Left: Wentland Family-1928: back, Walter (holding Donald), his wife Sarah, Paul, Duke, Josephine Westphal Wentland, her husband Stanley W.; front: Andrew J. Wentland, Florence, Frances.
Right: Westphal Family-1949: back, Ruth Tietzer, Herman C. Westphal Jr. (Bumpy), Dee Bower, Jo Wentland; front: Ken, Lillian, Herman C.
As remembered by John P. Wentland with input from his brothers, Stanley F. and Thomas J.
The collection of these accounts began with two separate collections of remembrances. The first—the one about Josephine B.—began as a work addressed to Mom in the second person and given to her on Christmas, 1989, her 82nd Christmas. Because of a stroke experienced in 1984, Mom could no longer convey these stories herself. The ephasia she experienced as a result of a stroke that reached its full extent in January, 1984, kept her from retelling the stories. Now, in place of retelling them herself, she would give her responses to the written collection of stories she knew so well. By her affirmation of “Right!”and her assertive “No way!” when I’d kid her about one or another aspect of her stories. She made clear that she enjoyed the recounting of the stories she’d shared over the years.
The second collection—the one about Stanley W.—begun in 2004 [it happened to be the 60th Anniversary of D-Day] came about when I was returning from Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago after seeing Robert Anderson’s I Never Sang for My Father. That play's content inspired me to begin writing remembrances of Dad. At that time I wrote: “Here are some of the actions of my heart I have pieced together as remembrances of the life of my Dad—known variously by his family as Stan, Stash, Shaver, and Dad.”
Mom’s stories were first entitled “Remembrances—being the collection of events from the legendary life of Josephine B. Westphal Wentland Finnerty.” I entitled Dad’s “Remembering Dad: I Sang for My Father (or I Said I Love You to My Dad).” This is the editing of the separate stories into “Stories from and About Stan and Jo” with additional material and pictures included in 2010.
Stan and Jo cuddling. . . and the Chihuahua around Dad's neck belongs to Irma and Harry Osborough, longtime friends from A&P management days
That’s what the director of the Steppenwolf production of I Never Sang for My Father wrote in the “Notes on the Play” in the Playbill. I suppose that some of what she wrote about her father could be written by many offspring of their fathers. I know some of it applies to my Dad and me. That is what inspired my gathering of the memories contained here.
The Wentland Family – 1927
Standing: Walter (holding son, Donald) & Sarah, Paul, Frank, Jo and Stan. Seated: Andrew, Florence and Frances
The Westphal Family – c. 1918
Ruth, Lillian, Kenneth, Herman C. and Josephine (Dee and Bumpy not yet born)
Stanley Walter Wentland,
Born: April 28, 1902, the fourth child of Andrew John Wentland and Frances Laskowski, born the third among four siblings, Walter A. “Katz”, Frank A. “Duke”, Paul and Florence.
Baptized: May 3, 1902
First Communion: June, 1915
Married: Josephine Bertha Westphal [7/16/07 – 9/30/93], February 11, 1926, St. Mary Church, Oshkosh, Wisconsin
Died: January 3, 1974, Rockford Memorial Hospital, Rockton Avenue
Josephine Bertha Westphal Wentland Finnerty
Born: July 16, 1907
to Lillian Amelia Emma Henrietta “Mamie” [Voltz]
and Herman Calvin “Candy” Westphal,
the first child with Ruth Florence Frederika , Lilyan
Mae “Dee”, Kenneth and Herman “Bumpy” to follow.
Married: Stanley Walter Wentland, [4/28/02 – 1/3/74],
February/11, 1926, St. Mary Church, Oshkosh,
Wisconsin
James Lyle Finnerty, [12/17/01-3/9/85] August 30, 1975, St. Peter Church, Rockford, Illinois
Disabled by Stoke: January 3, 1985
Died: September 30, 1993, Rockford, Illinois
Stan, 1949
At the counter of Wentland’s 2nd Avenue Grocery (Photo: Margaret Bourke White, LIFE)
Jo and Stan very much in love
c. 1931
Stash, left, with friends, c 1914
Stach, left, with friends c. 1915
INTRODUCTION
Remembering is a process of the heart. The mind may bring up the memory. It is in the heart that memory’s depth of feeling is plumbed. And there are all kinds of “heart” stories told about and by Mom and Dad over the years. Some of these stories flow from the family legends of Jo and Stan we remember. Others flow from conjecture based on what they shared. Either way, since they shared so many of these stories, I open my heart and let flow the list of the events that are our favorites.
STAN AND JO
To begin this series of vignettes with a little background about their sources and how Dad and Mom shared them seems appropriate. Mom and Dad had distinct narrative styles. The following gives some background about how they shared the stories that follow.
Talking to Dad. . . or Hearing from Him
Growing up in a family where Dad was breadwinner with Mom as his life-partner who worked at his side, I recognize that Dad was a moving force—quiet and determined—in my life. There are many things I never got to say to him or many stories I never got to hear from him. Much of his love was shown in action. Like his dad before him, he was the breadwinner. He worked hard giving an example, and, like most parents, he didn’t always understand what we were about, and never expected anything more back from us than any parent, respect and love—but never requested, and demanded only in moments of the usual parental anger and frustration.
