Sherman Butler Black (1888-1936), a quiet and reserved man, was the son of Sol and Margaret Victoria Black of Arkansas.  Sherman's mother as a child arrived in Arkansas by raft on the Mississippi River, but that is another story.  Sherman had one brother, William Harless Black, and a sister, Valeria Black Rowell.  In 1910 when Sherman was 22 years old he and a close friend of his, DeWitt Smith, followed closely thereafter by Sherman's brother William, left Arkansas and came to Chicago, IL to seek their fortunes.  After some initial success Sherman sent for his parents, and so they too moved to Chicago in 1916.  However, shortly after their arrival Sherman's mother, Margaret Victoria Black, fell ill and Sherman found himself in need of domestic help within his household.  Grandmother Ellen Whitehead, then recently divorced (1915) from Michael Edward Downey, applied for the job and Sherman was willing to take her on, including her youngest child, Ervin Downey, then only four-to-six years old.  During that same time frame Sherman and his brother, William, went into business together---they owned and operated a "deli" or general store at the corner of 59^th Street and Normal Ave on Chicago's south-side---see the photograph of their store included in the slide show above.  Sherman's mother never recovered from her illness and she died in January, 1917, shortly after Grandmother Ellen Whitehead was hired to help out.  And Sherman's partnership with his brother, William, ended in a fist fight later that same year (1917).

Sherman answered his call to duty by joining the U.S. Army during WWI.  Sometime before war's end in November,1918, Sherman married Grandmother Ellen Susan Whitehead.  Judging from their honeymoon picture at Lookout Mountain in Tennessee where Sherman is pictured in civilian clothing with short sleeves, it would appear that they were married in either late spring or summer or even as late as early fall of 1918---see their honeymoon photograph included in the slide show above.

Sometime after his discharge from military service, Sherman and Ellen gathered up all the Downey boys---Uncle Phay, who had been living with her brother, Robert Whitehead, since just prior to her divorce from Michael Edward Downey, my father, Eugene H. Downey, and Uncle Gerald Downey, both of whom had been living together in a $1 a-week boarding house also due to Grandmother's divorce from their father, Michael Edward Downey, and together with Uncle Ervin who had remained with his mother throughout this period---and they all set out for Craddock, VA.  The Black family, which now included the four Downey boys, moved into a two story frame house at 12 Cushing Street in Craddock.  And Sherman, along with my father and Uncle Phay, got jobs working together at the Interstate Tank Car Company in nearby Portsmouth, VA---see their photograph together in the slide show above..  At some point Sherman also found work at the Portsmouth Cotton Oil Company, which later became known as Lever Brothers. The Black twins, Uncles Bob and Bill Black, were born a short time later in July, 1920 at the house on Cushing Street.

But by 1922 when the twins were about 2-years old, Sherman moved his expanded household back to Chicago where they were to remain until 1934.  It is thought that upon their return to Chicago, Phay, being the oldest Downey boy, must have left home ---he would have been 20 at the time---by enrolling as a live-in student at Blackburn College in Carlinville, IL---a small college in southern IL, which at that time may have been affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, as Phay was to later become a Presbyterian minister.  My father, being the next oldest Downey boy, may have continued living as a member of the Black household during this Chicago period, but for only a short time as he too followed his brother, Phay, to Blackburn College.  That left Uncle Gerald and Uncle Ervin who probably remained in the Black household for yet a few more years.  Uncle Gerald might have been the next to leave by say 1926 when he would have been 20...and later, Uncle Ervin may have left, perhaps by say 1928 when he would have been 16-18 years of age.  So I suspect that Sherman's ebony player piano that Uncle Gerald learned how to play by ear was in the Black household during their Chicago years when Uncle Gerald still lived with them.

Not much is known about either Sherman's livelihood or his family's well-being during the Black family's Chicago years from 1922 to 1934.  However, we do know that during this period the Black family made several trips to the same Arkansas that Sherman loved as a boy and young man.  And we also know that despite the general period of prosperity that the nation as a whole enjoyed throughout most of the 1920's, such was not always the case with respect to the Black family.  During these Chicago days Sherman tried his hand at starting and running a heating repair business.  Sherman's heating business grew steadily, but it also had its ups and downs and never did generate the stable income he had enjoyed when his family lived in Craddock, VA.  For example, Uncle Bill in his unpublished manuscript regarding the life and times of his half-brother, my Uncle Gerald Downey, tells it this way---" One thing I will always remember Jerry for was the Christmas of 1926.  My parents were dead broke and after paying the rent and buying food there was nothing left.  Mother told Bob and I there would be no presents from Santa, but they would come after Christmas.  When Jerry found out he bought two large fire trucks, one a wrecker and one that actually shot water out of a built-in hose.  We were the envy of all the kids in the neighborhood.  They were expensive toys.  I never forgot that act of kindness by Jerry, even though I guess I paid him back many times over in later years.  On two occasions I loaned him several hundred dollars and he always paid back."

