Charlie Chaloupek

Charlie "Lob" CHALOUPEK was born 17 Dec 1887, or 1884, in Belle Plaine, Iowa. His parents were my great-grandparents, Frank Louis and Mary (Yaroshek) Chaloupek. So Charlie was my great uncle. He grew up in Belle Plaine, but somehow he was missing from the 1900 US Census. 

Charlie served in WWI. From his Registration card, from 5 Jun 1917, we learn that he was tall, of medium build, had blue eyes and light-colored hair. I don't know any of the details of his military service. He never married or had children. 

From Leighton Kaloupek, 2 Aug 2010:

"He must have been affected by the war. He lived about 1 1/2 miles west of town in some timber near the Iowa River. I don't know what he did when it flooded. I heard he lived in a shack ( on somebody else's land?) that was maybe 10 x 10. He never drove and just came into town for groceries I guess and maybe to the tavern. ... Around Chelsea he was known as 'Lob' Chaloupek. I don't know anything about the nickname."

By all accounts, he was never quite right after the war. Perhaps today he would be diagnosed with PTSD. It seems likely that his life would have turned out much differently, if not for his wartime experience. Look into the eyes in the photo, and try to assess the cost of war.

He lived on a small pension from his military service. Once a month, when his check came in, he would go into the tavern and buy rounds for everyone. No one had much use for a veteran with bad nerves, or shell-shock, or whatever you want to call it. One local farmer, who had hired Charlie to do some odd jobs, even took some pride in telling about tackling him and crushing a few stolen eggs in his coat pocket.

Charlie Chaloupek died in a blizzard, according to some. Other reports say he died in the Veteran's Hospital in Iowa City. Maybe he died in the hospital as a result of injuries sustained in the blizzard. The date of death is 18 Mar 1957, so he would have been 72, or 69. 

Charlie's application for bonus, dated 23 Jun 1923, has some useful information. It says he was born 17 Dec 1888, in Hartwick, which is 10 miles south of Chelsea. He lived in Chelsea from Nov 1894 until his enlistment on 34 Jul 1918. He served in the US Army for almost one year, being honorably discharged 19 Jul 1919. It looks like he reported to Camp Dodge, and served in 4 Repl. Regt. Co C. I'm not sure what Gordon, Ga has to do with it. Before enlistment, he did farm work for Mack Ryan, of Hartwick.

Article by Dennis Lamb

I enjoyed reading John Sheda’s article about some of the characters that used to live in Chelsea, IA.  He missed one, however, “Lob” Chaloupek, presumably because Lob was before John’s time.

On Memorial Day, my thoughts are always drawn to Lob, a little known WWI veteran from Chelsea, who seemingly personified the trauma and tragedy of many of his WWI comrades in arms.  

I knew Lob only as “Lob Chaloupek” in growing up.  Though it seemed pointless because I realized “Lob” had to have been a nickname, I recently Googled “Lob Chaloupek” on the off chance of finding something about him. To my surprise, I got a hit.  I learned his real given name was Charlie, the details of his WWI registration card, and that his parents were Frank and Mary Chaloupek from Belle Plaine, where Frank Chaloupek was a Car Inspector in the railroad yard.  I also learned that Lob was born on 17 Dec 1887 and died on 18 Mar 1957.  One of Lob’s distant relatives subsequently told me he believed Lob was buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery north of Chelsea.  

Lob’s WWI registration card, from 5 Jun 1917, showed also that he was tall, of medium build, had blue eyes and light-colored hair.  There was no photo.  He may have been handsome when he was young, but I cannot say he was handsome when I first met him around 1947.  But then neither am I in old age.  He had a large nose and long, sad face.  He apparently never married nor had children. When he came back to Iowa after WWI, he was something of a hermit and lived in a small ca. 10” x 10” shack in the timber about one and half miles west of Chelsea near the Iowa River on land that belonged to my uncle, Leonard Behounek.  The shack, as I recall it, was made of thin boards on a flimsy frame, apparently built by Lob himself from lumber he carried from Chelsea to the site.  I saw no sign of insulation when I visited the site in 1960.  In retrospect, it is difficult to understand how it stood up to strong winds and how Lob managed to survive winters in it.  It is now gone, washed away years ago by flood waters.  

