Wednesday, March 13, 2019

March 12’s of Yesteryear: Family Legacies and Rough Patches


Yesterday was March 12th.  But with the relentless movement of time, yesterday is already gone, as are the many March 12’s of yesteryear.  
33 Rundel Park,
Duane Haskell's home 

On one of those March 12th’s, eighty years ago, that is to say, March 12 of 1939, a man named Duane Haskell sat down and wrote a letter.  It was a thoughtful letter, kind but firm, from a teacher to a student’s mother.

The letter was written to my mother’s mother, Adeline Dossenbach Wheeler, about my mother, Melley Wheeler, who was 11 years old at that time.  In 1939, Mr. Haskell was a full-time music teacher at East High School, and was also Melley’s private violin teacher.* 
Above: East High School
Below: Charles Carroll School #46

The letter suggests that Melley was having a difficult year at the Charles Carroll School #46 (this is verified by a report card from that year), and that her teachers feel she is suffering from nervousness, and that they consider the problem to be enormous.  It sounds as if the teachers have advised Adeline that Melley should discontinue her musical studies.  

Adeline was worried, and so she consulted Mr. Haskell to seek his advice.  He, in turn, wrote her this letter.  
Duane Haskell in 1926

Mr. Haskell soothingly suggested that the problem was not “nearly as complex or enormous as the people at school have led you to believe.”  He advised that Melley should continue with her music, but cut back on her piano, and also stop playing the violin at events outside the home.  Mr. Haskell offered the common sense that Melley “will do well to do the things that she enjoys most” and that “with spring at hand, more out-of-doors sports will help.”  Furthermore, Mr. Haskell recommended that everyone around Melley should stop the constant discussion of her nervousness, as “she probably worries about it and that is bad for her.”  
Melley Wheeler, early 1940s

What a relief this must have been for Adeline!  

Often, our current worries are a result of things that happened long ago.  To better understand why the possibility of Melley being nervous was especially troublesome to Adeline, especially if the nervousness was connected with her violin and piano studies, we can look to the past.   

In this case, there was definitely a family legacy.  Adeline had an uncle, Otto Dossenbach, who was a successful child musical prodigy in Rochester in the 1870s and 1880s.  He was known as “Rochester’s Wonderful Boy Violinist,” and he played all over Rochester, throughout New York State, as well as in other states and Canada.  
Otto Dossenbach's Press Notices, 1870s-1880s

Otto was successful, which was certainly a result of his being pushed hard at both his violin studies and also his performances which began when he was 11 years old.  By 1889, at just 27 years old, Otto was exhausted; he was suddenly pronounced “insane,” and spent the rest of his life as an inmate in the Rochester State Hospital until his death in 1936.  

Would Adeline have been thinking of Uncle Otto when she worried about her daughter Melley?  Called “Crazy Otto” by some family members, he was certainly the stuff of family stories.  

My mother remembered that her mother, Adeline, used to visit a relative in the State Hospital, while the kids waited in the car.  Perhaps as Melley displayed signs of extreme nervousness, Otto’s story loomed large on Adeline’s mind.  
1939 Melley, Theodore,
and Barbara Wheeler

Indeed, the past is always close behind, but there was most certainly a very different reason why 11-year-old Melley was having a difficult year.  The Wheelers were having problems in 1939 which must have affected all of the children — Melley, her older sister Barbara, and her younger brother Theodore.   

The Wheeler family lived with Adeline’s mother, Nellie Eldridge Dossenbach, ever since Nellie’s husband (Adeline’s father) Theodore had passed away in 1924.  In 1939, the year of our letter, Nellie filed suit against her daughter Adeline, attempting to take back the deeds to two properties which she had signed over to her daughter some years earlier.  The properties were 28 Upton Park, the family homestead where Nellie had happily lived with her husband and daughter for two decades, and also the cottage at Conesus Lake (899 West Lake Road), which Nellie and Theodore had acquired in about 1904 (and which stayed in the family until 1970).  
Nellie Eldridge Dossenbach