In 1933 Grandmother Ellen Whitehead Black's brother, Robert James Whitehead (known throughout the family as Uncle Bob Whitehead and by some as Uncle Rob Whitehead), was instrumental in landing a rush contract for Sherman to replace the entire heating system  at the Willett Trucking Company where he (i.e., Uncle Bob Whitehead) worked. With the $500 he cleared from that job, Sherman headed to Baxter County, Arkansas, and purchased 50 acres of land some four miles outside of Norfork, Arkansas. The Black family then moved from Chicago to Norfork in 1934.

In Norfork times were tough.  By 1934 the Great Depression was well underway.  Work was hard to come by in those days regardless of where you lived.  The unemployment rate was up to around 35%.  In addition to the economic difficulties facing them, while Sherman was happy to be back in Arkansas, Ellen was not.  She was having a difficut time adjusting to small town life in rural Arkansas almost from the moment they arrived in Norfork---perhaps even before. At first the Black family lived within the town limits of Norfork, but in order to save the $8 a month rent and the monthly electricity bill, Sherman decided to build a log cabin on his fifty acres situated in a remote area just outside Norfork.  Faced with the prospect of living in a cabin with no running water, no electricity, and no central heating system, combined with the reality of dirt roads---if indeed, there were any roads at all--- outhouses, kerosene lamps, spring water, spiders, snakes, and the like, Grandmother Ellen Whitehead Black, being a big-city girl at heart, decided she would rather return to Chicago and find work for herself.  And so she did, despite the prospect of a separation not only from her husband, Sherman, but from her children, Bob and Bill, then teenagers.  I think for Grandmother Black to have made such a decision, the ensuing separation was more a response to a way of life than a reflection of any marital difficulties between her and Sherman.  He was at long last "home" in Arkansas, whereas she was not, for "home" to Ellen meant Chicago, not Norfork, Arkansas.

When Grandmother Black returned to Chicago, she stayed with Sherman's brother, William Harless Black and his wife, Clara and their daughter, Margaret.  Grandmother's then remaining unmarried sons, my Uncles Gerald and Ervin Downey, by that time were sharing a small, two-room apartment at 6502 South Harvard Street in Chicago.  And Grandmother's own mother, Maria McCullon Whitehead, was still alive, having been institutionalized at nearby Dunning State Hospital.  And as previously stated, Ellen's brother, Robert James Whitehead and his wife, Alma, were living in nearby Blue Island, IL and her son, Gene Downey and family (I was all of two years old at the time) were living in the nearby Hillside-Villa Park-Elmhurst area.  Grandmother Black found work at the Becker Ryan Department Store in Chicago, where she had previously worked before Sherman moved the family to Arkansas in 1934.

Meanwhile, Sherman and the twins pressed on by first building, then moving into their cabin out in the woods.  The twins continued their schooling in Norfork and found work wherever they could find it.  In addition to odd jobs here and there, they started cutting down huge pine trees, trimmed them up, and sold them as telephone poles, while their father, Sherman, found work building the bridge across the Norfork Dam.  They all lived off the land, eating roots and berries, and they fished and hunted game that was quite plentiful in the area.  Despite the hardships they endured as a typical American family trying to make it through the Great Depression, Uncle Bill remembered those times as being the best of times insofar as his own childhood was concerned.  But sometime after school started up again in the fall of 1936, both Uncles Bob and Bill contracted typhoid fever from drinking unsafe water from a nearby old, and all but dried-up, spring.  The twins received both care and food from friends and neighbors who would make the long trek from town out to the cabin, and Sherman did what he could with the situation, working long hours during the day at the Norfork Dam Bridge and then sitting up with the twins long into the night.  But without proper medical treatment, delirium and unconscious periods soon set in.  Sherman became increasingly concerned and sent word to Ellen of the boys' worsening condition.  For a time Sherman made arrangements for the twins to be moved into an in-town house where they could be looked after on a bit more frequent basis by both friends and neighbors and by the doctor.  Here's one account obtained just recently (October, 2003) by Julie Black Rolak, Uncle Bill's daughter, from a relative of Jackie Arnold who would later become Uncle Bob's wife---" When Bill and Bob were moved into town I went with my mother to visit them.  She took food, changed beds, etc. washed clothes and maybe spent nights with them. Their mother was in Chicago.  I remember them as having beds in the living room.  The house was across the street from Virginia Harvey's old house which was backed up to the log hut where we went to school. "

