Finding Johnnie

Blogging, Death, Obsessions, People, , ,

Note: I wrote the following a few days ago, before I made contact with his son, Jack, who confirmed that the letters were written by his father.

When I moved my blog from self-hosted to WordPress.com many of the photos were misplaced. I’ve been going through older posts and fixing any missing photos. That’s when I happened upon the Letters from Johnnie posts again. And again I wondered what ever happened to Johnnie Gannon.

I’d searched for him shortly after finding the letters and blogging about them, and again every so often when I remembered him. I was never near successful until recently.

If you recall, in the last letter I posted (I actually found more later but never got around to posting about them), Johnnie mentioned that his tour might be extended. I don’t know if that actually happened, but he ended up making a career in the Naval Medical Service Corps, retiring as a commander.

I know this because I found his obituary. And his Find a Grave page.

He did go back to Washington, DC where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree from The George Washington University. He then earned a Master of Business Administration from Pepperdine University.

Then, believe it or not, he lived in Bethesda for a while until he retired to Beaufort, South Carolina.

He was married twice. In 1960 he married Margaret Odessa “Peggy” Pope who was born in Montgomery County, Maryland. She and Johnnie had two sons. I’m thinking he probably met her when he was working in at Bethesda Naval Hospital. (Jack confirmed that Margaret worked at the Naval hospital too, as a business analyst). Margaret died in 2001.

John then married Joyce Anna Nestle but lost her in 2003.

I searched Facebook and think I found one of his sons’ Facebook page. I just now looked again and he’s posted his parents’ graves. And they are the same graves as on Johnnie’s Find a Grave page.

John Gannon died in 2014, two years before my mom died. But he was still alive when I found and posted about the letters. I wish I could have put them in touch before they both died.

Only One Giraffe

Life, Musings, ,

I have been thinking about drafts lately and that thinking brought me back to one of my earliest memories. We lived in an upstairs apartment near the highest point of a street on a (rare) hill in Elgin. I think my parents were having a party in this memory and I remember someone, possibly my mother, saying there was a draft in the living room. 3 or 4-year-old me heard “giraffe in the living room” and was disappointed that I could not see this giraffe my mother spoke of.

We’ve lived at our Bethesda house for more than 28 years. It’s an older home (built in 1947 or so) with mostly original windows on the main and second floors. For the first 13 or so years in this house we only had valences on the windows in the living and dining rooms. Each room has a large picture window plus up to 4 sash windows, so besides sort of living in a fishbowl at night, those rooms were also drafty and chilly in the winter.

Sometime in 2006 we installed honeycomb-style pull-down blinds on all the windows on the main and second floors of our house. It made a considerable difference in the temperatures of all the rooms in the house, especially the living room and dining room (and back room in our kitchen area that had two walls of windows). Winters were much more comfortable because of these shades.

A couple of years ago we bought new living room furniture. One piece was a beautiful leather “cloud” chair that sits next to the fireplace. It is exquisitely comfortable, has a light and plug nearby, yet I find myself drawn to the end of the sofa instead. I realized that the reason for that is because the chair is sitting in the coldest spot in the living room. The cold air from upstairs flows down the steps and into either the living room or the dining room. The cold air from the window behind the chair flows past the chair, into the kitchen. So even with the window shades, there is still that draft.

I searched online for a solution (I wanted pocket doors, but that was not practical) and found recommendations for curtains hung from expansion rods in the doorways (we have two into the living room). I bought some and installed them about a week ago. They are not haute couture by any means, but they do the job — very well!

The living room used to be several degrees cooler than the dining room (where the thermostat lives), but is now several degrees warmer.

When I realized that the curtains were working I proclaimed to no one in particular, “No more drafts in the living room!” Then I noticed the giraffe that Dean brought back from South Africa on one of his trips and amended my proclamation: “Only one giraffe in the living room.”

Charles Kaiser and Family

Family, Genealogy research, ,

Warning — very long post…

Yesterday morning I emailed the photo below to my cousin Judy (technically first cousin once removed since this is a genealogy-related blog post) and asked her if she knew who the people were in the photo. I told her that on the back of the photo was written “Charles Koeser & Family Taken Jan 1st, 1946” but that I could not find a Charles Koeser whose birth year matched what this man’s birth year may have been.

Judy responded that she had the same photo and recognized the house being her great grandparents’ (my great-great grandparents’) home in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. She’d been told that the woman was Silas Koeser’s niece and the child was his great niece. (Silas Koeser is my great grandfather and Judy’s grandfather).

Later after Judy talked to her sister, Beth, she sent me an email with a link to Find a Grave for Silas Koeser that had his obituary and links to other family members’ graves. I read that email at about 12:30 this morning and fell down the rabbit hole of genealogy — not a bad place to be when you cannot sleep in my opinion.

Here’s what I found out with help from two [first] cousins [once removed] and a number of genealogy focused websites (including a new subscription to Newspapers.com).

Charles, Myrna and Kay Kaiser, Two Rivers Wisconsin 1946

Charles Kaiser was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 26, 1911 to Lillian Koeser Kaiser and Frederick William Kaiser. When Charles was about 5, his father, a detective with the Milwaukee Police Department, was killed in in a bomb explosion at the Central Police Station in Milwaukee. Shortly thereafter Lillian moved, with Charles and his two sisters, Adrea (aged 11) and Nyra (aged 9) back to her hometown of Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

On July 22, 1919 when Charles was about 7, Adrea and Nyra went swimming at one of Two Rivers’ beaches along Lake Michigan. According to this article from the Manitowoc Herald-News, Charles went to the beach with his sisters. According to another article on that same Find a Grave page, Nyra (misspelled Myrna in the article) was pulled under water by the undertow. Her sister noticed Nyra’s distress and swam out to save her, but both girls drown. [Personal note: my grandmother would have been nine years old at the time and very likely was among the children that went swimming that day. One thing I remember about my grandmother was her fear of water and Judy said that the drowning of Adrea and Nyra contributed to that fear which is very understandable.]

Charles and his mother continued living with his grandparents through at least 1930 according to the US Census (although the 1920 census has him listed as his mother’s husband!). He attended Washington High School in Two Rivers where he was called “Charlie” and the superlative next to his yearbook photo in 1928 reads, “His nature was composed of many moods, first serious, then comical, then both.”

By 1936 Charles had moved to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin after attending Carroll College.

Charles married what seems to be his first cousin once removed , Myrna Beth Koeser (daughter of Charles Koeser, Lillian’s uncle) on August 22, 1936. Myrna was a teacher in Two Rivers.

By 1940 Charles and Myra were living in Menominee, Michigan with their two-year-old daughter Kay. Charles was employed as an office clerk for Wholesale Oil Company.

Around 1947 Charles and Myrna had a second child, Carol (gleamed from a newspaper article of her upcoming wedding) — which explains why there is only one child in the photo.

Kay married Richard Hughes in 1954 and Carol married Gary Burton in 1968.

Myrna died November 26, 1971 in Green Bay at age 58.

Charles married Ann Fulton.

Charles died November 25, 1980 in Green Bay at age 69 in 1980.