Family History Continued
I am writing this section in the year 2007. Teresa and I live in Southwestern Florida and we are in the 30th year of our marriage. Although there have been many periods of time over these past 30 years when external events have produced suffering and pain, we have continued to discover in each other an ever growing passion and love. I am the most blessed of men being married to Teresa Naso Clitsome Kostrubala, Ph.D. and daily thank God, the gods and the Ora Virgin for her. All who know her understand her love, grace, beauty and wisdom.
This is written for a grand, grand, grand daughter or son. It is to you, unknown to me, living in an unimaginable future, I speak. I am writing this when I am 76 years old in the earliest years of the 21st Century.
Why do I attempt to speak to you? At the root of my intention is a desire to help. Yes, to help you. From their words you may see a shadow of yourself. For you this time of my life is a dream world. You have many resources to fill in the details of daily life through the years from 1930 to 2007. In the past few years it seems everything is being photographed. Use those visual clues to assist your journey back into time.
Anton Kostrubala, my paternal grandfather lived in Czarist Russian occupied Poland. He joined the Polish underground resistance as a Socialist and ran a school that taught Polish kids the Polish language. In an attempt to Russianize the Poles the Russians outlawed speaking and teaching Polish and insisted on Russian in public and the schools.
They were living in an area known as Zamosc which is a town located close to the Ukrainian border.
He was exposed (meaning someone had revealed to the Russians his role in the underground school) and I was told, several times by my father and Uncles John and Marion, that one evening at dinner time, a shot came from the outside aimed at my grandfather. The bullet broke the front window glass and struck the wall near my grandfather’s head. He got up and ran out the back door as the Russians burst in the front door.
My grandmother, Helen, and the three boys were arrested by the Russians. Their property was confiscated. My grandmother told me that she had been tortured by the Russians by the use of water dripping drop by drop on her forehead. When I was quite young, perhaps 8, she pointed to an area on her forehead where she said the water had dripped.
The year when the Russians tried to kill my grandfather and arrested my grandmother and her 3 sons was 1912. Those were the days of intense unrest in Russia and Europe. Rasputin was meddling with the Czar. The Bolsheviks, Socialists and Communists were plotting and organizing. The First World War was looming.
My grandmother and the boys, John, Joe and Marion were expelled to Austria where they were promptly arrested, again. My father told me he remembered being marched through the streets of a city in Austria with soldiers holding rifles with fixed bayonets pointed at their backs. He said the city was Vienna.
As far as the genetic transmission of behavioral characteristics it is important to realize that my grandfather, Anton, was culturally abnormal. Not all the other Poles did what he did. He risked his own life and property and safety of his family by joining the opposition to Russia. What he did was considered high treason and punishable by death. The passion behind such an act reveals his underlying personality. It was not “normal” even if others considered his acts to be brave and noble. Obviously he was a risk taker.
In the meantime my grandfather was smuggled out of Poland by the Polish Underground to the United States. According to my father, my grandfather thought he was going to a South American country (Brazil) and was surprised that he ended up in Chicago. It is also important to consider that he did not choose to leave Poland. He was chased out as a criminal and his family was expelled.
In 1913 through the assistance of the Polish community outside of Poland Helen and the 3 boys arrived in Chicago. The year was 1913.
John was 13, Joe was 10 and Marion was 7 when they arrived in Chicago.
The differences in their ages may account for the degree of acculturation of each of them. John was the most Polish, Marion the least and Joe was in the middle.
As events unfolded the age difference made detribalization different for the families of each of them.
Chicago
I have attempted to visualize and comprehend what the 5 Poles experienced in Chicago in 1913. They did not know the language. Customs and dress were strange. They were uprooted. Penniless and faced with seemingly impossible challenges Helen took charge as Anton refused to accept his new situation. He deliberately made no attempt to learn English and also did not seek any form of employment. His attitude was, according to my parents, an aloof one feeling he had done what he was supposed to do in life and he continued to long for Poland and his life there.
