The Shopkeeper's story

Oddly enough, his older sister came to America first, several years before her father and brother. She and her husband homesteaded in DeKalb County, Illinois. Her father, Franklin Romey, a cabinet maker back in Dantzig, Prussia, and his 11-year old son, Albert, showed up to visit their daughter and sister, and ended up staying six years, at which time Franklin decided he preferred the old country and moved back across the sea. 

Son Albert stayed, took a job as a medical doctor's assistant somewhere in his sister's neighborhood. Most German-American immigrants of the era were familiar with war, too familiar in many cases, and therefore anxious to leave the battle-worn homeland behind. Suddenly, war was here too.

Then came the Civil War. Her brother Albert could likely have stayed out of the Union Army ranks, but when President Lincoln let it be known that the Union needed to put together an army, the young German-American joined to go to war. An old history of O'Brien County says "he was seized with the same patriotic zeal which caused the millions of native-born sons to flock to the standard of their country." He'd been here for just a few years.

In the spring of 1861, just after Lincoln's first call up, Albert Romey joined with the Company F, Third Regiment, Iowa Volunteer Infantry. He was just a kid.

The time he spent as a Union soldier seems to run on forever. The farther away we get from the horrors of the Civil War, the more its fatality count seems a preposterous horror. Estimates rise as high as 750,000  Americans, so many that it becomes difficult to believe that a kid like Albert Romey could fight his way through an entire war and come out alive: he was at Shiloh, the siege of Vicksburg, and part of Sherman's March to the Sea. Tucked beneath those big and famous battles were at least a half dozen fights that few remember at all. He followed the Red River Campaign to Yellow Bayou, a series of encounters that, strangely enough, ended by way of a grass fire so huge both sides put down their weaponry.

Somehow, Albert Romey, from Dantzig, Prussia, and, more recently, Sibley, Iowa, made it through all the strife, stem to stern, although wounded twice, one the gash of a sword laid to his back.

Chances are the Union's front lines were made up of hundreds, if not thousands of other immigrants, not many of whom came back home (Albert's tour of duty ran for more than four years, most of that time without the tent he lost early on, at Shiloh). But we've forgotten him and so many like him.

After the war, Alfred Romey took his new bride, Lucy Carpenter, out to Nebraska, following the stream of so many thousands of others on the trail west. But the two of them stayed for only a year, fearing the bloody depredations of angry, displaced Sioux. When the Romeys returned to Iowa, the two of them took land in the northwest corner of the state but moved to town rather quickly to start a business in Sibley. where he ran a quiet little business, a grocery store, for 33 years. Try to imagine a man with that history dressed in the  standard clerk's apron tallying your butter, milk, and eggs. 

My guess is he rarely showed his customers the slash across his back. 

The Bible says, " “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.”

And their lives aren't bad either.

For Veteran's Day

 

Hero Card 120, Card Pack 10
Photo provided by James Schaap (digitally restored)

Hometown: Oostburg, WI
Branch: U.S. Army 
Unit: Company B, 58th Infantry Regiment, 4th Division
Date of Sacrifice: August 6, 1918 - KIA at the Vesle River, near Ville-Savoye, France
Age: 27
Conflict: World War I, 1914-1918

Edgar Hartman was born in the small dairy-farming village of Oostburg, Wisconsin on June 14, 1891. After graduating from the village school, Hartman traveled 50 miles south to attend Milwaukee Business College. Following a year of studies, he took a job as an engineer at the Pantzer Lumber Company in his hometown.

With war raging in Europe (World War I, 1914-1917), the U.S. Congress and President Woodrow Wilson passed the Selective Service Act into law on May 18, 1917—requiring all men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military service.

Hartman was drafted into the Army, and on November 1, 1917, left Oostburg for Camp Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan. There he was assigned to Company B (Machine Gun Company), 58th Infantry Regiment, 4th Division. On February 17, 1918, Pvt. Hartman was transferred to Camp Greene in Charlotte, North Carolina, to prepare for deployment to Europe.

Escaping Death

Just as the 58th Regiment set out to board a ship and cross the Atlantic, Pvt. Hartman fell ill. He was returned to St. Francis Hospital in New York, where he spent the next month recovering from a case of mumps.

While Hartman recovered in New York, his Company B was in the English Channel aboard the HMS Moldavia, a passenger steamship purchased by the British Admiralty and converted for use as a troop transport.

On the dark, overcast early morning hours of May 23, 1918, Moldavia was part of a convoy of vessels in the English Channel, south of London. A brief opening in the clouds provided enough moonlight for a German U-boat (UB-57) submarine commander to clearly see his target through the periscope.

