By Any Other Name

Chicago’s Sheffield neighborhood was populated by people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. There were Irish, Germans, Scots, Italians, Mexicans, Native American, and even Assyrians. No one, however, knew the ancestry of the Tupple family who lived over on Fremont. It was a name seldom, if ever, heard before. There was a Tuttle family over on Bissell, and a Topper family over on Magnolia, but there were no other Tupples, not even in the phone book. Being extremely rare and having an almost comic ring, the Tupple name, when heard, generally produced a smile bordering on a smirk.

Thaddeus Tupple had grown up on the city’s north side and married Thelma Tobin in 1920. In 1922 Thelma gave birth to identical twins: Thomas and Timothy. The event was received with pleasure in the neighborhood because no twins had been born there in recent memory. As the boys grew, however, and were seen playing on the streets every day, the twin novelty soon faded and confusion followed. People were never sure which twin they were addressing, so they began to use the names Tom and Tim interchangeably. In fact, the twin’s parents were often heard to do the same, helping, by their example, to reduce, if not eliminate, any residual guilt.

The boys, both with red hair, freckles, and crooked teeth (which showed to best disadvantage whenever they smiled) were lively. In short, they energetically pursued high-risk activities. When only six and seven, they were already climbing trees in their neighbors’ backyards, finding ways onto garage roofs along the alleys, and clambering over the fence that surrounded the McCormick Theological Seminary to run under the lawn sprinklers. Neighbors marveled at the twin’s audacity. Boys their age resented, but also respected it. They also knew that a fight with one twin was sure to result in a fight with the other. Tom and Tim were known to stick together through thick and thin. Behind the twin’s backs, however, neighborhood boys snickered at the Tupple name.

When Tom and Tim were ten and eleven, they could often be found playing on the railroad tracks along Lakewood Avenue. Heavily laden freight trains passed frequently, but only shooed the twins off the tracks temporarily. Usually the trains were slow, so Tom and Tim hitched free rides by hanging onto ladders at the end of boxcars. Sometimes guards caught, scolded, and warned them, but in a few days the twins would be back and up to their old tricks. Their automatic smiles and free-wheeling dispositions carried them through many a scrape. In other words, the trainmen liked Tom and Tim, especially after the twins imparted their last name. Being stuck with a name like Tupple, the twins were considered candidates for leniency.

During summer when they were teenagers, Tom and Tim liked to go down to the lake on windy days and dive into the wavy water where it was twelve feet deep. Few of their friends followed their example. Others may have been slightly more muscular, but none were better swimmers. Tom and Tim often swam long distances from shore and back again without exhibiting the slightest strain. They could easily have become lifeguards if they had wanted to.

Times were tough in the 1930s when the twins were growing up. Their father worked in a tannery down by the river, but between slowdowns and shortened hours there was never much money. The family had no car, and vacations were unheard of. When Tom and Tim’s mother managed to save a dollar or two, she took them to Riverview Amusement Park on two-cent day. Most of the time they passed the Silver Flash and Blue Streak roller coasters and headed straight for the Pair-O-Chutes. The two-hundred foot steel tower attracted the twins like a magnet, and up they’d go, sitting on a small padded board with their feet dangling in the air until the chute opened at the top and they dropped swiftly downward. While Tom and Tim enjoyed the ride, their mother sat on a bench across the way, waiting, watching, and smiling in pride at her two sons. Seemingly fearless, they were considered a credit to the Tupple name.

The Second World War started just after the twins turned nineteen, and they quickly joined the Navy. Their enthusiasm for the service was more for the challenge and excitement than for reasons of patriotism. They wanted to experience the rough and tumble – and the danger – of being in a good fight. Their physical fitness and swimming ability were looked upon with favor by the recruiting officers and later by their superiors, and it wasn’t long after basic training that they found themselves on the light cruiser Tulsa.

Tom and Tim Tupple – despite the suppressed mirth their last name continued to generate – had all the qualities needed to be successful sailors. Although the two had an eye for women and were known to seek them out in every port, they were dependable, hard-working, and knew how to follow orders. Their ship was assigned to the South Pacific, and in several battles in which she was heavily engaged, the twins were mentioned for bravery in dispatches by their captain. In one battle they were credited with shooting down three enemy planes. Without college educations, however, advancement was slow and promotion infrequent. Some thought the Tupple name was also a deterrent.

The naval battles around New Georgia Island in the summer of 1943 were among the worst the ship had encountered. During an attack by scores of carrier aircraft, the Tulsa was torpedoed by a submarine as she maneuvered to avoid enemy dive bombers. It struck a vital spot and in a little over twenty minutes the ship’s bow slipped beneath the waves. Most of the crew was in the water, but the wounded had trouble swimming to life rafts and when they did, couldn’t climb in.

Newspapers, reporting on the battle, stated the U.S. Navy sank or damaged ten enemy ships and shot down numerous aircraft. Lost were an American cruiser, and an unknown number of planes.

What the newspapers were unable to report, because of the censors, was the name of the cruiser sunk and such things as the acts of heroism performed by the Tupple twins who, by their daring, determination, and swimming skills helped save the lives of over a dozen of their shipmates. If the people of Sheffield had known this, it’s likely they would have begun to look on the Tupple name in a more serious light.