Linked Memories: Two Generations, Two Double Lives

The combined evidence on the lives of our great grandfather James Louis Hynes and his son, our grandfather, James Gordon Hynes is abundant, decisive and powerful–they were astoundingly alike in their strengths and, sadly, their faults. We can learn much about each of them from the other.

On the surface, both men were successful Baptist ministers, our grandfather following literally in the footsteps of his father in taking over in 1930 the Freeport church his father had led a decade earlier.

But both led troubling double lives, inflicting lasting damage on their families. We have documented the details of this for our great grandfather. In the case of our grandfather, it was a matter of incrementally revealed hints that leaked through the family defenses through the 1980s and early 1990s–comments and revealed incidents reinforced by our comparing notes in later years. The grandfather we knew for three decades was as deeply flawed as his father.

Because the events in question have serious implications to our parents’ generation, I am being deliberately vague about the specific transgressions of our grandfather, only that they were on-par with those of his father. I do not believe there is anyone living who was directly harmed, but it is difficult to be certain.

What we have learned about our great grandfather further reinforces our understanding of our grandfather. The father’s life provides a template for the life of his son, the outrages and absurd contradictions repeating from one generation to the subsequent one. This is particularly difficult to understand with the knowledge that our grandfather grew up on the front lines defending his family against the outrages of his father– knowing the worst wouldn’t he surely have wanted to defend against the possibility of repeating them? I must conclude that there is a genetic component to the behavior, bred (perhaps inbred) through generations of unimaginable hardships in the northern reaches of Newfoundland, not able to be compensated-for in only a single generation of union with the genteel nature of the family of Bessie Gordon.

We can conversely glean a positive view of our great grandfather through our memories of our grandfather. Although it has been tempting to dismiss our great grandfather as a sort of cynical con-man, it is more likely that he was like his son who we knew to be a serious academic and clergyman, despite his serious flaws. We might have already guessed this from a man who wrote seasonal religious poetry that filled an entire page of a newspaper.

A 1961 or 1962 photo speaks volumes. It shows our grandparents on a visit to our grandfather’s Aunt Addie, in front of the Gordon family homestead at 182 Liberty Street in Newburgh. We have previously noted that Addie was the person in the world most able to see right through her brother-in-law. It is difficult to imaging that she, the person who devoted her life to aiding and defending young women, was not equally aware of the behaviors of her nephew.