FOREWARD

 

The material contained in this autobiography was derived solely from memory and no events were knowingly embellished.  The only exceptions not dependent on memory are exact figures such as battle casualties that were obtained from historical data of the 30^th Infantry Division and from other historical documents.

 

Because my working career kept my immediate family distanced from relatives my children had very little contact with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  Being the son of immigrant parents, I likewise was denied these treasured relationships.  The purpose of this personal discourse has therefore been to provide some meager ancestral data and recollections of personal events for my family.  However, other readers who have lived during this same time frame as I might find pleasure in relating to the reported events.

 

When I attended a 50^th high school reunion I was asked to say a few words about our small senior class of 1942.  I mentioned how fortunate we had been to have lived during such an interesting period in our nation’s history.  We were born approximately midway between the end of WW I and the beginning of WW II. In between these two 20^th century, world events the great depression of 1929 provided youthful hardships but gave us character for the upcoming war. I entered kindergarten in 1929 but this beginning of my academic career was in no way responsible for the great depression!  My age group spent our school years during these trying times and graduated as the first June class following the beginning of WW II for the United States and just in time to enter military service as 18 year olds.  I didn’t refer to us as the “Greatest Generation” as Tom Brokaw later coined the phrase but we certainly fit his definition.

 

Although the recorded data trend to be in chronological order there are digressions relative to the subject.  Basically, the discourse consists of general information on ancestors, early youth, military service, family and professional career.  It was 50 years after WW II that veterans of the war were encouraged to relate their experiences.  It was this request for individual accounts that created the interest for me to pursue this endeavor.  Consequently, a large portion of this autobiography is devoted to WW II, a short but most important time period in my life.

 

 

THE BEGINNING

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According to my birth certificate signed by Dr. John F. Miller, I entered the 20^th century on October 4, 1924.  With my first breath of air at 9:15 AM, I sensed the smell of sweet rubber that impregnated the air at 622 Sumner Street, Akron, Ohio.  At this time I believe that every tire manufactured in America was made in Akron, at Goodyear, Goodrich, Firestone, General, Seiberling, Mohawk, Miller and other smaller plants.  This birth event coincided with a little known birthday, that of our 19^th president, Rutherford B. Hayes, also born in Ohio but a few years earlier in 1822.  Also, born on October 4, 1924 is actor Charlton Heston.  A brother, René, born on Present Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, 1921, preceded me in birth. 

 

HERITAGE

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Parents were George Schneider and Rose Marie Raccordon Schneider, both having emigrated from the French part of Switzerland.  At home we spoke French and English.  Dad insisted that we were American and we were to speak English.  An explanation is required here to account for our claim of French heritage with a name like Schneider.  My father’s father was one of six brothers living in either Colmar or Mulhouse, Alsace, then a part of France.  During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 three of the brothers fought with the French and three fought with the Germans.  The French lost and Alsace and Loraine were assimilated by Germany.  Almost overnight schools began teaching German as the official language, street signs were changed to German and the overall atmosphere of the area became Germanized.  Grandfather had been on the French side and found the changes more than he could take so he moved to the French part of Switzerland to the city of Delémont where father was born on June7, 1892.

 

After the First World War the areas of Alsace and Loraine reverted to France but were conquered in the invasion of WW II and came under German rule again only to be returned to France at the end of the war.

 

Today, many of the cities and villages in Alsace have German names such as Strasbourg. Mulhouse, Colmar, Riquewihr, Selestat, Kayserberg and Koenigsbourg to name a few.  The typical French provincial cuisine is notably absent in this region and consists of sausages, cold cuts and smoked meats with emphasis on German dishes.  Almost all citizens of any nation who have German names and claim French heritage can trace their roots to Alsace or Loraine.  Among some notable ones are Albert Schweitzer and the Schlumberger brothers, Conrad and Marcel, the founders of the Schlumberger well surveying company, the world leader of electrical, mechanical, sonic and nuclear devices used to examine drilled holes in search of oil and gas.  Their first log was run in a small field in Pechelbrun, Alsace around 1927. 

 

The largest munitions maker in France before and during the First World War was Schneider Munitions in Alsace.  This was the French equivalent of Germany’s Krupp Works.  The most famous weapon produced during WW I was the French 75, a 75-millimeter cannon and howitzer.  Also produced were larger, 105 and 155 guns.  Many of these are on exhibit in French military museums and carry the Schneider nameplate.  The first French tank constructed during WW I was the Schneider tank.  Unfortunately it was poorly constructed and did not perform well in battle.

 

Other evidence of French Schneiders can be found in Paris.  Engraved in the Arch of Triumph are numerous names of French heroes and you can spot a Schneider among them.  My wife Elaine and I have a favorite bridge in Paris.  This is Pont Alexander, which crosses the Seine from the right bank to the entrance to Les Invalides, the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte.  On the upstream side near the left bank end there is a plaque indicating that the bridge was built by Schneider.  Another Schneider influence is found in the Eiffel Tower where a plaque on the superstructure of the elevator system identifies the Schneider Company.  Today, one of the largest, aggressive French companies called Schneider Electric, operates in Europe and throughout the world.

 

     Another location for many Schneiders is in Normandy.  Unlike the French Schneiders, at this site we find German Schneiders.  In the German Military cemetery at La Cambre, Normandy, there are buried 21,222 German soldiers.  Many of these are unknown and simply identified as ein Deutsche Soldat but of the remaining known dead I counted 69 Schneiders cataloged in a directory located in a small pagoda at the entrance to the ground.  This cemetery is quite different from the American cemeteries, which mark the graves with either a white Christian cross or a star of David.  The Germans are identified with a flat plaque and the cemetery is decorated with irregularly spaced black granite crosses.  Although the area is much smaller than the American cemetery only a short distance away overlooking Omaha Beach, the La Cambre cemetery contains more than twice the number of bodies - 21,222 versus 9,386 Americans.  The casualties of both countries are from the Normandy campaign.  Visits to both of these revered sites will never be forgotten.  I highly recommend visits to both. 

