52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 36

This week’s writing prompt involves Work and I'm writing about my dad’s early work history. LeRoy Kubler was born 29 June 1917 in Cincinnati, Ohio to Joseph and Lillian (Hungler) Kubler.  He was the second oldest of four children, and the only boy. He graduated from the Printing Vocational High School, located at 608 East McMillan Street, on 10 August 1934. In high school he set pins at a bowling alley to earn spending money.

cook at Jefferson Barracks

From the time he was 18 until at least the age of 21, Roy was listed in the Cincinnati Directories as being employed as a chef. How I wish I would have talked to him about that! I know that his mother taught him to cook (and clean house) along with his sisters, and that he was a cook at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis during his training with the Army Air Forces in WWII. He was quite good at it, and enjoyed preparing meals his whole life.

By 1941 Roy was working for the Railway Express Agency (REA), an organization that was responsible for shipping parcels by rail and truck throughout the United States. In order to work for the company he had to join the union. He became a member of the Cincinnati Labor Organization - Brotherhood of Railway and Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express and Station Employees, Cincinnati Lodge No. 2045. This union was formed in 1899 by 33 railroad clerks meeting in Sedalia, Missouri. He was employed by the REA when he got married to Catherine Crusham on 17 January 1942, and when he enlisted in the Army Air Forces shortly thereafter.

Union Roll of Honor

Dance Freight Line

When Roy came home from the war in November of 1945, REA made arrangements to get him back home to Cincinnati following his separation from the army at Fort Knox, Kentucky. It is unclear whether he was able to return to his position at REA when he was discharged from the military, but at some point he went to work for Dance Freight Line, a regional trucking carrier with an important connecting terminal in Cincinnati. Dance served Ohio, Georgia, the Carolinas, Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

Brady appointment

In the Cincinnati Enquirer on 6 May 1955 an article appeared listing the appointment of Roy Kubler, formerly assistant traffic manager of Dance Freight Lines, as sales representative for Brady Motorfrate Co. at the Cincinnati terminal. Brady Motorfrate had terminals in many locations including Cincinnati, Chicago, and Des Moines.

This new position would have lasting implications for the family. By January of 1956 Roy was required to move to Chicago, uprooting the family of six. Five years later, he was transferred to Des Moines, where he remained until his retirement in 1984, though his career would take many paths over those twenty-eight years.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 29

With the writing prompt being music, I have to write about my dad, LeRoy Kubler. Music was an important part of his life. He came from a musical family, in that his father Joseph Kubler owned a bar when my dad was in his late teens or so. My father told me that he and my grandfather both played musical instruments in a band at the bar.

My father’s real love was singing though. Often he and my mom, Catherine, would sing around the house together, or while we were driving in the car. He had a wonderful voice, and his whistle was nothing short of a musical instrument itself.

After he retired in 1984, he and my mom moved from Des Moines, Iowa back to Cincinnati, Ohio where they had both been born and raised. After settling in Delhi Township, they immediately heard about the Delhi Seniors organization, which met nearby at the Delhi Township Community and Senior Center.

Dad directing the chorale group
December 1988

Dad soon formed the Delhi Senior Chorale group, of which my mother was one of the first members. He arranged all the music for their numerous performances, and was the musical director. He also began to write songs for the group to perform, composing both the music and the lyrics. He file the songs with the U.S. Copyright office to protect his work. Copies of his music are in my files, and are a great treasure to me.

Mom in the chorale group
December 1988

Being able to attend a couple of his concerts was a thrill for me, and I’m grateful for the photographs and videos I have of those performances. The fact that 8 members of that chorale group dressed in their concert attire to escort my mom’s casket into the church when she died in 1989 is a moment I’ll never forget. They sang “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” as they entered, and there were no dry eyes in the church after that.

While I wish I had a thimbleful of my dad’s musical talent, I do believe that being raised in a musical household has played a big part in the fact that I have a great appreciation for many different kinds of music and for the artists who create them.

Küblers to America

Büsserach, Switzerland

Thus ends the chronicle of my branch of the Kübler family from Büsserach, Switzerland to America. I've traveled to Büsserach and walked the villages, inhaled the mountain air and seen the beautiful  countryside through my own eyes. I've met some of the descendants of Vinzenz Joseph Kübler's siblings and other extended family. I even slept in the building where Vinzenz made the exchange of money for his land so that he could come to America with his family. Despite all that, I cannot conceive of what it must have felt like to take a last look at everyone and everything you have ever known and loved and say a final good-bye. How tough was his life that he would risk everything to take an arduous one way trip on a sailing vessel with his young family to an unknown country and an unknown future?

