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Question of the day
Tuesday, Sep 19, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller * The man holding the baby in this photo is my maternal grandfather, George Akers…  * He was born in 1904 and went out west to be a cowboy and work the threshing machine circuit not long after his mom was killed in a tornado. He eventually returned to southern Illinois, married Nettie Juenger in 1937 and settled down, moving north to Pontiac and then (after they were flooded out) to Milks Grove Township in Iroquois County. I only knew the settled down version, not the cowboy. He was a kind, decent, quiet, humble man. You could just be yourself around him. He was a farmer, but he didn’t own his land. He was small in stature, but could out-work anyone and never once bragged about it. He just always did what he had to do. He never made much money while still providing a good life for his family, was never famous, never involved in politics. I firmly believe he was the most successful person I’ve ever known. He passed away in 1976. My youngest brother Devin, the baby pictured above with Granddad, turned 45 today. Time flies much too fast. Happy birthday, Devin. I’ll see you soon. * The Question: Are there any family stories you’d like to share?
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- Janga - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 3:49 pm:
My Maternal Grandfather was 5 years old when he started working for the mob as an errand boy. He then worked as a caddy and then a bookie all before turning 15 years old. He never finished highschool instead opting to work on the railroad. He did this for several years before going into the tile business. he built his Tile business from the ground up and hustled his entire career. He is now retired and plays golf everyday its nice enough for it. He never was involved in politics but the stories he could tell you about Chicago politicians would always leave you feeling amazed.
- blue dog dem - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 3:49 pm:
My grandpa. Blind in one eye from a farming accident. Cataracts covering the other. Took me on my first hunt. Squirrels. Hand in hand we walked to a spot in the pasture. He knew exactly the hickory tree limb I might see a squirrel. after a successful hunt he guided me through the field cleaning process. I remember every detail as if it were yesterday. Exactly 60 years ago on Sept 15.
- Nieva - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 3:51 pm:
Well my Great Grandpa was a German Immigrant that came over in the 1850s and settled in the Jasper Indiana area. He joined the Union Army and fought in an all-German Regiment throughout the Civil War. He died when Grandpa was a boy of eleven. Grandpa and his brother went out on their own and fished for a living. The lived at Browning Il. And finally settled at Shawneetown. He and Grandma were married 73 years. He never learned to read or write but he sure could figure the price of fish.
- Chicago Cynic - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 3:52 pm:
My grandparents were Swedish immigrants that didn’t speak a word of English when they came to this…oh wait. Nevermind.
- Over It! - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 3:53 pm:
This sounds a lot like my father in so many ways. He was a farmer as well and didn’t own his land, very kind and everyone knew his name, he always had a smile on his face and his cheeks would be rosy from laughing so hard. Always a joke behind everything. (except the Cubs) He was the man I spent every holiday with, when my parents divorced I was 6 and the oldest of 3. My father raised us all.
I see him every day in my Son who is 4 but my son never got to meet him because he was killed in a farming accident in 2011 the day after Thanksgiving.
It’s not the fancy cars or homes that make our lives rich, its the unconditional support and love from family members like George.
Cherish what you have!
- Responsa - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 3:55 pm:
A male forebearer of mine–one of the most reliable, staid, levelheaded, practical and dignified people I’ve ever known in my lifetime– left the family farm as a twenty year old and went out to make his fortune in the Oklahoma oil fields. (He didn’t make his fortune and soon returned to Illinois although he never went back to the farm) But the pictures and surviving family letters from that handsome, wild, young thrill-seeker has just not ever been possible for me to reconcile with the man I knew later in life.
- blue dog dem - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 3:58 pm:
C2. Priceless.
- Keyrock - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 4:04 pm:
The BTIA is supposed to keep the Governor from posting under his alias as Chicago Cynic. They must have arrived in mid-post.
- Honeybear - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 4:05 pm:
Great grandfather was a grocer during the Great Depression. He finally just gave up and gave away everything. When he got elderly he went to s nursing home. He’d walk over to the nearest stop sign and wait for a car to stop. When one did he would just get in and say “take me to the grocery store”. Once there he would busy himself finding the pricing errors on the merchandise. Then to finish off the day he would race the checker, adding up the orders in his head usually faster than the checker could use the cash register. Once he’d had enough he’d catch a ride home at the stop sign. He was a character.
