Cain Bendigo was graduated from Ridge Rd Grade School this June...
SAMUEL R. LIVINGSTON
(84, Wrightsville’s elder statesman. Dean of the “Hill” Livingstons and all his life a power in local politics. In 1911 he was in his sixth year as First Selectman.)
The medal was ordered from a Boston house and it was a month getting here. We had the ceremony on the steps of the Town Hall. Everybody came out for it — it was like Fourth of July. They packed the Green solid and overflowed into the Square. Course, I’d picked a Saturday for it, when everybody was in town anyway, but the boy deserved it, he surely did...
That Cain Bendigo, he stood up straight as a soldier when I pinned the medal on him. The crowd called for a speech, which I thought was pretty rough on a boy of fourteen, but it didn’t feaze him one bit. He said he thanked everybody in Wrightsville for the medal, but he didn’t feel he really deserved it — anybody would have done the same. That made a real hit with the townspeople, I’m here to tell you, and I said to myself then and there, “Sam Livingston, that boy is going places.” And he surely did!...
WRIGHTSVILLE Record, August 17, 1911
...as follows: 24-jewel Waltham open-face watch with black silk fob, presented with the compliments of Curtis Manadnock, High Village Jeweller. A Kollege Klothes brand suit with new style accessories presented with the compliments of Gowdy & Son Clothing Store, The Square. Wright & Ditson tennis racquet, with press, New York Department Store. Ten-volume set of The Photographic History of the Civil War, Semicentennial Memorial Edition, just published by the Review of Reviews Co., New York, presented with the compliments of Marcus Aikin Book Shop, Jezreel Lane. Good-natured hilarity greeted the announcement that Upham’s Ice Cream Parlor on Washington St, High Village, would present the young hero with a full month’s supply of Upham’s Banana Splits Supreme at the rate of one per day. An Iver Johnson bicycle, presented with the compliments of...
(From the 1911 Files of Fyfield Gunnery School.)
COPY
FYFIELD GUNNERY SCHOOL
August 15, 1911
Mr. Cain Bendigo
Wrightsville
DEAR MR BENDIGO
It gives me the greatest pleasure to inform you that, for manifesting the high qualities of manly character which are prerequisite to matriculation in Fyfield Gunnery School, the Scholarship Board at a special meeting has voted to present you with a full four-year tuition scholarship, to take effect at the opening of the Fall Term next month.
If you will present yourself with your parent or guardian during Registration Week, September 8-15, with proof that you have duly completed your grade school requirements as prescribed by the laws of the State, arrangements for your immediate enrollment at Gunnery will be concluded.
With warmest good wishes, I remain,
Yours very truly,
(Signed) MELROSE F. ESTEY
MFE/DV Principal
BEN DANZIG
(54, prop. High Village Rental Library and Sundries.)
Cain Bendigo was certainly the big squeeze in Wrightsville the rest of that summer before he went off to Gunnery. I remember the rush he got from the girls, and it made the rest of us boys, who’d graduated from the Ridge school with him and were going on to just Wrightsville High, kind of jealous. But there was one kid in town who’d have got down on his hands and knees and licked Cain’s shoes if Cain had let him, and that was his little brother Abel. I never saw such worship. Why, that kid just followed Cain around all over like a puppy...
Judah? Well...
EMMELINE DUPRÉ:
(52, better known as the Town Crier. Teaches dancing and dramatics to the youth of the Hill gentry.)
Where was Judah during the accident? Why didn’t he help save Abel’s life? Those were the burning questions of the day, Mr. Queen. There was one boy in our class — I was in Judah’s class, so I’m in a position to discuss this intelligently — this boy, his name was Eddie Weevil, rather a nasty boy as I recall, it wasn’t long before he was being seen down in Polly Street and that sort of thing, but he did say he’d seen it, and after all even a chronic liar can tell the truth some time, don’t you agree, Mr. Queen? Well, Eddie was going around telling the boys in the seventh grade — that was just after Cain went off to Gunnery — that he’d been up around Granjon Falls that day and just happened to witness the whole incident. Eddie Weevil said Judah didn’t do anything. Didn’t even try. The pure craven. Eddie said Judah was closer to Abel than Cain and could have fished him out easily if he’d had half the spunk of a ground hog, but that he ran away and cried like a baby and let Cain do the whole thing all by himself...
Well, yes, he was asked that, but Eddie said the reason he didn’t come forward with his story at the time was he didn’t want to get Judah Bendigo in trouble. Of course, I don’t know, the Weevil boy may have made the whole thing up just to call attention to himself, but it was funny, don’t you think, that Judah didn’t have a word to say about his part in the rescue, and Cain didn’t either?...
REVEREND ALAN BRINDSLEY
(52, Rector, First Congregational Church on West Livesey St.)
I occupied the seat next to Judah Bendigo in the seventh grade. I think I was probably the only boy in the class Judah trusted. He never said much about himself, though, even to me. I do know that he suffered horribly during the first few months after the rescue incident. Somehow the rumor spread that he had funked the chance to save his little brother and had run away instead of helping, or something of the sort. Even if it had been true, it was unfair to condemn a twelve-year-old boy as a coward, as if physical bravery were the highest good. Not all of us have what it takes to be a hero, Mr. Queen, and I’m not sure it would be a good thing if we had. Judah was a highly intelligent, sensitive boy who’d been branded from birth with surely the wickedest name ever given a child, I mean his given name, which was Judas...
It got to the point where it was too much for me to bear. Some of the boys began to call him “coward” to his face, rough him up in front of the girls, dare him to fight, challenge him to “swimming” races — you can imagine. Judah merely hung his head. He never replied. He never struck back. I used to beg him to come away, but he would stand there until they were through, and only then would he turn his back. I realize now what courage — what truly great courage — this must have taken...
Dr. PIERCE MINIKIN
Judah as a boy was what the fancy fellows these days would call a masochist. He enjoyed punishment...
REVEREND ALAN BRINDSLEY
It subsided eventually. It took about six months, I’d say. Then the whole thing was forgotten. By everyone, I’m sure, but Judah. I’m sure he remembers that Golgotha to this day. You say you’ve seen him recently. Does he brood? Is he lonely still? What’s happened to him? I always detected something Christ-like in Judah. I was sure he would leave the world a little better than he had found it...
WRIGHTSVILLE Record. November 28, 1912:
BENDIGO’S 4 TOUCHDOWNS
CRUSH HIGH 27—0