themightyten.com Blog » cousins

Geraldine Jones

George C. Hartman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:46:44 +0000

circa 1945 -perhaps Westfield-

Long overdue, I know. Geraldine Jones 9/4/29 to 9/5/11. Rest in peace. A wonderful woman, wife, sister, aunt, mother, daughter and friend. For the most of the Mighty Ten we lost touch with her and her family soon after Dad died. Our aunt Gerry. Our fathers sister. I was mightily blessed to have made a very slight connection with her right before she passed away and it brought back so much to me at the time and even now it still does. It all happened so suddenly and all at once, finding Gerry and Robert, Diane, Dennis and Bill, the losing Gerry and then….that dream-like sequence of events where I was actually visiting Robert at his home (Rock and Roll museum), the jet-lagged visions of Fort Dix, Brooklyn, Tin cups, Jay in full military garb, his smile and southern accent, Gerry’s screeching yelling at us crazy kids to stay in the basement. But most of all my memories of her are the time she scooped me up and took me to Sacramento Ca. In 1975. Reno, Los Angeles, Nevada, Disneyland and maybe I would have stayed there forever if she didn’t finally pay my way home because mom couldn’t. I could have been George Jones. I have always missed her and I always will. Not many in the Hartman family remember her. She slipped away so quickly and silently….right before I was going to see her. That’s what hurts so much. I had so many questions and now maybe they will go unanswered forever. God bless her soul.

In heaven, men can smoke cigars and watch football.

George C. Hartman — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 04:47:10 +0000

Once a long time ago in the 1960′s when things were different. Friendships and families were etched in real life, and not “on-line”. Face to face with booze, cards, cigars, cheap bars, real talk, real people and you couldn’t hide behind a monitor and a mouse. The TV broke down all the time because it had picture tubes in it. Men watched the NFL because it was a great game and not a big business nursing over-paid egos. There were REAL heros on the REAL grass playing half back for half ass salaries. There were heros circling the earth in tin cans and The Daily News had “all the news that’s fit to print” Those were the days. Lucky Filter commercials on the tube while sipping Schaffer beer…..and me and my cousins were around to remember this. To witness the love and togetherness of two families.
Since my reunion with Jaybird my memories have broken open and the things that I thought I remembered were only the tip of the iceburg. That as a very little boy I went around the living room while Jay and George drank beer from cans (that you had to open with a can opener) and I was “allowed” to take sips. And I loved it, cause it made me feel all warm and fuzzy and it had nothing to do with Y.A. Tittle throwing touchdowns against the Cleveland Browns on a mud field covered in straw.
Jay was a very tall man with a pom pom and a military uniform. His laugh was contagious and his smile endless. He loved my father and my father loved him. They journeyed into the Bronx New York together to watch The New York Football Giants play in a baseball stadium. They drank beer and laughed and celebrated life like two happily married men with children should. The economy was good, The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan and the Worlds Fair (the most famous EVER) was alive and well and only a stones throw from NJ. Gas was cheap and driving to and fro even on school and work nights was easy.
Brother-in-laws that cared for and took time to see each other whenever they could. They created a pact whether they knew it or not. That life is way too short to fight or cry or ignore. Life was good. But then like everything that is supposed to last forever……it changed. The endless happy visits to military bases suddenly cut short because fate had other plans.

Jaybird and Butch. Las Vegas November 2011. George Sr. and Jay Sr are smiling from the eerie glow of the night sky.

Turns out George Sr. died rather mysteriously and quickly and Jay followed right behind him about a year later. They left a legacy of fourteen children and two totally confused and frightened wives.
They missed everything that life had to offer after that. The cousins fell between three thousand miles and over thirty years of weddings, funerals, grandchildren, Super Bowls, vacations, sunsets, new cars, sickness, disappointment, happiness, technology, and all the extreme highs and lows that life can bring.
And one windy Fall night on the roof of a Parking lot, in the depths of Sin City’s neon glow, “The pact” was renewed. And whether they knew it or not…it all came together again….survivors, dreamers and lovers. The first time he grabbed me and hugged me…it actually shocked me(it wasn’t in front of a pool)….and when I asked him about that hug he said, “It’s just the type of person I am.”

Please keep Aunt Gerry in your prayers.

