All this week my mom and Nick’s girlfriend, Savannah, and I have been piecing together the love story of the husband and wife who built and owned my brother’s house. My brother got to know the couple when he worked for the gas company and was reading the meter there. Later, as they got older, my brother did landscaping and other odd jobs for them in his spare time. Irma died in 2005 at age 96. When Shel passed away at age 103 in 2012 my brother was able to buy the house from Shel’s relatives (they had no children). My brother found the letters in the basement and we’ve been sorting them by date (1936 to 1941 — although mysteriously there are no letters from 1937) and reading some out loud every night. Shel lived at the YMCA while they were corresponding, but the last letter (written to Irma after they were married when Irma’s must have gone back to Cleveland to visit her family) had the return address of this house — the house they rented as newlyweds in January 1941. This house was newly built in 1940 and they were the first to live in it. The rent was $35 a month — a bargain at the time as other rentals closer to downtown we’re being snatched up for $50 a month by men working in manufacturing for the war effort. In between going to estate sales we also hunted down the building where Shel worked and would have driven past the YMCA but it was lunch time. Have to save something for the next trip.
It's so interesting that you found their letters and are piecing together their story. I realized recently, while talking to a relative with dementia, that I should write down some of her stories or they will be lost forever.
Pretty house. Reminds me of some in my hometown in New Jersey.
my goodness, those were some long lives! The house must be a healthy place, your brother should stay there, at least until he's 103...
Can you imagine $35/month?!?
@eudora I definitely don’t write down enough stories. My mom is 87 and remembers everything, but I forget what she said or else I lose the paper it’s written on. Half of my family thought we were too nosy reading the letters; the other half couldn’t wait to hear more.
@margonaut My sister-in-law (not the one that lives in the house, the other one) and I think they lived that long because they didn’t have any kids. Lily and I were just talking about the rent tonight — it’s so hard to believe! I’m wondering if that was a struggle for them at that time? His uncle owned the company he worked for and eventually he became the vice president and financial officer, but he worked his way up from the bottom. When they rented this house he was 32.
@wiesnerbeth "lived that long because they didn't have kids" bwahahaha! If they were the 1st to live there, then your brother is only the 2nd owner of the house? That's pretty amazing. It looks like many of the houses built in Paducah in the post-WWII rush, when they opened the uranium enrichment plant there.
@margonaut So this house was built in 1940 as a rental for men coming to Erie to work in the manufacturing industry leading up to the war. Shel and Irma rented it in 1941 and were the first people to live in it. Later they built a house a few miles from here and that’s where my brother lives. But my brother is only the second owner of that house, which is a ranch on a hill looking over a golf course. Ironically my brother actually lived on the same street as the house in this picture but up a few blocks. And way after 1940. Hahaha!
July 15th, 2022
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Pretty house. Reminds me of some in my hometown in New Jersey.
Can you imagine $35/month?!?