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Monday, November 30, 2020

In Memory of Mom


October 19, 1928 - November 30, 2019


This is one of my favorite pictures of my mother - taken on a 14-day cruise/tour of Alaska that she made with Dad and two of my aunts, Sister Jean Marie Guokas and Rose Mary "Moe" Pape Dietz, in June 1999.  I believe this photo was taken at the Kenai Princess Wilderness Lodge, where they spent two nights.

I miss her.


© Amanda Pape - 2020 - e-mail me!

Sunday, November 29, 2020

Historic Preservation?

I was shocked to walk by this historic house at 501 Counts Alley, which is just a few blocks from my home in Granbury, Texas, and see this today:



This is what the house looked like about a year ago:



The stone arches on the front porch are being demolished.  So far, this whimsical flower is still there, but I have to wonder - for how long?



There's also a diamond and a dragonfly (I think) in the stonework on the chimney on the west side of the house.




I decided to do a little research on this house.  The property it is on was purchased by William "Bill" Harrison Kinson, 1889-1966, and his wife Bessie Drucilla Nash Kinson, 1897-1982, on December 27, 1933.  Bill and Bessie had married in Hood County seven years earlier, on December 28, 1926.  On the 1930 Census, she was a public schoolteacher and he was a trucker, and they were renting a house on nearby Pearl Street.  They had no children.

They may have bought the house for more space.  Sometime after March 29, 1932, the Kinsons took in the three children of Grover Cleveland Oxford (1894-1960) and Maude Ann Davis Oxford (1898-1932).  Maude had died from breast and liver cancer, leaving three young children ages 2-5, Grovina, Bonita, and Derl, and the Kinsons took them in and raised them (according to Grovina's 2015 obituary).  They don't seem to be related, and it's not clear why their father did not want to raise them.  The children are listed as "lodgers" in the Kinson home on the 1940 Census.

Tax records for the house indicate it was built in 1935.  That is likely when the mixed stone exterior walls with beaded mortar were built, as the initials in the front gable, "WK," are those of William Kinson.  The Kinsons owned the home through Bessie's death in December 1982.  Earlier that year, she conveyed the house to her former lodger, Derl Crites Oxford (1930-1989), retaining a life estate for herself.  Derl lived there until his death, and the home passed out of Kinson and Oxford ownership when it was sold by Grovina in the settlement of Derl's estate in March 1991.

However, it looks like a structure very similar to the existing house has been on the site since at least January 1905, based on Sanborn maps.  In the next two images, from January 1905 and July 1910, it is the smaller house on the left, with a (then-) house number of 110.  The yellow coloring indicates that it is a wood frame structure.





Now look at the next two images, from the February 1932 and March 1945 Sanborn maps.  The 1945 map notes the stone, and you can also see a small outbuilding has been added, probably what now appears to be storage but was likely the original garage.  It's possible the stone outer wall was added over existing wood frame and siding.

Above:  February 1932.  Below:  March 1945.



This house, described as a High Style Tudor Revival, is a high priority for preservation according to a historic properties survey done by the city in 2001.  It "contributes significantly to local history or broader historical patterns; is an outstanding or unique example of architecture, engineering or crafted design; and retains a significant portion of its original character and architectural integrity."

However, a large part of that uniqueness, character, and integrity is being destroyed.  The house is not in the city's historic preservation district (HPO), so the current owners (who bought the house in January of this year) did not have to submit their plans for the exterior to the Historic Preservation Commission (on which I serve, since February 2020) for approval.

ETA 14 January 2021:  The front door that is parallel to the street has been bricked in (with similar stone), and the planter box in front of the window to the left of the porch has also been demolished.



Also, a discussion with a lifetime Granbury resident and some additional research in old newspapers revealed that Bill Kinson was elected alderman (a City Councilperson) in Granbury in April 1939.  Also, his 1966 obituary stated that the Kinsons had owned the Corner Cafe since 1958.  The Corner Cafe was in the building pictured below, at the northwest corner of Pearl and Houston streets on the Hood County Courthouse square.



Based on an early (but undated) photo of this building, it did not always have the crazy-quilt-pattern mixed stone exterior.  I have to wonder if Kinson added this as well.


© Amanda Pape - 2020 - e-mail me!

