My Cousins in Wisconsin Cheer for the Packers
By Fred Owens
But first, some election news ....
My patented Election Predictomatic says that Bernie will win the nomination and then lose to Trump. That is the most likely outcome --- according to the Predictomatic. The second, slightly less likely outcome is that Biden wins the nomination and then goes on to beat Trump by a hair.
My own preference is for Amy Klobuchar. She will make a good President and I hope she wins, but her chances are slim at this point, according to the Predictomatic. In other words, it is unlikely she could get the nomination, but if she did become the nominee she could beat Trump.
Back to the Story
I have 12 cousins on my mother's side. Uncle Ted and Aunt Bee had 4 kids, Donald, Dick, Rosemary and Jerry. Uncle Chuck and Aunt Ceil had 6 children, Kathleen, Dennis, Timmy, Patricia, Eileen and Terry. Uncle Jerry and Aunt Grace had 2 children, Mary Alice and Peggy. They all lived in Chicagoland growing up. They all attended Catholic schools.
Dick, the second child of Ted and Bee married Florence. I remember their wedding, in 1952 or thereabouts, when I was six years old. It was the first wedding I had ever seen. Florence looked so beautiful in her white gown and Dick looked so handsome. But we hardly ever saw them -- they moved to Wisconsin and had six kids, all named Cuny because that was the family name.
But let's start at the beginning with the Begats as I call them. It goes back to a little farming village in Switzerland near the border with France. Roschenz was the little village and it is still there if you care to look it up. Here are the Begats ...
Heinrich Cueni married Marie Anne Weber in 1813 and they had 12 children. Ambrose Cueni was born to them in 1833 being their 10th child. He grew up in the little village and they were very poor. The farm was descended on the oldest child Peter, the first born, and he was a sour old man -- I know that because I have a photograph of him when he was much older.
Ambrose did not want to spend his life working on the farm for Uncle Peter so he lit out for America, floated down the Rhine on a raft, and made his way to LeHavre for a journey across the great water and never to return, although he did write letters to Roschenz, and they wrote back. I have some of those old letters in a storage box, written in Swiss German in very tiny letters. I cannot read them.
Ambrose sailed to America at the age of 20, in the year of 1853, going all the way to Davenport, Iowa, where he eventually met Carolyn Reidy, an immigrant from Alsace in France, near the border with Switzerland. I believe she spoke German at home and French at school. At age 10, in the year 1850 her father migrated to America bringing along her older brother George and her step-mother.
Jean Reidy, the father, died on the ocean journey. Can you imagine how awful that was for a ten-year-old girl, who had never left her little village in the French countryside --- to be on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, crossing over to a new land she knew nothing about, and the one person who cared for her, her father, died on the journey and was buried at sea.Her step-mother had no means to support young Carolyn so she was left with a family in Davenport, Iowa. Her older brother George was left on a farm somewhere in Missouri and she never saw him again. But life in Davenport was not too harsh for young Carolyn. She was not quite adopted by her family, but somewhat more that just a maid. They gave her some schooling. Still, she must had a lot of pluck and endurance.
Her lucky day -- his lucky day for sure -- was when Ambrose and Carolyn first met. They fell in love and were married in 1857. He was 24, she was 17. They moved to Kentucky where they saw slavery. Ambrose joined the militia and fought in the cavalry on the Union side. He escaped death and injury. I have a copy of his service record -- many minor skirmishes, although not so minor if you are in them.
Ambrose and Carolyn moved to Chicago where George Henry, their first child, was born in 1864. And they had changed the spelling of their last name from Cueni to Cuny, as many immigrants did in those days.
They opened a dry goods store and made a good living and had 5 more children, Albert, Edward, Lena, Frances and Frank. But moving along, George Henry, the oldest, married Theresa Hartl in 1898 and their first child was born soon after. His name was Ambrose, but he did not like that name, so everyone called him Ted, my Uncle Ted, father of Dick Cuny who married Florence on or about 1952
Dick and Florence raised their six children and he died, leaving Florence a widow, but with a nice home in Green Bay, Wisconsin, near Lambeau Field where the Packers played the Seattle Seahawks last Sunday in 24 degree weather, which is not cold for Green Bay in January.
Florence says she lives close enough to the stadium to hear the roar of the crowd, but not close enough that people will pay her to park in her front yard on game day. That is her sense of humor. She is nearly ninety and I thought of her happy days because the Packers won on Sunday. I was cheering for Seattle, but they lost and the Packers won, so three cheers for my cousins in Wisconsin. Cheeseheads Rule!
Those are my Wisconsin cousins. They cheer for the Packers. My Chicago cousins cheer for the Bears -- I will tell you about them some time.
The Quotidian.
The Quotidian, at 17,000 words, was by far the longest email ever attempted at Frog Hospital. There were a few readers who got all the way through to the end and they told me it was good and they even told me it wasn't really long enough. So I am gratified and I will put in longer pieces from time to time. And why not? If I give the readers fair warning, they can make their own decision to read it or not. No harm done.
The Election. We most ardently and most seriously need a new President in 2020. I will do what I can to make this happen.
The Debate in Iowa on Tuesday. Six candidates took the stage -- Tom, Joe, Bernie, Elizabeth, Pete and Amy. I am repeating their first names because I got the feeling that they all kind of like each other, with no hint of bitterness or grudges. This bodes well for the election to come -- if these six very good people can work together, then our country will be well-served.
Ambrose and Carolyn. I admit the telling of the Begats was a bit dull with lots of names and dates, but you gotta get the rhythm of it, the tumbling down of generations, from Heinrich Cueni and Mary Weber two hundred years ago, down through the years to something as ordinary as a Packers football game last Sunday. It's the story of our family, a family that is not outstanding in accomplishment or talent or wealth, but just folks.
Although, let me walk that back a little bit. The Cunys, descended from French and Swiss sources, always thought they were a bit better than the average, a kind of undeserved superiority. I have that quality. I can be a bit of a snob at times. Well, nobody's perfect.
St. Boniface. Ambrose and Carolyn are buried side by side in St. Boniface Cemetery on the north side of Chicago. I visited their grave in 1997.
Ambrose died in 1931 at the age of 98, being the last living member of his cavalry regiment. Carolyn preceded him in death. She died in 1922 at the age of 82. Carolyn was a happy woman and proud of her family, but even into her later years she would sometimes look out the window and start to cry, wondering what happened to her brother George. They left him on a farm in Missouri and never saw him again. Her only brother, and they never saw him again. The immigrants have often paid a heavy price.
Growth. Frog Hospital can grow, from 200 readers to 200,000 readers. I just don't know how to do that.
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Thank you,
Fred
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