This afternoon I finally finished the rather onerous task of transcribing all of the four hundred plus pages of the "History of the Center Compound, Stalag Luft III, Sagan , Germany" ... Whew!! It amounts to over three-hundred Word pages and was most interesting...and a wee bit tedious...to experience. I've tried to set up a separate blog in order to post these pages, but have run into difficulty with the German version of Blogger.com! Ah well...consider yourself spared!!
And now on to transcribing the daily letters that my father wrote to my mother when he was away at USAAF cadets camp, flight training and the like. Anything to avoid actually having to WRITE!!
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
A excerpt from "History of Center Compound, Stalag Luft III, Sagan, Germany"
23 January 1945
Less than 500 meters from the relative peace and quiet of the compounds a most dramatic scene was unfolding daily. The temperature made a sharp drop and hovered near zero degree. On all sides of the prison camp at Sagan the roads were conjested (sic) with evacuees from the Breslau area. The problem of maintaining discipline was turned over to the military and thousands of old men, women and children were shunted through the threatened area without a stopover at Sagan for food or warmth. Endless lines of boxcars and flat-tops were conjested (sic) with humanity. Many of the flat-tops, offering no protection from the wind and bitter cold, were loaded with as many as 50 women – practically all carrying babies. The Luftwaffe men who were on duty at the marshalling yard said that the trains cleared through Sagan at a very slow pace and no one seemed to know where to send them. Berlin was overcrowded with evacuees; food was very scarce and housing facilities were out of the question. The same applied for Leipzig, Dresden and other large towns reached by the Sagan rail line. The sights were pathetic. The people were hungry and as they pulled into the station they were forced to stay on the train. Mothers held infants who had succumbed from the cold, and the more hearty ones looked bewildered at the conjestion. (sic) There was no crying. Discipline was good. The liberation of Silesia by the Russians was dreaded by all – except the prisoners. The whole picture was very incongruous. Germany was on her knees, the people were licked, her armies were in full retreat, tanks, trucks, push-carts, and heavily overladen (sic) baby carriages carrying supplies and personal effects, added to the traffic confusion. Thousands of prisoners, evacuated from camps to the East of Sagan, joined in the procession. Dead horses, cows and livestock littered the road ditches where they dropped from starvation and exposure."
...Four days later, along with 1,700 other young American POWs, David Wolter would embark on a grueling winter trek across war-torn Germany, from Sagan, Germany (now Poland) down to Moosburg - near Munich. Referred to as "The Death March," David has quipped that it got this title because one old German guard died of a coronary. The original history of Center Compound suggests otherwise...
Friday, July 3, 2009
Happy Birthday Gary!
Friday, July 3, 2009 Apfeldorfhausen, Bavaria
Dear Gary,
As I sit at my computer here in Apfeldorfhausen, an idyllic point on the planet that Freddy aptly dubbed Middle-of-Nowhere, Bavaria, I’m aware that today is your fifty-seventh birthday…mid-day here, very early in the morning there in Seattle. On my morning bike ride through the verdant cow pastures and nascent fields of corn, I mused about the meaning of this day for you…a day that last year at this same time, if I were to be completely honest with you, I would have wagered you’d never see. But, much like that silly pink Energizer Bunny on T.V., you’ve exhibited an amazingly resilient constitution, an impressive will to continue on your life journey, despite the rather cruel vagaries of ill-health that have plagued you for years now.
Today I am filled with fond memories that span the length and breadth of our long and meandering friendship – what was it? Thirty-eight years ago this summer when I first laid eyes on you coming out of that side door at the South Center Mall? Thirty-eight years…nowhere near as impressive as your and David’s fifty-two, but still a respectable number in most people’s book. Having been regaled with stories about your shared childhood from my then high school boyfriend, David McLaughlin, I was most curious to meet this “metal-fire engine-owning,” “disgruntled big brother to twin sisters,” “camp fire trodding” friend of David’s! My first impression was immediate and lasting: what an amazing head of bright orange hair!! You seemed a bit shy – not quick to make eye contact…and that impression remained for some time to come.
You were always David’s good friend, and thus our relationship remained a tangential one…we shared the same place and space over the years, but we never quite took the time, or perhaps more rightly, we rarely had the opportunity to sit down and craft a rapport we could rightly call our own. Your progressive illness over the past five years has afforded us that opportunity, Gary…and thus, strange as it may sound, I guess I’m grateful to your cancer for that.
