Looking back, there’s no doubt that my life has been a strange one. Year after year it evolved, for the most part, in a pleasing manner. Of course there were a few stumbles as I moved on through the maze.  I was born on a verdant, breezy Caribbean island, the middle child of five boys. There were no sisters. I don’t want to give the impression that everything about it was pleasant. As it is with most lives, there were burrs of varying types to rub one the wrong way, some pain and disappointment, some lost loves, deaths and on occasion, threatening storms to stir up the surrounding waters. There were also frequent revolutions over on the mainland twenty miles away. They often spilled over onto my birthplace, Utila in the Bay Islands, bringing consternation from time to time. Looking back over the last seventy odd years, I still feel fortunate to have lived the first 11 years of my life here and to be blessed with loving parents, fussy old and attentive English aunts and great aunts. And, I mustn’t forget uncles. One might say that the entire island was one large and bonded family, with a few squabbles from time to time.

 We were all living in an historical time warp. In the early 1920s, the 1930s and 40s we existed in an environment that resembled England in Victorian times. My maternal great, great grandfather, Joseph Cooper with his wife, five daughters and three sons settled on a small cay at the west end of Utila island in 1831. More children came later on. They had sailed from Bristol, England to Belize and later on to the Bay Islands of Honduras. Now it would be a few years later and enough settlers arrived to crowd the small cay. New arriving settlers began to inhabit the crescent harbor front and build homes along its curving shoreline. The main town and harbor, five miles from the cay dwellers, is known as Eastern Harbor. Utila was the westernmost island of a total of five, consisting of Roatan, Guanaja, Barbarat and Helene. There were several small cays clustered nearby to the ones listed.

Utila was approximately eight miles long and three and a half wide, the last sea mounts of the long barrier reef beginning off the coast of Belize, once called British Honduras. Our closest neighbor was Roatan, a hilly, long and narrow isle approximately forty miles in length. By the 1930s Utila had a population of probably under one thousand people, consisting of mostly Europeans and a few freed slaves who had left the Cayman Islands after freedom was granted by England in 1834.

The oldest of we five brothers was named Dones, next, Woody [for Woodville].I was in the middle of the pack and named Billy, Van Baldwin followed me and Jack was last. Woody and I were closely bonded, fishing and hunting together, playing baseball as young children and in later years as young men. My ancestral Jacksons had arrived in the Caymans probably in the late 1700s. The paternal leader was John Shearer Jackson. Some of his descendants emigrated to Utila in the middle of the 1800s. They were John Henry, Allen, Alvanley, Tommy, Lizette, Fanny, Daisy and George. John Henry Jackson was my grandfather. I never knew him for he died at an early age. I barely remember my great Uncle Allen. I can recall great aunts Lizette and Fanny very well. Who could forget Uncle Tommy? He was an excellent sailing boat captain, and survived many dangerous storms at sea. Everyone called him “Talkin’ Tommy. And I found out why when I was a young man visiting Utila. He offered to take me on a fishing trip in his dory. Now in those days there were no motors in them. They moved by manpower. I had a paddle in the front, he was in the rear to paddle and steer. We left the harbor about 4AM, before daylight, paddled around the east end, [the “point” it was called] and soon we were on a westward course. Now let me tell you, my uncle talked from the moment we shoved off until we returned. He baited a towline with a sprat and when we had paddled a couple of miles along the northern shoreline, let out the line, held it in his teeth for awhile until he got situated better. Then quickly he put the paddle down took hold of the hand line [Utila fishermen all used hand lines] and began to pull. Then he fed out the line once more. The only thing from that day that I remember him saying was, “barracuda, man. He took half my bait. We’ll get him yet. Keep paddling, Billy.” And I can see him now. He let out some line, and suddenly he “hitched”. I heard him say “I got him now!” I stopped paddling as he brought the “barra” in with hand over hand reaches, slowly pulling him up to the dory. Then, he grasped his leaden mallet and struck the four foot long barracuda with one quick blow atop the head and the trashing stopped. He had his fish. The man talked incessantly from four in the morning until four that evening. Twelve hours! It is years later and I still cannot recall any other words that were spoken. I think by brain was overloaded that morning.  