Nellie wanted them back.  In 1939, the Wheeler family was now living at 415 Yarmouth Road, in the Browncroft neighborhood, and I suspect that Adeline and her husband Marvin were preparing to sell the homestead of 28 Upton Park.  Perhaps this is what spurred Nellie to fight for the properties.  It was a nasty fight, which ultimately caused Nellie to move out of the house; the legal drama didn’t end until Nellie’s death, four years later, in 1943.  
415 Yarmouth Road

The Dossenbachs were well-known in Rochester, and this story hit the papers.  Surely, it was humiliating, and, surely, there had been much arguing in the family which led up to it.  And, surely, much of this was kept secret from the children (as was the custom then), who sensed trouble and anger and sadness, and didn’t know why.  

All families have rough patches, this is true.  Theirs, yours, mine — it’s part of our journey through life.  Melley remembered how her grandmother Nellie used to sew the children’s clothing, creating matching dresses for the two girls.  How confusing it must have been for the children to see their grandma leave and never come back.  

It is no surprise, then, that Melley’s nervousness spilled into her life at school.   But Melley was fortunate to have a teacher on her side, a man who  believed in her, and a man who exhibited a great deal of common sense.  

I’ll bet that Mr. Haskell saved Melley that year.  

What did he write?  Well, see for yourself.  Here is the letter that Duane Haskell wrote to a little girl’s mother on a March 12th of 1939.   Thank you, Mr. Haskell!  



*_______________
Note: the letter, as well as a Report Card from 1939, spells her name “Melly,” but it is, in fact, “Melley,” which is the spelling I use here.




Monday, March 4, 2019

The Rochester Park Band At the Opening of Ellison Park in 1927

On October 1, 1927, the Rochester Park Band played for the Dedication and Opening of Ellison Park.  Excited visitors arrived from towns throughout the county.  People like Mr. and Mrs. O.L. Shult, and Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ginegawa and their daughter, Freda, all from Webster, joyfully attended that day.  

1931 Ellison Park, photographer Charles Zoller, courtesy of GEM
Picnickers spread their lunches on the tables and cooked their meats on the fireplaces, scattered thoughtfully along the banks of Irondequoit Creek.  As the smell of burning charcoal wafted through the air, children frolicked, shrieking and laughing on this wonderful Opening Day.  Though a threat of rain had hovered the previous week, in fact, the day was splendid, with temperatures in the 70s, the rain waiting to fall a couple of days later.  

At 2:15pm, Hermann Dossenbach, Director, picked up his baton, held it in mid air, hesitated for just a few moments, and then — woosh! — the Rochester Park Band, in their handsome cream-colored suits, commenced with the magnificent sounds of the brass instruments - the cornets, trumpets, trombones, tubas filling the air.
1916 Rochester Park Band at Durand-Eastman Opening Day

Though we don’t know the actual list of selections for this day’s events, the Park Band may have played a piece from Victor Herbert’s well-loved operetta, The Wizard of the Nile, with its signature phrase, “Am I a wiz?”  Or the ever popular “Londonderry Air”  with the Ellison Park crowd singing along to the “Oh, Danny boy” lyrics.    These pieces had been performed by the Park Band earlier in the year at Ontario Beach and for the Lilac Festival at Highland Park. 

Rochester Park Band
The Park Band excelled at presenting a mix of classical and popular tunes, and so they may have serenaded the crowd with the Minuet from Mozart’s Don Juan, and then brought a smile to their audience’s faces as they entertained with, “Sam, the Accordion Man” and “After I Say I’m Sorry” — they played all of these tunes the previous August at a street dance on Alexander Street in Rochester, between South and Mount Hope Avenues.  

The Rochester Park Band, begun in 1904, was famous during the early decades of the twentieth century, and not just in Rochester - they played all over the western part of New York State, in Buffalo’s Delaware Park, and to crowds of 10,000-20,000 people in Syracuse’s Burnet Park, and also in Geneva’s Lakeside Park, where the evening event was lit by hundreds of Japanese
Theodore Dossenbach
lanterns.  Theodore Dossenbach, my great-grandfather, was its first director and was loved by all.  Handsome and charming, he was often said to be generous with his encores.  

