Michelle Cox's Blog, page 11

“We Hid in the Walls”

Violeta Salcedo began life during the days of the infamous Pancho Villa. She was born on October 4, 1909 in Mexico to Alejo Abascal and Yamila Villalobos. According to Violeta, her great grandparents were Spaniards who controlled much of what is now Mexico. Her immediate grandparents were thus landowners, as well as tailors, who controlled the government, the school, the shops, the church, and who organized all of the town’s holiday celebrations. They had beautiful adobe homes with orchards of fruit trees, and they lived a very privileged existence.

Unfortunately, however, Violeta’s childhood was a time of chaos in Mexico, as Pancho Villa and his band of revolutionaries often raided the villages in the north of Mexico where Violeta’s family lived.  Even though she was a very little girl, Violeta remembers hearing the warning cries that would ring out whenever Pancho Villa was sighted on the outskirts of the village.  The men of the village would then go out to fight him, while the women and children hid in secret hiding places covered by wallpaper in the walls of the houses.

Violeta says that she witnessed much violence and atrocities committed by Pancho and his men, including the hanging of two of her cousins. The worst incident involved the owner of an inn where Violeta’s family once happened to be hiding. Pancho Villa took the innkeeper, hung him by his feet and shot him in the head, then called dogs over to eat his brains. Violeta says it is an image that will haunt her all her days.

As it turns out, Pancho Villa wasn’t the only threat to her family.  Violeta’s father, Alejo, was an even worse enemy.   According to Violeta, Alejo was the black sheep of the family.  His father, Miguel, wanted him to go to college and then to law school, but the rebellious Alejo ran away to the United States when just a teenager, where he lived a nomadic life working odd jobs for several years.  When he returned to Mexico, he married Yamila Hernandez, who was from a relatively poor family, and had nine children with her.

Bitterly disappointed with his only son, Miguel refused to give Alejo a position in any of his businesses or to give him any land upon his return to Mexico, so Alejo was forced to do factory work, though he found it difficult to maintain a job at all.  He began to drink more and more and smoked marijuana constantly.  His already fiery temper grew worse, and he began to beat Yamila and all of the children, even Violeta, who was the youngest.  Once, when she was just nine-months old, Alejo apparently beat Violeta into unconsciousness when she wouldn’t stop crying.  His angry rages increased until he actually murdered a man—his own brother-in-law, Ernesto.  Apparently, when Miguel began to favor and treat Ernesto as a son, Alejo confronted him and killed him in front of his wife, who was Alejo’s sister.

Banished after that by his father and the other townsfolk, Alejo and Yamila and all nine children began a nomadic life throughout Mexico and “the Spanish lands,” where they went from town to town looking for work.  Alejo was unable to provide for all of them on just his intermittent wages, so Yamila was forced to seek work as well and would leave the children in charge of the oldest daughter, Isabel, whom the other children called “second mother.”  Apparently, Isabel was as cruel and abusive as Alejo, however, and Violeta’s life under Isabel’s rule was almost worse than before.  She still cries when she remembers how cruel Isabel was to them.  She would cut switches from the lemon trees and beat them until they bled for even the smallest infraction.

This went on until Violeta was almost ten years old, at which point Alejo decided to uproot them and move to Chicago, where he heard there was a lot of work and where some distant relatives were already living.  In Chicago, Violeta barely went to school and was forced instead to work in factories to help make ends meet, as did all of her siblings.  Life continued this way until Violeta began to blossom into a beautiful young woman.  It was then that Alejo would look at her approvingly and comment that she reminded him of how Yamila used to be when they first met, young and beautiful, not the old and broken-down woman she had become.  This made Yamila terribly jealous, and she began to resent Violeta and to treat her badly.   Violetta was apparently the cause of many fights between Alejo and Yamila, the result being that Alejo again began to beat Violeta to appease his wife’s jealousy.

Desperate to get away from this situation, Violeta confided in a co-worker, Cesar Salcedo, and told him about her terrible plight.  Cesar urged her to move in with him.  Violeta says she knew what that meant, but agreed to live with him if he promised that they would some day get married.  Cesar promised, and Violeta accordingly moved in with him.  She stayed with Cesar for five years, and while she was relatively happy with him, she began to doubt whether she really wanted to marry him after all.  Just when she had come to that conclusion, however, Cesar surprised her.  She was late for work one morning, and Cesar offered to drive her to save time.  Instead of driving her to work, however, he drove her to city hall where he expected her to marry him, then and there.  Violeta was stunned and wasn’t sure what to do.  She did not want to “humiliate him in public” by refusing him, so she said yes, especially since he had been “nice enough to ask me.”

Violeta informed him, however, that she would not endure any beatings, which Cesar agreed to.  Only once did he raise his hand to her, but Violeta, angered, slapped him first. He never tried again. As a husband, Violeta says Cesar was “okay,” and together they had four children: Donna, Julia, Albert and Enrique.  Tragically, both Julia and Albert died young of cancer. Cesar, too, died in 1954, leaving Violetta to raise the kids alone. She worked as a housekeeper in a nursing home for 16 years to support them. Once Donna and Enrique left home to get married, Violeta lived alone for several years before going to live with her brother, Ricardo, with whom she became very close.

Violeta was apparently very happy living with Ricardo until her toe became infected.  For weeks. Violeta refused to see a doctor until Ricardo called her daughter, Donna, to intervene.  Donna then forced Violeta to go to a doctor, but it was too late.  Eventually, the toe had to be amputated.  To make matters worse, while recovering in the hospital, Violeta had a fall, which resulted in a broken hip.  Thus, upon discharge from the hospital, she was sent to a nursing home for extensive physical therapy.   She refused to participate in the therapy, however, despite her goal of wanting to get strong enough to go home to live with Ricardo again.

Other than refusing therapy, Violeta made a relatively smooth transition.  She was very accepting of her fate and seemed neither excited nor depressed by her admission.  Her only source of distress was hearing other residents cry out, as she feared they might be being beaten or abused by the staff.   When asked about her hobbies, she claims that years ago she enjoyed dancing or gardening but only when “other people allowed me.”  Despite being a victim of violence all of her life, Violeta seemed to harbor no bitterness or anger.  “I don’t let things bother me,” she would say placidly, as if nothing bad had ever happened to her in her life.

(Originally written: August 1996)

If you liked this true story about the past, check out Michelle’s historical fiction/mystery series, set in the 1930s in Chicago:

 

 

 

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Living the Life of a Debutante

Elizabeth “Jane” Hileman was born on September 16, 1914.  Her parents were Mary Alice Newell and Cleveland Hines Hileman, both of whom had quite interesting stories, as well.

Mary was born in Ireland but immigrated to Port Huron, Michigan with her family when just a little girl.  Cleveland, meanwhile, was of Danish descent and was born and raised on a farm in Geneva, Ohio.  It turns out that as a young man, Cleveland took some sort of trip, whether it was for business or pleasure no one really knows, to Chicago.  And on the day he passed through Union Station, he happened to spot Mary Newell across the Great Hall.  She had come to Chicago to work, but hated her job and the city itself.  She had decided, therefore, to quit and return home to Port Huron and was waiting for her train when Cleveland spotted her.  Cleveland says he instantly fell in love with her and went over to introduce himself.  They were married soon after and found an apartment in Edgewater at Winthrop and Ardmore, where they remained for 45 years.  Cleveland worked as salesman for John Sexton Wholesale Grocers, and over time, he and Mary became rather wealthy.  They were not able to have children, however, so they adopted a baby girl in 1914 and named her Elizabeth Jane.

Jane says that she was an only child and spoiled rotten.  She also says that “people think adoption is bad, but I’ve never felt that way.”  Jane can remember the days when Edgewater and Rogers Park were thriving and upscale.  “People visited each other and had fun,” she says.  “People socialized more.”  She has fond memories of coming home from school and putting on her bathing suit, as would her parents, and they would spend the evening at the beach.  She says that people looked out for each other, and when it was particularly hot on summer nights, they sometimes slept at the beach with their neighbors.  “If someone was murdered in the neighborhood back then,” Jane says, “it took us months to get over it.  Now they just step over the body and keep walking!”

At one point in her childhood, Mary had to have an operation, and Jane had to go to a Catholic boarding school in Park Ridge while Mary recovered.  Poor Jane was so bashful that she dressed and undressed in her tiny locker. Jane eventually returned to Edgewater and attended Senn High School, which, she says, was beautiful back then.  “I lived the life of a debutante,” she says and recalls the socials, bridge games and fancy parties at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, where girls wore formal dresses and long evening gloves.

After graduating from high school, Jane attended the Art Institute and studied costume design.  She says that she loved it and learned so much, not just about art.  After she got her degree, she got a job as a commercial artist at Mrs. Overton’s Studio, the company responsible for designing the window displays at Marshall Fields.  Jane loved her new career and relished in a very active social life.

At age 24, Jane met Paul Keely Barsaloux through friends, and they married three months after their first date in 1938.  Cleveland got Paul a job at John Sexton Grocers, and Jane accordingly gave up her brilliant career in fashion and art when she got pregnant.  They had three children: Steve, Linda, and Paul, Jr.

Paul and Jane lived for a time in Chicago before Paul got transferred to Oklahoma and then to West Virginia, where they lived for 7 years and which came to seem like home the most.  It was about this time, however, that Paul and Jane’s marriage broke down.  Paul had had several affairs over the years and wanted out of the marriage, so they divorced.  In 1955, Jane took the children, ages thirteen, eleven, and nine, and returned to Chicago, where she did the best she could to raise them on her own.  Jane’s daughter, Linda, says that another man, Tom, may have come into Jane’s life at some point, but when asked about him, Jane will not elaborate.