Helen’s approach was very different. She insisted her sons go to school and adapt. She also insisted that they get top grades. My father said that if any of them came home with a 99 on a test she would not praise them but scold them for not getting 100.
She was quite a scold. I was also told that she had made vows to a lay Polish Catholic order that allowed them to marry and have children but she, personally, had to assume poverty and dedication to assisting Poland to become free.
I never saw her wear any jewelry or makeup. Normally she dressed in shabby clothing including long dresses, and what appeared to me to be several layers of stockings. Her legs were not slim and her ankles thick. She was very clean as was her home.
Her home was simple and organized. There was no ostentation. The only object I ever saw on a wall was the Polish Icon of the Virgin Mary. You will see a photograph of that Icon in accompanying pictures. I now have it on my wall, to my right and above as I write. Teresa (my wife) had it framed in a larger frame to preserve it. It is now very fragile.
My grandparent’s home had a particular smell. It was kasha, a porridge composed of wheat, buckwheat, oats, millet, rice, potatoes, etc.. My grandmother kept a pot of it on the stove usually with bits of dark mushrooms in it. There was the lingering smell of cigarette smoke from my grandfather’s room. He smoked his entire life and also enjoyed drinking beer and “vodki” when his sons were visiting. I never saw him drunk. However, he often had a very red nose which I presume was due to his drinking.
Helen’s speech was intense, usually scolding. She especially chided Anton and appeared to regard him with extreme distaste. She refused to let him smoke indoors. So, in the deepest winter he would have to go outside on the porch to smoke. He never protested but quietly obeyed. She never called him by his Christian name. Instead she refereed to him as “You”, in Polish. Their relationship puzzled me and continues to do so.
All three of her daughter’s in law were afraid of her. She was civil but not at all affectionate towards them or, really towards anyone except a niece who came from Poland called Ursula.
Ursula was in her late 20’s and she was tall and very obese. She lived in the flat below my grandparents. When I would visit there I often would find several, dapper, dark haired Polish men who were thin and all had thin moustaches. Their hair was slicked back and they always wore dark suits.
Ursula never seemed to move. She would sit, not speaking. I think she must have sat on some kind of stool because I never saw her legs. She was covered in loose folds of cloth, clothing I imagine, that fell to the floor. She towered above everyone. The men as well as I had to look up to look at her face which was totally serene and immersed in jowls. Regally seated Ursula sported tiny, cupid bow red lips. These men would chat with each other and occasionally say something to Ursula. I never heard her respond. At best she would have a brief, thin, smile.
I was so astonished at this that I asked my mother about it. She told me they were “courting” Ursula.
Whenever I was with my grandmother she would always ask me if I was going to become a doctor and be as good as my father. Of course I always answered yes. It was expected by her and my parents for me to become a doctor and follow in my father’s footsteps. My grandmother made it very explicit. She seemed to sneer when she asked me as if I would ever be capable of doing as well as her son.
Every Sunday Anton would dress up in a three piece suit and with a hat, cane and shined shoes he would erectly walk to Sunday Mass. I never saw Helen go with him.
Towards the end of his life he would dress as above and attend their funerals.
Anton was always gentle and courtly. I remember him helping me on with my coat many times when I was a kid.
We actually saw a lot of Helen and Anton as my parents would drive to visit them every Sunday. The visits were long and at times John and his family might appear. The discussions were intense and political in nature.
My only role was to occasionally go to the corner store/tavern and fetch back a tin pail of beer. At other times I would mail packages for my grandmother to “O P Stady Zamosc” in Poland. She would get gifts, such as dresses and other items of clothing, from her son’s families and would promptly mail them off to Poland. My mother and Aunt Mitzie would complain and lament of my grandmother sending their gifts away and never wearing them.
Her dress and behavior exasperated my mother and Aunt Mitzie. But, they were unable to change it. Aunt Helen was less Americanized and did not join her sister’s in law in their concern.
