About Katie

Akron, Ohio may not be an extrodinary city but it does have a few recognizable attributes. Rubber tires, Soap Box Derby, Quaker Oats and the world's largest dirgible hanger may bring Akron to mind when mentioned to some folks. But since I was born there in 1925 and grew up there, more personal recollections come to my mind when it is brought up. Some of my Akron memories are my dad's store, the Great Depression, the German-American Club, broken windows from solidly hit baseballs (I was a teenage tomboy), and the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, including the loss of my brother when his B17 crashed overseas.

My parents were German-Russian descent. That does not mean that they were part German and part Russian. They were the consequence of Germans imported into Russia as early as the 16th century by Czar Ivan the Terrible. Engineers, scientists, officers, merchants, and administrative officials came to Russia to build up the cities and modernize the army and the administration. But Empress Catherine II and Alexander I in the 18th and 19th centuries were responsible for an intensive agrarian emigration from Hessen, the Rhinelands, southwest Germany and West Prussia. The Russian government granted these immigrants great privileges and large areas of land for settlement. Over three thousand rural villages emerged from the original settlements with well-developed school systems and their own church administration.

Each of my parents came from one of those villages but did not know one other in Russia. With the conditions in the German-farm villages declining since the abolition of privileges and rumblings in the air of the Bolshevist Revolution, they left Russia and met in Chicago where they were married in 1917.

I was named Catherine after my mother, and for 16 years that is what I went by. But when I needed a birth certificate, I discovered that my legal name was Katie because that is what the doctor inserted on the document when dad told him my name would be the same as mom's - and everyone called her Katie !

I started employment with "Ma Bell" in Akron and picked it up again when my family moved to California in 1946. With my on-again, off-again track record, I finally bridged enough time to retire from Pacific Bell with the mimimum requirements for a pension in 1978.

I enjoy cooking, and especially baking. We belong to the Gourmet Club at the private community where we reside, and it is always delightful sharing in the preparation of the new delicacies for our social events. I am also very involved in the activities of my church. Sometimes I think that more spare time was available when I was employed than now.