Remembering My Grandfather, Hugo Bartz - Part 1

Going through my mother's papers a while back, I came across a speech she made at my grandfather, Hugo Bartz's 90th birthday, on February 20, 1993. I'd like to share it here - together with my own comments, which I'll add in brackets. Although Hugo Bartz was my mother's step-father - she had lost her biological father when she was two - she loved Hugo, who was her father's first cousin and later her stepfather, and always considered him as her own father. This is what she wrote:

Our dad, Hugo Bartz, was born in the Ukraine on February 20, 1903. From the time that he was very young, Dad always had a lot of responsibilities. [He often stayed home to help his mother on the farm while his older brothers went off with their dad to work at the the flour mill they owned.] During World War I, the German people in the Ukraine had a difficult time finding a place of safety. Many went to Siberia. [That is what happened to my mother's parents and her older brother, Erhardt. My mother's older sister, Lydia, was born in Siberia while they were there, but my mother was born after they had returned to the Ukraine.] To avoid the Russian military, Dad's two oldest brothers had already fled the country - William to the USA and Herbert to Argentina. 

In June 1914, Dad, who was only 11 at the time, together with his parents William and Bertha Bartz, brothers Adolph and Paul, and sisters Alma, Meta and Margaret, had to leave their home and all their possessions, including a newly-built 5-storey flour mill, which had been their main source of income and survival.

Dad had an uncle, Henry Bartz, who had lived in the Crimea since about 1900. Thanks to Uncle Henry, dad and his family were able to go to the Crimea instead of to Siberia. Dad spent little time in school. The children had to work in those days. His uncle Henry was a successful cabinet maker in Crimea. He had a large workshop with very efficient tools. So young Hugo, at the tender age of 11, started apprenticing as a cabinet maker. He worked for his uncle for 4 years. Uncle Henry was so impressed with Hugo's talent that he said to him, "Hugo, some day you will have a factory of your own."  That promise was fulfilled about 50 years later, here in Kelowna, when Dad started the sash and door factory [Glenmore Millwork.]

Just before the end of World War I, Uncle Henry had to flee to Germany, but before he left, he secretly gave all his woodworking tools to young Hugo. Hugo cherished those tools, taking them with him when the family returned to Kremnanke [in the Ukraine], after the war in 1918. He did not part with those tools until he left the Ukraine to immigrate to Canada. A good friend and neighbor, Frederick Missal, was the recipient of those precious tools.

In 1923, Hugo Bartz married Olga (nee Sell) Guhl. Olga was a widow with three children - 9, 6, and 4 years of age. Her husband, Theodor Guhl, died of typhoid fever shortly after World War I. Olga said she wanted a man who would be a good father for her children, and Hugo Bartz was that man. After the wedding ceremony, he asked the three children to call him "Papa." Whoever would call him "Papa" first would get a special treat - an apple. All three were a little shy at first, but then the youngest jumped up and called him "Papa." [That youngest child was my mother.She carried this memory with her throughout her life.] Before long the two older children called him "Papa" too.

We never thought of him as a step-father or that we were his step-children. We were one happy family.

(To be continued tomorrow...)