Once the kids were raised, Jane moved to Hollywood, Florida where she spent the next 27 years and lived the life of “a loner,” according to Linda.  Eventually, however, she began having difficulty managing on her own, so she returned to Chicago, but found the adjustment very difficult.  Linda finally took Jane to a doctor, who has diagnosed her with Alzheimer’s.  It was a crushing blow for the whole family, and all of her children tried to learn as much as they could about the disease.  When it became apparent that the safest place for Jane to be would be a nursing home, Jane willingly agreed to go.  She is making a relatively smooth transition, and seems to enjoy talking with the other residents.  At this point, Jane is still very alert and aware of her condition.  She knows that she is at times forgetful and gets frustrated when she can’t think of a specific word, but repeatedly says to the staff “I’m pretty good for being crazy!”

(Originally written: April 1996)

If you liked this true story about the past, check out Michelle’s historical fiction/mystery series, set in the 1930s in Chicago:

The post Living the Life of a Debutante appeared first on Michelle Cox Author.

Around the World and Back Again: The Nearly Unbelievable Life and Times of Alek Kozel – Part III

(Our exciting story concludes . . . !  Make sure to read Part I and Part II first!)

Part III:  In which our hero makes his way to America with the helped of long string of strangers; finally finds work as a master tailor at Marshall Fields; and meets Anna, the love of his life . . .

Alek Kozel’s first step in attempting to achieve his new goal was to go to the American embassy in Prague.  There, he produced his crumpled, tattered American birth certificate, but the officials informed him, after careful inspection, that it was too torn and illegible to be used and that he would have to send away for a new copy.

Not to be deterred, Alek wrote a letter to St. Andrew’s, the Catholic church in Christopher, Illinois, where he had been born, to obtain a new copy of his birth certificate, a task he accomplished with the help of an acquaintance in Prague, a man by the name of Frank Svoboda, who knew how to read and write in English.

Alek waited months for a reply, which finally came in the form of a letter from one Donald Novotny. Donald Novotny was apparently a very prominent Czech living in Christopher, Illinois who had been given Alek’s letter by the pastor of St. Andrew’s.  In his letter, Mr. Novotny explained to Alek that the church had burned down several years before and that all the church records had been destroyed.  Mr. Novotny, however, vowed in the letter to help Alek to obtain a new birth certificate and wrote that he had indeed already started the process, though he warned Alek that it might take a very long time.

After eight months, the new birth certificate finally arrived, as promised, along with a letter from Donald Novotny explaining that he had had to track down Alek’s godmother, whom he found living in Indiana, to sign a document verifying his birth.  Once found, however, she proved to be too old and crippled to sign, so her son had to then be located to sign for her.  Also, Mr. Novotny wrote, he had gone ahead and applied to the United States Government to become Alek’s sponsor and had been approved, so all was in order for him to finally come.

Overjoyed, Alek then hurried to the embassy in Prague to obtain his visa to leave and began his preparations for his new life in America.  Before he left, he went to say goodbye to his old employer, Mr. Navratil, and to the old woman he had lived with, Mrs. Dubala.  He had a little farewell gathering at the pub he used to go to and there said goodbye to Dusan, Evzen, and his friend, the policeman, among others.  Sadly, Mr. Skalicky had already passed away.  It was at his farewell party that two sisters living in that same town asked him if he would carry some packages and letters to their sister, one Tamara Fiala, who was living in Chicago.  Alek agreed, and the two sisters ran home to get the packages and a little card with their sister’s address written on it.

Alek also went and said a last goodbye to all of the people working in the food ticket office, many of whom he had gotten to know so well over the years.  They then told him that they had known all along that his employment notes from the farms had been falsified, but that they had given him the tickets anyway.  They liked him very much, they told him.  He was a smart man and a good talker, and though they would miss him, they wished him well.

Alek was informed that he could have immediate passage on a cattle ship, but he wanted to wait for a regular passenger ship, even though there wasn’t one leaving for another three weeks from Le Havre, France.  Alek decided to spend his last weeks hanging about Prague until closer to the date of departure, sleeping outside and getting what food he could.

It was during this short, three-week period that Alek happened to meet a young woman, Bessie Beranek, who was working as a waitress in a café.  She had been married to a German who had died in the war, and Alek fell madly in love with her, the first woman he had ever fallen for.  He spontaneously asked her to marry him and come with him to America.  She said she would, but she had no money and Alek had only enough for his own passage.  He promised to send for her once he got settled and had earned some money, and so they sadly said goodbye when it was time for him to take the train to Paris and then on to Le Havre to board the ship.  For a long time after, Alek continued to write to her from America and to send her gifts—things she wouldn’t be able to readily get in Europe at the time, he said—such as a bathing suit or a beach towel.  Eventually, however, her letters stopped coming, and Alek finally gave up hope of them ever being together.

Once on board the ship that was to carry him away from war-torn Europe and toward his new life in America, he met a Yugoslavian man who could speak English very well and who was bound for Canada.  He took an instant liking to Alek and helped him in many ways.  For example, when the ship finally docked, there was an announcement for all Americans to disembark first.  The Yugoslavian interpreted the message for Alek and prodded him to go, since he had American papers.  Alek followed the man’s directions, but the ship officials tried to stop him because he couldn’t speak English.  The Yugoslavian man stuck up for him, though, and they eventually let Alek through.  Not knowing where to go first, Alek sat and waited for the Yugoslavian man to disembark, which took a long time as he had a big crate of gifts that the officials insisted on rifling through.  Surprised to still see Alek sitting there with his little case once he finally disembarked as well, the man bought him some dinner and then took him to the train station and bought him a ticket for Chicago.  Alek asked for his address where he could send money to repay him, but the man refused.

Once on the train bound for Chicago, Alek was again fortunate in meeting a friendly stranger who helped him.  The man only spoke English, but he bought Alek some food and a pillow and tried to find someone on the train who could speak Bohemian.  Finding no one, however, the man tried his best to communicate with Alek himself.  Once they arrived in Chicago, Alek showed him the address of Tamara Fiala.  The man seemed to understand and put him in a cab, gave the address to the cab driver and paid Alek’s fare for him.

When the cab finally pulled up to the building indicated on the card, the cab driver helped Alek find the right apartment, banged on the door and yelled, “Hey!  You got someone from Europe here!”  The woman who opened the door was not Tamara Fiala, however, but instead was Mrs. Fiala’s daughter and her husband.  They took Alek in, however, and gave him a much-needed bath and one of the husband’s t-shirts—several sizes too big—to wear for the night.  The next day, they took him to Berwyn, where Mrs. Fiala was living, and Alek was able to finally deliver all the little packages from her sisters that he had been carefully carrying this whole journey.

Mrs. Fiala promptly took Alek in, overjoyed to see someone from her old town, and collected money from the Czech community in Berwyn to pay for his train ticket to Christopher, Illinois, where Donald Novotny was supposedly waiting to collect him.  Once procured, Mrs. Fiala pinned the ticket to his lapel, explained his situation to the train conductor and asked him for his help in getting Alek to his destination.  The conductor willingly agreed and and thus accordingly told Alek when to get off.

As promised, when Alek descended from the train, there was his sponsor, Donald Novotny, waiting to take him to Christopher, Illinois, fourteen miles away, the very place he had been born back in 1913.  Though none of it looked familiar, Alek admits that he cried, so overcome with emotion was he.  Mr. Novotny was very kind to him and took him in to live with him and his wife.  They put him in their guest bedroom and gave him a bath, and then Donald promptly took him to get a hair cut and out to dinner to a restaurant, where Alek ordered a strange delicacy—spaghetti and meatballs.

Donald introduced him to the Czech community in Christopher, many of whom either remembered his parents or recognized the Kozel name.  They took turns having him to dinner, washing his clothes for him and attempting to teach him some English.  Alek was comfortable in his new surroundings, but after a while he began to realize that he had no prospects.  Likewise, it seemed that things were getting a little tense with the Novotny’s.  Indeed, one day, Donald’s wife, who worked at a local tavern, exploded in fury when she discovered that the money she was giving Donald to supposedly give to Alek was actually going to Donald’s mistress.

Alek tried to steer clear of the Novotny’s domestic troubles, but it was difficult since he was living in their house.  As it turned out, a Yugoslavian woman living in Chicago happened to show up just as all the trouble was brewing, to collect her husband’s pension check.  Donald Novotny was somehow involved in the pensions of the mine workers in Christopher.  This woman’s husband had been badly burned in the mine, and she did not trust the mail system; therefore, she came and collected his checks in person.  Donald introduced her to Alek, and when she had heard his whole story, she invited him to come and stay with another Yugoslavian family she knew of in Chicago.  As his official sponsor, Donald was hesitant to let Alek go to such a big city as Chicago to live and work, but after much thought, especially considering the marital troubles he was now having, it seemed to make the most sense.

So, back Alek went to Chicago to stay with the Yugoslavian family.  The family had two sons, the younger of whom, Ivan, especially befriended Alek.  The two of them would sit outdoors in the evening, and Ivan would try to teach Alek bits of English.  Alek was surprised and delighted to learn that Ivan was interested in becoming a tailor, but he attempted to talk him out of pursuing such a career, telling him that the pay was no good.  Ivan decided to listen to his new friend and eventually chose a different path, but he did take Alek to Marshall Fields to inquire about a job for Alek in the tailoring department.

As it turned out, the foreman of the tailoring department at Fields at the was a Bohemian man as well, and he agreed to give Alek a try.  Within a couple of months, Alek was recognized as the best tailor in the department— perhaps the best tailor they had ever had!