 

ANCESTRY

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     Little is known of my ancestors on both sides of my parents.  My father had two sisters, Maria and Cecile.  Maria married a Yugoslavian civil engineer and moved to the city of Split on the coast of the Adriatic Sea.  Her husband’s name was Ivo Girgic.  I’m not positive of the spelling of his last name.  He was a very ambitious and competent engineer.  He constructed an electric plant and supplied the city of Split with electrical power.  Consequently, he became quite wealthy and invested in two ocean freighters and a sumptuous villa overlooking the city.  This affluence came to an abrupt halt at the end of WW II when Tito confiscated all of their possessions.  Tito’s officers shared in the booty of the villa.  One chopped the crystal chandeliers from the room ceilings, another rolled up the tapestries and another helped himself to Maria’s fabulous stamp collection.  One of the ships had been sunk during the war but the other was in port and duly confiscated.  The Lloyds of London insured the ship that was sunk and it’s possible that he eventually collected for that loss.  Besides depositing profits in New York I believe Ivo had a large cache in London. The power plant under Tito’s regime began generating electricity to the city with no revenue for Ivo.  The couple was given a small apartment in town.  Earlier in the war, in the early forties, dad’s father died of natural causes during an American air raid on Split.  He had been staying with Ivo and Maria.

    

In 1948 my parents decided to take a trip to Switzerland.  This was to be their first return trip since emigrating after WW I.  While in Switzerland Maria had a serious operation in Split and, learning that my parents were about to visit she requested a visa to Switzerland to recuperate.  The government agreed only with the condition that Ivo remain as a hostage so that she would return.  The visa expired before my parents arrived so she requested an extension, which was granted.  Ivo then got word to her that she should remain in Switzerland while he made plans to flee the country.  He had buried some jewelry and other valuables that he retrieved and paid to a fisherman to take him to Italy.  How he entered Italy I don’t know but the voyage was successful and he had a rendezvous with Maria.

    

Their next move was to immigrate to America.  I wrote to our congressman and asked if he could obtain entry for them as displaced persons.  This was not possible since displaced persons were those from other Balkan countries and Yugoslavia was not one of these.  However, he said that because of Tito’s freeze on exit visas no one was getting out of the country and since they were already in Switzerland they would have no problem entering under the immigration quota for Yugoslav citizens.  The only provision was that we sponsor them and attest that they would not be a drag on American society and not take on work thereby denying an American worker of employment.  None of these restrictions was a problem.  In peacetime, freighter trips had been made regularly to the states, notably to the port of New York.  It was on these trips that some of the shipping profits were deposited in New York banks.  Either the Chemical Bank or the Hanover Bank harbored a nest egg of $80,000.00 in Ivo’s name.  My parents learned the amount of this deposit when they returned from Europe in 1948.  They had been instructed to report to the bank in New York and inform the bank that under no conditions should any funds be released to anyone except to the legitimate depositors.  Ivo was afraid that Tito would try to recover the money.  This was a sizable amount of cash in 1948 and entitled the owners to live comfortably.  After living on the farm in Sterling, Ohio with us for a short period of time Maria and Ivo moved to Wooster where they would be more comfortable associating with instructors at the College of Wooster.  They portrayed a certain aristocratic aura, which my mother detected and called Maria “The Duchess”.  Although Ivo was to refrain from taking employment he wanted to work on American bridges and he received approval to work for the county designing bridges.  After three or four years they became restless and returned to Switzerland where they settled in Montreux.  They eventually returned to Split and we heard no more from them.

    

Dad’s other sister, Cecile was an interesting character.  By today’s terminology you could classify her as the original hippy.  She was a kind-hearted soul who played the guitar and apparently didn’t have too many cares.  She married someone called “Grillon”.  It’s the only name I have for him and I assume that it was his last name.  Having heard of Dad’s adjustment to the American way of life Grillon and Maria joined them in Akron where Grillon got a job with Firestone.  He developed some mental or emotional problems, which climaxed one day when he announced that he was going to return all of his earnings to Mr. Firestone.  This unusual decision necessitated a commitment to the asylum in Massillon. Apparently he stayed there for a while because I am told that he was still there when I was an enfant and I would accompany the family on visiting days.  Many of the inmates got to know me and they would play with me. Both eventually returned to Switzerland.  For the next few years Cecile would send us French children’s books for Christmas.  They were usually about Becassine, Matresse d’école, a bungling schoolmistress.

    

Dad was born in Delémont, Switzerland on June 7, 1892, the only son of Jean Schneider.  I don’t know his mother’s first name but her maiden name was Montavon.  Jean was not wealthy but he made a comfortable living as a wine maker.  He was not a big operator but he had barrels big enough for Dad to crawl inside to clean them.  For part of his advanced schooling Dad commuted by train to a nearby town where I believe he received the equivalent of a high school diploma.  While in school I believe he received instruction in the German language.  He never had any great love for the Germans and in my lifetime I heard him speak German only once.

    

When he was eighteen years old he left for America to seek his fortune.  He arrived in New York all alone without an English word in his vocabulary.  He sat on his solitary suitcase and wondered what to do when he heard two women speaking French.  He approached them and when they realized that he needed help they told him to pick up their luggage and follow them.  The carriage took them to their apartment where they gave him some kind of accommodations and found him work in a hospital that was run by French nuns.  He worked as an orderly until the day he was carrying a block of ice that slipped from his grasp and went sliding down the corridor and upsetting a cart loaded with sterilized surgical tools.  The nuns came running after him calling him an imbecile.  He took off running and never returned to the hospital. This episode terminated his career in the Big Apple.  He managed to take a train heading west and stayed in the Akron area of Ohio where he worked in machine shops in Akron and Alliance.  Seeking more adventure he headed farther west with a stop in Illinois where he searched for a cousin who had a large farm somewhere in southern or central Illinois.  After a short stay he headed farther west and stopped in South Dakota where he found work for a rancher.  He was a part time cowboy and farmer, rounding up cattle, mending fences and planting and harvesting wheat.  The rancher liked dad and offered him a section of land (640 acres) at a few cents an acre.  He offered to loan Dad his mules to plow the land and plant the wheat and he wouldn’t have to pay for the land until he harvested the wheat.  Dad missed trees which were notably absent and wanted to return east so he declined the offer and left.  That year there was a bumper crop of wheat and the profit he would have made would have paid off the land.  He went to Ohio where he found trees and rolling hills that satisfied his image of America.  He found work as a machinist in Alliance, a village southeast of Akron.  He loved working metals on the lathe, the milling machine and the usual machine shop tools.  This was to be his working-career profession except for the depression years when he lost his job.  The machinist job in Alliance was not meant to last.  The First World War had now begun and Dad wanted to serve his new country even though he was not yet a citizen.  He joined the U.S.Army and in doing so he automatically became a US citizen.  He spent most of his army career in Camp Gordon, Georgia where he was a bugler and cook.  He wanted to go overseas and fight in his ancestral country but the army would not send him because of his recent citizenship.

