House of DeWolff: A True Story of Corruption, Kidnapping, and Conspiracy in the Justice System

By Joseph Waiksnis

Joseph hopes to start a new life for himself after he finally, tearfully reunites with his immigrant grandfather after twenty years and inherits a house from him. As he works hard to fix the property, however, he draws the ire of local authorities who covet his home. Escalating harassment climaxes with a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kelvin Waiksnis
• Release date: Sep 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087909806

Joseph Waiksnis

Born at St. Albans Naval Hospital in Queens, New York, the sea has figured strongly in Joseph Waiksnis’s life and heritage. He has spent the years working to get his story out and to improve himself as best he can despite the pressure, earning his EPA 608 certification. Between fighting for his and his family’s good name, he lives with his parents and son on Long Island, NY. You can learn more about him as his story unfolds on social media.

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Chapter One

Even as a young boy, my grandfather, Johannes Reinier DeWolff, dreamed of being a sailor. After finishing eight years of grammar school in Holland, at the young age of 14, he apprenticed as a deck boy on board the German built 20,000-ton triple screw luxury liner SS Reliance, which was owned at the time by Hamburg American Lines. It was 1925. When the ship docked in New York, John met his parents, who had emigrated from Holland the following year, and visited them in their home—one of the many brownstones that shaped the Brooklyn skyline. Then he would head back to the ship.

John and his younger sister Josephine, in Holland, date unknown. Shades of things to come: He was wearing a sailor suit!

Letter address to John from his parents on his maiden voyage to America John DeWolff Deck boy SS Reliance Pier 86 dated October 28 1925

Letters to my grandfather while he was serving on the SS Reliance in the Caribbean

In one of the ironies of life, two of the few letters my family has from that time period in our family’s history are dated February 28th and March 9th. These two dates were to figure prominently in the life of my grandfather’s descendant—me. On February 28th, many years later, I left my grandfather’s home, never to return, and on March 9th I was abducted by the police in what was the beginning of my bizarre, Herculean struggle with the justice system.

John’s father, my great grandfather, Joseph DeWolff, was an electrical engineer in Holland by trade, and he managed to get a job at Con Edison as a chief engineer. Having a good paying job and job security, the DeWolff family bought their first house in Baisley Park, Queens, New York. They lived only three doors away from my future grandmother, Regina Popko. Regina and John became good friends and started dating in the early ‘30s during his visits to his parents. One day, upon docking in New York, my future grandfather jumped ship, giving up his life at sea so he could stay with his love, Regina. They married in 1937.

Photo to the left: my grandfather John lived with his parents and his younger siblings in their new home in Baisley Park. Photo to the right: my grandmother lived three houses down on the same block.

John and Regina DeWolff, my grandparents

My grandmother and grandfather shared a love story that started in the 1930s and, even after separation and divorce, only ended upon John’s death in 1988.

They honeymooned in upstate New York, traveling in their new sedan to Niagara Falls and Seneca Lake, where my grandfather fell in love with the countryside. He would yearn to return there later.

My mother, Veronica, was born to the couple in November of 1939, not long after John and Regina bought their first house in Jamaica, New York. Because of the Depression, work was hard to find, but John was able to find a job in Long Island City working for the Silvercup Bread Company maintaining their fleet of vehicles.

My grandfather holding my mother, and a shot of their first home.

John always had his eyes and ears open for opportunities to earn a better living. Because of this, my grandfather was able to find a better job as a carpenter’s apprentice sometime in 1940, but he had to travel out of state, sometimes as far away as Maine, working on big commercial projects. Sometimes he was away from home for as long as two months at a time. That must have put a strain on their marriage, although he sent a lot of money home to pay the bills. What was more, John entered a trade school around this time to learn steel plate printing; this would enable him to become a jeweler later in life.

Once World War II started, my grandfather’s number came up from the Selective Service Board of Registration. John was visited at his home by two immigration officers who gave him two choices: join the United States Armed Forces or be deported. It didn’t matter that John had married a U.S. citizen and had a child. This was war, and the country needed him.

Because of his background with ocean-going vessels, John joined the United States Navy; he was inducted on May 23, 1944. To his surprise, he was sent to the lovely Seneca Lake area where he and my grandmother had gone on their honeymoon. This time, however, he was going to be staying at the newly built Sampson Naval Training Station for basic training. At the same time John became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

After completing basic training John headed back home on leave to spend some time with his wife and daughter before heading on to Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center on Rhode Island.

John with his family, his fellow servicemen, and alone in his uniform.

John received special training by joining the 3rd U.S. Navy Construction Battalion, with Construction Battalion often called CB. They are often fondly called the Seabees, and in WWII, they were known as The Fighting Seabees.

