Helen, Dearest

By Howard Holschuh

Howard (Howdy) Holschuh served thirty years in the US Navy, retiring in 1972 with the rank of captain after having duty in Trinidad, Hawaii, South Vietnam, Germany and, of course, several tours in the Pentagon. This tale outlines the beginning of that career, describing how Howdy joined the Navy College Reserve Officer Program (V-12) and served as an ensign aboard the amphibious attack transport USS Mendocino in the Pacific during WW2. But first Howdy met an attractive coed named Helen Stafford on their first day as freshmen at Westminster College in September 1941. They began a romance which Howdy tried to keep alive via the US mail while they were separated during those long war years. In 1946, when they married, the world seemed to be at peace, and Howdy began a second career as radio news writer in San Francisco. This book is not only a personal history of part of the war in the Pacific, it is also the romance of two young people whose enduring love for each other lead eventually to sixty-five years of marriage. --- Capt. Holschuh has published two autobiographies, one covering his thirty-year career in the U.S. Navy is entitled I Briefed a Thousand Stars, the other reporting on their retirement years together is entitled Loved Every Minute of It. Both are available from amazon.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781635752502

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Helen,Dearest

Howard Holschuh

ISBN 978-1-63575-249-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63575-250-2 (Digital)

Copyright © 2017 by Howard Holschuh

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

296 Chestnut Street

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION

When you live with a sweet and tender

woman for sixty-five years,

you love her more than anything else in the world.

When she is gone,

you know you have lost

the most precious thing in your life.

When you have only memories left,

you ask,

which memories are the most important?

I have a million memories of the woman I love.

I’d like to share a few of them with you.

And dedicate this book

to

my one and only

Helen

This is how it all began.

This book contains letters exchanged by the author and Helen between 1941 and 1950.

Helen, Dearest

MEETING

PREPARING FOR WAR

USS MENDOCINO

NEW YORK

PALO ALTO

Westminster College, New Wilmington, PA

September 28, 1941

Hi, I’m Howard. I sat behind you in the test...

I had followed this attractive five foot seven brunette out on to the patio. I’d watched the back of her head for an hour in the college auditorium. I knew she was no dummy; she had quickly answered each of the questions on the printed quiz. The late afternoon sun was warm. It glistened on her hair and shoulders. They were beautiful, vibrant. Her voice was like music.

Howdy.

She said Howdy not as a greeting. I sensed it as a nickname.

I’d been called Howard all my life. Had she given me a new name?

Since this moment on the Westminster patio, my nickname has been Howdy.

It was September 28, 1941.

An hour earlier, I’d said goodbye to my mother and grandparents at the curb and walked toward the big double doors of Old Main auditorium to take the freshman placement test.

Three young coeds came around the corner of the building. One caught my eye. Being a seventeen-year-old gentleman, I held the door open for all three and followed them into the crowded room. I found a seat directly behind the girl in the white sweater.

We were the new Westminster College freshman class of ’45, equally divided between young men and women, swelling the student population to 605.

Conversation flowed easily out there in the sun. Her name was Helen. There’s not much I could do to shorten that, except perhaps to slur it slightly, saying something that sounded like I was calling her hon—like my dad called his sweetie twenty-plus years before—a term coming from deep in my heart.

She ignored the two girls she came with and seemed to concentrate on what I was trying to say. I learned she shared my interest in journalism—maybe we’d share some classes together or maybe we could work on the college newspaper. We talked about the freshman dance that night. I mustered up all the courage I had and asked her to go with me.

She smiled and said, I’d love to.

Helen later wrote in her memoirs:

I was struck by the handsome young man standing there. He had followed me into the building where we were to take our freshman placement tests, and sat behind me. Little did I know or even care at the time that this was my future husband.

I knew almost immediately that she was the girl I wanted to marry. But first, I had to convince her and win her away from a boy named Dick (whose high school pin she was wearing).

At the dance, a button came loose from my sport coat (yes, boys wore sport coats to dances in those days).

Helen whispered, Not to worry, and took me back to her dorm room in Thompson House. She found the needle and thread in her desk drawer and sewed the button on tight.

We returned to the gym and danced together till curfew. She fit into my arms as if they were made just for her.

- - - -

I was born November 25, 1923, in Queens, a borough of New York City on Long Island; the only child of Gus and Marie Holschuh. We lived in the first floor apartment in the home of Marie’s parents, Chris and Kate Kleffmann, in the area known as Corona, near what is now LaGuardia Airport.