    

After the war he returned to the shop in Alliance and resumed his machinist trade.  While here he met a fellow worker who kept drawing cartoons on the shop wall.  This fellow machinist was an artist and he would soon move on to become one of the best-known cartoonists of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.  His name was Williams and he produced several different cartoons at the same time alternating them daily.  These were The Willits, Born 30 Years Too Soon, Out West and The Bull of the Woods. The Bull of the Woods was about a machine shop and depicted typical relationships between workers and the boss who was the bull.  Out West was about a cowboy who I believed was called Curly.  The cartoons by Williams were American classics and until recently I saw shop calendars with Bull of the Woods cartoons.

    

Meanwhile in Switzerland Mom was maturing as a teenager in the village of Porrentruy.  Mom was born in Courgenay, a small village near Porrentruy on April 4, 1895, one of three sisters and two brothers.  These villages are located in the extreme northwest portion of Switzerland in the Canton of Jura.  Her maiden name was Raccordon and her mother’s maiden name was Petterman.  Mom’s early life was harder than Dad’s and her father had a rough time supporting the family.  I don’t know what he did for a living.  Because of the near-poverty conditions at home Mom had to leave school early, probably around the 4^th grade and worked in a knitting mill making stockings.  This must have been close to slave labor conditions as the supervisor walked behind the knitters and cracked a whip imploring them to knit faster.  As a teenager she worked in the fields and it was while making hay in 1918 that a most interesting event took place in the hay field.  This unusual story deserves a deviation from the current subject.

    

First, a geographical setting must be visualized.  In the northwest portion of Switzerland there is slight protrusion from an otherwise fairly regular border. Located in this extreme protrusion is located the village of Porrentruy, the home of mom during her childhood.  During WW I the front between Germany and France, running essentially northwest to southeast terminated at the Swiss border near Porrentruy.  During the war, the nighttime volleys of artillery could be seen in the night sky and on occasions wounded from either side would find their way to Switzerland.  On June 29, 1918 while making hay with other friends Mom recalls seeing a German aircraft having engine problems and loosing altitude.  When it was apparent that the pilot could not return to his base he made an emergency landing in the hay field bringing his craft to an abrupt stop in a haystack.  The workers including my mother rushed to the downed plane and essentially took the pilot prisoner until the local police arrived and took him away to be interred in neutral Switzerland for the remainder of the war.  Upon disembarking with slight wounds the first question the pilot asked was,  “ Is this Switzerland?”  Upon learning that he was in Switzerland he did not hide his satisfaction.  The plane was a biplane, number N 62 N, a two-seater with the pilot in the front and a gunner-observer in the rear. The plane was equipped with four machine guns.  The observer was not as fortunate as the pilot and had taken six bullets in his body.

    

During a recent visit to Switzerland my brother René and a Swiss cousin developed an interest in the story and researched the archives of local newspapers and retrieved many details of the following:  The aircraft had flown from Habsheim near Mulhouse and had departed at 7:30 AM with the mission to attack and bomb the cities of Belfort and Montbéliard.  On the return of the mission a group from the French Escadrille, which included some American volunteers, attacked them.  A fierce battle ensued and one of the German planes was shot down in Alsace and the other was the one in the haystack.  The actual location of this downed plane was in Vendlincourt near Porrentruy.  The killed observer-gunner was on his 68^th mission, which was to be his last before returning to Germany to get married.  His body was brought to the church in Bonfol and was later carried to the German border where the transfer took place.  During the body transfer a German plane flew 50 meters over the group honoring the body. It was learned that the pilot who shot down the plane in the haystack was a lieutenant Ashenden from Chicago, an American flying with the 147^th French Escadrille.  Lieutenant Ashenden was flying a large French biplane

    

This story does not end here.  During the school year 1949-50 I was doing graduate work in geology at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and, for the master’s degree, participation in a two-week field trip in Western Maryland was required.  Most of us attending had been in military service and in the evenings the bull sessions invariably led to war stories.  The professor conducting the field camp was Dr. Ernst Cloos, an internationally recognized structural geologist from Germany.  His brother Hans Cloos was also a well-known European geologist.  During one of the evening sessions someone asked Dr. Cloos “Dr. Cloos weren’t you a German soldier in WW I?”  He acknowledges that he had been a pilot but didn’t want to talk about it.  It didn’t take much prodding to start him reminiscing.  This is his story.  “ I flew a biplane with a gunner-observer and had flown many missions without any problems from the enemy.  At first it was a sporting war with the enemy.  If one of our planes was shot down by the French or the British, honor was bestowed on the enemy by the victor the next day by dropping a wreath near the downed plane and the flying craft would tip its wings in salute.  We performed the same acts of recognition.  Then one day in June 1918 while over France I was attacked from above by the French Escadrille with American pilots.  The war was no longer sporting and the Americans wanted to fight!  My plane was shot full of holes, my gunner was killed and I began losing altitude.  I knew I couldn’t make it back to my base in Germany and I didn’t want to crash in France.  I was familiar with the area and realized that I could probable put down the damage plane in a narrow band of Switzerland between France and Germany.  This I did successfully terminating the flight in a haystack.” I responded with “Dr. Cloos, what was the name of the place in Switzerland?”  Whereupon he responded “It was some little place you never heard of.”  I then said  “I think I’m familiar with the village.  Was it near Porrentruy?”   A shocked expression appeared on Dr. Cloos’s face and he responded “How in the hell would you know that?”  My answer was “My mother was one of the women in the hayfield and she saw you shot down 32 years ago.  She was one of the teenagers armed with pitchforks and guarded you until authorities arrived.” 

