Michelle Cox's Blog, page 15

She Gave Her Two Sons to Her Sister

Sadie (2nd from right) and her sisters.

Sadie Riley was born on February 16, 1914 on a farm near Pittsburgh, Kansas to Lonnie Belanger and Jeannette Fenske.  Lonnie was a cattle farmer, and Jeanette cared for their six children: Fae, Alan, Della, Lila, Elbert and Sadie, all of whom lived into adulthood.

Sadie graduated from Crawford Community High School and got a job in retail shortly after.  She didn’t like it, however, and started waitressing instead.  At some point she was introduced to Emil Riley, who was a few years older than her.  Emil worked as a dental technician whose primary job was to make false teeth.  After dating for a couple of years, Emil and Sadie got married and had a child, Irvin.

By this time, most of Sadie’s siblings had left Kansas for Chicago, so Emil and Sadie decided to follow.  Emil found work again as a dental technician, and Sadie had another child, Robert.  Soon after, however, the two began to argue more frequently.  Irvin, who was five at the time, remembers his parents fighting constantly.  It is not a period of her life that Sadie likes to discuss, only saying that in the end, she and Emil decided to divorce.  Emil went back to Kansas and, according to Sadie, never sent “a penny” for her and the boys.

Sadie tried to provide for herself and her sons by going back to waitressing, but she could never make enough to pay the rent.  Irvin says that they lived a nomadic life, always moving from apartment to apartment.   Finally, Sadie had no choice but to ask her sister, Della, who was living on Oakley Avenue if she would take Irvin and Robert to live with her and her husband and children.  Della agreed, and though it was only supposed to be temporary, the boys stayed there for the next eight years.

Irvin says that he didn’t see much of his mom in those eight years and still isn’t sure what she was doing all that time.  “My aunt always told us she was working.”  When Sadie did finally show up to take the boys back to live with her, having apparently finally gotten a stable apartment and job, the boys didn’t want to go.  “I felt terrible,” Robert says.  “Aunt Della was more like our mother by that point.  I was only four when I went to live with her and Uncle Russ, and we had also grown very close to our cousins.  So I became very angry and rebellious.”

Irvin was almost sixteen when the two brothers moved back in with Sadie.  He finished high school and then joined the army, leaving Robert there alone.  “I got into a lot of trouble, you could say,” he says.  “I was arrested several times and eventually sent to a juvenile home for boys downstate.”  When he was eighteen, he joined the army just as Irvin had done.  “That sure straightened me out,” he says.  Neither of them have seen their father, Emil, since the day he walked out.

Irvin and Robert both say that Sadie has always been a very private, independent woman.  She did not have a lot of hobbies besides watching game shows and Days of Our Lives.  At one point, Irvin seems to remember that she liked to knit, “but she hasn’t done that in years.  She worked as a waitress for over forty years at various restaurants around the city.”

After she retired, Irvin and Robert arranged for her to move into the Senate Apartments on Pulaski, hoping she would meet people and take up some hobbies.  Their plan apparently backfired, however, and Sadie became even more reclusive than before.  In fact, they say, “she turned into a hypochondriac” and started going from doctor to doctor insisting that there was something wrong with her.  She ran up some very large medical bills doing this, which Irvin and Robert were then obliged to pay.

After paying off her many debts, Irvin and Robert decided  to keep closer tabs on their mother and took turns going to check on her, giving her money and stocking her apartment with food.  When the other brother would come just a week later, however, he would be shocked to find all of the money and the food gone.  At first they suspected theft, but finally they figured out that Sadie had gotten into the habit of giving all of the food and money away and would then forget that she had done so.  It was a situation they did not know how to deal with.  Over time, her memory only got worse.

When she recently had to go into the hospital for a colostomy, however, it seemed the perfect time to admit her to a nursing home.  So far, Sadie is recovering well from her surgery and is adjusting to her new home.  She is a pleasant woman and is very cooperative in her own care.  She enjoys bingo and watching TV with other residents, though she frequently forgets where she is and asks to go home.  Irvin and Robert, neither of whom married, continue to periodically visit and are happy that she is finally in a “safe place.”

(Originally written: January 1995)

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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From Czechoslovakia to America and Back Again – The Long Strange Tale of Clement Rybar

Clement Rybar was born on February 6, 1915 in Slovakia to Jonas Rybar and Alena Kriz.  Jonas owned a substantial farm, and even though he and Alena had seven children to help, they still needed to hire extra workers to get all of the work done.  Clement went to school until about the six grade, enough to learn to read and write, and then quit.  He helped his father on the farm for a number of years before serving in the Slovak army for four years.  When he was eventually released, he began working as a mechanic, a skill he had learned in the army, in the town of Bratislava, which was much bigger than the village he had grown up near.

He worked long hours and did not have time for hobbies.  On his one day off a week, Sunday, he enjoyed walking in the city’s many parks.  It was on one of these walks, that Clement one day spotted a lovely young woman sitting on a bench.  Captivated, he got up the courage to go over and introduce himself.  The young woman’s name was Renata Strnad, and she agreed to walk with him the following week.  The two of them began meeting regularly each Sunday for many months until Clement one day took her hand and asked her to marry him.  Renata said yes, and after a short engagement, they married.

