WWII: VICTORY IN EUROPE: D-Day to V-E Day Celebrated Across the Globe, May 5, 1945

         

Victory in Europe Day meant the long march from Omaha Beach to Berlin was over.

My Dad, Melvin Kallman, would be coming home.

Thank you Dad, Uncle Arnold Sevald, Uncle Howard Johnson, Cousins Soderstrom, Jacobson, Kallman and all the others who served. Members of "The Greatest Generation".

1950 US Census - Mel and Grace Kallman in Chicago, Illinois

My parents were married in 1949 and in this census I find them as a young married couple. And me? I was their firstborn but in 1950 I was not even yet "a twinkle in my father's eye".

Chicago, Cook, Illinois 

822 N. Lavergne 2nd floor apartment

line 5: Kallman, Melvin, head of household, white, male, 33, born in Illinois, married, worked 40 hours last week as a floor sander for a retail department store

line 6: Kallman, Grace, wife, white, female, 23, married, born in Illinois

  Hardly a pair of fashionistas were they? 

  Dad, really? socks and shoes on the beach?

      Love you both,

"Time to get a job"

Shortly after my sixteenth birthday my father took me to apply for a Social Security card. Today all children need a Social Security number for their parents taxes but at that time you got a card when you were old enough to get a job. My Dad then told me "time to get a job". There was no option here. My Dad came from the "you don't work you don't eat" culture and he felt the best way to prepare me for life was to push me into it. I was born in the midst of the "baby boomer" years. This meant that there were hoards of teenagers competing for jobs. College graduates were working as busboys and bagging clerks. I found a part time job my junior year at the Sun Drug store 2 blocks from my house. Sun Drugs is still there although now it is a CVS pharmacy. My starting wage was $1.60 an hour! Big money to me at the time. I was envisioning all the wonderful things I could buy. I worked 2 nights a week, Tuesday and Thursday 6 to 10 and Saturday 1:30 to 10. by my estimation that was 16 x $1.60 or over $25! We stocked shelves and manned the front register. My Dad picked me up every night I worked. I told him not to come in to the store. It was "too embarrassing". Big mistake. After that he waited for me at the corner outside the drug store, right under the street light so I would for sure see him. Then he would call out my name in a goofy voice as I left the store or wave at me furiously. Sometimes he would wear a goofy hat, fake mustache or worse yet this awful hugh trenchcoat. He would squat down and do this goofy walk where he looked like a dwarf all the two blocks home. My work friends thought he was hysterical. Me? Not so much. No wonder anymore where my son got his off the wall goofy sense of humor. Not funny then but It has given me lots of happy goofy memories of my Dad since.


At some point someone must have been taking money out of the  register because we all had to take a lie detector test and were questioned  by the police. Looking back at that I would think, for sure now and most likely then also, it was probably illegal to do that to minors without even notifying their parents, let alone without legal representation. But what did we know? Here comes the real "crime". My first paycheck. I couldn't believe it! Where was my $25? I went home in a huff to show my Dad who I was sure would straighten it out for me. Wrong again. "Taxes", he said "for the government and the state".  Then he informed me a certain percent went to the church, a certain percent went to savings for college and he had me sign my check, give it to him and he handed me a lousy five bucks.

Life lesson learned. Welcome to working, tax paying America.

Love you Dad,

Dad was a WWII Veteran and he never talked about it.

In a few days is Veteran's Day. We honor those men and women who answered the call of defending our country. My father Melvin, was a veteran. A World War II veteran and he never talked about it.

As a child I saw this picture of him in uniform, displayed proudly in my grandmother's home. I asked him if he had been in the war and he replied only that yes, he had been in World War II and he had been in the Army. Other than that, he never talked about it.

I know that he received Christmas cards and periodically long letters from men he had served with and even visited Army buddies on occasion. However he always went alone, never taking my mom or we kids with him. He never talked about it.

