.’ meant my second grade teacher, Mrs. Abrams, was already married. To this day I believe God used Eleanor to comfort me through that dark valley.

In later years I found that I was not alone in my deep love for Ella, as those who knew her best called her. Half of the men in uniform in WW2 also were at least infatuated with her simple, wholesome beauty. The tale of that era is that the military men had pin ups of Betty Grable and her million dollar legs, or of Rita Hayworth of the flaming red hair and dreamed in their fondest dreams of either one of these girls being ‘over there’ with them. For the most part they held to an even dearer dream that Ella would be home, waiting for them and at the end of the war, they would somehow actually meet, court and marry Ella.

Most thought that Ella lived a charmed life and had never actually shed a tear due to heartache.

How deluded we men can be, even at seven, concerning the women we love.

At age six Ella was abandoned by an alcoholic father, raised by her single mother who worked as a telephone operator and a cashier in a restaurant.

Ella wrote of her suffering in her autobiography including her bout with alcoholism, two very unhappy marriages. Her third lasted for thirty years until her death.

I was grown and married to the Great Blonde when I read Ella’s book and I commented to Joyce of Ella’s painful life and some of the un Ella like things she, Mrs. All American Wonderful had done over the course of her life. The wife of my youth, who has long comforted me through the withdrawal agony of the loss of older girls like Ella stated, “Larry, there are two sides to most women, the one they show to you until it’s too late and then the real one.” I never dreamed such a truth.

For several days after the Great Blonde and I talked about Ella, I was vividly aware of the truth of the Jewish adage, “If your wife is five feet tall, never talk about your first love who was known affectionately as ‘a tall drink of water.’”

Most of the world knew Ella by her stage name, June Allyson. I thought I should quote some words from a hymn, “My loved ones are gathering yonder.” From the intense looks coming from the eyes, eyes like water from eternal springs of beauty, of a certain living girl; I don’t think this would be at all wise.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2006 Use with credit

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