George C. Hartman — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:40:21 +0000

george, mom could certainly use your family’s prayers now, she not doing so well. in icu trying to hang on. robert.

Aunt Gerry our fathers sister, recently had complicated surgery. Robert is her son.

Tag -you’re it.

George C. Hartman — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 04:27:49 +0000

“i will never forget watching the beatles on sullivan at 121 whitman with my cousins, barbra, beverly, george and gregory. laughing and throwing couch pillows at the screen while my older brother david ( who was sitting us while mom dad uncle george and aunt joni went out) tried hard too watch and hear the fabs. some of my fondest memories are of my cousins. i have all the family snapshots and homemovies and hope to reconnect soon.”
Robert “Jaybird” Jones
This was written 6 days ago on a two year old post on this blog.
What I have discovered in the depths of the World Wide Web is that it is getting more and more powerful and contrary to what I had originally thought: that it is getting impossible to unbury your past because of the complexity of the endless layers.
The above comment to a post I had written two years ago was typed while I was on vacation. It’s the real deal. The shivers that went up my spine haven’t been felt since the Giants Super Bowl win four years ago.
I have been trying to find our long lost cousins for YEARS. Googling names and places: “Jones” and “Sacramento, California” I got nowhere. So I tried Facebook. Even less success. I think the real problem was the name Jones….a pretty common name in the USA.
So my plan was to hope one day that they would try to find us.
Word Press -the free blog service that powers this family blog is AMAZINGLY powerful in submitting “TAG” words to search engines. Tag words are what I include on a blog post that can be “found” by other people searching on the internet.
So, I smothered a few of my blog posts with “Jaybird Jones” and other key words that I hoped someone would search for. People have been known to goggle their own name…..so now I can only fish and wait….
Fishing. Trolling. Waiting. Hoping. Maybe one day. A nibble? NO, this is a big bite. Maybe even a little tease. If you can come back and read this Robert “Jaybird” Jones, please call me. Are you still in California? Where is Diane and Dennis? I miss your mom and dad, they were great people on this crazy planet. Come out of the water and show yourself!!! Call me if you can my long lost cousin: 908-456-2906.

waiting for Big Moon

George C. Hartman — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 23:39:23 +0000

It was BIG alright!

When I woke up Kryha said “Those poor Japanese people” and here it was eight or so days later and we are still captivated by the news. But when it is the first thing you say when you wake up then you know it was such an intense, earth moving event that you become consumed by it….well at least I was. It is the opposite – “does – G(g)od – really – exist” – thought. What I mean by that is this: “Why them?” Aren’t the Japs supposed to humble, quiet and clean? Free of crime? Spiritual?” If G(g)od really does exist then why would he wallop them with the triple-header? Tonight was the biggest moon in eighteen years. I thought of Richard and Clara. How close their dead bodies were. How I wanted to be by them. I imagined laying down on the grass spread out. Reaching for their bones. Reaching for the life that they lived. The Trolly cars, the horse shit on main street. Chicken dinner with the Hartmann’s The woman with the beautiful big brown eyes, mother of fifteen children. Burying two little infants (I will find them one day too!) and what about all the heartache, that they experienced? It all means nothing now. They had the world on their shoulders and now they are buried in it. This hustling-bustling time bomb of a planet. I would see Joshua and Jonathan tomorrow, BUT today, a day before the Big Moon, I would visit Richard and Clara. Swiftly through the sky blue windy day. (one day before Big Moon. In German dreams and tongue, I travel through time on slow moving elephants. Into the sands of time, the hourglass of past memories, into the streets of Jersey City.
Only In America can you come home from such a busy day and pop some popcorn in the microwave oven, sit down and watch a war, live on television, and then they cut over to a nuclear disaster (they are finding trace amounts of radiation in Seattle Washington) There are people over there that have been buried underneath the rubble for a week and they are uncovering them alive. If you want to know what it is like to get swept away by a tsunami, then you should watch the first ten minuets of Clint Eastwoods (directed by) movie, The Hereafter Although, it is nothing like the first ten minuets of “Saving Private Ryan” it has the same effect. It blows your mind!

