Memories of My Father

by Richard Hubenet    

My father was born Fritjof Gustaf Hübinette in Blankaholm, County of Kalmar, Sweden on June 24,1894 and came to the United States around 1911 with his sister Jenny Hübinette through Boston, Massachusetts. His uncle Frans Willehad Hübinette lived in Joliet, Illinois and helped many of the family to immigrate to the US. The last name was shortened to Hubenet and my father went by the name of Fritz. I heard that my father lived on a sheep ranch in Wyoming and this was probably before World War I.

The picture on the left was taken about 1915.
This picture was taken about 1919
1917-1918, Hanford, Washington
Picture of Gustav and Beda Lindstrom with 
my father in the 1920s.

My father’s friend Vic Victern served in the Army with him. Fred Eastern  was another friend of my father’s but I don’t know how he first met him.

My father and his sister 
Beda Otilia Hübinette 
Lindstrom in Joliet, Illinois around the early 1920’s.		  

     My mother   and father (left and right)

My mother Karen (Karin) Neilsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on January 4, 1902 and came to this country in 1923. She worked as a maid for the Knutsen family when Mr. Knutsen was head of General Motors of Detroit. My father and mother were married in Detroit, Michigan on August 30, 1924 and moved into their new home at 15892 Parkside Avenue on the West side of Detroit, Michigan. I (Richard) was born on May 24, 1925 and my brother (Edward) was born on November 2, 1926 in this house. Bertha Hansen was the mid-wife when we were born at home.

In the picture to the left is our home on Parkside and my father is working on the porch fence and seated on the steps is my brother Eddie, my mother, and me. This picture was taken about 1927.  

I remember my father making an ice rink in the back yard with snow banks and hot water in the winter time and also when he and our Uncle Nils Bergquist’s brother were forging metal and flat metal to make an ice scooter. It had a wire foot rest that snaked back and forth and attached to the blade. The tubing was flattened and attached to the blade. The top of the tubing was fastened to a cross piece of tubing to make a handle. We tried it out on the street in front of our house but it seemed to slide sideways. I suppose that they were trying to develop a saleable item but it didn’t work out that way.                     
I remember we had a German Shepard dog with a dog house in the back yard and we used to crawl in and out of the dog house. The stock market crash of 1929 put a lot of   people out of work and my father and uncle Nils lost their jobs. We lost our home and   my Grandfather in Denmark, Jens Neilsen paid the fare for our Aunt Oda and her son  along with my mother, my brother and I to go to Copenhagen, Denmark. We lived there for about six months until my father found work.

                        

 The picture to the left is of Eddie
 and I in Denmark, Eddie is on the right.

Uncle Nils moved to Sweden and Aunt Oda moved there. We came back from Denmark to Detroit and lived in a one room section of a big home with other boarders and this was located on McClellen Avenue. My father lived at 17169 Anglin Avenue in Detroit, which wasn’t too far from Parkside Avenue. I don’t know if we ever lived there. He may have lived there when we were in Denmark.                                                       

Uncle Ed and Aunt Mamie lived in Clausen, Michigan and when Uncle Ed moved to Russia to do some foundry work we moved into their house at 101 Tacoma Street shown in the picture on the left taken in 1977.
The house on Parkside was also still there in 1977 as seen in the picture below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We moved to many homes and Eddie and I went to many different schools until we lived on Seneca Avenue on the East Side of Detroit.
Our sister Margaret Evelyn (Peggy) Hubenet was born on September 1st, 1934. We lived in an upstairs attic apartment and our landlord lived downstairs. I remember Mrs. Belschume and she encouraged Eddie and I to go to Sunday school at the Lutheran Church not far away. She told us to pray for a new sister and lo and behold we had a new sister. We told our friends down the street and they prayed but the parents told our friends that their sister was still-born. I don’t know how true that is but that is the way the story goes. 

I remember our dad liking to go to Beer Gardens and it took a long time to get him home. One time we left our sister’s buggy outside and when we came out, the buggy was gone. We found it a couple blocks away. About 1934 or 1935 we moved to a flat or apartment at 4129 Iroquois Avenue a few blocks away from Seneca Avenue. The building had 4 apartments which was two story with two flats on each side. We lived in the right hand lower apartment and the landlord lived in the left side lower apartment. We had some good times in this home with friends and relatives visiting but my mother
and father were having problems with my father’s drinking. He was neglecting our family and my mother had to work to make ends meet. She later decided to go to Great Neck, Long Island, New York to stay with John Larsen and his wife while my father had to provide for us. Aunt Mamie and Uncle Ed finally convinced my father to board us out to a family in St. Clair, Michigan on a farm. This was 1938 to 1939.

My mother had returned in 1939 and we bought a home in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. It was the first time since we lived on Parkside that we lived in our own home. Eddie and I spent our High School years there and Peggy spent her Elementary School years there at the same location. We were happy there until our father had drinking problems again.

21723 Rosedale Avenue, St. Clair Shores, Michigan
South Lake High School in St. Clair Shores

However, we made a trip to Chicago and Fox River Grove, Illinois to visit Uncle Gus and Aunt Beda Nohlberg and later Uncle Frank in Chicago and those were happy times even though the War was on in 1942. We met our cousins Beverly and Donald Lindstrom there at Fox River Grove.  

