Family Lineage Notes — Divergence Phenotype Study

Three generations confirmed. G1 subject (born approx. 1901, deceased 1959) was Army, stationed somewhere in Colorado early 1930s, records incomplete. Son (G2) shows low expression — basically non-expressive by DPB. Granddaughter (G3, born 1964) is one of the strongest profiles in the cohort. She was in the Portland program, 1973. Classic skip.

G1: ████ (b. ~1901, Army 1929-1937, CO)   [HI]
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G2: son (b. 1929)                          [LO]
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G3: granddaughter (b. 1964)               [HI] ← Portland GPE-73
    

G3 subject is cooperative. She says she remembers the program as "being watched more than taught." She can't describe what was being assessed. She says none of the adults ever explained anything to the children. She says she thought that was normal until she was an adult.

Question: does G3 know her grandfather served? She mentioned his name once — Harmon — wait that's wrong. look at the record again.

G1 subject (born 1904, deceased 1961). Army service 1930–1938. I cannot get his full service record — NPRC says records for this period and location are "incomplete due to the 1973 fire." I have gotten this response for four different families now. The fire was real (National Personnel Records Center fire, 1973) but I am starting to think the rate at which it affects my specific cohort is not random.

G1: ████ (b. 1904, Army 1930-38)          [HI]
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G2: son (b. 1931)                          [LO — nearly absent]
 |       |
G3a (b. 1959) [HI]     G3b (b. 1963) [MOD]
    

G3a and G3b are siblings, not twins. G3a was enrolled in the Redding program, 1969. G3b was not. G3a has noticeably stronger expression. I find this interesting. I don't know what to do with it yet. It would be more interesting if they were identical twins.

This is the family with the Fort Garland connection. G1 subject's partial service record (obtained via FOIA request — see foia_response_94b.pdf) shows he was stationed at Fort Garland from 1932 to 1936. He died in 1966. His wife (interviewed 1989, now also deceased) said he never talked about the service years. She said he came back from Colorado "quieter." She used that word — quieter — and then seemed not to want to continue.

G1: ████████████ (b. 1909, Army 1930-1938)   [HI]
     stationed Fort Garland 1932-1936
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G2: son (b. 1937)                              [LO]
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G3: grandson (b. 1965)                        [HI] ← CO GPE-74
    

G3 subject enrolled in Colorado Springs program, 1974. Described program as residential. He says he was there for six months. His parents were told it was a gifted education placement. He says the other children in the program were all, in his description, "like him." He can't fully articulate what that means. When I push, he says: they all understood things slowly but completely. He says it felt like being with people who spoke the same language for the first time.

This is the most consistent description across participants. "The same language." I've heard this exact phrase from three separate subjects. That cannot be a coincidence.

G1 subject (born 1898, deceased 1963). Army service 1918-1920 (WWI) and then again 1929-1935. The second service period is the one that's partially redacted. G2 is his daughter — low expression, no program contact. G3 is her son, born 1960, enrolled in Virginia program, 1971.

G1: ████████ (b. 1898, Army 1929-1935)   [HI]
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G2: daughter (b. 1926)                    [LO — essentially absent]
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G3: grandson (b. 1960)                   [HI] ← VA GPE-71
    

G3 subject is, of all my participants, the most articulate about the experience of the phenotype. He says: "I receive things, I just don't respond to them immediately. By the time I respond, everyone has moved on. I have very strong feelings about things that happened a long time ago and very little feeling about what's happening right now."

I wrote this down as he said it. I did not tell him that I could have said the same words about myself.

I need to flag something about this family that I don't know how to include in a formal document yet.

G3 subject (born 1962, enrolled GPE-72) has a sibling who is not in the registry. The sibling was also identified for the program but was not enrolled. When I asked the subject why, she said she didn't know — she said their parents were told one of them qualified and one didn't, and that she was the one who qualified.

I asked her if she thought there was a difference between her and her sibling. She was quiet for a long time. Then she said: "I think they picked the one they wanted for a reason I still don't understand. And I think my sister was better off."

I don't know what "better off" means here. I need to follow up. I keep not following up. I think I'm afraid of what she'll say.

Things I keep seeing that I haven't figured out how to write up:

1. The phrase "quieter afterward." Multiple G2 subjects, when describing their G1 parent returning from military service, use this word or a close variant. "Quieter." "More contained." "Like he'd put something away." This is not specifically unusual for wartime trauma. But the service periods I'm tracking predate WWII. Several of these men were not in combat roles. Whatever changed them, it was not combat.

2. The program descriptions are too consistent. The subjects never met each other — they were in different states, different programs, different years. But they describe the experience the same way: being observed. Being measured, not taught. Rooms that were not quite classrooms. Adults who did not introduce themselves.

3. The family codes for the G1 generation in the Fort Garland cluster — BG-F004, BG-F008, BG-F011, BG-F014 — I keep seeing the notation "FG cohort?" in the older records, added in a different hand. I don't know who added those notations. They were there when I received the original data files from Institute administration in 1988. I have never been told what "FG cohort" means. I assumed it was a prior researcher's notation. I am less sure of that now.

4. Three of the G3 subjects in the most pronounced skip-generation families have independently told me, unprompted, that they felt as children that they were being looked for — not in a frightening way, in an anticipatory way. One said: "I always felt like someone already knew I existed before I knew they were looking."

I have no framework for this observation. I am writing it down because I cannot leave it out.