In my blog post last week about Tiny Broadwick, “First Lady of Parachuting,” I mentioned, with some sadness, that Tiny’s daughter disappears from the narrative.

I am pleased to tell you that my writing friend Nancy Kennedy took up the challenge and went looking for the daughter’s story. Here’s what she found:

The short version is that Verla Jacobs led a more “grounded”[1] life than her mother did, in every sense of the word. In  fact, in a 1973 interview in the Durham North Carolina Herald-Sun, Verla shared that she didn’t like to fly.

As we know from Tiny’s biography, Verla was raised by her grandmother—something that wasn’t entirely unusual once you look past the “her mother left to join the circus” element. Poor families at the time often had to send children to live with other relatives for a variety of reasons.

Verla completed the ninth grade, again not that unusual at the time– plenty of people didn’t make it that far. She married a farmer named Joseph Poythress in 1925, when she was 18. They had six children, thirteen grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. She named one of her daughters Tiny, which suggests she had a positive relationship with her mother, even if it was often at a distance. Tiny Poythress Culler was living in Saudi Arabia when Verla died; perhaps she inherited a portion of her grandmother’s adventurous spirit as well as her name.

Tiny stayed in touch with Verla throughout her life, though she seldom saw her. She wrote to her daughter regularly, emphasizing the importance of education, and sent her money, clothes and toys. We know that Tiny visited Verla for three months in 1972 and they were both guests of the Golden Knights[2] at Fort Bragg that year. Verla’s pride in her mother comes through clearly in the 1973 interview.

Verla died in 1985, only seven years after her mother.

Thank you, Nancy, for the reminder that there is always another narrative if you take the time to look.

[1] Sorry. Sometimes I can’t resist.
[2] The U.S. Army’s elite parachute team