Alek had been hired at fifty-five dollars a week, but when he found that everyone else was making sixty-five a week, he demanded a raise.  He didn’t care if he was fired, as he didn’t have any dependents and he knew he could get a job doing just about anything.  The foreman agreed, though, and Alek continued working at Marshall Fields for the next twenty-seven years.  For Alek, this was indeed the pinnacle of his career, the position it seemed he had been training for and working at for years and years while still in Europe.  He was immensely proud of his position at Marshall Fields, and accordingly, he thought it essential that he dress the part.  Each day, then, he would come to work dressed in a fine suit, tie and hat just as any business man would go to work in.  Once at Fields, he would change into his work clothes, but then would change back into his suit for his trip home.

Alek only stayed with the Yugoslavian family for a short time.  After only three weeks, the mother of the family felt it to be a strain to not only feed and care for her own two sons but Alek as well, so she asked her husband to find another place for Alek to live.  The husband appealed to a Slovak friend of his who agreed to rent him a room for a year.  After that first year, Alek then rented a room from the man’s mother, who lived in Cicero, which meant Alek had to commute to Marshall Fields from Cicero each day.

Alek didn’t mind living in Cicero, however, as there was a huge Czech community there, and he felt at home.  Now that he had a place to live and a great job, he decided to try to socialize more and meet some new friends and so joined many Czech clubs and fraternal organizations.  It was at one such club that he met a woman named Anna Hajek, the same given name as his mother.  The club was having a dance once night, and after catching his eye from afar, Anna approached him and asked him to dance.  Alek was taken aback by her forwardness, but he accepted and then spent the rest of the night talking with her.  He escorted her home, chivalrously paying her fare on the El for her, where she lived alone with her mother, she told him.  Alek and Anna enjoyed talking so much that Alek asked her out on a date for the following Saturday, and she accepted.  There was an immediate spark between them, and they began to see each other more and more.  Alek was mesmerized by Anna, and he quickly fell in love with her.

He was shocked and outraged, then, when one day he showed up at Anna’s house in Cicero, only to find a young man in the house with her.  His old temper flaring, he demanded to know who the man was.  Anna quickly explained that the young man was actually her son, William!  She then explained that she had gotten pregnant with William when she was only fifteen.  She refused to talk about the circumstances, merely saying that she never saw the father again, and that she and her mother had raised William on their own.  A few years after William’s birth, Anna explained that she had met another man, one Mike Kennedy, whom she fell in love with and assumed she would marry.  When she got pregnant, however, Mike deserted her.  After she had the baby, whom she named Robert, Mike unexpectedly showed up again, took Robert and gave him to his mother to care for.

Anna grieved for her baby, but she felt she had few options, especially as she needed to continue working to support her aging mother and little William.  Over the years, she told Alek, friends had told her that she should fight to get Robert back, but though she missed him, she wasn’t sure her mother could care for another child anyway.  Her mother had several health problems as it was, and from a young age, William was actually more a caregiver to her than the other way around.  Sadly, Anna explained that though Robert was now fifteen, she barely knew him and only usually saw him at the holidays, as Mike made it very difficult for her to be involved in his life in any way.  William, meanwhile, at age nineteen, was off at college now and was merely home at the moment for a visit.  She had planned on telling Alek everything, she told him, just that she had been waiting for the right moment, afraid that if she revealed too much, she would scare him away.

Alek, it seems, was a little thrown off by all of this and took a couple of weeks away from Anna to absorb it all.  Initially, he felt deceived by her, but in the end, he realized that he was acting stupidly.  After all, he hadn’t shared all of the details of his life yet, either, he reasoned, including his “affair” with Bessie Beranek. He loved, Anna, he decided, and didn’t want to lose her.  Thus, instead of breaking it off with her, he proposed to her, and she accepted.  Alek was thirty-eight years old at the time, though he felt he had already lived many lives.  Anna, too, at age thirty-four, had been through much.  They had both been in love before, but this was the first marriage for both of them, and they very much felt that they were beginning a new chapter and starting yet another new life, this time together.

They married in 1951, and one of Anna’s friends had a little reception for them at her home.  Alek says it was a small affair, but they had a nice dinner, beer, whiskey and a cake.  They sold the house in Cicero and rented an apartment in Berwyn, another big Czech community, and naturally brought Anna’s mother to live with them.  After only a year of working hard, they saved one thousand dollars, enough to put down to buy a dry-cleaners on Euclid in Berwyn and moved into the apartment above it.  Anna ran the dry-cleaning business while Alek still worked at Marshall Field all day.

Alek and Anna never had any children, but after only a year or so of marriage, a child came to them in a different way.  On their second Christmas together, Anna’s son, William, showed up unexpectedly at their apartment with his two-and-a-half year old daughter, Evelyn.  Right at about the same time that Alek had entered the scene, William had married a young woman named Ruth Herbst, whom he had met at college.  Neither Anna nor her mother had a good feeling about Ruth and tried to warn William, but he had married her anyway, saying that a baby was on the way, and he didn’t want to repeat the mistakes made by his own father and his brother’s father, Mike Kennedy, by having the baby born out of wedlock.

Shortly after Evelyn was born, however, Ruth demanded that they move to California to be near her family, so William reluctantly agreed.  He got a job there and continued trying to get his college degree at night.  William explained to his mother and Alek that he soon discovered that Ruth was leaving the baby alone during the day while she went out.  He suspected her of having an affair, so he hired a detective, who soon produced the evidence confirming William’s suspicions.  William divorced her and hired a babysitter to watch little Evelyn, who was now a toddler.  William then discovered that the babysitter and her husband were severely punishing Evelyn for wetting her pants, which was the last straw for William.  In desperation, he packed Evelyn up and went back to Chicago, arriving the day after Christmas to appeal to his mother and Alek for help.

He was desperate, he explained, and begged Anna and Alek to take Evelyn in while he finished his degree.  Anna was hesitant to do so, but Alek was captivated by Evelyn and convinced Anna to care for her.  Thus, Alek and Anna began a little family together, both of them adoring Evelyn.  They gave up the dry-cleaning shop after only a couple of years because it failed to make any money, so they moved to an apartment on Springfield Street in Berwyn, where they stayed for nine years before they moved again to Avery Avenue.

After only about a year of Evelyn being with them, William remarried in California, but neither he nor his new wife showed any interest in coming to get Evelyn.  Thus, Evelyn remained and grew up with Anna and Alek, whom she called her grandma and grandpa, for the next twelve years.  Alek continued working at Marshall Fields, and Anna, for the first time in her life, stayed at home as a housewife to care for Evelyn as well as her mother, who unfortunately died not long after.

When Evelyn turned fourteen, William again appeared at Christmas time to visit, the first time he had done so in several years.  Evelyn was enraptured with her father, and though she loved Anna and Alek, she begged him to take her to California so that she could meet her step-mother and her three half-brothers.  William reluctantly agreed, much to the utter heart-break of Anna and Alek.  They only wanted the best for Evelyn, but they were utterly crushed when she left and missed her terribly.  Nothing was the same after she left, Alek explains, though she wrote to them faithfully.

But Evelyn was not their only source of sorrow over the years.  One other reason that Anna quit working when Evelyn came to live with them is because she had been diagnosed with cancer in 1955.  She received extensive treatments, and the cancer went into remission, though it left her extremely ill at times. Even after Evelyn left, Anna did not go back to work and remained at home. Alek began planning their retirement very early on and over the years had saved enough to buy a little parcel of land and a trailer in New Concord, Kentucky.  By 1976, he was ready to retire, but his foreman at Marshall Fields asked him to stay on for one more year.  Alek discussed this proposal with Anna, but she told him that if she had to wait another whole year, she wouldn’t make the move at all.  Thus, Alek gave up his position of master tailor at Marshall Field, and they moved to New Concord.

They had several years there together and enjoyed puttering about with different hobbies and made new friends.  They were truly happy, Alek says, despite everything that had happened to them over the years.  Only once did Alek ever hear from his family in Czechoslovakia.  In 1978, he received a letter from a younger sister who had been born after he had run away.  This sister informed him that their father had died years ago, and she implored Alek to return home to visit their mother one last time, as she was old and blind and sick and was asking for him.  Anna told him that he should go, but Alek instead threw the letter into the fire and never saw or heard from any of them again.

Unfortunately, in 1984, Anna’s cancer came back with a vengeance.  She again took up the battle to fight it, but on April 13, 1989, she finally died.  Alek was devastated by Anna’s death and for many, many months had trouble sleeping.  He would awake in the middle of the night and, unable to get back to sleep, would get up and work on the trailer, fixing things inside and out.  He ran himself ragged to escape his sadness, and on December 12, 1993, he suffered a stroke and was taken to a hospital in Murray, Kentucky and then transferred to Lourdes Hospital in Paducah.  From there he was transferred for some reason to a rehab center in Marion, Illinois, very near the Kentucky boarder and, in an ironic twist of fate, not far from Christopher, Illinois, where he had been born, completing a nearly eighty-year journey around the world and back.

At the nursing home in Marion, Alek made little progress toward his rehabilitation and remained in a deep depression.  The social service staff were eventually able to locate and reach out to his step-sons: William, still living in California, and Robert, still living in Chicago.  The two half-brothers then eventually came together and found a Bohemian nursing home in Chicago where they thought Alek might be happier.  They arranged for the transfer to the nursing home and were both on site when he arrived at his new home. He was grateful and happy to see them both, but he lives in hope that Evelyn might some day visit, though she is living with her husband and children in California.

