Dickman History

My father, (written by Rosemary Dickman) John Harry Dickman, which may not have been the name he was christened with (it may have been Joseph) but the records were burnt in a fire at the church, he told me, was born in an apartment in a building on Spring Grove Avenue on the east side of where the supports of the Western Hills Viaduct now stand.

Herman and Rose Gesser Dickman moved to Dayton Street (the middle class part) then later to Jasper, Indiana. Harry went to a one-room school there and took an examination for the next higher grade which enabled him to skip a grade. In Cincinnati, (we have a picture) he studied in English the half of the day; in German the other half.

Herman worked for Hauser, Brenner and Fath Cooperage Co. His work was like a wheelwright. He would take large barrels to factories and see that they were put in position. We have a picture of him with a group of employees. He was an excellent marksman with a pistol, being able to hit the center of a playing card at ten paces. They are buried in the “old” St. Joseph Cemetery, Sec. 15, in Price Hill on the south side of Eighth Street.

Harry was friends with Steve Hauser, whose grandfather, also Steve, would take the boys in a wagon from the west end out Colerain Pike to his farm at Poole Road and Colerain, now Farbach-Werner Park. The horse would pull in on his own to the watering trough at the Six-Mile House at the corner of Blue Rock road, across from what is now my law office.

While at Dayton Street, Harry went to the school whose principal was Lafayette Bloom. One day he was taunted by some boys and called “Sheeney” (Jewish) so he got in a fight with them. Being called to the Principal’s office, he didn’t want to tell the Jewish principal what the boys had called him, so he said they said he had a big nose. Bloom was a very good person and probably suspected what had happened, so he told Harry about Israel Putnam, who was a revolutionary war hero with a big nose.

Harry’s mother, Rose (or Rosa) was a very saving person[1] and saved enough money to buy a house on Miller Avenue in Cumminsville. There is a picture of her there on the front porch. Harry (Dad) did some experimenting with photography and developed his own pictures. He used a candle with a red shade for a darkroom light. Much later I used some of the same materials. About this time, he worked in a print shop, setting type and correcting proofs. He bought me a small printing press when I was about 12 years old. I printed some business cards for his company.

When the family moved, Harry had to be carried to the new place, because he was recovering from typhoid fever and was barely surviving. His friend Peter Albiez who studied law helped him and so Harry went to East Night High School (Woodward then) so that he could attend the YMCA Night Law School. On June 23, 1908 he was admitted to the Bar of Ohio.

When Harry married Rose Anna Brunner from Bellevue (previously from Georgetown, Ohio, where she was born), they moved to Laurel Avenue in College Hill, which was changed to Larch when Cincinnati annexed the area. While there, I was born on October 23rd, 1912 and several months later, Herman died of pneumonia at the age of 56. They lived on the second floor.

With his mother’s financial help, Harry built a two-family with living space on the third floor at 6220 Aspen Avenue. At the time, we were living on the second floor of a house on the east side of Hamilton Avenue south of North Bend Road; it is gone now. We lived on Aspen Avenue until 1916 when we moved to Cleveland – Milan Avenue. In the same year, we bought a Ford; black with red wire wheels (which he conned me into thinking I had picked out.)

We lived on the second floor on Aspen Avenue in College Hill. The Nyland family occupied the first floor. Helen Mary Nyland was close to my age and I remember asking her to marry me when I had attained the age of 4. She had long curls. Later the Treat family moved in with Gordon Treat, who was slightly younger than I. Many years later the Nylands visited up at the Georgian Hall Apartments.

Before we moved away from College Hill, which had joined the city with some help from Dad, who belonged to the College Hill Boosters, providing us with a picture in their newspaper, we had a momentous event. I was banished to my grandmother’s third floor room which she shared with her sister Josephine Saunders (Auntie) while Dr. Beaman (I believe was visiting. Someone announced that I now had a baby sister who was named Rosemary – from Shakespeare’s “Rosemary for remembrance”. This was October 21, 1916, just before we moved to Cleveland.

The move was during the first World War and the government was in charge of the railroads. The furniture had been shipped by train, which was common in those days and the box cars had been broken into on the way to Cleveland. Some property was lost and there was great difficulty in trying to recover compensation.

Dad was selling real estate with the Joseph LaRonge Co. where he was very successful, becoming Sales Manager, later on. He bought a house at 1873 Marloes Avenue in East Cleveland, a good suburb, one of the first to have a city manager form of government. I went to Prospect School and later to Shaw High School, in East Cleveland. At the south end of our street was the Rockefeller estate of about 1,300 acres. We could play there until Terrace Road was built and a high fence put up around the estate. Later the estate was subdivided and W.H. Kirk (who had been the superintendent of schools) Junior High School was built right where we had played around a giant oak tree. It was thought that John D. had objected to high taxes so he moved to New York State.

Next we moved to 16119 Oakhill Road about the time that John Harry was born August 4, 1926. Then came 1929 and the Great Depression.

