55th in Command Departing

Jack Loren Reifschneider was born on June 10, 1925 in Lincoln, Nebraska.  He was a career navy man. He died this past Saturday, September 20, 2014 at the age of 89 after a brief but courageous battle with cancer.  He was my grandfather's brother.   In the early 70s, he was the Commander of the USS Constitution, otherwise known as "Old Ironsides." Commander Kearns and the current crew of the USS Constitution held a brief ceremony in his honor today.  The 59th in Command, Robert Gillen attended on behalf of himself as a shipmate of Uncle Jack and on behalf of all of the former commanders.  Bernie recorded the very moving tribute; you can watch it here if you are interested.

 

 

Nick wasn't able to join us in person today, but he was there in spirit.  Here is a picture of him folding the flag he got to keep when we attended the turn around cruise as guests of Uncle Jack on July 4, 2010.

 

 

Every family has legends, many of ours involve Uncle Jack. In addition to his distinguished naval career, many people will tell you he was an honorable man. He gave good advice to family, fellow sailors, and friends. He would bring communion to people who could not get to church. When he would joke around, which he loved to do, he would have a glimmer in his eye. Because he spent the majority of his life on the west coast, and I spent the majority of mine on the east coast, we didn't get to spend a lot of time together. We did, however, get almost a whole weekend together in 2001 at our family reunion held in honor of my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. He looked like my grandfather, he talked like my grandfather, I loved everything about him. He read some material I recently had published and argued with me the whole weekend about how my perspective was all wrong. As the weekend came to a close, he finally admitted that I was at least partly right. I told him I enjoyed our debates. That was the last time I saw him.  This is the Uncle Jack that I remember (photo courtesy of Jodi Totten):

 

 

My dad was lucky enough to see him in July of this year, and took this photo:

 

 

For us, today was about honoring Uncle Jack, but it was also about remembering another navy hero.  Bernie's dad passed away exactly one year ago today. I couldn't have planned a more fitting place for us to be today.  To say that it was emotional, is an understatement.

 

The flag flown over the USS Consitution today in Uncle Jack's honor, along with the certificate, are on their way to Olympia, Washington. They will be displayed at his funeral, next Friday, October 3rd.

 

 

Fair winds and following seas, Uncle Jack.  You were greatly loved and will be missed by many.

 

 

I've Been Working on the Railroad

My grandparents have lived all over the country and are active members of their community wherever they go.  As a result of their experience, they have the best stories.  They should both consider being guest bloggers (or starting their own blog) because their anecdotes are far more entertaining than mine.  My grandmother has devoted years to researching our genealogy.  She has collected birth and death records, pictures, and legends, from traveling all over the country and from searching online databases. She has traced some lines as far back as the 1300s and 1400s.  Her collection and passion are truly amazing. Our ancestors include both royalty and gypsies.  Yes, there might be some truth to the “princess” title that little Vivi has bestowed upon herself.

 

For those of you that don’t know (and I can’t believe there are many of you), my maiden name is Reifschneider.  I hated it when I was younger.  No one could pronounce it, let alone spell it correctly.  My brother is the only son of an only son, and therefore the only one left to carry on our line of Reifschneiders (no pressure there).  In my twenties, I began to appreciate the uniqueness and legacy that came along with that name.  I was reluctant to change it when I got married, but agreed to do so when Nick just wanted our names to “match.”  The compromise was I dropped Lynn, and adopted Reifschneider as my middle name.

 

Researching the Reifschneider line has led my grandmother to believe that my German ancestors settled in Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great.  Tsarina Catherine II, who was of German descent, allowed open immigration beginning in 1763. As a result, many German colonies were founded in the lower Volga river area. The immigration to Russia was motivated by difficult economic conditions and religious intolerance. In Russia, the Germans were free from military service and taxation. When Alexander II took over in 1871, Russian nationalism was on the rise and the immigration policy was reversed.  By 1874, the Germans were once again subject to taxation and military service.  In 1881, all remaining privileges for the Germans were revoked and they were required to speak Russian. The decline in conditions drove Germans out of Russia. The Volga Germans landed in Nebraska and Kansas (sources: Vivian E. Reifschneider, and Wikipedia).

  

One story my grandparents tell involves a cross-country road trip in their RV which included a stop in Sutton, Nebraska.  That is the only place they have ever been where people can pronounce Reifschneider correctly. I was in Omaha last week on business and decided I had to experience it for myself.

 

When I got to Sutton, my first stop was the cemetery.  My grandfather mentioned that there were a lot of Reifschneiders buried there.  I took a picture of this headstone and sent it via text to Bernie and my dad.  Phillip is my grandfather’s name, and the middle name of my dad, brother, and Jack.  I was surprised to find we had been using it this long.

 

 

You should always do your research before you jump feet first into a project.  I neglected to do so, and it turns out this this “Philipp” is not part of my direct line (although he is likely a distant relative of my grandfather). The headstone image I should have captured was that of Heinrich Phillip Reifschneider who was born on 12/12/1828 in Saratov, Volga, Russia and died on 8/28/1912 in Sutton, Nebraska. Heinreich, whose headstone reads H. Phillip Reifschneider, is buried a few rows away; a row I happened to miss.  The use of his first initial and then Phillip likely indicates that he was actually known as Phillip. This also means that our spelling of the name was in use in our family 180 years before Jack was born. H. Phillip, was my grandfather’s great grandfather. H. Phillip’s son, Johannes Phillip Reifschneider (my grandfather’s grandfather – are you following this? LOL) came to the United States in 1887 and was naturalized in Pennsylvania.  The city of Sutton was established in 1871 as the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad was extended westward.   Johannes was a switchman on the railroad.  H. Phillip left Russia in 1890, at the age of 62, to join Johannes and family in Nebraska. My great-grandfather, John H. Reifschneider was born in Sutton in 1888 and was a railroad engineer and machinist.  My grandfather, Phillip C. Reifschneider was born in South Dakota, and his branch of the family ended up in the Seattle area. Washington is where my grandfather eventually met my grandmother in a high school speech class (a story for another day).

