Monday April 6, 2020; 11:20 AM EDT
My maternal grandfather, Rudy Kiesler, was a bundle of energy. Highly opinionated. Very loud. Didn't spend a lot of time thinking (or so it seemed to me as a child) he just burst into action. #- He was the 13th of 13 children, born in the land between Poland and Germany, sent off to fend for himself as a very young boy. #
- Jewish, he was deported in the first rounds of the Nazi regime, leaving my grandmother and mother behind. Lucie, my grandmother, was Lutheran, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan princess. Why they married is something I never understood. They didn't seem to have anything in common.#
- So the women were left in Germany or Czechoslavakia, I'm not clear on which, and Rudy K was in Brooklyn or Queens, setting up a garment business, which he ran until he had a stroke in the 1970s. With no heir wanting to inherit the business, he sold the company, United Pioneer, to Salant & Salant. But he was always a bundle of energy, until he drifted away in a nursing home and died in the early 90s.#
- He would not have liked this "stay home stay safe" thing. I can't imagine he would have done it. He was the kind of guy who couldn't stand to wait in a line at the World's Fair, so he'd cut in front of the person at the front of the line, and when they complained, he'd ignore them (this actually happened). #
- Here's a picture of his family in Rockaway probably in 1961 or so. #
- He was a legend. Still looms large in my mind. #