Alek made a fairly good transition to the new facility.  He enjoyed being able to talk to people in Bohemian, though the stroke affected his ability to speak clearly.  This frustrated and angered him, as he had a lot to say and wished to tell anyone who would listen his long, long story.  Sadly, however, most of the residents could not understand him, though, as he slurred his words excessively.  He participated in some activities but preferred always to talk to the staff.  Alek was extremely pleasant and courteous, though he always seemed to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder.  He saw himself as a victim of life’s misfortunes in many ways, despite having thwarted life’s curve balls so many times.  He seemed desperate to tell his epic adventures and loved in particular to tell about his work at Marshal Fields, which seemed, in his mind, to be his crowning achievement, though the love of his life, he often said, was, and always will be, Anna.

(Originally written April 1994)

If you liked this true story about the past, check out Michelle’s historical fiction/mystery series, set in the 1930s in Chicago:

The post Around the World and Back Again: The Nearly Unbelievable Life and Times of Alek Kozel – Part III appeared first on Michelle Cox Author.

Around the World and Back Again: The Nearly Unbelievable Life and Times of Alek Kozel – Part II

Part II:  In which our hero finally finds work as a tailor, nearly dies of a mysterious illness, and has a run-in with the German SS . . .

(To read Part I first, click here.)

After being fired by Mr. Chvatal, Alek went back to Mr. Kratochvil’s boarding house, where he had run up a pretty large debt, not having made enough at the mill to pay for his lodging each week.  He searched endlessly for a job until he finally found work several towns over with another tailor, one Mr. Navratil.  Mr. Navratil’s shop had an apartment above it, which he rented out to Alek, the only condition being that he had to share it with an old woman who was already living there.  Alek gladly took the job and his share of the apartment and began working in earnest.  After only a short time, he had saved enough to pay his debt at the boarding house and to buy Mr. Kratochvil many packs of tobacco to repay him for all of his help.

Next followed a rather steady patch in life for Alek.  Not since he had lived and worked and trained with his master, Mr. Skalicky, did he feel such contentment.  He worked for Mr. Navratil for five years, saving money and making some friends—his first ever, really.  His new group of friends were an odd mix of people and included a policeman, a dentist, a pharmacist, a banker, a shoemaker and himself, a tailor.  They enjoyed meeting up at the pub each night to play darts, discuss the politics of the day or sometimes just to sing old Bohemian songs together.  It was his friend the policeman who encouraged Alek to buy a newspaper each day and try to teach himself to read.  Alek took his advice and, after a while, was able to pick out a little bit and even learned to sign his name.

Eventually, however, old Mr. Navratil grew tired of Alek coming home late each night.  He feared that Alek was becoming a drunkard and considered evicting him from the apartment. The old woman Alek lived with, however, Mrs. Dubala, had become quite fond of Alek and spoke up for him.  She argued to Mr. Navratil that even though it was true that Alek went each night to the pub to drink, he never came home drunk.  She described the way his hand was always steady when he lit the lamp late at night after he came home and how he meticulously laid out his clothes each night for the next day’s work.  Begrudgingly, then, Mr. Navratil agreed to let him stay.

Not long after this, however, Alek became very ill.  He soldiered on working, despite his illness, for about two months before he told Mr. Navratil that he just couldn’t go on.  He went upstairs and asked Mrs. Dubala to bring him some water, drank it, and asked for more and then even more.  When he started coughing up blood, he finally told her to go and get the doctor.  When the doctor arrived (the same doctor, oddly, that had treated his blistered hands in exchange for his golden curls), he merely touched his forehead and told Mrs. Dubala that if Alek was to live, he would have to immediately be taken by ambulance to the hospital in the next town.  So the ambulance was called, and Alek lay between death and life for about twelve hours in the hospital before his fever finally broke.

When Alek awoke, he found himself in a long, dark ward and urgently needed to use the bathroom.  He crept out of bed, and even now he remembers how icy the floor felt.  His fellow ward mates, alarmed that he was awake and out of bed, called for the nurses, who then ran into the ward and scolded Alek, saying how dare he get out of bed after they had worked so hard to save him.  They chastised him severely and threatened to tie him to the bed if he didn’t stay there and rest.  Alek obeyed and remained in the hospital for over two months.

When he was finally allowed to go home, the doctors told him to eat lots of bacon and drink wine to enrich his “weak blood” and to stay off from work for one more week.  Alek tried to follow these directions and also swore off going out with his friends anymore.  But after a few weeks, he was soon back to going to the pub with them and singing the old Bohemian songs.

In 1939, however, Alek’s contented, stable life came to an end with the German invasion.

After the Germans took over, Mr. Navatril’s business dwindled to almost nothing.  He tried to stretch the work as far as he could, but in the end, he finally had to let Alek go.  Alek understood Mr. Navatril’s dilemma and actually felt sorry for him.  He hated to leave him and old Mrs. Dubala and the few friends that were still left, but there was no more work in that particular town.  He began to search for a new job and happened to see an ad in the newspaper for a steel mill a short distance away that was desperate for workers.  He went and applied for a job and was immediately hired to shovel coke into wagons or the furnace.

When he showed up for his first day, his fellow employees snickered at Alek’s scrawny body and made lots of jokes.  Though he was small and thin, somehow Alek had retained his upper body strength and proved that he could throw his load farther than anyone.  Soon all of the men wanted him on their team, some of them even offering him food from the farms as an incentive to stay with them.  The foreman, however, seeing Alek’s skills, made him move around to all the parts of the factory so that all areas could benefit from his strength.

There was one man, however, by the name of Evzen, who continued to tease Alek about his skinny, scrawny body, though he had heard the rumors about his strength.  Evzen, an amateur boxer, was hoping to fight him and continued to goad Alek until he agreed to box him.  The resultant boxing match was well attended with many bets being placed, and the workers were shocked when Alek not only beat Evzen, but beat him very badly.  Enraged, Evzen swore that he would get his brother to fight Alek.  Alek replied that he didn’t want to fight anymore and would rather be friends than enemies.  Evzen was apparently taken off guard by Alek’s response, and eventually accepted Alek’s hand in friendship.

Not long after this incident, it was discovered that someone was cutting the train hoses in the steel yard, and somehow Evzen came under suspicion.  Alek was one of the few who stood up for Evzen, but in the end Evzen and several others were rounded up and sent to a German prison camp.  For a while, Alek was in contact with Evzen, who wrote to Alek, telling him that the Germans were giving the prisoners “shots” to make them stronger.  In reality, though, says Alek, these mysterious shots made all the prisoners sick.  Evzen was eventually released, but he was forever ill afterward.  When Alek eventually left the country several years later, he sought out Evzen before he left and gave him a new pair of gloves—a very good gift, says Alek, at the time.  He heard later that Evzen died shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile, Alek had his own problem with the Germans.  He recalls that on one particular day, after finishing his usual twelve-hour shift at the steel factory, he was packing up his few things to go home, filthy and exhausted, when there was suddenly a commotion in the factory and several German SS soldiers and dogs appeared.  They singled out Alek and commanded him to unload a wagon for them.  Alek protested, saying that he had already finished his team’s quota and then some.  For his insolence, the SS grabbed him and beat him and threw him out on the street.

Though he had been badly beaten, Alek still turned up the next day for work, but he was told by his foreman that he was fired.  Alek protested and accused the foreman of letting him go because he was afraid of the Germans.  The foreman did not deny it and remained silent, whereupon, Alek, outraged, grabbed him and threatened to throw him into the furnace if he didn’t let him keep his job.  The foreman finally agreed, but reassigned Alek to working outdoors in the yard, though Alek did not have a very thick coat or even proper boots or gloves.  When two young boys on Alek’s team tried to stick up for him, the foreman reassigned them to the yard as well.  None of them had proper clothing to be working all day outside, but they tried to make the best of it by building little fires from scraps to keep warm.

Several months after this incident, Alek started receiving letters from the main office, three hours away by bicycle, saying that he should report to the office to be reassigned to work in the mines.  Alek suspected the interference of the resentful foreman and consequently destroyed the letters.  He then discovered that his two young partners were also receiving letters to go to the office to be reassigned.  Alek told them they should go if they felt they should, but since they looked to Alek for guidance, they likewise refused to go and destroyed their letters, too.

Finally after Alek had destroyed three such letters, a company officer showed up to interrogate him.  He asked Alek about the letters, which Alek denied ever having received.  The officer then tried another tactic, imploring him to trust him as he would a father and to tell the truth.  Alek, always angered by any reference to his father, then hotly told the officer that he had no father.  He admitted, then, however, that not only had he indeed received the letters from the main office but that he had destroyed them.  The officer then commanded him to report to the office the next day and to bring the two boys with him.  When Alek tried to protest having to bring along two innocent boys, the officer declared that they were now Alek’s responsibility and that he would have to bring them.

Not seeing any way out, Alek decided to go and report to the office the next day with the two boys in tow.  There, they were informed that they were going to be sent to Germany to work.  Alek, thinking quickly, pretended to laugh and said that in fact he had tried dozens of times to run away to Germany and beyond, but that he had always been stopped at the border because of his American birth certificate, which he always carried on him and which the officer now demanded to see.  As Alek showed them the tattered birth certificate, he explained that he was always mistaken for a spy and was thus always denied access.  Miraculously, Alek’s plan worked, at least initially, and the three of them were assigned to work in the rail yard instead.

