Tribute for Cap't Jack - Early Life

Preface:  The next few blog posts are segments from the speech I delivered on April 6, 2013 to celebrate the life of my Dad, Jack William Siulinski.

     

     Good morning everyone. Thanks to everybody for coming especially to the family who flew in from all over the country. Today I will talk briefly about Jack's younger years, his life in the Navy, the start of his family, and his career. Then I will conclude with the 5 qualities that I think defined my Dad. I hope from hearing what I have to say that you will get the essence of who my father was...as a young person, as a brother, as a husband, as a family man, as a co-worker, and as a friend. 

     From interviewing my Dad for about 5 hours in 2007, I got to know him on a different level. He really provided me the motivation to research our family history. I wanted to know more about the family that he knew so little about on his father's side. The picture to the right is Jack's grandfather, Albert Szulinski, who lived in New York.

     One of the things I learned from the interviews was that Jack grew up in two very different environments:  the city life of Portland where he graduated from Deering High School, and the rural community of Jemseg, New Brunswick, Canada, where he spent many summers visiting his mother’s extended family.  One of Dad’s earliest memories was a long car ride to Canada where he distinctly remembered looking out a small window while his uncle drove the long, winding, dirt roads through the wilderness of Maine to get to Canada (see the map below).

Courtesy of google maps 

The Dykeman's of Jemseg had a farm with chickens, a few cows and a few horses. Their family dinners often had more than 20 people, a contrast to the small family life in Portland.

 

Jack's grandmother, Hattie Dykeman, always had homemade butter, bread and pies.  In talking with Dad’s brother, Adam, recently, the scent came back to him even today of the homemade butter and hot molasses over fresh bread. A fond memory of something Dad did with his grandfather, Joshua Dykeman, was getting up at 4:30 in the morning to go turn out the light in the lighthouse at Grand Lake.

The Siulinski’s of Portland were much loved by their Jemseg relatives, and the yearly visits were much anticipated. Only 5 years ago, in 2008, the Siulinski brothers, Jack and Adam, and their wives took a trip to visit the Canadian relatives for a family reunion in Saint John, New Brunswick, but did not visit Jemseg.  It was June of 1996 that Dad last visited the farm and the lighthouse on Grand Lake.

Before my Dad went into the Navy, he had six weeks of military training while still in high school at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine. He referred to the transition from the academy to the Navy as “coming out of the frying pan and into the fire”.  What may have led Dad to choose to enlist in the Navy was seeing the fleet visiting Portland when World War II was still going on.

 

Source: wikipedia

Life in the Navy took Dad from the heat of the South Pacific to the frigid climate of Adak, Alaska. He entered the Navy in August 1946 as a Construction Electrician. In California, he attended a Radio and Communications school in the Seabees program. 

The next post will explore the marriage, family and career of Jack which all began in the early 1950's.  

Note: Some of the pictures in this post were provided by Adam and Jean Siulinski of South Portland, Maine, and Marilyn Currie of New Brunswick, Canada.

Tidbits from the Interviews

On August 13, 2007, Jack and Pauline were interviewed at their home in Portland, Maine. Recently, I reviewed the transcripts from that interview and decided to share some tidbits of information from the conversation. The day of the interview culminated a series of recorded conversations about their lives.

Source:  Hurricane Ski Slope

All of the answers provided below are paraphrased from Jack and Pauline reflecting on their lives. The pictures shown in the post relate to the answers.

Thinking it would be kind of fun, I have decided to use a quiz format. Sadly, there are no prizes to give away. Of course, the answers are located at the end of the post. 

So here we go…

1. Where did the Siulinski's almost move to?

2. Where did Jack and Pauline spend their summers in childhood?

3. What other occupation might Jack have chosen for a career?

4. What one value from Memere made an impression on Pauline?

5. What favorite places did Jack and Pauline name as having traveled?

6. In retirement, Jack had a part-time job. What was it?

7. What sport did the Siulinski family most enjoy together?

8. What location did Jack and Pauline take the family to for regular vacations?

The answers:

1.     Around 1960, while the family was living in Augusta, Maine, Jack pursued a work opportunity in Florida. The family came very close to relocating to Florida. The neighbors in Augusta actually hosted a going away party at a local hotel for Jack and Pauline where they accepted a gift; a silver bowl with "Westwood" engraved on it. Jack soon after decided not to take the job.

