Happy heavenly birthday

Happy 120th birthday Uncle Charley!

For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow
For he's a jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny!

The Happy Birthday song has been around since the 1890s, but it was primarily sung to and for children at the time. However I can certainly imagine Grandpa Fred and Uncle Charley's fraternity brothers singing a rousing verse of the alternative on Saturday, Dec. 13, 1924.

It would be his last earthly birthday.

The tune of For He's a Jolly Good Fellow is of French origin and dates from at least from the 18th century, and it was well known by 1862 in the United States.

The British and the American lyrics differ slightly; "And so say all of us" is typically British, while we Americans usually sing, "Which nobody can deny."

-30-

The time of their young lives

An Ohio Christmas, 1924

Uncle Charley mentioned in his Dec. 9, 1924 letter home that he was involved with a party for poor children:

        I won't be home until Saturday, the 20. I am through finals on Thursday but we are having the Christmas party for the poor kids Friday night and its a party worth staying over for. Besides I'll probably [be, sic] needed to help get them here and home.

So of course I went digging and found this in the Dec. 12, 1924 issue of The Lantern:

SIX FRATERNITIES WILL ENTERTAIN NEEDY CHILDREN

CHRISTMAS PARTIES, WITH TOYS AND SANTA CLAUS, PLANNED BY CAMPUS GROUPS.

Phi Gamma Delta, Beta Theta Pi, Sigma Nu, Zeta Beta Tau, Delta Tau Delta, D. U. to Be Hosts.

    The spirit of old St. Nicholas will be the ruling but unseen visitor in a number of fraternity homes next week, when many needy youngsters are shown the time of their young lives.

    Phi Gamma Delta, the first fraternity to establish Christmas charity parties, will again entertain a group of boys and girls with a dinner and appropriate entertainment. Christmas trees will be in evidence in most of the houses that are giving parties and everything possible is being planned to brighten the one night of entertainment for the children.

To Provide Practical Gifts

    Beta Theta Pi and Sigma Nu fraternities are giving similar functions. The latter is planning to have one of its members don the red and white costume of Santa to play host to the children, while the former organization is buying practical gifts as well as toys and novelties to entertain their youthful visitors after the Christmas dinner.

    Zeta Beta Tau and Delta Upsilon are also contemplating charity parties and are just completing the arrangements for getting the children presents and a tree.

Charitable Groups Assist

    A number of sources are being used for obtaining the youngsters that most need such attention. The Godman Guild, the Family Service Bureau, and several other organizations are cooperating with the fraternities, so that the children may be gathered from all sections of the city.

    Delta Tau Delta fraternity plans to pass on to needy Columbus children the toys and gifts that they, in a spirit of fun, presented to each other. These gifts will be taken downtown and given to children who are members of large families, and who would otherwise receive very little to make their Christmas a happy one.

    The practical gifts that will be offered to the youngsters will take the form of shirts, ties, gloves, shoes, and a great variety of other useful and much needed presents.

I certainly hope he, and they, had the time of their young lives.

-30- 

Everything worth telling

Charles Henry Huls

Logan, Ohio

December. 9, 1924

Dear Folks:

Charley "Pickle Face" Huls

    I suppose you wonder why you didn't hear from me last week. I came home Thursday night intending to write then saw that Fred was ahead of me and told everything worth telling so I waited until now in hopes that I could give you some news.

    The insurance man came around to see me today regarding the report I filed with Harbough and said he would take care of the thing. It seems to me that it took him an awfully long time to locate me, especially when the report I made out was received by the company the same day. I saw the date of receival [sic] stamped on it myself.

    Well, I got another job that will require a lot of work and no remuneration [sic]. I was appointed chairman of the senior invitation committee. It is up to me to compile the list of around 1500 graduates in alphabetical order and under their respective colleges. I hope that I may be able to get my invitations free for doing the work.

    Someone got a lot of graft from the invitations last year. Paper ones cost 26 cents and leather ones 56 cents each. This year they will cost 13 cents for paper and 26 for leather. The same quality of work will be had too. I imagine Harcourt gave quite a rebate to the committee last year because the same prices that I got were given last year by another company.

