On uncles, wars, gifts, beer joints and enduring love
....and the passing of a generation.
WATERLOO — My Uncle John told me one of my favorite stories when I was flat on my back in the hospital after an emergency appendectomy more than 40 years ago.
It concerned him and my big brother George.
Uncle John, my mom’s brother and her youngest sibling, was a masonry contractor in Waterloo. George worked for him in high school.
”Boy your brother George was a good worker,” Uncle John said. “No wasted movement.”
Uncle John said he was watching George working down in a house foundation one hot day, covered in sweat. George was easily twice my size and played center on the West High football team. Stout, but big, powerful arms and tree trunk legs. So this is a real man in motion.
Uncle John was impressed. But, in the impish tradition of my mom’s side of the family, he couldn’t resist taking a dig.
He told George, ‘Y’know, when I was your age, I was fighting a war!’ "
George stopped and looked up. Knowing my brother, I can imagine he was a tad exasperated.
”Oh YEAH?” George said. “Didja WIN?”
”’Didja win,” Uncle John said, shaking his head and chuckling to himself as he finished the story.
Uncle John wasn’t lying. He enlisted in the Navy at age 17 for World War II. He’d tried at 16 and was turned away. Interestingly enough 20 years later, George also enlisted in the Navy when he was 17, upon graduating from West High. Both took their basic training at Great Lakes Naval Training Center near Chicago.
George served on a destroyer, the USS Luce DLG-7, in the Mediterranean and Caribbean from 1965-68. Uncle John served stateside at Norfolk, Va. Two days before he was to embark for Europe and an operation in the North Sea, the Nazis surrendered.
”They heard I was coming,” Uncle John liked to say.
Uncle John was a character.
He died Tuesday, Jan. 30 — one day before the 13th anniversary of my brother George’s passing.
As I creep into my late 60s, I’ve lost two big brothers, both parents, a brother in law and one of my best friends. Uncle John was in his mid-90s and he had been in assisted living for some time. But his passing is significant to me in that he was the last living sibling of either my mom or my dad — the last of the “Greatest Generation” on either side of our family. They grew up during the Depression, worked and fought through World War II and raised us Baby Boomers.
They didn’t have it easy. They were frugal, devoted, hard working, made a better life for us and passed on some of those lessons. I definitely saw that carried on in my brother George and I sure saw it in Uncle John.
He and his wife of 55 years, my Aunt Betty Ann, never had children of their own so they gave us presents for Christmas. Aunt Betty Ann owned and operated a gift shop in Waterloo, Random Gift House. So besides their natural generosity, she had a flair for it too.
One of their most beautiful gifts to us was a little wind-up music box my sister received that played “Lara’s Theme” from the movie “Dr. Zhivago.” We didn’t know much about the movie but loved the song and were fascinated with the little music box. It was so dear.
When we got a piano - a big heavy upright one —it was Uncle John who helped deliver it. He was slight framed and I remember him turning blue in the face as he was on the back end helping push it into our house. Mom thought he was going to get a hernia.
When my folks divorced, and for years later, I know Uncle John helped Mom out — probably in some ways I will never know.
And there was his hospital visit following my appendectomy. There’s a reason my middle name is John.
There’s one other trait those of that generation possessed, at least in my family, that isn’t often mentioned. They had a sense of humor and wit, in good times and bad.
I saw that on one excursion just a few years ago when I took my mom and my Aunt Edith, her sister, to visit Uncle John one Sunday afternoon. Mom and Aunt Edith had worked together in a Waterloo munitions plant, Associated Manufacturing, during the war - and “kicked up their heels” a little together back then too. They were very close.
I had them sit together in the back seat so they could converse easily. If you know the movie “Thelma and Louise” with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, well, it was like chauffeuring those characters from that movie — only in their 90s.
”Think Johnny’s got any beer over there?” Mom asked.
”Hell no,” Aunt Edith replied.
Uncle John had been a teetotaler for decades. But Mom kept up the teasing when we got there.
”Johnny, you got any beer here?” Mom asked.
”Go up to University Avenue and a couple blocks over,” Uncle John said. “There’s a beer joint there. You can get all the beer you want.”
Touche'.
Uncle John even had that quick wit when Aunt Betty Ann passed away in 2007. They had been retired and living in Peoria, Ariz. for years and it has been quite some time since I’d seen them. At the visitation, Uncle John was dressed very smartly in a dark, pinstriped suit, and I complimented him.
”I should have a violin case,” he said — meaning he thought he looked like a gangster, and all he needed to finish the ensemble was a case for a Tommy gun.
Uncle John was devoted to Aunt Betty Ann. He did not return to Arizona after she died.
”I’m not gonna leave her here,” he said.
Now, they’re together again.
All of them.
God bless them and may their light continue to shine in all of us.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. Click on their links below to sample their work.
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Beautifully written, Pat. My condolences for your loss. I appreciate the respect you always show to the folks who came before us.
I am sorry for your loss, Pat. Your words are a lovely tribute to your Uncle John and your whole family. Thank you for sharing their stories with us.