Harry and Carrie Selmeier
my father's parents
Click photos to enlarge
My grandfather made his fortune, lost it in the 1929 stock market crash, managed to put his two sons through college during the depression, re-made his fortune but had it confiscated by a retroactive IRS decision (or at least that was my understanding as a 12 year old), and then re-made his fortune yet again.
The painting above the mantel now hangs in my office. The sketch behind the floor lamp, by my uncle, is in my brother's possession. My sister has the candle sticks.
My grandfather was born Kentucky not far from Cincinnati, Ohio, but both his parents were German and spoke German. They arrived in this country slightly before the Civil War. He was the youngest of eleven and even though the Civil War ended in 1865 and he wasn't born until 1879, when he told me war stories they were about the Civil War. His older brothers were adults when he was born and had fought in the Civil War. They had told him stories about it when he was a child. He had only one brother who was close to his own age.
My grandmother was born in the USA also, but was of Alsatian decent, apparently German. When she and my grandfather met, she was teaching piano at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. I suspect she stopped teaching when they got married.
On Grand Vista in Cincinnati, Ohio, they built the house that they loved and managed to hang onto for years after the stock market crash.
In the days before air conditioning, people sat outside evenings. The cement pond in the backyard surrounded by chairs was a setting of which they spoke fondly for the rest of their lives, though their daughter-in-laws snubbed those remembrances, when they weren't around, wondering what the big deal was.
A gnome in the early 1920s. Go figure.
Their two sons, both of whom had been accepted to Harvard (Dad was a Rhode Scholar candidate and his brother set academic records at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati that were not surpassed for decades), were steered to attend Principia College to help build it. It was a cause in support of their religion. So they were self-sacrificing and community oriented (for instance, a plaque still carries their name on the practice room and the two grand pianos that they donated to the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music). But their sons' wives did not regard their parents-in-law to be warm.