The Hardest Part of an Adventure is Finding the Starting Point – Maestri

I was merely nine years old, when my grandmother Jenny Maestri Dale passed away. Her funeral marked my first encounter with the concept of death. Gathered around the family tomb in Metairie Cemetery were my grandmother Jenny’s, five adult children, along with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

As the priest prayed over the casket, a solemn atmosphere enveloped us standing before the Maestri-Dale tomb. It remains etched in my memory as the only time I witnessed my father shed tears.

The Adventure Begins Here

A Secret Written in Stone – Exhuming the Truth

Twenty-three years after my grandmother’s funeral I would return to the tomb, the family gathered once more at the Metairie Cemetery to bid farewell to my Uncle Arthur C Dale II.

As a grown man of thirty-two, I revisited the tomb, now with a different perspective. Reading the names etched in stone, my father’s name stood out, bridging the Maestri and Dale clans.

Engrossed in the details, I stumbled upon a discrepancy that shook my understanding of family history. The date beside my grandfather’s name didn’t align with what I had always been told.

How could the year of his passing be wrong?

He was said to have died in 1931, yet records showed his demise in 1957.

Arthur C Dale Sr

I would later discover that Arthur C Dale Sr had an issue with my father Maestri B Dale, an issue that would impact the entire family for generations.

Maestri B Dale

As the family gathered for a social after the funeral service, the surviving aunts and uncles revealed a sixty year old family secret, that Arthur C. Dale senior was actually placed into a mental institution in 1931.

What was said After the Funeral

There wasn’t a clear answer: Arthur was both an engraver and an alcoholic, and there was also something about him inventing a boat to carry heavy loads in shallow water, possibly in relation to Andrew Higgins’ boats. It was evident that they didn’t know very much about their father beyond what their mother had shared with them. It is also possible they knew much more but were still unwilling to reveal the truth.

“Dad designed that boat to bootleg whiskey from the north-shore.”
Uncle Ferdinand 1993

“Higgins stole my fathers design… that was well known in the family.”
Aunt Corrine 1993

The revelation opened a Pandora’s box of questions, what other family secrets lay buried beneath layers of misconception? Throughout the following decades, we gathered numerous times to say goodbye to those we cherished. Each occasion brought both sorrow and reflection on our shared heritage.

The passing of my Aunt Jenny Dale in 2003 marked a turning point. Amidst the somber proceedings, I felt a stirring resolve to confront the secrets shrouding my grandfather’s legacy.

I embarked on a quest to uncover the truth about my grandfather, Arthur Clement Dale.

Now nearly twenty-five years later, I aim to shed light on hidden family mysteries and honor the stories of those who came before us.

Deception & Disappointment

My father instilled in me a sense of integrity – the gift a man gives to himself.

Yet, the family tomb revealed a conspiracy and a lie. The people I held in the highest esteem suddenly had me questioning – Who am I?

Wanting to know more, I ended up at the Mandeville psychiatric hospital the place my parents always threatened to send me as a kid. Yeah, that was my childhood.

When I asked the lady there for my grandfather’s records, she gave me a weird look. She talked about how “dark” things were in mental health facilities back then and suggesting it might be best not to know.

She went on to said, I was in the wrong spot, that he’d likely had been in Jackson, Louisiana – “the asylum”. But she promised to make some calls, though she didn’t hold out much hope.

I figured getting those records would explain everything. But when I finally got them, they just rolled back a large heavy stone, opening a door I couldn’t close.