Cousins Carol and Bob Dutcher Remember "Gram"

The following are some memories of my grandmother from my cousins, Carol and Bob Dutcher.  My mother was the youngest of three sisters.  Carol and Bob are the eldest and youngest children of my mom's eldest sister Helen Heydrick Dutcher.  The Dutcher family stayed in Philadelphia while my mother's sister, Margaret Beyer, and her family moved to idyllic southern California in the late 40's and my parents followed my dad's military career to Vienna and then to Colorado where we stayed.  My Dutcher cousins grew up with my grandmother living in the upstairs apartment of their home in Northeast Philadelphia.

The Heydrick Family Home, Bridesburg, Philadelphia

Carol Dutcher Bream’s memories of

Helen Esther Eyles Heydrick and William Jacob Heydrick, her maternal grandparents

My earliest memories of my maternal grandparents date back to when I was two and returned from Seattle with my mother (Helen Eyles Heydrick) and my father (Russell Clifford Dutcher). My father had been stationed in Seattle as a captain during the Second World War. He always told us that his job at the quartermaster depot was to “supply shoe leather to the Russians”. I never really questioned him further on this, but I am pretty sure that his business degree from Drexel University qualified him for more than such simple duties. He was an accountant all his life, so I assume he was I charge of various administrative and accounting duties as a soldier. 

We came back from Seattle on the cross-country train sometime in late 1945, and my mother told me that the soldiers amused me while we were all waiting in line for meals by passing me back and forth down the line. I don't really remember this, but her description was repeated often.

In April 1946, my “widdle bwover Bwilwy” was born and I became the “big sister”. We lived at 4807 Garden Street in Bridesburg while my parents saved up to buy their first house. We moved there in 1948, I think: 4227 Princeton Avenue, Mayfair. Ours was the very middle house of a block-long row of two-story houses with brick fronts. There was one bathroom for the three bedrooms upstairs. Down in the basement was the “laundry room”, actually just the hall to the back alley, where our bikes were stored in the garage located under the kitchen and dining room. We had a wringer washer and hung our clothes on the line to dry. I can’t remember what we did in the winter!

We went to 4807 in our 1948 green Chevy every Sunday for dinner with Gram, Granddaddy and Aunt Ava. I think that Aunt Edna [ ed. note: There was no Aunt Edna, but Aunt Lizzie always lived at 4807, see Eleanor Heydrick's narrative.] was in the picture as well, but my grandfather’s two sisters seemed very old and decrepit. 4807 was a pretty large house, with a front parlor and large dining room at the front, and a smaller parlor with an upright piano just behind the front parlor. We spent many hours there singing and playing the piano, which I loved. I kind of remember a large table in the center of the room with something like an oriental rug on it, but maybe I am mistaken. The winding stairs up to the bedrooms were entered from the back parlor. I believe my father hurt a disc in his back helping to bring one of the aged aunts down those winding stairs. I believe there were three bedrooms, but there may have been four. As I say, the house was large. 

The roomy kitchen was behind the dining room. I think at that time there was an icebox, and I believe I remember the ice man arriving at the door with big blocks of ice for the icebox. I don't think it is my imagination, but I was really young! In any case the big blocks of ice impressed me. 

The back of the house had a wide porch with rocking chairs and a wonderful hammock that we kids spent lots of time in, both when we lived there and when we visited, especially in the summer. 

The back yard was wide and very deep, going back nearly to the Delaware River. At least, we could see the river from the end of the yard. Granddaddy had an amazing garden, and he did his gardening dressed in a suit, with a starched white shirt and a tie. I remember him always dressed that way, although I have seen a photo of him in a bathing suit on the beach at Ocean Grove (otherwise known by us kids as “Ocean Grave”, because life there was still as it had been a century or more earlier).

