Myrna Loy by Emily W. Leider Read Free Book Online Page B

years, and extravagantly long stays there, had surely contributed to the family’s insolvency. 18
    In February 1918 David Franklin Williams, while in Los Angeles, wrote and filed a last will and testament that was witnessed by three Los Angeles residents. What was he doing in Los Angeles at this time? Was he looking around for real estate, reconsidering his stance on remaining in Helena? Did he decide to write a will in his thirty-ninth year because he recognized that he might die on the European war front after his contemplated enlistment in the military? If he survived that peril, did he foresee a separation from Della, or a divorce? Affirmatives to at least some of these questions seem likely.
    Myrna recalled being at home in Helena, shortly after she turned thirteen, dressed up as a girl soldier with a cap and a khaki jacket, when, with a voice cracking with emotion, she tried to persuade her father to change his mind about enlisting. She wanted him home. He didn’t yield to her entreaties. Should anything happen to him, he told Myrna, she should take charge of the family. “You’re my little soldier. When I go, I’m leaving you to take care of things” ( BB , 21). What an extraordinary thing to say to a schoolgirl who had just entered her teens, especially considering the financial hole he was in the process of digging. Myrna took her father’s words to heart. They would shape her future role in the family and ultimately define her sense of purpose. She would become a person with a fierce work ethic, a young woman with ambitious goals for herself who at the same time shouldered responsibility for others.
    The Spanish influenza epidemic prevented David’s planned enlistment. Beginning in September of 1918, a virulent strain of the disease walloped the entire country. Almost a quarter of the national population contracted the infection, and out of every one thousand that fell ill, nineteen died. Army camps were decimated as more soldiers died from the flu than had fallen in the trenches. Calls for 142,000 draftees were canceled. In Montana entire homesteader families died in their beds, and children not yet stricken wore balls of asafetida tied around their necks. 19
    When Myrna, her brother, and Della all came down with the flu, David senior nursed them, aided by a professional nurse who came to their house for just one hour a day to administer medicine and pack them in ice. Myrna remembered waking from sleep to find her father sitting beside her, holding her hand. She also recalled a sleepwalking episode. Feverish and not aware of her own movements, she wandered out of her bedroom. Her father gently led her back to bed. 20
    When David himself contracted the disease, Myrna, who had recovered, went to stay with a neighbor. She learned of her father’s death by overhearing a morning phone call and went to pieces. Recalling the moment to James Kotsilibas-Davis more than sixty years later, while working with him on her autobiography, Myrna again broke down. 21
    David Franklin Williams, not yet forty years old, died November 7, 1918, two days before Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and four days before Germany signed the armistice and hostilities ceased. “Funeral services for David F. Williams, who died at 8:30 yesterday morning from effects of influenza, will take place at 11 Saturday morning from Flaherty and Kohler chapel under the auspices of the Helena lodge of Elks,” reported the Helena Independent . “The Rev. James F. McNamee of First Baptist Church will preach the sermon.” David Franklin Williams’s estate was billed $365 for funeral expenses, including “casket, box, services,” the hearse, and five taxis. He was buried on November 11, to background noises of jubilation—drumbeats, bells, sirens, and shouts—as the rest of Helena celebrated the armistice. 22
    “I worshipped him,” Myrna said of her father, whose death proved to be the determining event in her life. “I coped with his loss by