2. One of the most distinct memories of Jack's childhood was his many summer trips to the farming town of Jemseg, New Brunswick in Canada. Likewise, a vivid childhood memory of Pauline was summers spent at the family residence on Crescent Lake in Raymond, Maine.

3. Some of the training Jack had in the Navy was in the area of electronics so he thought he might have gone in the direction of being an electrician. As it turned out, he turned what was a hobby (photography) into a profession. Being paid for doing what you love is a great lesson in life. In my case, I am hoping to one-day turn my passion for oral histories and genealogy into a supporting income. 

4. Both her mother and her father influenced Pauline's faith in God.

5. For Jack, Hawaii and for Pauline, Niagara Falls (she was overwhelmed by the waterfalls). Jack also mentioned he liked going on cruises.

6. Jack worked for National Car Rental, driving cars from one location to another.

7. Skiing - it was the sport we all learned at a young age and practiced every season when Jack and Pauline purchased family passes. Our training mountain was Hurricane in Falmouth, Maine; no longer in operation but remembered by the Ski Museum of Maine. We then progressed to King Pine in New Hampshire which is still in operation. 

Source: I4BarHarbor

 
8. Bar Harbor was our rustic family getaway. 

Feel free to add any of your memories attached to these answers by adding a comment below or by sending an email.

The Famous Dyckmans

This is a story about one of the oldest Dutch families in New York City. The Dyckmans were one of those families and they prospered from farming and tending an apple orchard in a northern area of Manhattan now referred to as Inwood.     
Image source: Dyckman Farmhouse Museum brochure

Before the island became citified, farming was a thriving lifestyle for early colonists. The Dyckman’s made their livestock available to the markets of Lower Manhattan for many years. Here is a time period so far back. Try to imagine Manhattan three to four generations before the American Revolution. People in New York can do this by walking through the rooms of the Dyckman Farmhouse (built by William Dyckman c. 1784) and walking the grounds of the Dyckman homestead which is now a museum located in northern Manhattan. This home was featured in a Bob Vila televised special on the A&E network which I possess in VHS format. The Dyckman House has been an historic landmark since 1967.

Source of two house images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyckman_House

Of my four family lines, the ancestor's of my paternal grandmother (Ouida Dykeman Siulinski) heralds the most fame. The line is traced back to a man called Jan Dyckman who emigrated from Westphalia (an area in Germany) c. 1661. Our name spelling changed from Dyckman to Dykeman when a descendent of Jan, Garret Dykeman, moved his family and others to Canada in 1783. To show the link of my grandmother to the Dyckman line, the following images show the references of Ouida’s family in the book, Jan Dyckman and his Descendents. The images show the genealogy page (181) and the index page (187). Ouida (spelled "Weeda" in the book) is in the eighth generation.

A whole chapter in the Jan Dyckman book is devoted to Garret Dykeman, whose family and followers begin the Canadian line of the family. Garret’s marriage to Eunice Hatfield, niece of Capt’ Abraham Hatfield, begins his association with the Loyalists. The Loyalists (also known as Tories) were American colonists who remained loyal to the British monarchy during the American Revolution. When their cause was defeated, about 20% of the Loyalists fled or were driven out of the US to resettle in other parts of the British Empire (source: Wikipedia.org). There have been volumes written about the two sides which brought on the revolution but when it was all over, many losing-side colonists felt safer to pack it up and leave. Thousands of Loyalists boarded ships to Nova Scotia (what now consists of the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). Land grants and other supports were offered to help in their resettlement but what they encountered in the new land was a more primitive and desolate landscape then what they had grown used to in America.

Map source: www.treasuredtimbers.com/rivers.html

Fortunately, Garret Dykeman’s group had chosen well. They decided to settle on the St. John River, a fertile area and further north were uplands which supported cattle raising (source: Jan Dyckman book, page 170). The place where he “set down his family” became Jemseg. This is the town of Ouida’s birth.
 

Ouida (Dykeman) Siulinski with sons, Jack and Adam, Jr.

End note: Research for this post came primarily from these two books:

Jan Dyckman and his Descendents by H. Dorothea Romer and Helen B. Hartman

Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture edited by Roger Panetta.