Real estate business died completely. Dad had a $75,000 insurance policy; was not able to pay the premiums, so the agent foolishly (in my judgment) paid the premiums out of the cash value- a loan, which ate up the value. This would have been good enough if the Depression had lasted six months. He should have made it a paid-up policy for a lesser amount and it would not have been lost.

About 1930, we moved to Cincinnati, except me, because I had not finished high school at Shaw. I stayed with my Uncle Harry and Aunt Helen until a month later, when the school decided that I should pay tuition. Dad looked over the schools in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and arranged for me to take English and Physics at University School, a college preparatory high school in Avondale, which I did, so I got in UC on probation without a high school diploma, courtesy of Dr. Talbert and his secretary, Dorothy Lauterbach, who became a friend of mine.

Dad got some backing to build houses on Snow Road, before we left Cleveland, but they were slow selling. The architect, Mr. Pollack, I think, who lived next to us on Oakhill Road, designed those, so Dad used the same plans to build houses on School Section and Homelawn Avenues in Cheviot with the help of Attorney Richard E. Simmons, whom I worked for later.

It was 1933 and the Depression finally came to Cincinnati and Dad and Frank Rack[2], in the winter, went around selling a device that was supposed to make the coal furnaces more efficient. It fit on the furnace door to aid the draft. If I remember correctly, it sold for about $5.00. There was a profit of about $2 or $2.50 on each one. Bread cost 10 cents a loaf, then.

Rosa Gesser Dickman died about February 1933 of pneumonia after she had suffered a broken hip following a cataract operation at Betheseda Hospital. She was at our apartment at 2836 Harrison Avenue in the Georgian Hall apartments which Dad had built with financing from Simmonds and Charles Broeman, a wealthy lawyer and oldtime friend. We had lived there rent free because Dad was managing the building.

I had been visiting her at her place on Burgoyne Street in Cumminsville on my way from the University and she left all her money to me by will. It turned out that she had been putting case in her trunk which we found to have over two thousand dollars tucked away in it. We knew that she had been taking in washing (there were no Laundromats in those days) but the amount that she had saved was astonishing. Dad asked me if I would agree to let the family use the money to live on and he would pay for my schooling at the University. I had no hesitancy about this arrangement even though I knew that tuition was free to city residents. Also I knew that the family really needed the money to live on. Rosemary was about 13 and Johnny was about 3. An automobile cost about $500, a suit $40.

Dad was building houses on E. Gordon LaFeuille Oskamp’s subdivision (EGLO Realty) at Westower and Veazey Avenues between Price Hill (Overlook) and Westwood. He built a house at is now 3020 Westower Avenue, setting the price at $12,750, saying that if it did not sell, we would move in.

The house did not sell by the spring of 1934, so we moved in just after I graduated from UC with a Bachelor’s degree. I had finished the fist year of law school and was interested in a young lady from Oakley. I made the trek from home to Oakley so frequently that the 1930 Ford almost knew the way by itself. We also had acquired a 1929 Auburn from the architect who lived at 16119 Oakhill Road. This was a most interesting model; it could be oiled by pressing a foot pedal.

Jim Seltzer, an engineering student, who also belonged to Sigma Phi Eta, my fraternity, went with Dorothy Kramer, who belonged to Alpha Omicron Pi sorority and because I had a car, they would get a girl for me who belonged to the sorority for a “data”. So for the big game with Miami on Thanksgiving, Dot asked Venda Tow to go with me on a “blind date” to the game. I went to 4216 32nd Street in Oakley with them and walked up to the door in a grey flannel trenchcoat that made me look like a reporter and rang the bell.

The door opened and there was “clear-eyed Athena”. We went to the game and I talked to her so much abut my life in Cleveland that she got the impression that I still lived there, so she invited me to Thanksgiving dinner at her house. I explained that I would be at home, but her generosity impressed me so much that I asked her to go out with me to a birthday party on December 10th at McClure’s friend’s house who was also a AOPI. Her name was Jeannette Merk. Unfortunately, Venda had a date with Bill Restemeyer for the Junior Prom, but agreed to go with me afterwards, which she did, to Jeanette Merk’s house.

Venda was not the usual sorority girl; she was not impressed with sorority life but she was such an excellent student that the group was anxious to have her membership. She graduated Cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

That New Year’s Day, she invited me to meet her friends at her house: Faye Bunnell, Ellen Perin, Ruth Levinson, Marion Unverzeagt (whose names are now East, Wilkinson, Jentelson and Johnson). I was not at my best, shall we say, because I had been at a party with the family at Frank and Loretta Rack’s house the night before and I had imbibed a fair amount from convivial cups. However, I must have just barely passed the introduction – V. had a problem with my condition because of her family, particularly Charles E. Tow, who are fond of adult beverages.

Venda’s mother was very understanding and must have liked me, as she continued to do all her life. She had come from Wayne County in West Virginia with her four sisters and seemed to resemble an ancestor called Granny Wilson, but who was called Little Fawn in Cherokee. Some of the male relatives who worked in the courthouse tried to erase all mention that they had a Cherokee ancestress. Such was the prejudice about seventy years ago and it is probably not completely gone.