At 2:40 a.m., the U-boat fired a single torpedo into the port-side hull of Moldavia. The ship sank slowly enough for most aboard to be rescued by the destroyers in their convoy. But of the 56 American soldiers lost in the attack, all but one was from Pvt. Hartman’s Company B. The German torpedo left a gaping hole in Moldavia’s hull—destroying the compartment where soldiers of Company B had been sleeping.

Deployment to France

Pvt. Hartman recovered from his illness and embarked from Camp Merritt and the Port of Hoboken, New Jersey, on another transport ship—arriving in England on July 2, 1918, to rejoin his regiment.

After additional preparation in England, Hartman’s 58th Infantry Regiment deployed to northern France. From July 15 to August 6, 1918, the French Army—along with several American infantry divisions—launched an offensive to push the German Army back to France’s Vesle River.

Waiting for Word

Following the Allied push to the Vesle, Pvt. Hartman’s family agonized for months. Letters home from Edgar stopped, and there was no word from the War Department about his fate.

According to The Sheboygan Press, Pvt. Hartman’s sister, Mabel (Hartman) Dirkse, received a letter from his commanding officer, Captain T.E. Roderick, dated December 17, 1918—a month after the war ended:

Dear Mrs. Dirkse,

While fighting at the Vesle River, your brother, Edgar J. Hartman, was wounded on August 7.* A piece of shrapnel entered his right side while he was carrying a box of ammunition to the front. He was given first aid and sent to the hospital. We have not heard from him since. I sincerely hope that you have heard from him by this time and that he is well.

Months after Armistice Day, (Nov. 11, 1918) Hartman’s sister continued to write to Edgar. In March of 1919, she wrote: “Dearest Brother, Am making another attempt to have you hear from me. I have now had eleven of my letters returned to me but none the past month so will send something in search of you. We have been unable to find any trace of you up to now, nor received anything from you since your field service card reached us on August 7th.”

Pvt. Hartman’s sister sent letters to the War Department in Washington D.C., requesting news of her brother. In response, she received a letter from Cpt. E.T. Raylan, stating that Edgar Hartman “was discharged May 13, 1919, his address being given as Hilton, Tenn.” The family later believed that Cpt. Raylan had confused their Edgar Hartman with another soldier by the same name.

Newspaper appeals to other local soldiers for any news on Pvt. Hartman provided no answers.

Worst Fears Confirmed

Nearly two years after the war ended, Hartman’s family had their worst fears confirmed in June of 1920. A letter to Wisconsin Congressman Edward Voigt from Pvt. Hartman’s squad leader, Cpl. Leo B. Zastrow, described Edgar’s final moments:

[Edgar Hartman] was instantly killed on the Vesle River, close to Ville Savoy. He was a member of my platoon, but was in another squad about 300 yards to the left of us. We had just finished a barrage of 15,000 rounds to cover our infantry’s advance across the Vesle when they were fired upon by a German one-pounder cannon, and according to his squad leader’s information to me, he was killed instantly by one of the shells.

I wish to inform Mr. Hartman’s folks that he was a member of my squad in a little skirmish a few days before the engagement on the Vesle River and he was my most trustworthy man. When transferred to another squad, I surely felt his loss. I can assure them that he died a hero.

Pvt. Hartman’s body was returned home, and “the entire village and countryside turned out…paying tribute to the martyred hero,” according to The Sheboygan Press.

*Hartman’s headstone shows his date of death as August 6, 1918—the same date listed in The Sheboygan Press (June 18, 1921) account of his memorial service.

Edgar J. Hartman is remembered in his hometown, with Oostburg’s Hartman-Lammers American Legion Post 286 named in his honor.

Sources
Card photo provided by J.C. Schaap, Pvt. Hartman’s great-nephew.
J.C. Schaap, Professor of English Emeritus at Dordt College, August 10, 2018: Stuff in the Basement: In memory of Edgar Hartman
Tampa Morning Tribune, May 25, 1918: Transport is Torpedoed; 56 Americans Lost
Bach, Hall, and Dabo: The Fourth Division, Its Services And Achievements In The World War: Gathered From The Records Of The Division (1920)
U.S. Army Center of Military History: The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War I
The Sheboygan Press, February 5, 1919: Oostburg Yank was Wounded in Fight on Vesle
The Sheboygan Press, April 1, 1919: Edgar Hartman of Oostburg Reported Wounded or Missing
The Sheboygan Press, June 16, 1919: Relatives Anxious for News of Edgar Hartman, Missing
The Sheboygan Press, June 18, 1921: Impressive Services Held for Late Pvt. Edgar J. Hartman in the Village of Oostburg Today
Burial Site: Find a Grave

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Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 32

“. . .while you may be found.”