AP photo, now owned and a copy may be purchased from www.realwarphotos.com

In the late 80's I came across this AP photo in the National Enquirer. It was titled"Ghosts haunt Omaha Beach" with some typical bogus National Enquirer story of people seeing ghosts of the soldiers that died on D-Day invading Europe. The photo however distinctly showed my father in the foreground! I took the paper to him and his response was "hummm, looks like me, we came off a landing craft like that into the water, I had a helmet with a cross on it like that and carried the exact same supplies." The photo prompted him to also identify other men by name. He explained that he did indeed land on Omaha Beach but not on D-Day. He was part of the reinforcements. I questioned him more. It seems that he was more than willing to defend his country but didn't feel he could ever find it in himself to shoot someone for any reason. His helmet with the cross indicated that they made him a medic.  "You didn't believe you could shoot an enemy?" I asked him incredulously. "How long did that last?" He thought for awhile and with a small sad smile said, "Halfway up the beach". I remember questioning him further about the war, just general questions, and he rebuffed me with "you don't need to know about those sort of things." He never talked about it again.

After his death I found in his dresser quite a bit of WWII memorabilia. Photos of him and other soldiers in boot camp and somewhere in Europe, his discharge papers, draft notice and other memorabilia. Those photos were never displayed or in an album and that was the first time I had ever seen them.

He had never talked about it.

After the death of my grandmother I became interested in my family history. The movie "Saving Private Ryan" was out and I wondered again what part my Dad had in the war. I pulled out Dad's discharge papers and did some internet sleuthing. He was in the 3rd Armored division, Spearhead unit that along with others fought their way from the beaches of France, cold, hungry and often with inadequate supplies all the way to Berlin. His particular unit, the anti-tank company, 423rd infantry, had high casualties. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge where 19,000 American boys died in that battle alone. His unit had liberated a concentration camp. He never talked about it.

from the pamphlet (passed by censor for mailing home)
Spearheading with the 3rd Armored Division, in the Bulge, Duren-Cologne, The Ruhr Pocket, East to the Elbe

Dad was part of what we now call the "Greatest Generation:" Those men and women, out of duty and love of country went when called during WWII. They saw lots and did what they had to do. They saw no need to glory in it.  Although I am sure what they experienced, saw and were forced to do must have haunted them, they did what they had to do, for their country, for their family, for their children.  They bore the burden of those memories to protect us. "Those are things you don't need to know about." 

He never talked about it.

Thank you Dad,

November 11 and every day

Remember all of those men and women who served. 

They did what they had to do

...for our country...for our families...for our children.

HONOR OUR VETERANS

***click on above photos to enlarge for easier viewing***

Uncle Arnold saves Thanksgiving

My mom died in the spring of 1975. That Thanksgiving my Dad thought he would do Thanksgiving as we always had done. He invited my Uncle Arnold who was my Mom's divorced brother and my husband and myself. I had been married maybe two years at this time. I have to give my Dad credit that he was trying to keep the holidays the happy festive family time they always had been. He was going to do Thanksgiving for us all, all by himself.

It should be noted that my Dad came from a different time and place than men do now, He brought home the paycheck and my Mom took care of all the household duties. Their husband/wife division of duties was very clear cut and very traditional. When my Mom passed my Dad had no clue how to even boil water. I gave him a recipe for stovetop chili. My Uncle Arnold lived in Dallas Texas but his ex wife and kids were in Minnesota so between places he would often swing by our house. He told me once "please teach that man another dish!. All he eats is chili. The pot stays on the stove constantly and he just keeps adding more stuff to it! If I never again have chili it will be too soon!"

Thanksgiving was a good 6 months after Mom's death and Dad seemed so proud and confident of his abilities. "I don't need any help he said proudly." As we arrived I saw potatoes and veggies simmering on the stove, buns and stuffing ready to go into the oven. Pretty impressive for a guy who half a year ago had no clue how to turn on the burners. "I don't smell the turkey yet" said my Uncle Arnold who snuck a peek into the oven. "Mel,,,,this turkey is raw! How long have you been cooking it?"  "20 minutes" said my Dad confidently, "just like the instructions said." Uncle Arnold just looked at him incredulously, "20 minutes a pound is what it said and this turkey must weigh 18 to 20 pounds!".

