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A Changed Man: An Old Army Mystery

by Betty Eckgren

169 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0052; ISBN 1-55212-388-X; US$20.50, C$23.50, EUR16.50, £12.00

Ruskin Friton (the author's father) disappears from his loving family in St. Louis, and serves in the US Army under a different name during World War I. He marries an Army nurse, Margaret Kumpman, who knows him only as Thomas Burton. Daughter Betty, who has been researching this unsolved mystery for 10 years, wants help from readers.

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About the Book How would you feel, what would you do upon learning that the name you had grown up with was completely phony? It happened to me in middle age, with a husband and two grown-up children at the centre of my world. And for several years I simply didn't believe it! I still have scribbled notes from that day at the hospital, when my dying father denied he was Thomas Burton, the name Mother and I had known him by all those years we were together. When he identified himself as Ruskin Friton, I had to ask him to spell it. He did, and gave us his address in St.Louis, the names of his father and several aunts and uncles. Would you believe an old man so confused by Alzheimers that he no longer recognized his wife and daughter? Would you be annoyed, even angry with a parent who hid your relatives from you? Deprived you of finding your roots? Would you care enough to start sleuthing? For years Mother and I had been suspicious that this loving and supportive husband and father was lying to us about his past. We had never met his family. In my early twenties I had made a few inquiries, all in vain. Now I began by sending out more letters, still dubious that Dad had at last told us the truth. I was blown away when Ara Kaye, Reference Specialist at the State Historical Society of Missouri, helped me locate our whole family of Fritons, uncles, aunts and all, in the 1900 U.S. Census. I believe my hands were shaking as I read about Ruskin, his parents, and grandparents in old St.Louis. Completely captivated, I spent the next ten years churning out hundreds of queries to government agencies, military headquarters, libraries, veterans' groups...across the United States and as far away as Germany, wherever clues and hunches led me. I found my relatives in St.Louis, the present generation, who knew about the son who had vanished and was never heard of again. We shared wonderful old letters, documents, and photos, and I was thrilled to recognize my father as a boy of ten or eleven. I knew of his service in the Army during World War I because that is where he met my mother, Margaret, who was a Red Cross nurse at the hospital where he was stationed. They began dating and eventually were secretly married. (It was against the rules for nurses to date enlisted men) Was the Army aware of the secret identity change? Did they perhaps order it?? Certain key letters and documents suggest this is the case, but the evidence is by no means conclusive. Was Ruskin Friton/Thomas Burton engaged in undercover work? The family was German, and he spoke the language. Or perhaps he committed some crime? Friends ask: "Betty, if your dad did something dishonorable, would you really want to know?" The answer is yes--whatever he may have done will not dim this daughter's love and gratitude. Why would a brainy young soldier disappear forever from his family and hide them from his wife and child? My research has filled in many gaps, but the ultimate answer is still missing. I ask my readers: "How would you feel? Would you write this book?" My prime reason for going onto the net with this true account is the fervent hope that someone out there can provide information or clues. Organizations and/or individuals who share my interests in military history, true mysteries or genealogy are invited to link their website to this one: www.trafford.com/robots/00-0052.html. A Changed Man is more than just a mystery. The reader will embark on a sentimental journey into the zestful youth of the Twentieth Century, with its flappers, bootlegging, revolutionary inventions, and newfound freedoms; also a fond recollection of two vibrant and unforgettable people: Tom and Margaret, whose antics will make you laugh out loud, as when... -Tom locked bumpers with Richard Dix and dragged the furious film star all across Hollywood, to punish him for tailgating. -Or when he was thrown into a Mexican jail for the crime of winning big at a poker game. -Or Margaret's electrifying experience with spark plugs on the old Scripps Booth. -Or she drove her brother's Model T Ford into the neighbours' choice flower bed and was invited in for tea by the forgiving neighbours. -Read about the frequent root beer explosions, due to Tom's yeasty formula. (We had to carry bottles upstairs from the cellar, wrapped in a pillow). -Learn why Tom was delighted when our dear dog Peter bit him on the arm. Warning to readers: If you dip into this story, you may find it highly addictive and not be able to put it down. This was my fate when writing it! You'll be sleuthing for clues. If you come up with any, please share them with me! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THESE PEOPLE? One of the two photos Dad brought from his past: likely a good friend. Was it this young Naval officer who 'phoned Lydia's apartment, posing as Tom's make-believe brother Frank, the Philadelphia Port Captain? One of two photos Ruskin/Tom brought from his past: "My sister Fanny," he said. Not so! -Anna Weiland, in St. Louis, perhaps? (a friend of the family who corresponded with Ruskin/Tom's Cavalry pal, Riley Pfister?) Or: - Virginia, mentioned in Ruskin's letter to his father (Feb. 23, 1918)? She was "visiting her mother in California?" Is it possible he even married her??