    

Dr. Cloos was quite taken back by this “Small World Tale” and added additional comments.  While interred he signed an affidavit stating that, as a German officer, he would not try to escape and he was able to pursue his studies in geology. A copy of the affidavit was part of the material brother René recovered from the newspaper archives. He added that, as far as he knew the plane was still located in a Swiss museum somewhere near Basel where a plaque identifies the plane and the conditions in which it was shot down.  It had something like 150 bullet holes in the fuselage.  This could represent one half the number of bullets penetrating since the plane had a thin shell and each projectile made an entry and an exit hole.  This incident proved such an interesting event in the life of Dr. Cloos that, upon his death, the US Geological Survey under the Interior Department published his biography and the incident is included in the report.

    

Back to my mother’s family.  Other than knowing her family name of Raccordon and her mother’s maiden was Peterman I know little else except for some information about her siblings.  She had two sisters and two brothers.  The Petermans can be traced back to the thirteenth century.  One brother, Joseph became a watchmaker and an accomplished musician.  He was once the director of the Swiss Army Band and the lifetime organist of the church in Delémont.  He maintained his watch repair shop on Rue de L’Eglise and for many years he could watch his old childhood friends walk past his bay window fronting the cobblestone street.  He was not the only musician in the family.  Most of the other members were quite talented and played an instrument.  Mom played the base violin and younger brother, Able played the trumpet.  Able was a handsome young man but he was sickly and eventually died at an early age from tuberculosis.  His family thought it would not be particularly helpful for him to play the trumpet because of his lung problem.  He wanted to play so much that he would hide under his bed so that the sound would be somewhat muffled. 

    

Mom’s sister Jeannine became a nun and eventually the mother superior of the hospice in Delémont.  We visited her in 1964 while Elaine was pregnant with our last daughter and we were so impressed with the old nun that we named our last child Jeannine.  Third child, Jeannine was born on April 24, 1965 while we were in New Orleans and eleven years after Tom was born.  One week before going on a three-week motoring vacation through Europe we discovered Elaine’s pregnancy.  Considering the problems Elaine had experienced with the other pregnancies we were hesitant to take a lengthy, potentially hazardous trip.  A doctor who confirmed the pregnancy advised canceling the trip and, if we didn’t, he didn’t want to see Elaine again.  We disregarded his recommendation and the pregnancy was probably Elaine’s best.  We had planned the trip for more than a year and the itinerary covered the entire route of the trip but made hotel reservations for only the first night in London and the first night in the Netherlands.  At any time whenever physical stress appeared we could revise our schedule.  Only one revision was required, an extra night in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany and the elimination of one night in Paris at the end of the trip.  Our trip included a visit with the  nun, who was the mother superior for a hospice in Delémont, Switzerland. This aunt and a small group of additional nuns cared for almost one hundred elderly persons.  Our trip was so well planned that we arrived at the exact time we had advised her of our arrival.  We found the nuns on their “recreation” period, which meant that they were relaxing, knitting or conversing among themselves.    It is coincidental that the nun Jeannine was in charge of a hospice and more than thirty years after our short visit, our Jeannine would be in the process of establishing the first pediatric hospice in the United States.

 

The old nun had never seen any of her nephews and proudly exhibited the two of us to the rest of the nuns.  A modern, government hospital was located nearby and she gave us a tour of the facilities.  A lab technician wishing to show her proficiency in English addressed me as Mister and Elaine as my Mistress.  That night Jeannine insisted that we not spend our money on a hotel so she made arrangements through the nuns’ secret little underground to smuggle us into the hospital after all of the doors were locked for the night.  What we didn’t know was that we had been given accommodations in the maternity ward.  Early in the morning I almost got a rectal thermometer inserted by the duty nurse checking on the progress of my pregnancy.  All was resolved and we were served breakfast in the room.  The old hospice dated back to the 15^th century.  We paid another visit in 1994 but the hospice was no longer there as modern hospital facilities assumed these ends-of- life cases.

    

The other sister was Cecile who married a railroad worker and, because of economic problem, did not have an easy life.

    

The only other relative of historical interest was my mother’s great grandfather.  I don’t know from which side of the family he came.  He served with Napoleon Bonapart when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812.  He was wounded near Moscow and died in a hospital fire near the front.

 

EARLY LIFE IN THE US

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Back in America Dad found a machinist job in Akron, Ohio while Mom was in Switzerland.  It was now time for Dad to return to Switzerland and find a wife.  With this objective he returned to Delémont and approached the Raccordon home.  At the front gate he was confronted by the man of the house and immediately ask for permission to marry his daughter.  The father asked “Which one, Cecile?”  Dad said, “I guess that’s the one” whereupon Cecile came from the house but she was the wrong one.  Dad said, “No, it’s the other one.”  Upon the appearance of Rose Marie he was satisfied that she was the right one.  He then explained to the father that he had a job and a home in Akron and two steamship tickets to New York and wanted to marry Mom and take her to America.  The father told Mom, “You heard what he said.  Do you want to marry him?”  Mom simply replied,  “I guess so.”  A quick wedding was arranged and the couple left for America not to return until 1948.  It was now probably 1919. I find this truly amazing.  They didn’t come over on the Mayflower but they were every bit the stereotype immigrants that would help found this great nation!

    

I don’t know the steamship line or the name of the ship but it wasn’t a luxury cruiser.  I believe that sleeping accommodations were dormitory style with separation of the sexes.  Mom spoke no English but Dad had picked up quite a bit of the language.  Mom told Dad that there was a nice English gentleman who always greeted her with a tip of his hat and some English greeting.  She wanted to learn a few words so that she could respond to this kind person’s greetings.  Dad tutored her until she had the greeting well memorized.  The next morning on deck the encounter was right on schedule as the gentleman greeted with a warm good morning.  Smiling and proud of her new language she responded in her strong French accent, “Go to hell you SOB”.  The Englishman doubled up in laughter and my mother turned the color of her name. 