It seems apparent that Lob must have been affected by the war, shell shock most likely, for which he never received treatment.  Where he got the nickname “Lob,” I don’t know, perhaps from a reputation for skill in lobbing grenades in the Great War.  Lord only knows what he saw and experienced.  Lord only knows also what he might have become had he been treated for trauma after his service in the Great War.  He might have become a farmer, salesman, teacher, lawyer, or even a Congressman.

I understand Lob kept turtles he found in the timber and potatoes in a hole in the ground of his shack for food. He may have hunted or fished also, but my uncle never said anything about having seen him do so and, to the best of my knowledge, when he died no fishing pole or weapon was found in his shack.  In 1960 I did find his WWI helmet lying in the rubble of his shack. 

My uncle said he once looked in Lob’s door and saw that the legs of his bed were standing in cans of water.  Asked what the cans of water were for, Lob said they were to keep bedbugs out of his bed.  

Once a month Lob would attach a smelly sack to a pole and walk into Chelsea to pick up his army pension check and what meager groceries he needed to supplement his diet. On the way into town he reportedly would stop to pull weeds pernicious to farmers’ crops, though he grew no crops himself.  Once he picked up his check and supplies, he would visit a local tavern and buy beers for the patrons until his money was spent, apparently in a sad and futile effort to make friends and conversation.  Instead of buying this destitute old veteran a drink, these men would graciously allow him to spend his pension check on them.  I seriously doubt any of these “gentlemen” ever bought Lob a beer in return.

Lob apparently never went to church or expressed any view on religion.  Yet there were clearly parallels between his lifestyle - his living a solitary life in the woods, his kind, gentle nature, his giving his money away - and the lifestyle of religious ascetics.  Insofar as we tend to consider such people as “characters,” perhaps it is because our consumer society and current values cause us to dismiss without second thought Christ’s admonition not to lay up treasuries on earth and his warning that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. 

Quite likely Lob’s seemingly bizarre lifestyle had nothing to do with some religious belief or philosophical thought.  Yet one has to wonder: was his behavior due solely to untreated trauma and shell shock?  Or did he experience an epiphany during the Great War that few of us have had or can understand?  Leo Tolstoy (1828 –1910), the Russian moralist, ascetic and war veteran who wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, two of the greatest novels of all time, would have found much in common with Lob and undoubtedly admired him as someone to emulate.  One of Tolstoy’s short stories, Father Sergey, was about a monk living in a cave, and shortly before his death Tolstoy abandoned his estate, family and wealth to seek redemption in poverty.  So one wonders, might there have been more to Lob than we thought?

Lob quietly disappeared from view for me while I was in high school.  I did not know what happened to him.  I subsequently heard that he had died but did not know where his grave was.

I have often thought about Lob because when I was a small child of about five in 1947 my father had taken me into a Chelsea tavern with him.  As I stood there surrounded by adults and feeling very alone in spite of my father’s presence, a long sad face leaned down to me and asked me if I would like a dime.  Now a dime in 1947 was a lot of money to a child. It would buy two candy bars or two ice cream cones. It would also buy an adult a beer, so Lob quite clearly could have done other things with this dime than to give it to a small child.  But perhaps as much as I appreciated the dime, I appreciated the attention from a kind stranger.  As a consequence, I never forgot Lob.  Indeed I often thought about him over the years and his generous and kind nature.  As a consequence also, in traveling around Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism, I often carried candy in my coat pockets to give to children or impoverished old people begging on the streets, trying in this way to pass on Lob’s kindness to other people.  

I still remember an old woman caretaker in a church in Moldova from whom I bought three newly painted icons.  She started to wrap them in an old newspaper for me, and then noticed that one sheet had a photo of a wolf on it, which she said could not be used because the wolf symbolized evil and should not touch the icons.  Seeing by her clothing that she was very poor, I said she could keep the change which amounted to about three dollars in the local currency.  Obviously extremely thankful, she first turned her eyes to Heaven, then blessed me and got down on her knees and bowed three times to a safe that I can only assume contained a sacred object.  Seeing that this woman had a connection to God that I would never have, I later regretted that I did not give her fifty dollars and ask her to remember me in her prayers.  I am sure she would have done so daily the rest of her life– and maybe did anyway. 