Granddaddy was a wonderfully kind man, always with a smile and a hug for us. We went to the end of the garden with him to watch the ships on the river. At dinner, he sat at the head of the table (the place closest to the front of the house) and presided over what I remember as delicious meals. Around the table were Granddaddy, the two elderly aunts, my mother and father, and Billy and me. Sometimes I think Aunt Ellie was there, too, and Aunt Margie, Uncle Andy and our cousin Richard, who was just a few days younger than my brother, Bill. I don't remember Jim McKeeman until a bit later, but I imagine he was there, too. Much of the produce on the table came from the back garden, and I particularly remember the yummy fresh corn on the cob that we helped to pick ourselves and the deep red beefsteak tomatoes that were often served on a platter heaped with delicious (but high-calorie, no doubt) mixture of chopped hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise. I think we often had a roast on Sunday, but I’m not sure. Gram and the aunts spent a lot of time in the kitchen and I tried to help – probably getting in the way more often than not. I definitely remember “helping” to make cookies in that big kitchen. I don't think we ever ate meals at the big kitchen table, as it was mostly for working on. 

My grandfather had owned a hardware store during the Depression. I have two photos of the store, whose address was 608 on some street in West Philadelphia, I believe. I learned from my mother that the store had gone bankrupt in the 30s, but that her parents had worked hard as life insurance agents and managed to pay back all their creditors. Quite a feat, while raising three daughters.

Helen E. and William J. Heydrick, c. 1948

Gram was involved in community activities in Bridesburg and elsewhere. My mother told me that she had started a “Well Baby Clinic”, getting a nurse to come once a week to check out the babies to ensure they were ok and got some medical care when necessary. I think that some people (one man in particular) ridiculed her efforts, but she totally ignored him and the clinic was a success.

Both Granddaddy and Gram were very much pillars of Bridesburg Methodist Church, which was only a couple of blocks from their house. Granddaddy was in charge of the Sunday school, I believe. We attended Bridesburg Methodist Church before we moved to Mayfair (just a bit farther north and east of Bridesburg, but a newer area without all the pollution of the chemical plants in Bridesburg). Then we went to Johnson Memorial Methodist Church.

I remember vividly the day we received a phone call telling us that Granddaddy had died of a heart attack. He was 76. Gram was 13 years younger than he and still a very vital woman. But she decided that it would be best if she sold the house on Garden Street to find a smaller place. She and my parents starting looking for a duplex that could house our growing family (Bob was born in 1950, on Princeton Avenue) and have a separate apartment for Gram. In about 1953, they pooled resources and bought 1745 Rhawn Street, in Rhawnhurst. The house was on the northwest corner of Rhawn and Frontenac. It had been built in the 1920s (more or less) and was a solid two story single family house that had been converted to two units. We lived on the main floor (three bedrooms, two baths – yippee!) and Gram lived upstairs in a cozy two-bedroom apartment. It was a great solution for all of us. We loved having Gram close by, and she had dinner with us several times a week. 

Gram was a very accomplished person, and I believe she was the Executive Secretary of the Philadelphia Council of Churches. Because of her extensive community service, she had been asked to sit on the Philadelphia Charter Commission in the late 1940s, the only woman so honoured. The Commission created the “Home Rule Charter” that would guide the development of the City for many years. 

I am not sure how this got started, but at some point, Gram was asked to give speeches to various community and church groups. One was called “The Art of Living Together”. I don't remember the other titles, but she was in great demand, probably starting in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Her speeches were funny but had a great deal of what today would be called “self-help” information. People ate them up and just loved her, as did we. 

When I was in my first or second year of college, Gram was named “Pennsylvania Mother of the Year”. I think I have a professionally-taken photo of the event that includes Gram, Helen and her family, Aunt Margaret and at least the two oldest boys (Richard and George), and Aunt Ellie, Jim and probably Joyce and Kathleen. I’ll have to dig it out (and get it scanned) to check. At the center of the photo is the portrait of Gram that was commissioned for the occasion by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We were all very proud!
[ed. note:  Helen Heydrick was actually honored in 1963 by the Philadelphia City Council for 50 years of civic service to the city of Philadelphia. Not only were the entire McKeeman family there for the event, but Margaret Heydrick Beyer came from California with 5 year old David Beyer.)