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Thankful Thursday Thanksgiving 2020


Thanksgiving in 2019 ended badly, with a phone call that my mother, suffering from frontotemporal degeneration primary progressive aphasianonfluent/agrammatic variant (FTD-nvfPPA), had aspirated part of her (hopefully-)pureed Thanksgiving dinner at her skilled nursing center and had been hospitalized.  We drove in the dark to Austin, and luckily all my siblings and I got to say goodbye to her before she died two days later.

2020 has certainly been quite the year.  It started well, with some day trips to Hico in January for lunch and sightseeing, and a jaunt to Austin on February 1 for my first-cousin-twice-removed Everly's first birthday party.  The baby's grandfather, my cousin Tom, then a pilot with many overseas flights, talked about precautions he was taking against the novel coronavirus.  He mentioned that it was difficult to find N-95 masks, having to drive 50 or so miles to get them.  My youngest brother and sister, Brian and Mary, were also at that party, and that was the last time I've seen them (as well as Everly and Tom and Tom's wife Karen and daughter Katie and son-in-law Jimmy).  

My other brother Mark remarried on March 1, and we were supposed to celebrate his marriage to Nazli later that month with my siblings and nieces and nephews.  But then the lockdown hit.  I also had to reschedule a planned celebration of life for my parents twice (and will almost certainly need to reschedule it at least once more).

Although I didn't get to travel as I'd hoped this year, I am so thankful I am retired and did not have to deal with coronavirus situations at work.  I am thankful that if my husband was going to need various procedures, surgeries, and hospitalizations, they happened this year when we couldn't go anywhere else anyway (and that the hospitalizations were during early June and late September, when COVID was NOT peaking).  

I'm thankful for the radiologist back in mid-April who spotted a suspicious "shadow area" on my spouse's bladder.  It turned out to be cancer, but he caught it early enough.  I'm thankful for the interventional radiologist who persevered and made a second attempt to insert a drainage tube in my husband's abscess in early June.  That likely avoided emergency surgery and shortened the time at home with antibiotics via PICC grenades that I learned how to change.  I'm thankful for ALL the great doctors and nurses and therapists and hospital staff that have helped him this year.  And I am grateful that my sweetheart has recovered from all of this and is feeling MUCH better.

I am thankful for all the teachers and medical professionals and other essential workers, especially those in my family, and particularly those who have to put up with the stupidity of people who won't wear masks and avoid crowds.  I am SO thankful the smart people in this country rallied and voted in a new president who will not be a super callous fragile racist sexist Nazi POTUS (nor a science-denying liar).

I'm thankful for technology like Zoom, which allowed me to attend various genealogy meetings, my 45th high school reunion, virtual tours of historic homes in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago (where Dad grew up) and in Houston (where Mom grew up), and THREE book clubs, including my old group in the Seattle area.  We started meeting in 2001, when our kids - now in their early 30s - started high school!  I talk to my 90-year-old aunt at least once a week on Google Duo.

I can't sew masks, but I am thankful I could use my librarian skills to work on an international project to index medical device service manuals to make them freely available to biotechs during the spring surge of the pandemic.  I'm also thankful for all the free time that let me work on some crowd-sourced Lithuanian genealogy projects on Geni (via a Facebook group I co-administer).  I'm grateful for good weather that's allowed lots of biking and walking outdoors to keep me sane.

I have to say that I am thankful my mother passed away when she did, both because the quality of her life had greatly diminished due to FTD-nvfPPA, and because I would be worried sick not being able to see her most of this year in her skilled nursing center (wheelchair bound, on the second floor, and unable to talk).   I'm thankful that my son just happened to be with his father in Oregon when the fires were so bad there in August, and that he was able to help them evacuate their rural home (which survived) and pay for their hotel.  And I'm thankful for the daughter who made us some masks, and, many years ago, made the cute little handprint turkey above.

© Amanda Pape - 2020 - e-mail me!

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

(Almost-)Wordless Wednesday for Veterans Day

While looking for something else in the National Archives Catalog, I stumbled upon these Award Cards for the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal (with two Oak Leaf Clusters) awarded to my father, Frederick Henry Pape (1929-2017), during his service with the Air Force in Korea in 1952 and 1953:






The Award Cards collection spans the years 1942 to 1963.  The cards were transferred by the Air Force (and its World War II predecessor, the Army Air Forces) to the National Archives and Records Service in 1973 to be used to help recreate official military personnel files that had been destroyed by fire.


