More of Uncle Bill's Memories

Growing Up In The Bruemmer Family-
More of Uncle Bill's Memories

Aunt Shirley with Uncle Bill on the St. Louis Farm.

Here are more of Uncle Bill's family memories sent to me via email on October 27, 2017.

Dear Linda,

You have posed numerous questions, some of which I can respond to, but many I cannot. Having said that I realize that you are following a format for all the family members with the hope that some can fill-in the blanks that others cannot. Please excuse me if I take your questions out of order, as it works better for me to generally follow a chronological order of my life. So here goes---

My name is William John Bruemmer, Jr., 'tho I have never used the "junior" since my father, the "senior " was long dead before I even knew my name. I was born on August 29, 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri, the 4th of 6 children born to William John Bruemmer and Barbara Josephine (Cook) Bruemmer.

Barbara, Susan and Nancy with Bill and Shirley.

My parents met in the early 1930's, maybe 1932/33, as I remember my mother talking about how they were corresponding for several years before they were married in 1936.

The story I remember is that my father and his mother were on a motor tour (such a quaint term) of California, specifically the Redwood Highway (still fairly new at the time and the name applied to highway 101 north of San Francisco). They stopped at a motor court (motel) in Cloverdale and while there my father decided to take in a local softball game, where he happened upon my mother (an avid sports fan).

Below are two photos of a guide that Grandpa and his mother would have used at that time. Although there were several motor motels on the way to and in Cloverdale- this might have been the one they stayed at.

While talking to her he asked about where he might hire a horse to go horseback riding. As she herself was an avid horsewoman, she knew where to direct him and she went riding with him.

After Dad returned to St. Louis (where he lived) he began a written correspondence which lasted for several years and through which he ultimately proposed and she accepted.

An aside here, until her death my mother kept all of his letters bound by a pink ribbon. As a child I came across them and surreptitiously read them and found myself sobbing from the sweetness of them. His first letter was addressed "Dear Miss Cook". They soon progressed to "Dear Barbara". The last one, written long after their marriage while on a business trip was addressed "Dear Cookie and Little Cookies "(meaning Barbara Anne, Susan, and Nancy). I was in possession of those letters at one time, but I can no long find them-maybe one of the other "kids" has them.

My mother and father were married at St. Anselm's Church in San Anselmo, California on a date unknown to me in 1936 (now confirmed as September 5th).

`

How did this happen you ask, with Mom from Cloverdale and Dad from St. Louis? Well, because Mom's sister Eleanor, married to Dr. Alfred Schwarz, lived on Yolanda Court in San Anselmo at the time and Mom (I believe) was staying with them having terminated her nursing training at St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco in order to marry Dad.

He flew out to California, they married, honeymooned at Coronado, and flew home to St. Louis, where he had a spanking new 1936 Packard 120 waiting for them at the airport! (Please pardon the numerous references to cars in this history, but they form the basis for many of my early memories, including stories told in my presence as a child). Dad was a fairly well-off man; flying back and forth was pretty pricey in those days, not the commonplace thing it is today.

They then began raising their family in Dad's native St. Louis, where my father was the Secretary-Treasurer of Steifel Realty, a well-known real estate company in the area. (Dad had a law degree but he never practiced law).

Over the years, I have collected over 40 news articles on Grandpa regarding the Real Estate company Steifel that Uncle Bill mentioned along with other local zoning boards Grandpa was involved in. Below is a gallery of some of the best.

All 6 of us kids were born in St. Louis: Barbara Anne in 1937, Susan in 1939, Nancy in 1942, Shirley in 1945, me in 1946, and John in 1948.

While pregnant with me in 1946, mother came down with polio, a huge scourge at the time. She was temporarily paralyzed from the chest down. Her parents, Charles and Nell Cook, came from California to stay and help out with the family, as my mother was pretty helpless, with a newborn and 4 other little ones. Once Mom was able to do more, Charles and Nell returned to Cloverdale, taking Shirley, then barely a year old, with them, to ease the burden on Mom until she was fully "recovered".

For More Read the blog posting:

The following year, 1947, Mom, Dad, and the three oldest girls drove out to California to "retrieve" Shirley, leaving me with a neighbor/friend in St. Louis, as I was not quite a year old. (They towed a trailer with their 1939 Packard). There are several family photos (see one of them below) from that trip. The story also goes that Shirley put up quite a fuss being taken away from grandma and grandpa, the only "parents" she had had for the previous year!

Less than a year later, in May of 1948, your Uncle John was born. According to Mom, she no sooner got home with John then Dad was diagnosed with cancer of the sinuses. Thus began intensive radiation treatments – chemotherapy being unknown at the time and surgery being impossible. His condition was terminal and the day after Thanksgiving he went into the hospital to die.

During his illness my mother and father discussed her return to California to be near her family once he had died. Mom had never been crazy about St. Louis. Like many mid-western cities it was hot and humid in the summer, snowy and cold in the winter, and generally filthy due to all of the coal burning for heat and power.

Nor was my mother particularly close to my father's family, although his mother did live with them for awhile. She did, however, have a number of very close friends and neighbor's with whom she maintained contact for many years. They, of course, are all gone now.

So began the next saga of grandpa and grandma coming back to St. Louis. Sometime that fall of 1948 they returned to help Mom with us kids while she spent time in the hospital with Dad and making plans for the move to California. Dad died on Christmas Day 1948.

Mom then traveled to California and stayed with Eleanor and Al in San Anselmo while looking for a house in Marin County in order to be close to Eleanor. Mom and Eleanor had always been close and Mom knew she could count on Eleanor. Mom found the house at 100 Santa Margarita Drive, San Rafael. She then returned to St. Louis and sold the Petrova Court farmhouse. Grandma took Susan and John by train back to California while Mom and Grandpa Cook drove the rest of us out to California in the 1939 Packard.

We stayed with Eleanor, Al, and their 3 kids in their little 2 bedroom house in San Anselmo, 'tho I believe that some of the older girls may have been "farmed out" to some of Eleanor and Al's neighbor's. There was a major housing shortage after the war (WWII) and the people who sold Mom the Santa Margarita house could not move out when they had promised, so we were with Eleanor and Al a lot longer than was originally planned.