Coming to Colorado: A Young Immigrantâ??s Journey to Become an American Flyer

CHAPTER 7. Hedwig Grapentin

Hedwig Grapentin CHAPTER 7 { 89 } HEDWIG GRAPENTIN Ahouse finally became available in an air force housing project just outside the Lowry Air Force Base fence line, on the eastern edge of Denver’s city limits. Beyond the air base, to the east, sprawled the small township of Aurora, and beyond Aurora, for hundreds of miles, stretched the barren high plains into windswept Kansas. Sixth Avenue, a four-lane, tree-shaded boulevard with a wide, grassy median strip, flanked by the sumptuous homes of Denver’s social elite, ended at Lowry’s main gate. North of Sixth Avenue, in the direction of East Colfax, then Denver’s principal east-west thoroughfare, stood that humble air force housing project we were about to move into. On a Saturday morning we loaded our few belongings into Tom’s car, and he drove us to 52 Jones Street, our first home in America. Hedy and Leo had been to the house on Jones Street earlier in the week to clean and arrange furniture Leo had checked out on loan from an air force family support center. Our new home was a modest, wartime built, temporary frame building, much like the barracks Hedy and I lived in as refugees in Germany, only this structure had been built specifically to house families, not soldiers. Our small duplex had two small bedrooms with hardwood floors, a carpeted living and dining area, a small kitchen, and a tiny bathroom. All houses on Jones Street looked alike—pink, with large black house numbers stenciled near their front doors. All residents of our small village were air force sergeants and their families. Moving into our new home eased the strains which inevitably build up when too many people live together for too long in too little space, as we did in Marie and Tom’s very small house. Hedy, Leo, Marie, and Tom parted as friends, but it was high time for us to move on. Later Marie confided to Hedy that she missed her German cooking, a small compensation for Marie and Tom’s generosity. Although my mother never defined herself in terms of housewifely duties such as cleaning house, doing laundry, or cooking, she was in fact a very good cook. As the wife of a Luftwaffe officer she had put on many dinner parties in Sagan and prided herself on being an accomplished hostess. Hedy applied for and obtained a job as a sales lady at the Base Exchange, the BX, at Lowry Field. During the Berlin airlift in 1949, she { 90 } HEDWIG GRAPENTIN had worked in the BX at Fassberg, where she and Leo met. The BX was something familiar in a strange land, so Hedy thought of that job possibility first. It made good sense as well, since we lived in close proximity to the base. Finding a job for Hedy was not an option but a necessity. With Leo’s limited income and the debts and obligations he brought into their marriage, she had to go to work if they ever wanted to get ahead, buy a car, own their own home. Here in America, in Denver, Colorado, Hedy no longer had to worry about her physical safety, being raped or shot, yet the struggle for economic survival was no less demanding. Stress remained a constant in her life. Hedwig Grapentin was born on May 25, 1914, in Neuensund, a feudal village an hour’s horse and wagon ride north of the small market town of Strasburg. Strasburg lay halfway between Pasewalk to the east and Woldegk to the west, in a region referred to as the Uckermark. The Uckermark, one of the poorest regions in Germany then and now, was not blessed with natural resources or anything else that might have attracted manufacturing or commerce. On top of that, the little town was built at a crossroads for warring armies, the remnants of its medieval town wall attesting to the futility of trying to stave off invaders from north, south, east, or west. In the seventeenth century, the soldiers of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden left their mark upon the town during the Thirty Years War—burning, raping, and looting on more than one occasion. A hundred and some years later, marauding Austrians and Russians chased remnants of Frederick the Great’s Prussian army through the town after the battle of Kunersdorf during the Seven Years War...