My experience with my grandparent’s is fragmented as I was also learning to speak Polish as I grew up. It was spoken in their home, but not in ours. When I was 5 my parents decided to stop teaching me any Polish and refrained from speaking it whenever possible. It was clear to my parents that there was an evident downside to merging into the Polish American community.
This language problem prevented me from fully understanding the discussions held at their home. Helen would speak to me in English. It was heavily accented but very adequate. I had a distinctly clear relationship with Anton. He and I seemed to understand each other and I know that one area had to do with cats. Anton had a large cat. Helen despised all animals but tolerated this big tomcat. The cat kept distant from everyone except Anton and me.
When the family went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve I often was next to Anton and I sensed the feelings he had. They resonated with me and I vividly remember his eyes filling with tears as the Polish National Anthem was played.
In short Anton gave off an aura of aristocracy and integrity.
Time and Smells
There was radio but no TV and no computers. Automobiles did not have Air Bags and did not have seat belts. My Grandfather refused to believe that radio waves came through the air. He said the signal came from the electric plug.
My grandparents used the term “machine” for an automobile.
Their home was always very clean and smelled of Kasha which I loved. Her garden was overflowing with flowers in the summertime. She saved the seeds from the fall and planted them the following springtime. She knitted constantly and sent the results to Poland.
Uncle John
Uncle John was born in Poland in 1900. His parents had a stillborn child before he was born. John was a tall, and as he aged became heavy in a burly fashion. He had a deep baritone voice. He drank heavily and I often saw him, in Momence, get into a drinking contest with his friends. The contest seemed to be how large an amount of hard whisky one could swallow at one time. They cheered each other on and I think Uncle John won many of those contests. He also had a quick and violent temper.
One time when I was visiting their home he became enraged at Bart. Bart was continually teasing and tormenting Pola, his elder sister. Pola would cry. On this occasion Bart had either hit her or poured water on her. Uncle John found out and took off his large belt and started to chase Bart to beat him with the belt. I was with Bart and so I ran as well. I was frightened but he was not after me and caught Bart and whacked him with is belt.
When Pola married, I was in the wedding party. She was pretty but certainly plump as was her husband Charles Valasek. They loved each other deeply and a tragedy happened when their firstborn was stillborn. However, they had two children Christine and Paul Koro Valasek who has stayed in the Chicago Polonia community. Paul is a dentist a graduate of Loyola Dental School which was closed in 1994.
My father taught at Loyola Dental School after he got his MD from Northwestern. Bart went to that dental school. Bart joined Uncle Marion in his dental offices at 51st and Ashland but after a few years suddenly left to start his own office which angered Uncle Marion and Aunt Mitzie.
Uncle John had gone back to Poland to fight against the Russians in the 1920 war. I knew about that because on several occasions Uncle John would tell me, and I suppose Bart and Pola, about some of the things he experienced. My hesitancy about Pola and Bart is my sense, at that time, that they showed little interest in his discussions about his activities in Poland. He had a very large sidearm in a leather holster which I was allowed to touch. I do not know if it was a pistol or a semi automatic. He also had a pair of large binoculars that he identified as part of his war equipment.
It was very evident in the family that Uncle John was a Polish Patriot and a War Hero. His mother kept a photo of him in his Polish Uniform, in a frame, in the living room of her house. She did not have any pictures of any other family members.
Uncle John said that his unit operated independently and penetrated deep into Russia. He said that at one time he could see the tops of the tall buildings in Moscow.
One day two horses belonging to two scouts of the unit came back partly skinned and bleeding. The scouting troops were not with them.
The Poles set out to find out what had happened and another pair of scouts found a small Russian village where the two Poles had been captured.
The two Poles were put into holes in the earth with their heads sticking out. The villagers then urinated and defecated on them. Then their heads were cut off using the blunt edge of a saber.
At night Uncle John’s unit surrounded the village and set up their machine guns. When the villagers awoke they were all killed by the Poles.
