Compiled By: Ronald & Donald Guenther
Written: 12/14/2013

Well, Big Don, I did not know about this, but I do understand it.  Margy had also found something like this.  There is a misprint in what you had sent me.  It should be 1918 at one point instead of 1919.  But you have to understand grandma and very few did, I do not understand her either.  What Margy had found was dated 1913.  These things all happened either during pregnancy or immediately afterwards.  What many people would say about what you sent me was to call it post-partum depression.  She eventually came out of it.  There was not a divorce in 1913 nor was there one in 1918.  I do not think that mom knew about this, it was one of those things that was kept quiet.  Mom was two and Uncle Dick was one.  Grandma was a person who could never be happy.  If you look at the old pictures, you would say she was a pretty girl, but her upbringing had been difficult.  She had essentially been stolen from the woman she thought was her mother and then her mother rejected her a second time.  Every time some big event happened, she would have a nervous breakdown, in other words go into a state of severe depression.  The birth of our Uncle Dick was extremely difficult and painful and after that she could not have any more children.  This birth and the resulting difficulties in trying to take care of three children sent over over the edge.  After recovery, she and grandpa got back together.  After the death of her daughter, she went into a severe state of depression and went to live with her mother for seven months.  During that time, Aunt Gerthy came down and took away everything that would remind the family of Aunt Louise.

The last time I was with grandma, it was on the way to Germany, and I asked her point blank about Louise, thirty two years after she had died, and grandma could still not talk about it.  After our grandfather died, she could not deal with the farm, even though Uncle Dick was there.  She quickly moved into town, moved from house to apartment to house and finally out to us.  In those days during the war, when a person was lost, you got a special telegram from the war department.  Nobody wanted to see the postman drive up with something like that, and that happened to us.  I happened to be home at the time.  Uncle Dick went down on my birthday.  About a week later, the telegram came.  You cannot believe what a state grandma was in.  It was terrible.  She sat at the kitchen table and cried and cried and cried.  In the spring of 1944, she moved to Portland, always her dream.  She pined for Uncle Dick, thought maybe he was on one of those islands in the Mediterranean.  She said she was happy, but she was not, she could not be happy.  She married Fred.  The time in Coos County was too painful, she wanted to put that behind her.  During the time that I knew her, she lived in five different houses, always the next house was the right one.  In the last house she was in, she wanted to move again, but Fred said he was unable to move anymore.  She was obviously not happy with grandpa and she was not happy with Fred.  The last time mom and I saw Fred, it was after he had remarried and we went up there to retrieve grandma’s things, they all fit in a couple of tiny boxes, Fred said, “They say this is the way the ball bounces, but for me, the ball has always seemed to bounce in the wrong direction.”  You have to feel sorry for grandma and what you sent was a very sad story.  You have to feel sorry for grandpa, too.  He was at the end of his rope.

This did explain why Aunt Mamie and Uncle Heini never really liked her.  They were civil to her but did not respect her, but then, they did not understand her, either.  In short doses, she was wonderful and when Bob and I stayed with her a couple of times, she spoiled us rotten and we thought she was great.  But when the whole family came it was different.  I do not know if Dory and Phyllis remember her, I do not think any of the younger ones do, but Louise would remember her and I do not think Louise felt very comfortable with her.  When she wanted something, she would lie to get it, out and out lie.  But she had a conscience and then she would sit down and explain to herself and anyone else, why what she had said was not a lie.  Some of the reasoning that went into those explanations involved some real contorted logic, it would make your head spin.

In the end, I feel sorry for grandma.  She had an unhappy life.  It is truly sad.  I had not really expected to go into all of this, but this is something that probably everyone should know.  The reason the old days look so good is because our mind purges all that is bad and what is left is what our mind wants to remember and that is rosy.  It is good for us to know that the old days were no better than the new days and that the old boys and old gals had plenty of problems and they faced them the best way they could, just like we face our problems the best way we can.

I remember once about 1949 after the Soviets had exploded their atomic bomb, two old timers, Old Mr. Perry and Old Jack Lapp were talking and old Mr. Perry said, “If only Teddy were here, he would know what to do.”  And Jack Lapp agreed.  Teddy was president from 1901 to 1909.  Love, Papa/Brother/Uncle

Marge, could you send me a copy of the divorce records that you found.  I do not think that the divorce actually went into effect.  The reason that I think that is because grandpa died intestate.  That meant in those old days in 1940 that if they were not married, and that would have immediately come up in the court records, grandma would not have inherited, in fact she would have gotten nothing.  The property would have been divided between Uncle Dick and Mom.  As it was, the property was all in grandpa’s name and it went into probate.  It took three years to get it out of probate and into grandma’s hands.

When grandma lived out at our place, Bob, Louise and I would visit her and we loved it.  We played a game that she reminded me of the last time I saw her.  We took turns looking around and then the person who was “it” would say, I see something that has the colors of such and such.  She would be in bed.  One time she said, I see something that has all the colors in the rainbow.  That was something that we could not guess and it turned out to be her pin that she had tacked up on the wall.  At that time,mom just had three, I was in the first grade, that was the fall of 1943 and the spring of 1944.  But more children kept coming, the property went out of probate, and grandma headed back up to Portland which had been her dream from the beginning.  As I said, I do not think that mom knew about this, she never talked about it, but she did know that grandpa could never please her and grandma was unhappy.  She did not talk much about he life on the farm.  Later she only told Fred that our grandfather was a wonderful man, but did not say much more than that.  After she married Fred, she only came down to visit us about twice, we visited her in Portland about three times, Bob and I visited her alone three times.  Poor grandma.  Mental illness is tough to deal with.  Our father did not understand her either and used to get very frustrated in dealing with her.  As I said, truth was not her forte.  Our grandfather did not understand her, either, and he did not understand why his marriage turned out to be unhappy, but he came to a wrong conclusion.  He always said, remember, the big families are the happy families.  He thought about his own family which consisted of eight children who made it to adulthood.  There were twelve in all.  But that was a wrong conclusion.  There are happy families of every size and unhappy families of every size.  I loved grandma, but I totally worshiped grandpa as did mom.  I still think of him.  But grandma did her best.  The family that she grew up in was a strange family.  Can you imagine what it must have been like, to think the woman who raised you was your grandmother and not to know it until you are 14, the to be essentially kidnapped and never to see her again, then to be shipped off to a boarding school, essentially abandoned.  When she got married, her uncle had a big wedding for her, her wedding dress came from Paris, she thought she was going to inherit something neat, but her uncle handed her a $20 gold piece and said, that is the end of your inheritance.  Grandma Rena must also have been a strange person.  Divorce before 1900 was an iffy thing for a woman anyway, but she divorced her husband.  I think grandma even had the name of her father wrong.  She always said his name was Wilbur Richard Wiley and that he went by the name of Richard.  But in fact, his tombstone says Wilbur D. Wiley and the grandfather’s name was Richard.  Nothing really hangs together with that family.

Attached below are divorce papers: Joseph B. Delsman (plaintiff) vs. Wilda H. Delsman (defendant) 

1918 Divorce papers.doc (size: 1098k)