| 01 - Letter
From David BRODEUR To 492x1060,, Pauline MONTREUIL |
| Aug 5, 2007 |
Dear Pauline :
So kind of you to let me know of your father's death in April. My brother Paul
(18 mos older) got the word from another sister, I believe, and I'm sure I
can't name more than two of you. This split in the Webster (MA) Brodeurs goes
back to 1912 at least, when my father Paul Adrian (nee Adrian Paul)(1894) told
off the Fr. Can. Catholic priest in Lowell (MA) where itinerant father
Hermanigilde settled for a few years in his around so.New England post-loom
fixing days (Slater Mill, Webster). Casting Catholic reliquaries in plaster and
selling them door-to-door, Hermanigilde involved his older daughters in
collections--at least Anna and Hilda (later known as Concorde). Accordingly got
his high school a year each at Sommerville (MA), Providence (R.I) Lowell and
Portland (ME) where he grad. in 1917. By then, sev of the girls were lapsed
Catholics. My mother Sarah (age 102) is Protestant. Father made a show of going
to church with the family when we were young, but I could--as a little
boy--tell that his lip synching of hymns indicated his heart was not in the
Congregational Church either.
In fact father boasted of being a free thinker. He had a magnetic personality,
was almost always upbeat, but his agnosticism made him a frightened man near
death (1967). His brother Camille, a fine singer, did become a dedicated
Protestant. I visited him in Cleveland at age 15.He had a small car mechanics
business, and a daughter (my age) who is now a semi-invalid in Cleveland (Leila
Jeanette).
Due in part to to the split, we never got together in any reunion type
gathering. I saw Anna (as I recall) twice--17 years apart. We got regular
annual visits from Rachelle, on her treks to Sanibel. In 1982 I alwo saw
Rachelle in Ottawa. With mother, and Evette at her lake house with her (theb)
new husband, a Czech. We missed Marcelle and Paul in telephone calls.
I must report that the Brodeurs of your grandmother Anna's generation had
pretty hot tempers! The most notable exception, and the sweetest person in her
own right, was Bella (b. Annabella) the calligrapher, m. to Gustav Lange, a
widowed calligrapher, like herself. Bella did the illumination as well as
anyone in NY, perhaps better. It was likke seeing the Book of Kells. Old
Gus was a fine man and I enjoyed visitint them in Lex. Ave. I was the last of
the whole family to see Hilda alive--visiting here in Tacate (Mex) not far SE
of San Diego, jjust before she remove nto India--against doctor's orders--and
died the following spring in Chandagrah (1968)--six mos after my father died.
If you can forgive me for not having a computer, E-mail, etc., which I find
tedious and impersonal (PCs, that is) perhaps you will tell me about your
siblings. I met your father's NY Aquarium days.
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