Arnold Stuuri's Writings

I recently finished a long task. I scanned at high resolution an archive of letters, postcards, newspaper clippings, small booklets, and other ephemera from the family of my mother's mother. The items dated from about 1912 through 1971, with the greatest concentration of them being from 1942-44, during World War II. This ended up being about 1800 scans.

The majority of the items concerned my great uncle Arnold Wilhelm Mattias Stuuri (1913-1944). I think they were originally collected and saved by his mother Wilhelmina Elizabeth "Minnie" Hirvi Stuuri (1890-1946), since a few of the items are from her childhood and a few of the letters are from her brothers during World War I.

As I understand it, these letters and items were for a long time stored in the attic of the Stuuri family home at 503 Independence Street, Fairport Harbor, Ohio. My great aunt, Adela Mirjam Stuuri Bixler (1918-2003), sister of Arnold, raised her family in that house. At one point she cleaned out the attic and planned to throw this collection away. Her youngest sister, my great aunt Alberta Elizabeth "Abbie" Stuuri Peterson (1928-1995), rescued the collection. Now it resides with Aunt Abbie's husband, Jerry Mervyn Peterson.

The material gives insight into the lives of every member of this family, especially during the early 1940s. It also brings to life the small working-class town of Fairport during those years. The personalities of all the letter-writers stand revealed more or less.

My Uncle Arnold's death was for many years clouded in obscurity. Here's the newspaper report of his funeral from the January 5, 1945, issue of The Fairport Beacon:

Attending one of the most beautiful and reverent services conducted in Fairport were hundreds of people who came to pay tribute to Arnold Stuuri, son of Mr. and Mrs. Matt Stuuri of 503 Independence St., who died at the Brooklyn Naval hospital last Thursday morning. Torpedoman Stuuri had served in the US Navy for three years and had been wounded at Casablanca in January, 1943.

Note that final sentence about Arnold's being wounded. It's both incorrect and misleading. While scanning the letters exchanged between Arnold and his family, I tried to understand what exactly had happened to him--how he'd been wounded and what had led to his death. But I couldn't. The letters make the chronology clear, but are shy on details. My great uncle Jerry Peterson finally had the answer. He was already courting Arnold's sister Abbie when Arnold was in the US Navy during the war, and he went to visit Arnold in the hospital shortly before Arnold's death.

Arnold Wilhelm Mattias Stuuri US Naval idenfication card.

Arnold joined the US Navy in January 1942, shortly after the United States of America entered World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Arnold served as a torpedoman on two Navy ships during the war. The first ship was the USS Davis, which primarily patrolled the Caribbean and the east coast of South America. In Montevideo, Uruguay, on March 2, 1943, a depth charge fell on Arnold's foot and injured it. That was the wound that the above newspaper article references. The wound was not received in Casablanca, nor was it in January.

It took Arnold quite a while to recover from that wound, primarily it seems because the doctor aboard the Davis didn't take it seriously enough. It wasn't until months later and a new doctor was assigned to the Davis that Arnold's wound was tended to properly in Bethesda Naval Hospital.

In May 1944 Arnold was assigned to the USS Tillman, a destroyer that took him to Casablanca and Sicily. If he was wounded at Casablanca, it wasn't a wound of much consequence and it would have been in 1944, not 1943 as the newspaper article states. I doubt he was wounded at Casablanca.

Stuuri family portrait, probably Oct. 1944. Arnold is third from right.

In October 1944 Arnold had leave and went home to Fairport. It's during that time that the photograph [right] of the family seems to have been taken. But when Arnold left Fairport on the train, he grew sick. He had a condition that had bothered him all his life, it seems, an intestinal condition that caused obstructions.

The story as I've heard it is that people on the train assumed he was drunk. He was actually in pain and needed help. He made it to Grand Central Terminal in New York City and collapsed. He was taken to Brooklyn Naval Hospital.

He was in the hospital for a couple months and died there just after Christmas 1944.