Before long, however, the Russians invaded and took over from where the Germans had left off.  Alek decided that working in the steel company’s rail yard was getting much too dangerous and feared that the Russians, who were always hanging about the rail yard, would eventually send him off to work in Siberia.  Before that could happen, he again went to the company office and this time informed them that he was quitting and that he wanted his back pay.  Their surprising response was that he could not quit.  Alek hotly told them that they had no authority over him and demanded his back pay, which they eventually gave him, but not without much stalling and delay.

When the two boys heard he was leaving, they begged him to take them with him.  By this point, however, Alek was tired of them constantly clinging to him and of feeling responsible for them.  They begged for his help, however, so he finally agreed to help the younger one, David.  He gave him a little money for the train ride back to his parents and told him not to come back, that it was too dangerous.  The older of the two boys, Dusan, stayed working in the rail yard, and he and Alek became friends and sometimes met up in the pub at night.

Since Alek was out of a job now, he could not get “tickets” from the government for food.  His old policeman friend, however, came to his rescue and took him around to some of the farms, where they signed notes saying that he was employed there, which allowed him to still get government food tickets while he looked for a real job.

As it turned out, one night while he was in the pub with Dusan, some Russian soldiers came in.  Alek and Dusan began talking with them, and they learned that one of the soldiers was a tailor back in the Ukraine.  When Alek revealed that he, too, was a tailor, the young soldier suggested that Alek return with him after the war to set up a shop, especially as they were both Ukrainians.  Alek then made the mistake of saying that he didn’t fancy living under Communism.  The soldier, offended and drunk now, told Alek to shut his mouth.  Alek retorted that he certainly would be leaving Czechoslovakia, but that he wouldn’t be going to Russia or the Ukraine, but to America instead!

It was an idea blurted out in the heat of the moment, but it slowly began to take hold in Alek’s mind.  Perhaps he really should go to America, he thought.  As time went on, it made more and more sense—he had no job, was in constant danger due to the war, and had no real options or prospects.  And so, just like that, he decided to try to make it happen, just as his father, ironically, had fled a generation before for mostly the same reasons.

Next week, read Part III, the exciting conclusion: In which our hero flees to America and begins a whole new life there . . .

If you liked this true story about the past, check out Michelle’s historical fiction/mystery series, set in the 1930s in Chicago:

The post Around the World and Back Again: The Nearly Unbelievable Life and Times of Alek Kozel – Part II appeared first on Michelle Cox Author.

Around the World and Back Again: The Nearly Unbelievable Life and Times of Alek Kozel

Part I: In which our hero is born in Christopher, Illinois; finds himself  “a slave” on a Ukrainian farm; and becomes a master tailor in Czechoslovakia—all before the age of one and twenty . . .

Alek Kozel was born on September 17, 1913 in Christopher, Illinois to Anton and Anna Kozel, both of whom were Ukranian immigrants.  Anton’s father was a shoemaker in a small town near Kiev, and he very much wanted Anton to become one, too.  Not only did Anton not wish to become a shoemaker like his father, but he was afraid of the impending threat of war hanging over Europe.  In haste, then, he asked his sweetheart, Anna, to marry him, and they ran off to America together.

Anton and Anna somehow found their way to the little town of Christopher in southern Illinois, where Anton was able to get a job in a coal mine.  Their first baby, a little girl they named Larisa, died at two months of whooping cough.  Their next baby was Alek, who, though small, was healthy and lived. In total, they had eight children who lived past infancy—four boys and four girls.

Anton and Anna struggled to make a life in their new country, Anton toiling in the mines and Anna caring for the children.  At one point, however, Anna started getting distressing letters from her mother back in the Ukraine, begging them to return.  Anna wrote back faithfully, telling her mother that it was not possible to return, but each time she would enclose a little bit of money for her.  Not being able to read, Anna’s mother had to rely on neighbors to read her daughter’s letters to her.  Years later, Anna discovered that while the neighbors had indeed read her letters to her mother, they had meanwhile kept all the money for themselves.

As time went on, Anna’s mother’s letters grew more and more desperate, and more than once, Anna attempted to persuade Anton to go back to the Ukraine for a long visit.  Anton refused, saying that it he could not leave his job in the mine, and tried to instead persuade Anna to take the children on her own and go.  Anna was afraid to go alone, however, so the two continued to argue about what to do.  Anton, having been badly burned in the mines twice already, finally began to waver a bit and eventually offered Anna an ultimatum of sorts.  He would go back to the Ukraine, he said, if Anna would agree to it being a permanent move.  If they returned, he said, it would be for good.  Anna was not sure she wanted to give up her life in America, but she was so worried about her mother and her family in the Ukraine, that she agreed.

So, in 1920, Anton and Anna packed up their belongings and their six children at the time (two more would later be born in the Ukraine) and went back.  Anton decided to try his hand at farming and rented a farm from the Catholic Church for two years until he found a fourteen-acre farm that he could purchase.

This is when young Alek’s life began to take a downward turn.  Alek was just six years old when they took up farming in the Ukraine, but being the oldest, he shouldered a lot of work once they got there.  Anton had him working from sunup to sundown beside him on the farm and frequently referred to him as “the slave,” even in front of other people, who sometimes commented to Anton that he was working the boy too hard.

Alek says that his father seemed to love all of his children except for him.  He believes this is because he was short with blond, curly hair like his mother, while all of the other children were tall and dark like Anton.  Regardless of whether this was true or not, Anton worked Alek ceaselessly and was very short tempered with him.  Alek says he doesn’t remember much about his father during the time they lived in America, but his mother, Anna, once confided to him that Anton was like a different man after they moved back to the Ukraine.  It was as if something had “broken” in his mind, and he was now obsessive, irritable and impatient all of the time.  To Alek, as the years passed, it always seemed as though his father had a chip on his shoulder, as if he had something to prove.

Thus, poor Alek was required to work all day beside his father.  By the age of only eight or nine, he was also required to go into the forest in the evenings after his daily chores to chop wood, half of which Anton sold for extra money.  When he finished chopping wood for the evening, Alek then had to go into the barn to shovel out the manure and put down fresh hay before he was allowed to quit for the night.

Alek remembers that one day when he was just nine, he was so exhausted from the day’s chores that he sat down to rest before going out to do his evening chores.  When Anton saw him sitting there idly, he became enraged and grabbed a piece of wood and hit Alek on the head with it.  Alek remembers doubling over with the pain, but he managed to stumble out to the barn to continue working, though he couldn’t hear anything in his right ear for the rest of the night.  In fact, he had permanent hearing damage in that ear and later in life had several surgeries to try to correct it.

There’s no doubt that Alek had a terrible life on the farm in the Ukraine.  No matter how hard he worked, his father still seemed to despise him.  He was still small for his age but very strong from all of the manual labor.  As time went on, however, he became thinner and thinner and had what he calls “weak bones.”  He recalls one winter when he was sent out to lead the bull from one pasture to the next and was having a hard time getting the animal to go through the gate.  Anton noticed and came over to chastise him and to show him how to properly do it.  Neither of them realized that they were standing on a patch of ice, apparently, and when Anton pulled on the bull, the bull slipped and went down, taking Anton and Alek down as well.  Somehow, Alek was trampled underneath Anton, and he ended up with a broken sternum, which healed improperly and still sticks out awkwardly today.  He also recalls how he didn’t even have shoes, and if stepped on something and cut himself, he was not allowed to stop working.  He would have to wrap his bleeding feet with rags and keep going.  Needless to say, he never went to school or learned to read or write.

Finally, in 1928, when he was just shy of 15, Alek decided to run away.  Anna, discovering his plan, cried and begged him not to go, but Alek couldn’t take it anymore.  “I am a slave,” Alek told her.  “I have no father,” and set off one night for Czechoslovakia.  At some point along the way, the Red Cross came upon him and gave him a set of clothes: two shirts, one pair of short pants, one pair of long pants, shoes and two stockings.

Once in Czechoslovakia, one of the first people he met was a man by the name of Honza Skalicky, who was a tailor by trade.  Mr. Skalicky gave the nearly starving boy he saw before him some food and eventually offered to take him on as an apprentice, to which Alek readily agreed.  Because he had never gone to school and because he did not know the language, Mr. Skalicky sent him to a sort of school for two years at night in the winters.  Meanwhile, he lived with the tailor and was expected to do odd jobs around the house and tend the garden in exchange for his training as a tailor.  After what he had been through at the hands of his father on the farm, however, this was almost like heaven.  The tailor’s house was a half-hour walk from the shop, and each morning before he set off on his walk to the shop, he was required to wash himself at the well outside the house, whether it was hot or cold, summer or winter.

Besides learning to sew, one of his duties was to deliver the repaired clothing to the customers, and he was delighted when he got tips.  The tailor, however, soon discovered this and confiscated these tips, saying that by rights, he should pocket them to cover the cost of the clothes he provided Alek to wear.  Alek declared this to be unfair because the tailor was supposed to provide food and clothes as part of their initial agreement.  The tailor was resolute, however, saying that he needed the money to buy buttons and accessories, not included in the deal, and Alek had no choice but to turn over the tips.

Alek was not Mr. Skalicky’s only apprentice.  In all, Mr. Skalicky employed three or four apprentices at any one time, all at various stages in their training.  They all worked together to make one suit at a time and were able to produce fourteen suits per week this way, which was a lot, Alek says.  It took Alek four years to learn enough to become a master tailor “with papers.”  Just one month short of his “graduation,” however, an unfortunate incident occurred one day which prevented him from doing so.