As I shared with you when we parted on June 22nd, I was also always grateful for your easy and constant relationship with David, for it has invariably afforded me psychic “free time” over the years…time when you would readily keep David busy, thus allowing me space to attend to those matters that called to me and monopolized my attention: a master’s degree in Comparative Literature, the raising of three rambunctious kids…that kind of thing. Before you and David discovered Backgammon, you’d regularly arrive at our Bainbridge Island “farm” and the two of you would concoct a series of seemingly silly, yet surprisingly engaging pastimes – your swinging, leaping challenge from the old apple tree comes to mind. While you didn’t seem to remember it when I mentioned it to you a while back, it’s vivid in my memory. The previous tenants in the farmhouse had left a plank swing attached to the gnarled old apple tree in front of the “summer kitchen”…one day I came out to find you and David engrossed in a fierce competition. You were taking turns swinging as vigorously as you and your youthful legs could muster; then when you felt you’d reached an optimum height and velocity, you’d launch yourself from the swing, reaching for a piece of black electrical tape adhered to a sturdy branch out in front of you. I’m not sure who regularly triumphed at this singular sport, but I did thoroughly appreciate the hours you both spent engaged in the challenge, hours I was able to spend studying or writing a paper guilt-free, knowing that David was gainfully employed, playing with you! (I say “gainfully” for I can’t imagine that there wasn’t money wagered on this venture!)
And then there’s the Backgammon! How many years has that extended game been going on? Many were the Sunday mornings I’d awaken to the…not nearly as muffled as I would have preferred…sound of dice hitting table corners, punctuated by rude, vociferous disparagements – mainly instigated by David, but occasionally uttered by you as well…insults so shocking to the uninitiated that our poor neighbors, Jane and Alex, wondered if David and I might be involved in a verbally abusive relationship! Though I cannot fathom what you two find so very absorbing about that game, I am, again, grateful for the hours of delight you seem to have taken in it. To hear tell, you’ve both become impressively proficient Backgammon aficionados, and I’ll affirm now that David does, in reality, respect your ability Gary –no matter what he might claim in the heat of the moment! (Apparently uncouth taunting is all part of some strategy.)
I know that as you’ve languished there in your air bed these past weeks, you’ve
relived many of the memories that return to me now…Thanksgiving meals, Halloween parties, inner-tubing trips, countless visits to Thetis over the years, projects with houses and cars and boats and planes, picnics with friends and family, myriad meals involving “plenty of meat”…the list is long and indelible. Our children consider you a cherished member of our immediate family, Gary. Each of them has lifelong memories of you “being there,” in that comfortable, present way that you have – never imposing yourself, but always ready and willing to help by any means and in any manner asked of you. Thank you for that.
And so now here you are on your fifty-seventh birthday, squarely facing the most amazing of life’s adventures – second only to the somewhat rude shock of being born. While I inherently understand it, I sometimes marvel at the fear and trepidation that we humans seem to share when it comes to facing (not to mention even talking about) our inevitable demise. How ironic it seems that the one thing we all fear the most is the one thing that each and every one of us will face – some sooner than others, yet each of us does, in the end, have that proverbial rendezvous with destiny. I can’t begin to know how it must feel to be you at this moment Gary – but I do know that I admire your perseverance, I empathize with your fears, and yes, I marvel at the lessons you are learning as you face death. One need not be religious to stand in awe of the power and majesty of the experience.
I think we tend to separate death from life – even vilifying it as the antithesis to life – and yet I somehow suspect we’re off base when we do that. When you think about it, isn’t death actually an intimate part of life…the earthly end to the journey we began at our birth – a journey you began fifty-seven years ago today? The metaphor of a journey is an apt one. What then is death but a destination on life’s journey? And just as arriving at a destination is, at once, the end of a passage but also the beginning of a new chapter in an ongoing, perhaps even never-ending, life story, so must death be a beginning. I’m convinced of it.
