Friday, April 11, 2014

Almost a century

My Aunt Dorothy turned 99 years of age on March 25. She is in a nursing home now, somewhat alert though very hard of hearing. She is the last of my aunts and uncles. Her distant relatives in Louisville, Ky., told me that she has now outlived everyone of her relatives there and several of them lived into their 90s.

Aunt Dorothy is the older of my mother's two sisters. My mother died in 1998. The younger sister died in 2005. There was also a brother who died in 1970. I had been relying on Aunt Dorothy for a number of years for remembering details about their lives growing up. As in most families, there are stories that abound and some of them seem unverifiable. There were always memories of "cousins" but I hadn't been able to verify their membership in our family.

Aunt Dorothy did give me clues that I was able to track down. She used to talk, for example, about a trip she and my mother and the other two siblings made in their grandfather's Ford to New Castle to visit some cousin in the late 1920s. Their grandfather apparently drove the car off the road, overturning the car. No one was hurt apparently but their grandfather never drove again, she claimed.

She was no longer able to remember the names of these cousins. Through some genealogical sleuthing I wrote down the names of every head of household in the 1930 census in New Castle, Indiana. Aunt Dorothy said one name on that list seemed to ring a bell for her. I kept tracking the name and eventually discovered this to be the granddaughter of the husband (by his first wife) of Aunt Dorothy's great aunt (who was the second wife of the husband). The relationship is technically not close at all but there seem to have been a number of other families we would hear about from the distant past who were "cousins" to Aunt Dorothy's grandfather. And all of them seem to have originated in a small town in southwestern Germany.

What has always seemed strange to me is that neither of my aunts or uncle on that side of the family - nor my own mother - seem to have inherited any of my grandfather's talents. He was a musician as was his father. My mother played the violin as a youngster. Indeed, she and all her siblings were made to take music lessons but none of them persisted. I recall my mother's broken violin sitting on the floor of a closet in our house for many years. Aunt Dorothy's memory of music lessons is practicing the piano under her father's guidance. If she hit a wrong note, he would slam the cover on her fingers.

Aunt Dorothy has been active all her life. She spent most of her adult years in various kinds of secretarial work at a large local department store. Into her early 90s she worked part-time standing on her feet several days a week doing demos in a large supermarket. She favored wearing large oversize hats when she went out socially.

I would like to know more about her ancestors but it is almost too late. When we are young, we have no interest. Now that I am approaching my senior years, I have the interest but the individuals who could answer questions are mostly gone.

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