I never had the opportunity to know him, of course, as this was long before I was born. I barely knew my grandfather, Joseph Kubler. Although I was 13 when he died, traveling from Des Moines to Cincinnati in the 1960s was not an easy trip due to the lack of interstates. Busy, two-lane highways meant the drive was long and often slow, so visits back "home" were limited to once a year at best. Our family always stayed with my mom's parents, never at the Kubler house. We would go over to see Grandma and Grandpa Kubler when we were in town, however. They were nice to me, but I could sense the closer relationship that the cousins who lived in Cincinnati had with them. I always felt a bit like an outsider.

My memories of Grandma Kubler are much clearer, as I was 23 when she passed. She was kind and friendly, and a great cook. It was always a treat to be able to have a meal with her. It seemed like she was always in the kitchen when we visited. I'm grateful for her cooking skills as she passed them along to my dad. Though my mom was always the cook in our family during the week, on the weekends my dad nearly always helped out in the kitchen. Once he retired, cooking and cleaning were activities he shared with my mom.

Like most young people, I never sat down with my grandparents to get their stories. By the time I got interested in genealogy, following the death of my mother, all my grandparents were gone. I have tried to make up for that by talking with my older relatives each time I go to Cincinnati for a visit, and by participating in the Family History Writing Challenge so that I get the information placed somewhere besides my genealogy software. I have a long way to go, but at least I am taking steps to get there.

Dad and me circa 1958

I forgot to include in the last post the poem I wrote for my dad when he died, so it appears below. This is a scan of the original I placed beside his casket in the funeral home, somewhat wavy from the tears and snowstorm it was carried through. I have written poetry since early childhood, but I don't share it very often. I wrote a poem for Aunt Marie (my mother's sister) for her funeral, and another for my sister-in-law Lynn to express my feelings and hopefully console my brother, Joseph. So it seemed fitting to put my thoughts on paper for my dad. He was not always an easy man to be around, but I never doubted his love for me. It's an odd feeling when your second parent dies, as if you are now an orphan. The two people who were responsible for your very existence, and the anchor for your entire family are no longer a phone call or relatively short drive away. Pieces of my heart were buried with each one of them, but I am extremely happy that I have the photographs and memories to tuck away in those empty spaces.

Dad's Poem

Family History Writing Challenge Day 28

Kubler's Dairy Queen

Roy continued to work for the trucking company in Des Moines for about a decade, but his constant travel and entertainment commitments took their toll on the family. Eventually he quit and tried other pursuits, including selling record-a-phones (early answering machines for businesses), Airstream Motorhomes (until his business partner took off with the model they had purchased and left Roy with the payments on it), and owning a Dairy Queen for a brief period. He then settled into selling commercial real estate for a few years, and his last position of employment was as the manager of a store selling parts and supplies for motorhomes and campers.

Oldest daughter Kathleen married Joseph Lane in 1968. They have three children: Julie, Joseph and Christopher. Julie married Ralph Maness in 1991, and they have two daughters: Molly and Cordelia. Joseph married Susan Sheets, and Christopher is unmarried.

Kenneth married Virginia Staley in 1969, and their children are Todd and Sara. Virginia died of complications from an aneurysm in 2015. Sara married Jonathan Wendt in 2006, and their children are Leo, Owen and Hazel.

Kimberly married James Wolterman in 1978. They have two children: Andrew and Kathryn. Andrew married Megan Englert in 2008.

Joseph married Lynn Graber in 1990 and their children are David, Stephanie and Rebecca. Lynn died of pancreatic cancer in 2002. Joseph remarried in 2010. David passed in 2013. Stephanie has two children: Arabella and Killian.

Kubler home in Cincinnati

Roy retired in 1984, and he and Catherine sold their house in Des Moines and moved back to their hometown of Cincinnati. They immediately began reconnecting with relatives and friends, and became extremely active in the local senior citizens center. They both enjoyed the card games and dances, Catherine loved the crafts room, and Roy became the director of the chorale group, which Catherine also participated in.