As I told you when we saw each other last, Gary, I am also convinced that we – all of us who are so very connected here in this lifetime - will see one another again – in some form or fashion. This is a belief that you said you share with me. It may not come in a manner that we would readily recognize today, but it will, nonetheless, be real and enduring. I also told you that it gives me great comfort to know that you will have experienced death when my turn comes…I will look to you for strength and encouragement at that hour. Death does not seem so strange and unforgiving when we consider those whom we have known and loved who have gone there before us. And so I would encourage you to think about your mother, your father, Papa Fred and all of those whose spirits are poised to aid and ultimately welcome you as you proceed. Again, one need not be particularly religious to believe in such things. You must only look to nature to recognize the cyclical character of existence…we, like all of nature, are born, we thrive, we decline, we die…and so why not would we, like nature, be reborn? This is a fundamental question you will have an answer to soon enough. As German poet Rainer Maria Rilke observed, we have been living the question…your turn has come to experience the answer. I have faith it that will be a meaningful, even joyous experience.
While I will not try to tell you that your life has been a long one, Gary – I do maintain that it has been a good one. You have lived fully and well. You have pursued many interests, you have always met your many responsibilities, you have continuously and steadfastly been willing to take on challenges and most importantly, you have shared your life and yourself with others who care about you. You have known disappointment, but you have also known success. As I told you when we shared the contents of our hearts, you are a good man – to which you responded, “I guess I can’t ask for more than that!” I would add, what more is there really?
So thank you Gary…thank you for the years of unwavering friendship and staunch loyalty you’ve offered to David, to me and to our family. Thank you for your trustworthiness, your ability to know and keep confidences. Thank you for the quiet understanding you’ve offered us when we shared our fears and concerns with you – thank you for listening and truly hearing rather than commenting or advising. Thank you for your willingness to lend a hand, to go the distance even when the project wasn’t one of your own making. Thank you for just being there…for always being you…a comfortable and comforting presence in the day-in, day-out nature of life and the living of it.
I join with everyone who gathers and celebrates your life with you today on your fifty-seventh birthday. We are all so grateful that you were born – just as we are grateful for the time we’ve been able to spend with you. Know that you will always be an integral part of our best memories and that we – for the time that we have remaining – will cherish and honor those memories and you along with them…always.
I love you Gary. Happy Birthday,
Sally
POSTSCRIPT: Gary Lindsay Young died at 5:55 pm on Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Dear Gary,
As I sit at my computer here in Apfeldorfhausen, an idyllic point on the planet that Freddy aptly dubbed Middle-of-Nowhere, Bavaria, I’m aware that today is your fifty-seventh birthday…mid-day here, very early in the morning there in Seattle. On my morning bike ride through the verdant cow pastures and nascent fields of corn, I mused about the meaning of this day for you…a day that last year at this same time, if I were to be completely honest with you, I would have wagered you’d never see. But, much like that silly pink Energizer Bunny on T.V., you’ve exhibited an amazingly resilient constitution, an impressive will to continue on your life journey, despite the rather cruel vagaries of ill-health that have plagued you for years now.
Today I am filled with fond memories that span the length and breadth of our long and meandering friendship – what was it? Thirty-eight years ago this summer when I first laid eyes on you coming out of that side door at the South Center Mall? Thirty-eight years…nowhere near as impressive as your and David’s fifty-two, but still a respectable number in most people’s book. Having been regaled with stories about your shared childhood from my then high school boyfriend, David McLaughlin, I was most curious to meet this “metal-fire engine-owning,” “disgruntled big brother to twin sisters,” “camp fire trodding” friend of David’s! My first impression was immediate and lasting: what an amazing head of bright orange hair!! You seemed a bit shy – not quick to make eye contact…and that impression remained for some time to come.
You were always David’s good friend, and thus our relationship remained a tangential one…we shared the same place and space over the years, but we never quite took the time, or perhaps more rightly, we rarely had the opportunity to sit down and craft a rapport we could rightly call our own. Your progressive illness over the past five years has afforded us that opportunity, Gary…and thus, strange as it may sound, I guess I’m grateful to your cancer for that.