    

The last night at sea the newlyweds stayed on deck until they saw the distant lights of New York and by early morning they saw the statue of their liberty.  In Akron they set up housekeeping in a rent house on Sherman Street then bought the house at 622 Sumner Street, a little three-bedroom bungalow that backed up to the rental house on Sherman Street.  The area was quite nice with red paving bricks on the street.  Bricks were used as a common paving material and all of the streets in the area were covered in this manner.  These streets have now been blacktopped which is a shame because the bricks added a certain charm to the community.  Directly across from the home was a red brick grade school covering the best part of one half of the block.  This was Legett School, the school where I would begin my American education.  Since the couple was still childless they both went to work in the machine shop where Dad had established his job in Akron at the Akron Selly Gear Company a private shop owned by the Howard family, an affluent, Akron family. The Howard matriarch and her sister lived in a large estate near the University of Akron.  The house resembled a typical, Hollywood, haunted house with a tower capped with a four-sided roof, each side containing an elliptical window. In the 1930’s all houses in the entire block were razed leaving only the Howard mansion.  The Davey Tree Company then landscaped the property with gardens and full-grown trees.  The only remaining outbuilding was a large garage with a loft that connected to a house for the chauffer. The chauffer had a son a few years younger than brother Jim.  Jim and I would sometimes visit with this friend and in exploring the property we found a door on the upstairs landing that led to the loft over the garage.  Here we found piles of antiques that the Howards collected and below in the garage there were old electric cars dating to the turn of the century.

 

The Akron Selle Gear Company was located one block off of Exchange Street near the north end of the B.F.Goodrich Rubber Company.  Several families in the Akron area had emigrated from Switzerland and found work in the rubber plants and machine shops.  This relationship provided a common bond among the group.  There was an active Swiss Club and a smaller Alsace-Loraine Club.  The chauffer and gardener for the Howard family was French-Swiss and became my Godfather.

 

Mom got a job as a punch press operator and became quite dexterous as she pounded out stampings on a piecework basis, being paid for the number of pieces produced.  The machines had a safety harness, which strapped on to the arms and when the die came down the traps would jerk the arms away from the table.  This action was brutal on the arms and none of the workers used them.  As Mom was going through the ritual of inserting stock, punching and removing the stamped article she made a slight miscalculation and lacked about one quarter of an inch from complete withdrawal.  This error neatly removed the tip of the middle finger of her left hand.  Remembering the harsh treatment she had experienced as a young girl working in the Swiss knitting mill she feared being reprimanded by the boss.  She shoved the removed digit to the side of the machine and continued working.  A small number of pieces were punched before the girl at an adjoining press detected a faint condition in my mother, came to her aid and stopped her press.  Unlike the treatment she expected she was cared for immediately.  With the loss of only a small portion of a finger, healing was normal and she soon returned to work.  The surgeon that treated her at the hospital made a slight mistake in repairing the severed finger.  The amputation was at the base of the nail.  This left two slight remnants of nail at the cuticles that grew as protruding horns of nail.  Mom had to keep these filed the rest of her life.

 

Only a few English words were in Mom’s vocabulary and she felt embarrassed at lunchtime when the girls would unwrap their sandwiches from the newspaper wrapping and chat while they read bits from the paper.  Mom began carrying her lunch in newspaper like the rest of the girls and pretended to be reading the paper.  She began associating words with dialog of the cartoon characters and with pictures in store ads. This was the beginning of her English education.  She learned to read and write English and could speak fairly well but she never lost her strong French accent.

 

While both parents were working they were saving all that they could to pay off the house and managed to also buy the old farm in Sterling, Ohio that proved to be our refuge during the depression.  The house mortgage was with an Akron Savings and Loan bearing the name Dime Savings and Loan.  Mom must have taken the name seriously because she would apply ten cent pieces (dimes) to the mortgage every chance she had!

 

Sterling was approximately 20 miles west of Akron and bisected by the main lines for the Baltimore and Ohio and the Erie Railroads.  An additional spur of the B & O cut across the Erie from south to north and continued to Cleveland.  This made for a treacherous crossing right in Sterling and would contribute to a serious train wreck sometime in 1953 or 1954.

 

FAMILY BEGINS - THE ROARING TWENTIES

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With the beginning of the decade that would come to be known as the Roaring Twenties the family began to develop.  René was born on February 12, 1921 and Mom’s factory days were brought to an end.  For a few critical minutes it appeared that she might return to work without having her firstborn.  René was not breathing at birth and he was not expected to survive.  In an effort to restore life the doctor carried him outside and rolled him in the cold, February snow.  The shock worked and he is still breathing after more than  80 years, thanks to a primitive technique by Dr. Miller who delivered all of us.  René began kindergarten at the age of five or six.  Legett School was directly across the street so he needed only for Mom to escort him to the street curb, look both directions for vehicles then make a dash.  Although Dad spoke English at home Mom was quite restricted to French so, when attending school René spoke very little English and was ridiculed quite a bit.  One of his first great accomplishments in kindergarten was to color a squirrel purple, which drew laughter from the other kids and a comment from the teacher.  Playing with neighborhood kids helped develop the English vocabulary.  Next door at number 628 lived the Rohner family with two boys, Herbert and Martin About the same ages as René and me.  Other playmates could never pronounce his French name so they called him Raymond.  Another younger playmate was called Raymond so he became Baby Raymond.

 

On October 4, 1924 it was my turn to make an entry into the world.  Another addition to the family at the same time was our first vehicle, a 1924 Model T Ford purchased for $495.00 brand new.  Dad was real proud of his Model T and I am told that I likewise took a great liking to the vehicle.  Whenever I heard the engine start up I would run to climb in even if it meant only riding from the drive into the garage.  On one occasion dad did not see me and I was almost crushed against the side of the garage.  This Ford would be the instrument for several more narrow escapes before it went to the junk dealer.  While still an infant we went for a Sunday drive with my godparents and while descending a steep hill in Akron called Sherbondy Hill, falling snow caused the Model T to begin sliding, hit the ditch on the side of the road and rolled on its side.  My godmother hung on to me and all escaped without any injuries

 

Although I spent only about five and one half years in Akron before being forced to move to the farm in 1930 I have managed to retain vivid recollections of much of that short, early period of life.  To this day I could draw an accurate house plan of 622 Sumner Street with even a recollection of the furniture and its placement in the house.  I especially recall the location of the gas water heater in the bathroom.  I was suspicious of this contraption and I was sure that someone was hiding behind it waiting to do me great harm.