Emily Dickinson is haunting. One of her many poems that will never leave me is one numbered “LV,” which begins “I know that he exists/Somewhere, in silence.” Profound sadness fills that opening line. She knows he is there—she doesn’t doubt his presence for moment; but He is silent.

He has, she goes on to say, “hid his rare life/From our gross eyes.” I think of a million prayers from Dachau and Auschwitz; a young mother mourning her son, killed on a motorcycle; a grandpa whose grandson was swept away in a prairie creek, the body never found.

Sometimes it seems that God has simply left the building.

Then Ms. Emily sports with this peek-a-boo behavior. “’Tis an instant’s play,” she says, “a fond ambush,/just to make bliss [ours, of course] earn her own surprise!” Notice the exclamation point. God plays with us, and isn’t that cute, she says, tongue in cheek.

“But should the play/Prove piercing earnest”—as it has last week in a million places around the world, in a million grieving families, “Should the glee” from this little game of hide-and-seek God is so fond of—should that glee “glaze/In death’s stiff stare,/Would not the fun/Look too expensive?”

What if we call on his name—what if our souls scream at the shocking death of a thirteen-year-old boy who won’t see another spring, will never kick a soccer ball, or lean into his mother’s shoulder on the couch before bed—what if God is playing hide and seek at the moment we need Him most? That’s what she is asking.

Then—and it happens to many of us—“Would not the jest/Have crawled too far?”

The awful word here is crawled, because that word suggests a god who is, at best perhaps, a worm or sickness—this cute little game of his crawls.

I know some believers who can read Dickinson and not feel what she does. Some sanctified smiles simply write her off. But Dickinson is haunting because she’s on to something most believers feel during at least some moments of their lives—and she is a believer: “I know that he exists,” she says to start the poem. “I know.”

A line like David’s warning at the end of verse six inflames Ms. Emily’s anger in “lv.” David has just laid out the essence of God’s love—his forgiveness. Then he adds this caveat—“while he may be found.” In the words of the old psalm we used to sing, “Then let the Godly seek thee in times when thou art near,” especially then because it seems anyway that he’s not always conveniently located.

The most horrifying suggestion of David’s assertion is that sometimes he leaves.

If that makes no sense, you’ve begun to understand, I think, because it would be so humanly satisfying to create a God out of our finest aspirations.

But God is God. We worship him, not because he is the best of my dreams or imaginings, but because he is, ultimately, not made of what we are. He is not the best I can create on this page or pages; he is eternally much, much more.

His ways—and sometimes his seeming absences—are simply beyond our ken

He is God. We are not.

Those who worship him, worship him in that fear, that unfathomable regard, that profoundly mystifying awe. We worship Him on our knees.

Thank goodness

 

Let me try to get this all straight.

In 2020, six long years ago, the Dubuque city council was approached by a group who wanted to put a mural up on an available city wall and had already enlisted the artist whose idea they appreciated. The idea was to put up an image that would bring people together (all the planning was done in the shadow of the George Floyd tempest in the Twin Cities).

The local artist who created the image, Shelby Fry, suggested a series of raised fists, each of them a different color,  "a visual statement of Dubuque’s commitment to building a welcoming community where all residents have the opportunity to thrive," in the words of the council.

It wasn't a forever project. The mural went up in about a week, having been painted by literally dozens of locals, who did so in shifts directed by the artist. So, for the record, the Solidarity mural has been "on the east side of the Five Flags Civic Center on Main Street in downtown Dubuque" for six years stedfastly preaching the gospel of solidarity. 

And it hasn't moved. It's become its own kind of citizen of the city.

Until last Saturday, when locals caught sight of a huge tarp mysteriously covering the mural. Almost immediately, Dubuque's own put two and two together. On Sunday, you see, President Donald Trump was coming to town for a final election rally seeking to thrill his townspeople. There had to be a connection. 

The city authorized the removal of the tarp, and it came down.

As did Donald Trump just two days later, despite what he might think or say of himself or his bad fortune. 

You want to know why?

There are a thousand reasons, but the people of Dubuque know one of them very, very well: because his minions decided that a solidarity mural wasn't the story Trump's visit wanted to tell. Trump isn't into solidarity. 

Trump didn't get his clock cleaned because of a tarp in Dubuque--and yet he did. But if you know the story of Dubuque's mural, you can't help but sense the reason he got whomped on Tuesday.  Something died in voting booths all over the country.

Thank goodness. . .literally, thank goodness.

 A singular duty.

An uncommon privilege.

A precious gift.

Crashes

 

Local officials said on Sunday that they were evacuating about 600 residents in the small community of trailer homes near the impact zone, where smoldering chunks of metal ignited small fires.

