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Note: My Uncle Frank was a man I never knew very well. He and my father, Joe Seiler, were the only two children in their family, brothers raised together in poverty in the tough Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati. I have the pictures to prove it. As they grew into young adults they experienced very vividly the desperate times of the Great Depression. One would think they would be close, seperated as they were by only six years in age. And yet they had little to do with each other in the time that I knew them both, going back to my earlist memories in about 1952 or so.
I don't know why they drifted apart, both of them living all their lives within at most a twenty-mile drive of each other yet going years without speaking to each other. On the rare occasions that I saw them together, the relationship seemed strained and uncomfortable. I don't recall more than a couple of telephone calls between them over the years.
I have no unpleasant recollections of Uncle Frank whatsoever, and always found him attentive, pleasant, and direct. My impression is that he was generally in a serious mood. I don't ever recall seeing his first wife, Coleen Davis, although I somehow remember stories that she was a blond with a rather blemished past. Coleen left in about 1953 or so, taking their two children with her. After living a trailer-park life around Miami, Florida for awhile, she committed suicide. I remember going down there on a GreyHound bus with Grandma Rottmueller prior to that in an effort to get the children and bring them back to Cincinnati.
Uncle Frank thus regained custody of their children who, for whatever reason, ended up living with Fred and Blanche Rottmueller instead of with him. By this time he had married Anna Skaggs, a waitress in North Side, a blue-collar part of old Cincinnati. I have a couple of pictures of their wedding reception, held at our house. She brought with her to the marriage a number of older children from an earlier marriage. Perhaps they didn't get along with the newcomers, or maybe there wasn't room for all in their small home.
Frank busied himself for the rest of his life as the father of Anna's children, working as long as I knew him as a truckdriver. Although he was rather small in physical stature, I would imagine from his intense nature that he would have been a formidable opponent. After a time, he and Anna moved to a nice home in a modest middle-class neighborhood. Although we rarely spoke, he was invariably polite and friendly. It seems that the only time we met was at family funerals, and he was always there, quietly minding his business and showing his respect. I don't know of anyone who ever had anything bad to say about him.
I recall Frank, as I came to call him after my own maturity, as an honest, earnest, sincere, and able man who tried to do the right thing under often difficult circumstances. In later years I learned, belatedly, that Frank had all along been contributing the Social Security checks he was sent for the children to his mother, Blanche, for his children's welfare, although never mentioning it to anyone.
My few personal memories of Frank include the time he visited out at the farm, as we called it, and helped me put together a very difficult model helicopter. Another time we fell through the thin ice over the shallows in the creek behind our house there, standing on the bottom in about 15" of freezing water until he was able to help me get out. Once, age ten or so, I went hunting with him and a friend of his on old man Geiser's farm in the dead of winter, a brilliant sunlit day with blue sky above and blindingly white snow covering everything on the hillside. I remember the way our breaths puffed in the cold air, and the sudden explosions of gunfire shattering the quiet as they shot at their game.
I guess what I'll always remember about Uncle Frank is that I wish I could have known him better. I always enjoyed and appreciated his companionship. I think we could have been friends. And that's the best I can say to honor this man.
Dale Seiler
January, 1999
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