Chapter 48

While living at the rented house in Des Plaines, mother avoided all contact with neighbors. She was Mrs. Stewart but was living with a man named Eric Hopf. After awhile she insisted that Eric get a job, as much for appearances sake as for the fact that she wearied of him being around the house all day. So she appealed to old Adolph who found him a job in a jewelers shop on Milwaukee Avenue. Adolph was too old and tired to take the job himself, so urged them to hire his son. They did and Eric worked there until 1941.

By this time mother and Eric were making frequent trips in Wisconsin shopping for a place to live. I met Russ (Russell Allen Moyer) in late 1939, and knew that he was THE ONE for me. He had joined the Navy and was working as an Aviation Mechanic at the Glenview Naval Air Station right outside Chicago. We became a "steady" couple and he applied to become a navy pilot. To his great joy, he was ACCEPTED for Naval Flight training in the fall of 1940! He was ecstatic! I was living at the Charm House in the early spring of 1941 when Father called me from Joliet and asked me if I would accompany him and Irv on a trip to British Columbia! Since Russ was in pre-flight training at Glenview, and had many more months of vigorous training ahead of him, I told him yes. Mrs. Cosler, my employer at the Charm House assured me that she would hold my job for me. She had two other girls who could fill in for me! Irv came down to the Greyhound Station in Chicago where we all boarded a bus for British Columbia! Irv had just turned nineteen.

It was a long and illuminating bus ride as we all got to know each other in depth! We talked for three days! We were warmly greeted by Auntie Nan and dear Aunt Helen - also uncle Jim! I was to stay at Nan and Helen's house in Hollyburn, and Campbell and Irv went to Uncle Jim's farm. I stayed a total of three months during which time I came to know my dear family there - my cousins Bill Ferguson, Anne Piers, and Mary Fagan.

Auntie Nan was so generous and kind to me. But, it was my Aunt Helen whose kindness, brilliance, and goodness impressed me the most! I have always regarded her as the "jewel" of the family. I visited her twice in her last few years. First, in her lovely little house in Victoria, and later in the Rest Home where she died. It was a privilege to know her!

We had been in B.C. just about a month when Irv abruptly left one day. I learned later that he had hitch-hiked and hopped freights all the way back to Chicago. In a hasty phone call to him, I learned that Campbell had brought him there with the hope of uncle Jim taking him on at the farm so that he would not be drafted. Irv sensed that James did not want the responsibility of him and so left. Shortly after his return to the Midwest, he made a trip "up north" with Vensel Voightlander where he met the Rhinehart family and a sweet girl named Emma Rhinehart who turned his world upside down!