Stanley was my paternal Grandfather and somewhat of an enigma to me. As much as I have warm thoughts and memories about my maternal Grandfather Benny, I could not say the same for Stanley. He was not a warm man, in fact he sort of scared me. I don't have any memories of happy times or vacations with the family. I do remember riding in the car with him once and not wanting to be there. It's not that he was abusive or cruel, he just lacked warmth.
What I know of his childhood could explain some of this. He was the youngest of 9 children born to Martin and Anna Daruszka. Anna would die in 1904, the same year Stanley was born. Her death caused the family to be broken up with the children sent to live with different relatives until Martin remarried. His marriage was to a woman who was characterized by family members as an "evil stepmother". His father Martin would die when Stanley was 6. It is easy to guess that someone who grew up without the love of a mother and father could be molded into the emotionless man he would become. One emotion my Father said he did have was anger, raging anger.
Stanley married my father's mother Wanda around 1925. Like her mother before her, she died when she was 41. At some point Stanley took to drinking. He remained employed as a railroad conductor throughout the Depression but drank most or all of his paycheck. My father had to hide money from his part-time job in order to keep his siblings fed. Stanley would rage and demand the money he knew my father hid. I suspect it also included physical abuse as an inducement. My father left for the service in World War II sometime after his mother's death. Upon his return he discovered Stanley had remarried, and his gruff introduction of her to my father was, "This is your new mother and you will call her mother."
Needless to say the relationship between father and son was not the best. Perhaps some of my feelings for Stanley came from what passed as a relationship between father and son. My most vivid memory of Stanley came at one of the holiday gatherings at his house. As kids we were accustomed to being kissed and kissing other relatives. I went to kiss Stanley and he slapped me across the face and told me, "Real men don't kiss" or something to that effect.
At this point in his life diabetes had begun to take its toll on him. He lost both his legs below the knees and was confined to a wheelchair. He would eventually lose his eyesight as well. He had been warned to change his habits to prevent the disease from ravaging him. My father said he was too damn stubborn and knew more than the doctors. His plight only embittered him further.
Stanley died in 1971 while I was away at college in Chicago. I had moved off campus and we did not have a phone in our apartment. I had left the number of a neighbor's phone to call in case of an emergency. They never relayed the message about his death. I found out when I got an angry letter from my mother telling me that I had missed his funeral. I casually told her I wouldn't have come anyways. I felt no love for the man.
Ironically the man he told to accept his new wife as his mother would be the one who would treat her as he would have his own. My parents would run errands for her, drove her around and were constant visitors at the senior home she was in. He did it not because he felt compelled, but because he became a better man than his father.
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