 

One of my favorite recollections is waiting for dad to come home from work.  He usually walked to and from work, as the distance was probably less than a mile.  If inclement weather prevailed he could catch a bus that traveled Sumner Street with a stop at the corner. In the winter he wore a large black overcoat and when he entered the house we would rush to him and reach into his coat pocket because he always had a piece of pastry, which he bought at lunch time to treat us.  We called it a “Machin a la crème” which translated from this colloquial expression meant “something with cream.”  It didn’t take us long to discover that the whipped cream occupying the inside of the delicacy was concentrated near the center so we had to take turns for the center.  Younger brother Jim was born in 1926 and now shared in the three way split.  They don’t make these long johns or cream horns like that anymore!  The same overcoat pocket also provided the means of transport for our first pet, which was a tiny, abandoned kitten, that dad rescued at the shop and brought her home.  The only name she ever had was La Veille which means the old one.  The name didn’t make sense for such a young animal but she didn’t mind the name and lived a long life with the handle.  She was a good old cat and provided the nucleus for the cat community that would eventually attempt to control the rat and mouse population on the farm

 

When the proper time came I was enrolled in kindergarten across the street.  One recollection is the overwhelming size of the urinal we had in the school.  It was only three feet tall and looked like a vertical bathtub.  It looked like it was just waiting to swallow me.  We even had show and tell in those days.  I had two favorite toys that I brought for two separate occasions.  One was a fire engine that had a crank-up extension ladder, which extended to what seemed like the tremendous height of six feet even though it was more like three feet.  The other was a black steam shovel with a bucket you could raise, swivel the cab on the base, then trip the bucket and drop the load wherever you desired.  During one show and tell the steam shovel stayed in school overnight and I spent a good part of the night staring at the classroom visible from our home.  I had to make sure that no one was stealing my prize and that the school was not on fire. 

 

As my first Christmas in kindergarten approached we began making vases for our mothers.  Mine was a real piece of art.  It consisted of a glob of clay molded into a donut shaped base painted green with a glass test tube inserted in the center.  When dry, the teacher provided a Christmas seal to paste on the clay base to finish the decoration of the masterpiece.  I believe that the Christmas seal depicted Santa Clause carrying a Christmas tree.  When I presented it to my mother I sang “Silent Night” for her.  She cried as she hugged me and for years she wondered why we sang “Silent Night Oh Flash Light.”  To this day I cannot listen to Silent Night without strong emotional recollections.

    

I quickly developed friends and, living directly across from the school our home was a natural rendezvous on the way to school.  Every morning three or four friends would come to the kitchen porch, stop their feet on the porch floor and holler my name.  After we left for the farm in 1931 I never saw these friends but I still recall some of their names.  One insisted that his full name was Richard Dick O’Harry.  Others I recall were Robert Goudy and one I knew simply as Julius.  I hope these guys are still around and have enjoyed as blessed a life as I.  I once read in the Akron Beacon Journal an article about a Robert Goudy who was a singer.  Maybe exercising his vocal cords on our kitchen porch helped his voice.

 

Sometime before we left Akron, Goodyear entered the lighter-than-air dirigible program and was to become the only builder of these giant airships in America.  During WW II many “blimps” were built and today others are still being built for use mostly to cover sporting events.  These are single inflatable bags filled with helium and are much smaller than the dirigibles that had several bags enclosed in a rigid skin attached to a large gondola.  The word dirigible comes from the French word “diriger” which means to direct or steer.  Plans were to build airships even greater than those already built by the Germans who already had the Graf Zeppelin among others.  The disadvantage for the Germans was that they had no access to helium, a non-combustible, light gas.  They had to use hydrogen, a lighter gas but highly combustible.  To build an airship of such a magnitude that could rival those the Germans had, it was necessary to build a large hanger.  This was at the site of the Akron airport where we often picked mushrooms before construction of the hanger began in the late 1920s.  While driving in this area one raining day during construction the Model T ran out of gas on the main road to the hanger.  We pulled on to the shoulder of the road but it was not enough for the constant truckers who complained for blocking their way.   While we endured the insults of the truckers Dad walked to a gas station and returned with a can of and we were soon one our way.

 

The completion of the hanger constituted the largest building under one roof in the world being 1,175 feet long, 325 feet wide and 200 feet high.  By definition, under one roof means no pillars or any other braces to interfere with or interrupt the overall volume of the building.  This record fell with the advent of domed sports stadiums, the first being the Astrodome in Houston.  During WW II Goodyear Aircraft was formed to construct navy fighters and to house these facilities a plant was built near the hanger.  An attempt was made to utilize the hanger but it was so large that the atmospheric conditions could not be controlled.  Under conditions of high humidity and a quick drop in temperature clouds could actually form within the hanger and rain would fall.  Still determined to make use of the hanger, large tents were pitched over shop equipment.

 

It was in this hanger that the Macon and the Akron were built, the Akron being the largest American airship built.  Seeing one of these monsters floating overhead was a sight to behold.  After the hanger was built the German Graf Zeppelin paid a visit to Akron and flew directly over our house as it approached the mooring mast at the hanger only three or four miles away.  One of our neighbors was an old German widow and she was almost hysterical as she ran down the street in pursuit of the Zeppelin.

 

A few years later after we had moved to the farm the Akron was still flying and we often got glimpses of this large silver fish hovering in the distance near the hanger.  One night shortly after bedtime on the farm our mother awakened us to see the Akron only a few hundred feet overhead on its descent to the hanger.  All of the lights were on in the gondola and it looked like a passenger train in the sky.  Seeing the blimps of today can’t compare to such a sight.