Sadly, men don’t usually say I love you to other men, least of all sons to fathers or vice versa. My father said it to us in his actions. I said it to him before he died in 1973. It never occurred to me before this to write about my dad. I don’t know why. Until he was dying, I never thought there was great amount to remember about this man who is my father.
On some occasions, the only time we talked was after he’d had his share of Ten High. And then he’d become an authoritarian observer of the world political scene with an answer to solve each of the country’s—indeed, the world’s—political problems. I can remember hearing Dad and collegiate Tom in discussion with Dad. Dad would spout off with something that left Tom responding in total exasperation, “That’s pure commercialism!” to which Dad would retort something like, “You better believe it, Buddy Boy, if you’re going to make a living in this world.”
In those authoritarian moments, I learned he had no tolerance for “egghead politicians.” When I asked what he meant by that term, his description could be summarized as ivy-leagued politicians with a lot of book-learning and not much real working experience, men [this was before there were any well-known women politicians] who were out of touch with the middle class work force. Adlai Stevenson fell in the category of whom Dad was critical. On the other hand, Dad staunchly supported FDR who, while ivy-league educated, might have escaped Dad’s categorization because of this “egghead” was initiating measures that brought America back from the depression.
Perhaps Dad’s railing against Jews was due in part, as Tom conjectures, to his experiences growing up in Michigan City. Each summer Jewish people from Chicago came to their summer homes in the beach area Sheridan Beach, between Washington Park and Long Beach. The residents of Michigan City may well have considered this an invasion of their city. As a child. I heard veiled comments by Grandpa Westphal about that area when we’d drive Lake Shore Drive on our way to Tietzer’s (Aunt Ruth and Uncle Herb) at Stop 28. By contrast, Dad’s prejudice did not extend, to African-Americans. I remember his kindness and consideration of the janitor of the A&P on 8th Street and 2nd Avenue in Rockford in the 1940’s when there was an undertone of racial prejudice against negroes in that era.
And then, there were the other times when he’d offer a comment on world or church affairs with a balance that would surprise me.
There were some standard stories about his growing up Dad would recount, many of them around pictures in the family album.
Yet there are so many things I didn’t hear from Dad about his life, his growing up with his brothers, his relationship with Mom, where he got his fun-loving sense of humor. From some of the events of his life, I can surmise some of who he is and how he thought. Because of an inherited cultural aspect of Polish stoicism, his response to the events of his life I can only guess.
Following the example of his father, he was faithful to being father and husband, doing whatever it took to support his family and make our lives good. Much of what he did must have been shaped by what he knew of his father, a hard-working breadwinner. What I recognize in my heart as I look back is that his actions spoke louder and more eloquently than any of his shared words. Some of the events described here are ones he shared, others are ones I can only surmise.
Talking to Mom—frank responses from the heart
In later life, especially after Dad’s death in 1974, Mom shared some of her remembrances of raising three boys. That period seems to have been one of a sense of freedom to speak about her earlier life. Inspired by her going over the photos in the family albums, she spoke of some of the occasions before she and Dad had met: her first boy friend, Leslie Frazee, whom she knew while living in Hobart; her special relationship with her cousin Dougie Fleming, son of her Aunt Minnie Fleming (Lillian’s sister); her remembrances of the “Drug Store Gang” composed of Dr. Brennan, Millie Hecht, Louis Sass, and Mickey Cassidy. But regrettably, I never pressed her for, nor did she offer, personal reflections or stories to accompany these memories.
Not having children in the early days of marriage must have been a concern for her, because not only her younger sister had given birth to her son, “Corky,” but in 1926 her Mom had conceived her last child “Bumpy” at what must have been considered, then as now, the advanced age of 42. Mom must have felt the pressure of that situation.
After Dad’s death she was quite candid in those years about the efforts she and Dad made to conceive children. She described her condition as an inverted uterus, or retroverted uterus in medical terms. That condition, she explained, was what prevented them from conceiving children in the first few years of their marriage.
But according to dailymail.com
This complication is extremely rare and most doctors will
only see it once or twice in a lifetime's practice. It does not
cause infertility or any other difficulties getting pregnant.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-108200/Is-tilited-uterus-normal.html#ixzz0mJEKIDDz
Whatever the obstacle to conception, after Stan came, Mom commented that the love for him made them want a yet larger family. And it seemed easier to do what the doctor said they needed to do to conceive. And, lo and behold, it worked. Mom and Dad had a lot of love to give, not only to one another, but to their children. With Tom’s arrival, there was more love to give to two boys, and with my arrival there was still more love to share with the three of us. And for us boys, even though it didn’t seem like it as we were growing up, we also had a lot of love to share with them and one another.
Leslie Frazee, Jo's first boyfriend
"The Drug Store Gang": Dr. Brennan, Millie Hecht, Louis Sass, and Mickey Cassidy.
Mothers and their boys: Ruth and Corky, Mom and Stan, Lillian and Bumpy - circa 1933