Around Valentine's Day, 1928, With An Engaged Ruth Meredith

In her 1928 diary, Ruth mentions that she and John Kellogg were engaged on Oct. 19, 1927, which is earlier than I had thought.  The picture shows Ruth in 1928 in a cloche and
fur-collared winter coat with a beaded purse.  She was in Chicago, but I don't know where.

February 12, 1928, Sun. - "Church with John.  We took snapshots this afternoon.  Took long drive.  After supper we strung beads.  Bed 10:30.  'Lincoln's Birthday' ."

February 13, 1928, Mon. - "Monotonous day!  Raining!  Bright spot - John came to supper and we poked fun at each other.  Didn't do anything worthwhile tonite.  Looked over old valentines."

February 14, 1928, Tues. - "More rain!  Got valentine from Wanda.  John is buying mine tomorrow.  Just answered Esther's letter.  Pay day!"

February 15, 1928, Wed. - John bought 1 1/2 lb. box of chocolates with a bit of verse, entitled 'A Dumb Man's Wail'.  Good.  We saw 'The Loves of Carmen' in the movies tonight.  Also good."

February 16, 1928, Thurs. - "Got my new swivel desk chair this morning.  Tonite I washed my hair.  Florence & Clyde were at same show last night.  Now to read.  I must write Wanda soon."

February 17, 1928, Fri. - "Snow!  John over to eat.  Teased me about something he has in hiding place till 19th, which is our 4th month of engagement."

February 18, 1928, Sat. - "Papa drove me around and I did Mam's shopping.  She has stiff neck. Mama stayed home & the rest of us went to the show in Papa's car."

February 19, 1928, Sun. - "John gave cast aluminum percolator for 'hope chest'.  John & I went to Oak Park church with Papa.  Took snow pictures & then took long walk together."

Ruth doesn't mention that she is working now at Ward's.  The little clues are "pay day" and the swivel office chair.  Florence worked there too and Clyde was her steady beau, who married her in 1930.  I'm not sure who Esther is - maybe a work friend.

I'm guessing that Ruth and John went to a Methodist church on the 12th, which was his faith, and then to Oak Park's First Baptist on the 19th.  Ruth was raised a Baptist, as was her father, Jim Meredith, who was from Berrien County MI.  Ruth and John finally chose to go to Austin Baptist Church when they married in 1929.  It was the one Ruth's parents had been attending since at least 1922.  Ruth and John switched to the First Baptist in Oak Park when they moved there in 1941.  By then they had 2 children: Kenneth and Diane.

John's Exciting Encounter with the Police, Guns Drawn!

This is not from a diary, but sketches an incident that turned up among the papers left by my parents, Ruth and John Kellogg.  It's in John's handwriting, hastily written on the "scrap paper" with an ad for his bandage business on the other side.  I know he wrote it at 6:15 AM, but don't know the day or the year.  My guess is in the late 1950s or 1960s. The neighbor he mentions is not familiar to me, so I was not living at home at that point.

"I went to the garage and found door jammed.  Would not open.  I raised it a foot & crawled under & was looking at it when 2 men with guns rushed up & said to come out.  They said they had said they were police officers, but if so I did not hear them.

Citro girl & boyfriend were held up as they came home about 4 AM from a dance.  The Citro garage door makes noise so the girl, not yet asleep, heard door being opened.  Citro put on garage light & burglar rushed away.  Police said they saw me crawl under the door & figured I was the burglar.  

Good thing I got a good heart!  

Never had anything like this before."

I've never heard this story before, nor did I know the Citro family, who must have lived nearby, either on Linden or Euclid in Oak Park.  Both streets shared our alley.  Evidentally the attempted burglary was after the boyfriend dropped off the Citro girl at her house.  John usually left for work by 5 AM, so the fact that he wrote this note at 6:15 is telling.  He was upset enough to get off schedule - and doubtless was interviewed by the police as well, though his driver's license would have quickly proven who he was.  I wonder if the burglar first tried the Kellogg door, accidentally jamming it.

So far I haven't found out anything else, but perhaps a newspaper or The Oak Leaves might have covered the story.  This is not part of Pieces of a Life.

A Boy in Lancaster NY

John Webb Kellogg was born in Buffalo, NY in 1899 and grew up in the nearby village of Lancaster.  His parents were 18-yr-old Esther Clara Webb and 44-yr-old Charles Henry Kellogg Jr.

 John had a lifelong interest in history, but sadly, not in genealogy.  John was a high-detail, focused person as you will soon see in excerpts of his story, "75 Years -- Where Did They Go?"  His entire story, written in 1974, is part of Pieces of a Life.