Went down, I'm told, not far from West Palm Beach, Sunday afternoon. A Learjet, privately owned, on its way to the Bahamas. Authorities have no idea why or how things happened, but it didn't go down without taking all kinds of property along, including "a small community of trailer homes." 

For an as yet unknown reason, that Learjet went into an unimaginably horrible nose dive and fell at speeds of 30,000 feet per minute, crashing in a fireball caught on a number of car videos. No one had any chance of surviving. It's a wonder the crash didn't take lives on the ground. 

For years, my snowbird parents had a trailer home in a "small community of trailer homes" in West Palm Beach, Florida. I have no idea if the crashing jet took out trailers right there, but the possibility is enough to make me shudder because this is about the time of year they'd be packing up in Wisconsin and starting to go south for the winter months.

Given the date, it's nigh unto impossible to keep the conspiracy theorists away from such an event, Trump's Mara-la-go not all that far away. There is no link, and the frantic cries of the pilot recorded just before the crash erase the possibility of some kind of 9/11 strike. Still, I mean. . .it's fertile ground for speculation because these days it seems anything can happen, and nobody breeds hate and distrust like our Demander-in-Chief, who just a few hours earlier had hosted a Halloween party for those he delights in describing as "my rich friends," as if he has any number of buddies who aren't. 

The crash suggests that there are some things more crucial, more grave, than our politics. Hard to believe, but true.

We're in a dangerous moment right now, 24 hours away from an election that most people feel will topple the MAGA movement or at least send its 80-year-old hero reeling into the ropes, or so say the polls.  

A giant fireball in a trailer court in West Palm Beach Florida somehow feels like a bigger story. 

Certainly sadder.

Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 32

John Cheever (1912-1982)

 “Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to you. . .”

I read an interview some time ago with Susan Cheever, a novelist and non-fiction writer, who is—perhaps to her own dismay—likely better known as the daughter of the now deceased John Cheever, a highly celebrated short story writer.  For several reasons, that interview won’t leave me alone, and one of them is her claim that, to her as a child, her father’s short stories horrified her. 

 She remembers a time when her father used a ski trip she had taken as a base for a story about a little girl who dies on exactly that kind of outing. “In my family,” for her and her family, Susan Cheever says, “being fictionalized has been ten million times more painful” than finding themselves in portrayed in non-fiction, a memoir.

 That line in that interview nearly decked me because it had never dawned on me that my family might experience a similar horror, victims, in a way, of their father’s imaginative “use” of their lives. I’d never, ever considered the grotesque puzzle I might have left with any of them, finding semblances of themselves and each other twisted and turned into something at once bitterly unrecognizable and sweetly familiar.  I can’t speak for John Cheever, but I honestly never had a clue—I really didn’t.

Haunting questions arise unbidden.  Was my own playful creativity the occasion for their pain?  Was my joy their misery?  Should I have spent so much of my adult life trying to write stories?  Was the way I’ve lived my life dead wrong? 

And I ask myself this:  if I had read what Susan Cheever says when I was thirty, would I have dedicated so much of my time and enthusiasm to writing?

Perhaps it is a mark of the deep stain of sin itself, but now, looking back, I honestly can’t imagine myself not writing. For better or for worse, I guess, sitting here at this desk has become, for me, a “habit of being,” as Flannery O’Connor said. Sometimes, as the Bible says, our best deeds are as filthy rags.

 I feel myself in David’s own shoes here in verse six: “Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to you. . .”  His impulse to tell the story is, I believe, the impulse of most writers—and, for that matter, most humans. We want and need to tell the stories we find most meaningful, to share our joy or sadness. We want everyone to hear. Not all of us are evangelists, but we all have a gospel. We all want to testify. 

 Psalm 32 is a roadmap for those who need to find a path to forgiveness.  Psalm 32 shows us the way.  Psalm 32 leads us to divine and tranquil waters. But the story David tells has never saved a soul, and neither will a million sermons on this text, or, for that matter, this mediation.  Only God’s grace—through his son’s gigantic sacrifice—can do that.

I wonder if David knew that he was writing “the Bible.”  I wonder if he understood as he strung these words out in front of him that he was being directed by the Holy Spirit’s favor. I wonder if he ever considered his words were not his, but God’s.

Somehow, I doubt it.  And because I do, I find a refuge in his inability to keep silence.  He’s got to speak, to sing.  With the joy of forgiveness bubbling up inside, he can’t stanch the music from his soul.  He’s got to yap, to tell.

Even his joy, his testimony, his story requires forgiveness.  Everything he is—even his ecstasy—stands in need of grace. 

May God almighty forgive me, and Cheever, and all of us, as He promises, as He does, and as He will.