I think that would have been in either 1962 or 1963. Ellie and the family had just returned to the US mainland from Puerto Rico, where Jim had been stationed. I remember a conversation in our basement with Ellie and maybe Kathleen (or Louise), who wanted to get her ears pierced, like so many of the Puerto Rican girls. This idea horrified Aunt Ellie, and the fact that Carol (me), the oldest cousin and a paragon of virtue (no doubt!) had had her ears pierced just that year was not encouraging to her but enthralled her daughter! I don't remember the outcome for my cousin, but I sure do remember the discussion!!!

And now a word from cousin Bob Dutcher:

Gram

Gram was a talker AND a spiritual person.  Like my mother, Gram could talk a mean streak.  Only she wasn't mean.  I don't think she had a mean bone in her whole body.  She always told us not to say anything if we couldn't say something positive about somebody else.  And I can't recall her ever not honoring that rule.

Now, when I became a teenager and started arguing theology with my Sunday school teacher and with Gram, Gram did become a little irritated.  She didn't like having her faith challenged.  But challenge I did.  Both Harriet Retgers, at our church, and even Gram.  

When I argued that we can't see God, Gram told me there were unseen realities more important that the seen ones.  I remember her talking about William James' famous book, "The Varieties of Religious Experience."  She had the volume on her bookshelf in the upstairs apartment at 1745 Rhawn Street.

Gram was open to the occult, the paranormal, communication with the dead, that sort of thing.  All the possiblities which James himself was open to, and discussed in his book.  I'm sure Gram took comfort in the fact that a Harvard psychologist and philosopher like James was as open to these possibilities as they were in some sense live possibilities for Gram.

I had these talks with Gram upstairs in her apartment.  But I also saw her every night for dinner, downstairs at my parents' dining table.  And she could, and did, talk.  A lot.  As mom and I can, having come by the trait naturally, genetically, and by nurturing example from Gram and for me, from both Gram and my mom.

Gram and Mom were perfect examples of what William James in "The Varieties of Religious Experience" called the Healthy-Minded Souls.  Positive.  Energetic.  But Gram had a greater inwardness, soulfulness really, than I ever perceived in my mother.  Perhaps all the suffering she had endured, during the Depression and losing her husband in 1954, left her more pensive and reflective than Mom.

Mom would often be out for the evening at Temple University so Dad and I often had the table, and Gram, to ourselves.  This is just as well, because if Mom were there, she'd be competing for "floor time" with her own mother.

My Dad loved Gram.  What a Godsend it must have been for my father to marry into the Heydrick clan.  His family had suffered so many tragedies.  His older brother, George E. Dutcher, Jr., died in 1925 in a drowning at the shore.  The family lost a lot of property in The Crash of '29 and the Great Depression which followed.  His father was a wholesale furniture salesman.  Demand for household goods, including furniture, died during the depression.  A gas station in Upper Darby was foreclosed upon and sold at sheriff's auction. Dad's father's mother passed in 1933.  And my paternal grandfather, George E. Dutcher, Sr., gassed himself in the garage under the family's kitchen in Upper Darby in early October, 1935.  Dad and his mother found the body.  My father had just started his freshman year at Drexel University.  He withdrew for the rest of the first semester.  He took psychology (no surprise), among other subjects, in the second semester.  

So after being part of a very depressive family of origin, meeting the Granddady Heydrick, Gram, Marge, and Ellie, plus Aunt Ada and all the rest of the clan must have been quite a relief for Dad.  He really loved being with all of them.  What a sea change they were from what he was used to in family life.

Gram, Dad, and I would often sit at the dining room table after supper, before we did the dishes, and talk about all kinds of stuff.  I just took it for granted that everybody must have a grandmother like Gram.  But of course that's not true.  Gram was one of a kind.  God broke the mold, as the old saying goes, when Gram was knit together in her mother's womb.