The deed I discovered that led me back to my Father's family grave.
The location of the grave: Section 94, Lot 233, at the Mt. Hope Cemetery in Hastings-On-Hudson, NY
The tombstone. My father never added his father and sister to the site and I was in the Army and pending assignment in Germany. I never filled the names in, but arranged to do so. I still need to find years of birth for Pop and Tess.I was there perhaps twice in my life. Once in the 1940s when I didn’t know about what it was and a second time in 1972 when I knew too much about it. I haven’t been there in four decades.
It is Section 94, Plot 223 at the Mt. Hope Cemetery in Hastings On Hudson, New York. My father’s family “lives” there.
The plot was purchased by “Pops”, my grandfather on the day before Valentines Day in 1946, before I was born. I guess “Pops” was in a lot of pain that day. He was burying my grandmother, Anna, whom family lore says she died from pneumonia.
I didn’t know Pops (Joseph Munzer) very well. He died in 1954, when I was seven. But he had been in poor health for many years and was somewhat senile when I was alive. Generally, I saw him on holidays and my birthday. He was sort of someone who was in the background. I was born in New York City and our family moved to rural New Jersey in the early 1950s to a small house in Cedar Lake, Denville, New Jersey. Pop came to visit and fell asleep on the couch by the fireplace. My dad started a fire to keep him warm and he woke up screaming in terror declaring he died and had gone to hell.
It wasn’t too much later my parents told me Pop had died. But because there was so little contact, I didn’t have many memories of him. My father once told me that he and his brothers worked for a local brewery delivering barrels of beer to speakeasies during prohibition in the 1920s. He said these guys were so strong that they would sometimes pick up and remove a full barrel as if it was empty for their personal use.
He was buried next to Anna, but the tombstone was never updated, nor was it for my Aunt Tess, who died when I was a high school senior.
Tess was someone whom I had known as a youngster, but wasn’t very close to – especially after my parents separated. As I grew older, my father demanded I spend time where he lived in Manhattan and we would frequently meet at the Woolworth’s on 34th Street and 7th Avenue. It was near Macy’s and she often took me shopping for things like a good suit. Tess was a camera buff and loved to shoot photos of flowers. She had a keen eye and tried to show me what to look for when taking pictures. Sometimes a memory or two came back as I had a career in photography for many years.
I sometimes felt I was taking advantage of her. I didn’t like to exploit her, but my father insisted that she wanted to buy me things as she had never been married and I, an only child, was the only living relative she had other than my father, her brother. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the things she bought me were things I needed and couldn’t afford. For example, as a junior in high school, I wanted to learn to fence. She got me a foil and a fencing mask and I took classes both in school and at the “Y”. As I look back, I realize how grateful I was for these gifts. I was kind of shocked at the visit to learn her name, as listed in the cemetery records, was not Tess, but Alicia Theresa. Tess was her nickname.
She worked for the New York City Transit Authority all her life and one day she told her co-workers that she wasn’t feeling well and was going home. Several days later, she was found dead. This was in 1965.
I wasn’t allowed to go to neither Pops’, nor Tess’, funerals. I don’t think my father had a funeral for her, but just a wake. What I do remember is cleaning out her apartment. Tess was the first person who I discovered was a hoarder. With her death, it was discovered her apartment hadn’t been cleaned probably for the eleven years since Pops died. Cans of his pipe tobacco were left where they were at the time of her death. Canned food had been expired for many years. She bought many things through mail order and unopened packages littered the floor. Among the items were record albums that came from a record-of-the-month club. I took those and what was left of her cameras. My father thought that the cops who discovered the body had robbed it as well.
People from my father’s church came to remove whatever I didn’t want. There was more than enough for a huge rummage sale. And a cleaning service was needed to scrub out the place and toss out the furniture.
As I write this, I realize that the trauma of that time impacted me during my marriage as well. Being found dead in a mess like my wife had created terrified me and I probably battled way too much with her. If you read this, I am sorry that I over-reacted.
And so I had a discussion with these people. While it was quite lively, I suppose it was one sided. On Facebook, I mourned the recent death of BeeGee Robin Gibb. A friend asked me if it really mattered since he couldn’t see it. I asked him how he knew that. It was just as possible that he could. Anyhow, I felt a presence that they understood what I said and also knew that my words were inadequate for my feelings.
The conversation with my father was somewhat different. I recounted many times when his visits reassured me. Sometimes he felt like an entertainer as he did things like take me to amusement parks, bowling and other kid attractions and also on my very first airplane ride, which my mother went nuts about. There was a time when I came home with a piece of steak that had fallen on the floor and I tossed it to my dog. It happened in front of the landlord just as my mother was telling him she was too broke for a rent increase.
I guess the most important visits were the times I was desperately alone. I remember when I was eleven just going to a local park and skipping stones. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I do remember calming down. Another time, when I was sixteen, my mother was going crazy and he visited me where I was working at the movie theater. He even paid for an admission. We sat for about 20 minutes with him telling me I was OK and that things would be OK. He then left. He had travelled two hours each way on a train to do this. It is one of the things I will never forget. In hindsight, I realize that about a week later I wound up seeing the school psychologist and wound up in his group. As I gradually opened up to the shrink about my mother’s drinking, the shrink arranged for a family to take me in until graduation if need be. I didn’t need it but it was nice to know it was there.
Both my parents were alcoholics. They had similar, yet very different, drinking patterns. My mother would sneak her drinks and then become very outgoing and friendly until she turned morose and belligerent before passing out. My father drank openly in front of me, also became more outgoing and friendly, but didn’t turn mean, nor did he pass out.
And so I talked to Dad about these things, and much more. And then I started crying. The sorrow that had lain dormant for about four decades finally came out. I had been in something of a depression and it helped snap me out of it.
It rained most of the day and as I went from the cemetery office to the gravesite, the original deed slipped out of the plastic page cover I had been holding it in. I discovered it missing as I left the grave and retraced my steps in a panic before finding it soaked on the road in front of the cemetery office. But it dried up and I still have it in decent condition.
As I drove home, more good memories about the Munzers came out. Just as earlier in the year when I visited a cousin on my mother’s side and discovered a photo of our grandfather who died in the First World War, more pieces of my past came together. One of the things my ex had was an incredibly large number of relatives and I always envied her sense of her place in the world. I guess it’s never too late to find some of your own.
