_John ARQUETTE __________+
| (1844 - 1920) m 1867
_Charles ARQUETTE ___|
| (1877 - 1957) m 1911|
| |_Hannah Mabel TODHUNTER _+
| (1841 - 1918) m 1867
|
|--Clarence W. ARQUETTE
| (1912 - 2002)
| _J.W. PIERCE ____________+
| | (1853 - 1918) m 1893
|_Mary Ellen PIERCE __|
(1895 - ....) m 1911|
|_Mary KENNEDY ___________
(1865 - 1930) m 1893
_Christopher BROWNE _+
| (1523 - 1574) m 1572
_Thomas BROWNE ______|
| (1557 - 1590) |
| |_Mrs BROWNE _________
| (1527 - ....) m 1572
|
|--John BROWNE
| (1574 - 1616)
| _____________________
| |
|_Joan SAYER _________|
(1552 - ....) |
|_____________________
__
|
_Edward FULLER ______|
| (1505 - 1574) |
| |__
|
|
|--Joan FULLER
| (1530 - 1574)
| __
| |
|_____________________|
|
|__
_Henry HOWE _________
| (1497 - 1547) m 1522
_John HOWE __________|
| (1523 - 1574) m 1548|
| |_____________________
|
|
|--John HOWE
| (1556 - ....)
| _____________________
| |
|_____________________|
|
|_____________________
__
|
_Thomas MARTINDALE __|
| (1759 - 1843) m 1792|
| |__
|
|
|--Bennet MARTINDALE
| (1791 - ....)
| __
| |
|_Lucy BENNETT _______|
(1772 - ....) m 1792|
|__
________________________
|
_George Leonard VONBERG Sr_|
| (1827 - 1918) m 1855 |
| |________________________
|
|
|--Lydia VONBERG,
| (1862 - 1893)
| _John George NICKLAS ___
| | (1806 - 1884) m 1833
|_Elizabeth NICKLAS ________|
(1836 - 1905) m 1855 |
|_Anna Catharine BETSCH _
(1809 - 1889) m 1833
page 33
Von Berg, Leonard age 52 farmer Wirtenburg Wirtenburg Wirtenburg
Elizabeth 44 wife PA Darmstadt Darmstadt
John 21 son WI Wirtenburg Darmstadt
William 19 son WI Wirtenburg Darmstadt
Lydia 18 dau WI Wirtenburg Darmstadt
Leonard 9 Iowa Wirtenburg Darmstadt
Elizabeth 2 Kansas Wirtenburg Darmstadt
_Adam ZIMMERMAN _________+
| (1837 - 1899) m 1868
_George Edward ZIMMERMAN ______|
| (1879 - 1965) m 1904 |
| |_Elizabeth BRITZIUS _____+
| (1844 - 1911) m 1868
|
|--Forrest Elbert ZIMMERMAN
| (1909 - 1989)
| _Christian WINTERMANTEL _+
| | (1842 - 1897) m 1865
|_Wilhemina Julia WINTERMANTEL _|
(1880 - 1959) m 1904 |
|_Matilda Ella FEY _______+
(1845 - 1922) m 1865
[110]
Forrest Elbert Zimmerman
by Dianne Z. Stevens
February 18, 2004
Dear Children,
Today I am writing to you about someone I knew very well...my Daddy!
Forrest Elbert Zimmerman was born on 28 December 1909 in Tacoma, Pierce County, Washington. He was the one and only child of George Edward Zimmerman and his wife, Wilhemina Julia Wintermantel, called Minnie. George and Minnie were both from immigrant German families, so Forrest grew up speaking both German and English. His mother had taught school before her marriage and was an accomplished pianist. She tried to interest Forrest in the piano, but it didn't take. George was a very capable and clever young man who, over the years, supported his family in numerous different ways, including farmer, ship builder, and hardware store merchant. He shared with Forrest an interest in woodworking and in figuing out what makes things go.
