Hank explains that there were exactly ten years difference between his older brother Ted and himself. Ted liked to boss Hank around. When Ted was working, he would want to come home and get ready for his date, and would expect Hank to have his shoes polished for him.
Hank remembers that when he was a young boy, he and his friend found some cigarette butts and proceeded to smoke them with the predicable result of making themselves quite sick.
Hank came home and alarmed his parents who wanted to call a doctor. "Oh no," Hank reassured. "It was just something I ate. I think I'll just go to my room." His father, who was a smoker, didn't detect the smell of tobacco on Hank's breath but periodically came into Hank's room with Julia to express concern. "Oh, no. I'll be all right, really," Hank reassured them.
Ted came home and immediately smelled what had happened. "What was you doing? Smoking, you little s--t?" Ted demanded to know. "He wasn't that good of a buddy to me that time," Hank concluded.
Ted like his brother-in-law, Hank, was a machinist. At one time they both worked at Lempco Products in Maple Heights. My father writes, "at the beginning of World War II, Ted used his influence to get me a job at Lempco and he made sure that I kept my nose to the company grindstone. I first worked on a drill press, but soon got transferred to Ted's Assembly Department. Ted was my boss while we assembled small automotive repair equipment; brake drum lathes, cylinder honing machines, hydraulic presses, and piston grinders." This photograph shows Ted and his niece Carolyn Amacher in 1930. Photo courtesy of Carolyn's son, John Soltes.
Ted married Mary "Mae" Klima, the daughter of Frank and Anna Klima. Ted was a Grand Knight in the Knights of Columbus.
Mae had two sisters, Helen and Cecelia, and two brothers, Frank, Jr. and Joseph. Ted died on December 8, 1974, and Mary in May 1987. They had no children, but Ted's brother Hank describes them as "party people."
Ted died on December 8, 1974 and was interred in Section 95 of Calvary Cemetery.
Kazmiera, the third child, was born on November 27, 1903. She died on January 9, 1909 of Scarlet Fever after two days in the hospital, and was buried at Calvary Cemetery.
Zigmund, the sixth child, was born on June 12, 1910 and died on March 6, 1913 at the age of two years.
