Miss America.  Miss Universe.  Miss Richmond?  No, the title of “Miss Richmond” doesn’t quite carry the same cache as some other high-profile pageants prominent in our recent popular culture. 

However, to the fine people of Richmond, California in the year 1927, I’m quite certain being crowned beauty queen of the small town in the bay area of California would have meant something.

I’m sure the title meant something to my grandfather, Alfred Victor Williams, who – despite being forty-two years old – would marry the twenty-one-year-old local celebrity recently retired from her prestigious position.

Who knew she would be dead only three years later? 

Perhaps we should back up a little.

Thelma Mae Hastings was only seventeen when she was crowned Miss Richmond, California.  In the July 25, 1927 edition of the Oakland Tribune it lists Thelma’s hobby as “music” and shares that she “is looking forward to a week in San Francisco as ‘Miss Richmond.’” I can only imagine the excitement for this seventeen-year-old girl beginning life in an exciting way.

My research showed that the excitement, or at least the drama, would not soon expire.

I next find Thelma in the December 19, 1929 issue of The Searchlight out of Redding, California.  The headline reads, “Thelma Vidal, Former Local Girl, Missing From Home in Oakland.” Using the surname of her recently acquired first husband, the story shares that Mr. Vidal is desperate to locate his missing wife, whom he believes may be “victim of a kidnapper.”  Mr. Vidal continues to explain that his missing wife “had been followed on several occasions by a tall, dark man.” 

In short time, I am relieved to discover another headline, “Kidnapped Woman is Visiting at Gulch,” this time in The Shasta Courier.  The story reads, that Thelma had not been kidnapped but had “simply…quit her husband for good and come back to her old hometown of French Gulch to make her home with her grandmother, Mrs. Martinez.”  Finally, I am disappointed, but not surprised, when I read in the May 20, 1930 edition of the Contra Costa Gazette that Thelma is seeking divorce from her husband, sadly citing “grounds of extreme cruelty.”

Crowned a beauty queen?  Kidnapped?  Divorced at twenty?  What could be next?  Well, my grandfather.

As mentioned above, my forty-two-year-old grandfather, who listed his residence as the “Travellers Hotel” in Richmond, would marry twenty-one-year-old Thelma on December 7, 1931.  For her part, Thelma was truthful, identifying the marriage as her second.  My grandfather, not so much, listing this union as his first, never mind that he had been married in Utah in 1915 and probably still was.

What would come of the happy couple?  That’s a story that may never be told.  No, I couldn’t locate any record of divorce.  It’s possible none was needed.

It’s in the May 3, 1934 issue of the Oakland Tribune that I read Thelma “died at her home Tuesday night.”  Short on particulars, I further read that she was surrounded by her mother, two sisters and a brother.  No mention of my grandfather, her husband of two and a half years ago.

Cause of death?  Marital status?  Children?  The questions were many. 

The answers?  None at first.  Eventually, however, I’d learn a little more about the circumstances surrounding their brief marriage as well as the mysterious, untimely death of my one-time step grandmother. 

Read more about this story and all the other details of my grandfather’s strange life in The Lost Fifty-Seven: A Genealogical Journey of Discover, Deception, Secrets and Scandal available 10/22 on Amazon at a reduced rate for friends and followers.