In the summer of 1989, they traveled out to Colorado to visit their son, Joseph. They stopped in St. Louis and stayed a couple of days with Kimberly and James, and also got to see Kathleen and her family as they lived in the area as well. They spent a couple of weeks enjoying the scenery in Colorado and were on their way home on July 18th. In the middle of Kansas on Interstate 70, Roy fell asleep at the wheel of the car. They had stopped for a potty break in the afternoon, and neither one of them put their seat belt back on when they reentered the car. Driving off onto the shoulder of the road, Roy awoke and over-corrected his steering. The car went off the road, flipping a couple of times. Catherine was killed instantly, and Roy was severely injured. The car behind them happened to contain a couple of off-duty paramedics, who immediately stopped to offer assistance and dialed 9-1-1. Roy was able to give them Joseph's phone number from memory, and he is the one who received the first call about the accident.

Roy was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Hays, Kansas. He suffered from a broken collar bone, all the ribs on one side were fractured, and he had internal bleeding. Joseph, in the meantime, faced the unpleasant task of notifying his siblings. He left a message on the answering machine at Kenneth's house and called Kathleen at work. She told him that she would call Kimberly at home that night after she knew her sister was done with work and had picked up her son Andrew at his baby-sitter's home. Kathleen was so distraught that someone drove her home from the office.

Joseph then had a friend drive with him from Colorado Springs to Hays, and Kathleen and Kimberly drove there together from St. Louis the next morning. Once they assessed their dad's situation and realized he would be in the hospital for quite a while, it was determined that Kathleen would fly to Cincinnati to begin making funeral arrangements for Catherine. In the meantime Kathleen's husband Joe would drive to Kansas and stay with Roy while everyone else made their way to Cincinnati for the funeral.

Catherine's obituary

Catherine's body was shipped by train to Cincinnati. It was very difficult for the children to plan their mother's funeral, especially knowing that their dad would not be able to attend it. They also did not know all of his wishes for the funeral, though he and Catherine had purchased a burial plan so that helped with some of the decision-making. The funeral was well attended by family and friends as Catherine was well-loved in the community. Men from the senior chorale group, dressed in their performance best, escorted the casket into the church while singing, "When Irish Eyes are Smiling." There was not a dry eye in St. Dominic's Church.

One thing that Roy made clear from his hospital bed was that he did not want anything personal of Catherine's to be in the house when he returned home to Cincinnati. He told Kathleen and Kimberly to pack everything up and have a yard sale in St. Louis. It was a very difficult thing to ask of two grieving daughters, but they reluctantly complied with his wishes, bringing Catherine's personal belongings back home with them after the funeral.

The beloved matriarch was dead at the age of 69. The foundation of the family shifted, and the children were numb.

Family History Writing Challenge Day 27

Catherine with Joseph
and Kimberly

Following Kenneth's birth, Catherine experienced a couple of miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy, resulting in the removal of one ovary and all but a piece of her second ovary. The doctor told her that she had a chance in a million of ever conceiving again, and a chance in 10,000 that a baby would be carried full term. When she started feeling ill in 1953, the doctor ran a pregnancy test even though he was sure she could not be expecting. At the time, the test involved injecting the urine of a woman into a female rabbit. If the woman was pregnant, the chorionic gonadotrophin in the urine would cause the rabbit's ovaries to enlarge and develop characteristic surface changes. Unfortunately, the only way to read the test results was to cut open the bunny. This is where the expression, "The rabbit died" comes from. Son Joseph joined the family in 1954. In 1955, she advised the doctor not to kill the bunny because she knew she was pregnant. Kimberly (that's me) was born later that year. Catherine definitely defied the odds, not once but twice!

Roy's household was expanding during a time period when the Railway Express Agency was contracting. Following the war a flurry of construction on highways and the widespread purchase of automobiles resulted in a downturn of passengers traveling by the rails. The railroads began sharp reductions in the number of passenger trains, which cut back on the reach of Railway Express Agency. It was perhaps this turn of events that caused Roy to seek employment elsewhere. He ultimately took a job with a trucking company in Chicago, Illinois at about the time Kimberly was born. He went ahead to find a house for the family and get established. A few months later, Catherine boarded a train in Cincinnati and took the four children to Chicago. How hard it must have been for her to leave her friends and family - her whole support group - behind.

Catherine's mother Mayme
Crusham comes to visit in
Chicago for Easter 

The house purchased was in a new subdivision by O'Hare Airport. The airport had just officially opened to commercial air travel in 1955, and their new next-door neighbor worked in the control tower at O'Hare. The second story of the home was unfinished, so all 6 members of the family slept on the main floor until Roy could add two bedrooms upstairs. Chicago was close enough to Cincinnati that both Roy and Catherine's parents could come over for a visit.