In another story Uncle John told us how he had used some of his dead Polish soldiers and tied them to horses and fixed them in position with wood structures so they appeared to be alive. Then the horses were driven forward into an area where the Russians were hiding. The Russians shot at the dead men exposing their positions.
Uncle John told about how they extracted information from captured Russians. I was quite taken by this story. Uncle John said the Russian would be tied down with his belly exposed. Then an iron pot would be placed on the Russian’s belly upside down. A rat was placed under the pot. Hot coals were then put on the bottom of the pot. The rat would try to escape the heat and start to dig down through the belly of the Russian. Uncle John said that always worked.
Uncle John said there was another way to kill Russians. It was necessary to find a town were Russian troops were stationed. Then the Poles would locate a small valley, or ravine that had excellent kill positions along the edge of the ravine. Then in a place in the ravine the Poles would bury a large number of bottles of whisky and vodka.
A Pole posing as a Russian, dressed in villagers clothing, would approach a Russian guard and say that he had found the most amazing thing, a large number of bottles of booze. When the guard was taken to the place and saw and sampled the booze he would go back to his camp and bring some of his buddies.
Uncle John said that it’s necessary at that point to be patient. The word would spread in the Russian camp and finally that valley would be filled with Russians and then the Poles would kill all of them.
Uncle John told these stories with relish.
I remember him laughing when he described a member of his own troop that had been shot from the side through both cheeks of his buttocks.
Uncle John was very Polandized and found a position working in the “Polish Daily News” (in Polish) and as a commentator on a Polish radio station. I was proud of his war experiences and liked to hear him on the radio.
When the family had Christmas Eve at his home the house would be filled with Roman Catholic priests and various dignitaries of the Polish community. One such was a girl named Marilyn Rozmarek. She played the piano. When I started Northwestern I saw her in my same classes. Many years later I met her when she became Judge in a Family Court in Chicago.
The Midwest Store
Uncle Marion
Marion Francis kostrubala was born in Poland in 1906.
He went to Loyola Dental School and remained a dentist his entire life. He married a beautiful, tall dark haired woman that I called Aunt Mitzie. She had high cheek bones, good looking legs and seemed the most stylish of the Kostrubala women. I remember seeing Vogue magazine for the first time in her home.
Uncle Marion was in the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) before WWII. When the war broke out he was immediately mobilized as a Captain in the Army and sent to Australia. He spent the entire 4 years of WWII stationed in Australia as an Army dentist. He was slightly shorter than my father who was slightly shorter than Uncle John.
Uncle Marion did not smoke cigarettes which was a confirmed addiction in his brothers and father. He occasionally would smoke a cigar. He was the most Americanized of the family and was very social.
His dental office was at 51st and Ashland Avenue his entire life. He had a serious interest in anthropology and was a pleasant and cheerful man. His brothers had a tendency to be grim.
On July 3rd, 1938 my parents, Bart and I were in an automobile accident. Our car, a new 1938 Maroon Pontiac, was hit on the passenger side by a single seat Coupe crammed with 6 people going 60 MPH. Two of the six were killed in that car. My parents were hospitalized and that night Uncle Marion came to that hospital and took me home with him. He was very kind and his kindness and gentleness formed a bond with him.
My 3rd son, Lt. Kazimir Marion Kostrubala was named after him. Shortly before Uncle Marion’s death I was able to tell him about Kazimir. I called him in Florida where he retired.
When he came back from Australia he gave me an Australian tennis racket. I thought it was beautiful. It was called a Cressy Perfect. Of course it was wood and I used that racket in High School in El Paso Texas. Using it, along with Hale Randolph my tennis partner we won the Junior City Doubles championship for El Paso in 1945.
Marion and Mitzie had two children. The first was a boy named Jan. Jan was quite sickly as a small child and there were serious fears in the family because of a chronic lung infection. Jan later changed his last name to Kay and became a private detective.
