From John Clinch to Jon Clinch

     My last name is Clinch: I got it from my dad, which he got from his grandfather; this happened because my dad was legally adopted by my my great-grandfather around 1953; I never met him, (nor my younger biological grandfather, with a much more common surname) but he was Pops to my dad; he was named Guy. He died years before I was born, maybe around 1962.  He was born in the late 1890s, some 130 years ago. He was born in Massachusetts, one of the oldest states of the United States. The Clinch line of Guy Clinch traces back to the Maritime provinces of Canada, like New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and before that Ireland, and before that England. This goes back a few hundred years, maybe before Christopher Columbus. Perhaps we go back to the Round Table of the Knights of King Arthur? Likely they did not exist, but who knows? Arthur Clinch, perhaps, once upon a time... We all descend from God anyhow, we are all of noble birth no matter our progenitors...

     Mysteries abound about us Clinches, like the rest of humanity, like the rest of the human family. Most of us know a lot less about all of us than we would care to admit. What do you or I know about the people of Madagascar, for example, or of the thousands of islands with their peoples in remote spots like Mayotte or the Comoros, Reunion or the Seychelles or Mauritius? Some could kayak those distances from the giant behemoth Madagascar laying across the edge of the Indian Ocean, a true marvel of nature and science, a sheer terrestrial beauty. An island so long and huge that we would have a hard time walking its mere width let alone its length. Why would anyone wish to walk it, you may ask? Why not? Why do anything?

    There are a few Clinches who are better known than the rest of us lesser known ones. One is an author who I found in the public library a few years ago. (No relation to me that I know of.) He wrote a book called Finn, based on Huck Finn and his rather sordid father as a well crafted prequel of the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn iconic characters, in the world of the 19th century Mississippi river valley heartland; classic tales of the ubiquitous Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens.  Clinch created a buzz about this 2007 book, making a name for himself on the literary scene. I just read another of his prequels called Marley, about the characters in the lead up to the classic Dickens novel A Christmas Carol. This John Clinch is a bit ambitious, or at least his subject matter of authors is. Bravo for him, try the books at your own peril. He has written other fiction as well.

    My father has written some fiction, too, the more acclaimed book drawing on Clinch family history. Nothing to dramatic, but original and creative. The best attention and praise came from Morgan Freeman and his people. Yes, The Morgan Freeman, actor extraordinaire. Not bad for a career electrician.

   John to Jon: 1800s to 1900s

    So, about the two Jon Clinches, as mentioned in the title: (the first named John). For the record, I am confident that the first one mentioned, a man named John Clinch, was most likely born in the state of New York as the above-mentioned author happens to hail from. The author described graduated college, maybe from Syracuse?, in 1976, as an indicator of his age. If 22 then, being born in the mid 1950s, he is now about 70 or so. The older John Clinch, on the other hand, from the 1800s, was most likely the younger one, in the life sense of age, because he died in the Commonwealth of Virginia around 1864. His grave is marked rather honorably but isolated in the periphery of the city Richmond, in a large field of Civil War tombs by a small church, far from anywhere. Not forgotten by me, where I randomly (sort of) came to this graves among hundreds, at yet another lonely field where thousands were laid. This solemn site is located near major battles waged of the North versus the South in the climax of the Union's troops approaching the capital of the South, in and around many skirmishes, battles, firefights, and lives lost as the time known as Cold Harbor.

     Many men died, on both sides,  most good and a few bad, and that John Clinch was one of them. I would wager he was good. Eternally young, maybe 21, or 25, or lucky to be in his thirties. Did he have a wife and children? Certainly he had siblings and parents, and friends. Some claim that institutional racism is still rampant in 2020 in the United States of America, but the price of freedom is not cheap, certainly a costly price for the freedom of the slaves. John Clinch was one of hundreds of thousands of martyrs to that cause of the Abraham Lincoln era constitutional amendments guaranteeing the rights of citizenship of all people, regardless of race. Freedom has not been free for Americans. It has been paid for, sacrificed for, bled for, fought for, over, and over. And admittedly, most battles are not literal, as this soldier's, but a daily, monthly, yearly, lifetime of working and toiling.

     Like Jon Clinch, the buried soldier of the 1860s, and Jon Clinch still living in 2021, the creative writer, these Americans, who share my less than usual last name, are persons that have given to the cause of freedom and creativity, thought and circumspection.

 

    I become circumspect every time, well not every time, but most of the time, that I regard a grave of a soldier or Marine or someone laying upon the shallow crust of the earth, the resting places of the mere mortals who suffered to give their lives for a greater cause. Jesus had many words for these souls. Believe them or not, the proclamations of glory are real, God-powered or no, secular or otherwise.

    Jon Clinch, John Clinch, Guy Clinch, my father, me. 

    We all have contributed our parts of our respective lives, our actions or legacies, big or small, our books, our testaments, our air above the ground and the molecules beneath it.