A goosebump moment

 I've written previous blog posts about my cousin, Philip Young Justis, who survived Utah Beach during WWII but was killed in July of that year. He was the only child of his parents. Those stories always haunt me. And Phil's birthday was also my son's birthday, February 16th. There don't seem to be many photographs of him, I only have a fuzzy one and a bad photocopy one. 

This afternoon, I was going through the photographs I had on familysearch.org with my Mom to see if there were any more details to add to what I had. 

We were looking at this photograph.

 I knew the mother with the baby was my grandmother, Dorothy (Irving) Wenz, and the gentleman next to her was her father, Linus Dudley Irving. But even though I've had this photograph for many years, I never knew who the two men on either end of the bench were. 

At first, neither did my Mom, but she exclaimed "Oh! That's Uncle Reggie!" He was her favorite uncle, and his wife Mabel Irving was a sister of Linus. Then came the goosebump moment - we both realized at the same time that the young man on the right was the son of Uncle Reggie  - Philip Albert Justis. 

What a blessing to have a decent photograph of him. It really pays to get the stories out of the older generation!

Grandma Dot and her Recipes

My maternal grandmother, Dorothy Mae (Irving) Wenz lived in Miami when I was growing up, so I didn’t know her as well as my Gramie Smith. We knew her as Grandma Dot. You could call her Dot – but don’t ever call her Dotty! I did get to know her better when I lived with her for a year after high school. Because I was a busy single adult (or at least I thought I was!), we didn’t share too many meals, but there are some dishes that I remember her for.

One I’ve already featured in a blog post: http://keillorsmith.blogspot.com/2013/12/aunt-hatties-hermits.html because of their significance in our family history. Grandma Dot made them pretty regularly.

Another is one I remember from school lunches as well as Grandma Dot’s: American Chop Suey. It’s a great combination of economic/food storage meal with its basic ingredients of canned tomatoes, ground beef and elbow macaroni; and comfort food – especially on a cold New England night! If you’re interested in the recipe and a little history of the name, Yankee Magazine has a great blog post on it here: http://www.yankeemagazine.com/new-england-traditions/american-chop-suey-casserole

One of my favorites of hers was Lemonade Pudding, which you can make with pink or yellow lemonade or limeade. Great dessert for a hot summer’s night!

Grandma Dot’s Lime/Lemonade Pudding

1 envelope unflavored gelatin	¼ cup cold water
1 8-oz package cream cheese	½ cup boiling water
1 can frozen lime or lemonade concentrate	¼ cup sugar

Soften gelatin in cold water, let stand. Blend cream cheese with sugar, then gradually add milk, beating until smooth. Add boiling water to gelatin, then add to cream cheese mixture. Stir in thawed (but NOT diluted) concentrate. Pour into cups or mold and refrigerate until firm.

Grandma Dot and my Grampa Ted (Theodore Anthony Wenz) moved to Miami around 1958, so I only saw them about once a year, mostly during the summer when they came up for Wenz family reunions. It looks like this photo was taken in Florida, and I'm sure THAT dinner was delish!

Unfortunately, I can’t ask her, so I’ll just have to assume it was because she lived in Miami that she got good at making citrus preserves. This is one of her recipes. Yummy!

I asked my Mom what she remembered about Grandma Dot’s cuisine, and she added the fruitcake that was made with a spice cake recipe that had a nice, frothy sauce. That recipe is in my Great-Grandmother Wenz’s cookbook, which is a whole ‘nother blog post – because I’m the proud owner of that cookbook!

In memory of Cousin Phil, 70 years later.

On this, the 70^th anniversary of the death of Philip Albert Justis, I wanted to take a minute to write a brief memorial from what we know about his life and death.

Philip Albert Justis was born in Somerville, Massachusetts on 16 February, 1916. The 1920 Federal Census finds him living in Somerville with his parents, Albert Young and Mabel Alberta (Irving) Justis.  By 1930, the census shows the family living in Wellesley, Norfolk, MA, where his father worked as a printer. He had no siblings, but Mabel’s niece, Lina Irving (age 17) was living with them.

