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Resweber Page
Photo # i: sent by Jackie Resweber Mire
Grandmother Stella Durand Resweber and
Grandfather Oscar Resweber with 4 of their children.
Owen, Lloyd, Mildred and Carlyle
# 1 Owen J."Bolo" Resweber, Sr., and his wife Pauline "Pim"
Duchamp Resweber San Diego, California, Dec. 16, 1944.
Bolo, the grandson of Felicie and Oscar Durand and the son of
Stella Durand and Oscar Resweber, was a Pharmacists Mate
stationed at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego from 1942-1945
# 2 Pauline "Pim" Duchamp Resweber,
George Jackson (bartender at Jimmy Kennedy's Paris Inn
in San Diego), Owen J. "Bolo" Resweber,
Navy Pharmacists Mate
# 3 Pauline "Pim" Duchamp Resweber and Owen J. "Bolo" Resweber
in Jimmy Kennedy's Paris Inn in San Diego
# 4 Pim inscribed the following note on the Autographs page
opposite this photo: "Saturday night, December 16, 1944,
To my darling husband "Bolo" with all my love--your little wife "Pim"
# 5 Pim wrote on the Autographs page this notation:
"This picture was taken on our last night in San Diego, Tuesday,
December 19, 1944. George Jackson wrote:
"To my friends, Mr. & Mrs. Resweber From George Jackson,
That's my home ad (address) #419 Via Linda Road,
Redondo Beach, Cal., Hello "Owen" Hello
"Polly" (Jackson's nickname for Pim) and Merry Christmas, Jackson
# 6 Autograph page dated Monday Night, November 6th, 1944,
with inscription: I adore you and signed "Bolo".
Pim wrote, Ditto, "Pim".
Rest of page in different handwritings
are the names popular songs of the day,
apparently written by friends of Bolo and Pim.
# 7 Owen Resweber Sr. in Navy
See story about this photo
# 8 Owen Sr. and Lloyd Resweber as children
See story about this photo
Sister and Brother: Jackie Mire and Owen "Duke" Resweber
Resweber Stories
Owen Resweber Jr.'s Stories
These stories were sent to me (Glenn Currier) by Owen "Duke" Resweber Jr. on Oct. 17, 2005:
Navy Separates "Bolo" and "Pim": Interesting side story about Allen: Daddy (Owen Resweber Sr.) volunteered for service in the U.S. Navy during WWII, went through basic training in San Diego, then to Pharmacists Mate School in San Diego. Subsequently assigned to the Naval Hospital, San Diego, also called Balboa Naval Hospital because it was located on the grounds of Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo. In the spring of 1944 after being separated from his wife for two years, he wrote a letter to his mother asking if she would be willing to take care of Jackie while Mom (Pauline Marie Duchamp Resweber) went to San Diego to visit him.
From New Iberia to San Diego by Train: He wrote a letter to my maternal grandmother asking if she would be willing to take care of me for the same reason. (I found the letters in Mom's house after she died in 1989.) Both agreed and in early summer 1944, Mom boarded a train in New Iberia and sat on her suitcase until the train reached Arizona [emphasis mine, GCC ] when she finally was able to get a seat; the train had been packed with servicemen and women. Daddy was assigned to the Admissions Office at Balboa and when troop ships came in from the Pacific theater with hundreds of wounded servicemen, they would type up admission cards on manual typewriters. Mom, a crackerjack secretary, volunteered to work in the admissions office, and she told me they often stayed up 72 hours or more to get the job done. The Navy triaged the wounded in Balboa Park in tents and only the most seriously wounded made it into wards in the hospital; the rest remained in tents in the park.
Image # 5: I have pictures of Mom and Dad taken in a bar in San Diego during her stay there, the kind that a photographer would take, develop, put in cardboard sleeves and sell before the customers left the bar. There are several spread over a period of time, but the one I find most interesting is one dated Dec. 20, 1944, inscribed "My last evening in San Diego". Allen was born Sept. 20, 1945, 9 months to the day later.