There are those who would say he wore blinders like a horse, so preoccupied with whatever drew him at the time.  He could then race straight ahead to his goal.  Like so many things, being very focused is both a plus and a minus, but a strong Kellogg trait.

John describes the house pictured in detail, but not colors or decor or even how the rooms were laid out.
(The picture is from 1940 when the house would have been 60 or more years old and was no longer on
3 1/2 acres.)  "Our house had been built many years before we bought and had about 20 rooms.  It had two floors, plus a cement floor, full basement.  In the basement there was a furnace in which we burned hard coal and which gave hot air through ducts to the two living rooms and dining room on the first floor, also to both second floor front bedrooms.  The first floor also had a large kitchen and pantry, which were heated by a large range primarily used for cooking or baking. Water came from the kitchen sink pump or a large pump outside, sheltered from rain or snow."

As you can see, I wasn't kidding about John's delight in detail!  "In the back of our land was a high hill that no one seemed to own.  Lancaster, being at the east end of Lake Erie, gets a lot of snow. After each snowfall dozens of small boys and girls would take their Flexible Flyers to the hill for a long coast down.  

Sometimes we would make tracks; simply do not steer or guide the path it took.  Thereafter, it would follow those tracks each time it went down.  At times in the day the sun would melt the top layers of snow and at night it would turn cold so the crust would get hard.  Lads would then take out their sled on a moonlit night and push it along the top of the crusty snow with a stick that had a spike pounded in one end.  The head of the nail had been sharpened. This spike made fast travel under these special conditions.  

This idyllic childhood continued until I was about 13 when Father died, leaving a family in an expensive setup and no money to pay the bills.  But that comes later."



 

Ruth, John & Kenny Surviving the Great Depression

The photo shows Kenny Kellogg at age 3 (9/ 6/34),  on the front steps of the stucco Iowa Street 2-flat where he and his parents, Ruth and John, lived. You can see his 3rd birthday cake to the right on the ledge.   He's sporting a beret. Neither the picture nor diary entry were in Pieces of a Life.

The Great Depression was still going on, with money tight and jobs hard to find.  John was working a 7-day week and often nights as well, trying to make a go of the Sealtex business that he took over, debts and all, in July of 1934.  He fired the factory workers and his secretary, explaining that he would re-hire them in the Fall when he had the money from bandage orders. He also moved Sealtex into a much cheaper, smaller basement space.  Part of  the money coming in he set aside to pay off the bills run up by the previous owners.  He also negotiated with some of the creditors, who quickly realized that half of the money owed them  by the previous owners was a lot better than none!

Ruth's diary (age 28) reveals that she was depressed about being alone so much and, of course, the restrictions of being on so small a budget. Occasionally, she had friends in or went out, but everyone was cutting back, trying to provide a meal on a shoestring.  She and Kenny were together every day while Ruth did the housework, with Lottie babysitting maybe once a week for an hour.  It surprised me to see how little structure there was to Kenny's schedule.  He really didn't have any!  At one point, Ruth mentioned that  it was the 6th of the month and John was late with the rent. Fortunately, the landlord was Ruth's father, Jim Meredith, who knew all too well about the Depression and how much John was working.

Friday, March 22, 1935
"Spent the day cleaning & preparing for Cecile & Ted's visit tonite for supper.  She & baby came about 5.  They stayed until 9:30.

Spent most of time arguing with John to go with class Sat. to Swedish restaurant and Lawson Y.M.C.A.   No Sale with him!  Darn it.

I took Dorothy down to show her to folks -- they think she's a little doll."

Cecile and Ted Duncan were close friends of Ruth's through the Austin Baptist Church.    Their baby girl was "Dorothy."  Evidentally Ruth couldn't persuade John to go to the restaurant and YMCA with the Yomarco (Baptist adult Sunday School) class because of his working much of Saturday and also not wanting to spent any extra money.

A Hot July in 1934...and Even Hotter at the Biograph Theatre!

Ruth (28) and Kenny Kellogg (not quite 3 years old)  returned from Ann Arbor MI on July 16, catching a bus in Ypsilanti.  They had visited John's mother, Esther Wood, and his stepfather, Guy Wood as well as seeing Dorothy Hiltner, John's sister and Sara Jane, Guy Jr., his stepsister and stepbrother.  The picture of them was taken on the Wood's front steps in Ann Arbor. I've used it before and think it's also in Pieces of a Life .  Ruth had stopped there for 5 weeks on the way back from staying with John in NYC for  month.  He was working for Sealtex on the East Coast.