In 1945 my grandfather took part in one of the bloodiest assaults of the entire war: the Battle of Okinawa. It was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific theater, lasting some eighty-two days. To strengthen his resolve, he always carried his Navy-issued Bible, family photos, and a lock of my mother’s hair.

John received the Asiatic Pacific Ribbon, the American Theatre Ribbon, Expert Rifleman, Victory Medal, and an Honorable Discharge after the war. He was very proud of his record of service, and it entitled him to further his education under the GI Bill.

John DeWolff, my grandfather, in proud service to his country, 1945

Chapter Two

Times were hard on the home front, though; bills were adding up, and the mortgage was overdue on my grandparents’ house. The bank foreclosed, and while John was away fighting the war, Regina and my mother had to move in with her parents. So much separation, plus the new living situation, must have put even more strain on my grandparents’ relationship. Unfortunately, my grandmother met another man, Bill, with whom she became friends and, over time, more than friends. There are many such wartime stories. While my grandfather did not receive the infamous Dear John letter while he was serving in the navy, in fact, his wife had met someone else with whom she was more compatible.

When he returned after the war, the couple had no place to stay together, so they stayed with their respective parents while they figured out what to do. John remembered how much he had loved the area near Seneca Lake. In 1946 John headed upstate to the Finger Lakes Region and got a job with the Corning Glass Works in Corning, New York, not far from Seneca Lake. He had a few navy buddies in Pennsylvania, near the New York State line, so he was able to stay there inexpensively in the town of Oliverville, Pennsylvania. He was hoping to build a house so that Regina would join him there, but it did not happen. Regina wanted a separation.

I’ve mentioned that they were rather incompatible. My grandfather was a perpetual joker, and my grandmother was a serious, responsible woman. In fact, my grandfather was passed up for a Good Conduct medal in the armed forces, probably because of this jokester mentality. They realized they were very poorly matched sometime after the war, and certainly the long separation they had when John was away working and during the war cannot have been easy. There were other people they felt closer to—Bill, for my grandmother Regina, and a teacher named Mary Moore, who lived in Oliverville, for my grandfather.

In 1948 John granted my grandmother’s wishes and Bill paid for the divorce. Both my grandparents remarried soon after. Of course, there were bad feelings among family members, as there so often are in a case of divorce. Over time, distance, and negative emotions, the families drew apart, and I rarely saw my grandfather.

John eventually purchased a home in Oliverville, Pennsylvania, at 72 Market Street, right in the heart of the little town. It was a very large house, with two stories and seven bedrooms, a full basement, and a stand-up attic. The property came with a two-story, three-bay barn and garage, where John kept one of the many boats he had over the years. The original house was built in 1905 when such outbuildings were common.

A large, friendly, versatile house, 1988

Large three door garage barn with loaf me standing in the doorway "1988

Close-up of me standing in the barn doorway, 1988

It was a spacious, multi-use place

Working on my auto while one of John’s boats sits in the barn, 1990

My mother strolls down the driveway while visiting her father

It was a large, spacious property, well-suited to multi-purpose use. It was a valuable property too. The house was heated with gas, but there was a beautiful fireplace in the living room, adding to the value of the place.

The main house had an extension added on in the rear at some point, too, designed to accommodate a business. My grandfather turned the front of their home into a store and set up shop so he could make a living doing watch and jewelry repairs, which he had trained for under the G.I. Bill. He also set up to sell giftware and jewelry to the township.

Extension added on in the rear with two doors

My grandfather with his house front jewelry and gift shop

The drama that began brewing in Oliverville surrounding this desirable property took several decades to explode. Before this, my grandfather and his second wife Mary simply settled down into their new home in 1949. Not long after that, Mary’s mother and father moved in with them. Although it is not always the case in such arrangements, this wasn’t at all a bad thing for my grandfather and his new wife. Mary’s father took to raising chickens, using a small area of the barn. He also grew row upon row of sunflowers, some of which reached more than six feet and added to the charm of the place.

Mary’s mother brought her own energy to the house, too, preparing meals for the busy family day after day.

Sometime in the mid-1950s, John’s father Joseph moved in when John’s mother, my maternal great grandmother Jante, passed away. Joseph lived out the rest of his life with his son and his new family.

Although they remained close, my mother and my grandfather saw each other only very rarely during this period. My mother was still attending school at John Adams High School in Queens, and Oliverville was too far away for frequent trips.

When she did get to see my grandfather, it was usually because my grandfather's younger brother, known then as Uncle Joe, would take her along with him and his own children for a family reunion. My grandfather's second wife, Mary, was a wonderful woman and very kind to my mother. She was used to dealing with children, too, being a teacher, so it was almost second nature to be supportive and motherly. Mary’s mother, though, was a different story. Maxine was apparently less than thrilled to have her son-in-law fawning and fussing over a child that was not her daughter's.