Ten years later, Albert was working as an executive for a drug company, and Philip was a stock clerk in a wholesale drug company. For reasons we can only suppose, Philip enlisted in the U.S. Army as a Private in Boston on 15 March 1941, nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

It is at this point in the narrative we must mention one of the most tragic events in family history research: The fire at the personnel records center in St. Louis, Missouri in 1973. Millions of service men and women’s personnel records were lost. Both the fire and the resulting water damage to records have created a documentary disaster that is still being sorted out over forty years later.

The next document we have been able to locate for Philip is his burial record, listed on the website of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC). They list his service number, 31030229, his date of death, 20 July 1944, his rank of Sergeant, and the fact that he had been awarded the Purple Heart. His body lies in the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France in Plot E, Row 14, Grave 36 overlooking Omaha Beach. We also know from the ABMC listing that Philip served with the 359^th Infantry Regiment, 90^th Infantry Division. Recently, I was contacted by a findagrave volunteer who was headed to Normandy and volunteered to both photograph and do a rubbing of Philip's headstone. When folks come to photograph the headstones, volunteers provide sand from Omaha beach to rub into the engraved letters to make them stand out for the photograph, and then clean the headstone afterward. 

Poignantly, his mother died three years after her only child’s death, and their marker in the Needham Cemetery in Needham, MA lists Philip’s name and dates of birth with “Lies in France” underneath.  His father passed away in 1956.

Because he had no siblings, there are few folks left who knew him at all, but last year, I called his cousin, Ginnie, who lives in Wellesley. She recalls him as a quiet, serious man who was always kind.

I hope one day to know a little more about Phil’s last days, but in the meantime, I just want to remember and be grateful for his service and sacrifice. 

How I Contracted the Disease

When I was a kid in the 1970s, my mother’s family had somewhat regular family reunions in the summer. There were essentially two branches of the Wenz family, located in New York/New Jersey and Boston. Most of the reunions I remember were in Boston, except for one big one in 1976 in New Jersey. Each year, I would have an opportunity to hang out with cousins who were ostensibly related to me and then not see them again until the next reunion. My mother’s mother, Dorothy Mae (Irving) Wenz, lived in Miami, and would come up for a visit at the time of the reunions. As we were preparing for the 1976 reunion, I was sitting at the kitchen table with Grandma Dot and I asked her how I was related to the cousins I only saw once each year.

It was a bit of a tangled situation, the result of the marriage of two sisters, Dot and Millie Irving and their marriage to two brothers, Ted and Fred Wenz. I finally had to get out a piece of paper and draw a little chart to keep things straight. As she waited for me to draw the lines, she would tell me stories of her childhood.

Her father was an immigrant from Canada, where he used to run the ferry from St. John, New Brunswick to Boston. One trip, it seems, he just got off the ferry and never got back on it. Eventually he got a job with the Houghton Publishing Company in Boston (millions of schoolchildren then and now will recognize the Houghton Mifflin name!). He used to bring home the seconds to his children, starting them, and subsequent generations, on a lifetime of a love of literature.

Grandma Dot said that her legs were bowed as a child, and that her father had dug a shallow trench in the backyard, sit her in it and pack her legs with dirt each day. I don’t remember how long this process took, but eventually, my grandmother had nice, straight legs.

To this day, thirty-five years later, I can still remember the magic of that moment – I loved the stories about the people and the history and wanted to know more! I embarked on a mission to accumulate dozens of vital records certificates from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and each one provided both missing pieces of the puzzle and more holes in the puzzle! From the scrap of paper (which I still have) came a half dozen poster boards delineating the Wenz-Irving family for the reunion. Wonder what became of them?

Then one day two LDS missionaries came to the door while I was working on the posters. I could say coincidentally, but I’ve come to know that there are no coincidences in the work of family history. There just happened to be a woman in town, part of the only LDS family in town, who know a lot about family history.

Learning about the genealogical resources of the LDS Church opened up a whole new world to me. In September of 1976, I moved to Miami and went to my first local Family History Center, in the Miami 1^st Ward building, with Sister Edna Slay as director.

Since then I’ve spent countless hours in Family History Centers, National Archives Branches and online and had some marvelous “adventures of the Spirit.” Oh, and I'm a Mormon now!