Towards the end of her life, my father’s mother, Dorothy Ruth McMurry Black, dropped a bombshell on me. She told me she had accidentally killed her first husband on their honeymoon. A first husband? Accidentally killed on their honeymoon? I was eager to learn more about both of these revelations, but she was clearly very emotional about the incident, and I didn’t want to push her too hard.
Over the years, I managed to get her to tell me a few additional details about her first husband, but both he and the circumstances of his death were topics she did not like to talk about, and so the details remained largely unknown to me. Continue reading