PHOTOS THAT MAKE YOU THINK
In March 2011′s photo’s I only now just noted that there is one thing similar to all the photos for that month. I took every single photo. Do you think I will ever run out of photos that make you think? Maybe when all the photos are grabbed off my laptop it may mean only three things: 1. I have run out of photos and I am desperate. 2. I am just a lazy bastard and didn’t have time to scan, clean and color correct. OR 3. I am still waiting for help from the family in the form of emails and/or snail mail scans.
In Feb 2011 photos that make you think there is a photo of one of the scariest moments in my life. In the Summer of 1975 I was sent to California to visit the Jones’. The Jones’ were our nephews and niece from our fathers side of the family. Our father had a sister named Geraldine. She married Robert “Jay” Jones. They had three children: Robert, (Jaybird) Diane and Dennis. We used to be very close with them as children (for those very few of us who can remember) Jay Jones was a professional soilder and “worked” as a soilder in south Jersey. Dad used to take us down there alot. His sister Geraldine, was a shrieking manic-depressant that yelled and cried a lot. She was a very good woman, though. She also had another child, much older than the others named David, I think out of wedlock that eventually became some kind of manager for Dads fabric store in Westfield.

"Jaybird" Jones poses with me pool-side July 1975. He reeked of reefer and mistrust.

In my Summer trip to California I met all the Jones’ for what would probably be the last time in my life. My aunt Geraldine loved to take photos but she was lousy at it.
I hated being there in California that Summer. I was told it would only be “a week or two” but it turned into the whole Summer. I wil never forget that lie. Mom drove me to Newark airport very drunk and late. The plane ride was my first and it was amazing to me. To look down at the clouds, toy cars and toy cities it is only then that you realize just how bug The United States of America is!! (2,825 miles)
I wanted to be home. Summers were magical back then. The side-street gang may have been fading, Bill Brunner may have moved away for all eternity but there was no school, no work and long hot days. Mc, Gitts, Beds, and the others were all playing baseball, football and hunting for unexploded fireworks on the streets July 5th.
In this photo Jaybird had me! His arm around my neck. Aunt Gerry ready to snap a photo and I just knew he was gonna throw me in the pool and the sound of “cheese”.
I was a very awkward fifteen year old boy. I was as skinny as a stick. I had a uncontrollable mop of yellow hair, pimples all over, I had two huge front teeth that were chipped (I didn’t smile for 18 years until I had them fixed myself) I was lost without my father, my mother was always drunk, I had zero self-confidence, I had just completed my freshman year in an all-boys Catholic High School that was an absolute nightmare, I didn’t know what was going on inside my body or outside my body. My penis had become an uncontrollable monster connected to me like an evil twin. I was confused, very lonely, young, dumb and full of ……
Jaybird never threw me in the pool but now thirty-six years later I am looking for him. On Facebook. In people searches, obituaries, web browses… I have been trying to find this part of our family for as long as the internet has been around. The biggest obstacle that I have faced is their last name: JONES. (this is the third most common name in the United States behind Brown and Williams)
The “TAG” words in this blog, I have discovered are VERY powerful. They are openly exposed (and very quickly I might add) to search engines all over. I have randomly added our cousins the Jones’ to many of the blog posts in the hopes that maybe one day they may “google” themselves and find us. So far nothing. No sign of any Jones’ anywhere. Come out, come out, where ever you are!
Why America is so Damn Fat getting fatter.
It all began about eight or nine years ago when fast food establishments ended their CASH ONLY policy and started accepting credit cards. WORSE THAN THAT, they suddenly started their “We are open LATE” routine. Not just until midnight but two or three o’clock in the morning. Have you ever driven past the drive thru of a McDonalds at ONE AM in the morning and seen seven or eight cars waiting for deep fried fat and hamburger meat on a sesame seed bun?? Is it dinner time? NO! It’s let’s have ANOTHER fat drenched meal before bedtime!!!
WHY do we CARRY ON like nothing happened?
Am I the only one that still feels a sense of dread and doom over the loss of 15,000 human beings and counting in Japan?? That there is STILL a NUCLEAR TIME BOMB on the edge of the ocean some where in the world. Life still goes on. We work. We go to school. We play. We turn on the news and Japan isn’t the headlines anymore, sometimes not even the second page. Mothers are still driving their cars, loaded with their young innocent children into lakes. People are still getting blown-up beyond recognition in third world countries, the economy is still sinking like a Western sunset into the sea…people are still killing people, with guns, their cars, bats, knives and poison. Life goes on.
WHERE IS THE HAPPY NEWS?
HEADLINES:
Father Doesn’t Leave Family
or
Women Completes Rehab rejoins family to tears and hugs
or
Family Buys A Home
or
Man Donates HALF his Savings to Charity
or
Woman Opens Door For Crippled Woman at WalMart

Over the river and thru the woods….