On that particular day, Alek walked into the work room and witnessed the tailor screaming at a new apprentice for something he had done and hitting him on the head.  Memories flooded Alek’s mind of his own father hitting him on the head with the block of wood, and something “just snapped,” Alek says.  He became enraged and picked up a nearby pair of scissors and threatened to kill Mr. Skalicky if he didn’t stop.  Apparently terrified, the tailor rushed out of the shop with Alek pursuing him before Alek came to his senses and let Mr. Skalicky go.  Horrified by what he had done, however, Alek stayed away from the tailor’s house and shop for over a month before he realized what he needed to do.  He was nothing without his “papers,” which he had worked for for over four years.  So, gathering his courage, he slunk back to the tailor and apologized.  The tailor took him back, and Alek was able to finish his apprenticeship and graduate.

At the time, it was 1932, and Czechoslovakia was in a severe depression.  Alek set off trying to find a job as a master tailor, but no jobs were to be found.  It was as though he had done all of that work for nothing.  He travelled around a bit, looking for work, before he finally went back to see his old master, Mr. Skalicky.  The tailor offered him a position in his shop in exchange for room and board only, no money—an offer Alek was insulted by.  The conversation between the two became heated, with Alek declaring that he’d rather shovel manure.  A neighbor overheard them arguing and told Alek he was a fool not to take the tailor’s offer, but Alek retorted, “Don’t worry, I’ll never come begging at your door!” and left.

As it turned out, Alek did come very close to begging after several months of wandering from town to town in search of work.  Eventually he had to eat his words and really did get a job shoveling out the contents of outhouses into a wheelbarrow and spreading it on fields for farmers.  He also got jobs cutting grass with a long sickle.  He slept in parks and ate whatever rotten fruit he found on the ground under trees.

Eventually, as would be expected, his health began to decline and his hands became covered in blisters.  Not being able to work with blisters all over his hands, he decided to seek out a doctor for help.  Before the doctor examined him, however, Alek told him that he had no money to pay him.  After studying him for a few moments, the doctor said he would treat his hands and charge it to a rich customer of his who wouldn’t know the difference if Alek would agree to cut his long curly blond hair and give it to him.  Though this seemed an odd request, Alek agreed, knowing he could always grow his hair back, and so had it cut accordingly in exchange for treatment for his hands.  He was also losing his teeth due to his poor diet, so he asked the doctor what he could do about it.  The doctor advised him to rub lemons on his gums from time to time, which Alek laughed at—as if he had access to lemons!

Alek then went on his way and continued to sleep in parks until one day he saw an older man pasting up posters in the park.  The man asked him where he was living, and when Alek told him he was basically living in the park, the man offered to let him stay at his boarding house.  Alek informed him that he didn’t have any money to pay, but the man said not to worry, that he would find him a job.  The man’s name was Josef Kratochvil and he lived in a basement apartment of the boarding house, where he spent much of the day smoking tobacco.  He had a son and a daughter living in some of the rooms above him.  His son, Mr. Kratochvil explained, was apprenticed to a baker, which made sense when Alek eventually met him, as he was very large and was also losing his teeth, both of which Alek put it down to sampling too many of the bakers’ wares.

Being the owner of the building, Mr. Kratochvil offered Alek a place to stay, which Alek accepted, promising to pay as soon as he could.  Alek eventually met all the tenants in the building, including a man by the name of Mr. Chvatal on the top floor, who had grown quite wealthy from buying wheat from local farmers and reselling it in Prague.  He offered Alek a job sewing patches in wheat sacks where mice had chewed through.  It was a messy, dirty job, but Alek readily took it.  After only a short time of working for him, Mr. Chvatal was impressed with Alek’s hard work and began to trust him more and more.  Eventually, he arranged to have Alek sleep in the office to guard the safe at night and gave him a small raise as compensation for this extra duty.

Things were going along pretty well until one day when Mr. Chvatal left for Prague as usual to sell another load of wheat.  Not long after he was gone, Mrs. Chvatal called Alek in from the mill and asked him to come upstairs to help her carry the laundry.  Alek obeyed, but when he got upstairs, he found Mrs. Chvatal dressed only in a housecoat.  To his dismay, she then untied the belt to reveal her underthings to him.  Stunned, Alek quickly told her he wasn’t that type of man and wanted no part of this and then ran out of the house.  When Mr. Chvatal returned several days later, his wife, apparently stinging from Alek’s rejection, informed him that Alek had made advances to her and insisted he be fired.  Mr. Chvatal seemed reluctant to lose his best worker, but he ultimately listened to his wife and fired Alek.  At this point he was just twenty-one years old . . .

Read Part II next week: In which the Germans and then the Russians invade, and our hero finds himself escaping the clutches of many different foes . . .

If you liked this true story about the past, check out Michelle’s historical fiction/mystery series, set in the 1930s in Chicago:

The post Around the World and Back Again: The Nearly Unbelievable Life and Times of Alek Kozel appeared first on Michelle Cox Author.

She Was Born “A Normal Little Girl”

Esther Matula was born in Chicago on August 13, 1929 to George Matula and Nicola Pacek, both of whom were children of Bohemian immigrants.  George was born in Chicago and worked as a “heat treater” in a tool factory, and Nicola, who was born in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, cared for their four children: Vincent, Esther, Darlene and Herman.  From time to time, Nicola helped out at the corner grocery store for extra money, but she was frequently ill and in and out of the hospital so often that she didn’t earn much.

Esther was always been considered to be “mentally retarded,” but Esther’s younger sister, Darlene, believes that Esther was actually born a “normal little girl.”  As a young adult, Darlene spent a lot of time questioning various aunts and uncles and cousins and has concluded that Esther was not born “retarded” as everyone has always labeled her.  Darlene discovered that one fateful day when her mother went out, Nicola put George in charge of watching the children, which, at the time, was just Vincent and Esther, who was only a toddler.  Apparently George got drunk, as usual, though he promised Nicola that he would not, and left the cellar door open.  Esther wandered by and fell down the stairs, which is apparently when her “retardation” began.

The obvious person to ask the truth would of course have been Nicola, but she unfortunately died at the young age of 38.  Always ill, Nicola’s doctor finally diagnosed her with a “poisonous, inward-growing goiter” and told her that she did not have long to live.  Informed with this tragic information, Nicola knew she had to make a very difficult decision.  She knew she could not leave Esther, who was just thirteen at the time, with George after she was gone, as, not only was George an alcoholic, but he was cruel to Esther as well, constantly teasing her and threatening to cut off all her hair, which never failed to throw Esther into hysterics.  So before she died, Nicola packed up Esther and took her to a mental institution, where she felt she had no choice but to leave her, despite Esther’s screams to not be left behind.

Nicola returned home, utterly depressed, and was not long after again admitted to the hospital.  She did not expect to ever go home again, but when she was surprisingly released, she made her way home and flew into a rage when she found George drunk again.  Darlene remembers her mother yelling and screaming more than she ever had before, so much so that she collapsed and died right in front of them of a cerebral hemorrhage.

On the day of Nicola’s funeral, Vincent, just seventeen, declared that he was joining the navy, that he wasn’t going to “get stuck washing dishes and caring for brats.”  He left the very next day.  Darlene was eleven, and Herman was ten.

Though Nicola had placed Esther at a Catholic facility in the city, the staff eventually transferred her to the mental asylum in Dixon, Il., where she lost contact with her family for many years.  Darlene eventually married and moved to Arkansas, but she always felt guilty about leaving Esther behind in Illinois.  Over the years, however, Darlene has been able to communicate with Esther over the telephone.  Supposedly, Esther recognized Darlene’s voice before Darlene could even explain who she was and was overjoyed to hear from her sister.  After that, Darlene tried to get her brothers to call Esther as well, but both have refused, saying that Esther wouldn’t remember them anyway.  Darlene has many times explained to them that, actually, Esther does in fact remember them and that she asks about them during every single phone call.  Darlene has also told them that, amazingly, Esther remembers many family members and stories from way back.  Still, Vincent and Herman have refused to call Esther even once.  Darlene suspects that they feel too guilty, especially when she told them what she found out from their aunts that Esther, despite her damaged mind, loved her siblings very much and that she had always been very protective of them until she was taken away.

When she reached her sixties, Esther was transferred to various nursing homes that could better care for her until she was finally placed in a facility called “Our Special Place,” which was a community house for seniors with mental disabilities.  Esther apparently loved “Our Special Place,” the first “home” she had lived in since age thirteen.  Esther stayed there for several years until she began having seizures and had to have brain surgery.  Upon being released from the hospital, she was required to go back into a normal nursing home to recover, which has been very disorienting and upsetting to her.

Though Esther is officially under the care of a state-appointed guardian, Darlene has been kept informed.  She is very distraught at the thought that Esther had to leave “Our Special Place,” and is trying to convince Esther’s guardian to let Esther go to Arkansas to be near her.  Darlene hopes that Esther can come to live with her, but as Darlene is now legally blind and is also diabetic, this does not seem to be a realistic plan.

Meanwhile, Esther is not making a smooth transition.  She is not able to communicate effectively with other residents and has no desire to participate in activities.  Her only solace is listening to music.  Darlene calls her every other day, but Esther finds it difficult to talk.

(Originally written: November 1996)

If you liked this true story about the past, check out Michelle’s historical fiction/mystery series, set in the 1930s in Chicago:

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Waldemar Karlsson – 95 years young!

Waldemar “Wally” Karlsson was born on February 2, 1899 in Sweden to Ralf Karlsson and Beata Berglund.  Ralf was a farmer, and Beata cared for their ten children: Olov, Njord, Melker, Carola, Ebba, Waldemar, Breta, Niklas, Ludvig and Hulda.  As a young boy, Wally learned to play the violin and was often chosen to play in the church choir.  When he was nine, he began a carpentry apprenticeship, which he attended once a week after school until he achieved full carpenter status at age fourteen.  He left school then and began working on neighborhood farms as an extra hand doing odd jobs.