As I shared with you when we parted on June 22nd, I was also always grateful for your easy and constant relationship with David, for it has invariably afforded me psychic “free time” over the years…time when you would readily keep David busy, thus allowing me space to attend to those matters that called to me and monopolized my attention: a master’s degree in Comparative Literature, the raising of three rambunctious kids…that kind of thing. Before you and David discovered Backgammon, you’d regularly arrive at our Bainbridge Island “farm” and the two of you would concoct a series of seemingly silly, yet surprisingly engaging pastimes – your swinging, leaping challenge from the old apple tree comes to mind. While you didn’t seem to remember it when I mentioned it to you a while back, it’s vivid in my memory. The previous tenants in the farmhouse had left a plank swing attached to the gnarled old apple tree in front of the “summer kitchen”…one day I came out to find you and David engrossed in a fierce competition. You were taking turns swinging as vigorously as you and your youthful legs could muster; then when you felt you’d reached an optimum height and velocity, you’d launch yourself from the swing, reaching for a piece of black electrical tape adhered to a sturdy branch out in front of you. I’m not sure who regularly triumphed at this singular sport, but I did thoroughly appreciate the hours you both spent engaged in the challenge, hours I was able to spend studying or writing a paper guilt-free, knowing that David was gainfully employed, playing with you! (I say “gainfully” for I can’t imagine that there wasn’t money wagered on this venture!)
And then there’s the Backgammon! How many years has that extended game been going on? Many were the Sunday mornings I’d awaken to the…not nearly as muffled as I would have preferred…sound of dice hitting table corners, punctuated by rude, vociferous disparagements – mainly instigated by David, but occasionally uttered by you as well…insults so shocking to the uninitiated that our poor neighbors, Jane and Alex, wondered if David and I might be involved in a verbally abusive relationship! Though I cannot fathom what you two find so very absorbing about that game, I am, again, grateful for the hours of delight you seem to have taken in it. To hear tell, you’ve both become impressively proficient Backgammon aficionados, and I’ll affirm now that David does, in reality, respect your ability Gary –no matter what he might claim in the heat of the moment! (Apparently uncouth taunting is all part of some strategy.)
I know that as you’ve languished there in your air bed these past weeks, you’ve
relived many of the memories that return to me now…Thanksgiving meals, Halloween parties, inner-tubing trips, countless visits to Thetis over the years, projects with houses and cars and boats and planes, picnics with friends and family, myriad meals involving “plenty of meat”…the list is long and indelible. Our children consider you a cherished member of our immediate family, Gary. Each of them has lifelong memories of you “being there,” in that comfortable, present way that you have – never imposing yourself, but always ready and willing to help by any means and in any manner asked of you. Thank you for that.And so now here you are on your fifty-seventh birthday, squarely facing the most amazing of life’s adventures – second only to the somewhat rude shock of being born. While I inherently understand it, I sometimes marvel at the fear and trepidation that we humans seem to share when it comes to facing (not to mention even talking about) our inevitable demise. How ironic it seems that the one thing we all fear the most is the one thing that each and every one of us will face – some sooner than others, yet each of us does, in the end, have that proverbial rendezvous with destiny. I can’t begin to know how it must feel to be you at this moment Gary – but I do know that I admire your perseverance, I empathize with your fears, and yes, I marvel at the lessons you are learning as you face death. One need not be religious to stand in awe of the power and majesty of the experience.
I think we tend to separate death from life – even vilifying it as the antithesis to life – and yet I somehow suspect we’re off base when we do that. When you think about it, isn’t death actually an intimate part of life…the earthly end to the journey we began at our birth – a journey you began fifty-seven years ago today? The metaphor of a journey is an apt one. What then is death but a destination on life’s journey? And just as arriving at a destination is, at once, the end of a passage but also the beginning of a new chapter in an ongoing, perhaps even never-ending, life story, so must death be a beginning. I’m convinced of it.
As I told you when we saw each other last, Gary, I am also convinced that we – all of us who are so very connected here in this lifetime - will see one another again – in some form or fashion. This is a belief that you said you share with me. It may not come in a manner that we would readily recognize today, but it will, nonetheless, be real and enduring. I also told you that it gives me great comfort to know that you will have experienced death when my turn comes…I will look to you for strength and encouragement at that hour. Death does not seem so strange and unforgiving when we consider those whom we have known and loved who have gone there before us. And so I would encourage you to think about your mother, your father, Papa Fred and all of those whose spirits are poised to aid and ultimately welcome you as you proceed. Again, one need not be particularly religious to believe in such things. You must only look to nature to recognize the cyclical character of existence…we, like all of nature, are born, we thrive, we decline, we die…and so why not would we, like nature, be reborn? This is a fundamental question you will have an answer to soon enough. As German poet Rainer Maria Rilke observed, we have been living the question…your turn has come to experience the answer. I have faith it that will be a meaningful, even joyous experience.
