Musing on Family History and Our Current National Disasters

I posted a few days ago about how about a quilt made in Iowa 1910 is connected to my ancestors and family members.  At one point in my writing, it occurred to me how many people whose names are on that quilt soon were to experience the 1918 pandemic.  In fact Etta Flexner, whose is one of the people I was researching, died in 1919.  I haven’t been able to find a death certificate for her (yet), but who knows - the timing is right for her to have been a flu victim.  She was 40 years old at her death, so she certainly didn't die due to old age.

So, since my mind has been on the ancestors, here is our family story about that pandemic.

My mom was born in 1916.  When she was 2, my grandma got sick with “the flu”.  She experienced super high fevers and probably nearly died, though no one ever actually said the word “death” in my presence.  As a result, my mom said she was “emotionally unstable” for the rest of her life. 

My mom and grandma, 1916

I only heard the story in euphemisms, so I don’t know anything with any certainty or in any detail.  Perhaps there was brain damage from the fevers.  I’ve also heard it postulated by a therapist that sometimes high fevers like that can unlock memories and emotions that have been long suppressed as a means of self-protection.  (And there is other circumstantial evidence of some sort of abuse in her childhood home.)

In any case, she was “fragile”, couldn’t handle any noise, and had terrible nightmares for the rest of her life, often waking in the middle of the night screaming.  I don’t think she’s actually smiling in any of the photos of her after than time.  In other words, my mom never experienced her as a healthy woman, and her childhood and much of the family life were curtailed because of my grandma’s fragile state.  My mom never could have more that one friend in the apartment at a time.  She just generally couldn’t make any noise.  And no one ever came and comforted her at night or even the next morning when my grandma woke screaming.  The thought of that now, seeing it as an adult and parent, makes me cringe.

My mom and grandma, 1927

 

I can tell you that the fallout from that has traveled from my mom to me, and as much as I tried to stop it, to my kids as well.  

So to me, this pandemic raises all those memories, and I’m sure that is part of why I am so scared of it, and have been staying home and avoiding even the things that are now considered pretty safe.  I just want to hide.  

And it makes me even more adamant about how dangerous and terrible our country’s handling of the whole situation has been.

To take all that and add it to the current rise in racial violence and hatred, including anti-Semitism, and I find myself also reliving the terrors that my father and his family suffered in Germany in the 1930s.  That, too, has come down to me as a deep emotional legacy.  I’ve long been aware of the similarities between the 1930s and the 2010s - the rhetoric, the creeping lock down of political systems, the lies, the fanning of prejudicial flames…on and on….

The Wassermann family c.1913

My grandmother, my dad, uncle, and grandfather

Bamberg, Bavaria

My grandfather’s farm supply business collapsed in 1935 because his customers were afraid to frequent a Jewish business.  My grandfather was overwhelmed with grief and then came down with pneumonia and died.  My uncle escaped to England, and then spent several years in an enemy alien camp.  He said it was fairly comfortable, but underneath it all, they were all still locked up, their lives on hold.  My father escaped on a British ship which was torpedoed at sea when England declared war on Germany in Sept 1939.  He saw people drown. He suffered nightmares the rest of his life.  They both suffered deep guilt for not having been settled enough soon enough to get their relatives out of Germany.  My grandmother and all her sibs save one were captured in Jan 1940 and killed in the camps.  The sib who survived apparently was saved by having married a gentile widower.  They survived due to the kindness of one of his daughters.  His other daughter was frightened and disowned them.

My grandmother Martha and grandfather Karl
c.1936-7

 

My dad Heinz and uncle Kurt
c.1936-37

 

When I think of how much my ancestors suffered, how many were killed in horrible ways….  

It’s not always fun inside my brain and heart, that’s for sure.  I was told from childhood that my parents had given me my grandmother’s name as my middle name so that some part of her made it out of Germany.  I can tell you that I am always aware of carrying her pain and living for her as well as for myself.

I often think about all the genocide in the world, and about how the pain and loss is carried by multiple generations.  And I wonder, given the ugly histories in pretty much every part of the world, if there are any people anywhere who have come through this all without such inherited emotional pain.  My heart cries out for the imprisoned children at our border.  I know they will, at best, have a lifelong struggle to regain their equilibrium.  The same can be said for survivors of friends and family who have met with horrible and wrongful deaths on our streets.

It seems like these times are all about suffering through the same things yet again.  Why?  It seems so futile to me that we could be repeating both these histories even after we’ve had so much time to learn from previous mistakes and regroup and make better plans and systems.  

Well, thanks for listening.  And please….vote!!!!  Vote!!!  As they say, vote like your life depends on it, because it does.  And I have the family history to prove it.  

My father Henry Wasserman and mother Adelaide (nee Flexner) Wasserman
about 1947-8

Flexner Family Names on a Signature Quilt - Part 2

 

You'll find the full backstory to this post on a post from April, 2018.  Here's a short summary.

Back in the 1980s, I'd found three people with my mother's maiden name, Flexner, on a 1910 fundraiser quilt at the museum in Kalona, Iowa.  They were not included in the genealogy that my mom knew, so we went exploring.  And after a circuitous and long route, I finally unearthed the answer:

My great-great-grandmother and the mother of the man named on the quilt were cousins.  They both had married men from the Flexner family.  So this quilt had led us to a branch of the family that we had never known about!  Unfortunately, by the time the internet came along to help the search, my mom had passed and never got to hear the conclusion.

