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■ Beginning an exciting and unique series of biographies — personal histories of radio characters you have come to iove. In these pages you'll meet each member of the vital Barbour Family, to learn his past and understand his innermost thoughts. Start now to — meet The Barbours
UNTIL the year 1937, the tap of a cane was as familiar to One Man's Family listeners as the organ theme, "Destiny Waltz."
Once in a while you can hear it now, rather faintly, if you are listening for it. The cane sounds the limping approach of Paul, first son of the Barbour family.
In the early days of 1917, Paul hurried to the first recruiting station to open in San Francisco; then to Newport News and across the Atlantic with the vanguard of the American Expeditionary Forces.
The winter snows found him at an airdrome somewhere behind the lines, where he watched yellowheaded kids fall in flames before the bursting fire of the Vickers. The experience burned a horrible picture in Paul's mind. The memory has never left him.
He came home in 1919 a widower, a permanent casualty of the war, and an uncompromising propagandist for peace. Doctor Thompson, family physician of the Barbour family, has never definitely committed himself on the question of shell-shock, but the inference is there. Shell-shock intermittently is indicated in his demeanor. ,
Paul's greatest war tragedy, however, was not a shattered leg, or possible shell-shock or the memory of pilots who never came back, but a shattered romance. When memories of the war fling open a shutter back in Paul's mind, before him stands a white cross marking the grave of an American war nurse.
Much of the story of the war nurse remains untold, although
apml, 1940
Paul has dropped fragments, which have been pieced together by the family.
Paul's plane was shot down in France. He spent many weeks in an American hospital behind the lines. He fell in love with a nurse, and as soon as he was in a wheel chair, they were married.
Then came the influenza epidemic. His wife, whom Paul had never known , except for hurried
PAUL BARBOUR
goodnight kisses in the candlelight of the hospital ward, was among the first to die.
Paul came home violently embittered against war. For many years the girls Paul had known since boyhood were treated with a cool, professional neglect. As the years have passed, he has grown more tolerant toward women.
Whatever members of the Barbour (Continued on page 73)
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