Jan had dark hair and looked like his mother. Dana was their other child and she was blonde and had a round face. She looked like a Kostrubala female. I have learned that she has had poor health.
I have only fragments of information about Uncle Marion and Aunt Mitzie in the years starting in 1959. I do remember that they quarreled and I also heard that he went back to Poland to stay for a while.
Uncle Marion died from a stroke, in Florida, either in late 1981 or late 1982.
Joseph Gabriel Kostrubala- (My Father)
He was born on March 17th, 1903, St. Patrick’s Day. I am writing this on March 19th, 2007. My father was not named Patrick, but, today is St. Joseph’s day. Imagine a Pole named Patrick!
I know very little about his boyhood days except the stories told about his mother demanding straight A’s on all his schoolwork.
He told me he had started out in undergraduate school intending to be an engineer. One day he had a toothache and went to a dentist who treated him and told him the pain would stop at an exact time. He watched the clock and was amazed that the pain stopped at that precise time and that motivated him to go to Dental School (Loyola) and become a dentist.
In photographs of him dated to the 1920’s he appeared very handsome. He grew a Clark Gabel moustache and according to my mother dated frequently and became a “gay blade.” I did see a photo with him standing alongside a big convertible looking jaunty.
He established a dental office at 51st and Ashland Street in Chicago which was, then, in the heart of the Polish neighborhood.
In the summer of 1928 he was invited to a summer cottage in Momence. He knew there was a young woman there whose parents were of polish origin named Herrick. When he got there she was sick with a migraine headache. Her name was Amelia Emily, but most of the time she just went by her middle name of Emily.
Her mother Antoinette had been born in Texas with the family name of Maciejewski. At the time he met Emily, or “Em” he did not know she was adopted and her original name was Jablownowski. I do not know when he found out that she had been adopted.
My grandmother on my mother’s side was quite different than my paternal grandmother. I never got to know my maternal grandfather, John, as he died from Pernicious Anemia when I was a year old. I cherish a photo of him standing at the back of the 19th Street house. The address was 3043 19th Street, across the street from Douglas Park.
The Maciejewski family was large and my grandmother’s brother called him “Whitey”. Maciejewski became a Congressman representing the District centered in Cicero where the clan lived. Yes, Cicero, and it was very clear that “Whitey” was “connected” to the Democratic Party machine and also knew mobsters who were located in Cicero.
The house on 19th Street had a face of yellow brick and two flats. The basement extended a half story above ground. The backyard had an “Indian Cigar” tree as well as a “Snowball” bush.
Some of my earliest memories of my father are associated with his smell. He smoked Camels but the odor was not cigarette smoke but the antiseptic odor of hospitals at that time.
But, I am getting ahead of myself.
My parents married in 1929. My father decided to become a doctor; he said “a real doctor”, not a dentist who was called a doctor. On the day I was born, 22 September 1930 he started his pre medical work at the Lewis Institute in Chicago. That is how I got the middle name of Lewis.
My father went to Northwestern Medical School, and interned for a year at
Cook County Hospital. After finishing his internship he purchased the practice of a Family Doctor on 51st Street about a block from the corner of 51st and Ashland.
I remember living at the 19th street house when he was an intern as I would walk to the corner when he would get off the street car and pick me up. He wore a complete white outfit and the smell of the antiseptic was very strong.
While still living in the 19th Street house, and thus while he was either in medical school or his internship, he brought home biologic specimens which he kept on shelves in the basement. The ones I remember best are a single embryo with an attached umbilical cord floating in a Mason jar with bits of tissue in the surrounding preservative liquid. Some had their eyes open and any movement of the shelves, or passing trucks on the street, would make the embryo move inside the jar.
My father also conducted a study on the facial spaces in the head and face. He obtained a male cadaver head and injected it with colored gelatin. The colors were blue, red and green. Then he had the head cut into section horizontally, front to back and had those sections enclosed in glass. If the sections were piled one atop the other in sequence from the top to the bottom the face of the person could be seen broken up by the areas of glass. Each head section was a rectangle about an inch and a half thick and as wide and as deep as the head.