George C. Hartman — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:36:59 +0000

a letter written in 1918, tells me where the Hartmann's lived!

A letter received several years ago from Mendam NJ after an inquiry by our sister Barb about our two great aunts on our fathers side. Our grandfather came from a family of 12. Really, 13 but “he” died early in life. Health was a fragile thing in the beginning of the twentieth century. All you really need to do is walk through an old cemetery to see the short life spans and large number of young children.
SO this first large family of Hartmanns in the United States of America lived in Jersey City. When I first saw that address, I knew that one day, I had to go there.

"Rosy" my navigator will guide me with sweet robot voice

SO here we go, over the river and thru the woods. I was pretty excited, almost like I felt as if the entire family of 15 was waiting for my arrival.

In our great aunt Gertrude’s original letter she stated that she was born in NYC on June 6 1888.
- Between 1820 and 1880, thousands of German and Irish immigrants arrived in New York City as men, women and children left their homeland to escape civil unrest, persecution and the repeated failure of the potato crop. Initially, many of the Germans settled in what became known as Little Germany, a section of the city east of the Bowery and extending from Houston Street to 12th Street. She also states that her mother’s name was:
Clara M. Flanger and her fathers name was:
Charles R. Hartmann
The first American Hartmann family had FIFTEEN children!! One sister and one brother died early so there were 13. Of these 13 I only know the name three of them. My grandfather George Joseph and his two sisters Gertrude and Frieda who both became nuns and therefore our sister Barb has attained their records by writing a letter to their home sisterhood.
The church mentioned in Gertrud’s letter “Church of St Joseph Yorkville” at 408 East 87th Street still stands. It is there where I am going to attempt to get Baptismal records that may give me the remaining names, birthdates of the NINE girls and FOUR boys. I might also be able to discover exactly when they moved to 15 Cambridge Ave in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Gertrude also mentions that her father Charles was a printer…as am I!
The Journey
I don’t know the name of that bridge but I it got me into Jersey City.

It was a weird day. I felt very alone and tired. Wishing someone was here with me on this journey.
Before the bridge, passing the city of Newark. To me: a very depressing city with an even more depressing name. The only ties our family have there are that my aunt Carol and her husband Fred (Rebel) Dooley met there and married. Strange how a country boy from Alabama ended up as a parking lot attendant. I remember they owned a red VW punch-bug and me and my sister Barb rode in the back with the top down to go to their apartment that was on the top of a very large building there.

The "Red Light" beggar

This was one of the most remembered things of this journey. Waiting at the red light after the bridge…I’m in Jersey City. This beggar walks in between the cars with a paper cup. Looking for money. I gave him a handfull of change from my change jar that I keep in the car. He was very grateful. I watched in the rear view mirror behind me the dressed up fancy smancy couple, shake their heads, roll up their window and then roll their eyes.

Old time Jersey City New Jersey. Turn of the century. No cars. No cell phones. Blue crisp sky day. Buried in time.

“Rosy” my navigator was taking me through the streets of Jersey City 2011, where one hundred years earlier my great grandfather, mother and his kids played, shopped and worked. She took me down the very long main street, full of shops, cars and a melting pot of race, creed and color. Some things never change.
I was almost there now, according to “Rosy” 15 Cambridge. “Make the next left to arrive at destination.”
I’m not quite sure what I was expecting but of corse I wasn’t expecting this.

When I turned the corner onto Emerson Street…I was expecting everything to maybe turn black and white. I was looking for Charles R. Hartmann’s kids to be playing on the street. I was looking for a sepia sky, trolly cars, horse carriages. I was looking for maybe Clara Hartmann to be coming down the steps pregnant.