Chapter Two

We can only go back to my great grandfather, Anton Dickman, who was from a town in eastern Holland with a name like Doorn, although that may not be in from what I remember.[3] He and three (or four) brothers came over to New York and one brother disappeared there. Anton came to Cincinnati and met some Swiss settlers who were going to the Swiss town of Tell City in Indiana. There was a young lady named Catherine Pulskamp whom Anton followed to Tell City and married. They had five children: George (Uncle Yatz), Herman (my grandfather), Josephine, John? and ?

Anton Dickman (his gravestone has an extra n) did construction work, constructing some buildings in Tell City. When Harry was a boy, Anton had a brickyard where men made the bricks by hand. Harry asked his grandfather about his left eye, which was gone. “I lost it dueling at Heidelberg” he was told. Dad told me that his granddad was probably joking about this, but he did not find out more about it.[4] The Dickman family were all over six feet tall, excepting perhaps Josephine.

Josephine married Joseph Bauer and had three children. Anthony (Tony)[5]; Maude, (who married Dr. Ralph Funkhouser, producing James Bauer and Mary Catherine[6] (Pud)); and Catherine. We have a picture taken on Tony’s farm near Columbus about 1930 with many members of the family on it.

Dr. Jim Funkhouser died a few years ago. He was the only person I encountered while I was in Italy during World War II whom I had known previously. He was with the 45th General Hospital in Naples, on Vomero Hill. He saw my name among the casualties and had me sent to his hospital. I had received some bomb fragments in my chin and right leg in farm country near Rome. The field hospital removed the small piece from my chin, but sent me to Naples, by plane. The surgeon told me while I was on the operating table that he couldn’t feel the small fragments in my leg, so there might be too much damage to try to find them. The Veteran’s Administration later in Cincinnati, took an X-ray showing them which designated me as ten percent disabled, sending me compensation. I had been concerned only with what would happen if the pieces (both small enough to fit on a dime) started to work out of the calf of my leg. Apparently they are still there. In Jim’s hospital in Naples, I was so glad to see my second cousin that it made up for the distasteful and only slightly bearable army life. Jim arranged for me to do some jobs such as helping the payroll officer while I was recovering and also took me to see the Aquarium.

At the time the relatives visited Tony’s farm, Jim and I had been camping there in a tent, pretending that we were Indians or Roman soldiers – not knowing that in 1944 we would both meet as American soldiers in Naples. Jim was versed in good literature and started me reading James Branch Cabell. We had gone up to Lake Erie with Jim Seltzer after stopping at Akron to see the dirigible Akron christened while visiting relatives of ours. Then we crossed the lake on the St. Ignatius steamer and went to London Ontario. It was all uneventful but it made us feel mature.

Years later, Venda and I visited Jim and Gene Smith Funkhouser on our honeymoon in 1939. They were living in a house on the grounds of the Virginia Northwestern State Hospital (for mental patients) where Jim was working, on his way to becoming a psychiatrist. Jim showed me various types such as an idiot-savant: one who could name the day for any date any year and others. Finally Jim rose to become Assistant Director of the State Board of Health of Virginia. Jim and I were always “simpatico” so I regret our lack of communication over the years. I do hear from his sister, Mary Catherine (Pud) Johnstone. Her son Drew visited us while going to UC[7] Pharmacy College. He is now a doctor like his father and brother.

Maude Bauer and my father were first cousins and fond of each other. So one time, Maude and my mother took a riverboat trip to Tell City to see the Dickmans. Each one had a small son still nursing (Jim and I). As an experiment, they switched babies, but apparently I, who was months older than Jim, objected.

I had begun to walk and climb which I did when I saw a ladder going up to the roof of a porch on a new house nearby. They had to climb up to rescue me, because I couldn’t figure out how to get down. I have a dim remembrance of the fuss they made about it.

The next time I visited Tell City, was when Maude was buried in the cemetery overlooking the beautiful Ohio river.
[1] Many of the things that have been passed down in our family are from Rosa. I have come to the conclusion if it is a family item and I don’t know where it came from, that it came from Rosa.
[2] My mom, Rosemary, dated one of the Rack sons. I remember when I was a child going up to Tip City to Frank Rack’s funeral with my family.
[3] My mother seemed to think that the name had been Dykman and was changed to Dickman when they came to this country. That may have been supposition on her part. I did find out that both Dykman and Dickman are common names in Holland.
[4] If we knew when Anton came to this country, we might know whether this oft repeated story could be true or not. Since Anton came from Holland and Heidelberg is in Germany, it does seem unlikely. However, when I was in Heidelberg, I found that dueling in Heidelberg had been very common then.
[5] Tony had three children. After both he and his wife died, John Harry and Rose took in the two youngest: Joe and Marjorie.
[6] Pud and Rosemary were very close friends all their lives.
[7] For those on the west coast, this UC is University of Cincinnati