I have a small Baby Book that his mother kept. In it is a lock of his surprisingly blonde hair, and a list of baby gifts. On the list is this entry, "Ring from Mrs. J. Ward." I have that ring. I also have a number of photographs of my dad as a small child. In them he has long curly hair and is wearing dresses! I was quite alarmed when I first saw these photos. Since then, however, I have learned it was the style at that time to dress little boys like that until they were about three years old.
Forrest's family moved aoround quite a bit when he was small. I have a Valentine's Day postcard addressed to Forrest in Thornton, Washington dated 1914. Thornton is a small town near the Washinton/Idaho border and about 40 miles south of Spokane. I have no idea what the family was doing there. The next item I have is Dad's third grade report card from Astoria, Oregon. Astoria is right on the Columbia River very near its mouth where it meets the Pacific Ocean. According to his report card he was "Excellent" in reading and spelling and behavior and "Good" in everything else. We know a little bit more about the time in Astoria because of a letter written by Forrest to his granddaughter Dawne in 1974.
"Dear Dawne,
Grandma is writing to you about when she was a little girl on a farm. I grew up in small towns so my life was different.
When I was nine years old your great grandmother and great grandfather and I lived in Astoria Oregon. This was during World War I and they were building wooden ships at Astoria. My father worked at the shipyard. When we first went to Astoria we couldn't find any house to rent or buy so my father bought a lot and built a house on it. He built a real simple house, and got a carpenter friend to help him. I remember when we first moved into the house there were no inside partitions.
The year I was eight we had an influenza epidemic that killed lots and lots of people. I remember every week when we went to school we would see another empty desk. Most of the time the kids got well and came back but not always. Several of my classmates died that winter.
My how it rained there and how the wind blew! I remember one time I started out for school wearing a raincoat, a rain hat, and rubbers. I got just a short distance from the house when the wind caught my hat and blew it off. Every time I tried to pick it up the wind caught it again just as I was about to pick it up.
Astoria is very hilly and our house was on the side of a hill, with the back of the house on dirt and the front of the house on stilts. We kept our wood under the front of the house. We had a wood burning stove that your great grandmother cooked on and that we used to heat the house.
The country around Astoria is a lot like that in the rain forest on the Olympic Peninsula that we visited, lots of trees, brush, moss, and grass. During the heavy rains the water would soak into the ground at the top of the hill and sometimes we would find the nicest spring bubbling out of the ground at the bottom of the hill. Other places you would see the water just flowing out of the side of the hill. After the rain stopped the spring would dry up and the water would stop flowing out of the side of the hill.
I remember when I was there I went with a friend of mine (he was five years old) and his father for a walk through the woods. We saw half a wooden sled and my friend asked his father what it was. Of course I was a big boy and I knew. It snows there about once every twenty years.
My friend and I explored all the woods around and picked flowers in the spring. We found trilliums, wild Iris, johnny jump-ups (yellow violets to you), mayflowers, and many more that I cannot remember.
One of our neighbors was a commercial fisherman and in the middle of the afternoon he would bring some of his catch around to sell. My mother would buy salmon, or rock cod, or ling cod, or some other fish and cook them for dinner. I can still remember how good they were.
This is about all I can remember now. Grandma and I hope you get a Girl Scout badge for this.
Love, Grandpa"
The influenza epidemic Forrest wrote about was the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. It killed more people than World War I, somewhere between 20 and 40 million people all over the world. It was the most devastating epidemic in world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351.
By 1922 Forrest and his family were living in Portland, Oregon. I have his 6th and 7th grade report cards from Glencoe School. For High School, he attended an all boys school called Benson Polytechnic School. he graduated from there in 1928. Then he went on to college at Reed College in Portland where he was one of seven students to graduate with a degree in Physics in 1932. At Reed Forrest was weel liked and respected. Here is what his college yearbook, "The Griffin" has to say about him at the time of his graduation.
"Zimm has a reputation for having the largest heart in the physics department. Whether taken literally or figuratively makes no difference, for his stature is quite as outstanding as his willingness to oblige his fellow physics majors."