- Amalia - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 4:06 pm:
a sister of a grandparent disappeared. by that, the family means that she left and never got in contact with them again. I suspect something bad happened that drove her away, and I’m fearful what that is. But, with the magic of the internet, and boards, I discovered that she indeed was alive, and well for many years, and had kids and grandkids and people still alive who want to contact me! we all make decisions how we live our lives and some of those decisions may not be to the liking of those who love us, but life might just be fine.
- Grandpa - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 4:18 pm:
My father was a child of the depression, eldest son of an unhappy coal miner and a woman too young to be a mother. In the summer he supported the family shinning shoes, since there was little need for coal when the weather was warm, he was a good student, a track star, but had to borrow a jacket to graduation. No money, off to WWII served in Germany as a platoon sergeant, won the bronze Star, fell in love hard to mom and never waivered. He became a coal miner after a stint in Medical School was too restrictive. Warm, hardworking, generous to a fault, never missed Mass, loved his family with all his heart and passed with dignity.
- JoanP - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 4:21 pm:
Amalia, that’s amazing! I hear so many stories about relatives finding each other that way now. I so hope you and your new-found relatives click. And maybe you’ll find out why your great-aunt took off.
- Thank God for - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 4:22 pm:
The Greatest Genration / GI generation
- OldSmoky2 - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 4:42 pm:
Amalia, wow! I know you are a regular commenter here. Your comment amazes me. My mother left her family at age 19 and never contacted them again. We never knew any of them or that she had changed her name when she left them. She was married to my dad 66 years and they were very happy. After they died, thanks to DNA tests and genealogy sites, I discovered who her family had been, and I have had contact with a few cousins.
- perrier - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 4:44 pm:
Both of my grandfathers served in the 82nd Airborne Division in WWII. Both participated in D-Day. Both were lifelong residents of the South Side of Chicago. They never knew one another before my Mom and Dad met, and if they ever encountered one another during their service, neither of them remembered it.
I get goosebumps thinking about the possibility that perhaps they bumped shoulders at some point, without the slightest clue what was in store for the next several decades.
- Cheryl44 - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 4:49 pm:
When my grandmother came to Chicago in the mid 1920s to go to teachers college her parents sent along her younger sister because they didn’t like the idea of Grandma not having any family living with her. Grandma buckled down and studied hard, but Auntie Lee became a flapper and a gun moll. I have her wedding picture on a sideboard in my dining room–her (first) husband was gunned down in one of the many battles that erupted after St Valentine’s Day. I think she was widowed at 17. The sisters eventually moved back to western Ky, where Aunt Lee settled down, married a butcher, ran a grocery, had 5 kids and became a pillar of her church.
- Just Observing - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 5:15 pm:
My paternal grandather, a poor Jew from Poland, was sent, by himself, at age 11, over here on a boat to live with relatives. I’m told he had some sort of note pinned to his clothes (I guess for immigration officials). He never saw his parents or siblings again as they were, most likely, all killed in the Holocaust.
- illini - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 8:47 pm:
Great picture and great story, Rich.
And thanks to all the others that have shared their family stories as well.
I’m not certain that I could come up with a single appropriate anecdote or story about about my father, grandfather or great-grandfather, but this post has caused me to reflect. Thank You.
- RNUG - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 10:19 pm:
Dad never talked about it but I got a bit of the story out of him after I found his ribbons and medals. Was everywhere in the European theater, including volunteering to be at the Battle of the Bulge (a story in itself). We’ll just skip the rest of the details.
Typical of the Greatest Generation. Went off to WW II, did the job, then came home, rejoined the union, married, settled down, raised a family and built this country in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
- RNUG - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 10:37 pm:
I got a bunch of photo slides from one aunt’s estate. My uncle was the photographer. Going through them, I found photos of mom and dad’s wedding. Showed them to mom; she had never seen them. Commented to mom I saw everybody I would have expected except one grandpa. Mom just said “he didn’t come”.
