Reading my Mom's 1941 diary entries of dating my dad is like listening in on a BFF conversation. In my upcoming book, Redlined, I had to streamline my parents' romance–so I could get to the meat of the story of my Chicago neighborhood. But Mom's vivid recollection of her evening with "Fred Gartz" is worth lingering over.
WHAT THE HECK IS THIS STORY ABOUT? That’s the critical question every author, fiction or nonfiction, has to answer. In my case, I had so much material–the thousands of pages of letters, diaries, documents, etc. I found in my parents’ [...]
Frank may be the “little brother,” but he’s wiser about life and love than Will, older by eleven years. I’ve written before about Will’s “serious” nature, and difficulty “letting himself go.” Here Frank takes Will’s reluctance to get involved with a girl head on—filling his older brother in on what life’s all about.
Fred and Lillian Gartz, Nov. 8, 1942, outside church Seventy years ago today, my Mom and Dad vowed to stick together in good times and bad, in sickness and in health. Those vows were tested across the decades, [...]
World War I trench warfarephoto credit: www.anunews.net/blog Last week’s photos pictured Josef and Lisi Gartz, with their two young sons, Friedrich and Wilhelm happy and healthy in Chicago about early 1916 (see below) and again in the summer [...]