Howdy, Mom & Dad

I was born with a slight deformity. My pyloric valve was stuck in the closed position. Virtually no food was getting through to my digestive tract. When I was six weeks old, I weighed less than when I was born. The medical profession had just discovered a breakthrough. They realized they could operate on the pyloric valve and make it operate properly. My parents moved out on faith. In early January 1924, I was perhaps the first patient in New York City to undergo the procedure. It worked. I still have the scar to prove it. And the knowledge that God had blessed me at an early age and perhaps was saving me for something special in the future.

Due to my father’s ill health, we left the city and moved upstate to the small rural community of New Hampton in Orange County, New York, when I was two years old. We moved into a home provided for us by my grandmother’s brother, Uncle Phil Baust. The house was on a hilltop surrounded by twenty acres of land with magnificent views in virtually every direction.

Orange County was one of 12 counties created November 1, 1683 as part of the province of New York, each named for a member of the British Royal family; this one was named for the Prince of Orange.

We became friends with several other local families and attended Denton Presbyterian Church, the only church for miles around. This was the thing to do and the place to be on Sunday mornings for Sunday school and on Sunday evenings for worship service. Everyone was there.

Our families enjoyed each other’s company and spent time together whenever possible.

My earliest memory is welcoming Charles A. Lindbergh back from his historic May 20-21, 1927, solo trans Atlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis. Dad took me down to Manhattan to be in the welcoming crowd. I remember sitting on Dad’s shoulders and staring out over that throng. I don’t remember if I actually saw Lindy or not. But I was there.

Another aviation first occurred two years later. The German seaplane, Dornier Do X, landed at the sea drone near where La Guardia airport is now located. We were visiting my grandparents at the time. Grandma took me over to see the plane, which was a giant for its time. The wingspan was 158 feet; the hull was 142 feet long.

This huge aircraft was powered by twelve Curtiss twelve-cylinder propeller engines mounted in six pods above the wing: six engines facing aft and six facing forward. On this maiden flight from Germany, she carried seventy first-class passengers (but had a capacity of 170 in three decks) at a top speed of 216 km/h.

We were invited on board, and Grandma conversed in German with the crew. I remember she asked the chief pilot how I could become a pilot. He replied in German, Study hard. I have done that but chose not to become a pilot, even though I spent thirty years in the US Navy in company with some good men who were aviators.

The crew gave me a large framed photograph of the Dornier Do X which I have on display in my apartment to this day.

I knew my dad was special. He did not go out to work. He stayed at home and had a chicken coop built. He raised chickens and sold eggs to supplement his World War I pension. I learned later that this was the lightest form of animal husbandry one could do for profit.

I soon learned that my dad had tuberculosis and received a small stipend and supplies from the government every month.

Dad never engaged in heavy physical activity. Grandpa Kleffmann took care of all the heavy work when they visited us, including putting up storm windows in the fall and taking them down again in the spring.

My dad became less and less active. Eventually tuberculosis took control, and Mom became his constant caregiver, caring for him 24/7 during his last days. He died when I was ten years old.

I was sleeping in the adjoining bedroom on that fateful night. I could hear him talking in guttural tones. Finally, there was silence in the next bedroom. Mom came in and told me, Your daddy has died.

I learned at an early age that death was nothing to fear. It was just the next stage of life. One moment, my dad was alive. The next moment, he was dead. I had nothing to fear.

Funeral services were held in our home. The funeral director, Mr. Cornelius, took me aside and said, Now you have to be the man of the house.

I took him seriously.

Some say I lost my teenage years. Others say I grew up rapidly. Whatever.

Mom received a reduced Navy pension as an Un-Remarried Widow.

We continued living in the house on the hill in New Hampton. Family finances were very limited, but we had lots of help from Grandma and Grandpa and didn’t know we were poor.

We, teenagers, enjoyed each other’s company: bike riding together, swimming in the Old Kill in the summer, and sled riding down the hill below our house in winter then back up the hill to do it again or go inside to play kissing games to warm up. We played and laughed together. We went to Sunday school every Sunday morning and church that evening. Then on Thursday evening, we’d gather at Mrs. Martin’s home for choir practice and refreshments. We sang in the church choir. We even took dance lessons together.

We did everything as a group. We almost never went out on a date two-by-two.

All four of my grandparents’ families had emigrated from Germany in the late 1800s and settled in New York City. My Holschuh ancestors came to America from a little village named Unter-Sensbach in the province of Hesse. I not only wanted to learn to speak their language, I wanted to go there someday.

Middletown High School offered three years of German language instruction. In time, I enrolled in all three. As I recall, I got As every year. And years later, I got my wish: I visited the family homestead in Unter-Sensbach.

