My grandmother died when she was around 70, in 1966, from a severe stroke. My grandfather lived until 1982. After he passed, my mother was going through his belongings, and found her mother’s 1929 honeymoon diary. A few years later, she and I used that diary and retraced my grandparents’ steps during our own grand tour of Europe, staying at many of the same hotels, eating at many of the same restaurants, and visiting the same sites. Priceless.
On the voyage home, Mrs. McLean reports that Walter is worried about his investments, and that she was feeling seasick. We know today that he was watching the stock market crash of 1929 – and she was pregnant with my mother.
Some day I will get to Prague. And when I do, I will drive the 100 kilometers to Zavratec, in what was once called Bohemia. Not really to visit the Museum of Limestone Mining, although I am sure it is fascinating. More to visit the place where my great-grandfather Joseph Smid was born in 1874. He emigrated to this country in 1892 on the ship “Weimer” and settled in Chicago. ‘Brown hair, brown eyes, prominent nose’ says his document. His WWI draft card said he was a tailor, but in his 1952 obituary he was described as a plumber. That makes four generations of plumbers in my family on my Dad’s side (proud member of Local 12).
The 1910 Census says Joseph was married to Josephine Dvorak, and two children lived in the house, Lillian, 14; and Joseph 10 (my Grandpa). The 1920 Census adds William to the household. Great grandfather’s wife died in 1933, and he remarried, to Antonia Zrost, in 1934.
Joseph Smith, b. 1899, was well known in Boston as the Chief Plumbing Inspector. But he was more famous, and beloved, for the plumbing classes he taught at Wentworth Institute, getting apprentices and journeymen ready for their licensing tests.
As a young adult he took ill with measles and was hospitalized. He married his nurse, Margaret “Mimi” McPhee. In my mother’s belongings is a photocopy of a photo, marked “1st Graduation Class”, Mimi – Margaret Smith – with a penciled in dot on the child in the very center of the photo.
Another photo is of my Dad, with his big sister Lorraine (in her First Holy Communion dress, I think) with their Grandmother McPhee. There is no date on the photo, so I am not sure if my Uncle Rod was not yet born, or perhaps too young to hold still long enough for the photo.
Lynn Smith 