Meet my Uncle Carl Sepia Saturday Week 26 (Click to link to others)

I have missed Sepia Saturdays both posting and enjoying others, but am back now for a few weeks before we journey to Southern IL for an RV Rally. We have been in PA tending to matters for my Uncle Carl Konesky who is 92 and living in an assisted living personal care facility since last July due to his dementia. He is content there and doing as well as expected and some days better than others.

He is the last of my family, Mom’s brother and has survived all his sisters. He has outlived his heart  bypass operation in his 60's, stomach ulcers in his 50's and  broken bones along the way.  While in PA trying to get his home cleared to sell, a task which we could not complete this trip despite my optimism,  I found many old photos and some with dates in an album, black pages, labeled with white ink, years ago by Aunt Marge, Uncle Carl’s wife, who died in 1997. I have so much more to write and share about Carl and Marge who never had children, designating me as the surviving blood niece to handle things. Well he was important in my life growing up as was Marge, so I accept this challenge paying back however  I can.

Carl changed the family name to Konesky from Kochanowski, much to the consternation of his father, my Granpap Teofil whom you met several Sepia’s ago. Once Carl did this, my mother and aunts followed suit also using Konesky, but my Granpap never did. Carl said it was easier to spell and to the day he died, Teofil would ask him why if he was so smart he couldn't lkearn to spell his name the right way!

Many years back on a visit to PA my aunt gave me this photo of Uncle Carl at a Fireman’s parade. He was a proud volunteer fireman for more than 50 years and I remember his marching in parades in uniform, spit shined shoes and white gloves. Sometimes he was the leader of the parade and so had a  big brass whistle to blow, which was his from the Army and which I brought home to MN this trip.  He played a harmonica and sometimes a horn. I have always loved this particular photo, which is framed and on one of our bookcases in the study/compuiter hobby room. but until this trip I did not have a date of the photo. Uncle Carl himself did not remember the year when I had asked about it several years back, just saying, “Oh that was long ago.” So I have learned thanks to Aunt Marge’s album that it was in 1938, he would have been 19 or 20 years old and this was one of the river towns along the Allegheny in PA. The  firemen always marched in the  Memorial Day and Veteran's Day parades and had a band.  We observed the Memorial Day parade  this trip to PA and the firemen were there, but riding their trucks and there is no longer a marching band of volunteers.  Today, most of the firemen are paid, full time positions.  My birthday is  in November and for  many years I believed the Veterans' Day parade was part of my birthday celebration, because Uncle Carl told me so and I thought he should know being so prominent in the parades!  I wouldn't miss a beat of the marches  standing there on the sidewalk with my grandmother and grandfather, just beaming and of course, Uncle Carl always made the band stop and play a tune right in front of me.  I was the proudest little girl in town.  I don't know anyone else who really did have their own parade serenades! 

Well just back from weeks away there is a lot of catching up to do around here, laundry to wash, yard work; weeds to pull, etc. so this must be short posting. I am celebrating acquisition of many more photos (which I need like another hole in my head as they used to say) some from his Army experiences in WWII in Germany, France, Belgium where he served with the 809th Tank Destroyer Unit which I will share later.

Here is Uncle Carl as a young Army soldier and Aunt Marge (Lichanec), in September 1942, a month before they were married in Tulsa OK during his early Army years. I have written once before on this blog about Aunt Marge.  You can go to mySeptember 7, 2008 post titled, "Margie Sway" ( http://patonlinenewtime.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-09-08T19%3A51%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=50)
Aunt Marge made her living as a beautician and had her beauty shop in their home until she retired, the same home they built in 1950 and where we are tasked with clearing out lifetimes of accumulations.  I found a small wooden sign, "Marge Konesky's Beauty Shop," that Uncle Carl  painted for her and put at the foot of the steps outside arrow pointing the way, so that those women not  bother him in his garage/shop/mancave. I brought it home and have hung it on the  downstairs in the rec area near the bathroom door.   Uncle Carl was also a self taught artist and  painted   big and small signs for extra money while working full time at the gas company until he retired.  He was an avid hunter and fisherman and as I have said, more to come later.

As usual, click on the title to link to  Sepia Saturday where you can  clickk to other posts.....