These were the streets of my heritage. That in this space a family of 15 lived, struggled, had dinner together, celebrated holidays and never once thought that one century later the fathers son of one of their own would come here looking for them.

Of corse I was disappointed. It was obviously not the same house, it was not the same street and certainly wasn’t the same city. Everything had changed. There were no survivors. Nobody remembers “The Hartmann’s” … that big German family with the printer father. Everything was buried deeply in time. And in another hundred years, another hundred families will have been born and raised on these streets. That time and technology are interlocked into a giant machine that consumes the human spirit. All the laughter, tears, hopes and dreams of 15 Cambridge Street are gone. Not too long ago, they were the most important things in the world to the Hartmann’s. I just had to get out of the car and breath the air, walk the street, where once horse carriages trampled by. I looked around… and the wind blew some old newspapers down the street……….

15 Cambridge, Jersey City, New Jersey.

James Fredrick Gill answers “The Twenty Questions”

George C. Hartman — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:11:19 +0000

Jim has always been very athletic and competitive.

Remember the 20 questions? They were devised by Ann Hartman 4 years ago and everyone answered them except Gregory. Well here is Big Jims go at it:
What is your memory of Mom/ Aunt Joan?
Sitting at the table on Whitman Street smoking a cigarette!

2. What are three words that other people use to describe you?
Big, happy, intelligent

3. Who was better Elvis or the Beetles?
Elvis…Beetles…Elvis…Beetles…
It should have been between The Rolling Stones or The Who!

4. What is your favorite song and why?
Anything Van Halen (with David Lee Roth) or off Boston’s first album; vintage ELO as well.
I know that doesn’t answer your question…I guess Desperado by The Eagles…but I really don’t have a favorite song.

5. What is your favorite movie? Can list up to three titles.
Shawshank Redemption and Godfather 1

6. What are you afraid of?
Heights.

7. Do you have any pets?
Cats and a dog

8. Do you wear glasses dentures or a hearing aide?
Glasses only if I want to see the TV, where I am driving at night or anything from a distance!

9.What is the most embarrassing thing that has ever occurred to you?
Pulling the wrong way in junior high; the play went left and I went right…the only one ON FILM that went right!

10. What is the funniest thing that ever happened to you?
They would have to do with flatulence!

11.What color is your bedroom?
Lavender but it’s Tammy’s bedroom, not mine!

12. Which room do you eat dinner in?
Living room.

13. What is your favorite meal?
A hardy Breakfast.

14. What do you do for a living?
Recruit professionals for manufacturing, engineering, accounting and human resource positions.

15. What do you wish you did for a living?
Early in life? To play quarterback or catcher for a professional team.
Now that I have grown up? A teacher and coach for a middle school.

16. What is your favorite subject in school? Do you still like it?
Math first; English second.
Love them both today!

17. Do you know how to drive a stick-shift automobile?
Yes!

18. What is your favorite candy bar?
Snickers!

19. Do you bite your nails?
Used to; don’t now!

21. What is your favorite cereal?
Captain Crunch Reese’s flavored.

22. What is your favorite cereal as a kid?
Don’t know that I had one…Frosted Flakes?

23. What is your nickname?
Now? Don’t really have one…see below.

24. What was your childhood nickname?
Bluegill!

25.What is something we didn’t ask but would like others to know?
In 1978 I spent 33 days in Europe as a People-to-People Student Ambassador.
We visited communist Russia, Belgium, Germany, France, England, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden – great time!

26. Which sibling would you like to get to know better?
I would have liked to have known all of you better.
I know my sisters very well.

27. What shoe size do you wear?
11 ½ – 12

28. How was growing up in a large family better than a smaller family?
When we visited? I always had a ‘brother’ to play football with!

29. What is your proudest accomplishment?
Running a ½ marathon; raising 2 kids, making it on my own; surviving whatever life has thrown at me!

30. What would you like to change about yourself? Why?
Nothing now.
Growing up…I would have liked to have been 4-6 inches taller and more dedicated as an athlete.

31. What is your favorite childhood memory?
Traveling to Grandma’s house (my Mom’s Mom) for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

32. If money were no object where would you like to go?
Travel everywhere. Visit all stadiums throughout the U.S.

33. What is your favorite book?
Anything by James Patterson.

34. How did you meet your spouse/companion/best friend?
On E-Harmony!

35. What is the one thing you would like to do in your life before you die?
Retire and do whatever the hell I want, whenever the hell I want to and not have any worries!