Reviews

from Grace V., a reader from Victoria, B.C.

"It's hard to put down! Thank you for sharing one of the most singular mysteries I have ever read. I'm to page 92 of this intriguing personal enigma. It is absolutely amazing, and my husband pcks it up when I am interrupted. We find ourselves speculating on the bizarre 'reasons' (?) for such concealment. A factor that could bear fruit is that your dad and mother traveled so widely during the Happy Wanderings; perhaps you will hear from a descendant of Somebody in one of these widely scattered sites? The pictures are VERY helpful as well as interesting. Incredible and very readable."

(Then, after finishing the book, Grace adds: )

"It remains a nagging mystery that I cannot wholly forget, a haunting story.

Canadian Military History Book Supplement, June 2001

    At the heart of this book is a mystery: an American First World War veteran, stricken with Alzheimer's disease in a Victoria, British Columbia, hospital, in occasional moments of lucidity refers to himself by a name that his loved ones have never heard before, and to his siblings, who are equally unknown to the family. Years after Thomas Burton's death, his daughter decides to do some research and discovers that her father was really named Ruskin Friton, and that he had concealed his true past from his family since the First World War.
    Eckgren eventually determines that her father served in the U.S. Cavalry before the war, and also served in some capacity with the medical corps during the war (she is never able to detrmine for certain whether he went overseas), but that he discarded his old identity (and severed connections with his family) at some point during that period. Was he involved in some crime that necessitated him going underground? If so, was the army complicit in his deception? Or was he an undercover agent? For which side? Unfortunately, these questions, which could draw the matter to a conclusion, remain unanswered. Eckgren has done some excellent detective work, but the final missing pieces in the puzzle have thus far eluded her.
-Doug Gates

Fifty Plus (Victoria Times-Colonist), March 6, 2001

Searching for dad: Tom Burton's deathbed revelation sent daughter on hunt for past

    As Tom Burton, 88, lay dying of Alzheimers in a Victoria rest home in 1983, his ramblings shocked wife Margaret and daughter Betty Eckgren.
    "Don't call me Tom," he complained to the nurse. "My name is Ruskin Friton."
    He then recited a St. Louis address and named several family members, none of whom his wife and daughter had heard of.
    It wasn't just confusion, Betty would later discover. Tom Burton was not the man she and her mother had known. Unravelling the mystery would prove a daunting but rewarding quest for the retired Victoria librarian.
    In her book, A Changed Man: An Old Army Mystery, recently published by Trafford, Eckgren reveals the astonishing facts she discovered about her "dear old dad."
    In 1918, Eckgren's mother Margaret Kumpman, an army nurse, met Sgt. Major Tom Burton at the military hospital in Hoboken, New Jersey, where they were both stationed. It was against the rules for nurses and soldiers to fraternize, so their dating was discreet, and their marriage secret.
    Margaret was troubled by the fact that she had never met his family. Tom told her his parents had made a speedy exit to Germany during World War I.
    "Are they spies, for Heaven's sakes!" she asked. Tom wasn't saying.
    Eckgren began checking some of what her father had told them: that he had graduated from Stanford University with a degree in civil engineering; that his sister Fanny had attended Vassar College; that his brother Frank was port captain of the Philadelphia Port Authority.
    "All lies," Eckgren found. "Vassar had never heard of Fanny and Philadelphia's port bureau had never heard of Frank. As I later discovered, dad never even had a sister named Fanny or a brother Frank.
    For the past decade, Eckgren has churned out hundreds of inquiries to government agencies, veteran groups, historical societies, including the U.S. National Archives, the Library of Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
    Imagine her excitement when the 1900 and 1910 U.S. census verified what her father had said on his deathbed about the Friton family in St. Louis. Incredibly, two Fritons were listed in the current St. Louis phone book. Betty lost no time in writing them. They proved to be her cousins, who remembered the story of an older family member, Ruskin, who mysteriously vanished after the war.
    There were visits back and forth and a sharing of precious old photos, letters and stories.
    But Eckgren found it harder to figure out why her father had changed his identity, though the St. Louis family had documents that hinted the army played a role.
    One letter from Ruskin Friton to his family in 1918 talks about an army friend, Thomas Burton, whom he said was going overseas. "He is a splendid man. I wish I could be with him all the time," he writes. Eckgren takes this as a hint to his family that he was taking on the Burton identity.
    When Ruskin cut off contact with his family in 1919, his father Julius remembered a letter in which Ruskin mentioned Burton was staying at the army hospital in Hoboken. So he wrote there, asking about his son's whereabouts. The St. Louis cousins still have the army's reply which states that Lt. Ruskin Friton had been discharged and presumably had gone to England with his "friend Mr. Thomas Burton."
    Eckgren feels that, unless this is a forgery, it shows that the army was part of the coverup and knew about Friton's identity change.
    Other old letters came from Riley Pfister, a friend who claimed Ruskin was working as a civilian when Thomas Burton and Pfister had enlisted as soldiers in the U.S. 13th Cavalry in 1913. Eckgren believes Ruskin had already become Burton by then, and Pfister was covering for him. Army records show that, in 1916, Pfister and Burton took part in the punitive expedition into Mexico, on the trail of the revolutionary Pancho Villa.
    Eckgren found Pfister's daughter in Colorado. She said her father was just like Ruskin: a good dad but a great liar who seemd to be estranged from his family.
    Despite her sleuthing, Eckgren is left with many unanswered questions about why her father changed her identity, when he made that change or whether there ever was a real Thomas Burton.
    In her book, Eckgren poses her questions as if she were sitting asking her father why he became Thomas Burton:
    Was it an army order? With your fluent German, were you in the secret service?; Some crime or misdeed? Did you kill someone, perhaps by accident? Were you a bigamist?; Or, as a bloody-minded teenager, did you sail off in a huff one day and sulk for 60 years?; And, by the way, what did you do with the real Thomas Burton?
    "This puzzle is like a giant jigsaw," Eckgren writes. "I keep finding small pieces, lighting small candles in 80 years of blackout. The search has been a fascinating learning experience that has brought me together with a dear family. My chief reason for writing the book is to reach out to readers for possible information and clues."