At one point, Wally was required to join the Swedish Calvary, but he only had to serve for nine months, as there were no wars going on at the time, he says.  When he was nineteen, he became the manager of a very large farm that belonged to a sort of governor.  After working for this man for only a year, however, Wally quit because he thought him very mean and greedy.  Wally then went back to his father’s farm and asked to manage it. His father, deeply in debt, agreed to let Wally take over. Wally’s first decision was to cut and sell the lumber from the acres of woods on the farm, which quickly cleared the debt and made the farm successful.

Wally worked for his father until he was 27, at which time he decided to strike out on his own and left for America with his brother, Niklas. Their older sister, Carola, had already immigrated to Denver, while their brother, Olov, had gone to Chicago, where he lived with his wife, Norma, and their two daughters. Wally and Niklas made their way to Chicago and stayed with Olov and Norma during their first summer in America.  Wally immediately found work as a carpenter, but Niklas went from job to job.  After several months, Norma suggested that the two brothers get their own place, as cooking and cleaning up after the brothers, especially Niklas, was becoming too much work for her.

Wally liked and respected Norma very much, so when she gently suggested that they leave, he responded immediately, not wanting to upset her.  He went out and found a nearby apartment for himself and Niklas, where they lived together for three years.  Niklas, it seems, never really settled and made some very undesirable friends.  He was constantly in trouble, and tensions rose between him and Wally.  Finally, it became apparent that one of them would have to go, and since Niklas was wanted by some shady characters throughout the city, anyway, it was decided that he should be the one to leave—and not only the apartment, but the city as well. He made his way to Denver to live with Carola, where he reportedly created havoc there, as well.

Meanwhile, Wally continued working as a carpenter, doing odd jobs, until the Depression hit and he found himself unemployed and hungry. At one point he went for eleven days without eating because he was too proud to ask for food. Eventually a friend offered to try to get him a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant. Wally felt ashamed to have to rely on someone else to get a job, but in desperation he reluctantly followed his friend.  At first the manager of the restaurant refused to hire him, saying that at age thirty-one, Wally was too old, but he later changed his mind.  Glad of a chance, Wally worked extremely hard and impressed the owner so much that he offered Wally a job as the head maintenance man for his thirteen restaurants. Wally gladly accepted and worked for this man for over thirty years.

Wally had many sweethearts in Sweden and America, but he never married. He saw so many poor families over the years, he says, that he was determined not to have a family himself if he could not provide for them, and he always felt he could not. Instead, he traveled extensively with his boss, who was the master of a Masonic Lodge and who was very wealthy, and his family.  Often, Wally went on vacation with them.

After working for thirty years for this man, however, Wally decided it was time to step down, as the responsibility for managing thirteen restaurants was getting to be too much.  He then took a different maintenance job in the early 1960’s at an office building at Lincoln and Belmont, where he stayed for many years.  After that, he became the maintenance man at the building he lived in in Logan Square until he was in his eighties.

Finally retired in earnest, Wally pottered around his apartment and still tried to do some carpentry work here and there.  He loved listening to the news on the radio and reading the newspaper.  His primary function, however, even into his nineties, was to run errands or go shopping for “the old boys”—men who were years younger than himself who lived in his apartment building.  No matter how bitter or cold or hot it was, Wally never failed to go out and pick up items for “the old boys” and bring them back.  He never locked his door and says he had no fear of walking the streets of his neighborhood at any time of the day or night.

Occasionally his niece, Ann Fogar, would telephone him from her home in Arlington Heights to check on her Uncle Wally, but, she says, he never once asked for help from her or her family.  (Incidentally, Ann was one of Olov and Norma’s little girls whom Wally and Niklas lived with for a time when they first arrived from Sweden.  Ann was just a baby at the time.)  Ann says she has tried over the years to include her uncle in family gatherings, but he stubbornly refused to “bother them.”  Recently, however, Wally’s neighbors telephoned Ann to report that Wally was very sick.  Herself in a wheelchair now, Ann sent her two daughters to the city to check on him, where they found him feverish with what turned out to be pneumonia and delusional, as well.  They telephoned an ambulance, and he was hospitalized for several weeks.  From there he was discharged to a nursing home.

Wally seems to be making a relatively smooth transition to his new home, but he doesn’t see himself living here for very long, he says, nor does he believe that he will ever be allowed to go back home.  Instead, he expects to die very soon—”in a couple of weeks,” in fact—and plans to accelerate this by beginning to “breathe very slowly,” which he believes will facilitate his death.  Despite this rather morbid plan, however, he has taken up playing the violin again and loves to seek out other residents with whom to have debates regarding politics or religion, or any topic, really.  He is very knowledgeable and is an incredibly positive, cheerful, sweet man who seems much younger than his ninety-five years.

(Originally written: February 1994)

If you liked this true story about the past, check out Michelle’s historical fiction/mystery series, set in the 1930s in Chicago:

 

 

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“I’m Losing My Mind…”

Jonas “John” Dusek was born on January 3, 1913 to Adolf Dusek and Valerie Janota, both Czechoslovakian immigrants who came to Chicago in 1908.  Adolf worked as a cabinet maker, and Valerie cared for their three children: Tania, Josef, and John.  When she was just thirty-one, however, Valerie died giving birth to what would have been their fourth child, who also died.  John was only three years old when his mother passed away, though Adolf soon remarried.  Actually, John says, his father had a total of five wives and outlived them all!  In fact, he died coming home from a girlfriend’s house on Christmas Eve, 1967, aged eighty-seven!

John and his two older siblings grew up in Chicago and completed high school. John worked as a cabinetmaker with his father and also as a machinist. In his free time, he liked to hang around his cousin, Al, and another friend, Tony.  One day, Al told John and Tony where they could get some good free food.  John, who says he was permanently hungry growing up, agreed to go with Al to what he expected was going to be some choice garbage cans in back of a restaurant.  He was surprised, then, when his cousin drove them to a farm in Riverdale, Illinois.

Unbeknownst to John and Tony, Al had gotten a job picking up produce from farms and driving it into the city where the owner of the truck sold the produce at a market.  Al had become friendly with many of the farmers, many of whom told Al that he could take as much damaged fruit or vegetables as he wanted.  Delighted with Al’s explanation, John quickly got out of the truck.  But before he even took a step, he spotted a beautiful young woman on the second step of the farm house, watching them.  John took one look at her and knew that she was going to be “his girl.”  Her name was Emily “Em” Longton, and they married six months later on November 21, 1936.

John and Em got a little place in Chicago, and over the course of their lives moved about between Cicero, Lisle, Berwyn, and finally ended up in Algonquin. They had one child, Edward, who was born on October 30, 1937.  John had a variety of jobs over the years besides being a cabinetmaker and a machinist. He worked for Diamond J trucks as an inspector and then for Harvester and also at one point owned two taverns—the Tree Gables in Lisle and then the Court Inn in Cicero.

His favorite “occupation,” though, was playing saxophone, clarinet and piano in a local band called Guy Pakee’s Orchestra. They even made a few records, of which John is extremely proud. John feels they had a great life together, he and Em, and when they retired (Em worked on and off at the Time Life building downtown as a secretary), they decided to travel. They went to Europe, Alaska and even to Hawaii, and traveling became a great love of John’s.

Their traveling days ended, however when Em died unexpectedly of emphysema.  Em’s death hit John very hard, and not long after, he began experiencing “forgetful spells.”  Only months after Em’s death, John was often found wandering the neighborhood, lost and unable to navigate back to the house.  The neighbors finally decided to call John’s son, Ed, who was living in Ohio.  Ed came home and, shocked by how quickly his dad had deteriorated since Em’s death, started flying in every weekend to check on John.  Ed eventually persuaded John to go to a doctor, who sadly diagnosed him with early Alzheimer’s. Distraught and not knowing what else to do, Ed arranged for his father to be admitted to a nursing home. According to Ed, John agreed to this move, but now at the nursing home, John is frustrated and upset and wants to go home.

As a way to deal with his anxiety, John often makes jokes with the staff, but at other times, he can be found wandering the halls, desperately asking the staff if they have seen Em. When they gently tell him that she is deceased, he bursts into tears, as if hearing the sad news for the first time all over again.

The most heartbreaking part of John’s condition is that he has moments of lucidity in which he seems to realize his condition, reporting to staff that “I can’t think straight” or often says “I’m losing my mind.”  He blames his forgetfulness on a “pinched nerve” in his neck, which he says the doctors can do nothing about.

Now when John anxiously asks the staff where Em is, they simply tell him that she has gone out to the store, which seems to pacify him for a little while. He passes the time, waiting for her, in his room, listening to his Guy Pakee records on a little phonograph he has brought with him from home or by looking at the scrapbooks of “history and geography” he has made over the years from newspaper clippings.  He reports that these things help his memory.  Occasionally he will interact with other residents, but his mood changes rapidly and he often leaves the group.  Still, he seems to be trying very hard in his own way to make the best of his situation.

(Originally written: October 1993)

 

If you liked this true story about the past, check out Michelle’s historical fiction/mystery series, set in the 1930s in Chicago:

 

 

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“Absolutely Full of Life”

Sara Arnold was born on January 27, 1900 to Vladan Medved and Terezia Novak in Zariecie, Slovakia. Vlad and Terezia immigrated to the United States in 1904 and settled in the Pilsen area of Chicago.  Vlad found a job as a machine operator at Western Shade Co. and worked there until he died in 1925, whereupon, as a tribute to him, Western Shade shut down Vlad’s machine and draped it in a black cloth for one whole day, a testimony to his hard work and ingenuity.  Terezia was left to care for their nine children: Vincent, Sara, Tomas, Stefan, Petra, Silvester, Rozalia, Olga, and Robert.  After Vlad died, most of them were forced to quit school to find work.

