Milwaukee Remembrances

Every residential neighborhood has a grouchy old neighbor and so it was for me growing up on Milwaukee’s Washington Heights on the west side. A beautifully maintained corner bungalow on 48th and Vine Street was owned by Charles and Ada Stark. The lawn was golf course quality and the thirty “baby boom” kids on 48th street would frequently, while riding on the sidewalk, cut the corner by riding over Charlie’s lawn eliciting a “Keep off the grass” yell.

We lived next door to Charlie in a little two story gem of a four bedroom stucco house built for the Miller Beer company Master Brewer Mr. Sielaff in 1919. My parents, whose first home was directly across the street, had purchased the Sielaff house when I was in high school. Thus, I had known Mr. Stark and Mrs. Stark, a childless couple, for some years. Occasionally he would pay me to help with gardening or moving chores. A master tool and die maker Mr. Stark had the equivalent of a full machine shop in his basement. Sometime he would let me come down to see what he was working on.

Once when I was a student at Steuben Junior High School I mentioned to Mr. Stark that I had the lead in the school play. When I mentioned that the play was about World War I he brought out an old Army chest and opened it. Inside was a uniform, boots, belts, and other non-lethal soldiers’ paraphernalia.

He had me try on the uniform. It fit me. Mrs. Stark came down and was in tears as she said it reminded her of first meeting her future husband. Mr. Stark let me wear his uniform in the school play. He also came and sat in the audience. It was an anti-war play and I saw later that Stark had teared up as well.

When I asked him how it was in the war he told he had been trying to forget the war for forty years but couldn’t. “I did my duty!” Was all he would say.

I guess that’s enough. On this Memorial Day let’s give thanks to Charles Stark and his generation of First World War veterans, no longer with us, whose epitaph can read “I did my duty!”