The Man Who Didn't Want Children

A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW IT WILL NOT MATTER WHAT MY BANK ACCOUNT WAS, THE SORT OF HOUSE I LIVED IN, OR THE KIND OF CAR I DROVE. BUT THE WORLD MAY BE DIFFERENT, BECAUSE I WAS IMPORTANT IN THE LIFE OF A CHILD.                                          ~Forest Witcraft

"There are three people who make up Michael Salmons and Uncle John was one...He is a part of me." That was what one of my cousins texted earlier this year. It was a text he accidentally sent to the rest of his cousins while communicating with someone else. I was glad to have received it. "There is no greater compliment that you can give someone", I replied. Lynn agreed. "I think Uncle John influenced all of us" Mary Jo added. "Definitely!" Vickie replied. 

A writer's imagination is always at work. It is always piecing together ideas for the next story. Over my lifetime, I have had more ideas for stories than I could ever find the time to write. Because I was a part of what they referred to as the "TV generation", most of my ideas presented themselves in the form of a screen play. One "movie" idea that came to me a long time ago was based on a very simplistic theme. "The Woman Who Didn't Want Children" was the title. The main character would be a free spirit who couldn't imagine being tied down by the responsibility for children, but would HATE herself for feeling that way. She would ask herself what was wrong with her. Was she cold? Was she selfish?

The story would follow her from a young woman to an old lady. She would come to know her own special gifts and talents. She would eventually discover that there were other ways to contribute to society and to her family. She would develop a relationship with nieces, nephews and other young people and have a strong impact on them. She would realize that she did not have to be a parent to be important in the life of a child. The final scene in the movie remained vivid in my mind. An elderly spinster, the main character would arrive at a party. A flood of younger relatives would run to greet her. It would include people from several consecutive generations, all excited to see her, all having a special connection to her. Someone would ask the host, "Who's that?" The host would then smile and reply, "That's the woman who didn't want children." Change the main character from a woman to a man and the story has already been written. 

                                                                             Little Johnny

Uncle John was born on September 22, 1941, the fifth child of Albert and Mary Salmons. It had been a difficult pregnancy for Mary Salmons - my maternal grandmother - Nana. Nana owed her life and health, as well as that of the baby's, to a skillful and dedicated obstetrician, Dr. John Duggar. "I don't know how to thank you," Nana said to the doctor. "If it's a boy," the doctor replied, "Name it after me." That's how Uncle John became John Duggar Salmons. 

He came into the world, began to grow, and before anyone knew it, little "Johnny" was on his feet, tagging along after his four older siblings - Albert Jr., Marcia, Bea and Barbara. His siblings used his innocence to their advantage. Whenever they would get caught having engaged in some mischief, they would just blame it on Johnny, pretending that he was the one who did it. They knew that Johnny would not be punished for the misbehavior because, unlike them, he was too young and innocent to understand what he was doing. My mother laughed frequently about a time when he was walking up the cellar steps behind them saying, "I did it! I did it!.....What did I do?" In grade school, Uncle John took part in box car races. Time passed quickly and he became a teenager who was quite outgoing and witty. "No applause!" he would say to everyone, as he walked into the room. That was the personality he had until 1964, when he was drafted into the Vietnam war. Two years later, he came home a broken man.   

                                                             When Johnny Came Marching Home

My first memories of Uncle John were of the man who used to hide in his room during parties and family gatherings. He would occasionally come out and quickly pass through the gathering. It seemed like he was avoiding eye contact. If he spoke at all, it was to mumble something, so softly that you couldn't hear what he was saying. Mom said that he didn't come out of his room at all for about six months after returning from the war. I knew that what he had been through was bad, but I had no idea exactly how bad until I attended a training for counselors working with Vietnam Veterans in 2004. The things that I learned in that training about the war explained clearly why Uncle John was so traumatized. Fortunately, he was able to begin healing because of the work of a talented psychologist named Dr. Reardon, who helped several members of the Salmons family. Gradually he came out of his shell. He worked with his brother and nephews in his father's tool and die business. He began to supervise apartment buildings. I remember him giving Mom a tour of one of them, as I tagged along behind them, no more than about five or six years old. The most memorable part of the event for me was finding a tennis ball and a pencil in one of the empty, unfurnished rooms. Mom handed the ball and the pencil to Uncle John. "Well, you can keep the ball" Uncle John said, "I can use the pencil." Wow, we could keep the ball! Uncle John sure knew how to make my day! Uncle John  remained a life-long bachelor. Somewhere along the line, he decided that he did not want children. However, he had fourteen nieces and nephews, of which I was the next to last to be born. It was strange that the man who didn't want children seemed to always be surrounded by those of us who belonged to the next generation. 

                          "Once I thought my innocence was gone, now I know that happiness goes on!" 

"Ecstatic" - that's how I described Uncle John in my diary on May 6, 1984. He was driving a group of us down to Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey. Vickie, Guy and I were riding in the back of his car. My father's sister, Mary McDonnell, was riding up front with Uncle John. Two cars were following us and a few people met us there. Billy Joel's latest song, "The Longest Time" began playing on the radio. Uncle John immediately turned the volume up and we all began singing. An hour later we were going upside down on a ride called Lightening Loops and getting splashed after crashing down a huge hill on the Log ride. 

