Touching Lives ...He Was a Good Man

A story, that I have been a part of since World War II ended and baby boomers filled the hospital beds, has now reached closure. 

Elementary school taught me one major skill that has sustained me. My favorite part of the week was "Show and Tell" not recess.  My parents each saved memorabilia from their forty years of life's experiences. They told me stories about places, people, and items. I took in every story whether true or exaggerated. 

The memory I will never forget is standing in front of my fourth grade class at Roosevelt. I smiled and felt proud as I told a story of my daddy meeting an important doctor in Japan after World War II. One boy interrupted and bullied me with, "You mean a Jap." 

I sucked in my breath and continued, "Dr. Aoi and my father are friends. We write letters back and forth like pen pals."  I am sure Mrs. Bloomberg helped to ease the situation.  "Dr. Aoi and my dad played golf together. That is why they are still friends." 

This is the only remaining Christmas card from my dad's correspondence after WWII with Dr. Setsuro Aoi. For over a decade in the 1950's my father wrote and shared pictures of us with Dr. Aoi, whom he met after World War II. Dad was stationed in Japan after the war. My guess is that he had skills to fix things, he never met a stranger, and he played golf. 

I carried this letter in my cedar hope chest from the day I moved away from  209 H NE in 1968 to the present.  While living Hutchinson, Ks we met a couple from Japan. Yuka and I became friends. Then a few years ago this lovely Christmas card surfaced in one of my discarding/ cleaning out moods, and I decided to find out who Dr. Aoi was. Yukari willingly helped me by posting this picture with a message in search of Dr. Aoi's family on Facebook. 

We first learned that Dr. Aoi had been a doctor at the tuberculosis hospital  in Nagoya, Japan.  His niece sent this message:

メール有難うございました。アメリカのお友達がカードをまだお持ちなら写真を撮ってPCに送って貰う事は可能でしょうか？次女の方は独身で両親を看取り現在は名古屋市の施設におります。長女は90才、次女は87才になります。まだ元気なようですが父親の送ったカードを見ることが出来たら懐かしいのではないかと思います。多分PCなどは持っていないかと思いますので私宛に送って頂いたら何とかします。コロナ騒動で現在は緩和されたとはいえ私は三重県ですし直接は会えないかも知れませんが。

" Her father is a brother of Dr. Aoi who you are looking for. She said Dr. Aoi passed away in 1980 at the age of 82. He got two sons and two daughters. The eldest son passed away, the second son was in the USA and married an American woman who lived in California!! but he has already died. She said if she knew the story at least ten years ago you could have seen him. She asked two daughters about your father but they did not know any episodes about American man."  

IF.  If I had just done this research when I lived in Kansas. The great IF, but I didn't. 

In the last year Yuka and I have kept in touch with updates from Dr. Aoi's niece. As of June 2020 Dr. Setsuro's brother's daughters were still fine, ages 90 and 87. 

In a more recent email Mitsuko, Dr. Aoi's niece writes: 

"Your father's friend Dr Seturo was a very talented person. After graduating from medical school in Japan, he was studying at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

From that experience, he accompanied as an advisor to the Japanese representative of the Berlin Olympics. He became the director of the tuberculosis sanatorium during World War II, and probably met your father there after the war. 

His son, Mitsuko's father, was also a doctor. He went to North China as a medical doctor. At the end of the war he was interned in Siberia and missing forever It was a really sad story." 

Yuka writes:  No more war.

                     No more COVID-19

                    Love and peace. 

I replied, "Yuka, this is the best gift of the year. I think we can close the story and know we've done our best by history and loved ones. I thank you for your sincere help in finding this information. Hope you are both well and safe from COVID."

One last note sent by Misuko reads, "And most of Dr. Aoi's family are doctors. They are fighting COVID-19 right now." 

Letty writes: No more war.

                    No more COVID-19

                    Love and peace.

**Update January 2021:

In a box my father carried with him I recently rediscovered the Japanese fan that Dr. Aoi sent to us in the 1950's. Once again I asked my friend Yuka for help in translating the words on the fan. The best news of all the translation down the side reads: Made my Hotel Taigetsu-row in Toba-harbor. Taigetsu means waiting for the moon.  

Toba, she writes is a beautiful place to visit. Here is the website: 

Toba Harbor

The Address Book

The old and the new.

My address books may not have carried much value over the years, except at Christmas when I yearly mailed cards and short stories to friends and family.  The year my parents died a few months apart, my sister and I felt abandoned and lost when Christmas time came.  Someone else lived on the farm, and the Miami Country Club, our second home, had burned to the ground.  In the midst of my Christmas heartache I found Mother's address book, with names and addresses of hundreds of friends they had met over the years.

That December I used my mother's address book and began sending cards to many of my parent's  friends, along with a short typed note explaining that our parents had died unexpectedly that year.  Most every person I contacted replied, and many of them shared hand written stories or pictures of mom and dad.

That year I learned the value of personal address books. In a distant way it kept my parents memory alive.

This year my old address book looked more like scribble than readable address. In the decades of that book friends had moved several times, some simply lost touch, while others died. I couldn't even read some of my own handwriting, as I searched for people and addresses that were current.  A simple solution, I bought a new book, one with a shining cover. Then began the task of writing out names and current addresses of people with whom I shared Christmas, birthday, or anniversary cards  With each and every name in my book I see that person and for a moment my brain scans through times we shared, through tears, hysterical laughter, somber moments, tough talks.

