Pennsylvania Railroad Sep 29, 1938 Grandfather Letters 1 of 46
My grandmother, Betty, always seemed to me a solitary figure. A woman sitting alone at the end of a shiny always polished formal dining room table. Her hair is coiffed. She wears a crisp button down shirt, ironed pants with a crease, cardigan sweater draped around her shoulders, and legs crossed with house slippers on her feet.
A 10-year-old sees her grandmother’s home in Ocean City, New Jersey as neat and orderly — her grandmother, calm, collected, quietly polite. I remembered the rooms in her home and the deck off her bedroom. It felt like a violation of her privacy to walk through her bedroom to enter the deck but I did. My sister and I sat in the deck chairs and couldn’t wait for the next day to walk down the street to the beach and swim in the ocean.
When I was 12 my father and I drove to Ocean City from Plattsburgh, New York to collect furniture from the spare bedroom in her home that will be my new bedroom set. She would be moving into a nursing home shortly after we left. As we drove home in the U-Haul I planned where each piece will go. At home I feel connected to her for the first time as we unloaded the twin beds, desk, and dresser, into my room. The crochet comforter on both beds smelled like her. I never forgot that scent.
I will never see her again. She moved into another home, and then another and finally a state-run facility. Always healthy but her mind was gone. Ever since her husband, Charles “Fritz” died she had been depressed. She went to psychologists, entered hospitals, and was even lobotomized. She never seemed to recover from his death.
After her death my mother and aunt discovered letters she kept in a locked drawer; letters from her husband the year before they were married. They read them and laughed and cried. My mother loved her father dearly. My mother loved how fun he was; always the life of the party, she said. He played football and graduated from Trinity College. He married and lived in many places with his family of six. He died when my mother was just 30 years old and was retired from the Pennsylvania Railroad for less than a year. He spent his entire career with the railroad.
I asked my aunt to send me these letters. A month later, photo copied letters arrive in the mail. I read the 46 letters dated from September 1938 to April 1939. After reading the first letter I wanted to know more about the Pennsylvania Railroad and the places my grandfather traveled to while employed there. Betty Fritzson, my maternal grandmother is 26 years old in 1938, born in 1912. Fritz, my maternal grandfather was 27, born in 1911.
My mother has always been fascinated by trains and I am beginning to understand why. The connection in my maternal family: Trains.
In my parents’ home reminders of the railroad are in every room. In the dining room is a Seth Thomas clock my grandfather bought my grandmother from a train station in Baltimore. Four framed steam engines from the railroad are positioned perfectly on a north facing wall.
After reading the 46 letters I want to know why these items mean so much to her. I want to understand the family I was born into.
Here is the first letter.
Letter Postmarked: Sep 29, 1938
From: the Sheridan Hotel, Marquette at Eleventh, Minneapolis.
To: Miss Betty Hodgson 6034 Walton St. Phila, Pa
Sep 28
Dearest Betty:
I finally arrived at 8 pm this evening after traveling for what seemed to be days. At present I am encamped at the above hotel in a room which I do not like. All the rooms with bath were filled when I pulled in so I had to take one without. The week-end football crowd started pouring in to-day & that accounts for the scarcity of rooms. I have my name noted for a room with bath & expect to get located within a day or two.
I had a four hour layover in Chicago waiting for trains but I didn’t have a chance to even drop you a card as I was busy the entire time. Mr. Barriger had previously phoned the vice-pres. Of P.R.R. & asked him to have a man with a car meet me at the train & show me about the old town. We mostly visited places of railroad interest but I also saw the stock yards, and the produce terminal. I think it was a very nice gesture on the part of Mr. Barriger & also of the good old P.R.R.
From Chicago I rode the Milwaukee Railroads crack train “The Hiawathan”. This train is probably the most luxurious & best known train in the U.S. I rode Pullman, or course, and had a seat in the observation car. I had a grand view of the countryside.
There are only 3 men here beside myself & we expect to be joined this week by a stenographer, an engineer, & probably a few examiners like myself. I carry around a fancy U.S. government card which gives me the title of Examiner and state in bold letters that I am on official business, all of which makes me look like the real McCoy. Of the 3 men here one is Mr. Hamilton, who is the boss, of the outfit, another man is a financial expert, and the third is a draftsman. Since I only carry the title of Examiner I will probably be the stooge for everybody.
There were only two sheets of paper in my room. I used one sheet to write to my mother & this is the second. Since I have no writing paper of my own I will have to end this letter abruptly. However, I have a lot more to tell you as soon as this hotel gets me settled.
I am not going to unpack until I get a different room but I have unpacked your picture. With more love than have ever before experienced, Fritz
1938. The U.S. President is Franklin D. Roosevelt. The War in Europe is brewing. The minimum hourly wage is 40 cents, and the most popular film was Boys Town starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney.
I never met my grandfather. He died shortly after I was born, he was 69. He was a businessman first and a family man second.
“He wasn’t home much,” said my mom. “He wanted to be an executive in the Pennsylvania Railroad and had to be a company man.”
According to Special Collections at Temple University The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was the largest railroad in the United States in terms of corporate assets and traffic from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The railroad’s decline was primarily caused by the interstate highway system and air transportation. The PRR executive’s goal was to build a railroad from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh via the Allegheny Mountains. The Pennsylvania Railroad merged in 1968 to become the Penn Central Transportation Company and my grandfather retired shortly after.
I wonder what was it like for my grandmother to read these letters over and over again. He wrote about the good time he was having while she was home in Philadelphia. Was she sad that she couldn’t be there to dine and “go clubbing” with the other couples he was hanging out with? Did it hurt her feelings that he mentions the other wives who were college graduates since she didn’t finish college? I think of this as I read the letters and wonder how she felt. I don’t know what my mom thinks of these letters. I don’t know what emotions they stir in her. What does she not want to remember or talk about?
My grandmother died at 90 years old and spent 39 of those years alone without the love of her life. What could that have meant to her? I wish I could read the letters she wrote back to him but they were not in her box.
I don’t know anything about my grandfather who was gone much and died at 59 just months after retiring.
“I sent you a text to the link of the introduction to the book about the PRR. Did you read it?” I ask my mom. I’m reading, The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 1 Building an Empire, 1846–1917. In the introduction the author, Albert J. Churella writes that many executives died while working there, or shortly after retiring.
“He is right about the high stress jobs in railroad business. I saw it in my father and how it affected his life,” she texts back.
This is the first I hear about her workaholic father. He was always the fun- loving life of the party. “You never talked about this,” is what I wanted to write back. But I kept my respectful quiet, just like my grandmother.
