October 21, 2013

  • Grandpa Frank was a starting guard

     

    Grandpa Frank played basketball for Syracuse for two seasons. I just found this out by accident.

    Frank

    He was the captain of the 1902 Syracuse Classical School team (today it would be called the Freshman team). In 1903, he lettered as a starting guard on the varsity team and also doubled as the team manager. He did not play basketball after his sophomore year.

    Frank was also on the crew team, lettering in 1902 and again in 1905. I bet Grandpa Frank got a lot of tail. What do you think?

    I knew him as a kindly white-haired duffer who gave me Brach's mints every week. In retirement, he converted his back yard into a vegetable garden and kept us supplied with fresh corn and squash. Besides that, the only biographical facts I am aware of are those given to me by my dad.
    brachs

    (I suppose I could find more information in the Mormon database, but it is too much work. Besides, I would be really cheesed off if I found out they baptized him as a moron mormon posthumously.)

    Dad says Grandpa Frank lost both his parents while in high school in Kansas. He and his brother continued to support themselves on their Kansas farm. Frank was certainly a self-made man.

    After graduation from college, Frank applied for work in the U.S. State Department, where he worked as a consul until he retired. My father was born in Zurich, Switzerland.

    Other locales my grandpa worked in were Cuba, Mexico, and Canada. There were more. I never met my grandmother, who died of high blood pressure before I was born. In all these locales, she and her children -- my dad and my aunt -- accompanied him. They grew up alien and weird.

    But in a good way. My dad was bilingual and taught me a lot about tolerance.

Comments (19)

  • Thank you for sharing your Grandpa Frank with us! :-) He sounds like he was a great man! It's sad that he suffered the loss of his parents AND his wife. :-(
    I wish I could "rec" or "like" this post for others to read!
    HUGS!!! :-)

  • Your grandfather probably did get a lot of tail. I think everyone's grandparents have a stash of Brach's something-or-another for the grandkids. :) I always associate Brach's with grandparents (in a good way). Sounds like a cool guy.

    • I am sure he did. Those varsity athletes do all right. And there was nothing of the alpha male in him as far as I saw. He was basically a super-competent guy.

  • do post as many of these bios as the data supports, I love reading them. it's unforgivable how quickly these days the long and complex lives of our ancestors become... irrelevant?

  • I bet he played for Jim Boeheim.
    a lot of tolerance...so you're saying you're not Lutheran
    I am a douche.

  • (Reply to We-De-Ev) Need to add that since the 'duh' 'Reply-to' feature is missing here; apparently 'John' was too busy to implement it, what with stowing the cash in a water-proof bag for the bahamas trip.
    To the point: The net, like the Lord, giveth and taketh. Createth miniscule attention spans on one hand but makes data-bases and archived data instantly available. I would not have been able to 'populate' 18 generations of Solbergs, not even close, without it.
    (I just posted on WP about a comet, and remembered seeing a striking one for several months way, way long ago. I get goosebumps knowing that, should I desire, I can, these days, look up 'Comets from the 1950s.' and find him or her.
    oh, and int'l travel most certainly beats gawking at google-images of far-away places.

    • I do not care to comment on asteroids and comets at this point. You are correct, though, that the absence of "reply-to" buttons is explained by criminal underworld larceny. I squirreled millions of Xanga dollars into off-shore accounts in The Virgin Islands and Singapore.

  • RYC Doritos: I'm not concerned about GMO. Let's face it, evolution is just genetic modification in slow motion. And almost everything we eat and grow has been artificially selected and hybridized for a hundred years. And Roundup? I don't think it's as bad as some would have you believe. Ethanol might be worse, all things considered.
    Frank sounds like quite the man. International travel in those days was adventurous in itself. Switzerland between the wars might have been nice for a few years. At least, it sounds like that's when he was there.

    • I don't have threaded comments here, and I don't know why. I have to go to "Dashboard" and click "Reply" under the comment. New Xanga is a ass.

      Okay. Roundup is not the thing we worry about. It is the genetic modifications of food to withstand roundup that trouble us.

      World Wars -- yes, I just realized my dad was born in the middle of WW1 in Switzerland. What drama! There are several great novels to be written about it, but they are long forgotten.

  • I think there was something in the grandpa manual about maintaining a pocket full of candy. The guy who sat in the pew in front of us in church used to slip me peppermints to keep me quiet...or perhaps it was to keep himself awake. Rev. Hoeksma was a real fire and brimstone kinda preacher so nobody slept very long during his sermon.

    • There once was a German farmer named Pachs. (You reminded me of a classic sleeping-in-church story.)

      Pachs tended to fall asleep during mass. The priest droned on in Latin, building up to his finale PAX VOBISCUM. At this point Pachs sat upright saying, "Hier bin ich, Vater!"

      (I removed the duplicate comment along with your observation that there's a duplicate. We note that solberg blames the editing failures on webmaster john, who is busy stowing the cash in a water-proof bag for the bahamas trip.)

  • I know more about your grandparents than you since you weren't paying attention beore you were born. I have a good feeling about grandma Большой. I have seen a clipping of her playing a major role in The Merchant of Venice. Probably she had a great influence on my early education since I arrived at kindergarten with a great deal of language ability.Did you know my mother was divorced from my father before I was born. I was left with my grandparents, who apparently were delighted to have me and it was a good world for me.Grandpa Большой's Alsatian roots were gentlemen farmers with a military bent. Grandpa Большой's father was a captain in the French army. He came to US just after the Franco-Prussian, which the French lost. More soon.

    • "The quality of mercy is not strained ..." Maybe grandma is the actress who delivered this line. I knew about Elizabeth's early divorce, and you told me about traveling in Italy with grandpa Frank. Did I tell you I traveled in Alsace in the late 1960s? All the duffers I saw walking down the street had a thick mane of white hair like Frank's.

  • "The quality of mercy" part was her exact role. I have good but rather vague memories of her. According to what I was told (by whom?), grandpa bohr wanted to be a farmer, but the potential grandma bohr wanted no part of it. So he colleged himself, majoring in German (i.e., the language spoken in his home) and joined the state department in Berlin as a consul. Germany was thirsting for war with England at the time and grandpa bohr relished the goose-stepping troops marching down the main street of Berlin. When the war actually started , Americans of German heritage came to join the war (US was, of course, neutral at that time)Grandpa bohr facilitated their joining. When US, itself, joined the war, he quickly stopped these activities. Being on an easily crossed border between Germany and Franc, Alsatians had over the centuries developed a facility for rapidly and smoothly changing sides.

    • “The quality of mercy” was part of a story my dad used to tell. But his version ended with, “the koala tea of murphy is not strained.” You know, stupid word tricks.

      Thanks for the history. While I've got your attention, let me add that the years I spent in Virginia were certainly the worst of my life. Every time Katie hatched some new delusional idea, you ate it up like a puppy with a biscuit. It is amazing how stupid you are.

  • I traveled with him to Europe to visit grandpa Hour's places of service and Rome, since he was Catholic. Coming into Rome he read an Italian dictionary and spoke using Spanish grammar, communicating surprisingly well

  • Again, the years I spent in Virginia were certainly the worst of my life. Every time Katie hatched some new delusional idea, you ate it up like a puppy with a biscuit. It is amazing how stupid you are.

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