While I will not try to tell you that your life has been a long one, Gary – I do maintain that it has been a good one. You have lived fully and well. You have pursued many interests, you have always met your many responsibilities, you have continuously and steadfastly been willing to take on challenges and most importantly, you have shared your life and yourself with others who care about you. You have known disappointment, but you have also known success. As I told you when we shared the contents of our hearts, you are a good man – to which you responded, “I guess I can’t ask for more than that!” I would add, what more is there really?
So thank you Gary…thank you for the years of unwavering friendship and staunch loyalty you’ve offered to David, to me and to our family. Thank you for your trustworthiness, your ability to know and keep confidences. Thank you for the quiet understanding you’ve offered us when we shared our fears and concerns with you – thank you for listening and truly hearing rather than commenting or advising. Thank you for your willingness to lend a hand, to go the distance even when the project wasn’t one of your own making. Thank you for just being there…for always being you…a comfortable and comforting presence in the day-in, day-out nature of life and the living of it.
I join with everyone who gathers and celebrates your life with you today on your fifty-seventh birthday. We are all so grateful that you were born – just as we are grateful for the time we’ve been able to spend with you. Know that you will always be an integral part of our best memories and that we – for the time that we have remaining – will cherish and honor those memories and you along with them…always.
I love you Gary. Happy Birthday,
Sally
POSTSCRIPT: Gary Lindsay Young died at 5:55 pm on Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
"The Century: America's Time" with Peter Jennings
I've been watching the first episode of "The Century: America's Time" with Peter Jennings and taking notes - the idea being to get a layman's vision of the history of the period before, during and after the era of "my story." It's way cool that most of this century was filmed. I find it fascinating to watch footage of folks as they go about their business - just like we do - folks long dead by now. For some reason, the fact that my beloved grandmother, Julia (Haller Cook) - whose stories I know by heart because, as a young girl, I had the forethought and interest to always ask her questions about her life - was born in July of 1900 gives me a special attachment to this early period. Whenever a momentous date is mentioned (for example, the Triangle Shirt Factory Fire in March of 1911) I think, "Gramma Julia was ten and a half years old then..."
I really should write down the many stories she shared with me. I sure wish I can recorded her!! :-)
Ich bin wieder angekommen...aka: I'm baaack!!
As I feared, yet another fall, winter and spring have come and gone with absolutely no psychic time for working on this rather epic project...passion...of mine! So here I am, once again, in beautiful "Middle-of-Nowhere, Bavaria" ready to roll up my figurative sleeves and continue my work! I arrived mid-morning on Wednesday, June 24th...and will stay until mid-day, Monday, July 27th (flying home early on the 28th)...so I have close to five weeks to devote to this labor of love of mine!!
and then bug a staff member to go retrieve materials for me! It was while I was exploring said stacks that I happened upon a rather thick, vintage notebook - page upon riveting page of hand-typed notes, copies of letters, inventories, etc...all on thin rice paper...the original "History of Center Compound, Stalag Luft III, Sagan Germany" that dated back to the 1940s! I immediately set about digitally photographing each and every page of this precious original document, and it's these pages that I'm now transcribing! I say that I literally "found" the history because at one point, Dr. Mary Elizabeth Ruwell, head of the Special Collections, happened by and noticed what I was doing. "Oh my goodness...you found it!" Apparently, this priceless bit of POW history (priceless at least to me and my project) had been misplaced and thus virtually lost in the vast expanse of resources in the collection! I feel especially lucky to have full access to it now and am learning a lot as I transcribe each and every page exactly as it was written "back in the day."
At the moment I'm busily transcribing the some four hundred pages of the original "History of Center Compound" that I literally found in the Air Force Academy's "Special Collections" section of their expansive library. I've spent two different winter breaks there in that amazingly rich resource - a collection of POW artifacts and original writings, etc. collected and then donated by the academy's Senior Officer, General Albert P. Clarke, who was the first American flyer taken prisoner of war in World War II and an internee at Stalag Luft III along with, among over 2,000 others, my dad! After my first visit, I was warmly greeted by the personnel there and pretty much allowed free rein of the facility, which meant I was allowed to peruse the electronically movable stacks, rather than having to consult the "finder binders"
and then bug a staff member to go retrieve materials for me! It was while I was exploring said stacks that I happened upon a rather thick, vintage notebook - page upon riveting page of hand-typed notes, copies of letters, inventories, etc...all on thin rice paper...the original "History of Center Compound, Stalag Luft III, Sagan Germany" that dated back to the 1940s! I immediately set about digitally photographing each and every page of this precious original document, and it's these pages that I'm now transcribing! I say that I literally "found" the history because at one point, Dr. Mary Elizabeth Ruwell, head of the Special Collections, happened by and noticed what I was doing. "Oh my goodness...you found it!" Apparently, this priceless bit of POW history (priceless at least to me and my project) had been misplaced and thus virtually lost in the vast expanse of resources in the collection! I feel especially lucky to have full access to it now and am learning a lot as I transcribe each and every page exactly as it was written "back in the day." And now...back to work...