It was a hot summer,which Ruth mentions time and again as she does the housework, ironing, cooking in the flat above her parents' apartment on Iowa Street in Chicago. The washing was done in the stone basement, so would have seemed much cooler. Also, she was washing and ironing John's shirts and other clothes, which meant carrying heavy boxes to the post office to mail them to New York City.

On July 22, Ruth says, "Gangster  Dillinger shot to death tonite by police & gov. men as he came out of the Biograph Theatre. Another hot day!  We got ice cream bars every day.  Played Hearts in cool breeze of porch tonite."

Ruth mentions on the 24th that it was "Hot! 105 degrees in the shade."  I wonder if she had been aware of John Dillinger.  He became a famous figure because of all of the newspaper coverage of his shady career, not to mention the movies later made about him.

John Speaks of Esther Clara Webb, His Mother

The quote below is from the beginning of my father's section in Pieces of a Life.  It's taken from the brief autobiography John Kellogg wrote in 1974 called 75 Years - Where Did They Go? 

The picture shows G.A. (Guy Ashford Wood) and his wife, Esther, in their home on Hamilton Ave., Detroit MI in 1922, both in their 40s.  This was after they'd moved from Buffalo NY as newlyweds and before they moved on to Walnut St. in Ann Arbor to buy and manage a rooming house for University of Michigan students. When this picture was taken, they had two young children, Junior (Guy) and Sara Jane.

I remember my grandmother saying that after trying both male and female students as roomers, she settled on only men because they were easier to deal with.  Like my father, she had strong, definite opinions - nothing wishy-washy about her!  Also like John, Esther was very interested in politics and current events.

Esther's first husband was Charles Kellogg, who had died in 1913.  She had been married at 18 and had two children with Charles as well - John Webb and Dorothy Helen.

"By luck I was born into a family which knew gracious living.   One of my earliest memories is my Mother, a young, attractive woman with a flat velvet ribbon around her hair to keep it in place.  One day I asked her why she wore that kind of decoration when none of the other ladies did.  The next day she appeared with her hair fluffed around a metal form called a 'rat.'  We have a 1907 picture of her dressed in that manner with her two children.

Actually she was much younger than the other women she knew.  As a farm girl, at an early age she learned to make her clothes.  Her next step was to do dressmaking in Buffalo NY.  At the age of 18 she married my Father, a widower about 44.  The farm was on Grand Island, which is in the Niagara River below Buffalo and above Niagara Falls."  

I recall a few early pictures of Grandmother Wood, but haven't seen them in years.  I'm sure that I saw the picture my father mentioned from 1907, but it may have been on a wall in Ann Arbor.  Sad that old pictures, letters, journals so often are lost in the dust of time.

"He Tackles Tennis, Life With Zest."

The Clearwater FL newspaper article about John Kellogg was headlined with the quote about tackling tennis and life with zest.  John had just written the short autobiography that's part of Pieces of a Life.  and apparently sent a copy to the newspaper along with the ones he sent to his children (myself and Ken) and five grandchildren.  He turned 75 three days after the article was published on Aug. 22, 1974.


I'll quote some of it, though you'll know what's coming if you've read the book.  His philosophy was written in stone.  "Not many 75-year-old men play tennis three times a week.  J.W. Kellogg does, and his arduous schedule tells a lot about the man."

" 'I hadn't played in more than 35 years, didn't have the time.  After I retired, I took lessons and it all came back, ' said Kellogg, a member of the Clearwater Tennis Club. ' "  Note:  He did play with Ken and a little with me when I was in grade school, but maybe that didn't count.

"Although his game is slower now, he plays it with the same dedication and seriousness with which he has tackled work and play all of his life.  Dedication to a goal and extra effort to 'make each job successful plus' pay big dividends, Kellogg said.  With that in mind, he is leaving his five grandchildren a double legacy:  several thousand dollars in bonds for each and the story of how one man toppled from the lap of luxury as a child, working his way from poverty to riches."

"He inched his way toward the edge of his chair.  The crow's feet deepened around his gray eyes as he recalled the first work room for his big manufacturing venture, SealTex, an adhesive bandage.  'It was a basement room next to the boiler with one window and one pigtail light.' he said, squinting at the still-remembered glare.  But the rent was only $10 a month, that was the important thing."

"It is the story of a self-made man.  It is also the story of a growing, industrialized nation and an era now almost lost in the mesmerizing hum of a computerized society.  Kellogg's father, a graduate of M.I.T. and a builder of bridges, died when the youth was about 11 years old.  Kellogg set his goal of financial security early.  He has attained that goal and is satisfied.  But perhaps the best legacy, after all, and one that any grandparent can leave, is a first-hand account of days that are gone forever. " 

Note:  It seems that Charles Kellogg, John's father, did not go to M.I.T., but he and his father did build bridges all over the eastern part of the United States.  Also, John was 13 1/2 when his father died, not 11.   

