Chester De Young 1906-2002
A
life-long Worker Bee
The Story of Chet De Young
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| Chet with his son Jim in 1939 (That's me the author of this tribute) |
My dad, Chester(Chet) De Young, had a long and productive
life. He was lean and not very tall, but
he did possess a natural athleticism that revealed itself as a fine youthful
baseball player and later in life a good bowler and a very competitive golfer.
He was a steady disciplined worker who
held the same job for over fifty years. I would like to think that my sister
and I have inherited that work ethic
from him and have passed it on to our children. Like most of the human race, Dad did not attract a lot of attention outside
of his immediate circle of family and friends, but there were plenty of those
and I do not recall any of them speaking ill of him.
Work started early for him and it didn’t result in some romantic
Horatio Alger myth. There was no pot of gold waiting . Yet given the acute deprivation of his early
years, his attainment of a respectable middle class life for himself and his
family carries only admiration.
Dad spent his early childhood as the eldest son of what can
be charitably called an affable, dreamy, itinerant farmer with let’s admit it a
drinking problem. His parents, John and Emma De Young (nee Draeger) were
married in 1900. Their first child Margaret
(always called Marge) was born somewhat less than nine months after their
nuptials. According to my father the
shotgun wedding did not earn the couple any points--especially with his
mother’s in-laws. The couple were more careful after that because my father didn’t
come along for five years more years in 1906.
The young De Youngs initially lived in a duplex on my great-grandfather
Isaac’s farm just outside of Beaver Dam, WI and young John Joseph (my
grandfather) worked as his own father’s hired hand. As the first and only at that
time male child, my Dad was integrated
into the normal routine of daily farm chores by the time he was five or six.
Dad’s more formalwork experience also began early. My great grandfather Isaac sold his Beaver
Dam farm in 1913 and moved into town for his own years of retirement. There was
to be no primo geniture for my dad’s father. Instead he was apparently given a
cash gift and told that there would be no further inheritance. John Joseph took
the money and purchased a new farm over 100 miles north just outside of
Marshfield, WI. The family moved there but stayed only a short time before selling out and moving
into a rented house in the town of Marshfield proper in 1917. By that time the family was growing. My dad and his older sister now had three
more sisters (Hazel, Gladys, and Frida) and another brother on the way. John
was born in town. An additional son,
Elmer, had been born in 1909, but passed away in 1910 most likely of influenza.
Life now got more stormy. The family narrative, even though the real
estate documents are missing, says that when my dad’s father, John Joseph, sold
the Marshfield farm and moved the family
to town, he took some or all of the sale money and decided to look for a new
property or business in Minneapolis or the eastern Dakotas. It now seems certain
that sometime in the fall of 1917 dad’s father gathered up a $10,000 grubstake
(almost certainly from the sale of the Marshfield farm) and traveled toward Minneapolis.
It is reasonable to think he took a
train as Marshfield was a major rail center and had several passenger trains a
day in all directions. After that all we know is that somehow he lost the money
in a misadventure. Whether it was gambling, theft, or a scam we shall probably
never know.
What we do know is he stopped communicating and disappeared. His
wife (my grandmother) was left with six
children and no income. She ultimately resorted
to filing a formal abandonment warrant against her husband. This probably
triggered some welfare, but she also located a job cleaning for a furniture
store/funeral parlor in downtown Marshfield. This represented a real salvation
because the job included some kind of subsidized rent for a second floor apartment above the store. This helped with finances, but Dad’s older
sister Marge still had to quit school to work. New baby John stayed in Marshfield with Grandma Emma and some of the other girls were sent to
relatives for a time. My dad was eleven and stayed home and in school, but took
a series of part time jobs to help out. According to his testimony he sold
magazines and newspapers, he helped Mr. Remb, the proprietor of the furniture
store/mortuary, collect bodies, and also held a
part-time job at the local Adler Opera House cleaning seats, assisting
the projectionist, and helping with finding props and materials for the
traveling stock companies who arrived to perform.
So where did my grandfather John J. go for over a year? The older children testified that their father had returned
wearing an Army uniform and carrying a dented helmet. Yet for many years no one
could produce and records that proved he was in the Army. Modern computerization of WWI war records
finally solved the problem. John Joseph De Young, my dad’s father, enlisted in
the US Army under the assumed name of John J. Jones in February of 1918. He served
as a Private during WWI in Company E, 5th Regiment, Corps of
Engineers and his military stint included a six month tour on the front lines in
France. The details of this search will be left for an article on my
grandfather’s life. For this essay it will suffice to say that when he was eleven
years old my father was already practicing to be a full time breadwinner.
One piece of absolute proof that dad’s father had returned to
the family in 1919 was the 1920 census, which does show both parents and all
the children living in the Marshfield
apartment above the furniture store/funeral home. This does not mean that the
next years were suddenly devoid of economic peril. The family added two more mouths
to feed with the births of sons Harold and Eugene in 1921 and 1922 and they moved
at least three times more to other farms in south eastern Wisconsin before finally
settling permanently in Watertown, WI. in 1922 just before my uncle Eugene’s
birth.