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Flights of Fancy
Modes of transportation seemed to captivate the boys’ imaginations. In addition to the Bozo II, Claire designed several impressive pushcarts that he was able to construct thanks to the wheels the boys would scrounge from Fred Hunziker’s automotive shop as well as the provisions they purchased at the local lumberyard. It fell to Freddy and David to not only make the supply runs, but also to come up with the funds for purchasing said supplies. This necessity spawned their clandestine flower business. While father Tony was otherwise occupied, the boys would clip choice specimens of zinnias, gladiolas, and asters from his abundant flower garden and then offer bouquets to various neighbors for a modest price. Any earnings were exchanged for scrap lumber purchased from the neighborhood’s most generous lumberyard proprietor who surely sold the boys far more merchandize than their nickel or dime actually afforded. Once he even gave them a bag of nails, which saved them hours of arduous labor, straightening used ones. One of Claire’s carts even took advantage of the rather impressive spring and summer winds that would blow through the flat lands of South Gate. Attaching a sail to some two-by-fours mounted on wheels, the boys could pick up quite a bit of speed as they sailed down the dusty and almost always empty San Carlos Avenue.
Of all the various modes of transportation that were quickly evolving in the first half of the twentieth century, however, flight was the one that enthralled the boys most completely. Besides building make-believe fuselages in which to experience hours of imaginative fligh
t, they also got the idea to try their hand at actual aeronautics. Having rescued an impressive sheet of thin wood from a packing crate, the boys set about building a frame, which they covered with the plywood, ultimately crafting a wing spanning over six feet. They attached webbing through which a brave pilot could slip his arms and quickly nominated Claire to be that brave pilot. Surveying the various runways available to them, the boys decided upon Freddy’s slope-roofed garage, which was deemed perfect for their initial challenge to gravity’s relentless law. All Claire had to do was take a running leap and surely, like the hapless Icarus before him, he’d soar! And so, with arms stretched under the expanse of wing, Claire ran and then dove head first off the garage, hoping its seven-foot height would give him the time and air space he needed to ascend. It didn’t, and soon his chest and chin plowed through the newly planted grass in the sandy loam below. For their part, Freddy and David were certain that just before he crashed, the audacious aviator was gaining altitude! That said, they were never able to convince Claire to give it another go.
Of all the various modes of transportation that were quickly evolving in the first half of the twentieth century, however, flight was the one that enthralled the boys most completely. Besides building make-believe fuselages in which to experience hours of imaginative fligh
t, they also got the idea to try their hand at actual aeronautics. Having rescued an impressive sheet of thin wood from a packing crate, the boys set about building a frame, which they covered with the plywood, ultimately crafting a wing spanning over six feet. They attached webbing through which a brave pilot could slip his arms and quickly nominated Claire to be that brave pilot. Surveying the various runways available to them, the boys decided upon Freddy’s slope-roofed garage, which was deemed perfect for their initial challenge to gravity’s relentless law. All Claire had to do was take a running leap and surely, like the hapless Icarus before him, he’d soar! And so, with arms stretched under the expanse of wing, Claire ran and then dove head first off the garage, hoping its seven-foot height would give him the time and air space he needed to ascend. It didn’t, and soon his chest and chin plowed through the newly planted grass in the sandy loam below. For their part, Freddy and David were certain that just before he crashed, the audacious aviator was gaining altitude! That said, they were never able to convince Claire to give it another go.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Summer of 1929
Southern California in the mid to late twenties was as good a place as any to grow up in and far better than some. A few weeks before David was born in late August of 1923, then president Warren G. Harding had died suddenly at the young age of fifty-seven of what was presumed to be a heart attack, although the exact cause of death remains a mystery, to the point of possible scandal, to this day. His last public address, made on his “Voyage of Understanding” tour, was to a lukewarm crowd at Husky Stadium on Seattle’s University of Washington campus...David’s would- be alma mater some eighteen years later. Harding’s untimely death in San Francisco left the terse, retiring vice-president Calvin Coolidge at the helm of a prosperous nation, where his laissez-faire approach to government as well as business allowed for the “boom” in the boom and bust cycle of capitalism to prevail. And so it was that Coolidge, with his the chief business of the American people is business approach to leadership, was just barely sworn into an office he had never coveted as David was being born in Everett, Washington. He would reluctantly remain president for the first part of David’s childhood, publicly supporting the biggest controversy of the day – Prohibition – all the while privately opposing it. 
