I must start somewhere, and this story seems to be the best. It is January 2021, the year that I turn 80. My first story begins with my two granddaughters, Olivia Rose and Eva Katherine Nienhouse. Both are creative in their own way. Olivia Rose is a working actor and music teacher, and Eva is a writer and videographer. First Olivia, then Eva a year later, told me that they have taken on the professional name of Peck, my maiden name. It moved me to write the following message to them:
“Hi, I’m just filled with love. I know my parents are looking down and are pleased. Let me tell you about my dad, William Samuel Peck. He was a man who spent his life taking care of others.
His father, Samuel Danuel Peck, died when Dad was about 20 and his kid brother, my Uncle Roger, was only 4. So Dad devoted his next 15 years or so taking care of his mother and little brother. That included the time that he married my mother and that I was born. We all lived together.
Then came WW2 and Dad was uncertain if his number would come up to be drafted. He did not enlist because my mom, me, Roger, and his mother were all dependents. They had to sell their house in Grand Rapids in case he was drafted. Grandma and Roger moved into their own rental home in 1943 or so, when I was about 2. Mom and Dad and I moved to a rental home in Wyoming Park, where we lived when my sister Judy was born in 1944.
Uncle Roger is still alive: 90 years old, fairly healthy, and we stay in touch. He considers my dad as his father and mentions it often.
My mom became sick with porferia (sp) when I was 8 and was in the hospital for a few months. She never became total healthy for the rest of her life. When I was 12 and Judy was 9, Mom was hospitalized again with lupus, and spent 3 months at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She came home just before Christmas, driven in an ambulance from Rochester. Dad had missed months of work and then had a huge Mayo bill to slowly pay off. He never accepted an offered administrative position; he worked as a tool and die maker until he retired.
Your mother can remember him, as she was 23 when he died of an aortic aneurysm in 1989. My mother had died in 1978, also of an aortic aneurysm. (Yes, I’ve been xrayed and all is OK)”