Still, the Oliverville home was a very exciting house back in the fifties, when my mother used to visit my grandfather there. John at times would take my mother water skiing on Seneca Lake. He never lost his love for boating and fishing. Because of the way the house was designed and the need to support my grandfather and his wife and relatives, the house was used in many ways to make money. In fact, it had been a funeral home before my grandfather bought it too. Its versatility was one of its extremely attractive features.

On one of her visits to the home, my mother found a hidden skeleton key. She tried the skeleton key in a door that was always locked, and it worked. That door led into the new addition in the back of the house. There were two small rooms, one leading into the other.

The first room had wooden wall cabinets filled with cosmetics, brushes, wigs, and old photography equipment, including vases and baskets that may have served as props in a photographer’s studio. In the other room beyond that, which was part of the back wall of the house, a large white cast iron sink stood next to a long marble slab table that had a huge copper cylinder next to it. Beside another gas stove there were open wooden cabinets built into the wall and filled with bottles, jars, and what looked like surgical tools. They were embalming tools. Much of this stuff was still there when I moved in years later. The previous family had turned the original house into a funeral home back in the days when they still used gas lighting and horse-drawn carriages. My mother thinks the funeral home went belly up during the Depression, and that is why my grandfather was able to buy the house at a discount.

My mother’s memories of the house were rather distant recollections by the time I heard them. At some point, while she was growing up, my mother lost contact with her father for a time. We believe this might have been due to Maxine’s influence. Though sad, it didn’t stop my mother from enjoying her youth.

My mother in the passenger seat with her high school friends, holding a doll, Coney Island, 1957

Chapter Three

My mother moved on with her life. She married my father, Joseph, a U.S. Marine, on March 5, 1962 at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida. I was born the following year in January at the St. Albans Naval hospital in Queens, New York.

Dad, 1962 Me, 1964

Waiksnis family, Queens, New York 1966

While my grandfather still resided in Pennsylvania with his other family, he was not aware of my mother’s marriage or of my birth since communication had fallen off. Then on Sunday November 13, 1966, my mother returned to her mother’s home in Queens to find her father, John, sitting at the kitchen table with her mother, Regina, and stepfather Bill. Grandpa John was heading back from Maine to Pennsylvania, looking for another boat, when he decided to make a detour to wish my mother a happy birthday. There my grandfather and my mother reunited for the first time in years. He learned that my mother had married, and he discovered and met me, his only grandchild. I still have a vivid memory of sitting on his lap as a child.

John told of his beloved Mary’s passing from cancer in September 1966, of his sadness over her loss, and of his new love, a bigger boat. My mother questioned her father as to why he hadn’t answered any of the letters she had sent him over the years. It turned out that Maxine must have intercepted the letters at the Post Office, because my grandfather never received them, and Maxine picked up the mail on a daily basis. The photos John had of my mother and of the two of them from the 1950s went missing as well. He advised us that Mary’s father had passed away, and that Maxine was living with her other daughter nearby. In fact, he had evicted Maxine from his Oliverville home after Mary’s death due to the problems she caused him.

From that time onward, my mother and grandfather stayed in touch, but I was kept out of the equation on my maternal grandfather’s side. A family breakup can be downright cruel when one side of the family wants no ties with the other because of some sense of betrayal. There are such secrets in every family, and it is sad when they cause people to be estranged from one another.

My mother remarried in 1972 and occupied much of her time raising me and taking care of the home on Long Island, but she kept up with my grandfather. She heard from him that year, 1972, when tremendous rains in upstate New York had caused major flooding, affecting areas of northern Pennsylvania, including Oliverville.

Flooding surrounds the family home in Oliverville

My Grandpa John

The garage was flooded

The house was flooded too

My grandfather describes the water levels

Front Store

Old embalming room

The Army Corps of Engineers had the task of cleanup. Some homes had been swept off their foundations by the volume of water that passed through the Oliverville area. Flooding was an issue again three years later. My grandfather’s home was safe, as well as many others that were located on the west side of Main Street. We were very fortunate.

In the early eighties, my mother and stepfather visited Oliverville a few times and saw the aftermath of the floods there still. A good portion of the homes and stores on the east side of Main Street were gone; only foundations remained as a sort of testimony to what once had been. My mother didn’t realize it at the time (neither did my stepfather) but what they saw on those visits would allow us all to understand later why my grandfather’s home was so valuable.

My parents sitting with my grandfather in his home

One day in July of 1988, my mother learned that her father was in a VA hospital in Bath, New York. How my mother found out was very upsetting. Because of John’s health problems, my mother would call him every weekend to see how he was doing, but one weekend there was no answer.

At the time John had a lady friend in town who was helping him out around the house. My mother and stepfather had met her on one of their