1930: The Stress of Being "Laid-Off"...and Rehired

As you know from Pieces of a Life, Ruth Meredith, pictured above, and John Kellogg were married in June, 1929.  The Depression hit just months later in October and the economy began to slide precipitously. This was shocking to the Kelloggs - and to everyone else in the country.  At this point, both Ruth and John still worked for Montgomery Ward, but a rocky road was ahead.

Thurs., Jan. 8, 1930 - "I was laid-off.  More than 50% of office got it.  Am all broken up over it.  John found an opening for me in Hse. Auditor's Office.  Hard to get transfer."    Doubtless, Ruth was stressed out about the sudden loss of a job she and John counted on for extra money.  That was also familiar work in a department where she knew everyone.  Without John's help, Ruth never would have been transferred over to the House Auditor's Office.  Everyone fired - both at Wards and elsewhere - was job-hunting.

Fri., Jan. 9, 1930 - "Finally got transfer - but keeping it quiet.  Packed all my belongings and left Gen. Methods (what there is left of it) tonite.  Florence is still there."   Years later my mother, Ruth, told me that Florence Childers kept her job, at least at first, because she had no spouse employed by Wards.  Florence, a close friend of Ruth's, was married at the end of 1930 to Clyde Ballentine. He didn't work for Wards.

Sat., Jan. 10, 1930 - "Worked straight through until 2:00 today (Sat.) - hard - so tired I cried when I came home.  Didn't go to show.  We baked our first pie - butterscotch - for tomorrow."   Ruth was trying to take on a new job of tedious typing job involving a lot of numbers and columns, I'd imagine.  She was also working for and with people she didn't know. There were no computers to handle rote tasks, so typists did that work.  On top of that, Ruth and John were having a few people in for a light meal and dessert the following day - more pressure!

In 1968 Ruth Wrote About a Terrible Shooting That "Shocked the Multitudes."

"We babysat tonite so Diane & Dan could go out for a cocktail and see movie, 'The Graduate' at the Capital in town.

This morning D & D went alone to the beach for a few hours of walking and relaxing after picking up 2 rental strollers at $3 each for a week.

Dr. Martin Luther King was killed by a bullet in the neck in Memphis, Tennessee appearance today.  It shocked the multitudes.  Not good for colored equality.  Afraid of uprisings now everywhere."

That last paragraph was written in red pen.  My mother was probably quoting what she had heard on television about "uprisings."

Dan and I were visiting my parents, John and Ruth Kellogg, in Clearwater FL where they'd moved a year or two earlier.  Lynn was almost two years old and Cindy about 9 months.  You can see all four of us on a couch in the living room of the condo.

I didn't recall that we had seen "The Graduate" that particular night, but vividly recall the cocktail at Schraft's, a restaurant/bar in Clearwater.  We were sitting at the bar when the television on the wall in front of us broadcast the news and film about the death of Martin Luther King.  It was a horrifying moment, not unlike the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963.  You hear the words, see the picture, but it is too awful to believe.  

A Tale of Three Uncles - # Three

 The picture on the left is Guy Ashford Wood Jr. in April, 1945 (age 28) on a 30-day leave from the Royal Canadian Air Force.  He was a Flight Lieutenant.  He's pictured in the backyard of his parents, Esther and Guy Wood, in Ann Arbor, MI.  He tried to join the U.S. Army Air Corps (later became the Air Force) early in 1941, months before the U.S. engaged in World War II.  However, Guy was color-blind, so was not considered eligible for service.

When he crossed the Canadian border to try again, Guy was welcomed with open arms by the RCAF.  Canada, as part of the British Empire, had been at war for two years by then.  Guy was a fighter pilot, mainly in North Africa, and was never shot down.

When on leave in Capetown, South Africa, he met his future wife, Edna Smith, who worked at the hospital.  At the time the family was told that Guy was hospitalized because he was hit by a car while riding a bike.  It was only months ago that my cousin, also named Guy Wood, told me that his father had been in a bar fight!  Guy must have changed the bar fight to a bike because some of the family, my father among them, did not drink, nor did they believe anyone else should do so.

The picture on the right was taken at the Wood's home in Ann Arbor in 1938.  My father, John Kellogg (age 39), and his step-brother, Guy Wood (age 21),  are shown with Esther Webb Kellogg Wood in the back-ground.  Each man looks like his own father, so appear very different from each other. Uncle Guy was actually my step-uncle.

Though the people in this post are mentioned in Pieces of a Life, these pictures and this story are new.