After the cemetery, I toured the city which is 2.0 square miles and about 1500 people. The city is surrounded by hundreds of acres of cornfields. Driving into the center of the city was akin to stepping back 100 years in time.      The train tracks run right through the center of the city. The train cars seemed to extend for miles.

 

 

 

It makes me wonder if Nick’s train obsession in his younger days was somehow genetic. I considered all the times I sang “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” with Grandma, without giving a second thought to what the lyrics actually mean. 

The city has one small pharmacy that also houses medical offices.  It only sells medications, medical supplies, and limited gift items.  The only grocery store is independently owned and named “Brown’s Thrift Store.”  I wrote my maiden name on a piece of paper and walked into both the pharmacy and the supermarket in search of someone who could pronounce Reifschneider without coaching.  Both people I asked probably thought I was crazy, but they both articulated it correctly without hesitation.

The city has a historical museum.  I would have loved to spend some time there but it was closed.  Apparently it is only open on Sunday for a few hours.

My last stop on the Sutton tour was Zion Lutheran Church.  As far as I know, that side of the family has always been Lutheran. I was a little disappointed that the one story building that currently houses the congregation was erected in the 1980s. However, the congregation itself was organized in 1894 and the bell looks like it could have been original to the congregation. My grandparents helped build their current church building.  It would truly be something if that tradition had started at the turn of the twentieth century.

 

It was very interesting to knowingly walk on the same ground that my ancestors did over one hundred years ago.  I tried to imagine what their lives were like and how much courage it must have taken to come all that way from Russia in search of a better quality of life.

I did find one other item in Nebraska that I know my family will appreciate.  It is the world’s largest coffee pot.  Coincidence that it is relatively near where one branch of our family tree settled?  Given how much coffee we consume, maybe not.

          

Common Ground

The fall of 2001 was about new beginnings for me.  Bernie and I had gone our separate ways. I had moved out of the house we had purchased together one year earlier and was settling into life on my own.  Bernie had sold the house and had moved into a condo nearby.  We intentionally lived in neighborhoods within the same school system to make life for Nick as easy as possible.  Our break-up was hardly amicable and we were finally able to discuss what was happening with Nick without being at each other’s throats.  We were equally sharing physical custody, which meant that Nick lived with Bernie half the time.  The space without Nick was an uncomfortable place for me.  The schedule worked out so that Bernie had Nick every Saturday.  I signed up for an accelerated Saturday MBA class at the University of New Haven to give myself something positive to focus on when Nick wasn’t with me.  I was working at Integrated Process Technologies (“IPT”).  IPT was a small facilities management company based in Hartford, that had recently been acquired by Enron. I had just been promoted to a position where I was basically a project manager for the implementation of new contracts.  Enron was providing tuition assistance for my MBA.  Nick was adjusting well to the rhythm of Kindergarten.  I was twenty-five and excited about the future.

September 11^th, was a beautiful, crisp fall day. The sun was shining high in the sky.  The leaves were just starting to turn yellow and red. As I drove into work, I sang “Beautiful Day” along with U2 on the radio, thinking that it really, truly was. I got to work, started up my computer and headed into a meeting with my manager, Brian.  He was visibly upset and said he had heard reports that a small private plane had crashed into one of the twin towers.  He seemed to know right away that we were under attack.  I tried to downplay it, insisting it was an accident.  It wasn’t long until all of the reports starting coming in about a second plane hitting the other tower, the Pentagon, the plane going down in Pennsylvania, and the towers falling.  We kept trying to refresh CNN for the latest news but the websites were freezing from all of the traffic. We had co-workers that had flown out that morning.  No one knew where they were or if they were alright. No one knew whether there would be another assault.  It was the first time I was ever concerned about our close proximity to two major cities. I was an hour away from Nick, and his school was near both the Navy Submarine Base in Groton and the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant.  I feared that they could be targets. I didn’t know whether to stay put or pick him up from school.  There were not a lot of words spoken that day by anyone.  We watched the events unfold in stunned silence.

I stayed at work. Nick stayed at school.   I just wanted to see Nick, to hug him, to tell him it was going to be ok, to convince myself it was it was going to be ok.  It was Bernie’s night to pick Nick up from daycare and to have him sleep-over.  Bernie gave me the green light to stop over after work, and I did.  We sat on the couch and just watched the footage over and over again. I didn’t want to go back to my empty apartment alone that night.  I ended up staying with Bernie.  I never left.  We didn’t tell anyone we were back together for almost six months.  We didn’t want to see our friends roll their eyes at us again, hear the sighs, the warnings, the lectures about how us being a couple was a terrible idea. Almost a year later we were engaged and almost two years later, we got married.

We were lucky in that we didn’t lose anyone we knew in those attacks.  We were scarred by what took place, I don’t know how you could not be. The events of that day reminded us that there are no guarantees in life.  It made us realize what was important; and how all of the things we used to fight about were wholly insignificant.  We began to appreciate how much better we were together than we were apart. 

I don't think any of us will ever forget what happened on 9/11. As a nation, however, it seems we have collectively forgotten the lesson of what happened after the attacks: the importance of unity.  We came together as a country to figure out how to move forward and we took those first steps together. The best way to pay tribute to the individuals who lost their lives on that horrific day and their families who remain among us, is to find common ground, politically, socially, economically.  We are facing some enormous challenges as the United States of America; we can resolve those issues through working together, through compromise, through leaving polarized positions and once again being united.