When Forrest first graduated from college it was the height of the Depression. Jobs were very hard to find. So he took a job working on the railroad and felt lucky to get it. If you had known Grandpa it would make you laugh to think of him working on the railroad. He was about the most non-athletic man I've ever known. He was very tall and looked strong but he wasn't cut out to be a physical laborer. But that was all he could find so that's what he did.
But in September of 1935 he went to work at the Bonneville Dam which was still under construction. The dam was one of President Franklin Rooseveldt's New Deal projects. The New Deal attempted to provide recovery and relief from the Great Depression through many various government programs. The Bonneville Dam was one of the New Deal's public works programs. It is one of the major dams on the Columbia River where it passes through the Cascade Mountains between Oregon and Washington. It was built between 1933 and 1943 by the U.S. Corps of Engineers. It is used for navigation, flood control, and power production. It has locks that enable ships to pass the dam and fish ladders that allow salmon to spawn upriver. Forrest considered himself very lucky to get the job and worked his way up from the position of clerk to that of generator operator. It also enabled him to marry his sweetheart.
Thelma was one of several young women working in the home of Forrest's physics professor, Marcus O'Day. They were married 16 Nov 1935 in the Reed College Chapel. Their first home was a very tiny one on the side of a mountain overlooking the Columbia River Gorge. They called it "The Shack". I have a photo of it around here somewhere. Here Thelma pursued her artistic career while Forrest worked at the dam.
Here is what their friend, Dianne Joseph, wrote about their marriage on the ocassion of Forrest's death. "Yes, your father did adore your mother and learned to love music, opera, art, ballet and all because of his deep love for her. Certainly with the academic mind and the brains he had, it would be very difficult for anyone to even bend enough to try to enjoy the fantasies and such of a woman, but not Forrie. He was kind and gentle and couldn't hurt anyone, nor could he see any bad in anyone. Your mother, too, was the same. When I first met them and grew to know them, they always maintained a certain amount of innocence that was refreshing, especially at that particular time of turmoil and war that we lived in. What a legacy he has left you."
That Forrest and Thelma were always very much in love was obvious even to me as a small child. She was his Dido. He was her Forrie. Here is how I wrote about them for Dad's Eulogy:
" But the one central fact that I remember from those years is how he adored my mother. Even the foolish things she would do, he would somehow transform into something cute, clever, or artistic. Because he loved her, he learned to enjoy the things she enjoyed like art and ballet. And all through my teenage years he took me to art shows and every summer to the ballet because he wanted me to share this part of my mother that he had known."
On 29 October 1939 their first child Jon Christian was born and they left the shack and moved down to the grounds of the dam. World War II had already begun. It would be two years before the United States entered the war. But the time passed quickly for the little family and early in 1942 Forrest enlisted in the US Navy and went off to Officers Training School in New port, Rhode Island, the same place as your mommy went about fifty years later.
Then he was sent to Norfolk, Virginia where he trained to be a gyro compass officer. Their second child, Dianne Irene, was born there on 23 Oct 1943. Soon after Forrest was sent to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and Thelma and the two children went back to Portland to wait out the war with Grandma and Grandpa Zimmerman. The war finally ended and Forrest came out of the Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Soon after that the family moved clear across the country to Boston. One reason for this move was that a number of friends from the Reed College days all moved. There was Marcus O'Day and his family, Fred and Peg Nicodemus whom we called Peggy and Nick, Herb French, the Moores - they all went to Boston, so we went too. There Forrest worked for the Air Force Cambridge Research Center as an electrical engineer designing and testing transformers, chokes, and generators. We first lived in Jamaica Plains, a Boston neighborhood. We soon moved to a large housing project in Ayre, Massachusetts that was full of returning servicemen and their families. In the fall of 1949 we moved to our first house in Lexington. Here's how I explained my dad during that period to an old friend.
