Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life - No 3:Grandfathers

I never met my maternal grandfather Doering. As he was born in 1885 and died in 1946, eleven years before I was born. He was born in Walburg, Germany, lived through the deaths of 4 younger sisters who died at the ages of 2, 3, 11 and 18. He came to America and settled in central Texas.

Soon after arriving he suffered a serious sunstroke and gave up farming. He quickly utilized his considerable entrepreneurial skills and in succession opened the Henry Doering Mercantile, the Walburg Post Office and the Walburg Bank. He apparently passed on his business skills to all his children who were successful in the grocery, banking, hotel, insurance, cotton ginning and farming businesses.

He was known as an intelligent, humble, devout Christian citizen. When he opened the post office the US postal service suggested the settlement be called “Doering” in his honor. He declined and opted instead for Walburg, the name of the town in Germany from which he had immigrated. He was an active, generously contributing and founding member of Zion Lutheran Church and School of Walburg.

My mother was only 14 when her father died, but in her life she exemplified his virtues of hard work, humility and Christian service; yet I remember very little of her even speaking to me of him.

I knew Grandpa John Kieschnick much better. He was born in 1864 near Brenham, Texas. His heritage was Wendish (Sorb), a distinct ethnic group with its own language, tragic history of persecution, poverty, losers at war that dates back to the first century of the Christian era. He married grandmother in 1886 and they were blessed with 7 children who survived infancy. My father was child number 5.

I have three strong images of Grandfather Kieschnick. One is from a period shortly before his death in 1941 when I was 13. My sister Leona and I were visiting, allegedly to help bring in the crop. Grandpa and we were in the sweltering bottomland of his farm. Two mules pulled the wagon while Grandpa walked along side limping all the way from the lasting effect of a broken leg suffered previously when mules ran wild and he was dragged from his wagon and severely fractured his leg. In the 100º temperature Grandpa limped, sweated profusely and resolutely picked ear after ear of corn and pitched them into the wagon. I looked at him with deep concern, greatly afraid that he was about to fatally succumb to it all right before my young eyes. But he made it back to the farmhouse and instructed me to unhitch the mules and take them down to the water tank (pond) so they could get their thirst quenched.

My second image of Grandpa Kieschnick is of him leading family devotions, a ritual which was for him absolutely essential every single day. I doubt if he every got beyond 6^th grade in school, but he read the German devotional material and prayers with such solemnity, quiet eloquence and conviction that I still hear his voice today.

My third memory relates to his funeral. After his death his embalmed body was returned to the parlor of his farmhouse. There church members, neighbors and friends all came to pay their respects. Then there was a brief pastor-led ritual after which his coffin was placed in the hearse for the trip to St. John Lutheran Church in Lincoln for the formal funeral.

To get from the Kieschnick farm home to the main road required going through several gates. At each of the 4 gates there stood one of his hired black laborers. Each one stood next to a sleek black horse and each black man held his hat solemnly across his chest, honoring the man for whom they all worked.

Grandpa combined his deep devotion to God and church with hard work and wise investments. Beginning with very little he departed having fulfilled his vision of being able to provide via inheritance a separate farm for each of his children.