    Fred says to tell you that he will probably be home for dinner Friday. He is driving my coupe down and will bring it back Sunday.

    I won't be home until Saturday, the 20. I am through finals on Thursday but we are having the Christmas party for the poor kids Friday night and its a party worth staying over for. Besides I'll probably [be, sic] needed to help get them here and home.

    We passed H.R. north of Lancaster when we came up last week and he sure was having a terrible time as you said. He looked like a kid on the end of "crack the whip" game the way he was holding on to the wheel. We didn't have any trouble at all with the chains, but we saw a lot that were slipping without them.

    Our examinations begin Wednesday. I have two that day and two on Thursday. Fred has three on Wednesday and one on Thursday. I certainly will be glad to see this quarter end as I never knew the time I was so sick of school as I am now. I'm afraid it's because I don't have anything else to do, like Makio. I was busy all of the time the years before this and now I have so much time to kill that that's about all I do. It's so easy to keep putting off when you know you will have plenty of time to do things the next day.

    I suppose Pop worked the big cross-word puzzle in the Sunday Dispatch and I wonder what luck he had. I worked most of the afternoon on it and succeeded in getting all but two letters in one word. I had H -- C -- A and the word was Hecla, a mountain. Some people think that the puzzles are a waste of time but I learned a bunch of new words Sunday. I got out my dictionary when all other means failed and found synonyms I never heard of before.

    Tee Young and I went to Keiths tonight and I got the tickets alright. The fellow asked if I could identify myself and I happened to have a Charles Henry Huls card which was alright. He said it was so easy for any student to give my name that they had to ask for identification. It would be very handy if Pop would type a little note on one of the little letterheads.

    Some of the fellows got a little sore at me because they said I was crabing [sic] about the meals. They seemed to think I wanted potatoes removed from the menu but the point I had in mind was to vary the style of serving them. For seven meals straight we have had mashed potatoes and I hate to look at them. The cook fixes them the easiest way for her instead of trying to please out tastes. If I were the Stewart you can bet that the menu would contain boiled, baked, and French fried potatoes between mashed ones.

    With a four thousand word thesis to write before Monday and finals coming I have been pretty busy. I still have a couple of short fraternity letters to write tonight and it is almost 1 so I will close this one.

    I almost forgot to tell you that we remembered where our knives were and did not buy new ones. But they were not in our laundry as you said they would be. However, I don't say that to criticize as I know that Pop is too busy to trifle with such things as sharpening knives. Fred can bring them back Sunday.

    I am well with the exception of the cold in my head which I had when I was home. I'm going to souse myself with baum tonight and expect to break it.

Love,

        Hen. 

    P.S. I am enclosing several pickle faces. Really, I can smile at times. I picked the front view for the Makio. Don't like it but there isn't time to have another taken.

           Hen.*

*typed on letterhead

-30-

Cruciverbalism

https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-72554/

I was intrigued when I read this paragraph in great-uncle Charley's Tuesday, Dec. 9, 1924 letter home:

I suppose Pop worked the big cross-word puzzle in the Sunday Dispatch* and I wonder what luck he had. I worked most of the afternoon on it and succeeded in getting all but two letters in one word. I had H -- C -- A and the word was Hecla, a mountain. Some people think that the puzzles are a waste of time but I learned a bunch of new words Sunday. I got out my dictionary when all other means failed and found synonyms I never heard of before.

One of the strongest memories I have of grandpa Fred is his love of crossword puzzles (and solitaire), so it amused me when my father developed an interest in them.

Like most people I kind of assumed they had always been around, but apparently not. Arthur Wynne is credited with the invention of the American crossword-style puzzle in 1913. By the 1920s, the crossword phenomenon was starting to attract notice.

[There was even a song called “Cross-word Mamma You Puzzle Me (But Papa’s Gonna Figure You Out) recorded on Jan. 22, 1925 -- nine days before Charley's death.]

Though The New York Times ridiculed crossword puzzles in the 1920s, calling them in an editorial “a primitive sort of mental exercise” and a waste of time, the newspaper began to run one in 1942 to offer readers relief from war news. Today, its crossword puzzles are syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals.