© Amanda Pape - 2020 - e-mail me!

Monday, November 9, 2020

Military Monday: WWI Honor Roll, Glen Rock, New Jersey

In honor of the upcoming Veterans Day and for The Honor Roll Project, I decided to transcribe the World War I Honor Roll plaque in Glen Rock, New Jersey.  The roll lists all the Glen Rock Borough men who served during World War I.  The first five names on the list (those with asterisks in front of them) lost their lives in the conflict.


Above:  Glen Rock Honor Roll [with Memorial Day wreaths from the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, 10 June 2007, cropped] / Beatrice Murch / CC BY-SA 2.0

Below:  Glen Rock Honor Roll, Glen Rock, NJ [20 April 2003, cropped] / birdphone / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0



Glen Rock Honor Roll
They Fought the Good Fight, They Finished the Course, They Kept the Faith

* Peter Ebbert
* Frederick Jensen
* Mortimer Kerr
* Jacob E. Phillips
* Frank Squires
-------------------
John Ackerman | Roland Banister | Theodore Bauma | Leo W. Bolte | Frank A. Blum | Frank Buycher | John Christopher | Maurice Clark | Benjamin A. Conklin | Joseph Conklin | Max R. Cramer | Ralph S. Cramer | Carl W. Daines | Frank Daley | George Stanley Dart | David C. De Ferrari | Ellory De Groat |

Edo De Young | Charles W. Duffin, Jr. | Stanley Elsworth Elwood | John F. Erlenback | Gerald Faber | Carlos Fajardo | Raymond J. Fisher | Frederick Freestone | Harding U. Greene | Prentice Hencevelt | George C. Henriques | Everett L. Hoffmire | George C. Hubschmitt | John R. Humma | Arthur J. Kidd | Samuel King | Tunis King | Harold W. Lampe | Cornelius Lont | Humphrey Lloyd | Joseph C. Loughery | Gordon Duvar MacDougall | Eugene McCoy |

Peter McDonald | Richard H. Mann | Louis Marron | Hudson May | LeRoy May | Walter Meyer | Gordon Miesse | Arthur H. Miller | Howard V. Miller | John E. Miller | George Monro | William Monro | John Morey | John J. Mulqueen | John Nally | Walter Nally | Jesse Louis Nunn | George T. Parker | Cornelius R. Peckart | Edgar Peter | Henry E. Post | Nicholas Postma | Harold Rasmussen |

Edward H. Riopel | Lester Robertson | Donald Ryder | Philip Schuyler | Willet B. Sherwood | John Frederick Simonson | John T. Sinclair | Garret Sinkway | Joseph I. Smith | John B. Smith | Floyd Snyder | Herbert Spendlove | Herbert C. Stubbs | John Tourse | J. Olen Van Blarcom | Barney Van De Weert | Ralph Van Orden | Louis Van Winkle | John F. Walter, Jr. | Leslie White | James Wilkie | George Winter | William H. Winter | Lester Zabriskie


© Amanda Pape - 2020 - e-mail me!

Friday, November 6, 2020

Friday's Faces From the Past: It's Been Three Years




This image is from a Kodachrome slide I found, among others from Korea (1952-53) and of Pape family in Chicago (1953-1956), in a paper bag in my parents' study after he died rather suddenly three years ago today.  There are no markings on the slide to indicate place or date.  I'm posting it mostly because I like his smile.

I think it may have been taken in Houston, possibly somewhere near Ellington Air Force Base, based on the background, and on the fact that other pictures definitely taken the same day feature a lot of men.  One of the men looks like Major Lloyd Dale Herman Jr. (1927-2019), who was a groomsman in my parents' wedding.  However, there's another photo of him with a woman and baby, and I'm pretty sure his first child was not born until March 1957 (although this photo could have been taken in 1958, after my parents moved back to Texas).


Above:  Dad with three other men - the one on the left might be Lloyd Herman.
Below:  The man who I think is Lloyd Herman with a woman I assume is his wife (Betty Ruth Hall Griffin, married in November 1955 in Houston) and a baby (perhaps his daughter born in Harris County on March 1, 1957).  If that is true, it would date these photos to early 1958 at the earliest.



I wish I'd found these slides sooner, so I could have asked Mom and Dad about them.


© Amanda Pape - 2020 - e-mail me!