By 1960 Roy took a position with a different trucking company in Des Moines, Iowa. The family was on the move again. This time Roy and Catherine purchased a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home located on the north side of Des Moines. The walkout basement afforded extra living space for the family, and the dead end street was a safe haven for growing children. Cornfields surrounded the area, giving a feel of country living in the city. Nearby Woodlawn Park was easy walking distance, and offered play equipment, a baseball field that converted to an ice skating rink in the winter, a wading pool and a park shelter with games and activities throughout the summer.

Des Moines house with neighbor
girl and Kubler dog, Duke

Holy Trinity Church and School

The three older children were enrolled in various Catholic schools, and Kimberly attended kindergarten in the Johnston School District as Holy Trinity did not offer this grade. Roy and Catherine found a bowling league to join, and resumed their golf games. The family members settled nicely into their new lives in Des Moines.

Family Search 52 Stories Week 4

One nice thing about the 52 Stories project is that you can select from a number of different categories for each week's theme. You don't have to write about your life in any particular order. This week I am writing about school, using the following question:
What was your first introduction to formal education - preschool, kindergarten, homeschooling? What do you remember about those first few years?

Lawson Elementary

My family moved from Chicago to Des Moines when I was 5. As the youngest of 4 children, I was the only one still at home during the day with my mom. That fall, my parents tried to enroll me in first grade at Holy Trinity Catholic School where my older brother was going to be a second grader. I would be 6 in October, and they were hoping the school would let my young age slip by since the cutoff date for turning 6 was September 1. The school wouldn't budge however, and as it did not offer kindergarten my parents had to look for an alternative. I ended up at Lawson Elementary School, which is located in the nearby school district of Johnston. That is interesting in and of itself, as Lawson was 3.8 miles from our house, and Woodlawn Elementary in Des Moines was only .7 miles away. However, over-crowding at Woodlawn necessitated that children in the neighborhood be distributed among other schools. A new elementary school which was built on my street - Samuelson Elementary  - would not open until 1965.

kindergarten picture

I have a vague recollection of my mom dropping me off the first day of school, and the tears that followed. After all, I had been used to being with her every day, and even my beloved brother wasn't at the same school. I remember little else of kindergarten other than the fact that I rode the bus every day. The bus picked me up at the corner of Bel-Aire Road and Lawnwoods Drive, a distance of 7 houses. The Edwards family lived on that corner, and Rick Edwards was given the responsibility (by our moms) of watching out for me on the bus. He was a worldly third grader.

Holy Trinity Catholic Church

The next school year my parents sent me to Holy Trinity with my brother. As I understand it from a neighbor, the kids from my area who had been at Lawson for kindergarten were transferred to Cowles Elementary School in Windsor Heights for first and second grades, moving to Samuelson when it opened. So either way I would have had a new school for first grade.

My brother and I took the bus to Holy Trinity every day, this time being picked up at the corner of Lawnwoods Drive and Lindlavista Way. I would guess this to be a couple blocks of walking each way. I didn't mind riding the bus most of the time. However, if someone misbehaved in the classroom, certain teachers punished everyone by making them all stay after school. This would result in me missing the bus. I was lucky in that if my brother didn't see me get on the bus, he would wait after school for me. Because my dad had the only car we owned at work, we would have to walk home. That was a two and a half mile walk. This being before the age of cell phones, we had no way of letting mom know that we had been delayed. How frantic she must have been when we didn't arrive home at the normal time! Fortunately this did not happen often.

friends rocking the HT uniform

We had to wear a uniform each day, with the boys consisting of white shirts and navy blue slacks and the girls wearing white shirts under navy blue jumpers. A navy blue sweater was permitted on cool days. The big girls - those in 8th grade - got to graduate out of the jumpers and into navy blue skirts and white shirts. In all cases, however, the hem of your jumper or skirt had to touch the kneeler when you were on your knees in church. And believe me, they checked! On the last day of the school year, we were allowed to wear a skirt or a dress.

I have mostly fond memories of Holy Trinity. We had to take a sack lunch each day, but twice a year the mothers would come and serve us beef burger sandwiches with pickles and chips. It was such a thrill for me to get to see my mom then. Many of my teachers, all nuns, were quite good and encouraged my writing and poetry. I left Holy Trinity at the end of 7th grade. By then I had some good friends on my street who attended Meredith Junior High, and I wanted to go to school with them. On the last day of 7th grade I took my Kodak Instamatic with me to snap a few photos of my friends. Over the years we lost touch, so it is nice to have the pictures to reflect back on.

last day of 7th grade on the playground