With this month's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" writing prompt, I don't imagine you're expecting anything too uplifting. But, while sad things happened, this story is about a man who made a happy life for himself -- in spite of it all.
My first time in an airplane was flying from Iowa to Michigan for my paternal grandfather's funeral in October of 1972. I was ten years old. Patrick was not quite two and he stayed home with friends, so it was just me and Mom. Our seats were in the very last row, and I got kind of nauseated when we landed. The stewardesses (back then, that's what they were called!) were very kind and gave me peanuts and some 7-Up and I was okay after a bit.
There was a funeral Mass; my father's, two year's before, was the first one I'd been to, but I felt rather expert by this time, at least to the extent of being unsurprised by the censer being wafted about. Mom and I rode to the cemetery in a limousine with my grandmother, Helen, which sounds very hoity-toity but I believe was an option extended by the funeral planners, one gratefully seized upon by the friends who helped Helen plan the service. She was extremely demonstrative in her grief. I had not seen anyone so out-of-control before and Mom gripped me tightly to her, in reassurance but also in alarm, I think.
And that's the most vivid memory I have surrounding my grandfather, which is unfortunate, especially in light of the things I've learned about him since then.
My grandmother, Helen, died in 1994 but was in a nursing home and not particularly lucid for many years prior to that. When I began working with genealogy in 1999, the only information I had about Erwin was his obituary and the notes that my mother had written about him: "I was told that Erwin Sr. came from Canada. I don't know when, I also got the impression that when he was younger, he gambled and drank a lot. But I'm not sure about that. He was one of those people who knew what was best for everyone and the only person he ever listened to was Helen and sometimes Erwin Jr. There was something about an elopement and a family estrangement, but I don't know if that was Erwin or his parents involved in the story."
Well! That sounded interesting! As you can probably tell, Mom was not close to her in-laws (to say the least).
The obituary provided great starting points for genealogical research though -- a birth place and birth date, that marriage place and date, the names of parents. In my experience, those things would normally be enough to turn up some helpful census records. But nothing was easy when it came to tracing my grandfather's life, and there are still a lot of things I may never know. However, my mother's vague recollection turned out to be largely correct -- it seems Erwin's mother, Minnie, was born in New York City but adopted by a Michigan couple, Jacob and Lena Mohr. Sometime after June of 1900, Minnie eloped with Alfred Feltz, who had been born in Canada to German Immigrants. Erwin was born on May 20 or 21, 1904, in Detroit or Battle Creek -- it seems even he didn't know which of those things was correct. Alfred was still married to his first wife and had had a son with her at the time of Erwin's birth. I rather suspect the allegations of "drinking a lot and gambling" applied to Alfred, also -- according to the evidence, my great-grandfather was a Bad Man. After finally getting a divorce in 1907, Alfred married again and moved to California with his eldest son, dying of tuberculosis in February of 1914. Minnie died in May of 1914. Four months later, ten-year-old Erwin was sent to live with Lena Mohr by the boardinghouse owner who had taken him in after Minnie's death. In his 1941 application for a delayed registration of birth, which asked "where did you grow up," Erwin wrote "123 Congress Street in Detroit." That was the address of St. Joseph's Home for Boys.
So, I was right: it certainly was interesting. And also so terribly sad! I had no idea -- and I'm sure my mother did not, either -- that Erwin's childhood was such a complete and utter shitshow. How sad, too, that Mom never got to know her husband's parents enough to hear the whole story. But Helen and Erwin were very devoted to one another, and it's unclear how much of the story they shared with anyone -- and how much Erwin, himself, knew. It's quite possible that Lena told him "Your mother eloped with some boy and I never saw her again; she died when you were 10 and you came here to live with me. You brought this photo of her that was taken in Battle Creek, so she must have been there; you might have been born there for all I know."
But I did have one other avenue to use in acquainting myself with this somewhat mysterious man: the photo albums that a kind person sent to Mom after Helen died. I didn't know they existed until Mom died and then it was years before I actually went through them. But as I think now about Erwin, I feel that they portray someone very different from my mother's description. There are lots of vacation snaps, although Erwin was clearly often the photographer. There are pictures of birthdays, Dad enlisting in the Army, Dad going off to college. The photos seem to show a man who took great pleasure from simple things, and most of all from family.
Doesn't he have the sweetest smile, especially for his grandchildren?
Erwin was 19 when he married Helen and 20 when my father was born. I suspect that he would have liked to have had more children. He made a living but never really had a career. I think his adoptive mother helped him buy the house he and Helen lived in until they sold it to buy a motorhome and travel to Florida the year before he died of lung cancer. Despite having the Childhood from Hell, he successfully built a life that revolved around his family and the home they made together. And it was enough.
I wish we'd had the chance to know him better.
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