Unfortunately, Clement and Renata did not have a very happy marriage, though Clement does not say why.  They eventually divorced despite having four children.  Clement does not elaborate on the years following his divorce except to say that in 1969, he could no longer stand living under a Communist government and decided to immigrate to America.  He ended up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he found work in a restaurant.  Soon after, he found a different job in a clothing factory, where he worked for three years before getting a job as a milling operator.  He says he had a large group of friends and that he enjoyed dancing, reading, and going out to hear music.  He says that he can speak Slovakian, Serbian, Russian, and Polish and that he has traveled to every country in Europe, hence his ability to make friends easily.

Clement eventually met and married a new woman, Nancy Klimich, whom he met through friends.  After only a few years, however, she tragically died in a car accident, spiraling Clement into grief.  Shortly after her death, Clement was also involved in an accident at work, which resulted in him losing two fingers.  He eventually recovered, but he was let go because he could no longer adequately perform his job.  Not wanting to give up working, he started his own remodeling business and actually became quite successful at it.

Meanwhile, Clement says he was very lonely and craved a wife.  “I’m no Robinson Crusoe,” he said.  “I don’t like to be alone.  I like to be with people; I crave companionship.”  Not being able to find anyone in Ohio, he started taking out “inter-country personal ads” to try to find a wife and says he went to Yugoslavia over twenty times to meet potential women.  Unfortunately, they all turned out to be impoverished, homeless or worse.  Besides this desire for companionship, however, Clement says he was anxious to find someone to marry so that he could leave his assets to a new wife instead of everything going to his first wife, whom he assumed was still living somewhere in Slovakia.  He resolved at the time that if he couldn’t find anyone to leave his money to, he would give it all to the Red Cross rather than have his first wife and his children “snatch it up.”

Clement’s situation changed, however, in 1989 with the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia.  After that, Clement says that the Czech government began sending out propaganda to all the ex-pats, inviting them to come back to Czechoslovakia and start over.  It was enough to convince Clement, and he sold everything he owned here and moved back to Czechoslovakia.  There he invested the equivalent of 120,000 US dollars in a building company that promised to build him a brand new house on a large tract of land.  Clement waited for over six years for work to begin on his house.  Finally, fed up and desperate, he took them to court.  Shortly after the case began, however, he says he was attacked by two men while walking down the street.  He was beaten and put on a plane bound for Chicago.  He has no proof, but he is convinced the attack was somehow connected to the building company that he was attempting to sue and is sure that these same people have meanwhile confiscated his property and money.

After landing at O’Hare, agitated, beaten, and distraught, he was taken to a hospital and diagnosed with depression and “abnormal behavior.”  Clement says he “went a little wild” because no one could understand what he was saying.  He was eventually transferred to a nursing home, which he says he hated because it was dirty and all of the residents were old and sick.  Clement demanded that they allow him to go back to Ohio, saying that he had many friends there who would “take him in.”  The administrator of the nursing home reports that he was able to contact some of these people, though most were deceased.  The ones that he did manage to find, however, were either too ill themselves to care for Clement or simply unwilling to take him in.  Finally, unable to deal with Clement’s demands and horrible mood swings, the nursing home sent him back to the hospital.  The hospital discharge staff then sent him to a different nursing home, this one with a high number of Czech residents and staff, in hopes that Clement would be happier.

Clement does indeed seem to be content and is making a very smooth transition to his current facility.  He has, for the most part, given up the notion of going back to live in Ohio, but he tells the same story over and over to anyone who will listen about how he was cheated and robbed in Czechoslovakia.   He is now asking the staff to contact the Czech Daily Herald to come and interview him about what happened in the hopes that someone out there in the Czech community will be able to help him get his money back.

Meanwhile, he enjoys the food and activities at the home and especially enjoys being around the other residents.  He is almost never to be found in his room and is always out doing something.  Clement appears to be alert and aware, but it is impossible to determine how much of his story is fact or fiction.  The administrator of the previous nursing home also reports that not only did he spend many months trying to contact Clement’s friends in Ohio, but he likewise attempted to investigate the mysterious building company in Czechoslovakia, the companies Clement worked for in Ohio, his first wife and children in Slovakia, and any remains of his second wife’s family.  Oddly, he was not able to trace any part of Clement’s supposed history.  At one point, Clement told the staff of his current nursing home that he and Renata never had any children and that she died of cancer nine years into their marriage.  Later, he retracted that story and sad that she and his four children are alive and well in Slovakia.

Except for the distress he seems to experience when telling his same story over and over, Clement seems to be happy and content.

(Originally written: April 1996)

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“Why Get Upset About the Past If You Can’t Change It?”

Honza Ruzicka was born on October 22, 1904 in Chicago to Cyril Ruzicka and Lenka Vesely.  Cyril was born in a little village outside of Prague and came to America as a young man to escape being drafted.  He had an older brother living in the Pilsen area of Chicago, so he went to stay with him and quickly found work as a tailor.  The shop in which he worked catered to people in uniform, such as policemen, postal workers, etc.  At some point, he was introduced to Lenka Vesely, who had been born in Chicago of Bohemian immigrants.  Cyril and Lenka eventually married and had seven children: five boys and two girls, with Honza falling somewhere in the middle.

Honza graduated from Harrison Tech High School at 24th and Sacramento and got a job the following day as a draftsman.  Honza was a baseball fanatic and played shortstop on the Crawford Avenue baseball team for years.  He also loved to dance and used to go to a dance hall on Cermak Road in Cicero every weekend, and sometimes even on Wednesdays if they had a good band on.  It was at this dance hall that Honza met Marie Moran.  Marie worked as a secretary at a bank in Cicero, and her Bohemian friends at work finally succeeded one night in getting her to come to the dance hall with them.  They knew Honza from the neighborhood and, at his urging, introduced him to Marie.  Honza then asked her to dance, though he concluded right away that she was not a very good dancer.  Despite this flaw, he still asked her out on a date at the end of the night.

Soon Honza and Marie began seriously courting, and every Sunday Honza would go to Marie’s to play cards with her sisters and their husbands.  At the time, he was driving an early model Ford car, but Marie was embarrassed by this and made him park it on a side street and walk to her house instead, as she thought this was more respectable.  The two of them married in 1929 and lived with Marie’s mother for about a year until they got their own place.  Eventually, they bought a home in Cicero.

Unfortunately, Honza and Marie were not happy together almost from the get go.  Honza says they fought constantly and that they were soon not attracted to each other anymore.  Neither of them believed in divorce, however, so they decided to make the best of it.  Their first child, a girl, was stillborn.  A year later, Marie gave birth to a boy, Leo, who would be their only child.  Coming from a big family, Marie did not want a lot of children, and Honza agreed.  When Leo was old enough to go to school, Marie went back to work as a meat buyer’s assistant.  Honza says that it was a very good position in that it was a government job and came with lots of benefits.  Marie worked there for over thirty years.

Honza continued working as a draftsman until he retired at age 65.  Later in life, he took up the hobby of photography.  He doesn’t do much with it now, he says, but avidly reads the newspaper and enjoys watching PBS.  He and Marie did not have much in common and lived separate lives under one roof.  “Marie had her friends,” Honza says, “and I had mine.”  They tried to do things together with Leo, but they weren’t always successful.  Most events ended up in an argument, Honza says, which “probably wasn’t good for the kid.”

Apparently anxious to get out of the house, Leo joined the army at eighteen and fought in WW2.  He survived, but upon being discharged, he did not go back to Chicago, but instead moved to California where he eventually got married and had a family.  Honza and Marie made one trip out to California to see the grandchildren when they were very little, but they never went back for another visit.  “We were never very close,” Honza says.  Sadly, Leo died five years ago from a heart attack, a fact which does not seem to cause Honza much sadness.  “He had his own life,” he says.

Just after Leo passed away, Marie was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  Honza was forced to care for her until it got to be too much, and he then put her in a nursing home.  She has been there the past three years and very recently passed away.  Just after the funeral, Honza developed pneumonia and was admitted to the hospital for several weeks.  Having no one at home to care for him, he was discharged to a nursing home to fully recover.  He is determined to go back home, however, as soon as he is strong enough and is already setting up arrangements for a caregiver to come in and help him in his home on a regular basis.

Since he believes that his stay at the nursing home will be temporary, he has a very good attitude about his placement and spends much of his time wandering among the other residents and especially enjoys talking to the women.  He is very alert and intelligent, though he sometimes tells fantastical stories that can’t possibly be true.  For example, he claims to have met and stayed at Guy Lombardo’s house, that he once made the Cubs draft but because of a broken leg, was benched all year, or that he once stopped an armed robber from robbing a bank.  It is difficult to know whether Honza really believes these things or if he just likes to be entertaining.  He is very aware of his surroundings and can interact well with staff and residents and seems very capable of making his own decisions.

When asked about Marie or Leo, Honza does not show any sadness or emotion of any kind.  His only comment is: “Why get upset about the past if you can’t change it?”

(Originally written: March 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 “Why Get Upset About the Past If You Can’t Change It?” appeared first on Michelle Cox Author.

“A Real Man of Mystery!”

Brogan Cullen was born on October 25, 1921 in Cleveland, Ohio to Angus and Cathleen Cullen.  Not much is known about Brogan’s childhood.  It is thought that Angus and Cathleen were Irish immigrants and that Angus found work in Cleveland as a factory worker.  Cathleen cared for their three children: Brogan, Lily and Liam.  Apparently, however, Angus was an alcoholic and frequently beat Cathleen.  When he began beating the children, too, Cathleen divorced him.  She struggled to care for the three children by working as a housecleaner, which forced her to leave the kids alone most of the time.  As the oldest, it was Brogan’s job to care for them, though he was only seven at the time.

When World War II broke out, both Brogan and Liam left to join the army.  Though Brogan had not had much formal schooling, he was apparently recognized for his intelligence and was trained to do engineering work by the army.  When the war ended, Liam returned to Ohio to live near his mother and sister, but Brogan headed off for Chicago.

Brogan found steady work as an engineering assistant, but his true passion was in the arts.  He loved to paint and also taught himself how to play trumpet.  For a while he even played in a band that performed in small venues around the north side.  When that fizzled out, he got another side  job as a professional photographer.

Brogan never married.  He apparently said at one time that his parents’ divorce was so painful and traumatic that he never wanted to go through anything like that ever again.

Though a self-professed introvert, Brogan could and often did socialize, but he most enjoyed being on his own at home, painting or “tinkering” with various projects.  Often he would voluntarily fix things in the building where he lived on Farwell Avenue, so much so that he was eventually hired by the owner to be the building’s “manager,” a job he really enjoyed.

As the years went on, he retired from his engineering job and became even more reclusive.  Meanwhile, it became harder and harder for him to do the work of the building manager.  When residents began complaining to the owner that things weren’t getting fixed, the owner hired a new man, Sam Sanchez, to step in.

Sam befriended Brogan and often stopped to check in on him, often bringing him groceries and other small things.  Sam says that he was amazed the first time he went to his apartment and saw his huge collection of books.  Sam sometimes got Brogan to tell him stories about the war or about growing up in Ohio, but mostly Brogan was silent about his early life.  “He was a real man of mystery!” Sam says.

Sam did notice, however, that Brogan often seemed sad about the fact that he hadn’t seen his family in over fifty years.  More than once, Sam offered to drive him to Ohio to see his family, but each time, Brogan would politely decline.  Sam says he has no idea if they are even still alive.

One day just about a month ago, Sam stopped in to check on Brogan and found him gone.  After searching for him for several hours, he decided to call the police and filed a missing person’s report.  The police eventually found Brogan wandering in the neighborhood, where he had apparently been sleeping on a bench for two nights.  He was taken to the hospital and was diagnosed with dementia, hydrocephalus, and a gastrointestinal disorder.  He was eventually released to a nursing home, with Sam helping to move his things out of the apartment he had been in for thirty-seven years.

Brogan seems to be making a relatively smooth transition, though he is often confused.  At times he claims that he has been a resident of the home for over thirty years.  He likes to stay in his room alone and does not like interacting with the other residents.  Staff are encouraging him to come out to join various activities, but he is very stubborn.  He does still recognize Sam when he visits, though he sometimes sadly calls him Liam.

(Originally written: June 1995)

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 “A Real Man of Mystery!” appeared first on Michelle Cox Author.

“The Cat Helped Me Up”

Fatemah Farhadi was born in a small village in Persia on May 5, 1918 to Arman and Delara Farhadi. Arman was a farmer, and Delara cared for their only child, Fatemah. Fatemah attended high school and then got a job as a seamstress. When she was twenty-one, her father arranged for her to marry her cousin, Saam, who worked as a clerk. Not much is known about their marriage. Their first child, Sara, died when she was just two years old. Several years after that, they had a son, Roshan.

After attending high school, Roshan decided to immigrate to the United States, where he made his way to Chicago and married a woman by the name of Pamela Lloyd. When Fatemah’s husband, Saam, passed away in the 1960’s, she decided that she would also go to America to be near Roshan and persuaded a great aunt to come with her. Fatemah and her aunt lived together in an apartment on Lunt, and Fatemah got a job as a seamstress. Later, she worked for Montgomery Ward in the catalog department. Her great aunt died after only a few years of being in the United States, but Fatemah continued to live in the apartment on her own. She often spent time with Roshan and Pamela and their two children, David and Miriam, but she and Roshan had an “on again, off again” type of relationship. Roshan suffered from substance abuse and eventually died young at age forty-nine.

According to David, Fatemah’s grandson, his grandmother has always been very much “a loner.” He says that she rarely visited them, especially after Roshan died, and does not have many friends. She was always quiet and preferred her own company, David says, and has never seemed completely happy. As far as he knows, she does not, or never has had, any hobbies. He says that Iranian people of that generation did not have hobbies or do things for “entertainment,” such as go to the movies or travel. “They went to work and came home to their families, that was all,” he adds.

In the early 1990s, Fatemah was hospitalized with pneumonia, and it was suggested by her doctor that she not go back to her apartment and live on her own. The family thought it was wise advice because they had begun to notice that she was getting forgetful. After Roshan passed away, Pamela bought a three-flat on Roscoe and lived in the first floor apartment. David lived on the second floor, and Miriam on the third. So when Fatemah was released from the hospital after her pneumonia, she came to live with the family on Roscoe, bouncing between the apartments, depending on who was home.

In 1994, however, Pamela decided to sell the building, and David bought his own building closer to downtown and took Fatemah to live with him. Fatemah has significantly declined in these last two years, however, David says, both mentally and physically. When David would come home from work each day, his grandmother would always report that she had fallen while he was away. David was unsure whether or not to believe her because she never had any injuries and would say things like “the cat helped me up” or something equally strange. Eventually, however, he did witness her fall and took her to the hospital, especially because she had also begun screaming and crying out at night. Upon examining her, the hospital psychiatrist recommended that she be placed in a nursing home.

This was an extremely hard decision for David to make, as he says this is not how traditional Iran culture works. However, he admits that the current situation of having her live with him is not good for her either. Never very close to Fatemah, Pamela has no interest in having her mother-in-law live with her at this point and was against her living with David in the first place. Likewise, Miriam is not of much help, having since married and moved to Dubuque, Iowa. Thus, David feels extremely guilty about placing her in a nursing home, but he doesn’t know what to do. Even if she didn’t need help physically, she was becoming increasingly confused at home with him, lapsing into an ancient version of Farsi or abruptly switching from old Farsi to new Farsi, forgetting that David doesn’t understand the older version. He is hoping that she will be able to adjust to life here and that she might actually enjoy it.

For her part, however, Fatemah is confused and disoriented. She screams frequently and is often combative. Even when she is relatively calm, she appears worried and anxious. She is able to understand some English, but seems miserable. She does not participate in any activities, but waits for David to visit. When he does come, however, she spends most of the time with him either screaming or crying.

(Originally written: June 7, 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 “The Cat Helped Me Up” appeared first on Michelle Cox Author.

A Family Divided

Glen Mayer was born on September 15, 1932 in Chicago to Adolf Mayer and Elizabeth Bojars.  It is thought that Adolf was a German immigrant and that Elizabeth may have been from Latvia.  They apparently met in Chicago and married, Adolf working as a butcher, and Elizabeth caring for their three children: Glen, Lena and Mae.

Glen graduated from high school and even attended college for two years.  He then got a job working for the telephone company and also worked sometimes in his father’s butcher shop.  He loved outdoor activities, such as bike riding and fishing, and enjoyed playing board games.  He was always on the hyper, nervous side and loved to always be busy doing something.  When he was about thirty years old, he went to a dance with friends and was introduced to Stella Winters.  The two hit it off and began dating.  They married about a year later and eventually had two children: Don and Linda.

The story is not clear, but, apparently, when Don and Linda were very small, Glen got into an argument with his sisters, after which he cut off all contact with his family from that point on, including his parents.  Thus, Don and Linda grew up never knowing their grandparents, uncles, aunts or cousins on that side of the family.  Nor did they know Stella’s side of the family in the early days, who mostly lived in Scotland.

Sadly, Glen and Stella eventually divorced, though it is unclear why.  Stella took Don and Linda and returned to her family in Scotland.  Glen was left alone in their house and tried to focus on work as a sort of solace.  Linda says that her dad never really understood what had happened to him.  Don and Linda were sent to live with him every summer.  Linda relates that Glen always seemed to look forward to them coming and tried his best to make the summer special for them.

When Linda was sixteen, she came to live with Glen permanently, as his health had begun to seriously decline, and she wanted to care for him.  He was a heavy smoker and had neglected his health after the divorce and consequently had high blood pressure.  In the early 1980’s, Glen had a stroke and then had to have triple bypass surgery.  He was also diagnosed with diabetes and needed constant help in managing it.  Thus, Linda, who was living with him and was nineteen at the time, quit her job to become his full-time caretaker.

Linda has cared for her dad all these years and, finally, in 1993, when he had two more strokes, she decided to put him in a nursing home because he had become confused and agitated.  It was at that point that Glen’s sisters, Lena and Mae, reappeared in his life.  Linda says she doesn’t like to speculate, but wonders if the reason has something to do with his bank account.

Linda says that at first she was very happy to meet her aunts, but her new relationship with them quickly soured when they became very accusatory and antagonistic toward her.  They attempted, she says, to get control of Glen and even went so far as to try to check him out of the nursing home without Linda’s knowledge.  When Linda found out about this, she decided to seek legal guardianship of her father.  Her aunts accused her of neglecting and starving him and chastised her for putting him in a nursing home instead of caring for him at home.  Eventually, despite her aunts’ best efforts to the contrary, the court awarded Linda the guardianship.  Unhappy herself with the care he was receiving at the nursing home and perhaps feeling a little guilty, Linda decided to move Glen to what she hopes will be a better nursing home.  Likewise, she again attempted a reconciliation with her aunts and was deeply hurt by their accusations that if she had only cared for him better at home, he wouldn’t have ended up in a nursing home in the first place.  They blame her for his current bedsores and claim that he is “starved and underfed.”

The staff have attempted to explain the situation to Glen’s sisters, especially reminding them of his dietary restrictions due to his diabetes.  His sisters refuse to believe that he actually has diabetes and claim that his doctor is “full of it.”  The staff repeatedly find inappropriate food that they have smuggled in and hidden under his mattress and around the room.

Meanwhile, Linda tries not to visit on the days she suspects her aunts might be there.  She has decided to wash her hands of them, just as her father did so many years ago.  She was determined to mend the family rift, and she feels disappointed that she wasn’t able to.  “But what can I do?” she asks.  “They’re both crazy!”  She wishes she knew more about what happened to have caused her father to break away from his family in the first place.  She says that she has asked her mother about it many times over the years, but that Stella has always claimed not to really know.

Interestingly enough, Linda has recently contacted Stella, who has decided to come from Scotland to try to help support Linda in her efforts.  Glen, meanwhile, remains confused and agitated.  He has trouble with comprehension and expression and frequently cries out, especially at night.  It is a constant source of worry and grief to Linda that her visits seem to bring him no relief or comfort.

(Originally written: May 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 A Family Divided appeared first on Michelle Cox Author.

They Met at the Roller Rink in Milwaukee

Roger Fulton was born on June 24, 1915 in Chicago to William Fulton and Elizabeth Muller.  William was an immigrant from England, and Elizabeth was Canadian, though it is thought she was of Swiss descent.  It is unknown what type of work William did, but he was reportedly “always sick” and died of pneumonia in 1955.  Elizabeth took care of him and Roger, their only child, and worked as a “jogger,” at a printing house.  Oddly, she died of pneumonia, too, in 1982.

Roger went to school until the tenth grade before he quit to get a job.  He eventually became an industrial photographer at Keogh Printing.  He enjoyed stamp collecting and reading, but his main love was roller skating.  He joined a roller skating club that travelled to different skating rinks in different cities and towns.  It was at a rink in Milwaukee that he met his wife, Fern Dubala.  Even though he was an experienced skater, Roger somehow fell that night, and, as it happened, he went down right in front of Fern Dubala and her friend.  It was Fern that helped him up, and she and Roger spent the rest of the night skating and talking.  Fern, Roger discovered, was of Czech descent and had been born in Milwaukee in 1918.  She had gone to school until the eighth grade and worked as a claims clerk for the Social Security Department.  At the end of the night, Roger didn’t want to say goodbye, but he had no choice but to return to Chicago on the bus with his roller skating club.  Before he left, however, he got a promise from Fern to keep in touch via letters.

Fern kept her promise, and the two of them spent the next year writing letters and getting to know each other.  Twice in that year, Roger took a bus back up to Milwaukee to visit Fern.  The first time he visited, they went on a date to the roller rink where they had met, and the second time, he met Fern’s parents and privately asked Fern’s father for permission to marry his daughter.  When Mr. Dubala said yes, Roger proposed to Fern, and she happily agreed.  They had their wedding six months later in Milwaukee at St. Stanislaus and the reception in the church hall.  From there, they took a honeymoon to Des Moines, where Roger had some cousins, and then went to Chicago to live.

For a while they lived with Roger’s mother, but they eventually bought their own house on Dayton Street.  Roger continued working at Keogh Printing his whole life, and Fern worked as a secretary until she got pregnant, at which point she quit to stay home.  She and Roger had one daughter, Audrey, who now lives in San Francisco with her own family.  Fern says that she and Roger wanted more children, but none came along, which is just as well, Fern states, because Roger developed a variety of serious health problems over the years.  In fact, he had to retire early in 1962 after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

After Roger’s retirement and diagnosis of MS, Fern became his main caregiver, just as Roger’s mother had cared for his father all those years.  “I should have known what I was getting into,” Fern says.  Indeed, Roger’s list of ailments is long and includes diabetes, prostate cancer and possibly dementia.  He also had a stroke in the early 1990s, which left him unable to walk without a walker.  When he recently fell, he was hospitalized for about a week.  It was then that his doctor suggested to Fern that perhaps he should be discharged to a nursing home instead of going home.  Fern says that she was at first reluctant to admit him to a facility, saying that she could care for him at home, but when the doctor told her that he thought she might have a stroke at any time due to the stress she has been under in caring for Roger all these years, she eventually agreed.

Roger is very mild-mannered and soft spoken and seems very dependent, both physically and emotionally on Fern.  He is quiet and withdrawn.  Though he will politely answer questions, he does not elaborate.  He says he does not want to live in a nursing home, but understands why it must be so.  Several times he cried during the admission process.  Fern, in her own way, also seems to be having a hard time, though she has remained very matter-of-fact and unemotional through the process.  She has informed Audrey and has asked her to come out to help, but Audrey is apparently afraid of flying and wants to wait for a couple of months before driving across the country.  Meanwhile, neither Roger nor Fern have revealed a lot about their life together.  Fern says they had a happy marriage, but that they didn’t socialize much or travel because of all of Roger’s illnesses.  She seems weary and despondent herself, saying that perhaps she should come and live at the nursing home, too.  She has no hobbies, she says, and no friends and doesn’t know what she will do without Roger at home.

(Originally written: September 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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“She Played Me For a Fool”

Beatrice “Bea” Weber was born on February 12, 1903 in Chicago to Francis Moran and Sarah O’Toole.  Both Francis and Sarah were born in Dublin, Ireland, where Francis worked as a butcher and Sarah stayed home and cared for their two sons, Herman and Daniel.  When Daniel was just a baby, Francis and Sarah decided to immigrate to America, hoping for a better life.  They made their way to Chicago and settled in an apartment on Halsted on the south side and there had two more children, Bea and Nellie.

Bea attended elementary school and was apparently very athletic.  She loved to swim and also loved to play basketball, which was unusual for a girl at the time.  When she graduated from eighth grade, she got a job at Andies Candies, where she worked for a couple of years before getting a job as a bank clerk at Citizens State Bank, a job she kept until she retired at age sixty-eight.

At some point, she met a young man by the name of Peter Weber, who had also been born in Chicago, though his parents had emigrated from Germany.  Peter worked as a sales rep for Phillips 66.  After they were married, they got an apartment on the north side on Glenwood, but moved to various apartments around the city and Park Ridge until they eventually bought a house on Pratt Avenue.

Bea and Peter never had any children, so they both continued working at their respective jobs and joined many clubs and organizations, such as the Elks and the Rotary.  Likewise, they were on various bowling leagues for many years.  Bea even convinced Peter to join the couples softball team at Citizens Bank, though he was reluctant to do so, not being as fond of sports as Bea was.  They also traveled often, especially with Peter’s job, and visited almost every state in the country, including Puerto Rico.

Apparently, Peter was a very kind, subservient man with a very nervous disposition.  He developed peptic ulcers and then was diagnosed with prostate cancer and some sort of blood condition.  He died eventually of pneumonia in 1984.  Following Peter’s death, Bea lived alone for many years in the house on Pratt Avenue.

As Bea aged, she became less and less social and more and more dependent on her nephew, Lou, and his wife, Mary.  Lou was Bea’s sister, Nellie’s, only son, and Bea always had a soft spot for him, especially as she never had children of her own.  At first, Lou says, he and Mary were happy to help out, stopping over a couple of times a week to clean or to take her out for errands, but when Bea began to repeatedly call them in the middle of the night for various reasons, it started to become a strain.

The first time Bea called them in the middle of the night, it was wintertime.  Bea telephoned Lou, crying, saying that her gas and electricity were off and could they come over and help her, as she was very cold.  Lou and Mary rushed over, only to find Bea sitting in the kitchen, waiting for them with a pot of coffee made, the gas and electricity working perfectly.  Her explanation to them was that the electricity had miraculously come back on just before they had arrived.  Lou says that his Aunt Bea “pulled this stunt,” or similar ones, many times.

Eventually, Lou and Mary became less willing to dash over and “rescue” Bea from false alarms, so Bea apparently started disconnecting everything herself.  In the summer months, this would cause the food in the fridge to go bad, which was infuriating to Lou and Mary, on top of everything else, because they were the ones that had gotten the groceries for her and paid for them!  Even so, they warned Bea that if the power was off—for whatever reason—that she should not eat any of the food in the fridge in case it had spoiled.  Inevitably, however, when Bea would call to say that nothing in the apartment was working, causing them to reluctantly go over to reconnect everything, they would find Bea calmly sitting in the kitchen eating the spoiled food.  “It was almost as if she did it to spite us,” Lou says, as any other time, she refused to eat anything that wasn’t a dessert.  “She basically lived on sugar,” he says.

When Lou and Mary stopped “falling for her shenanigans,” as Lou began to call them, she “thought up a new tactic.”  She began calling them in the middle of the night to come over and cut the grass.  When they refused to, they would get calls from the neighbors, saying that Bess herself was outside cutting the grass at night and could they come over and stop her, as she was waking up the neighborhood.  After this happened six nights in a row, Lou reached the “end of my rope.”  She had also stopped doing any cleaning in the house and refused to take a bath or see a doctor, for any reason.  Lou says he tried to reason with her many times, but she had a very short temper and would scream and yell at him and vehemently deny everything.  “All her life, she was a mean, selfish, stubborn, manipulative woman,” Lou says.  “I don’t know how Uncle Peter put up with her for so long.”

Lou and Mary tried to talk to her about going into a nursing home, but she refused to even discuss it and screamed at them.  As her Power of Attorney, however, Lou decided to finally call the Department of Aging, as he didn’t know what else to do.  They sent someone to Bea’s house on several different occasions and eventually determined that Bea would indeed be better off in a home.  Apparently, Bea willingly went with two representatives from the Department of Aging to Bethany Methodist Hospital, where she was admitted to the psychiatric ward for twenty-one days and diagnosed with dementia.  She quickly became a favorite of the staff, who reported her as being a very sweet woman, which infuriated Lou, who claimed it was “all an act” and that she had “played him for a fool for years.”

Bea has recently been discharged to a nursing home and seems very confused and disoriented.  She does not seem to comprehend where she is and is concerned that Peter is at home alone, waiting for her.  On the other hand, she has expressed interest in many of the home’s activities, especially the Resident Council.  Likewise, she has offered to help in any way she can, saying that her two talents are handwriting and sewing, if the staff has any need of those.  So far, she has exhibited no problem behaviors.  Lou and Mary, however, who are currently visiting daily, are more leary and seem scarred by their long ordeal with Bea.  They repeatedly warn the staff not to be fooled.  “It’s just the calm before the storm,” Lou says sadly.  “She’ll soon be up to all her old tricks.”

(Originally written: October 1993)

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She Worked the Walgreens Cafe Counter For Over 20 Years

Ula Wojcik was born on October 24, 1906 in Indianapolis to Samuel Szymanski and Wislawa Mazur, both of who had immigrated to the United States in 1903 from Poland.  Wislawa had been married before, but her husband died young, leaving her with two little girls, Teresa and Stefania.  Not long after her husband’s death, Wislawa met and married Samuel Szymanski, who persuaded her to go to America and start a new life.  Wislawa was reluctant to bring her little girls to what she believed to be a wild and scary place, so she left them with her mother.

The couple somehow made their way to Indianapolis, where Samuel found work in a factory, and Wislawa cleaned offices at night.  They eventually had two children: a daughter, Ula, and then a son, Mariusz, two years later.  When the children were four and two years old, respectively, Samuel and Wislawa decided to move back to Poland, though no one in the family is exactly sure why.  Once back in Poland, Ula attended school for a few years before quitting to get a job.  Life was very hard for the family, and when Ula was in her twenties, she decided to return to the United States on her own.

Ula made her way to Chicago, where she found work in a factory.  After only being in Chicago a short time, she met a man by the name of Oskar Wojcik at a dance.  Oskar was also a Polish immigrant and worked as a house painter.  Though he was seventeen years Ulan’s senior, he asked her to dance and then asked to walk her home.  They began dating, then, and eventually got married.  Ula continued working at the factory until their first child, Barbara, came along, after which Ula quit her job to stay home.  Another baby, Thomas, followed soon after.

Shortly after Thomas’s birth, however, Oskar died suddenly of a brain tumor.  They had been married for only a little over two years.  Ula was left alone in a still-strange country with two little children and unable to speak English very well.  She considered returning to Poland, but she knew life there would be even worse, so she instead looked for a job.  She began bussing tables and working in the kitchen of a little café near their apartment.  When it eventually went out of business during the depression, she managed to get a job doing the same thing at Walgreens, where she worked behind the café counter for over twenty years, learning many of the customers by sight.

While she was working, she left Barbara and Thomas with her landlady, who became a good friend to her.  In this way, Ula somehow managed to scrape by and raise Barbara and Thomas on her own.  She never wanted to marry again, she says.  Oskar was the love of her life, and she never entertained being with another man.  Ula lived in the same apartment on Harding for just over twenty-seven years until the landlady died and the new owners of the building told Ula that she had to get out.  At that point, Barbara was married and living in a bungalow on Sacramento, so Ula went to live with her and her husband, John.  Barbara and John could never have children, so when John died of cancer at age sixty-four, Ula and Barbara were left alone.  This might not have been such a bad situation except that Barbara was having some serious health problems herself and could not really take care of Ula, who was eighty-one at the time.