My father’s oldest sister Marge left for an independent life
and marriage in 1923. Her husband Walter (Stubby) Schultz was a successful and generous
man and he and Marge supplied housing and employment for most of the other
siblings over the following years. Even
with this kind of help from Marge and
Stubby, finances remained precarious for
the family. Chet (my dad) had to drop out
of Watertown H.S. after his sophomore year to go to work in 1925. He was never
able to return to get a high school diploma.
As the great Depression gathered steam over the next five
years, Dad worked at a cannery and in the fields around Watertown harvesting peas. Meanwhile, his sister Marge
and her husband, Stubby had moved to
Toledo, Ohio where Stubby had taken another position at an American Can Company
facility. Stubby offered him a job in the company office and also an
opportunity to live with them, which would save dad some more money.
There is some fuzziness in Dad’s life between 1925 and 1930 .
My best estimate is that he came back to Watertown, WI. from Toledo in 1927 or
1928. With a bit of money saved and his skill set now showing experience in the
clerical area, he probably set his sights on the larger and more fruitful Milwaukee,
WI job market. A combination of the 1930 census and the
Milwaukee City Directory revealed that he was working as a clerk for a company
called Griffin and Turner that sold seeds and garden supplies. Since Dad grew
up on a series of farms, employment at a
seed and garden company would seem to make sense. Always frugal, Dad was also
not living above his means. The 1930 census shows him living in a rooming house
with several other men. We need to remind ourselves that in the middle of the
Great Depression anyone with a job of any kind was clearly thankful.
At this point however,
brighter days were on the way. Sometime
between 1927 and 1929 Dad met my mother Lillian. Lil had grown up on a farm outside of
Watertown, WI. She had attended Johnson
Creek high school for two years and then transferred to Watertown HS in order
to take advantage of their special commercial training program. She graduated
with that emphasis in 1927 and also set off for the big city of Milwaukee to
find a job. She roomed with her long
time school chum from Johnson Creek, Addy Brown, and found a job as a
secretary. Dad said that they actually first met on the old interurban line
that ran from Milwaukee through Watertown when both of them were returning home
for a weekend visit. Though they had
grown up within ten miles or so of each other and had even attended the same
high school for a time, the school yearbooks seem to prove that they did not
intersect. Dad left Watertown HS after his sophomore year in 1925 and my mother
did not transfer in to Watertown High from Johnson Creek High until the year
after dad left.
In any case things progressed from that chance meeting. First
there was acquaintance, then some serious dating, and then a marriage in Milwaukee on Sept. 16, 1930. They were still married when my mother passed
away in 1991. Dad told me that he had secured his job with Lindsay Brothers
in Milwaukee shortly before their marriage. That would make it sometime in 1930
, but after his 1930 census interview when he was listed as a clerk and living
in that rooming house with a bunch of men.
It is time for me to issue an apology for depending so
heavily on my dad’s recollections. The truth is I never really took the
opportunity to talk to my mother a lot about her life and then I moved away and
bang she was gone. My dad was not as
talkative as my mother, but he did live on for many years after she died and after
he sold the family home in Milwaukee and moved to Galesburg IL, IL, we spend a
great deal more time together and talked more about the past.
For instance he told me about his marriage to mom in some
detail during a long conversation at a Perkins Restaurant in Galesburg in 1999.
He recalled that he and Mom had
been married at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Milwaukee in the office of
the minister. He didn’t recall who made the arrangements. I suspect it was
Mom. Mom’s best friend from Johnson
Creek and her roommate in Milwaukee was her Maid of Honor. Addie’s husband Earl
was the best man. The Browns continued to be friends of my folks down through
the years. Earl was in the insurance business but also a fine photographer and
took some of the early pictures of me. In the years after their marriage and
before I was born they traveled and vacationed with the Browns.
After the wedding ceremony Dad said they had a lovely dinner
at the dining room of the Astor Hotel on Milwaukee’s lower east side. I looked
the hotel up recently and found that it was built in 1928. It was still
operating as of 2018 at 924 East Juneau
Ave.
After dinner, according to Dad, he and Mom took a bus to
Chicago arriving there around midnight. There they transferred to a bus for
Toledo, OH and arrived early the next
morning. He said they sat in the bus
station to wait for a reasonable hour to call his older sister Marge and her
husband Stubby to come and pick them up. They stayed about a week he thought
before taking a bus back to Milwaukee. And that was their honeymoon.
Dad was already somewhat familiar with Toledo as he had
worked there at the American Can Company for a couple of years before 1930 and
had lived with sister Marge and her husband. Marge’s husband worked for the
American Can Company and Stubby got him a job, which was in the office not on
the factory floor. It was probably there that he got the first taste of
clerical work and it probably was good for his resume when he interviewed for
his position at Lindsay Brothers.
Lindsay Brothers Inc. was already a well established wholesaler
of agricultural machinery and supplies in the 1930’s. While talking to me in
June of 2000, Dad said that he got the
job through a depression era employment agency set up at the Milwaukee YMCA.
