Much of what I know about my father’s early life is drawn from the unpublished Travis family biography compiled and written by Gertrude Tottem, the daughter of Margaret and Harry’s second child, Esther Hazel Travis. I have extracted material from that biography to describe the events in Mel’s life until his late teens when he met his adoptive father in Salem, Oregon, in 1930. I have supplemented that information with some of the historical highlights of the period and locations where the family lived and, more importantly, the views my father expressed to me about his early experiences and his relations with members of his family.

My father told me about his adoption when I was 18 years old. Up until then, my sister, Marilee, and I had been told that he was the biological son of Montague Lord. When he did tell me about his adoption, he was distraught, though I was unclear why at the time. I hope that the wiser perspective I have gained over the years allows me to report my father’s feelings and views faithfully as he expressed them to me then and in later years.

My father’s story about his early travels with his family does not match the movements described in Gertrude Tottem’s biography of the Travis family. I will rely on that biography for details about the family’s life because it is well documented. I think that my father’s story was probably a compilation of his memories like photographs of different moments in his life put together in a series. He told me that his move from Missouri to the West (he never mentioned Colorado, but instead spoke about his mother working in California) was like John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, which depicts the flight of thousands of tenant farmers that were driven from their midwestern homes by drought, bank foreclosures, and severe dust storms, known as the Dust Bowl, as they migrate to California along with thousands of others seeking jobs, land, and dignity.

Steinbeck’s story focuses on the harrowing trip of travelers heading west, marked by starvation and growing desperation, as news from families returning to the Midwest from California told of few opportunities. My father’s comparison of his family’s travels probably referred to the Travis family’s move from Colorado to Oregon when Mel was 14 years old, since the family’s earlier move from Missouri to Colorado took place when he was two years old. It is unlikely that he remembered anything from that time.

As a side note, the story that my father told me about his father and the family’s migration to California was that his father, Harry, was a Shaker priest who preached in a tent along the route. The Shakers are a nearly defunct religious organization that grew out of a branch of Quakerism founded in England in 1747 by Jane and James Wardley. Shakerism combined aspects of Quaker, French Camisard, millennial beliefs and practices, and the revelations of visionary Ann Lee (Mother Ann), who brought Shakerism to America. The Shakers were so-called because they practiced shaking, dancing, whirling, speaking, shouting, and singing in tongues. When they arrived in California, according to my father, Harry left the family because he was a drunkard. Margaret supported herself and her children by washing dishes in the northern part of the state. This account by my father has little, if any, resemblance to that which appears in the Travis family biography by Gertrude Tottem. Her account of events is well documented and, therefore, serves as the basis for the present biography of my father.

There is much less documentation about my father’s adult life serving in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), United States Army and Central Intelligence Service (CIA). The OSS was the was the first independent US intelligence agency. Established in 1942 and led by William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, it operated for little more than three years between 1942 and 1945 to collect information and sabotage the military efforts of enemy nations during World War II. It was the forerunner of the CIA. My repeated efforts to obtain even the most basic information about my father’s service in these branches have been met by allegations that all records were destroyed in a warehouse fire. The account of my father’s life in those years has been pieced together from statements made to me by friends and relatives and by my observations of events during those times.

Montague Lord (22 September 2023)

The following is a chronology of the life of Melvin S. Lord written by his wife, Carmen Pagés Vilar: