Here I am again

 I was going to title this “Yet Another Flashback Friday and COVID Update,” but I decided that was simply too long.

In addition to continuing to go through old pictures, scanning the decent ones, and pitching the bad ones, I’ve been working on my family tree—Dad’s side. Hence the pictures of one of his projects from back in the early 1980s.

My dad was born in Germany in 1915. World War I was ravaging Europe, and three years later, as the fighting continued, the Spanish Flu of 1918 reared its ugly head. More people died from that pandemic than from the war. Somehow, life went on, and my dad’s family welcomed another son that year, bringing the family up to three sons and three daughters.

I can’t imagine what their lives had been like. Dad never talked too much about his life in Germany. Sure, he was only nine when they immigrated to America, but he had a few memories he shared. His dad throwing him into the river to teach him to swim and how severe the poverty was for everyone.

I sure wished I had paid more attention and asked for more stories.

Hopefully, thanks in part to the internet – and maybe even this blog – our children and their children will remember the times we lived through in 2020 and 2021.

Not too much new on the pandemic front in my small town. The number of positive cases seems to be going down as the number of those having received the vaccine continues to go up. Our COVID shot clinic last Saturday went relatively smoothly; all our patients were appreciative and well-behaved. Though my hero’s cape is pretty threadbare, I was able to wear it for the entire nine-hour day. 

The Early Years

Ninety-eight years ago on the 20^th of this month, my dad was born near Cologne, Germany. Thinking back on what his life must have been like, I deeply regret not gleaning more information from him. As it is, over the years, I have pieced together a few stories from that past.

He was the second youngest of six children born to Paul and Emma Loehmer. Hannah was the oldest and I have found absolutely no information on her. When the rest of the family moved to America in 1923 and 1924, she stayed behind. I know, I need to set up that Ancestry.com account and find her, huh?

The next oldest was Frederick, known as Fritz, born in 1908. The remaining siblings were Emmy, born in 1912; Klara, born in 1914; my dad and finally Franz, born in 1918.  

The only memory my dad shared with me about life in Germany was that he learned to swim when his father threw him into the river.  It was either sink or swim, so he picked up a noble dogpaddle and was able to get himself to the shore. 

I think he spoke very little about life in Germany because it had been so very hard. It’s one of those things they don’t talk about much in the history books. When Germany lost World War I, the victors imposed such stiff retributions on the country, that it seemed the country would never bounce back. Do you remember how well that worked? The poor and destitute population of Germany turned to an up and coming individual who promised to return the country to its former glory. It was so easy to be drawn into his promises, easy to be mesmerized by his oratory style. And just as this man - it doesn’t even seem right to call him a “man” he was so evil – began his rise to power, my dad and his family were packing up to come to America. How different my life would have been had they not left Germany when they did, or more likely I wouldn’t have been born.

(I just couldn't come up with a picture for tonight. There are very few pictures of my dad from back in these days, but this blog post willl shed more light on his early life.)