On many Christmas Eves, Theodore and his Park Band, accompanied by Rochester’s Santa Claus (Frank G. Newell) and other dignitaries, drove in trucks (offered for use by the Rochester Stamping Company) throughout the neighborhoods, playing Christmas carols, pausing at Mr. Eastman’s and Mayor Edgerton’s house and others, visiting the Home for the Friendless and and the Rescue Mission and the hospitals, and delivering presents to the special children at St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum.  

Theodore continued as Director of the Park Band until his death, too soon at age 53, in 1924, at which point his brother, Hermann, took over.  Hermann was quite famous in his own right, having founded and conducted the Rochester Orchestra, a precursor to today’s Rochester Philharmonic; he also co-founded a little school called the DKG Institute of Musical Art, which George Eastman eventually purchased and made into the Eastman School of Music.  Both Hermann and Theodore Dossenbach, children of poor German immigrants, were members of the Dossenbach Quartet/Quintet which played at Mr. Eastman’s East Avenue home for his twice-weekly musicales and big parties from 1905-1919.  
Ellison Park Opening Day,
Albert Stone, courtesy RMSC

The crowd at Ellison Park, on this magical Opening Day, would have been thrilled to hear the Rochester Park Band!  The concert concluded with a rousing rendition of The National Air (The Star Spangled Banner), during which everyone proudly stood together. Now buoyed up by the music, they listened to remarks by Frank T. Ellison, donor of the Park Lands - can you imagine the applause given him for his generosity?  Also, Dr. Arthur T. Parker, former state archaeologist and director of the Rochester Municipal Museum (eventually to become the Rochester Museum and Science Center) gave an address entitled, “The Red Man’s Gateway to the Genesee Country.”  

Historical pageants then dominated the day.  The Boy Scouts presented a picture of La Salle’s first visit to Indian Landing in 1669 - and they were able to do this on the exact spot where it occurred all those years ago.  Also near the historic Indian Landing, the Girl Scouts demonstrated pioneering skills in three stone fireplaces.  

Chief Freeman Johnson,
Photographer Charles Zoller, courtesy GEM
The Seneca Indians, members of the Tonawanda Reservation, and descendants of the Seneca Iroquois, who once owned all of the Genesee country, proudly took part in the dedication ceremonies.   Chief Freeman Johnson was there, as well as his great-aunt 
Go-wat-ha (Nancy Black Squirrel), who was 110 years old.  

It was a great day, to be sure.  It had been well-advertised in all the surrounding papers, such as Fairport’s Herald-Mail, the Medina Daily Journal, Rochester’s The Daily Record (covering “Law, Real Estate, Finance and General Intelligence”) and The Democrat and Chronicle, The Troy Times, the Niagara Falls Gazette, and also in the Long Island Nassau Daily Review (even though it was printed a week after the event). 


Next time you visit Ellison Park, think back to this event of the past.  As you walk the nature trails, remember Frank Ellison, whose generosity we benefit from to this very day.  And, in your imagination, hear the magnificent music of the Rochester Park Band and let their proud strains lift you higher, and then step taller and appreciate all that we have had and still have.   

Saturday, March 2, 2019

Green Trance: Searching for the Dossenbachs

Photo Courtesy Polly Smith



In a Green Trance,
I know this —
They are here,
Chattering,
Clamoring for my attention.
“We are here!  See us!
Find us!”  (“Find me!” shouts Nellie.)






In the Riverside Blue,
Mind quieted, ready to receive,
I walk the shores of Lake Ontario,
the paths of the Er-i-e Canal,
the banks of the Genesee.
They whisper to me,
“We walked here too,
Long before you.
We were glorious, you know.
Keep looking, keep searching,
we are here with you now.”







In the once formal garden on Prince Street
   where Hermann taught Emily’s first-born son,
On the green grass of Webster’s Forest Lawn,
Photo left courtesy GEM; Photo right courtesy Alma Faroo
   Hazel and Elsa and Alma frolic.
The Song of Summer resounds,
   Theodore’s Park Band offering the soundtrack.


And I walk - in a Green Trance.