It’s been a pleasure over the past few years to acquaint total strangers in cyberspace with people who were dear to me.
It’s also been interesting, from time to time, to acquaint myself with people in my family I never really got to know — as in this entry from a few years ago, and this one and this one as well.
We’ll do that again this week, as we step back in time 46 years to the funeral of a relative I wish I could have met.
March 13, 1969.
Bob Kidd would have been my great-uncle, had we lived at the same time; but he could have been my grandfather.
Back in the ’30s in Springfield, Mass., Bob dated a young lady named Corine Wambolt. Then he decided that Corine’s more outgoing older sister Eleanor was more his type, and transferred his affections.
Corine went on to marry a draftsman named Bill Blumenau — the guy who kept the calendars — and, years later, became my grandmother. Bob Kidd and Eleanor also got married, had two sons, and settled in the Springfield area.
Bob and Eleanor on their wedding day, November 1940.
My dad’s description of his uncle:
Bob Kidd was a fun-loving, athletic, bright, truly funny man. Had kind of a New England nasal way of speaking. Self-made man. Worked for Holyoke Wire & Cable (I believe). High school graduate; was at one point a time-and-motion study person (forerunner of an industrial engineer), and ended up as a vice-president.
(Ancestry.com tells me that Bob’s Scottish-born father, Charles MacEwan Kidd, entered the U.S. from Canada in March 1911 through Rochester, New York — a city that would pop up again in Blumenau family affairs 55 years later. Coincidental, but interesting.)
The Blumenau and Kidd families spent time together fairly regularly when my dad and aunt were growing up. My dad still holds fond memories of those days, and of his funny, fun-loving uncle:
Bob Kidd hula-hooping, 1958, at 1107 Hope Street. Can’t say whether beer was involved.
Eleanor and Bob Kidd at my parents’ wedding, July 1967. Jeez, don’t they look happy?
Unfortunately, by my dad’s telling, the stresses of a vice-president’s job wore hard on Bob; my dad describes him as “more high-strung than he used to be” in his last years. Like most men of his age and time, he also smoked.
Both of these things might have contributed to his early death. On March 10, 1969, Bob Kidd died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 54.
My grandpa took it hard. My dad, who still remembers the phone call, has a few regrets regarding his passing as well:
I will forever feel guilty for not making that funeral; I had a bad cold and my ’66 Mustang was acting up with carburetor problems and I apparently had my priorities in the wrong place. Uncle Bob was a great guy!
Clearly, from his calendar entry, my grandfather, grandma and aunt (who was in college in New Haven at the time) attended the service. He was not so grief-stricken that he couldn’t keep track of his mileage; but I don’t take that as a sign that the day was not meaningful to him.
My great-aunt Eleanor is still alive at 102, and has had the pleasure of meeting grandchildren and, I think, great-grandchildren as well.
I am sure she still feels her loss of 46 years ago. But, if it is any consolation, her husband is fondly remembered by those who met him.
And some who didn’t.
I really appreciate your writing so fondly of your grandparents. I find them very interesting, which opens up fond memories of my grandparents. My grandparents lived in Watertown, a distance from Stamford, but not terribly far. They were both of German extraction, they were Methodists. Their social circle was mostly people who were Methodists. I had a vision of our grandparents at a backyard picnic, all enjoying a beer.
Snow is falling here — Torrington CT — and it’s cold. It’s been fun to go back into time for a moment with our grandparents.
Thank you! Yes, it does sound like my family and yours would have mixed nicely.
Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but my mother’s mother’s family was from Torrington, including the guy who is linked in the first link of the second paragraph.
How did these Germans become Methodists as opposed to Lutherans or Catholics or Anabaptists?
I’ll answer for the Hope Street Germans. Kurt’s grandfather Blumenau was indeed raised a Lutheran; we have a certificate of his confirmation. And his mother, Kurt’s paternal great-grandmother Blumenau, played organ in German Lutheran churches for much of her life.
But Kurt’s paternal grandmother (who was part German, French, English, and what-not) was raised Methodist. There must have been some compromise, because I believe she and her Lutheran husband-to-be were married in a Congregational church.
After that it was pure convenience; as is mentioned a few places in this blog (most recently about the fire), Springdale Methodist Church was diagonally across the street from the Blumenau Hope Street home, such that going to church there was a walk of a couple hundred feet.
[…] might remember my post about Great-Aunt El on her 100th birthday … or the post I wrote about her husband, Bob Kidd, who died before I was born but whom I would have liked to […]