Susan Saulny

You know, I'm having this conversation with him.

I'm somewhere between 7 or 11 years old.

And I'm guessing that he thought to himself, what good would it do her to know about all the pain I've been through right at this moment in time?

So on one level, he was honest with me.

He said his mother died and he went and he lived with the nuns.

And he made it sound as though, you know, they saved him in a way.

Well, just finding the will was a shocking thing in itself.

And to read the words that he was leaving everything in his estate to his father, Colonel Joseph de Grange, was just...

A punch in the gut.

I have no way of knowing how that will came to be, so it's hard to make any concrete judgment.

I just know that that's the will and reality played out from there for destitute children.

Yeah.

So what I've been told by the older people in the family, his oldest daughter, my aunt Evelyn, was that

He was absolutely destitute.

And he thought that since so much time had passed since Minerva died and Ned died, that maybe his grandfather's attitude would have softened toward him.

That maybe he would open the door and say, you know what, let me give you a hug.

So glad to see you.

You remind me of my son or something.

I guess he had his hopes set really high and thought that this could be a moment for some sort of reconciliation.

But that didn't happen at all.