As one of the older children in the family, Sara left school after 8th grade and went live with a family friend, Mrs. Mickelson, where she got a job in the Loop at Western Union. Sara was a very independent, spirited young woman, involving herself in the temperance movement as well as the Red Cross during WWI. She wrapped bandages, sold war bonds door-to-door, and practiced marching in Grant Park with her fellow trainees in preparation for their planned trip to France to aid the soldiers there. The war ended, however, before they got a chance to go, and while they were overjoyed, of course, that the “boys were coming home,” there was a distinct feeling of disappointment that their adventure had been thwarted.

Not long after the war ended, Sara was walking home from work one day and passed down Jefferson Avenue where she saw a group of young men playing baseball in the street. One of them stopped playing and came over to talk with her. His name was William Laska, and he later became Sara’s husband on October 16, 1916. Sara was just 16 years old; William was twenty.

William worked as a truck driver with the Teamsters and did not approve of Sara working, so she stayed home and raised their four children: Susan, Rose, Evelyn and Martin.  She also had twins, Peter and Paul, who died after only 6 hours of life. According to her children, Sara enjoyed her life as a housewife and cooked, baked and sewed everything from scratch.  She even made her own beer, though she was very opposed to liquor!  She was a woman, her children recount, who was “absolutely full of life.”

Every summer she and the children would pack up the car and traveled north of the city to the little village of Wauconda, where they had a summer cottage on the lake. Sara loved to fish, garden and read. She was a very intelligent woman and was very strong, and though she was in many accidents over the years, her children say that she never cried, complained or babied herself. They have many stories of Sara’s “misfortunes” over the years, including the time she was trapped in a burning car, the time she got her arm caught and mangled in a wringer, the time she stepped on a sickle and slashed her leg, the time she stepped on a rusty nail in Wauconda and drove herself to Chicago with a ballooned foot, the time she dug a fish hook out of her thumb, the time she split her finger open with an electrical saw, her various mild heart attacks, and the time she had her cancerous uterus removed. In all of these situations, her children recount, Sara remained calm and cool. Her attitude is typified in a statement she made before her hysterectomy. “If it’s God’s will, I’ll make it; if it’s not, then I won’t!”

She was strong, too, when her husband, William, died in 1943 at age 47 of one of his “spells.” Afterwards, Sara lived alone with the children until 1950 when she married Augustus “Gus” Aronold, a radio and T.V. repairman, though they only had 8 years together before he died, too.

After Gus’s death, Sara lived alone in the apartment above her daughter, Susan.  She sold real estate for a short time and also worked as a cashier in a department store for a year or two, but mostly she seemed to enjoy being at home. She and her friends formed the “Fat Ladies Club,” which consisted of them going to each other’s homes to eat and play Bunco. She was very handy and could repair many things around the house and loved to paint and wallpaper. She gardened and canned until age 80, as well as baked and cooked. Whenever someone in the neighborhood died, Sara would bake hundreds of kolaches for the family. She was a very kind person, say her children, and she loved life, making it all the harder for them to place her in a nursing home at age 96 after she suffered a stroke. She is no longer able to speak, but her children speak for her, one of them always remaining by her side except to sleep at night, a beautiful testimony to a joyful life lived for others.

(Originally written: June 1996)

If you liked this true story about the past, check out Michelle’s historical fiction/mystery series, set in the 1930s in Chicago:

 

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Hated by Her Father Because of the Way She Looked

Zuza Gwozdek was born in Poland on March 16, 1908l to Przemo Dunajski and Wojciecha Jagoda, farmers just outside of Warsaw. Zuza was the third of eight children (Ula, Tosia, Zuza, Wanda, Olek, Miron, Stefania and Romana) and had the misfortune of looking almost exactly like Woujciecha’s mother, whom Przemo hated. By the time Zuza was three, Przemo could not stand the sight of her and, having other hungry mouths to feed anyway, sent Zuza away to a Catholic orphanage in Warsaw.

At the orphanage, Zuza received a sketchy education at best and was instead expected to work. When she finally turned eighteen in 1926, she was allowed to leave and “start my life,” as she puts it. Not knowing what to do, however, she decided to travel to another city where she had a friend, Renata, who had been in the orphanage with her. Renata welcomed Zuza with open arms and allowed her to stay with her. Not long after she moved in, however, their apartment was broken into while the girls were out for a walk, and all of Zuza’s few possessions were stolen. The robbery hit Zuza very hard, and she became depressed and withdrawn. Renata, in an attempt to cheer her up, decided to have a party and invited some friends over. It was then that Zuza was introduced to a young man by the name of Ludwik Gwozdek, who seemed very attracted to her.

Despite the party and the possibility of a romance, Zuza remained depressed. In fact, one day she found herself on a bridge overlooking the river near Renata’s flat. She contemplated jumping, but a voice told her “Don’t jump. Your life will be okay.” For Zuza it was a profound moment and the beginning of what she describes as her spiritual life. She felt overwhelmed that someone above was watching over her, that someone actually cared for her for the first time in her life. Zuza climbed down off the ledge and married Ludwik shortly thereafter.

The young couple at first lived with Ludwik’s family and tried to find work where they could, but the marriage, even then, was not a smooth one. When the war began and Germany invaded Poland, Zuza and Ludwik were separated and sent to different work camps. Zuza was forced to work in a factory until the war’s end.

In 1945, Zuza was released from the work camp. Both Renata and Ludwik were gone, as was his family, and Zuza didn’t know what to do. Alone and very ill, she decided to walk all the way back to her parents’ farm, hoping that they might still be there. Zuza was overjoyed to find that at least her parents were still alive, but she did not receive the happy welcome she had hoped for. Her father told her that she could stay at the farm if she could pay for her upkeep. The only thing she had of any value was a beautiful babushka, which she handed over to him to be sold. Her father, however, rather than selling it for money, instead gave the babushka to her sister, Tosia, as a gift.

Heartbroken yet again, Zuza left the farm and sought refuge from some neighbors. They allowed her to stay for a short time and then suggested she go to Warsaw and try to find work there. They gave her extra food and clothes and some cigarettes to sell to help get her started. Zuza eventually made it back to Warsaw and, through a strange turn of events, was reunited with her husband, Ludwik. At first Zuza was happy that he was still alive, but she soon began to regret it. Ludwik had changed during the war. He had once been loving and kind, but he was now short-tempered and even brutal. He frequently beat Zuza and “abused” her in other ways. He seemed unable to hold a job for any length of time, forcing the couple to move from city to city constantly, looking for work, towing their first child, Karol, along behind them. After thirteen years of this, they eventually settled down in Dansk and had another child, Ada. Zuza saved and saved until she had enough money to buy a sewing machine so that she could make extra money. She would also walk every morning to the countryside, buy cheap fruit and vegetables and then walk back and sell them in the city for a small profit.

Meanwhile, her marriage with Ludwik grew worse, and he became even more violent. One night, the fighting was so bad that the neighbors called the police. This incident, plus the fact that Karol and Ada were always nervous and fearful, pushed Zuza into leaving Ludwik. At first she was afraid that he would come after them, but he did not. At this point, Zuza had a growing reputation as a skilled seamstress. So between her work as a seamstress and working at the local orphanage, which was very dear to her heart given her own childhood, she was able to scrape out a meager existence.

Karol eventually married a woman named Maria and had a child, Leo, with her. Not long after Leo was born, Karol immigrated to America. He worked there for eight years to save up enough to send for Maria and Leo, as well as for Zuza and Ada. For a while they all lived together in an apartment in Chicago, but Karol and Maria started to have marital problems. Karol decided to move his little family to Texas for a fresh start, but Ada and Zuza remained in Chicago, where Zuza found work as a seamstress in a factory to support Ada and to put her through high school.

Ada eventually married, too, but moved to the south side to be near her husband’s family. Zuza lived alone for many years, then, until she eventually retired at age seventy. When she announced that she was quitting, her boss threw her a little party and reportedly told everyone that he was going to have to hire two people to replace her. Zuza is very proud of this and frequently repeats it. Even in retirement, Zuza continued to sew, often making clothes for her grandchildren. Her favorite thing to do was to watch TV and movies to observe the clothes the actors wore and would then try to imagine how she would go about making them.

Zuza lived independently until 1996, when she began to fall repeatedly. Karol was very worried about her, but he was sadly preoccupied with his wife’s diagnosis of cancer and impending death. Also concerned, Ada decided to have Zuza come and live with her.  It proved to be too difficult for Ada, however, as she spent fourteen years caring for her father-in-law before he passed away.  The thought of starting all over again as the primary caregiver for yet another elderly person was too much for Ada.  So, all things considered, Ada and Karol decided to put Zuza in a nursing home, though they were very weighed down by guilt.

Zuza, it turns out, has made a relatively smooth transition to her new home.  She is very alert and able to carry on conversations.  She enjoys the Polish food and music and talking to other residents, though she sometimes has bouts of melancholia. It is fitting, she says, that she has to start all over yet again. She feels that she has never really fit in anywhere and has spent most of her life moving. “I’ve lived among strangers all my life,” she says. “This isn’t so different.”

(Originally written: July 1996)

If you liked this true story about the past, check out Michelle’s historical fiction/mystery series, set in the 1930s in Chicago:

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