Schumann Family Newspaper Clippings

 October 3, 2023 During summer break, when Grandmother attended her sorority's national convention, Daddy would stay with Grandfather Dennis and Aunt Florence.  I asked what he did --- if he went fishing or rode bicycles. He said, "I dranks soda pop! That was a big thing." And then he said he mostly spent time with Grandfather Dennis. He would go down into the basement with him, where he separated the cream from the milk, He went to the barn with him, where Grandfather Dennis killed a chicken in the way that was common at the time, but that was surprising for Daddy, his grandfather being such a kindly man. Daddy walked to the pond with his grandfather, where he liked to go to ponder. Daddy said, "He was good to me. I asked him about death once, and I think that maybe the way I asked him was not very tactful. But he was kind in his answer. He said that he felt that he was ready to go, and that he would be leaving the world a better place than when he came in and that ...

September 17, 2023 Daddy is still in touch with Roland Martens and his wife, and had learned from Mrs. Martens that Roland is beginning to experience Altzheimers. Daddy passed this article along to them, as he thought it might bring back some happy memories for him.  Daddy said that in 1947 they didn't even have a gym. The Naval Air Station that had operated at Vero during the war had a building they were no longer using, and the team used that. (It is possible that the whole Naval Air Station had shut down, my notes aren't clear on that.   

 

September 24, 2023 Daddy said that he had forgotten that they had won this tournament, and that he had to look at the names to recognize some of them. He remained friends with Jimmy Buckingham, Harry (Bump) Holman, Jim Thompson, John Jewett, Dale Talbert, and George Loy for life, and over life --- they changed.   

  September 4, 2023 Daddy said that although the attached article does not say that he went to the World's Fair, he knows that he did, because he remembers it. They went into the city via tunnel, and while Daddy wasn't sure which one, he believes it was relatively new. What it was for sure was an experience that impressed him. He was seven at the time, and my guess is that it would have been his first time going through a tunnel in a car. This was also where Grandad bought them hamburgers and was incensed (Daddy's word) at the cost. Granddad said the hamburger wasn't as big as the coin it cost. (Maybe a silver dollar, maybe a fifty-cent piece. You get the idea.) General Motors had a big display of cars at the fair, with a mezzanie where people could gather and view the cars. Granddad took Daddy there, and they became separated. Daddy said that maybe Granddad moved a head to get a better view, and he got left behind. He said that he must have been taught what to do in su...

  August 7, 2023 Daddy and I talked about the newspaper, and the hat, and the salaries --- I was clarifying what I thought he had told me, which was that during the crash, at the end of the week, Granddad would put the money they had collected and put it in a hat, and everyone got a share. Daddy said that a man from John's Island, Mr. Dobbs, was the son of the man who started Dobb's catering business, which catered to the airlines. This man was in his early 30's when the business became his and he grew it into one of the biggest catering businesses in the country. He sold it and then bought an auto dealership, which he and his nephews grew into a nationwide operation.  This Dobbs (John?) said that the most important part of entrepreneurship was the start, meaning the start that his father had give him. Daddy said, "I got a start, and to some extent, Dad did." He wasn't sure how much Granddad's father was actually able to help him. He said, "We don...

  August 27, 2023 Daddy and I talked about this article a couple of weeks ago. The article mentions a man named "Perk," who Daddy said was in advertising.  Bill Wodtke, the author the letter, owned the department store in Vero Beach. Daddy said that Mr. Wodtke was always kind to him. "He was the father of a lot of little Wodtkeys." Daddy and Kay Wodtke were in the same class, and she married his good friend, Eddie Trent, so they were all very close.  Daddy said he was assigned to advertising without a whole lot of experience in it and that Bill Wodtke helped him in advertising. One day, Mr. Wodtke handed him a bunch of product descriptions and pictures and said, "Lay me out a full page ad," and that Mr. Wodtkey's confidence in him had meant a lot to him. 

  August 27, 2023 When Daddy and I talked about this article, the first thing he said was how pleased he was that she had noted that pay was much higher than for many newspapers of the same size. We just talked back and forth --- I told him how much I had enjoyed reading about the thank you notes he wrote the reporters, and that he had personally typed the notes that accompanied their pay raises. He seemed heart-warmed by her positive memories, and noted that she was no longer working at the Press-Journal when she wrote this, and so did not have to be positive. He talked a little bit about the IBM typewriters, and my notes are kind of sketchy, but he said that the IBM typewriters had a red symbol underneath the letter, and that symbol was read by the offset machine. He said the retraining for the linotype operators wasn't easy because the keyboards they used for linotype were set up differently

  July 8, 2023 Daddy said, "We really took that seriously, didn't we? Every member was an officer." He said there were two Whizer Motor Bikes and two motor scooters, and that it would have been when he was in high school, and they were old enough to ride motor scooters on the street. The article is dated 1958, and I mentioned that, and he said, "I think that date has got to be wrong. You were born in 1952. I wasn't riding motor scooters then." And that's when I remembered a feature the Press-Journal used to run. "Remember?" with articles from 20, 10, and 5 years ago. Sure enough, this article first ran in 1948. 

  On May 24, 1950, Indian River County held an election regarding a school bond. On May 19, the Vero Beach Press Journal published four student essays, with this introduction: "Students of the Vero Beach schools have written some highly interesting and pertinent essays concerning condtions that now exist in the local school system. They urge the freeholders of Indian River County to go to the polls next Wednesday and cast their ballots for the school bond election. Billy Law, Charles Bracket, Gwen Loy authored the other three essays. Daddy's is below. When Daddy and I talked about it, he said that he thought he seemed rather adamant to have been so young. ..... "Adamant" may not be the exact word, but it conveys the impression I took away.  As of this writing, I am still experimenting with the best way to get these articles from Newspapers.com to Blogger, so the first part of what you see below is actually the last part of Billy Law's essay. Daddy's name is r...

June 27, 2023 When Daddy and I talked about this article, I asked him what a Rotary Vocational Booklet was. He said that he didn't know, but that from its beginnings, Rotary reached out into the community for all vocations to be represented, so that instead of being a trade group, they would have a broader scope of input. We talked a little about the various monetary prizes, and then he said, "I remember the American Legion award. I was very pleaed to get that."