"I lived on School Street. Number 44. We were probably the curse of the neighborhood. I love my father dearly and always have. I have to say that before I tell you how totally inept he was at managing the nuts and bolts stuff of everyday life. Perhaps he was more of an intellectual. Anyway, when we moved there in the fall of 1949 the house had a white front and dark green on the sides and back. My mother thought it should all be white. Someone told my dad that he couldn't paint white over dark green so he went out and bought a very tall ladder and a bucket of silver paint. He proceeded to paint one green side of the house silver - a base coat supposedly. I don't know if the effort overwhelmed him or exactly what the problem was but from then on we had a three color house - white, dark green, and silver. It must have been quite a sight. The neighbor behind us kept goats. One time they asked us to watch their goats while they went out of town. My dad brought them down to graze on the lawn so he wouldn't have to mow. Actually, that sounds to me very sensible. No pollution - not that we ever owned a gasoline lawn mower."
But more was going on than simply not wanting to paint. It was becoming increasingly clear that Thelma's health was going downhill. She suffered from rhuematic heart disease and her doctor would put her on a regimen of bed rest for weeks at a time. In the spring of 1952 they came in contact with a doctor who thought he could correct the leaky valve with surgery but she would have to spend time in the hospital in Boston to build her strength prior to the surgery. Before the operation could be performed she suffered a major stroke. If only she could have had the surgery! It would have been one of the first open heart operations. Instead she died of a second stroke on Jon's 13th birthday, 29 October 1952. It practically killed Forrest. This is how I described it in the Eulogy.
"When our mother died he grieved terribly. Sometimes at night I would hear him pacing the floor outside my door and I'd get up and play cards or chess with him. Those were very difficult times for him, coping with two active growing kids and trying to maintain a household. But he always came home to us at night. And he always managed to get a meal on the table. Potatoes were his specialty. He also tried to get us to church every week. These things were made more difficult by the fact that our old Studebaker konked out that winter. We took the bus a lot. And I can remember more than once carrying sacks of groceries a mile home from the store. Finally he did the only thing he could do. He left his friends and memories and came to Illinois so that Aunt Musa, my mother's sister, could help raise us."
He went to work for Gramer-Halldorson Transformer Corp, Chicago, designing and testing transformers. It was a long commute everyday on the train. It was ten months before we found a place where we could all live together, a flat in Highwood, IL. Until then Dianne lived at the YWCA with Aunt Musa and Forrest and Jon lived in a tiny upstairs apartment and every night Aunt Musa and Dianne would walk a mile up St John's Avenue in Highland Park to cook and eat supper.
Sometime during that second year without our Mommy he met, and courted Kathryn. They married on 16 July 1955. After that our lives became much more peaceful and stable. These were probably the most contented years of my dad's life as under her sunny disposition and good organizing skills we all flourished. Shortly thereafter Dad began working for Kleinschmidt Laboratories responsible for the selection of electrical components used in manufactured equipment for Signal Corps. Also at that time we moved to a little house in Waukegan, Illinois. In August 1957 he began working for the Ninth Naval District, Utilities Division, Great Lakes, Illinois as an electrical engineer. Two high points of his years at Great lakes were being named Federal Employee of the year for the Chicago area and earning his professional engineer certification, both in 1965. In 1969 he retired and he and Kathryn moved to the Seattle area. In 1975 they returned to Madison because of Kathryn's health issues, moving to Oakwood Retirement Village in 1979. After the move to Oakwood it became more and more clear that Dad's mind was going. He was diagnosed as having Parkinson's Disease with dementia. By the fall of 1985 Kathryn, who was quite crippled from multiple sclerosis and in a wheelchair, was no longer able to care for him and he had to be moved to a nursing home. He died on March 8, 1989 at the New Glarus Home in New Glarus, Wisconsin.
I close this story with a section from the eulogy I gave at his Memorial service.
