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Uncle Elmer

 
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roger.pape
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Joined: 17 Mar 2009
Posts: 414
Location: Liverpool, NY

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2009 8:50 pm    Post subject: Uncle Elmer Reply with quote

Everyone has certain relatives they look up to. As a youngster, I literally looked up to my dad’s younger brother Elmer. He was at least 6 foot 5 inches tall. He also had very long arms. One of his favorite tricks was to stand on a chair, bend down and touch the rung between the legs of the chair. As the youngest child of Jacob and Mary Pape, he was the heir-apparent to the family homestead.

Uncle Elmer married Concordia (Corde) Runge, who was a maternal cousin of mine. So Cousin Corde became Aunt Corde. The ladies in the butter wrapping room of the creamery used to reprimand me when I referred to her only as Corde. Marie Schlesselman would say that I should show more respect and call her Aunt Corde. In the “Scenes around town” segment of the Concordia videos, there is a brief shot of Uncle Elmer and Corde walking along the sidewalk in front of St. Paul’s Church. Their wedding is also included in the “Weddings” segment of the St. Paul’s videos. (Unfortunately, it is very dark because Dad was just learning how to take movies indoors.)

During World War II, Uncle Elmer was called to serve in the Army. I was told that he could have received a deferment because of his height. (Apparently, tall people presented a problem for the Quartermaster Corps in providing proper sized clothing and other supplies.) However, he chose to enter the military. Although I was unable to find a copy, we had a photo of him resting in his pup tent with his feet sticking out of the end flaps.

WWII was a difficult time for the German-American community. While they all were intensely loyal to the U.S., I’m sure that many of the boys would have preferred to be sent to the Pacific rather than Europe fighting against soldiers from their fatherland. On the other hand, some looked it as necessary to free Germany from the clutches of the Hitler regime. In the spring of 1944, Uncle Elmer was shipped out to fight in the Italian Campaign. We eagerly followed his journey as he reported seeing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius from onboard his ship and seeing the sights of Rome as they marched through the city. Progress seemed agonizingly slow as they fought their way north through Florence into the mountains of northern Italy. Finally, the family received the telegram that every family dreaded. Uncle Elmer had been killed on Oct. 25, 1944. It was particularly difficult for Grandpa, having left Germany as a teenager to avoid military conscription. Grandma quietly hung the Gold Star flag in the window of the front parlor, after losing two other children in infancy. It was even more devastating when we received the news that he was not killed by enemy fire, but by a bullet from a soldier in his squad. Then came the trickle of packages; personal effects, gifts he had bought to send home, Christmas packages we had sent to him, even boxes of his favorite homemade cookies.

People react differently to personal tragedies. Grandpa seemed to have lost interest in farming, knowing that Elmer would not return to take over the farm. Shortly afterwards, he moved into Concordia, buying a house on Orange St. from his lifelong friend from Germany, Bill Horman. My father was not a letter writer, but among his papers we found a number of letters from Uncle Elmer that he had saved, indicating the frequent correspondence that they had maintained. In one letter, he wrote that he did not envy my brother spending two weeks at Boy Scout camp, since he was weary of sleeping on the ground all those months. In another, letter he noted the irony of war. Glenn Saults, who joined the Marines, had returned home from the Pacific campaign, surviving Guaducanal and other battles. He married Hattie Mahnken, my dad's bookkeeper at the creamery and a friend of Corde, being a bridesmaid in their wedding. In his final letter, he noted that he had met Chaplin Otto Reinboth, who married Lillie Gieseke. They spent time recalling memories of Concordia. Among my childhood memorabilia, I still have a small V-mail letter that I received from him shortly before he was killed. In it, he said how he looked forward to having me visit him and Corde at the farm.

Dad cut out all of the segments in his home movies that contained scenes of Uncle Elmer. He wanted to avoid the bitter memories as we watched the old movies. (The film clips had been saved and, when I assembled the family movies on a DVD, I spliced these segments back into their proper sequence.) Years afterward, in 1984, we held a Pape reunion in St. Paul’s Fellowship Hall. As Uncle Louis was relating the Pape history, he choked up when he spoke about his brother. The emotions that he had held in for years came flooding out. I will always remember him standing there, sobbing into a big red handkerchief.

Memories linger on.
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