In Prague in 1990, I noticed a woman with a boy about seven years old and asked the woman if it would be alright to give him a piece of candy. She concurred and told the boy it would be okay for him to take the candy.  As I watched the boy grope around eagerly for the candy, the woman explained that he was blind.  To the delight of the boy and woman, I gave them all I had on me.  Surprised and saddened that such a fine looking young boy could be disabled by blindness, I regretted that I did not have more.

In walking along a street in Minsk, Belarus, in 1993, I noticed a large building that looked like a hospital but had a cross on top of it. Curious, I walked in and found that before the Bolshevik Revolution it had been the town’s Catholic Cathedral. After the Bolshevik Revolution, it had been turned into a training center for Soviet gymnasts. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Minsk’s Polish Catholics mounted a seven month candlelight vigil on their knees outside the building, requesting the return of their cathedral. This included the winter months and several people reportedly ended up in the hospital with frostbite. The Belarus Government finally relented and returned the building to the Polish Catholics.  Before leaving, Belarusian gymnasts, apparently applying scorched earth tactics, smashed the walls with sledge hammers, leaving the lower walls looking like WWII just ended.  

In pulling out a wad of the local currency to pay for some religious material in back of the church, I noticed a girl about seven years old looking at it. I then reached into my pocket, pulled out a couple pieces of candy and held them out toward her.  She tugged on the dress of the woman she was standing with and obviously asked if it was okay to accept them.  She woman smiled and gave her consent.  After the little girl retrieved the candy, I went over to speak to the woman, who turned out to be the girl’s aunt.  When she learned that I was an American, she noted that the little girl was studying English and encouraged her to try to speak to me in English.  The little girl, however, hid behind her aunt’s back. “That’s okay,” I said to the aunt. “Little girls are supposed to be shy.”  

Switching from Russian to German, the aunt asked me if I spoke German. When I replied that I did, the aunt then explained that the little girl had been born without a right hand and was embarrassed about it.  I had not noticed this when she retrieved the candy, but the cause was obvious – the 1986 Chernobyl disaster that had left much of Belarus glowing in the dark. 

About this time, the Polish congregants stood to sing.  Believe me, you have not heard anything until you have heard 150/200 formerly repressed Polish Catholics raise their voice to God.  I had not heard anything like it before, nor have I since.  I am not ashamed to admit that the combined emotions of seeing a young girl born without one hand and then hearing the Polish Catholics singing with all the power and glory of a mighty heavenly host caused tears to well up in my eyes.  I subsequently converted to Catholicism. 

The moral of this story is that one never knows how great an impact a small act of kindness can have on other people and the returns such kindness can have. The children and impoverished people in Eastern Europe to whom I gave candy and money in the early 1990s were clearly pleased and cheered by these small gestures, gestures that would never have happened had a long, sad face not leaned over and given a dime to a small child in 1947.  And had Lob not been so kind and generous, he would not be remembered and read about today.  For my part, I would not have met so many interesting people and had so many interesting experiences.  I only regret that Lob does not know the impact his kindness had on me and perhaps some people in Eastern Europe.  But maybe he does.

Here's a toast to Charlie "Lob" Chaloupek. Thank you for your kindness and service to our country, Charlie!  And thank you for enriching my life and making me a better man. Now that I know where you are buried, I’ll either return your helmet to you or give it to a veterans’ organization with a plaque on condition they place the helmet and plaque in a place of honor to your memory.  And maybe I’ll just stop by the one remaining tavern in Chelsea and buy the patrons a round to your memory. 

                                                                                                Dennis Lamb

                                                                                                Lambden at hotmail.com

Dennis Lamb said he visited Lob's shack a few years after he died, and found the helmet. 

Charley, I was almost one year old when you died, so I don't remember you, but I thank you for your service!

Back to Bill's Genealogy Page

Updated on 23 Jun 2023 by William Haloupek. Contact haloupek at gmail dot com.