When Ellen first received word of the twins' worsening condition, her response, or lack thereof, remains somewhat of a mystery to the family, for Ellen did not return to Arkansas to nurse her children back to health...at least not initially. In his unpublished manuscript of the Black family history written many years later, Uncle Bill is somewhat evasive on this point, but that is explained by his daughter and my cousin, Julie Black Rolak's observation that her father's way of handling any hurt was always "quietly and non-judgmental...for he had an uncanny way of being able to pretend something never happened.  After speaking his peace one time, from then on, it was ignored---like if you don't talk about it, it never happened."

But Ellen did return to Arkansas, not initially in response to the twins' typhoid, but subsequently in response to an even worse tragedy that struck the family.  Only 3/4 of the cabin's flooring was in place because Sherman was digging a combination storm and fruit cellar underneath the cabin.  Despite a heavy rope he had put around the open area, Sherman, while sweeping the floor, accidently fell through that section of open flooring to the unfinished cellar below, crushing several ribs.  As fate would have it on that particular day, October 14, 1936, the twins, with their typhoid and all, were also at the cabin.  So too was a local townswoman who was looking after the twins when Sherman fell through the open floor joists---a distance of only three feet to the cellar below. Apparently as she was helping Sherman out of the cellar one of Sherman's broken ribs pierced a lung and one of his kidneys.  Sherman felt pain in his rib cage and had trouble breathing.  The townswoman made him as comfortable as possible before making the 4-mile walk into Norfork to summon the doctor.  The doctor and the townswoman returned to the cabin, and the doctor made his preliminary diagnosis---Sherman had broken five ribs and, after listening to Sherman's labored breathing with his stethescope, he concluded that one of these broken ribs had punctured his lung.  The doctor informed Sherman of the seriousness of his injuries and that he needed to be transported to the VA Hospital in Fayetteville for treatment ASAP.  Unable to move himself, let alone care for the twins' typhoid, Sherman asked the doctor to get word to Ellen of the seriousness of his condition and to tell her that arrangements were being made for him to be transported to the VA Hospital in Fayetteville.  The doctor returned to Norfork and made that telephone call to Ellen.  Ellen, upon hearing of Sherman's life threatening injuries, finally came to the realization that the twins' own health and safety was truly in jeapardy should Sherman die from his injuries.  So she told the doctor to assure Sherman that she was on her way.  Ellen called Gerald and the two of them hopped in Gerald's 1932 coupe and began their two-day automobile trip from Chicago to Fayetteville.  Unknown to Ellen at the time, it took these same two days for Sherman to be transported to Fayetteville---a distance of 135 miles over dirt roads that connected Norfork to Fayetteville through the Ozark Mountains. Presumably Sherman had to be transported by stretcher over 4-miles of rough terrain even to get him from the cabin into Norfork.  And ambulance service from Norfork to Fayetteville was presumably non-existent in those days, so arrangements had to be made to transport him to Fayetteville probably by pick-up truck, as he had to lie prone throughout the entire journey.  Ellen and Gerald arrived at the VA Hospital in Fayetteville on October 16th only a few hours after Sherman himself finally began to receive the hospital treatment he so desperately needed two days before.  However, the previously undiagnosed damage to his kidney proved to be fatal and Sherman Butler Black died from his injures that same afternoon at 5:45 P.M. on October 16, 1936, just 9 days short of what would have been his 48th birthday. 

Fortunately, Ellen did make it in time to reconcile with Sherman, as Sherman, then on his death bed at the VA Hospital in Fayetteville, whispered his final words to Ellen, " You've come back, Honeybunch."  And come back she did, for after Sherman's death, Grandmother promptly returned to Norfork, rented a house in town, and assumed responsibility for nursing the twins back to health.