BOOK REVIEW:
A SECRET GIFT
by
TED GUP
I first heard of Ted Gup and his non-fiction work A Secret Gift through an article which recently appeared in one of Case Western Reserve University’s alumni magazines. That article instantly caught my interest as I learned of the many common threads running through the author’s life and my own. Mr. Gup was teaching at Case Western during the time when I was a graduate student there (although our paths never crossed during that time). His education and interests seemed to mirror mine, in that he was educated in the areas of History and Journalism, and seemed quite conversant in genealogical research, as well. Further, some of the people named in his book had names identical to ancestors that I had discovered in researching my late husband’s family tree. Lastly, Ted Gup and I were both born and raised in Northern Ohio, and were only three years apart in age. With all the above in common, I think it goes without saying that his new book, A Secret Gift, was a “must-read” for me. But little did I know before actually reading the book that, although it mainly concerns events that took place during the Christmas season of 1933 in Canton, Ohio, it would be so unbelievably relevant to the financial woes devastating present-day Northern Ohio—and the entire U.S.
This book’s beginnings date back to June, 2008, when the author’s aunt gave him an old suitcase which had belonged to his grandfather, Sam Stone, a long-deceased clothing store owner from Canton, Ohio. What the author found in the suitcase totally amazed him. It contained an ad which had run in the Canton newspaper in late December, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. The ad told Canton readers that, if they would write a letter to the ad’s poster, telling him of their current financial situations, said poster would send to the most needy letter-writers a small gift to bring some cheer to their Christmas of 1933. Wanting to remain anonymous, and thus not embarrass those who might know him, he created the alias of “Mr. B. Virdot” as the signature in his newspaper ad.
Sam Stone, a man who had, himself, experienced extreme poverty in his youth, while not wealthy even in 1933, felt that he could afford to allot the sum of $750 to help the needy of Canton. Originally, he had intended to send $10 to seventy-five needy families. After being inundated with a deluge of letter from poor families all over town, he decided that he could better help his fellow Cantonians by sending half the amount (five dollars) to twice the number of families (one-hundred-fifty). And that is exactly what he did. Also contained in the old suitcase were the letters he had received in response to the ad. The letters were from those who had already been poor before the Great Depression struck in 1929, as well as from some of Canton’s former wealthy and well-known citizens (many of them business owners) who, due to the Depression, were now in the same dire financial straits as many of their former employees. The suitcase also revealed the 150 cancelled checks, for five dollars each, from those who had received the gift from “Mr. B. Verdot.”
At first, author Ted Gup was at a lost as to the meaning of the ad, the letter, the cancelled checks and as to the true identity of Mr. B. Virdot. But he soon became aware, with the help of his aunt and other family members, that Mr. Virdot was none other than his own grandfather, Sam Stone. His imagination and interest were so captured by this revelation that he began work on his book A Secret Gift. During the writing of the book, he managed to trace and find the living descendants of all 150 families! This project took him countless hours and required him to do painstaking genealogical research on each family. After identifying the living descendants, he spoke with someone from each of the families, asking them if they had ever heard about the gift from B. Virdot, and if it had made any difference to their families so long ago on Christmas, 1933. Almost unbelievably, most of the descendants knew of the gift, told him that it had added some essential or other to their Christmas—be it food, clothing, heat, or a toy or two for the families’ young children.
During the writing of this book, the author also discovered a number of secrets concerning his own grandfather—things which he had never even suspected in all the years that he had known him. Sam Stone died in an auto accident in 1981 at the approximate age of 93. Most people would not learn of his secret identity, or of his gift-giving until about 78 years after the fact with the 2011 publication of A Secret Gift by his grandson, Ted Gup. I very much admire the honesty with which the author portrays his own family in this book. Such honesty often takes a great deal of courage.
Mr. Gup is an award-winning journalist who has worked closely with some of America’s most famous and influential writers and public figures. Although this is the first of Gup’s books that I have read, I cannot fail to be amazed at his attention to detail, and at the unfathomable number of hours needed to complete this book less than three years after his first discovery of the mysterious suitcase and its startling contents. Having faced some daunting publication deadlines myself, I can appreciate Ted Gup’s achievement from my dual viewpoint as both a reader and a writer.
Throughout the book, the author continues to remind us that we are once again in a situation similar to the terrible financial disaster of the 1930’s known to all who lived through it, as well as to their descendants, as the Great Depression. The similarities that he points out in his book of the conditions of the 1930’s and the conditions of the present, while frightening, are also instructive. A Secret Gift is very well-written and extremely readable for all who are concerned about our present economy, and about its forerunner—the Great Depression. The writing style is almost like that of a well-crafted, engrossing novel that the reader cannot put down. It is, in a word, excellent, and I recommend it very highly.
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