One year LaVonne's letter shared how her son had run through a plate glass window. When other people might have been shocked or worried, I laughed. Our son, Michael, had once run through our sliding glass door without bloody injury the day before we were to leave on a two week vacation in the yellow van. We had to hire a house sitter for a day or two until the glass company could be there to fix the door. Oh, such memories. 

Christmas cards are pictures on a world of people who have walked through my life and made it better.

That should have been the end of the story except this time, more people had died than I ever realized. It rattled me to realize how decades had passed.

I posted on short note on Facebook sharing my feelings. Barbara replied, "I hear you. We are at that age where we have friends dying all too often. I replaced my address book last year for the same reasons you mentioned."  Her words lifted my spirits.  Someone else shares my feelings. Her words were echoed through out the list of replies.

Still there was no answer for my heart on what to do about all the names of people who have died. Then another friend posted the answer that put me back on track. Debbie wrote, "One of my least-favorite book work tasks. I feel I am disrespecting a friend or loved one by marking out their name or deleting their phone number on my phone. I can't do it. In time, I start a new address book but their phone number will remain in my phone until I need a new phone..."

Thanks to Debbie's words, I noticed a place on each tab page of the new address book that stated 'Quick Reference.' A perfect place to list a name and hometown of a friend who has passed away from this earthly life.  Now for the next few decades my friends will have a new home in my address book, and a smile from me when I see their names.

Thinking back about address books and writing this story, I realized that there is more to the value of that book than just printed names. Addresses write our history. My stories come from 209 H st. N E,  3030 Oakland, Nebraska st, Canterbury st and more. We didn't have many pictures, so our words had to tell the story.

August 4, 1911, Hulst Holland, Peter de Bakker, Prosperity Mo, Amerika

Place was how families stayed connected with oceans between them. Letters told of babies dying, people moving, aches and pains of growing older, and other news of the day. The stories of our families, our genealogy are directly tied to place and time. 

I started writing pen pals letters in 5th grade  through addresses found in My Weekly Reader.  Then on vacation in the summer of 1959 at Branson, Missouri, I met the Kuhlman family. Susan and I immediately became friends and pen pals until the 1970's when we both had children and lost touch.  A few years ago during a trip that Jack and I took to St. Louis, I saw a highway sign that showed Mexico, Mo. I wondered whatever happened to my friend Susan.  Over the next week of traveling, thanks to Facebook, I found my long lost Pen Pal. A year later we met up in Mexico, Missouri and told stories all morning long.  Sadly, Susan in now in hospice care. I heard the tinkling of tiny china bells the other day and wondered when or if Susan had received her angel wings.

The ebb and flow of our lives will continue in the book of life. 

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Pen Pals Lost and Found

Consumed by a Story

Pen Pals Lost and Found

Arriving home from a genealogy vacation last summer,  I returned to the search for classmates, notes, and connections to our 50th high school class reunion.  In a small pile of grade school pictures, I gasped in surprise, there in my hands was a wallet-sized photo

Susan Kuhlman, my pen pal from 5th grade.  I remembered exactly where we met, that July of 1959. 

My parents had taken a long weekend trip to Branson, Missouri to fish and enjoy the waters of Lake Taneycomo (long before it was the Branson of today).  Our small roadside motel had a pool for the kids, a boat dock and fishing dock. Best of all it was raw with nature and wilderness surrounding it. 

A large snapping turtle had been captured and placed in a four sided cement tank on prime property for kids to bend over and offer carrots or poke at it with sticks. In retrospect, I'm sure that turtle wasn't captured for us to tease, but at the time it seemed logical.

Susan and I met in the pool that week, and became the best of young friends. She had a little sister, as did I, so we shared our woes of always having tagalongs sisters on each adventure.  Her father was the principal at the Missouri Military Academy, and like my father he enjoyed fishing. Our mothers made the best picnic lunches that week, and our evening meals were hot dogs, or fresh fish from the lake.  

At the end of the week, Susan and I exchanged addresses and began a writing letter friendship that lasted until we both went off to college.  

The story might have ended, but my curiosity to know what happened pushed me to begin my search.  How simple it became, thanks to social media. First, I found her younger sister on

Susan Kuhlman 1963-64

facebook, and a few days later, I received a note and friend request from my Pen Pal.  Oh, we laughed and recalled those years and letters. Neither of us managed to save those letters, nor did I find any old postcards of Branson.  She said that she'd often thought of me and tried to find me over the years. Susan recalled that one summer her parents were on vacation and dropped her off to stay with me overnight. "You showed me your fallout shelter in the backyard, and I was overwhelmed.  I hoped no one would every have to use it. We played games and just caught up with lots of laughs and great friendship.  I remember your little sister, Jonya. My sister, Joyce, didn't spend the night with us." 

Interesting how a setting made for an Alfred Hitchcock scene, the frigid cold waters and bouncy waves of Lake Taneycomo, a stucco motel with a flat roof and gravely parking lot, provided a happy ending for two little girls, who still share those memories, and whose friendship has come full circle. 

In the process of writing this blog, we've begun to communicate again about memories, about our parents, and eventually we will arrive at today. 

Branson's history