It had been quite a day already. Aunt Mary drove me down to Uncle John's because I didn't yet have my license. Aunt Mary got to know Uncle John through my mother who was attempting to play matchmaker for the two of them. Uncle John and Aunt Mary became good friends. They dated for a short time but Uncle John eventually ended up with another lovely lady named Rose Marie. 

Uncle John approached the day with a great deal of organized planning which was his typical style. His dining room table was covered with envelopes with everybody's name on them. Each envelop contained fifteen dollars to spend for lunch. That was in addition to the park admission that Uncle John paid for each of us to get in. Uncle John spared no expense when it came to showing love for his family. Everyone in the family was invited to Uncle John's annual trip to Great Adventure but the young people, meaning his nieces and nephews, were usually the only ones up for that kind of excitement. 

While we waited for everyone to get to Uncle John's house that morning, we looked out through the sliding doors into his back yard. We saw something a bit unusual - a fat squirrel. The squirrel was munching on nuts that Uncle John had left for him. Uncle John was always feeding and caring for the wild creatures outside. His back yard was full of bird houses and a large bird feeder. I wondered if the squirrel could see us as well, looking back in through the glass. Aunt Mary laughed saying, "He's probably thinking, 'Boy, John, there's a lot of nuts in there!'" I laughed like crazy myself when Uncle John said that there were once two stray cats in his back yard, mating. They were making a lot of noise and Uncle John had to shoo them away. "I felt bad doing it," He said, "But I was afraid someone would think that I had a woman in here and I was beating her." 

We all had a great time getting on rides that day. The peak of our adventure was getting on a particularly scary ride called Rolling Thunder. There were two tracks - one that went forwards and one that went backwards. We got on the backwards one. Uncle John said something about just going with it, letting yourself be tossed around, but I was so scared that I was scrunched down in my seat with my eyes closed the entire time. After getting off, I said to the others, "I was so scared of the ride that I missed out on it."  I really wished that I had kept my eyes open. I realized that Uncle John was right, and that I had just learned an important lesson, not just about amusement park rides, but about life in general.                                                                     

                                                                              Life of the party

After Pop-pop passed away in 1979, the man who used to hide in his bedroom during family gatherings began to host them. For decades, Uncle John invited everyone over to his house two times a year - for a summer picnic and a Christmas party the last Saturday night before Christmas. He had a friend named Ed Hartman who made recordings of the party for him when camcorders first came out. In the summer, he got out the grille and we all sat around in his back yard in lawn chairs. My brother, Jos, used to bring his guitar and sit out front playing and singing. Eventually my mother's cousin Kay's husband, Jack Forsythe, came and joined him and they made music together. For a few years, everyone brought a container of laundry detergent to give to my step-father, Pat, who was collecting items for a lodge for people recovering from cancer. 

Uncle John's bedroom became a check in station for people just arriving at the Christmas party, which Uncle John began referring to as an "Open House". Everyone threw their coats and purses on Uncle John's bed and placed bags full of presents around the room. They then made an entrance into the living and dining rooms, where they greeted everyone and helped themselves to the meatballs, roast beef and cold cuts that were sitting on Uncle John's dining room table. Uncle John used to cook and bake all week to prepare for the party. The nieces and nephews tended to hang out in Uncle John's tiny, narrow kitchen, laughing like teenagers. Sometimes they followed the smokers outside to his patio in the back. The story-telling, the jokes and the drinking that went on out there seemed to chase the darkness away. One year they even brought a TV outside so they could watch the Eagles game while they were out there. Though we were outside and it was nighttime in December, no one ever seemed to feel cold.

Uncle John's sister, Barbara, would help him hand out slices of ice cream cake roll and then she would help him bring out large bags of small presents for the annual raffle. He placed a bunch of tickets with everyone's name on them in a saucepan. As he shouted out names, the youngest child would take a present to the person who's name was called. The last gift to be raffled off was an envelop with one hundred dollars in it.  Uncle John's humor flavored the party as he took us back to see his train set in one of the bedrooms. "Please overlook the mess", he told us, "Remember that I have been cooking and not cleaning all week." 

Uncle John brought his sense of humor wherever he went. When Aunt Bea was preparing to put new wallpaper in her dining room, we took turns writing on the wall. Uncle John wrote, "Please cover me with paper - John." At my 21s birthday party, he said, "Well Darcy, its all down hill from here - every year you get uglier." He gave me advice when I got my Master's Degree in Counseling, saying, "When a client asks, "Are you my doctor?" Just say, "Why Sointenly!" 

                                                 You make me feel like dancing....the Older Johnny

Uncle John lived to be eighty-three but he never looked or acted "old". He went out dancing. He taught other people how to dance. Somehow he ended up meeting one of my cousins from the other side of the family - Jacqueline Myers. She said he taught her how to do the Shuffle. He cut grass for the neighbors. He went out to lunch with Aunt Barbara every Wednesday. Having always had an interest in classic cars, he bought one that he called the Zimmer. He entered the Zimmer in hundreds of classic car competitions and won a room full of trophies with it. Many of those competitions were fund-raisers for charitable organizations like Shriner's Children's Hospital. In addition to all of that, Uncle John continued to manage an apartment building, feed birds and squirrels, and throw Christmas parties every year. Though he never smoked, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 2025. He maintained a positive attitude as he battled the disease. He said that he was strong and that there was only one thing wrong with him which was his lungs, so he was going to build up his strength and begin immunotherapy. Less than a week before he died in July, he was still out cutting lawns in the neighborhood. He left us with a powerful example of how to approach our difficulties in life.