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Thomas Eickhoff on the traces of his family

I met Thomas back in 2001 when I started working for an advertisement company in Vienna were he was a copywriter. Originally from Germany he was then living in Vienna because of his former girfriend. We both shared some passions like our love for Portugal, we've got very similar views of a lot of things, I guess you could say our minds work rather similar in a lot of ways. We enjoy and appreciate similar things. So we got very good friends over the time. Although Thomas no longer lives in Vienna we still stay in touch, we write e-mails once in a while, talk on the phone and see each other two or three times a year. Having a good friendship does not necessarily mean sticking together all the time.

So I met Thomas again last weekend were I visited him in Margaretville. The photograph above shows him sitting in the living room of Laurens farm. Lauren is the cousin of his granduncles sister-in-law. Thomas travelled to Upstate New York to meet more parts of his family which he didn't know until last year. Kind of an interesting story but I'll, as an exception, let Thomas write about it today:

"In 1929 my granduncle Phillip – brother of my grandmother Katharina – left Germany and emigrated to the United States. At that time he was 19 years old. Arriving in New York City right at the beginning of the big depression, he somehow managed to get a job at Schrafft’s and worked his way up to be the head cake designer of this formerly very well known big bakery, which also ran a couple of good restaurants all over the American East Coast.

A few years later he met Mabel – a young lady from Margaretville, a little village in the Catskill mountains. They fell in love, married and 1932 their daughter Phyllis was born. Phillip stayed in contact with his family back in Germany over many years by writing letters and sending money, thus supporting them during the difficult times of WWII and after. In the 1960s, the letters suddenly stopped. My grandmother Katharina never got to know what happened to Phillip. The worries about her brother stuck to her over all those years, until in 1999 she asked me to do some research on his whereabouts.

After "googling" around for quite a while I finally got a hold of the family of Phillip’s wife Mabel, some of which are still living here in Margaretville. Phillip, Mabel and Phyllis used to come up to the Catskills on the summer weekends, leaving the hot and humid city behind. In the 60s, Mabel became ill and died of cancer after a long suffering. After her funeral on the Margaretville cemetery, Phillip went back to his house in NYC and never returned to the Catskills, although a lot of his family members up here tried to get hold of him. In the 1970s, neighbors discovered his body in his apartment – he obviously had never been the same after his wife had passed away. His daughter Phyllis arranged his funeral in Margaretville – and shortly after that she left for California, leaving no address or other traces behind.

I met my American family last year for the first time, when I was looking them up while being in New York. Apart from a lot of distant, yet wonderful family members I met Berna, Phillip’s sister-in-law, and Lauren, Berna’s cousin, who’s running his family farm in Margaretville. This summer I’m staying at Lauren’s and helping him out on the farm. My mother and aunt – my grandmother’s daughters and Phillip’s nices, that is – and my uncle from Germany have just left after a three week visit to their “old/new” American relatives. It was very emotional and I still have no words for the wonderful things that happened to all of us. All I can say is that I have a deep feeling of joy and gratitude, that our two families have been united after all those years. I consider it an honor and a very special gift."

Guest author Thomas Eickhoff

I'd be interested in your comments on this story. Leave them on this site or send Thomas an e-mail.

Posted by Martin Fuchs on July 12, 2005 09:19 PM