Francis Moehn 1916-2007

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketMy grandfather passed away in December, just short of his 91st birthday. I should have posted about him then because he was an incredible man. I'll have to make it up now.

As a child, he caught polio and was forced into quarantine for six weeks. The only person he was allowed to be in the same room with was the nun who took care of him. He survived, but his knees were never strong again. It was largely because of these leg problems that he was rejected from the Army after he was drafted for World War II. Oddly, if it weren't for polio, my mom, seven aunts and uncles and twenty-some cousins and I might not be here today.

As an young man, he took on a job that should naturally be left to German-Irish Catholics: he opened a bar. He and his wife worked together at the bar. They also single-handedly (double-handedly, really) built the house that they lived in for nearly 60 years. They settled there to raise eight children born over the course of twenty five years.

When the bar business went bad, he became a mail man. He worked at the post office for nearly thirty years until his retirement. In retirement he attended daily Mass and worked on his baby, a 1910-era Ford Model T.

This is how I remember my grandfather Francis Moehn. Although I will have fun with his collection of stuff in the next post, he meant a lot more than that. More than stuff, I'll still have those memories of Eggo waffles and Uno games and scrambled fairy tales (to this day, I really don't know whether he was joking or confused about those).