Ula’s son, Thomas, and his wife, Carol, then offered their house to Barbara and Ula.  Tom and Carol’s three children had already left the house, so Ula and Barbara moved into the kids’ old rooms.  Apparently, it was a situation that suited everyone until just recently when Ula has begun to be more and more confused.  The family describes her as being “in her own world” most of the time now and often speaks to them as if they were all living in Poland.  She frequently asks for her parents and siblings, all of whom have long since passed away, except Mariusz.  Her daughter, Barbara, says that they would have been able to handle Ula’s confusion, but she has fallen twice now, and they are worried it will happen again with potentially more serious outcomes.  She has also been leaving the burners of the stove on and has been hoarding scraps of food and hiding them under her mattress.

So it was with great agony that Barbara and Thomas decided to admit Ula to a nursing home.  Barbara and Carol assisted her in the move, which went surprisingly well.  Ula seems to welcome the chance to speak Polish with the other residents, though she does not always seem fully aware of where she is.  Barbara reports that her mother was able to speak English pretty well from her years working at Walgreens, but in her older age, she has oddly lost this ability.  She seems to still understand English, but has a hard time speaking it.  Though she is at times nervous and agitated, Ula is overall making a smooth transition and enjoys doing embroidery and attending bingo and morning mass.  She was a very active member in her parish, St. Mary of the Angels, where she was at one time a part of the Rosary Sodality.

Barbara and Thomas visit her frequently.  They still feel guilty, they say, about putting their mother in a nursing home when she did so much for them, but they feel that is ultimately the best place for her.

(Originally written: July 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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Brainwashed by “Hitler’s Philosophies”

Iveta Prochazka was born on February 8, 1923 in Czechoslovakia to Adam Klima and Bozena Pesek.  Iveta was the youngest of three children, her older siblings being Radana and Rudolf.  It is unknown what type of work Adam did, as he passed away when Iveta was just four years old.

Left to raise her three children alone, Bozena decided to flee to West Germany when World War II broke out to escape being sent to Siberia by the Russians.  Not much is known about their life there or how they survived.

All that is known is that in 1957, Iveta was able to immigrate to the United States with three of her friends.  They arrived in Chicago and stayed for a time with a relative of one of the girls—a cousin by the name of Bessie, who was married and had five children.  Bessie and her husband allowed the girls to stay for a couple of months but then told them that they would eventually have to find their own place, as they didn’t really have room for four extra people to stay there permanently.  Iveta found work as a cleaner at a hospital and was looking for a place to stay when she was introduced to a young man, Martin Prochazka, through a friend of Bessie’s.  When Martin learned of her story and predicament, he offered to let her stay at his place.

Iveta was reluctant to stay alone with him, however, so Martin told her she could bring along one of the other girls she had immigrated with.  Before long, however, Iveta and Martin began “dating” and often went dancing together, which Iveta seemed to like.  After a couple of months, they married.  Martin now says that it is the worst decision he ever made.  He felt sorry for Iveta, he says, who seemed so scared and alone when they first met.

Martin himself had already known some heartbreak.  He, too, had been born in Czechoslovakia and had a wife and daughter there.  When the war ended, he tried to persuade his wife to leave Europe and go to America with him.  She adamantly refused, but Martin wanted to leave so badly that they decided to divorce.  He arrived in Chicago in 1947, looking for work and a new life, and was shocked to discover that American girls “snubbed” him because he was divorced.  He eventually found a job with the railroads and spent ten years working there until he was introduced to Iveta through a mutual friend.  His heart, he says, went out to her instantly.  He offered to marry her because he wanted to “help her and take care of her.”

Almost immediately, however, Martin noticed that Iveta was somehow “not right.”  He initially put it down to living for so many years in Germany and being brainwashed by “Hitler’s philosophies.”  She had bizarre, emotionless behavior, he says, and claims that in all the years of their marriage, she had no interest in anything.  She never once cooked, sewed or cleaned, and never once cried.  He says that she spent her days lying on the couch, listlessly chain-smoking cigarettes.  This went on for years and years, until Iveta suddenly became violent.   Martin says that she beat him up on several occasions and that she even once tried to kill him by setting him on fire.

Martin says he attempted to divorce her, but was told he could not legally divorce a mentally ill person.  Somehow he was able to then get Iveta to see a psychiatrist, who diagnosed her with schizophrenia and put her in an institution.  She “escaped” however, and returned to live with Martin, who says that his life with her was “a living hell.”

This horrible life continued until very recently when Iveta was admitted to a hospital because she was having difficulty breathing.  She was diagnosed with COPD and put on a respirator at the hospital.  The staff told Martin to prepare himself for her imminent death.  When they removed the respirator, however, Iveta surprised the medical staff by not dying.  She was eventually then discharged to a nursing home, where she now requires 24-hour care.  Most of the time she is unresponsive, but when she is awake, she is withdrawn and uncommunicative, except to insist on smoking in the smoking room, despite her near inability to breathe.

Martin, meanwhile, is having a very difficult time coping with Iveta’s admission.  He was prepared for her death and was relieved at the thought of finally being free of her.  Now that she has survived, however, he is anguished that his life with her still really isn’t over and feels immense guilt for wishing she had died in the hospital.  He cries frequently whenever he visits and seeks out the staff to talk to, his main topic being his many years of misery with Iveta.  Iveta, on the other hand, has no reaction to Martin’s presence and shows no emotion at all.

(Originally written: June 1995)

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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