The story I'd heard from family since I was small was that Arnold's seaman's bag disappeared in Grand Central. In that bag was supposed to be the manuscript of a book he was writing. My Aunt Abbie seemed to believe that Arnold's manuscript somehow ended up in the hands of author C. S. Forester, who passed off some or all of it as his own work. The elements in Forester's work that made her suspect this were the mention of a dog and the numbers of an automobile license plate that had been tacked up in the Stuuri garage at 503 Independence Street.

I don't know why Arnold's seaman's bag disappeared. His parents had a receipt for his seaman's bag and his wallet. His sister Alice Lillian Stuuri Sinko (1915-2002) makes explicit reference to that receipt in one of her letters in the collection. Maybe whoever was storing the seaman's bag lost it before the receipt could be turned in. Or maybe his parents lost the receipt. Or maybe there was a deadline to redeem the seaman's bag with the receipt and that deadline wasn't met. I don't think anyone knows at this point.

In the letters there are no references to Arnold writing a manuscript. He appreciated good literature. He was a good public speaker, winning debate competitions in high school. So maybe he was writing a book, too. I don't know how anyone could confirm that at this point.

Suomi Zion Lutheran Church

Suomi Zion Lutheran Church, circa 1920s.

My family has been associated with Suomi Zion Lutheran Church in Fairport Harbor, Lake County, Ohio, since its beginning. Members of my family were among the church's founders. The first meeting of the congregation took place on December 13, 1891, in a hall above a grocery store next to Wolff’s saloon on Water Street, before there was a church building. Officers elected at that first meeting included my great-great-grandfather Matti Uhmusberg Hietanen Sr. (1857-1915) as treasurer.

The first couple married in the Suomi Zion congregation were my great-great-great-uncle John Heikki "Henry" Hirvi (1860-1935) and Justiina Johantytar Somppi Hirvi (1875-1935). The marriage was performed by the congregation's first pastor, Reverend Abel Kiviola, on January 26, 1892. Henry Hirvi was also a signer of the church charter and from 1898 to 1903 held the office of vice president of the congregation.

The family of my great-great-great-uncle Henry Hirvi (Hervey). Back row, left to right: Weino Hjalmer "Wayne" Hervey (1901-1991), Olga Sigred Hervey Palmer (1894-1955), Saima Ilona Hervey Oliver (1892-1951), Thomas John "Tom" Hervey (1898-1958). Middle row, left to right: Elvira Justiina "Ella" Hervey Meyer (1896-1991), John Heikki "Henry" Hirvi (Hervey) (1860-1935), Justiina Johantytar Somppi Hervey (1865-1935), Richard Henry Hervey (1917-1962). Front row, left to right: Linda Emelia Hervey York (1905-1992), Hilda Marie Hervey Finneman (1903-1928). Photo circa 1922.

Construction of a simple church building on Seventh Street was finished in July 1892. The building was dislocated and damaged by a storm in 1893, but put back in place and repaired.

On July 12, 1896, a lot at the corner of Fifth and Eagle Streets was purchased. The church building was moved and substantially renovated. A foundation, a steeple, and a belfry were among the additions. My great-great-great-uncle Henry Hirvi and Oscar Hill Sr. built a new altar. My great-great-grandfather Matt Hietanen Sr. built the pulpit.

Suomi Zion Lutheran Church sanctuary, early twentieth century. The pulpit on the left was built by my great-great-grandfather Matti Hietanen Sr. My great-great-great-uncle Henry Hirvi helped build the altar.

An eight hundred pound bell was installed in 1898. The purchasing committee for the bell included my ubiquitous great-great-great-uncle Henry Hirvi. The bell still tolls today. The number of times it strikes indicates things such as the beginning of the Finnish service, the beginning of the English service, the death of a congregation member, and a funeral.