The German Club (Der Deutsche Verein) provided my in-school boy-girl activity. Again, we did not date. We did things as a group. Our understanding teacher, Miss Lillian Dirks, let us have fun parties in her homeroom after last-period class. We played games, sang songs, watched German travel movies (which I’d obtained from the German Embassy), and ate homemade strudel (prepared by the girls). I served as club president for two years. We had picnics at the lakeside summer home of one of the girls. We designed our own club patch, had cloth copies made, sewed them on our sweaters, and wore them to school every day. Our club motto, Immer Lustic Weiter, could be freely translated as Always Happily Onward.

Photography was my hobby. Grandpa created this lifelong interest by giving me my first camera when I was barely old enough to hold the thing. He developed my exposed films in his home darkroom. Better cameras followed as I grew older. I served as photo editor of our high school yearbook, the 1940 Epilogue, and filled twelve pages of the book with about one hundred of my original candids of my classmates and others.

I continued to be an avid photographer in college and aboard ship later in my Navy career.

Grandpa was also an avid 8 mm movie fan, and took photos of my Westminster dorm and other college buildings the day we arrived on campus. By chance, he captured on film the moment Helen and I met on the steps of Old Main.

This was not a passing encounter of two students.

It was obvious that God had planned our meeting well in advance of that September day in 1941. It would not become a casual college romance, if I could help it.

Helen and I came to Westminster College from high schools four hundred miles apart. I had graduated in 1940, Helen in 1941. We each graduated in the top of our class and each won a scholarship to Westminster. But I delayed a year in accepting mine. It was no coincidence that we each landed on campus that same day.

It was also no coincidence that Helen and I arrived on the steps of Old Main at exactly the same moment, coming from opposite directions on campus.

And it was no coincidence that there was a vacant seat waiting for me directly behind her in that crowded auditorium.

- - - -

Helen was born on April 23, 1923, in Rockwood, Tennessee, the third daughter of Warner and Jeanette Stafford. He was a mining engineer, and Superintendent of Mines for the Roane Iron Company in Rockwood. Helen rode the family mule from their home on the hill to the schoolhouse in the valley. When the Depression hit, the Roane Iron Company was plagued by competition from other mills and was forced to suspend operations.

Helen, two older sisters, and her dad

The Stafford family moved north to Jefferson, Ohio, in January 1930 and lived with Warner’s aunt Kean. Dad traveled the highways for months until he finally found a job with the Pure Oil Company in Pittsburgh. He brought his family to Pittsburgh’s southern suburbs and bought a modest home in Dormont. He eventually went into business for himself, selling house trailers. Family finances were very tight those years. There was no income while he was job hunting and very little income until the business got underway.

Helen entered Mt. Lebanon High School and became an A student. She served as president of the girl’s athletic association, was a girl reserve officer, and art editor of the student newspaper, the Lantern. She won a scholarship to study art at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, attending classes there every Saturday and for two weeks each summer.

Helen’s ancestors were 100 percent British. The Stafford name can be traced to the fact that the family once lived at a river crossing where they provided a staff for travelers to ford the river.

One of her father’s ancestors, Andrew Warner, came to America in 1632 and helped found Hartford, Connecticut. His son, Andrew, came west and founded Jefferson, Ohio. The eighteenth century Warner homestead still graces Saybrook, Connecticut.

I’d love to go back there someday and trace my family roots, she told me.

In some instances, Helen’s background was similar to mine, in others, it was vastly different. I was still seventeen. She had already celebrated her eighteenth birthday.

Late September 1941.

Helen and I were in college now—a new learning environment for both of us. I was no longer going on group dates. For the first time, I wanted to date just one girl. For the first time, Helen would be without her high school friend. It’s a new experience for each of us.

I had a lot to learn. I wanted Helen to be my teacher. I wanted to learn as much and as quickly as possible.

Monday, 8 a.m., Journalism 101. I arrived early for class and saved the seat next to mine for Helen. She accepted, and those became our assigned seats throughout the entire semester.

We talked briefly after class then went our separate ways, but we planned to meet again later that afternoon at the newspaper office. All journalism students would be there. We’d learn all about the publishing business and maybe get an assignment to write an article for this week’s newspaper, The Holcad.

We compared our schedules, and I noticed she had an afternoon art lab. I was able to sign up for that same art lab as an elective, and we were able to spend another couple of hours together each week. I also discovered that I had some hidden artistic talents that I never knew I had. Best of all, after art lab, Helen and I walked up street and shared an ice cream at Isaly’s.