Well, Uncle Arnold put the veggies on hold and reset the oven. We had our Thanksgiving later than expected but we all had a good time laughing over Dad's cooking ability and reminiscing about all the great family Thanksgivings we had in the past with Mom and those future holidays which may be different but also promised to be good in their own way.

1973 Mom and her brother, My Uncle Arnold

Fun in Chicago

When I was a kid, living in Chicago, my parents would take my sister and me to various fun activities. We went to Riverview, a fun old time amusement park that closed unexpectedly when I was fifteen. We went to the museums and I don't know how much it cost to get in but I bet it was way cheaper than the entrance fees today. The Field museum scared me, all these stuffed animals in glass cases. The Shedd Aquarium was okay but how many fish can you look at? And Dad agreed with me. It was right on the lake though and sitting outside eating a peanut butter sandwich sitting in Daddy's lap was the best. The museum of Science and Industry was my favorite. You could see baby chicks hatching, fetuses in bottles of formaldehyde, a giant heart you could walk through, and the coal mine. Big fun for a kid. One year my sister who had run up the stairs to the second floor ahead of us turned and yelled “look Mom”. She stuck out her tongue, put it on the brass railing and ran back down the stairs. My Mom nearly had a heart attack. She couldn't have been more than 5 and most likely wouldn't remember it but let me tell you it was the highlight of that visit for me!

The best activities were those that really didn't cost much of anything except maybe a little gas in the car. Activities that maybe don't sound like much now but boy we sure enjoyed it. Taking the toboggan over to the Jensen slides after a snowstorm. Going to Buckingham fountain to see the lights come on or checking out the window displays at Fields at Christmas time. We also would drive down to the beach, along with my parents friends and their kids, spend the day swimming, picnicking, laughing. My Dad seemed to have a fun way of looking at the world and a silly sense of humor. On a hot summer night he would head for O'Hare airport and pull over and park on a street real close. We laid on the front hood or top of the car to watch the planes flying in. We would scream as they came closer and flew right over us. It seemed like inches away to a little kid like me. You can't do that anymore because of terrorism. I don't think you can even get anywhere near the flight paths.

About the time we moved to the suburbs it changed. I have talked with my younger brother about our childhoods and it seems his and mine were different, very different. He doesn't remember Chicago. By the time we moved to the suburbs the dynamics of the family, and therefore of my Dad, changed. He was crabbier, serious, worked a lot, worried about money, worried about health. I think I now know why, in spite of the inevitable teenage fights, my Dad and I always got along. I remembered. I remembered when Dad was young, healthy, happy, silly and carefree. And he knew that of all us kids, I, the oldest, was maybe the only one that remembered. Remembered who he was. I remembered Chicago.

with Dad, first day of spring, Montrose Beach

Dad was a Mommy's boy

My Mom said on numerous occasions that my Dad was a "Mommy's Boy". He would go over to her house to help her. When we got a new refrigerator he dragged the old one to her house and things like that. My mother felt that she was always calling him with the "poor me, I'm old and ill and I need help" routine. 

Looking at it now through the eyes of an adult I don't know that I see it that way. 

We were as kids very close with my maternal grandparents. My mother was a very gentle gal who had her share of physical problems. She had a number of surgeries such as her appendix out, her gallbladder out, parts of her stomach removed and she died of cancer in her  40's. For the physical needs my maternal grandmother was there at our house quite often watching us kids.  My grandmother was an emotionally strong person with very definite ideas about most everything. Let me make it clear that I adored her. I understood her because maybe I have a very similar out-there personality. Mom was just the opposite. She thought the best of everyone but she really let grandma's strong personality run roughshod over her. Grandma never spoke well of Dad's family. "They were clingy, they were cheap, they were needy, they were goofy Swedes" etc.  I loved her so much and with my similar unbending personality I basically bought it.