Young David, for his part, would find much childish humor in the one-liner, “Repeal the Eighteenth Banana,” not quite understanding its societal significance. The glamorous world of the speakeasy and the dramatic rise of organized crime that abounded in places like Chicago in those days dubbed The Roaring Twenties were all beyond young David’s purview and were more than likely not part of his parents’ reality either. While in her later years Marguerite Wolter was known to imbibe on a predictable basis, as a young wife, mother and wage earner in the 1920s she adhered to a strict Christian Science practice, one which her husband came to share as well. 
Like most converts to a cause, it was Tony who would wax fanatical about his faith, a faith that his sons came to recognize and later reject as cult-like and rigid to the point of irrational. Even so, David recalls that his father would indulge in a beer when they’d go to the horse races in the 1930s, perhaps expressing his German heritage that couldn’t possibly consider beer real alcohol.
By the time David and Freddy Hunziker met and bonded on that dusty road in South Gate, Republican President Herbert Hoover had taken over where Harding and Coolidge had left off, promoting his notion of the Efficiency Movement in the then prevailing Progressive Era, a position that held that a technical solution existed for every and any social and economic concern. This notion was to be severely challenged and ultimately foiled in the face of the Great Depression that loomed less than eight months after Hoover’s inauguration in March of 1929. At age six, David was only tangentially aware of the social and economic stresses that surely added to the strain upon his parents’ already troubled union. Again, it was a clever quip that typified the era for the boy – “Scott Tissue hits bottom…thousands wiped clean!”
The challenges of the period were so pervasive that there seemed an almost noble dignity in the degrees of despair that so many shared as the nation and ultimately the world slid into what surely must have felt like an inexorable decline to the adults who sought to cope with making a living. Young David recalls periodic visits with Mr. Smith, an elderly gentleman friend of his father’s, who resided in what was referred to as a “poor farm” – a kind of communal living arrangement for older citizens who’d lost their retirement savings and were forced to pool their talents, adhering to the concept that a shared burden is a lessened one. Invariably Mr. Smith would present the boy with a dollar – a fairly impressive sum at the time, advising him to invest wisely, which to David’s way of thinking meant ninety-nine cents worth of penny candies! On other darker days David recalls sitting around the family dinner table with his mother and brothers, passing the time, as they awaited their father’s homecoming, in prayer that he might have earned enough that day to supplement the rice their mother had cooked. Still, as is the way with childhood reminiscences, the desperation of the epoch is not what remains when memories are shared. This was a time of concentrated creativity and ingenuity, not only on the part of the adults who made ends meet, but also on the boys who continued to scrounge supplies with which to build dreams.
In that summer of 1929 Claire and his crew of two built a boat which they christened the Bozo II – in honor of Freddy’s bull terrier, but also in recognition of the raw materials supplied by Fred Sr. from his auto shop. The Bozo II was constructed rather expertly from drawings that nine-year-old Claire had made. Its wood frame was covered with canvas donated by father Fred and then painted over several times with more contributions from Hunziker Auto Repair so that, in the end, it was more or less waterproof. Freddy’s amiable mother, Thelma drove the boys and their boat down to the water at Long Beach where they launched the Bozo II on her maiden voyage. Because her hull was basically round, she immediately capsized, but here again, Fred Sr. saved the day by attaching vulcanized inner tubes to Bozo II’s gunnels so that when fully loaded, she would float with the assistance of the car tire tubes. David recalls playing with Freddy, Claire and their boat for over two years in the Long Beach bay created by the horseshoe-shaped pier’s breakwater. It was there, too, that Freddy and David, ages six and seven, learned to dive and swim after a fashion. They’d craft kick boards out of pine and spend the day, or as much of it as an impressively tolerant Thelma would donate, thoroughly engrossed in water play.