Pictured to the left is Uncle Gus, Aunt Beda, my father, my mother, Uncle Vic and Aunt Jenny in Fox River Grove. We stayed in a cabin there where the Nohlbergs lived.
Pictured on the left is Beverly, Aunt Jenny, my father, Aunt Beda, my mother, Uncle Vic and Uncle Gus sitting on the dock by Fox River in Illinois. 

Aunt Beda was always very sociable and everybody enjoyed visiting her and the relatives. Our family will always remember that trip. Across the river was a Norse Ski Jump used in the Winter. Eddie and I rowed miles up the river in a row boat. The Johnsons who lived nearby had their son give us a ride on the river and of all things; they had a Johnson Sea Horse outboard motor on their boat.

Our father and mother dropped us off at Uncle Frank’s home in Chicago where Eddie and I played pool in the basement and took bus tours around Chicago while Peggy and our parents drove home to St. Clair Shores, Michigan. Eddie and I took the Ferry Boat from Chicago to St. Joseph, Michigan and played slot machines on the way. Big mistake, we used up our bus fare home so we had to hitch-hike about 160 miles back to St. Clair Shores. We had to wait a couple of hours during a blackout test in Grand Rapids, Michigan till we could continue our hitch hike. Eddie and I tried to enlist in the Navy but they turned us down, Eddie for a forged birth certificate and I for health reasons. A year later I was drafted and was able to select the Navy as my choice. Eddie joined the Merchant Marine a little while later. While I was in training at Great Lakes Naval Training Base my parents sold the house in St. Clair Shores and moved to Chicago. My mother worked for Studebaker Defense factory and my dad went to work in Hanford, Washington during the War. I was in the South Pacific when I received news that my brother was missing at sea.

When WWII was over my parents lived on the North Side of Chicago and Peggy was going to school there. I came home and worked in a radio service store and enrolled in a Radio Technical School. The semester was to start in the fall of 1946 so I spent my summer back in St. Clair Shores with old friends. My mother divorced my father and decided to make a trip to Denmark with Peggy. They spent about six months there. Meanwhile Aunt Beda and Uncle Gus lived in my mother’s apartment and when I returned from Michigan, I lived there too and attended Radio School. When my mother and Peggy returned to 2113 Roscoe Street in Chicago she had a Danish accent. It took a while to get rid of it.

Our father rented a room in South Chicago close to where he worked. I saw him on rare occasions but then he died in his hotel room on August 23, 1947. The service was conducted in Joliet, Illinois with many of the relatives and friends there on August 26, 1947. Relatives in attendance were:

Mr. & Mrs. Harry Coutts, Mr. & Mrs. Harlan Rohel,  Mrs. E. Alexander, Mr. Victor Anderson, Mrs. Stanley Johnson, Mrs. Levida Larson, Miss Hildegarde Alexander, Mrs. Jennie Johnson, Mr. & Mrs.  Higdon, Mrs. Ruby Carney, Mr. & Mrs. Kanute Erickson, Mrs. Ed. Kiefer, Mr. & Mrs. Harry Lindstrom, Beverly & Donald Lindstrom, Marjorie Kiefer, Mr. & Mrs. Edwin Hubenet, Mr. & Mrs. Bert Heintzleman

Friends in attendance were:

Mrs. Wm. Hanson and son Ebert Hanson and the friends that my father worked with at Kirby Sheet Metal Shop.

 

A brief history of my mother Karen Neilsen Hubenet Boye Bruce.

My mother moved to Glendale, California after she sold her home on Roscoe Street in Chicago, Illinois around 1952 and my sister Peggy went with her. They both found work in Glendale and Peggy met her first husband Jim Pruitt. He is the father of Marya and we visited my Mother and Peggy when Marya was a baby around 1953.

My mother then moved to Brooklyn, NY and met Gunnar Boye and they got married. They came to visit us in Cupertino, CA. They later moved to Laguna Beach, CA and in 1956 we drove from Northern California to Tijuana, Mexico and then back up the coast to Laguna Beach. We celebrated our daughter Pamela's second birthday there. My sister Peggy and her husband Jim also lived in Laguna Beach and by then they had a son named Martin (Marty). Jim Pruitt left my sister and my mother had her marriage annulled and worked and cared for her two children as a single mother. She later married Jerry Liotta who she met in Laguna Beach. Marya and Marty had their last names changed from Pruitt to Liotta when Jerry Liotta adopted them.

My mother and Gunnar later built a house in a canyon a couple of miles inland from Laguna Beach and lived there until Gunnar died. My mother sold the house and moved to Florida. There she met her third husband Robert Bruce. In 1977 on my trip to Danmark and Sweden we met my mother and Robert Bruce in London. Robert went to visit relatives in Scotland and my mother, my daughter Susie, and I went to Denmark and visited my Uncle Hans. My Aunt Oda from Sweden met us there and then Susie and I went to Sweden and met Aunt Oda's family and then on to Umeå to visit my first cousin Folke and Ebba Hübinette. Their daughter  Margareta was the only one at home with his father and mother when we visited there.

Robert Bruce died and my mother moved back to California and lived with my Sister Peggy who now had married her second husband Jerry Liotta and had a son named Marlon. All of Peggy's children were married so Peggy and Jerry lived in Winchester, California. Shortly after they moved to Winchester I retired and Marion and I moved to San Jacinto about 12 miles away from Winchester. My mother later moved to a trailer park where she lived for a few years and her sister, Aunt Oda came to visit a couple of times. My mother then moved to a care home in Hemet and lived about 2 years there and died in 1993 at the age of 91 years.