Then last summer, in August, 2019, I was contacted by a woman who had found my blog while doing research on her Flexner ancestors.  She was wondering if the Jacob Flexner in her family was the same person as the Jacob Flexner in my family.  Turns out, they are not.  They were born about 6 years apart and have different middle initials and different parents.  

But here's where it gets really cool.  The two cousins named Mrs. Flexner both had many children, and amongst them, both had sons named Jacob.  One Jacob is brother of the man named on the quilt, and the other Jacob is brother of my great-grandfather.

And now, thanks to another cousin in that line, I have received photographs from their family archive!

What an exciting moment!

Another Snowflake Quilt

Wonderful coincidences and quilt stories just keep on coming.  I love quilters!  Here's the newest one to arrive in my inbox:

I have inherited this quilt and saw you restored one just like it! Thank you for giving me some history of where this quilt came from. I didn’t know who made it but am a new quilter and really appreciated the work. So, that's pretty exciting!

Of course, I wrote back and asked if I could post the quilt and her story here.  She kindly agreed.  Here's what she has to tell:

Social Justice Sewing Academy - Remembrance Block Project

Hi, everyone.  My recent three weeks of sewing have been deep and meaningful.

As some of you know, I have been doing some sewing for the Social Justice Sewing Academy for a while now.  This is a brilliant organization, lovingly and thoughtfully created and organized. The mission statement includes using and teaching sewing and art skills as a way to voice social justice topics and to give voice to parts of the population who are underserved or not served by the art world.

I can best describe the Remembrance Block Project by quoting from the website:

...a quilt block community art project that will provide activist art banners for local and national activist organizations who have requested creative statements to be publicly displayed that represent solidarity as well as remembrance. This partnership will create a visual statement to memorialize those who have been unjustly murdered by community violence (e.g. gun violence, domestic violence, child abuse, etc.) race-based violence, law enforcement, and gender or sexuality based violence. These artivism blocks will honor the lives of individuals through symbolism and portrait. Their names and identities will be displayed during community activism events reminding the world that their lives mattered.

Unfortunately, as we know, the list of names is very long and continues to grow.

I received my assignment three weeks ago.  I spent the first week researching the life cut short that I was to memorialize, and two weeks on the sewing.

Here is Bettie Jones' sad, sad, story:

This block honors Bettie Jones, who died on December 26, 2015 after being shot while trying to help a neighbor in distress.  There is lots of information online about her murder, because it was complex and in litigation for 4 years.  Her landlord and upstairs neighbor had called the police because his son was suffering from mental illness and had become violent and threatening.  The landlord asked her to open the door for the police, but when she did and the officer saw the son coming downstairs and towards him brandishing a baseball bat, he fired into the building.  He killed both the son (Quintonio LeGrier) and Bettie.  Quintonio himself had called earlier to ask for help, but the dispatchers didn’t send anyone.  In the end, the officer was fired and the dispatchers suspended for some time.  To me, this whole heartbreaking story highlights so many ways that this system is broken.

Red was Bettie’s signature color.  She was the matriarch of a loving family, and so I surrounded her with flowers representing her 5 children and 9 grandchildren.  This reminds me of all the large red and white flower arrangements that surrounded her red coffin at her funeral.  The golden bells at the top represent the family choir called Seven Bells.  Her nickname was Bettie Boo.

And here are some in-progress and detail photos.

 

 

The Remembrance Blocks are an on-going project.  You can register to stitch a block on the SJSA website.  There are other projects on-going as well - another sewing project to make memory quilts for bereaved families, and a brand new small business incubator.

There is also a block-of-the-month project.  These blocks are designs by the students in the social justice sewing workshops (which are now on hiatus due to the pandemic).  The blocks are super powerful.  I made one back in March.

I can tell you that this was not emtionally easy, but it has opened my heart and taught me a lot.  It has been a very Good thing to do.

The growing collection of Remembrance Blocks is on Instagram at @sew4justice_sjsa.

Eye Contact P.S.

So, having just blogged about my entry in the Eye Contact show yesterday morning, this post about the exhibit showed up in the evening on my instagram!  (It's in two pieces because I couldn't screen shot the whole thing in one go.)

Eye Contact

An exhibit called Eye Contact: Creating A Connection has recently opened at the Virginia Quilt Museum in Harrisonburg, VA.  The exhibit runs through September 15, 2020. 

I love everything about this show.  For one thing, I always love a challenge quilt show.  I find all the different, creative ways the challenge topic is expressed to be endlessly fascinating.  I also love this particular show because I have a quilt in it, and I had such a deep experience in making the quilt. 

The quilts are small - 23" wide x 5" high - and the only instruction to the artists was that the subject be "two human eyes looking at the viewer".

Here's my quilt:

Piece on Earth

Hello, everyone! 

I haven't posted here in well over a month....

All healthy, so no worries there, in case any of you noticed my absence and were worried.  The whole situation in which we find ourselves took over my attention and energy, and certainly my ability to express it all in words.  But I’ve been busy, and here’s what I’ve been doing.  It’s been a while, so this will be long!  Grab an iced tea (in my hemisphere anyway), and settle in.