His new boss, F.H. Lindsay, just happened to be on the board at the YMCA and
may have been impressed by the earnest young man. Over the years at Lindsay Bros.’s. Dad was a clerk, general office worker, accountant,
salesman, and buyer for the firm. He also helped to set up and run the
company’s profit sharing plan for retirees. He worked continuously at Lindsay’s
until he retired some fifty-one years later.
When I was growing up I visited his office often. I met some
of his co-workers and his boss, Mr. Lindsay, on several occasions beginning in
the late 1940’s. Old F.H. Lindsay took a
particular interest in me. He used to buy sheets of new postage stamps as they
came out and when he discovered I was a stamp collector, he let Dad take groups
of commemorative plate blocks to give to me. I still have those stamps and
though collecting is not a popular pastime any more, they do have some value
today.
The Lindsay building was in the old Third
Ward at 126 S. 2nd Street. It was constructed in 1892 and was
impressively large with 220,000 sq ft of warehouse space on the upper floors
and 10,000 sq ft of office space on the first floor. As far as I can tell the company
went out of business sometime between 1990 and 2000 and the old building is now
part of an historic urban renewal area. I marvel that such an impressive structure
was put up in what was essentially an industrial area. I remember it as not quite so sparkling. The
trim was green and 2nd street
was a busy and noisy thoroughfare with a streetcar route and large numbers of
trucks and other delivery vehicles passing by. You entered the office up a half flight of steps in the
middle of the building. The office itself was well lighted from the large
windows and filled with desks on an open plan. Whenever I visited things always
seemed to be busy yet quite informal and friendly. My dad’s desk was fairly close
to the entrance and near his boss, F.H. Lindsay. F.H.’s desk was closer to the
front windows, but I don’t recall any separating partitions to make it private.
At the far end of the room a wall separated the office from the
loading docks. Behind those docks were two big old lumbering freight elevators. They
would grind up slowly to the upper floors where the inventory was kept. The few times I went up there I remember it as
shadowy and a bit scary.
The Lindsay brothers (I think there were three) had big
summer homes in a compound on Oconomowoc Lake just outside of Milwaukee. The
yearly company picnic was held there and it was a highlight for all the
employees and their families. There was space to run, plentiful food, games
with prizes, swimming, and boat rides on the lake. This helped to spark other social
activity among the employees and I know my parents counted a number of Dad’s fellow
workers as close friends and saw them and their families outside of work.
Dad was a low priority for the draft in WWII. He was almost forty, married with a child, and working in an
agriculture related industry. On the
other hand his current job was not highly paid and my mother had quit working
when I was born. I have no recollection of her working again when I was a
child. She did return to the work force as an admitting officer at St. Luke’s
Hospital in Milwaukee during my sister Nancy’s college years and did continue
to work after Nancy graduated. I know the extra income did make their later
years more comfortable financially.
At some point during WWII, Dad also took a part-time evening
job at the cigarette and cigar stand in the lobby of the Milwaukee Athletic
Club. My guess is that it was a help for
the family finances and allowed for some extra savings to make a down payment
on a house. Dad was a smoker at the time and the job also came with a chance to
get scarce wartime cigarettes at a good price.
After their marriage Mom and Dad rented a two bedroom apartment
on the 2nd floor of a house at 4438A West Medford Ave on Milwaukee’s
north side. We lived there until the impending arrival of my sister Nancy in
1945 made the search for a somewhat larger house more important. In 1946 we
moved across town to Milwaukee’s south
side and a tiny but still a 3 bedroom bungalow at 3722 S. 20th
Street. It would be the first and only home my parents would ever own.
Another job I remember Dad doing in the late forties and
early fifties was ushering at Marquette University basketball and football
games. I have no idea how he got involved in this, but he seemed to have been in
charge of checking the ushers in and then paying them at the end of the game.
The usher hats were kept in a large chest and came in lots of sizes. Dad often took
me along to these games and when he did he would put me in charge of handing
out and collecting the hats. I was allowed to wear a hat too and I remember
always searching through the trunk to find a size small enough to fit me before
the other guys arrived. At checkout time Dad would pay each person two or three
dollars in cash. I usually got a dollar. It was one of my first paid jobs.
Dad retired from Lindsay Brothers in the 1980’s and lived on to
enjoy many years of relaxation and travel. He and my mom were able to see
Hawaii and to go abroad to visit my wife and I in London and my sister and her
husband when they were stationed in Germany. Both mom and dad were faithful
churchgoers and members of the Tippecanoe Presbyterian Church. They served at various times as Elders or Trustees
and Dad also served as the financial
secretary for the church.
With my sister and I out on our own, mom and dad continued to
live in the house on 20th St. that they had purchased in 1946. A few
years after my mother’s death in 1991, we moved Dad to an apartment at a Galesburg,
IL Senior Home. This put dad about 20 minutes away from my wife and I in Monmouth
and we were able to see him regularly until he passed on in 2002 at the age of 96.
“Well
done oh kind and helpful servant.”
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| Chet with his two children Nancy and Jim in March, 2002 not long before his death. |
Jim De Young, 2020