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About the Author

A bit of a job-hopper, Betty Eckgren taught school in California and Hawaii; then worked as a journalist for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin; next, an information officer in Tokyo, and advertising copywriter in London. With a master's degree in Library Science, she became a librarian in the Los Angeles and South Pasadena Public Libraries; later, in Canada, at the Greater Victoria Public Library.

A Changed Man is her second book. The first, 500 Live Ideas for the Grade Teacher, was co-authored by Vivian Fishel and published by Row-Peterson. It sold more than 30,000 copies.

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Excerpt

from Chapter One

"When my Aunt Lydia learned that her younger sister was intending to marry a soldier she had met at the Army hospital where both were assigned during World War I, she was distressed.

"You just met him a few months ago, Margaret. You know almost nothing about the fellow." She did her best to dissuade Mother.

Margaret Kumpman was an Army nurse, working in what had been the old St. Mary's Catholic Hospital in Hoboken, New Jersey, but was now Army Embarkation Hospital #1. In her memoirs she recalls that it was only a 7¢ ride on the tube to New York City and Lydia's apartment on Lexington Ave. Her parents also lived nearby, on a farm in Dover, New Jersey. They were German immigrants, proud of their American citizenship, but their German accents alienated some of the neighbors and won them few friends during the war. Margaret, only three years old when the family had immigrated, grew up beautifully bilingual, with no telltale accent.

"You've never met his parents," Lydia objected.

Margaret needed no reminder. The fact disturbed her also.

"They live in California," she explained.

What she had not confided to her sister was a strange and somewhat chilling incident in New York City a couple weeks earlier. She and Tom had been shopping, and then he left her standing within sight of the Harbor while he went to speak with a middle-aged couple waiting with their luggage on the pier.

"I've got to have a word with them," he told her. "I won't be long."

She watched from a distance and wondered why she had not been invited to come with him. Finally she saw the couple board a liner docked nearby, and Tom came hurrying back, looking a bit embarrassed.

"They're on their way to Europe," he explained.

"Oh, friends of yours, I guess?"

"Well--actually, they're my parents."

"Your--parents!"

He could see that she was stung.

"Look, Margaret, I'm really sorry you couldn't have met them!"

"Well, were you ashamed to introduce me?"

There was an unhappy silence. He reached awkwardly for her hand, but she drew it away. He bit his lip, wondering what to say. Finally--

"This is very confidential," he warned. "My parents--I don't quite know how to put it--You see, they're leaving the country, probably for good; sailing to Germany, by way of a neutral country, of course."

"To Germany!" Mother was dumbfounded.

"Because of this damned war! They've got to get out of here in a hurry--or be arrested."

She stared at him."

"Are they spies, for heavens sakes?"

By this time Dad felt he had already said too much. He clammed up.