In 1901 the parsonage was built on the lot next door. The chairman of the parsonage committee was—take a guess—my great-great-great-uncle Henry Hirvi. The congregation agreed that members would take turns filling his position on the Pennsylvania and Lake Erie Company docks if Hirvi had to attend to parsonage affairs during the workday. The old parsonage remained beside the church until 1941 when it was moved to 428 Sixth Street and a new parsonage was built.  Also in 1901 the church balcony was enlarged to accommodate a manually-pumped pipe organ. About 1950 the most recent organ was installed, an M.P. Möller, Opus 8550.

The church established a Summer School in 1902 to instill patriotic and religious feeling into the youth of Fairport’s Finnish community. Confirmation classes were held beginning in the early years of the church. Members of my family appear in early photographs of both the Summer School and Confirmation classes.

Suomi Zion Lutheran Church Summer School, 1911. The first girl on the left in front is my great-great-aunt Elizabeth Stuuri Lehto (1903-1982). Sitting just to the right of her is another great-great-aunt, Elsie Emilia Hietanen Austin Behm (1904-1990). The boy third from the left in the top row is John Everett Ojanpa (1903-1968), my first cousin twice removed.

Suomi Zion Lutheran Church Confirmation class, 1902. The girl second from the right in the middle row is my great-great-aunt Liisa Emilia "Emma" Salo Klein (1887-1973). The girl second from the left in the back row is Maria Lepisto Hirvi (1887-1973), who married my great-great-uncle John Wilhelm Hirvi (1888-1918).

Suomi Zion Lutheran Church Confirmation Class, 1906. The girl on the left end of the middle row is my great-great-aunt Helmi Sofia Salo Syrjälä Haapala Lahti (1890-1961). The girl second from the left in the front row is my great-grandmother Wilhelmina Elizabeth "Minnie" Hirvi Stuuri (1890-1946).

In 1920 the original church building was moved to what eventually became the church parking lot and a new brick church was built on the old site. The new building was completed in 1925 and still stands at the corner of Fifth and Eagle Streets in Fairport Harbor today. The old building was converted into a gymnasium for a while. Then the building materials were reused to build what is now the Potti Funeral Home at 538 Fifth Street. This was the funeral parlor for my grandmother, "Muumma," in 1971, and all I could think of when I saw the name Potti—it was stenciled on the backs of all the chairs—was "potty." My mother was not amused.

Organizations within the church through the years have included choirs and singing groups, orchestras, Ladies Aid societies, the Luther League, the church council, and various committees as needs arise.

The church has continued to be a center of community in Fairport Harbor, especially for the descendants of Finnish immigrants to the USA. Church services in Finnish, in addition to weekly English services, are still held on the first Sunday of every month, as you can see on the church's website here.

Suomi Zion Lutheran Church—or simply Zion Lutheran, as it’s been called for decades—has been a touchstone in my life, too. It was where my parents were married in August 1962, although I was not around for that event. I was around in the summer of 1970 when I attended Vacation Bible School for a week. My great-aunt Adela Mirjam Stuuri Bixler (1918-2003) was teaching it.

Many of my relatives are buried in the church cemetery on East Street between Fifth and Independence Streets. Land for the cemetery was purchased in 1902 and clearing began in 1903. Among my family buried there are my grandmother Arlene Wilhelmina Stuuri Hietanen (1917-1971) and my grandfather Everett John Hietanen (1915-1998). I attended both their services at the church and their burials in the cemetery. The memorial service of my grandfather, “Paappa,” was the most recent time I was inside the sanctuary.

Suomi Zion Lutheran Church sanctuary today, from the church's website.

The most memorable feature of the sanctuary is the painting above the altar. It has nothing to do with my family directly, but all of my family who have attended that church can’t fail to have been struck by it. Painted by Reverend Hannes Leiviskä, pastor at Suomi Zion in 1905, it pictures Christ in Gethsemane. It’s based on the oft-copied Heinrich Hoffman original from 1890, now in Riverside Church in New York City. But Leiviskä used the Hoffman original merely as a starting point, adding substantial touches of his own. The most curious touch is what has always looked to me like a bolt of lightning in the sky. I remember attending Suomi Zion Lutheran as a child and trying to figure out exactly what was supposed to be represented by the brush strokes and paint colors forming this bolt. When I’ve seen the painting as an adult, it immediately evokes overwhelming nostalgia. Now it looks to me that what I thought was a lightning bolt is actually light reflecting from a cliff.

