Maggie Whitson's cinematic girlhood at the headquarters of US Army Europe — the Cristoforo Colombo crossing, the King at a military mixer, and Mensur swords drawn for her attention
The record's maternal line runs through a palatial requisitioned mansion in Heidelberg, where a classified American official's beautiful daughter met Elvis Presley at a military social and watched Bavarian nobility fight ritual Mensur duels to impress her — chaperoned throughout by her stepmother June.
The trail exists so that people who were there can reconstruct their own memories, recognize what they helped incubate, and add to or correct the record — or forward the few pages that belong to someone they know.
My mother, Margaret ‘Maggie’ Ina Whitson, was born in Maryland on January 10, 1943, her early life defined by the post-war environment. In the late 1950s my grandfather, William L. Whitson, was stationed in Germany. He held the civilian equivalent rank of a Lieutenant General so he could interface seamlessly in the chain of command, reporting up to full generals and down to major generals — operating much like General Groves did during the Manhattan Project. The exact nature of his assignment remains highly classified, though it placed him at the absolute highest echelons of the U.S. military bureaucracy. Around 1957 or 1958, my mother and step-grandmother, June Whitson, crossed the Atlantic to join him on the Cristoforo Colombo, the famous sister ship to the Andrea Doria.
In Heidelberg — which served as the headquarters for the United States Army Europe — they lived in a palatial mansion that had been seized from a member of the German nobility. It was a highly charged, cinematic era, and my mother found herself in the orbit of both American cultural icons and European aristocrats.
Between October 1958 and March 1960, Elvis Presley was stationed just an hour north at Ray Barracks in Friedberg. Because of my grandfather's elite rank, my mother crossed paths with the King of Rock and Roll at a military social mixer during his deployment. Like practically every girl of that era, he was her absolute celebrity crush — an infatuation that remained with her well into her late twenties.
But perhaps the most striking spectacle of her time there involved the young Bavarian nobility. My mother was beautiful, and all the college-age aristocrats vied for her attention. In Heidelberg, courting a woman's favor was steeped in an ancient, famous academic fencing tradition known as Mensur. Much like a medieval joust, these young men would engage in highly ritualized, brutal bouts using sharpened, needle-nosed Schläger swords as a raw display of manhood. Seeking to impress her and earn their duelling scars as badges of honor, they would practically duel over her. My mother, entirely innocent to the blood sport of it all, simply watched the spectacle unfold — carefully and constantly chaperoned at all times by my grandmother, June.
A classified official's daughter, a requisitioned mansion, the King of Rock and Roll at a mixer, and swords drawn in the old university town: the maternal line's formation chapter, told from the family record with the era's public facts — the Colombo, Ray Barracks, the Mensur tradition — checking out around it.
Episodes are building blocks. The same material appears in more than one where it belongs in more than one, and every claim traces back to a primary source.
Hare's mother: born Maryland 1943, the classified official's daughter in the seized mansion, chaperoned through a cinematic era; later Margaret Whitson again, now married to John Crowley
Open →In the graphNuclear physicist, Titan II, ARPA — and a two-hundred-word obituary
Open →In the graph1916–2015 — who carried the record, and taught the method
Open →In the graphRay Barracks, Friedberg, October 1958 – March 1960: the King's Army years, one social mixer, one lifelong celebrity crush
Open →In the graphConsilient Architect — the node this graph was seeded from
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