Then, of course, there was the weekly sock hop in the gym. I made sure I asked her for a date to the dance every Friday.

My plan was working wonderfully well.

November 25, 1941—my eighteenth birthday. We had been dating for two months. Helen’s birthday kiss made it a very special day.

But would I want to be eighteen forever? Or in later years, would I ever wish I were eighteen again? Not really. Eighteen was good—but the rest will be so much better!

I went home for Thanksgiving. Grandpa set up his projector and showed the movies he had taken on campus last September. I provided a running commentary, That’s Jeffers hall… there’s Old Main… that’s the science lab… that’s the library…

When the last scene came on showing me opening the Old Main door for three girls, I shouted, That’s Helen! Remember I wrote about her in my letter.

My folks liked what they saw and what I told them about Helen. They knew she was something special.

I was delighted.

Helen, Dearest

MEETING

PREPARING FOR WAR

USS MENDOCINO

NEW YORK

PALO ALTO

I’ll pick you up after lunch, I promised.

Helen said she’d be ready.

She loved the out of doors and liked to hike as much as I do.

We’d been planning a long hike through the countryside for several days, but our schedules kept interfering. We were both free this afternoon.

The day dawned bright. It was warm and sunny this first Sunday in December.

In my exuberance, I may have overdressed—I wore a tie.

I rushed over to pick up Helen at her dorm, the Thompson House. She was ready and waiting.

We set out arm in arm across campus. Our thoughts mingled as we continued out into the New Wilmington countryside. We enjoyed each other’s company and the warmth of the early December sun, knowing that the first snows of winter were not far away.

We circled through the valley, making small talk as we crossed the little stream and climbed the hill opposite of the campus toward my goal. I pushed open the wrought iron gate and entered the old cemetery.

We found a quiet spot next to an old headstone.

For years, my fraternity had chosen this cemetery for some of its pledge night activities. I chose it this afternoon for a different activity.

Helen, Howdy in cemetery

I snuggled close to Helen to show my affection and to keep warm. The sun was slowly sliding down the west side of its bowl behind the green pines and naked oaks. I knew I loved her. She returned my caresses. But I knew I had to proceed cautiously. We had known each other for only two months, and she frequently wore the high school pin of a boy from her hometown. At the moment, he was not a threat. He was attending another college 150 miles away.

I had the advantage of location, location, location.

Our relationship was, to coin a phrase: platonic, but fun!

We enjoyed the warmth of each other’s company in the quiet recesses of the hilltop cemetery. All too soon, it was time to head back to campus. Dinner would be ready.

Reluctantly we left our secluded hideaway. I closed the cemetery gate. Helen clung to me as we recrossed the stream, climbed up the slope, and reentered the campus quadrangle.

I squeezed her hand tightly as I left her at Thompson House. I continued down Market Street, climbed the hill to my dorm, Jeffers Hall, and entered the side door.

The lounge was in an uproar; the radio on full blast. Everybody was listening.

In 1941, Hitler’s armies had overrun Poland, France, the Low Countries, Denmark, and Norway. German General Rommel was pushing the British back in North Africa.

My dorm mates were more excited about radio bulletins from the other side of the world: Japanese terrorists had bombed Pearl Harbor, our Navy bastion in the mid-Pacific, in an early morning raid. Twenty-one of our best battleships lay smoldering in the harbor, some resting on the bottom oozing fuel oil into the saltwater. Two thousand American sailors lay dead in their bunks. Another thousand wounded. Three hundred bombers and fighter planes would never fly again. It was the worst disaster our country had ever faced.

Some of my buddies wanted to rush off and join up immediately.

Should I join them? Should I help defend our country? Should I leave college? Should I leave the one girl I had come to love?

Over the next days, I pondered these thoughts.

I preferred college president Robert Galbreath’s advice: Stay until called.

I considered my future career options carefully. I knew I was destined for the military.

Perhaps a little education would lead to a commission. Rather than serving as a doughboy, I could serve as an officer.

Westminster offered an accelerated study program. I signed up. I took extra gym classes, learned how to climb a rope to the top of the gym; I swam laps whenever the pool was open. I applied for summer school.

Helen went home to Mt. Lebanon that next weekend. Her roommate told me she was planning to meet her high school boyfriend, Dick. I had no idea how strong those old ties were or how our relationship would be when she returned to Westminster.

Would we still have a date for the sock hop on Friday night?

Helen returned to campus, all smiles. She sat beside me as usual at our Monday 8:00 o’clock journalism class. She got an A on the morning quiz. She hadn’t copied from me. And obviously, I didn’t copy from her. We spent the afternoon working together writing articles for the school