"Christ in Gethsemane" by Hoffman, 1890.

"Christ in Gethsemane" by Leiviskä, 1905.

I thank my second cousin once removed Sharon Ojanpa Mackey and Elaine Kangas of the Finnish Heritage Museum in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, for providing the Zion Lutheran Church 90th Anniversary booklet from which I took the black and white photos in this blog post.

My Mother the Genealogist

Up until several years ago I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about my family genealogy. Family stories were often interesting and of course I liked to know my specific relationship to relatives that I’d actually met. But I was happy to leave researching, compiling, and recording to others.

My mother, Karen Elizabeth Hietanen Shanower, was one of those others. In the early 1970s she began seriously researching both her own family tree and my father’s. We lived near Washington, DC, so things like US Census records were close.  Some days when my dad was at work and my sister and I were in school, my mother would travel into the city to do genealogical research.

Back then I had little concept of how research libraries worked. But I’ve since had experience looking up entries in catalogs, submitting call numbers, and waiting for books and other written records to be delivered to the call desk, then either consulting the index or going through the laborious task of visually scanning pages. These time-consuming methods of research are a lot of work. (But I find the process kind of fun when I’m interested in the subject I’m researching. I never know when the next surprising and valuable nugget will turn up.) Today, gathering much of the same material my mother found back then simply takes an internet search, winnowing through results, then a few computer commands to copy and paste it into a word processing document and backing that up. But personal computers and the internet weren’t available to my mother in the 1970s.

For a while all things genealogical seemed to interest her. One time she went to hear an author speak about his forthcoming book that incorporated family research. Afterward she told my sister and me how this author had incorporated family stories passed down through generations into a book, which my mom had put on request from the public library. It seemed like a year or two passed before the book was finally published. But when it was, Alex Haley’s Roots was a sensational best-seller and adapted into the first tv mini-series. To me Roots seemed a little old-hat, since it felt like I’d known about it forever.

I remember my mom trying to explain to my sister and me the ranking of cousins. On the big chalkboard on the family room wall my mom would write the names of relatives into a grid. She’d patiently explain how and why so-and-so was a certain number cousin, so many times removed. At eight years old I didn’t get it. Eventually, however, I was able to understand the concept. Now it’s hard for me to understand how I couldn’t grasp it at one point.

My mother, sister, and I would play a game. One person would think of a relative, then recite the chain of relationship leading to that relative. The challenge was for the others to guess the relative the speaker was thinking of. For instance, my mother might say, “Your father’s brother’s mother’s father’s wife.” My sister and I would each try to be the first to call out, “Grandma Dell!”

One Christmas—must have been about 1972—we were visiting relatives in Ohio, where both my parents were born and grew up. My mother interviewed her maternal grandfather, Mattias Vihtori Stuuri (1888-1981), about immigrating to the USA from Finland when he was a child. This was one of the few times I was present when my mother was actually doing genealogical work. Usually I might only hear about results, which were fine, but not of great interest to me then. But hearing Paappa* Stuuri relate facts about his family’s trip from Europe to North America stuck with me—mostly, I think, because I rarely saw Paappa Stuuri interact with others.

Mattias Vihtori Stuuri (1888-1981), my great grandfather, is seated at left in this photo from the early 1940s. My mother, Karen Elizabeth Hietanen Shanower, is the child standing center. My great aunt Adela Mirjam Stuuri Bixler (1918-2003), also mentioned in this post,  is standing on the right.