 

Near our home there was a bakery on Kling Street that specialized in French bread.  The baker and owner was Burry and he had a brother elsewhere in Akron who was also a baker of French bread and competitive.  Both baked excellent bread and supplied the finest restaurants in town.  They were maybe Swiss in origin and it’s possible that Dad knew them from the old country.  Dad would often walk to the bakery on Sunday morning and buy a loaf of French bread and some hard rolls.  Our breakfast would consist of these rolls with butter and jam.  I’m sure that Burry’s are no longer in Akron, but I have noticed that individually wrapped biscuits and crackers found in trays in restaurant dining rooms are baked by Burry’s in Florida.  I suspect that these are the same Burrys who escaped the northern winters in favor of Florida

 

A special memory of the short stay in Akron is that an old family friend and fellow Swiss named Charlie.  His last name was something like Voegly.  He was a big-hearted clown and a bachelor.  Every Christmas he would deliver gifts to all of the kids he new; however, I always thought that he favored us.  A few days before Christmas we would be on the lookout for his old car, a Maxwell or a Dodge that he called the coffee pot.  He did his shopping at the M. O’Neil Company whose store bags were a bright green.  Charlie disembarking from the coffee pot with green bags told us that Santa Clause was here.  He once gave me a set of ceramic building blocks that were still around when I got married but are now lost.  René once got a real fine erector set.

 

The two social clubs in Akron that the Swiss and the Alsatians belonged to were appropriately named the Swiss Club and the Alsatian Club.  Charlie belonged to both of these clubs and at all of the various events that were held such as picnics, the October Fest, Christmas Parties etc. he would always distribute tickets that were exchanged for ice cream, pop corn etc. After we moved to the farm Charlie would hold an annual event for his friends.  A couple of weeks before the big event Dad would make a batch of home brew beer and on the Sunday of the party Charlie would show up early and begin preparing the meal.  He insisted on being the chef and had the same menu each year, consommé, meat loaf and noodles.  He ground the meat himself and baked a fine meatloaf.  When Charlie was cutting the meat the family cats stood by for a handout.  He would trim off undesirable slices of meat and tossing them to the cats he would say, “Pour le chat” and we would all laugh.  The consommé was basically dissolved bouillon cubes and the noodles were homemade by Mom.  Most of the guests were more interested in the beer and in playing cards and tossing horseshoes than in the food.  The most distinguished guest we had was Mr. Isaly who had a chain of ice cream parlors and now makes the famous Klondike bar.

 

In the late 1920s we were about to usher in the great depression but we were too young to realize what was happening.  In fact we had just bought our first radio, a Stromberg Carlson.  We were to enjoy it for only a few months before we had to leave for the farm where there was no electricity.

 

Around 1929 the member of the Howard family in charge of the Akron Selly Gear Company where Dad worked was hospitalized and his replacement was someone Dad didn’t like and didn’t trust.  He was dishonest and while in charge he tried to get the employees to produce fewer pieces of product from a given piece of stock.  This resulted in a greater percentage of scrap and he had a side business going on with a friend who was a scrap dealer.  Most of the metal was brass and commanded a good price in the scrap market and a nice profit for the boss who was in effect stealing from the firm while the owner was in the hospital.  Dad would have no part in his scheme and finally got in a fight and slapped him in the face with his oily, machine-shop hand.  Although the depression was about to cause his dismissal the slap hastened it.

 

Now unemployed Dad exhausted all means of getting any income for the family.  One short-time job was a pick and shovel job at the school across the street paying ten cents an hour.  When this short project ended he sought work with a friend who owned a tavern on Exchange Street on the approach to the railroad viaduct.  There he washed dishes, waited on tables and attended bar.  His meager income from this job could not meet our basic needs and it was evident that the depression was taking its toll.  The decision was made to move to the farm where we could at least survive.

 

At the beginning of the winter semester of 1931 I began first grade at Legett School.  The school system was apparently feeling the effects of the depression and additional classrooms that were needed could not be added to the school.  To solve the problem two wooden shacks were moved on to the school grounds to house first grade students.  Each unit had a pot bellied stove for heating and there were desks for all.  The students were slowly evolving from coloring and pasting to serious learning but I don’t remember doing anything except kindergarten work.  I had not learned to count numbers or the letters of the alphabet when the time came to flee to the farm.  The lasting emotional experience I recall from first grade occurred on Valentine’s Day.  There was only one black boy in the class and he sat next to me.  For a week before Valentine’s Day we would deposit valentines addressed to friends in a decorated box on the teacher’s desk.  On the final day the box was opened and the recipients were delivered their greetings.  All of us had several valentines except for the black boy who received only one – from the teacher.  How hurt that poor kid must have felt!

 

 

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In March 1931 the time had come to make the move that would provide a chance for survival.  A scene from the “Grapes of Wrath” would best describe the 20-mile journey.  The caravan consisted of the Model T loaded with the family and a few possessions while a Model T stake truck held the rest of our possessions.  Prior to the move Dad had done what he could to make the farmhouse habitable.  There were none of the city amenities such as running water, electricity or gas.  Electricity and water were not available; however, a natural gas line had been laid along the country road adjoining the farm property.  The problem was that the house was at the end of a long lane measuring approximately 200 yards. Dad hand dug a trench this distance and laid a pipeline all by himself so that we could have at least one convenience and Mom could cook with gas.  The house was badly leaning to the west and Dad jacked it up as best he could by using timbers from around the barn and tree trunks from the property.  The floors never reached perfect level but were level enough so that we never developed sea legs. Our lost marbles could always be found on the west end of any room.

 

 

The gas connection provided lighting in two rooms, a double globe in the kitchen and a single globe in the living room. Water came from a broken pump outside the kitchen.  Only the handle connection was broken and a makeshift repair enabled pumping for excellent fresh water.  A second pump at the barn also provided excellent water even though it was located next to the barnyard.  Testing of this well revealed no contamination from the barnyard.  The reservoir for both wells was a sandstone formation only about 40 feet deep with an intake for the formation probably many miles away.  The water was soft in contrast to water from wells one mile downhill where the wells were completed in glacial fill and the water was hard.

