Charles Eustis “Charlie” Lucking

Charlie was born in Detroit in 1918, seventeen months after

the birth of his brother Bill. From the beginning he was a

favorite, and I think he was probably a sweet-natured boy. He

was spared the series of illnesses that Bill suffered, but though

the boys were very close they seemed to be rather different.

Old movies show Bill to be active and bumptious, mugging

whenever a picture was taken; while Charlie was calmer and

more restrained.

The year 1922 was horrific for his mother Catherine’s family;

her father died weeks after her sister Claribel married. Claribel

quickly became pregnant but late in her pregnancy contracted

scarlet fever. She died soon

after delivering a

little boy, and her

son died weeks

later. Catherine

had a sort of a

breakdown and

stayed for a time at

a New York

sanitarium

operated, I think,

by Dr Morton

Roberts Peck. And

Dr Peck spent his

winters in a little

California valley

called Ojai. Later,

when her marriage to William Lucking failed, it

was in Ojai that she sought refuge.

In 1925 Charlotte Duhme Eustis Ives, Catherine’s

1

https://ourfamilyhistoryblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/charlottes-lake-arrowhead-cabin.pdf

Well, he only got as far as a training camp where he contracted mumps, but that’s2

another story.

Email May 27 2015 Laura Wensley , Webb School Alumni Office3

mother, purchased five lots at Lake Arrowhead and had a cottage built; and for the next1

fifteen years it was a center of family activity.

About the same time Catherine met the son of Dr Peck. Kenneth

was an avid sportsman, handsome, wealthy and a man who after

service in World War I went to Cornell and took courses in2

agriculture. He was always elegant, polished, with an upper class

drawl and the ability to talk with a banker, a farmer or an

irrigator with ease. And he fell in love with Catherine and she

with him, to the disappointment of the Ojai girls. He wooed

Catherine directly and through her sons. He taught them to fish,

to play tennis, to swim, and to hunt, especially birds. And he

married Catherine in 1929 at Lake Arrowhead.

When Catherine, moved the children to Ojai, the boys, and later

their sister Patsy, went to Ojai Valley School. Then Bill, and a

year later Charlie, went to the Webb School in Claremont. “Charles attended Webb from

1932-1937, 8th-12th grades. During his time at Webb, he was a football player, Block W

member (Varsity letter society), and an Honor Committeeman. During his 8th grade year in

1933, he won 1 place in the saddling race and two 3rd places in other contests at the Annualst

Gymkhana Contest. Like his brother, he won 1st place in scholarship in the 8th grade class.

For many years after his death, his parents and brother gave to the Charles Eustis Lucking

Book Memorial Fund, allowing Webb to purchase books for the library.”3

Bill and Charlie lived a more-or-less idyllic life, at least as seen from eighty years away.

They had lots and lots of outdoor activities sponsored by an attentive stepfather. They had a

loving mother, a grandmother (Charlotte Ives) who provided backup care and of course the

cottage at Arrowhead; another grandmother (Vie Lucking) who gave them checks for their

first horses; an adoring father, I think; good looks and charm, which later got them attention

from girls. They would go back to Detroit to visit their father (how often?) where they sailed

up around Lake Huron. They would take the train, alone, and would stay at the Drake Hotel,

described as “the most luxurious hotel in Chicago.” Imagine boys in their early teens

traveling alone now.

May 27, 2015For about ten years their father and his parents were visitors in Ojai, where

WAL Sr had carved out an estate. By 1935 his parents had both died, and he had started a

relationship with a divorcee, Nancy Akers Powell. Well, he was smitten, but the boys didn’t

care for her. She made them wash the dishes! And somehow “Pa Bill” decided that to induce

her to marry him he would sign all that he had

over to her, essentially disinheriting his

children.

The boys, each in his turn, went to Dartmouth.

That may not have been the best choice;

Dartmouth was known as a hard-drinking

school, and remains so (Not for nothing is their

unofficial mascot ‘Keggy the Keg”). Also

academic rigor may have taken a back seat to

fiscal concerns. It was the depression, and a

reliable tuition check was like gold. Dad (WAL

Jr) said that he had a double major, pre-

medicine and pre-law; and that he got

“gentlemans’ grades.” I had assumed that the

latter meant B’s and C’s, but I now suspect the

standard was somewhat lower.

The first hints of trouble with Charlie surface

with an interview with an English cousin who

said

that my grandfather and Charlie had been in England in the late 1930's and that Charlie had

been giving WAL Sr. trouble about his prospective remarriage.

But everyone knew that war was coming; Dad (WAL Jr) and Charlie had enlisted in the

Naval Reserves. But before the (American) first shot, Charlie was in a bad state. Another

cousin said that he had written to his father saying that he was “at the end of his rope,” feared

that he wouldn’t graduate, and wanted his father to come and visit him. And his father said

that he couldn’t just then, he was about to marry Nancy, but when he got back from his

honeymoon he would come. I don’t know if this last is true but at all events just three days

after the wedding Charlie committed suicide.

Well, the family was torn in a particularly painful way. WAL Jr had to bring his brother’s

body to Detroit for burial. Catherine, Gran, developed a cough which never left her, used to

stifle the tears. Patsy, especially close to Charlie, never discussed him. How could that not

have affected WAL Sr? And the grief and confusion continues into the next generation.