OK … grandma was there but grandpa didn’t come to the wedding of the son named after him. Had to be more to the story.
Finally got mom to spill the story. During the Depression, Grandpa list his business and was having a hard time paying for all the kids to attend the Catholic school. Tried to work something out with the nun in charge. Couldn’t agree, he got mad, pulled the kids out of school, and left swearing he would never set foot in a Catholic church or school again.
Kids went to public school. He missed one son and two daughter’s weddings. Became a Protestant; buried in that part of Oak Ridge.
THAT is the definition of a stubborn German … and but the my wives would probably say I inherited some of that stubbornness.
- RNUG - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 10:38 pm:
… and both my wives …
- Oswego WiIIy - Tuesday, Sep 19, 17 @ 10:45 pm:
Cuteness overload. Adorbs.
- Anonymous - Wednesday, Sep 20, 17 @ 12:20 am:
My dad had 7 brothers and 3 sisters and all of them but one, were older than him. My mom had 2 brothers and 4 sisters. The families were of different religions but majority of family members were farmers. There were brothers that served in WWI and some in WWII. I know of two that received Purple Hearts. Some members of family and their husbands or wives were cops, car dealership owners, artists, missionaries, fed agents, maintenance workers, civilian workers on military bases, grocers, interior decorators and ministers.
My youngest son came home from school one day and said he had to write a report on a family member or chart our family tree and he wanted to do the family tree thinking it would be the easiest. I never got to start on my husband’s family before he chose to write a report. I’m one of oldest left so I should write some of the “good” stuff down.
- RNUG - Wednesday, Sep 20, 17 @ 1:27 am:
I did a lot of the family tree years ago. Now the current generation just tell their kids to ask grandpa or uncle when they have to do a report. Don’t wait too long to start; it is a heck of a lot easier to do if at least one parent is alive to get you started and to correct errors you make. This is especially true if there have been divorces, remarriages, and blended families with adoptions (legal or just an informal name change that was never recorded).
Just today I was filling in a really distant relative I had no idea about who found us on Facebook about part of their family. I did know who their dad and grandmother were, so I could tie it together for them.
They paid hundreds of $$$’s for a report that had maybe half of what I gave them in just a few minutes.
- TinyDancer(FKASue) - Wednesday, Sep 20, 17 @ 8:37 am:
My paternal great-grandparents came here from Russia via England in 1880 and settled in the Maxwell Street area where my great-grandfather had a clothing factory. My dad said the workers went on strike, so he closed the factory and opened a ladies ready-to-wear right on Halsted south of Roosevelt.
I’m sorry that I became interested in this so late that I never made it down there to see the old neighborhood before everything changed.
- Rayne of Terror - Wednesday, Sep 20, 17 @ 8:46 am:
My FIL was greatest gen. His parents immigrated to Chicago in the nineteen-teens from Bari, Italy. Lou served as an MP in Japan. His story is that when he came home from Japan he and his buddies moved to Indianapolis. Lou worked moving mail between trains in Union Station, but all his buddies wanted to do was play football in the street, and eventually they got run out of town back to Chicago. (I always thought there had to be more to this story, but he’s gone now and know one is left who would know.) There he met and married my MIL. My MIL’s folks immigrated from Holland to Wisconsin in the nineteen-teens. Elayne was the oldest of twelve and though she was very very bright, only went to school to 8th grade. They were poor so when Elayne was done with school, they put her on a train to Chicago to go find work as a housekeeper or nanny. She worked in various homes in Evanston until she met and married Lou in 1950.
- TinyDancer(FKASue) - Wednesday, Sep 20, 17 @ 9:05 am:
My dad (born 1915) was a bombardier on a pathfinder lead crew stationed in East Anglia, England (8th Air force) and flew 30 combat missions over occupied territory. They also did some (top secret)”milk runs” dropping supplies to the Polish partisans. My dad said they were out of range and had to stop in Russia to refuel and that the Russians blew up their planes and flew them to Greece. I said, “Dad - that’s crazy - the Russians were our allies.” But, I guess the Russians had their own plans for the Poles.
He shined his shoes and worked out every day (just like in the army) and treated us all like his little soldiers. (Chin up!)
He died in 2003.