 

My brothers and I went about exploring our new home and the surrounding out buildings but my mother sat down and cried.  The inside of the house was filthy.  Most rooms had wallpaper that had mostly peeled away and behind the remaining strips of faded paper bedbugs waited for nighttime when they would feast on the new city slicker arrivals.  The most pressing job was to sanitize the house by fumigating the entire house with sulfur.  To insure an effective fumigation all cracks around doors and windows were stuffed with newspaper.  A canister of sulfur with a wick was lighted and the burning sulfur produced toxic gas that killed all of the critters.  The gas was probably hydrogen sulfide, a most deadly gas.  After 12 hours we entered the house that was free of bugs thereafter.

 

None of the doors fit tightly and the kitchen door was supplemented with a screen door that fit worse than the kitchen door.  It served no purpose since the bottom panel had a large hole through which children of the previous tenants crawled through.  The screen was replaced in time to deter some of the flies that would swarm in the summertime but the fit didn’t improve.  At the top of the screen there was a gap of one half inch on the far side from the hinge.  The old family cat was pretty smart and figured how to take advantage of this defect and enter the house.  She would climb up the screen to the gap, pry at the gap with a front paw increasing the opening enough to get her head through, then swing the rest of her body inside and lower herself to the floor.

 

One of the first priorities after getting rid of the house pests was to get us enrolled in school.  Dad had met some of our neighbors and we were invited to meet them and get some advice about enrolling.  After supper we took an old kerosene lantern and walked through the fields to our neighbor, Emile Wald.  Their son, Ralph was older than any of us so he sold us some of his used books that we would need.  I think that the amount paid was $0.10 for a spelling book and an  arithmetic book

  

DEPRESSI0N TO WAR

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To get started Dad borrowed $300.00 from and good friend and with this amount he bought two horses, one named Barney and the other Daisy.  Both were real plugs and were not capable of doing much work.  The remainder of the loan went toward the purchase of two cows, one called Jersey the other was Patsy.  I don’t know how Jersey got her name because she was definitely not of the Jersey breed.  She was as solid black as Barney.  Patsy had some Holstein blood in her and after a short life got something else in her - some green apples from which she bloated from the gas and died.  Needless to say we were definitely not in the dairy business with only one cow.  I guess the good friend came through with another loan and two more cows were purchased. The milk supply from this herd was not enough for any milk company to bother with but Mom managed to skim off enough cream every week to sell at a local creamery.  After much persuasion Dad managed to get the Averill Dairy in Akron to buy our milk.  Since the dairies didn’t need the extra milk they would grant the farmer a base price for a maximum amount of daily milk delivery, say 20 gallons a day, then a lesser amount for the surplus.  We barely made our base amount and were constantly threatened to have the base reduced.  This highly technical farming we had entered into was now bringing in about $3.50 a month.  The local farmers eventually banded and built a cheese factory near Rittman.  All of the members of this cooperative venture could sell their surplus milk to the cheese factory at a price higher than the price paid by the dairies for surplus milk.  The factory produced an excellent swiss cheese that shareholders could buy at a slight discount. Our neighbor, Emile Wald solved his surplus milk problem by making his own cheese.  This was a new experience for him but he soon learned to make an excellent cheese.  The operation began with his wife stirring a large copper kettle of milk on the kitchen stove.

 

An attempt to get extra cash by selling some baby pigs at a weekly auction netted us the obscene sum of $0.50 per pig.  Mom kept the receipt for this capitalist transaction among her faded memoirs for many years

 

I was now enrolled in the first grade in Sterling school but since the school was not on a semester basis like the one in Akron where I had just begun the first grade, the first grade in Sterling was finishing when I joined them with only three months of first grade.  The first three months in Akron had not been very productive since all I did was to color and draw pictures.  No one had told me that I was supposed to be learning my numbers and letters.  I must have passed on condition because the next September I reported to the second grade.  I sat next to an older boy who had probably flunked the second grade a couple of times.  His name was Herman and he was not going to be a particularly good influence on my education.  The entrance to the gymnasium had two doors leading from the basement hallway, one leading to bleachers and the other on to the gym floor.  The one to the gym floor was in a small well surrounded by a railing.  Some of the older boys found it a great sport to run down the hall, grab on to the rail, slide under it and drop to the door opening on to the floor.  One day Herman conned me into attempting this gymnastic maneuver just in time for the Principal, Simon Miller to catch us and escort us to his office where we were given a stern lecture and displayed a large paddle with air holes to reduce friction when wielded on a backside. We were asked if we would like him to apply it to our rears whereupon we replied in the negative.  He excused us and we refrained from any more of these gymnastics.

 

Tolerance to religion was more prevalent than now and every Friday we held “Chapel” in the auditorium.  By high school time this session was changed to “Assembly.”  Other than a short reading from the Bible, which was usually a Psalm, this gathering of the entire school body had no religious implications.  Each class would have a turn during the school year to put one the program.  These usually consisted of songs, musical solos or skits.  While in the second grade the teacher wanted me to sing a French song.  I was to wear a leather beret and announce that the beret was brought to America by my mother. The program began on schedule with me sitting somewhere in the audience with classmates.  When I thought it was about time to sing I got up and walked toward the stage.  Approaching the stage I upset a music stand being used by one of the band members.  At this point Mr. Miller placed me on his lap until the current performance was completed and I took my turn.  After making my announcement about the beret I rendered a flawless version of  “C’etait une  bergère et rond et rond petit pataploon; C’etait une bergère qui gardait ses mouton mouton.” Although grammatically incorrect this is what it sounded like.  So much for my singing career. 

 

Meanwhile back on the ranch things were not improving.  Dad bought two or three hundred peeps (baby chicks) and housed them in a dilapidated old summerhouse we called the shack.  It had also been fumigated and seemed like a respectable home for our new feathered friends.  When morning came Dad checked on his newly acquired flock and found that a weasel had entered the shack through a hole in the floor and had killed almost all of the chicks.  Mr. Mast who operated a hatchery in Sterling felt badly about the hard luck and gave Dad some replacement chicks that he was preparing to destroy because they were mostly roosters and all he could sell were laying hens.  Some of these survived until we needed meat for a Sunday dinner.

 

In a desperate move to save some of the chicks from the weasels it was decided that new quarters would be necessary.  The only solution was to move them into the house.  The upstairs bedroom over the kitchen was selected as the new indoor henhouse and the remaining chicks were moved to their new quarters.