Another September Birthday!

Today is my Uncle Erhardt’s birthday. My mother’s older brother was the firstborn of Olga (Sell) Guhl and Theodore Guhl, my mother’s parents. 

This is the only picture we have of of his father (my grandfather), who died when Erhardt was seven. 

Erhardt was born in the Ukraine in 1914, the year World War I started. Not long afterwards, the family was sent to Siberia for the duration of the war. Erhardt’s sister Lydia, the young girl on the left, was born while they were living in Siberia. My mother, next to Lydia, was born after the family returned to the Ukraine. The youngest child is Theodore, the first child of Olga and Hugo, Olga’s second husband.

This family picture was taken either in Europe in 1928 or in Canada in 1929. By this time his father had died and his mother was remarried - to her first husband’s cousin, who came to help her on the family farm. The family arrived in Canada in December, 1928. Erhardt, aged 14, is on the right.

He was a big help to the family, leaving school at an early age to help support the family during those hard economic times.

And here he is on his 95th birthday. He lived to be 98, greatly beloved by all his family.