36. End this with a quote:
Be happy and don’t take life too seriously.

October 25 2009 Giants, New York, Westfield Tammy and Jim

George C. Hartman — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:33:04 +0000

Can you see us from up there???

Jim Gill and his girlfriend Tammy arrived early Saturday morning and were gone before I could even blink an eye.

Rocking out at Rocking Joes Cafe.

Jim looked great, having just lost 60 lbs and Tammy was a real sweetheart. Hopefully we will ALL get together with them soon. Our travels to Austin Street in Westfield (where his Dad, “Brother” and our Mom grew up) and the cemetery for Jims first visit to his fathers grave in over 15 years. I enjoyed their stories of being a couple together, their hardships, their experiences of being parents, their travels to Scotland, their cruise over the Summer, and our exchanging of “family rumors” from the deep (sometimes dark) past of Gill/Hartman history.

Happy Family?

Mother and son.

George C. Hartman — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:09:00 +0000

Around April I made it a mission to find Grandma Gill and Brothers grave. Earlier last year, Barb and I had unsuccessfully attempted to locate it and the office was closed on the weekend we were there. When I came back I tried on my own to find it and finally gave up and went in the office. They gave me an almost exact location and I STILL couldn’t find it.
I was looking for the two trees. The landmarks of the grave for the past 50 years. Planted by Grandpa Gill after his wife May was buried.
I finally found to stone but to my dismay, the TREEs were GONE! I couldn’t believe it! I was very upset. How do you just “take down trees”? Without asking or for that matter HOW DO YOU JUST KILL TREEs. Trees with much sentimental value.
Not only were they missing but the holes in the ground were never properly taken care of. Not filled in enough or at all! As a result of this inconsiderate action, the stone has begun to shift.
I went back into the office and complained.
They told me that they NEVER take down trees unless they are dead or “unrecoverable”
I believed them.
From what I did understand (please correct me if I am wrong) is that Grandpa Gill planted Japanese Maples
I remember it had red leafs. Very beautiful. Very very slow growing. Hardly a tree to survive for a long time in this area.

My idea is to replant trees here. Hopefully the same kind. I would like to do it if any or all of the Gill family happens to stumble into New Jersey sometime.
To the Grandmother I never met: I heard you were a very good woman. It is too bad you lived such a short life. I don’t know why your husband and father of three children didn’t want to rest next to you. He was a strange bitter man sometimes but a good generous man.
Grandma May, you would have loved your many many grandchildren. We would have loved you and your wonderful smile.

Photos That Make You Think August 2009

George C. Hartman — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:16:17 +0000

Multiple heads and thoughts from this months Photos That Make You Think

To the best of my knowledge from what my mother told me: There was a neighbor that was an amateur photographer that came around and took photos of the Gill children. For the years that some of these were taken (the mid 1940′s) he is using some very high end equipment of the time. I found an envelope of negatives and from my best guess, he used a Browning Camera.
This photo of Fred Gill (Brother) is a pure classic. The photographer captured a moment in time that could thrill even non family members.
Just look at Brothers eyes! Doesn’t take much to thrill children this age. Innocence reigns!
My mother told me that Brother had this doll for many years. Took it with him wherever he went and as you can see by the look in his eyes, he absolutely adored this thing. As beat up and dirty as it got, he loved it even more, his sister Joan said.
Photography really took off in the 1940′s and was a huge but expensive hobby for many people. Family Ties will be revealing much more of these Austin Street gems in the future. Some of them need some work. This Photo Album was rescued from the heat and humidity of Florida just in time.
This photo had a pencil scribble in Brothers hair that I painstakingly removed. But when I thought about it, the pencil scribbles are acually part of the history and heritage of this awesome photo.
So here is the original, making us all wonder, WHO might have been the artist from such a long time ago.

About Aunt Pats glasses: What can I say? It was the EARLY 1960′s. Batman was a popular show on TV Saturday nights. Catwoman was his hot villian. Was Aunt Pat inspired by Catwoman? Who knows? Actually, who cares???