Sometime in the 1930s I was kidnapped [not really], I was captivated by a new introduction to the island. Hollywood was the kidnapper. The movies had come. First the “silents” and then the “talkies.” I was hooked! Overnight I wanted to be a cowboy. Hoot Gibson, [never heard of him, have you?] was my hero. He wore a big “ten gallon hat”, rode his horse as fast as the wind, and always captured the bad guys and most important, got the girls. Immediately I began to pester my parents to send me to Kansas where I could become a cowboy. After a couple of years I wore them down and they considered the educational possibilities were much better in the States. And so, I was put on a Standard Fruit and Steamship Co. banana freighter heading for New Orleans. I met my older brother there [he had come from Tampa, where he was in high school] and in a few days we boarded a train. We were headed for the small town of Englewood, Kansas, fifty miles south of Dodge City, where my aunt lived with her family. I would soon be in the land of cowboys and pretty girls, I thought.

It was 1937. This was not the land of the cowboys! It was not the Land of Oz. In a way it was, for we had tornados, but no miracles. It was depression time in the U.S. There were dust storms, flat plains where it seemed one could see forever and ever. It would soon be winter and I would have my first taste of cold, hurting hands and feet—outdoor toilets, no central plumbing, the same with heating. None of this was what the movies depicted. Those reels were magical, captivating and filmed in special places not resembling reality at all. I wanted to go back to my warm island and my mother and father, [I was only 11 you know]. But I realized I had to tough it out. I had begged and begged to go and now I would not turn tail and run and beg to return. Strong Englishmen do not cut and run. I remembered my father singing that song, Hearts of oak are our ships, Jolly tars are our men, we always are ready, steady boys steady, we’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again. That has stayed with me year after year.

But what really saved me was love! You know, that puppy love that strikes one around twelve or thirteen years of age. I thought I was set for life. I treasured the valentines I got from her in school. Then after a couple of years she moved about fifty miles away to another town. I wanted to go home again. Then I begin to notice other girls, and so the cycle goes round and round.

Time began to accelerate. World War 11 was on. My parents were faithful with their letters to me. But now they said they were planning to bring me out for a visit but German submarines were spotted by fishermen and they wouldn’t take the chance. They were surfaced charging their batteries and so it was too dangerous. My ship might be torpedoed. Time was moving faster and faster. I decided I could be drafted and so I went home in the summer of 1944 in spite of the subs. I was a young man now and had difficulty bonding with parents and siblings after such a long absence. I remained for the entire summer re-acquainting myself to all my relatives and to the island. On my return to Kansas I received my draft notice to be inducted into service for The United States of America. I was a senior and had to report to Fort Riley, Kansas in December of that year. My teachers were extremely cooperative and agreed to give me final testing in order to certify me for graduation. I passed all my tests and soon found myself in uniform in the Army of the United States.

I had a long basic training in the tank corps then was entrained for Fort Ord, California where my troop would then be sent to Camp Anza. We would then go by a Liberty troop ship for the Pacific war zone to take part in the invasion of Japan. While we waited the atom bomb was dropped and the war ended. However, we sailed regardless, zig zagging for twenty-eight days at ten or fifteen knots for there were rogue submarines still in the Pacific. We were in a sort of limbo for there were so many of us eighteen and nineteen year olds they were not sure what to do with us. After about three months of tropical heat, flies and eating out of mess kits I applied for a transfer to the European Theater of operations. It was necessary to sign up for another year, [I had one to go anyway] in the regular army. In a couple of weeks I was on my way back to the States, had a 30 day leave pass then was on a troop ship out of Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, once more heading across the Atlantic this time—destination Le Havre, France. We boarded a troop train and sped across France for Germany. Our destination was Kitzingen, Germany. We were assigned to the 14th Constabulary Tank Regiment with M24 “Chaffee” light tanks, just being formed. We were not there long and then moved to Schweinfurt. It seemed to me I was the only one who had any knowledge of tanks other than a few instructors. I was a PFC but was soon issued my sergeants stripes, [T4] and assigned as driver to the lead tank for maneuvers and early morning raids of German towns. The next 10 months was an interesting and eye opening period in my life. Most major cities were bombed to hell, but Heidleburg was untouched—and beautiful. One day I went with other soldiers for an all day visit to the Nurenberg trials of the major Nazis who were deemed criminals. From my upper deck seat I could plainly see Rudolf Hess, Hermann Goering and others. I always had a penchant for history and I was watching it unfold.

