Rundbrief second generation “anchors” are being lost: the third generation now needs to step up

I previously described the Rundbrief, that is, the round-robin letter (actual, physical packet of letters on paper, as opposed to e-) that has made its way around North America among my Dad’s generation—the second generation born on this continent to the original immigrants from the Ukraine of the Krause-Dirks line such as my grandmother (“Oma”) Mary Dirks Janzen—and in recent years, also interested cousins/second cousins of the third generation, such as me.

Two of the biggest cheerleaders of keeping such a correspondence going among the extended family, back in the 1980s, were Dad and his cousin “Reck.” They took much of the initiative to stir up interest among their cousins in the U.S. and Canada. It so happens that in the established circular route of the packet, Reck is the one who sends it on to me from his winter home in Florida. He always e-mails me to let me know the snail mails are on their way!

Let’s back up for a moment, for a kind of sequel to The Batum Story. Great-grandparents Heinrich and Agatha (Krause) Dirks and their three children Heinz, Mary, and Katja landed in Manhattan in 1923. A couple of Agatha’s older children by her previous marriage to the late Kornelius Krause came over at the same time, and the rest eventually followed.

The three youngest children, all in their late teens, worked off their passage for their sponsors in eastern Pennsylvania, then rejoined their parents in Manhattan. Oma Mary married Peter Janzen in 1924; Katja married Herman Niebuhr, a fellow immigrant of the same background, in 1926. Eventually, Peter and Mary, and Herman and Katja, ended up living in the same apartment building in Harlem. Reck N., born 1926, and my Dad Heinz J., born 1927, along with his sister and brother, played together as toddlers until the Janzen family moved west circa 1930.

Well Dad and Reck, although taking very different career paths and having different views on maintaining the family religious tradition, were in many ways two of a kind: that is, both deep thinkers with apparently genius-level IQs and both very concerned with social issues and the betterment of humankind. Dad took the route of theology; Reck that of psychology, eventually becoming an administrator at Temple for a time.

We lost Dad in June 2011. After Reck and I exchanged many letters over a period of close to ten years, not just Rundbrief letters but many personal e-mails back and forth, I and the rest of the family learned last week from his daughters that Reck had suffered a severe stroke and could no longer talk or swallow; his children kept vigil with him as I and my family did with Dad in June. This situation could not but remind me of Dad’s situation, where he also could not swallow the last 10 days of his life, and caregivers could only give him water via a small sponge dipped in a glass and he became skin and bones.

Last evening, I learned that Reck died. His wife died of complications of Alzheimer’s a little over four months ago and the day (we think) that he had the stroke, he e-mailed my aunt to say he was lonely and wished he had someone to talk to. It may seem strange to those outside the family that I feel such sadness at the death of my father’s cousin, who I don’t recollect meeting face-to-face (although I may have in Philadelphia as a middle schooler when his mother, my Oma, and their half-sister Agatha had a reunion), but it does hit hard.

Please let us of the third generation not lose touch and let us continue our connections to the extended family!