Our Little Sunshine

Grandma and Grandpa were German by birth. Grandpa went to Cornell University and then practiced medicine in Northern Indiana.

Here are grandma and grandpa at the Indiana Dunes. Their age difference was twenty years. They died in 1940 and 1955.

In 1982 we went to Germany on our hochzeitsreise. We traveled to the town we were told grandma had come from. We walked into a konditorei (bakery) called by the same family name as Grandma, asked the people there if they might be related, and within minutes the owner produced a photo of my dad as a child. The baker-owner was dad's cousin and his home above the fourth generation bakery was the same home in which grandma was born and raised. After grandma died the cousins' families did not keep in touch, but the German kin were still in the hometown hoping to hear again from the American relatives. When we (the long lost American relatives) finally showed up we were not allowed to leave until we had met and stayed several nights with each of the existing branches of the family tree. We were treated like visiting royalty for a week and have remained in contact ever since.

Here is the photo sent to the folks back home in Germany of "our little sunshine" aka, dad.