“Family Archaeologist” explores a century of family letters, diaries, and artifacts, and how they illuminate history and our shared humanity. To get an overview of the blog, click: “Welcome to Family Archaeologist”
LATEST BLOG POSTS
Lots of Love on Valentine’s Day
Lisi Gartz, my grandmother, struggles again with English, writing in her tortured spelling and syntax to Ebner, her youngest son, who's in basic training at Keesler Field, Mississippi. She enlists my mother, Lillian, to take over midway through the letter to help with the writing.
In charge of 200 men…
The War Department started an Aviation Mechanics school at Keesler Field, which was activated in June 1941. "The first shipment of recruits arrived at Keesler Field on August 21, 1941. Many stayed at Keesler to become airplane and engine mechanics, while others transferred to aerial gunner or aviation cadet schools."
My troubled heart
Elisabeth (Lisi) Gartz, Jan. 1943 Ebner’s mother was undoubtedly finding that writing her son in English was so difficult, she fell back to writing to him in German. Below is a translation into English of what she wrote, but she’d soon find she had no easy way out of her struggle with English. After [...]
Slow Starvation?
Ebner’s best buddy, Frank Von Arx, wrote him on Feb. 2, 1943. Seventy years ago today, Von Arx’s mom took her turn filling Ebner in on the home front. She reports her mother is dying. I’ve edited the letter for clarity and length. Original at end. […]
“One instructor we tied in a bed!”
Here's a letter from Frank Von Arx to my uncle. Frank Von Arx was two months older than Ebner, He enlisted and took the train to Camp Grant on 12/12/1943, for basic training, same place Ebner would go in January. Most of Ebner's friends were training for the war, bonding a generation in shared experiences.
“Unlimited opportunities…”
Will Gartz, Harlem Airport, 1943-1944 Writing Ebner became focal point of Gartz family life. Here’s a letter from the oldest Gartz brother, Will. Born in 1913, he was eleven years older than Ebner. Age 29 when Ebner was drafted, Will was probably too old for the draft himself, but he did his part, by [...]
“Here to help.”
My grandmother's letters to her son were written in a foreign language—English. Lisi Gartz's schooling back in Austro-Hungary, before it became Romania after World War I, only went as far as the fourth grade, so even in her native tongue, spelling and grammar had never been mastered.
A WWII Draftee’s First Day
My uncle Frank Ebner Gartz was drafted into World War II on January 23, 1943. The next day he wrote from his new home at Camp Grant, near Rockford, Illinois. Until I found the letter below, I hadn't know where he had started his training. Here's how the first day in training was reported by a new inductee on his first day in camp.
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