Thus began David’s love affair with swimming, one that he pursues to this very day with his frequent plunges into Lake Washington’s waters, often in the company of several generations.
Young David, for his part, would find much childish humor in the one-liner, “Repeal the Eighteenth Banana,” not quite understanding its societal significance. The glamorous world of the speakeasy and the dramatic rise of organized crime that abounded in places like Chicago in those days dubbed The Roaring Twenties were all beyond young David’s purview and were more than likely not part of his parents’ reality either. While in her later years Marguerite Wolter was known to imbibe on a predictable basis, as a young wife, mother and wage earner in the 1920s she adhered to a strict Christian Science practice, one which her husband came to share as well. 
Like most converts to a cause, it was Tony who would wax fanatical about his faith, a faith that his sons came to recognize and later reject as cult-like and rigid to the point of irrational. Even so, David recalls that his father would indulge in a beer when they’d go to the horse races in the 1930s, perhaps expressing his German heritage that couldn’t possibly consider beer real alcohol. By the time David and Freddy Hunziker met and bonded on that dusty road in South Gate, Republican President Herbert Hoover had taken over where Harding and Coolidge had left off, promoting his notion of the Efficiency Movement in the then prevailing Progressive Era, a position that held that a technical solution existed for every and any social and economic concern. This notion was to be severely challenged and ultimately foiled in the face of the Great Depression that loomed less than eight months after Hoover’s inauguration in March of 1929. At age six, David was only tangentially aware of the social and economic stresses that surely added to the strain upon his parents’ already troubled union. Again, it was a clever quip that typified the era for the boy – “Scott Tissue hits bottom…thousands wiped clean!”
The challenges of the period were so pervasive that there seemed an almost noble dignity in the degrees of despair that so many shared as the nation and ultimately the world slid into what surely must have felt like an inexorable decline to the adults who sought to cope with making a living. Young David recalls periodic visits with Mr. Smith, an elderly gentleman friend of his father’s, who resided in what was referred to as a “poor farm” – a kind of communal living arrangement for older citizens who’d lost their retirement savings and were forced to pool their talents, adhering to the concept that a shared burden is a lessened one. Invariably Mr. Smith would present the boy with a dollar – a fairly impressive sum at the time, advising him to invest wisely, which to David’s way of thinking meant ninety-nine cents worth of penny candies! On other darker days David recalls sitting around the family dinner table with his mother and brothers, passing the time, as they awaited their father’s homecoming, in prayer that he might have earned enough that day to supplement the rice their mother had cooked. Still, as is the way with childhood reminiscences, the desperation of the epoch is not what remains when memories are shared. This was a time of concentrated creativity and ingenuity, not only on the part of the adults who made ends meet, but also on the boys who continued to scrounge supplies with which to build dreams.
In that summer of 1929 Claire and his crew of two built a boat which they christened the Bozo II – in honor of Freddy’s bull terrier, but also in recognition of the raw materials supplied by Fred Sr. from his auto shop. The Bozo II was constructed rather expertly from drawings that nine-year-old Claire had made. Its wood frame was covered with canvas donated by father Fred and then painted over several times with more contributions from Hunziker Auto Repair so that, in the end, it was more or less waterproof. Freddy’s amiable mother, Thelma drove the boys and their boat down to the water at Long Beach where they launched the Bozo II on her maiden voyage. Because her hull was basically round, she immediately capsized, but here again, Fred Sr. saved the day by attaching vulcanized inner tubes to Bozo II’s gunnels so that when fully loaded, she would float with the assistance of the car tire tubes. David recalls playing with Freddy, Claire and their boat for over two years in the Long Beach bay created by the horseshoe-shaped pier’s breakwater. It was there, too, that Freddy and David, ages six and seven, learned to dive and swim after a fashion. They’d craft kick boards out of pine and spend the day, or as much of it as an impressively tolerant Thelma would donate, thoroughly engrossed in water play.
Thus began David’s love affair with swimming, one that he pursues to this very day with his frequent plunges into Lake Washington’s waters, often in the company of several generations.
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