Time, of course, is always moving forward. I had spent ten months in the U.S. Constabulary. My time was now up to be discharged and though I was promised the next grade up in rank, I just wanted to go home, wherever that was. The discharges were issued to we nineteen and twenty year olds and some of us spent the next two or three years trying to find just where we belonged. I first visited the little town in Kansas where I had gone to school and found other vets there trying to find that niche. They had formed a basketball “town team” and played other neighboring towns in a league organized just to avoid growing up and becoming men. Putting off responsibility was a major factor here. This was the Winter and Spring of 1946 and ‘47 and when the games were over, myself and a friend decided to head for the island of my birth. We again joined a baseball league and we again were involved in the game of ‘finding our destiny’. That did not have a productive solution. So then I was off for San Diego, California, spent a year in school at Balboa College under the GI Bill of Rights.

That did not work out either. I labored at odd jobs for awhile but ran out of pocket change so I headed for Chicago. I began work in a corrugated box factory and was stuck there for twelve years—oh yes, I was now married. Those years ran by quickly and it paid off for I had learned the manufacturing process of a corrugated box. I was off once more  to Geneva, Illinois, forty miles west of hard working Chicago, as superintendent in a new box company. I don’t want you to think I wasn’t giving consideration to writing. There just was no time, raising a family, paying the bills, fighting the good fight of survival. Then time was finally available. I had an almost miraculous quirk of fate in Aurora, Illinois, an adjoining town. In a strange, round about way I ran into the American consular officer, a Mr. William Rupprecht, who had signed my passport papers in La Ceiba, Honduras granting me entry into the United States in 1937. I was eleven at the time. I could not believe it! And I had know him for only fifteen minutes. It had happened thirty-three years after first seeing him.                                                              
I was through with work—retired . In 1993 I started my book And the Sea Shall Hide Them. I had kept this tale in my head ever since I was a youngster on that little island of Utila. I had recorded my mother’s version of that dreadful story, for as a young girl, she had climbed on her father’s lap [Judge Joseph Cooper], and begged him to tell her the story of the Olympia murders.

I have lived in the vibrant and picturesque Fox River town of Geneva, Illinois for the past forty years and written my book. I have received enough compliments via emails and phone calls that I’m finally convinced my readers were pleased to read this true story of one woman’s tremendous faith and courage.

Did I mention I have always loved to read. I can go back to when I was just four or five years of age listened to my father or mother reading stories out of the British Royal Reader, A Victorian school book from England. I still can call up the image of Rumplestilskin, Henney Penney and others. Mark Twain is my favorite author. He is an author to read when one is very young for the pure joy of entertainment, for the adventures of young people growing up. Then to read later as an adult and be able to see the real story between the lines, the way a writer can write two versions that cannot be decoded until the reader matures and learns the truth, the real meat of the story. My background was so rich in verbal stories of ancestors, true tales of mayhem and murder, of pirates and petty criminals, of revolutions and revolts. There were no local papers to read, no telephones, one or two radios and TVs were not even thought of. So story telling was truly and art. These tales are stored somewhere in a hidden part of my brain. But they are there. I will continue to search for them.