December Remembrance

On December 9, 1953, family gathered to celebrate the birthday of beloved “Grandma.”

She was born 79 years earlier in the town of Orbis in the Rheinpfalz area of Germany, nestled along the Rhine River so close to the French border that it has more than once over the centuries shifted official languages and political loyalties. She was the fourth of five children to Martin Fuchs and Maria Franz, at least as far as family lore and added research has revealed to us.

Her given name was Elisa; she called herself Elise if she was feeling French, Elsie if she was feeling German, and Elsie Von der Rhein if she was tipsy. She called herself Elsie von der Rhein a lot.

Grandma enjoyed good health in her senior years, despite painful arthritis. There was a pall over her birthday party because of recent news from the vet about her 8-year-old Spaniel-mix, Patsy. The mongrel was suffering from an incurable disease, and did not have long to live. But Grandma’s spirit was indomitable, and nothing could crash her legendary party mood.

Grandma’s blood relatives were joined in the festivities by her ‘live-in’ family, the three men who boarded in her second-floor apartment at 140 First Avenue at Ninth Street in New York City. There was 58-year-old John Gloszat from Holstein, Germany, nephew of her late ex-husband Michael Naujoks; 90-year-old Paul Landberg; and 79-year-old Fred Schmidt, affectionately known as “Schmitty.” Because Schmitty had a car, he was also Grandma’s unofficial chauffeur.

Grandma’s daughters, Henrietta Elise “Hattie” (Naujoks) Bello and Bertha Marie “Bada” (Naujoks) Leicht, each named for Grandma’s older and younger sisters, respectively), were there with their children and grandchildren.

The impending Christmas celebration was likely on everybody’s mind, but I wonder what else was on Grandma’s mind – besides Patsy’s mortality. She had never made a big deal about it, and I don’t know if she even told anybody this fact, but it was on Christmas Eve 1891 that she arrived in America, just two weeks after her 17th birthday.

When the creaky 24-year-old SS Waesland docked in the port of New York that December 24, Elisa was one of the 318 steerage passengers, sailing in the aft section.

 

 

She was indentured to one of the either 5 first class passengers or 16 second class passengers, but those arrangements never came to fruition as Grandma fled the scene to eventually find her older sister, Henrietta (also called Hattie), who made her way to America under similar circumstances six years earlier. They were inseparable throughout much of the parallel adult lives they built together.

 

As Grandma’s 79^th birthday party broke up, everybody went their separate ways to prepare for Christmas. Turns out the vet was right about Patsy, but fate was not for the dog alone.

 

Nearly two weeks later, on the evening of December 22, after dinner and clearly a few drinks, Grandma sat in the living room with Patsy on the floor alongside her, and started writing out the cards for her Christmas gifts. The men had all gone off to bed for the night, but inevitably one of them had to get up for a late-night pee, as drunken old men are apt to do.

The apartment was warmed with at least one portable heater connected to a natural gas outlet in the wall by a hose stretched across a hallway.  Sounds dangerous, right?  Well it certainly was. Either Gloszat or Schmitty tripped over the hose and passed out, releasing the gas into the apartment and asphyxiating all inside.

The accident made headlines in all the New York papers – New York World-Telegram and The Sun, New York Journal American, Daily Mirror, New York Post, and at least three others.  The journals each gave varying descriptions of who was where in the apartment when they died, but the common thread was that a neighbor from the third floor, Amelia Dreher, smelled the gas when she got up to walk her own dog at 6 am, and called the police.  Patrolman Peter Wieber (one of the papers spelled his name Weaver) got into the apartment through a fire escape, and made the discovery.  All were pronounced dead at the scene.

 

So on Christmas Eve 1953, 62 years to the day she first set foot on American soil, Elisa was laid to rest in it.

 

Grandma is buried alongside her first husband Michael Naujoks and with John Gloszat in the old Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery in  Middle Village Queens, marked by a stone that says “Hier Ruhet in Frieden”  – here they rest in peace.

This Christmas and all Christmases may we all honor the spirit of Grandma Elsie von der Rhein, spreading mirth, joy, and friede.