My father said I was “helping him” as he arranged the head and followed the pathways of the colored gelatin. I was 5 years old. The head in the basement was at the 19th Street house.
The practice my father bought had an apartment behind the offices just as the dental office had. But, this apartment and office was on the first floor. There was a pharmacy attached to the office, operated by the doctor. I was fascinated by the vials, jars of colored liquid and balance machines. My father closed that part of the practice as it was now considered old fashioned. There was a pharmacy across the street and my father used that pharmacy and became friends with the pharmacist. One summer, while at the cottage in Momence, the pharmacist visited and one of his legs was missing. I was told it was due to malignant melanoma. He died shortly afterwards.
In the waiting room of that office were souvenirs of his travels. One was a model of a Tahitian single pontoon sailing craft. It was quite large, about three feet long. I had that model for a long time and it excited dreams of sailing and distance places.
While living behind the office the auto accident of July 3, 1938 took place. I remember my mother being bedridden in that apartment. But, we soon moved back to the flat at 19th Street. The reason, I think, was my mother’s recovery. She was badly injured and her face was scarred from the cinders left in the wounds near her left ear and eye.
It was close to that time when my father began to consider himself a surgeon. The natural direction to go was Orofacial surgery and that is the practice he developed.
We moved several times. One house was near a school I attended, St. Gall’s. I was there only one year at that time.
It seems we also moved back to the 19th Street apartment several times as I attended Nathaniel Pope School several times. I had gone there for my first grade. The second was a Polish Catholic School near 51st and Ashland run by Polish Nuns who often taught in Polish and had a tendency to smack my hands with a ruler. Being deficient in Polish I was often confused not only about the lessons but about where I lived. The only stable place was being at Momence each summer and the times in the flat on 19th street.
My father’s practice was successful and my parents built a new, red brick house a couple of miles down the boulevard from Uncle Marion’s house. I first went to Gage Park School from that house but was transferred to St. Gall’s in about the 5th or 6th grade. I took a bus to St. Galls.
On the morning of December 8, 1941 the kids at St. Galls were assembled to listen to President Roosevelt. WWII had started.
One of the strongest memories I have is praying for my father to return safely from the Pacific. I prayed in front of a bank of burning candles in red glass cups. I think it was in front of a picture, or statue of The Virgin Mary. The war news was bad. There were many Gold Star Banners in the windows of the houses. That meant a member of that family had been killed in the war.
Uncle Marion was a Captain in the Army and as a Dentist and he soon received orders which shipped him to Australia where he remained for the entire war.
My father joined up with a group of doctors who formed the 25th Army Medical Evacuation Hospital. I remember a parade when they were assembled prior to being sent overseas. It was a warm day so I suspect it was in the spring of 1942.
The group was sent to the South Pacific to Espiritu Santo Island in the Solomon Islands.
He was on that Island for a little bit more than a year. He contracted malaria and some form of tropical eye infection which refused to heal. So, he was transferred back to the USA to Winter General Hospital near Topeka, Kansas. My mother and I joined him there and we lived in a quite small apartment. I had a Murphy bed.
I went from St. Galls to a public school and finally a Catholic School where I finished 8th grade. My father worked as a surgeon at Winter General and then was suddenly transferred to William Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso, Texas. I was in the middle of my freshman year.
We found a small house near Austin High School which I attended. I was tall and one night my father asked me to come along with me to the hospital. There had been an accident and they needed a Plastic Surgeon. I was 13 and I scrubbed for the first time. I held retractors, cut sutures, clamped bleeding vessels and watched. I continued to “assist” at various times until my Senior year.
My father was discharged in 1945. He re-established his surgical practice. We moved to Riverside for one year and for my Senior Year we had moved back to 19th Street where I graduated from Harrison High School in June of 1948.
My mother graduated from the first class to graduate from Harrison.
