Documents here, but none there

A smidgeon of my grandad's papers

Back in the early 1940's when my grandfather unexpectedly passed away, somehow he managed to leave behind a plethora of miscellaneous documents, some useful for genealogy, and some just kind of interesting. My grandmother? Not so much, and next to nothing in documents. Although we have a few pictures. As you might imagine, the wealth of documents from grandad Heller don't really tell a lot about his personality or his manner, or even his beliefs.  I'll be exploring what kind of man I believe he was as this blog is underway.  I know he was a bit of an authoritarian, as my Dad would mention now and again when I was growing up.  Dad talked about how he would chafe under his father's sternness. But, really, that is only a one-dimensional picture I've drawn of him. A bit unsatisfactory, don't you think?

 While I didn't know either of my paternal grandparents, my brother did know Grandma Heller (Isabelle).  I recall stories that Jack would try to run away from home to go to Grandma's house. Unfortunately for him at that time, Grandma lived in Watsonville, and we lived in Novato (Hamilton AFB) in the mid-1950's. That was a goodly long drive (120 miles) for an adult, let alone a 10 year old boy, so I would guess he never really got very far.

Isabelle LeComte Heller

 I was born in 1954, and really never knew our grandmother, since she died in 1955. That has always saddened me. I know that she passed along a lot of recipes and other MIL notions to my mom, like how to make a yummy rhubarb pie, and Jack told me that loved her very much. But, I know nothing about her. Well, I know she was Christian, and may have even been into Christian Science, according to my mom. Her bible was well-thumbed and had a lot of passages underlined in red pencil. She wrote an occasional Letter to the Editor of the Watsonville newspaper, usually about supporting the US and the Armed services. (At that time, my Dad was making a career of the USAF as a pilot. He started by serving in Europe during WWII,  then in Korea and Vietnam.)

So, bear with me as I sort through all these things, add them to my family tree, and try to elicit the story of the Heller family through documentation, DNA, and Ancestry, as well as any other source I come across.