"Anyway, Margaret, it was my last chance to talk with them, privately, and to say goodbye. I'm sorry to have hurt your feelings."

This was one of his rare apologies. (I doubt he made more than half a dozen of them during his lifetime!) And she melted. Although concern about his family hung ever at the back of her mind, it could not shake their love.

Margaret's Memoirs, written when she was in her seventies, provide a window into those long-gone days of their secret romance. She had joined the Army as a Red Cross nurse on July 13, 1918, and been assigned to Army Embarkation Hospital #1, in Hoboken. Tom was in the Medical Department there.

"...I was becoming increasingly involved with a feller who, next to the Adjutant, was Colonel Quick's right arm. He was Sgt. Major Thomas R. Burton. He was also forbidden fruit as far as I was concerned, since we were not permitted to fraternize with the enlisted men, and Tom was still in that category.

"We did manage to go out, of course, night after night, over to New York, to dance at such places as The Hofbrau Haus (renamed during the war: Janson Wants to See You); to Murrey's, with its revolving dance floor; to The Palace, and other places of amusement.

"One night we went to the Hippodrome, officially. Some patients were invited as honored guests. The Colonel went along and asked Tom to arrange for a nurse to be there, too. That's how I rated a box seat with Tom and the Colonel and his friends. Ed Wynn was on stage..."

How to describe my parents of seventy-five years ago, on the eve of the Flapper Age and the Roaring Twenties? Margaret was five-foot-two, eyes of blue; generous hearted and open. Photos of Tom during this period show him to have been clean shaven. Later, he grew a mustache, which (And I hate to say it!) lent a slight resemblance to Charlie Chaplin or even Adolf Hitler. But he was no clown; very reserved, in fact, and in control. He was charming to people he liked, and harshly critical to those he didn't; above all, a free spirit.

Again, the Memoirs:

"...On the Jersey side of the river was Stevens College, where we went for walks. One evening, sitting in the bleachers, he asked me to marry him, and that was that.

"On a beautiful day in June (June 7, 1919) we met my dear friend Betty Graves and Tom's Army buddy, George Holland; stepped out of the Holland Tunnels and walked to The Little Church Around the Corner, where, in a small chapel, the Rev. George Houghton performed the ceremony..."

The marriage would last sixty-four years, until Dad died in 1983. It was shortly before his death that he informed us that he was not really Thomas Burton, born in Los Angeles on July 3, 1892, as the marriage license states, but Ruskin L. Friton, born in St. Louis, Missouri. (I learned later that his real birth date was September 10, 1894.) My cousins tell me that several men in the family lied about their ages so as to appear older than their wives, thus strengthening their head-of-the-household positions.

By marrying Mother he had, of course, bestowed on her his alias. He signed himself a Presbyterian: had a little trouble spelling the word, as he was probably never inside that church, being normally a forthright atheist. On this occasion Mother must have prompted him. The Little Church Around the Corner would not likely have been interested in marrying a non-Christian. She, herself was a Presbyterian, more or less. The only partly accurate information Dad gave them was his mother's maiden name, Matilda Castelhun. Castelhun was correct, but her family knew her as Anna. The 1900 US Census lists her as Anna M. so Matilda could have been her middle name. Probably just one of Dad's sly clues.

The Memoirs report that after the ceremony, bride and groom walked over to Lydia's apartment.

"She met us at the door and just stared for a moment, then burst into tears. She had not been invited to the wedding because she had disapproved. But she somehow knew it was inevitable..."

She collected herself and invited them to dinner. He was one of the family now and must be accepted.

The war had been over for several months. Mother had applied for her discharge, hoping it would arrive before headquarters learned of her marriage and she might be disgraced. Dad was soon to be transferred to the Army Reserve and become a free man once more.

"How would you two like to live here with me for a while?" asked the always generous Lydia, "I mean, once you're both discharged."

An apartment on Lexington Ave. in the midst of all the happy action! They loved the idea and promptly accepted.

During dinner the telephone rang. It was a long-distance call for Tom, who chatted and laughed and was plainly delighted. Finally he brought Margaret to the 'phone to say hello to her new brother-in-law, who had 'phoned to greet the bride and groom and offer his best wishes. Mother was nervous but very pleased to have even this fleeting contact with Dad's family, which probably lasted all of two minutes. Then, when they had hung up, Tom told Lydia,

"That was my brother Frank."

"Where was he calling from?" asked Lydia.

"Philadelphia. He's Port Captain there."

"Oh, a Naval officer!" She was a clearly impressed. "Have you other brothers and sisters?"

Glibly, Dad identified them. All but one were phony names and particulars.

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Catalogue Information

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