My father continued his practice as a plastic surgeon and became a Professor at Loyola Dental School in Orofacial Surgery. He usually did his surgery at Oak Park Hospital. In my senior year at Northwestern we had moved to River Forest.
During the years after his Army experience he obtained Board Certification. He was proud of that accomplishment.
A family situation appeared to influence my father’s relationship with his brothers. Although my grandmother’s two other sons had achieved professional status, John was the only family hero as he had gone back to fight for Poland. I do not know the explicit details of the entire situation but it was very evident to me observing John’s house and other material effects that they had less money than either Joe’s or Marion’s family. Their home was behind a store where Helen sold female things such as hosiery. I specifically remember his excitement and pleasure as Uncle John showed me his first flushing toilet. He was proud of that toilet. It had a big box near the ceiling that held the water and a chain dangled down to release the water from above to flush the toilet.
From 1948 on, I only had peripheral information about my father. It was difficult to know what he was doing because I questioned my mother’s observations and conclusions. She had started to tell me my father “was seeing other women” ever since I was 8 years old.
However, in the late 60’s, I noticed a tremor of intention. He retired when he was 65. I do know he was respected as a surgeon.
I visited him one afternoon when he was at home dying from metastatic colon cancer to the bowel. He asked me one question: “Do you still wear a white coat?” I did and I told him so. When I left I was crying bitterly. He died on September 30, 1970. My mother told me the last thing he said to her was: What’s it all about, Em?”
He had overcome extreme obstacles to become a respected and capable surgeon. In a clear way he was the embodiment of the American Dream as he rose from poverty and alienation to acceptance and professional and financial success.
His personality was animated and talkative in a social party situation. He drank regularly and smoked until the last year of his life.
Amelia Elizabeth Herrick Kostrubala - (My Mother)
She was born on February 13th, 1918, and was the youngest child. She had a sister Stella and a brother older than Stella.
When my mother was 5 her mother died. Her father married a widow with six children. Emily and her brother and sister were placed in an Orphanage.
My mother told me many times that she was made to stand in front of a group of new relatives and sing a song called: “I am a poor orphan girl.” She always told me of that event with bitterness and anger.
She was adopted by John and Antoinette Herrick. John was a veteran of the Spanish American war and was a metal smith in a factory that produced small figures in bronze. I still have one of them portraying an old man carrying a woven basket on his back. I also have a bronze salamander.
Photos of John Herrick show him to be a kind and handsome man. Antoinette could not have children as her ovaries had lost their function during one of the epidemics that ravaged Chicago when that City as they dumped the sewage near where they brought in the drinking water. The high fever accompanying the typhoid fever she contracted also had an effect on her brain. She took a medication, a shot a day, from a large brown bottle. I did see her have one of her seizures. They were mild and she recovered promptly.
My mother, Emily Herrick, finished Harrison High School and I think she went to one year of college. But, that was never clarified. I do know she never had a job of any sort.
She was wistful and wan, very thin and suffered from migraine headaches. She played the piano as her parents wanted her to but she never enjoyed it. She had no hobbies. She did not engage in any explicit sporting activity. She did like to color photographs so they resembled the actual colors of the subjects in the photo. Although it was never diagnosed as such she clearly suffered from a depressive illness. She seldom smiled and I never heard her laugh. Her behavior was removed, or distant. She did express anger. Quite often it was surprising.
Reviewing my memories of childhood and the moves back to 19th street brings me to the simple conclusion that the moves back were necessary for my grandmother Herrick to care for my mother. I also presume that much of my care as a small child was done by my grandmother.
Antoinette Herrick’s behavior was oriented to taking care of people. A relative, Gladys Grisgo, severely ill with psoriasis was taken in by her until nursed back to health. She would also take animals such as small dogs who were unusually aggressive and care for them. She was happiest when she had a house full of relatives as she cooked for them. She loved to talk with them and to play Pinochle.
I experienced my first migraine when I was a teenager when my father was in the Pacific.