"My dad had kind of a fierce look about him that might have gone well with a ancient warrior or king. His bald head with the black fringe of hair, his dark eyes that looked out from deep wells, his heavy dark eyebrows, and his tall stature would have been impessive on a Roman soldier or a Spanish conqueror. I was a teenager before I began to appreciate the fact that his visage did not in any way match his demeanor. Yes he had a temper, but his bark was worse than his bite. And underneath it all he was a real pussy cat of a man that needed someone to take care of him. He was gentle and tender and affectionate. Sharon at the nursing home summed it up when she said, "So often when people get older and develop things like Alzheimer's, their true nature comes out and they can get very cranky and irritable. But your dad was always pleasant to everybody. He was a true gentleman in the truest sense of the word."
I'd like to share three things about my dad's character that I really admire. First of all, he was basically I think, a man of simple pleasures and simple dreams. And in this world of people who seem to need more and more of everything to be happy, I find that very refreshing. He loved to read. He read voraciously science and history and literature and for many, many years he remembered everything he read. He had a wonderful mind. My dad was a good humored fellow who loved to razz and hear and tell a good story. We used to joke that Aunt Musa could remember the details of meals she had eaten 50 years ago. well, Dad could remember the punch lines of funny incidents that had happened 50 years earlier. And especially as he grew older he enjoyed roaming around town and "shooting the breeze" with various older gentlemen of the same inclination. My dad enjoyed good food, gadgets, playing solitaire, and going for drives in the country. And he loved his country very much. He was also a man of simple dreams. He had a dream retirement home that was drawn but never built. He also dreamed of retiring in the Pacific northwest which he did for six years and heartily enjoyed it and gave us wonderful vacations there. And he dreamed of travelling. Though I know he didn't get to all the places he wanted to, he did get to Churchill, Canada and to Alaska. In our time these are simple dreams and pleasures.
The second thing I admire about my dad is that he had great respect for the women in his life. He was non-chauvanistic and that's why it took me so long to understand the women's lib movement. He always encouraged me academically and never led me to believe there was anything I couldn't do just because I was female. He always took time to help me with my homework in math and English. I wish I could say that because of him I went on to become a great scholar. It wasn't for lack of his encouragement that I didn't. I know he must have been terribly disappointed when I dropped out of school to get married, but he accepted it and was Just as proud of me as a wife and a mother as he had been of me as a scholar.
The third thing that I admire is he was a man of steadfast affection who never wavered in his loyalty. He had two wives. He loved each of them very much. Each of them ended up in a wheelchair and required a great deal of care from him. And yet I don't believe he ever complained. He got Irritable at times, but it was a fleeting irritation. In both cases he considered himself very lucky to have such a wonderful wife. And he did his very best as long as he could. I know there's a lesson here for me.
So this was my dad - a fine man that we loved very much. A man of steadfast affection - a true gentleman.
Oh, one more thing I admire --- his hair never did turn grey!"
Love, Granny
Line 20 1289 E. Morrison Dwelling # 115 Household # 137
Zimmerman, George E. Head age 40 MN Can OH OCC: Mechanic- Iron works
Minnie J. Wife 39 IA Ger Ger
Forest E. Son 10 WA MN IA
Line 22 972 Wasco Dwelling 37 Household 37
Zimmerman, George E. Head Owns $6000 Radio age 50 m at 24 MN CAN OH occ: Sheet metal worker in Bldg trade
Minnie J. wife 49 23 IA GER GER None
Forrest E. son 20 s WA MN IA None
Tacoma Ward 3 ED# 244 1323 S. M Street Dwelling # 28 Households #'s 29 and 30 Line 23 - 29
Zimmerman, George E. Head 30 M1 5yrs MN Can PA OCC: Tinsmith at Hardware store R
Minnie J wife 29 M1 5yrs IA GER GER
Forrest son 3/12 WA MN IA
Mundorf, John Head 28 M1 5yrs KS GER PA Laborer at odd jobs R
Ella C wife 25 M1 5yrs OR GER GER
Lowell L son 3 OR KS OR
Druschel, Mitelda mother-in-law 65 wd GER GER GER