Great-Grandfather Beitz

This will be a short post. Just received an e-mail from our daughter Joan, who is the family historian, bless her little heart.  In the e-mail were some pictures from my Mothers side of the family.  I have always thought that we were short lived in the Howe and Beitz, however it seems that my Great-GrandFather Jacob Beitz lived to the ripe old age of 89, so I guess we are not so short lived at all.  I'm not sure about my oldest Brother and Sister, but am pretty sure I am to only one of the younger kids to actually have met our Grandfather Wendel William Beitz.  Shortly after I joined the Navy in Dec 1953,  I was sent to Bainbridge Maryland to attend Quartermaster "A" school where I was suppose to learn Navigation and Visual Communications, hah, little did they know, but that is a story for a different time.  During one of the long weekends I decided to hitchhike to Buffalo New York to visit my Mom's family a distance of about 380 miles.  On arrival I stayed with one of Moms sisters don't remember her name, Mom came from a large family 11 brothers and sisters.  Anyway, it seems there was some kinda feud going on within the Beitz family but they put their differences aside so I could meet as much of  the family as I could on such a short visit.  On Saturday morning we went to another sisters house where Mom's dad, my Grandfather was staying.  He wasn't in the room when we all came traipsing in but someone went upstairs to get him  When he came downstairs, my Aunt said "Dad this is Jim, Evy's youngest son", his response, "Evy?, who in the hell is Evy?".  "You know Evelyn, she married Walt Howe", Grandfather Beitz - "Oh yeah that one armed son-of-bitch that took my daughter out to the Indians".  Aunt, "I think you should go back upstairs and lie down Dad".  That meeting lasted about 3 minutes, one of the longest three minutes of my life.  I really felt sorry for all of the people there,  Mom hadn't seen any of her family since it must have been around 1930 when they left Buffalo and moved to Ill. I remember Mom telling us that when they decided to move out to Washington State her whole family was in an uproar, they were terrified that everyone in the family would get scalped by the "injuns".

Just a little side note.Great-GrandFather Beitz