That attitude by my maternal grandmother plus the fact that my paternal grandparents were already old and elderly when I came along left me with very little knowledge of who my paternal grandparents really were. Doing my family history I learn more and more of who they were when young, where they came from and what life threw at them and they had to deal with, with limited resources. I now have pictures of them young, healthy, working. I have heard from cousins, second cousins who had good opinions, who really liked my paternal grandparents. I also am now a grandmother myself and sometime find myself feeling a bit annoyed (yes I know it is unreasonable) that another couple has the all out gall to claim MY grandchildren as also their grandchildren. Shades of my maternal grandma isn't it?

Dad, the "Momma's boy" was a good son. My paternal grandparents both had severe rheumatoid arthritis, in a time when there was next to none of the medications, surgeries, modalities that are available today. He was the closest son as my uncle Al lived in California and also had bad arthritis. Of course he helped them and I do not think we ever suffered or went without because of what he did for them. If anything we spent way more time as a family with my maternal grandparents. 

You can love someone dearly and still disagree with them. I loved, admired and on many levels can only hope to be the great gal my maternal grandmother was but in this respect she was wrong. Dad was no "Mommy's Boy". He loved, respected and helped his parents as he should. Grandma used to say "you are half Norwegian and half Swedish but just tell people you are Norwegian. That Swedish part is a shame." She said it sort of tongue in cheek, like the joke always going around between Norwegians and Swedes. I must have bought it because for years I would tell people I was of Norwegian ancestry and then sheepishly added, "and half Swedish but I'm not supposed to admit that."

Well... my maternal Grandma, the bull-headed, generous, energetic, Bible thumping, straight talking, hard-working, never say die, fun-loving Norwegian is still number one with me, but

I am American of Norwegian AND Swedish descent. Deal with it grandma.

Grandma and Dad (the Mommy's Boy)

Saturday Mornings with Daddy

Daddy, my sister and me

Like most familys in the 50's we had just one car and for a time we did not have a car at all because my Dad drove a company truck. My mother would do her shopping on Saturday morning when the car was available. She would take my younger sister with her but my Dad would say, "Ranae stays at home to help me around the house". Looking back, at 7 or 8 years old, how much help was I? But I felt very Important, proud and thought I was big help. Dad would be working around our house repairing, doing a little maintenance etc in our apartment or the one below. I followed proudly right behind him carrying his screwdriver or plunger or whatever so I could hand it to him at the appropriate time. When Mom was home he was the disciplinarian as in "wait till your father comes home, you tell him what you did". He could on those occasions be pretty harsh. On Saturday mornings though it was different. He would call me "firstborn" and we would laugh, tell jokes and talk. He would ask me about my school and friends. He would ask my advice on the particular job he was doing. "What color should I paint this firstborn?" "Should I put another nail in here, firstborn?" And he would listen carefully to me like I had an important opinion. "Good thinking firstborn" he would say with a pat on my back. 

"Mom is coming home soon lets have something good to eat." We would share a can of chili or his other favorite was corn beef hash that he would slice and fry in a pool of bacon grease. The same bacon grease grandma saved in a coffee can. "Don't tell Mom", he would say, "she doesn't understand good eating." And it was good, Saturday mornings back then were real good.

My childhood home

My childhood home
I never lived in a single family home until after I was married. My Dad owned our home but it was a two flat or three flat. With the income from the other apartments it was easier to pay the mortgage, maybe we even lived technically rent free. Saving a dollar was always a priority for my Dad, probably from living through the Great Depression.