*I would love to find a copy of the Dec. 7, 1924 edition of the Columbus Dispatch!

-30-

Fatal error

For Memorial Day I would like to respectfully remember another cousin who was almost forgotten: ARM2 Owen Douglas Huls.

ARM2 Owen D. Huls
1924-1945

He was another ancestor that I grew up hearing about. Supposedly he had been beheaded by the Japanese during World War II, which was an error. (We now believe Owen's story somehow got confused with the historic photo of Australian commando Leonard Siffleet about to be executed that ran in LIFE magazine during the war.)

Born July 9, 1924 in Logan, Ohio, Owen would have been Charley's second cousin, one time removed. (He's my third cousin, once removed.) I don't know if Charley met his infant cousin before his death, but it's possible.

Owen's parents moved with Owen and his sister Marianne to Columbus by 1930, where he lived a typical Ohio boy's life until WWII reared its ugly head. He graduated from Grandview High School in Columbus in 1942, and joined the U.S. Navy and attained the rank of Aviation Radioman Second Class.

Owen's plane was shot down on June 4, 1945 by a Japanese ship and made an emergency landing near the island of Celebes, now known as Sulawesi, Indonesia. On June 6, Owen was captured by the Japanese while he was trying to help a crew mate.

Owen was forced to dig his own grave near the shore line, where he was bound and shot to death by his Japanese captors.

Owen's body was never recovered, but his name is inscribed on the Tablets of the Missing at Manila National Cemetery at Ft. William McKinley, Manila, Philippines. He is also memorialized at Union Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.

Owen was posthumously awarded the Silver Star, the air medal, and the Purple Heart among other combat medals.

Owen and the other members of his doomed plane are featured in the book, Fatal Error: The Final Flight of a Navy WWII Patrol Bomber, by Gary Cooper. (Owen's sister Marianne cried when she was interviewed for the book because she thought her brother had been forgotten.) I am deeply indebted to Mr. Cooper for writing about yet another cousin of family legend.

-30-

Sundry claims

It is fairly easy to find online sources about Uncle Charley and David Puskin, but after the initial poisonings it is much more difficult to find information about the other victims and what happened to them. These two clippings made me sad.

First, this was in the Oct 23, 1924 issue of The Athens Messenger, three months before his near fatal poisoning:

NEW GOLF PRO IS OHIO STATE MAN

Delbert Thompson Has  

Two Brothers in Game

    The board of directors of the Athens Country club has appointed Delbert Thompson as professional for the club's golf course.

    Thompson is a student at Ohio State university and will come to Athens in April after finishing his studies at Ohio State in March. He has had seven years' experience as a golf professional paid for his education with his clubs. His last connection was with the Ambridge club of Pittsburgh.

    He is a brother of T.D. Thompson professional at the Parkersburg country club. He claims the unique distinction of being one of three brothers who are all golf professionals.

I then found this in the Thursday, Dec. 16, 1926 edition of the Dayton Daily News:

Poison Victim Files Claim

Attorney Seeks Compensation for Canton Golf Instructor

    Attorney Don Thomas, of the law firm Baggott and Thomas, conferred with officials of the state sundry claims committee at Columbus relative to compensation for Delbert Thompson, Canton, golf expert and instructor and one of the victims of poison at the Ohio State University in January, 1925, he announced Thursday.

    No definite sum was asked for the bad condition in which Thompson alleges he was left by the poison, which was dispensed to a number of students accidentally as quinine.

    Thompson has no adequate relief in the matter in the courts of the state and must depend upon the decision of the committee, Thomas stated.

    Thompson lost a position at Athens, where he was hired as a golf instructor, due to his ill health, it was reported. He values his service at from $4000 to $5000 a year.

    Charles Huls, Logan, and David I. Puskin, Canton, died as a result of the poison. A.E. Huls, father of the dead boy, is seeking $15,000 damages for the loss of his son.

 

I'm still trying to discover more about Delbert, but I think his job loss must have been especially painful coming from a family with two additional golf professionals: Thomas and Clifford. I wonder if it was permanent? To date, I can find nothing specific about Delbert or his golfing career after this.

-30-