I rarely interacted with Paappa Stuuri myself. He didn’t talk much and my impression is that he was hard of hearing. When I knew him he usually sat in his accustomed chair on the enclosed porch of the house at 503 Independence Street in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, the house where several generations of the Stuuri family had lived for decades. He’d just sit there silently. Whenever my family arrived on a visit, his eyes would light up for a moment, he’d smile, and he’d let out an "ohhh," perhaps chuckle, and say a few words of greeting in his high, rough voice. Then we’d go on into the house to see the rest of the relatives.

In 1976 my sister and I stayed a week in that house with my great aunt and uncle, Adela Mirjam Stuuri Bixler and Alvin Ahlstrom Bixler. Their youngest child, my cousin Jim Bixler, was still living there, too. One day I was searching for a library book I was reading, one of Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll titles. I passed by the door to the porch and spotted my book—open in Paappa Stuuri’s hands. He was more than just casually glancing through the book, he was reading it! I was a little annoyed that someone had usurped the book I was reading, but I was also struck by the fact that this old man originally from Finland was reading a children’s book by a Finnish author.

Through the years my mom’s interest in genealogical research has waxed and waned. In the summer of 1978, my mother, sister, and I stopped in Pennsylvania where my mom did some research into the Lancaster County Shanowers. But after that I don’t remember her doing much with genealogy. Maybe I was simply unaware of it after I moved out of my parents’ home. In the 1990s other members of the family began to contact my mom for assistance with their own research, but I don’t think she ever plunged back into it to the depth she’d gone in the 1970s.

Her research has proven valuable to later family researchers. For instance, she had determined the place in Finland where her father’s family branch originated. In pre-internet days my mom hadn’t had the time or resources to follow where that information pointed. But in the 1990s when a US cousin researching the Hietanen branch of the family contacted my mom, she was able to guide him in the right direction. He forged ahead, made contact with Finland, and uncovered a wealth of information on our ancestors there. He credits my mom with providing the foundation for his success.

After I became fascinated with family genealogy a few years ago, my mother, I think, was a little relieved. Finally she had someone to turn all her research over to. She wouldn’t have to store all those papers and books anymore. I got them all. Well, a lot of it, at least. She held on to most of her old family photographs.

But I was grateful for everything that she gave me. I began entering all the information into the online family tree. It was fascinating to study some of the process she’d gone through to gather information. She’d kept neat graphs detailing which relatives she’d contacted, when they’d replied, and when she’d followed up. Different types of pencil and pen are used on the same pages, making it clear that at certain points she was filling in information later. Some of her questions have still not been answered. Her research into the McNaughton branch is exhausting to look at. She copied down McNaughton names and dates from record after record, even including variants such as McNorton. She had no way to be sure whether these were related or not.

About two weeks ago, when I wrote a blog post here about my McNaughton forebears, I didn’t have much more information about them than my mother had gathered back in the 1970s. At the end of that post I noted that some details of info I’d gathered myself seemed questionable. Writing that post spurred me to look again at the McNaughtons. I found more information. Turns out I was right to be suspicious—some of my information was wrong. But I’ve now revised it and have discovered a slew of relatives I hadn’t known about before as well as a consistent scenario for their movement from Scotland to Ohio. I’ll save that for another blog post.

Among the research my mom gave me I found the notes from her interview with Paappa Stuuri. I’d only had vague memories of the answers he’d given her back then. But now, decades later, here they were written down in front of me. I’ve recorded them on the online family tree so that the rest of the family can see them if they’re interested, so that any other interested researchers can access them, and so that they’ll be preserved for future generations. And, yes, I perform regular back-ups of the family tree to a couple external drives.

My mom is still interested in her family history. A few years ago she was excited to learn from one of her uncles that he’d found an archive of family letters from the 1940s. The letters contain some family history as well as being of immense sentimental value. I haven’t seen the letters, but I dearly want to make copies and computer scans to preserve them. One of these days.


* Paappa – Finnish word for grandfather, pronounced “boppa.”