Returning to my birthplace

I came to Malta from Portland, Oregon with my wife Susie on June 21st of this year and we stayed for two days. We had our dog, Bran, with us. Bran is a 13-year-old Bernese Mountain Dog. She loves everybody and almost everybody loves her. We talked to lots of people-at the Country Inn, the Phillips County News office, the library, the laundromat, the DQ, and all over town. We made friends.

I was born in Malta in 1938. I moved away when I was less than a year old-first to Great Falls and then to Tacoma, Wash. Once, when I was about 16, I drove through Malta with my aunt but we didn't stay the night. So, this was my first real visit back to the town where I was born.

My parents were married after I was conceived, and they divorced shortly after I was born. In December 1941, my father was working for the railroad in Seattle with his good friend, Kenneth Stine, and the two of them responded to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by enlisting in the Marines. By then, my mother n.

I didn't see my father again until I was 18. That was just a year before he died. The circumstances of my birth were never mentioned to me by anyone in my family. I've always had an irrational but strong feeling that, somehow, I did not come into this world in the usual way, but rather that I had some mysterious beginning, like falling out of a tree or something. My origins were shrouded in secrecy and, to me, mystery.

I understand the story better now, and I can tell it with some confidence and even pride.

My mother taught school in Malta. It was her first teaching job after graduating from college in Bozeman. She fell in love with a young man here, I was conceived, she and my father were married, and I was born. In that order. My father may have been one of my mother's students-at least that is one story that has filtered down to me over the years. Another story is that my mother and father first met when my father returned to Malta after being away for a year at college. Either way, I was born here in Malta, and either way, my birth must have been a scandal, especially to the prominent Brayton and Tressler families in Malta. (One measure of the secrecy around my birth is that Keith Stine, whose older brother was my father's best friend and whose sister later married my father, had not been aware that my father had had a previous wife and a son: me. Keith is still a resident of Malta. The Stein and Brayton families had lived in the same neighborhood in Malta back in 1938, but Keith was a few years younger and he was kept in the dark.)

My father was John McKnight Brayton III. His father (JMB II) had been the manager of the Tressler Mill in Malta. My grandfather married the mill owner's daughter, Ilo Tressler, and so it was that I later became their grandson. I am John McKnight Brayton IV, but I had my name legally changed to Bush many years ago.

After my parents' brief marriage, I was moved to my grandparents' house in Great Falls, and then-with a new stepfather, Bill Bush-to Tacoma. This was early in the war (1942). I lived first on Fort Lewis and then in nearby Lakewood. My stepfather was a good man. My mother was loving and constantly watchful over me. I had a good life. I didn't hear from or about my father until I was 18, when I got a letter from him. (I learned later that he had sent several earlier letters and presents to me, but these had been kept from me by my mother and stepfather. They kept the secret well.)

While I was beginning my young life in Tacoma, my father married another girl from Malta, Esther Stine. Esther had known my mother. (She, too, may have been one of my mother's students, but I don't know that for sure either.) I got to know Esther after my father's death. She was a wonderful, kind, and caring woman. Esther and my father had two children, Keni and Thomas Brayton. Keni and Tom have visited Malta several times. They live in Long Beach, California. We keep in touch.

My mother was Katharine Baltzell. The Baltzell's were many-generation Montanans, and dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. Their politics were based on the rights and interests of people without power-in those days, workers and farmers-and so I grew up with old-fashioned liberal values. My life experience has turned me into what you might call a West Coast liberal. I didn't vote for Trump.

The highlight of my visit to Malta was the hour Susie and I spent with Esther's brother, Keith Stine. Keith is fun to talk to. He watches or listens to Fox News and it remained on the television set in the living room as we sat talking around the kitchen table. We didn't talk politics, but Keith couldn't resist a couple of digs at Hillary Clinton and "sanctuary cities." I think we both knew that what we were really talking about, our families and our histories, was more important than anything being said on TV, on Fox or any other channel.

Many, if not most of you, probably know Keith Stine. Keith is a great old man. If you don't know that already, you should go visit and find out for yourself. I admire him.

I could not be happier about my visit to Malta. At the museum, the library, the newspaper and everywhere else-you have all been welcoming and fun to talk to. I'm proud to be from here.