"Duke" Graduates from Naval Officer Candidate School
When I graduated from Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island in June, 1962, Mom, Dad and Allen drove up for the occasion. One day in our apartment, Allen showed my wife, Mim, a registered nurse, some swollen glands at the base of his neck. She took him to the hospital where she worked and the doctor who examined him told her that he was concerned it might be Hodgkins Disease and that he needed to have a complete workup in Louisiana before a certain diagnosis could be made. Our parents took Allen to New Orleans and the diagnosis was Hodgkins. After a gallant battle of more than three years, Allen died at home on Oct. 3, 1965, just a couple of weeks after his 20th birthday. He was valedictorian of his high school class in St. Martinville and completed two years at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette before his health declined to the point that he couldn't go on any longer.
[In another email (Oct. 18, 2005) Owen said:]]
Pauline's Death: My mother died in her sleep in my home in Annandale, Virginia, in the early morning hours of Feb. 1, 1989. She had come for a long visit before the holidays and had been in declining health for some time. My father died in the hospital in St. Martinville on Oct. 7, 1981.
[Commenting on the photo referred to above taken in the bar just before his mom was to return to Louisiana, Owen says:]
Image # 6: There are autographs of friends or notes Mom made on the inside of the sleeves holding the photos. On one, Daddy wrote: "Monday night, November 6th --1944. I adore you. "Bolo" (Dad's nickname). Mom wrote beneath that: "Ditto". On the same sleeve in different handwritings are the names of popular songs of the day: Stardust (Mom and Dad's favorite song), I'll Get By, The Very Thought of You, I Walk Alone, Making Believe, The Waltz You Saved for Me, Always, You'll Never Know, Together, and The Eyes of Texas are Upon You. I surmise that Mom had asked their friends to write down the names of their favorite songs. Would you like to have the inscriptions scanned as well?
"Polly"
The bartender is in one of the photos and he signed it " George Jackson" and gave his address as "#419 Via Linda Vista, Redondo Beach, Cal.". He also wrote: "Hello Owen" and Hello Polly and Merry Christmas, Jackson" I asked Mom why he called her Polly and she said it was Jackson's nickname for her. Nobody in the family ever called her that and I wish I had asked her why Jackson chose that nickname for her.
"Stardust"
[Owen and I exchanged email messages in which I (Glenn) shared with him that my mom's favorite song was Stardust, as was his mom's. The story below that he shared with me is very touching to me.]
How interesting that your Mom's favorite song also was Stardust. Are you familiar with the words and the melody? Very sentimental in both cases and I can see why it was so popular during the dark days of the Great Depression and World War II.
A postscript also related to Stardust: My mother came to visit us while I was assigned as the Public Affairs Officer for the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command and the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk in the mid-80s. One night Mim and I took her to dinner at the Officers Club at the Naval Station in Norfolk. A piano player was playing dinner music and Mom asked me if I thought he would play Stardust for her. I told her I was sure he would, so she went up to him and requested the song. As he played it, she stood with both hands on the top of the piano as if trying to make a psychic connection with the music. She seemed to be in another world as sweet memories washed over her, and in a way she was in another world, the one of her younger days. The image of my elderly mother transfixed by a song and standing alone at the piano (my father had died a few years earlier) is indelibly etched in my memory. I'm sure she was remembering their courting days, her time with Daddy in San Diego, and all the other memories associated with Stardust. That experience was for her a precious gift, and the memory of it is precious to me.
Photo # 7: Owen Jr. (Duke) says of the sailor picture of his dad (# 7): "My mother wrote on the back of this photo that it was taken in July 1945 and my father gave it to her as a birthday present for her 31st birthday, August 9, 1945."
Photo # 8: And his explanation of the two children in the black and white photo (# 8) is: "This photo of Daddy and Uncle Lloyd came out of Mama's family photo album. I assume that Daddy's mother, Stella, gave the picture to Mama; there was no date on it but I estimate it must have been taken in 1914 or 1915 based on the fact that Daddy looks to be about 2 or 3 years old and Lloyd 4 or 5. Daddy was born in 1912 and Lloyd in 1910. How about those outfits! I remember asking Daddy why Uncle Lloyd had long hair and he didn't. He told me he didn't want to look like a girl so he insisted on a "boy's" haircut. I guess he couldn't avoid wearing the frilly clothes."
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