My grandfather came from a large family. He had five brothers, one sister, and one older half-brother. His mother, Lovina, was one of fifteen whole and half siblings. John Henry Yegerlehner, Roscoe’s father, was one of ten children. Several of his aunts and uncles did not survive childhood, or in fact, their infancy. I don’t know if there were any infant children of Lovina and John Yegerlehner. I doubt that they did as the family cemetery does not have any stones honoring any infants of John and Lovina. My grandfather did have one brother who died in 1922, aged 19 years.

Raymond Christian Yegerlehner was too young to have served in World War I since he was born in 1902.  He was not a graduate of Clay City High School¹. He appears on only two censuses, 1910 and 1920. On the 1920 census when Raymond was enumerated at age 17, he had not attended school during the year and he had no occupation recorded. At the very least though, he would have been assisting his father around the farm. I have copies of two different obituaries for Raymond.  Both say that he died after a short illness. My grandfather once told me that Raymond died from influenza, during the epidemic². The large outbreak of influenza that killed 50 million people around the world occurred in three waves during the years 1918-1919.ᶟ Raymond did not die until 4 years later. So although I am sure he died of influenza, he did not die in the initial wave of the pandemic.

Raymond is buried near his parents at the St. Peter’s Reformed Church cemetery at Hickory Corner, Owen, Indiana (FindAGrave).

Notes:

1. The Clay City High School yearbook for the year 1936 does not list Raymond as an alumnus.  Raymond’s brothers Clarence and Roscoe are listed as well as his sister Ruth.
2. Regional history article from the National Archives regarding the Influenza outbreak of 1918 http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/
3. Article from the United States Department of Health and Human services “The Great Pandemic”, http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918/

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My grandfather seems to be a bit pre-occupied in this letter and was rambling a bit by the end. I’m not sure who he was referring to as an O.B. patient. In today’s medical lingo, an O.B. would of course be an obstetrician. Since my grandfather was on a naval base, I don’t think there was much call for an obstetrician there. In general, he also seems uncertain about what will happen to him as I am sure a lot of the sailors and officers also worried about their own fates.

Letter transcription:

Mon Eve.

Dear Mother,

Got two letters today and none Sat. I really haven’t had time to digest the question of you coming down. And then Dr. Lentz might ask for a leave next week to go to the med[ical] convention + that would make it very nice for you to spend the time here and also I don’t know yet about the car. Whether you could get gasoline I may send for the registration card so that I can get an X card to send to you. Those are things I’ll have to do yet. If he doesn’t get his leave maybe we can put it off until after June 11^th.

The weather was very hot here yesterday and today it is murky been a sort of a fog all day long and fairly cool.

Things are just so uncertain one doesn’t know what to do. A fellow came in 3-4 days after I did but he has been ordered to another base so that’s the way it goes. Some of the others have been here as high as 6 mo.

(page 2) If you can get along without the car for a few days + send me the registration card-the one on the steering rod with my driver’s license, I’d see if I could get an X card, then if Dorothy wanted to drive you down she could and if not the X card would make no difference.

I’ve found that they charge 3.75 per day for O.B. patients here all the rest is gratis or one can go to a private hospital and get a discount which amounts to about the same thing. I got that by listening. I haven’t told anyone. It really won’t make any difference because the orders come from Wash. and not locally.

I’ll give this visit a good think tonite and write more about it tomorrow-

Love Daddy

© 2012, copyrighted & written by Deborah Sweeney