My parents bought our first home when I was 1 year old.  It was a wood frame two flat with asphalt shingles in a working class, north side, Chicago neighborhood. We lived in the second floor apartment. It was small. There was a living and dining room combination with a small kitchen separated from the living area by a peninsula we used as a kitchen table. There was one bathroom and only one bedroom. After my sister was born my Dad renovated the attic into two bedrooms. You went up these very steep stairs to reach the first bedroom and then you had to go through the first bedroom (my parents room) to get to the front bedroom (my and my sister's room). The bedrooms were so small an adult could only stand up in the middle of the room as both side walls sloped inward at the angle of our steep  roof. It could be cold in the winter but we had down comforters my grandma had brought us from Norway. We had a space heater in the living room that gave some heat from a hole my Dad had cut in the ceiling of the living room/floor of the bedrooms. He liked to turn the heater off though at night to "save money". That was okay but in the summer? Whew, it was hot and I mean hot. I don't think anyone had air conditioning then. Only bowling alleys and movie theaters were "air-cooled" and as fundamentalist Christians we never were allowed to go to any of those "sinful places". On steamy Chicago summer nights we would drag our mattress into the front room and leave the front and back doors open. Dad would put a fan in one door blowing in and another sucking the hot air out of the tiny apartment. Mom always warned us "don't let the fan blow directly on you or you will wake up paralyzed" and Dad insisted "if you put your finger in the fan it will serve you right if it cuts off your fingertip, that's what happened to Cousin Arthur you know." I was always real careful about my fingers but it was often so hot I tried to get as close to the fan as I could. It was totally worth the risk of paralysis.

 1953 Chicago - Grandpa & Grandma, Mom and Me

We had a washing machine on our back porch but no dryer. My Mom hung the laundry on a pulley line that went from our porch to the top of the garage in back. Boy, those sheets and towels did smell good. Our front stairs went directly to the second floor. I remember them well because of my grandfather. He would whistle from the outside when he arrived and I would run to the front door. He would do a little fancy tap dance up the stairs and when he reached the top I would get a kiss and a piece of candy he had hidden in his pocket. We moved to the suburbs when I was entering the fifth grade. We moved to a nicer apartment building which my Dad bought in a nicer area but I always felt that little house on Monticello ave was my real home. Life was good then. Mom and Dad were young, happy, healthy.....and Grandpa could dance.

An Anniversary to Remember

Sixty seven years ago today my parents, 

Melvin Kallman and Grace Sevald, became husband and wife.

The happy young couple

Mr. & Mrs. Melvin Kallman

married: October 1, 1949

**click on photo or document to enlarge for easier viewing**

A Swede + A Norwegian = Me

 Today would have been the 66th anniversary of the marriage of my parents. My mother was 22 years old and my father was 33. My Dad, Mel, might have married earlier as he told me he had a girlfriend in his 20's  but life intervened, as it often does. Dad enlisted in the Army after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and President Franklin Roosevelts declaration of war. His girlfriend? Well, Melvin was in France, part of the great Normandy invasion, marching across Europe towards their final destination Berlin and the girlfriend was home all alone. She found another. Home from the war in 1946 Dad spent the next year getting re-established, looking for a job, catching up with family and friends.

My Mom, Grace, was a quiet, sheltered, "Daddy's girl". The only daughter, she was adored and very close to her "Pa", my grandfather Paul. Sunday nights they would  attend various Sunday evening services together, possibly stopping for a bite on the way to a particular church. As much as Pa loved their closeness and outings together, Grace was now twenty and he worried she should find a nice Christian husband. She, however, was shy and seemed content to be at Pa's side.

Sitting in a predominantly Swedish church one Sunday night he asked her, "What kind of man would you like to meet? Do you ever see a type that interests you?" Perhaps she had already been looking because to Pa's surprise she immediately pointed toward the church choir. "See that one, not so tall, smiling, with the very blue eyes and blond hair? I wish I had a boyfriend like that."

Pa hatched a plan. The next few Sunday evenings they attended the same church. Before services one evening he pointed out another young lady attending. "Grace, do you see that girl there? That is the sister of the blond fellow in the choir. She comes with her brother on the streetcar to church every Sunday. When she goes to the ladies room, you follow her. Start a conversation with her, ask her where she lives and offer her a ride home because you and your father are going that way. She, of course, will say she is with her brother. You then, very off-hand say, that's okay we have room for him also."

Melvin Carl Kallman and Grace Gunhild Sevald married in the Philadelphia Church 

on 5437 N. Clark street in Chicago, Illinois on October 1, 1949

The maid of honor on Grace's right? Of course it is my Aunt Ebba, the sister who needed a ride.

Happy Anniversary October 1, 1949!

- Ranae

**clicking on photos will enlarge them for easier viewing**