First Draft of My 1001 Flat World Writing Project

My paternal great grandfather, John Von Pabst, was born in the US to German parents and then raised as young boy in Germany. At the age of twelve he and his mother returned to the US, but their life was far from easy. My great grandfather used to tell my father that as a young boy, some Christmases the only gift they would get was a fresh orange.

Later, as a young man, he served in the US Navy as a sailor during the WWI. Throughout his life he was an extremely loyal and patriotic citizen, which are often traits associated with people of German ancestry. He also possessed the typical Germanic temper. As a young sailor in WWI he was almost court martialed when he punched out his commanding petty officer for calling him a profane name that he felt insulted his mother.

After WWI my great grandfather Pabst (he dropped the Von) settled in the Chicago area, obtained an education as an engineer and become a successful insurance executive. Always a tough pugnacious German, he was nonetheless a very loving and doting father to his three daughters. My grandmother tells a story when she was about 12 years old, of going to get an ice cream cone at Peacocks Ice Cream Parlor in Evanston with her father. As they are sitting on a bench eating their cones, my great grandfather sees a fist fight break out nearby. The next thing my grandmother knows, he takes of his (tailor made) suit coat and tie and hands his ice cream cone to her and joins in the fight.

My great grandfather’s sense of duty and patriotism remained strong and, two years prior the US entering WWII he resigned from his high paying job and enlisted in US Navy as an intelligence officer, using his fluent German language skills to infiltrate the German American Bunds (fraternal organizations) prevalent in the Chicago area at that time. In early December of 1941 he quietly told my grandfather, a young Naval ROTC officer at Northwestern, that we would at war with Japan with a week. It has never been determined within our family whether this prediction was conjecture based on his intelligence work or actual knowledge.

(As an interesting footnote to this incident, my other great grandfather was a life long friend of Admiral Husband Kimmel, the admiral in charge of Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack who was subsequently blamed for not being prepared for the attack and relived of his command. Admiral Kimmel and his supporters, along with Colonel McCormick, the owner of the Chicago Tribune, always contended that President Roosevelt knew in advance of the attack and allowed it to occur to get us into to WWII. In 1999 the United States Senate passed a resolution exonerating Kimmel stating that he was “denied vital intelligence that was available in Washington.")

When the US entered the war in 1941, the Navy, in its infinite wisdom, sent this German speaking intelligence officer to the Pacific war theater as a beach commander to fight in the invasions of Japanese held islands. My grandfather, who also served in the Pacific during the war, today still has the pistol that my great grandfather carried when making beach landings along with two Japanese ceremonial swords that he “liberated” from dead Japanese soldiers he came across during these battles.

Before the US dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, the US was planning on invading the island and, because of its extensive fortifications, the US command was estimating large numbers of US casualties. My great grandfather was scheduled to go in with one of the early assaults and had already written my grandmother to say good bye and to instruct her to take care of her mother and sisters.

After the war he returned to the Chicago area and lived a comfortable life active in the community and his church…..with his daughters and their families nearby. My dad remembers him coming over and babysitting on Saturday nights and building great creations with building blocks and erector sets. He would always leave some money in the cookie jar for my grandparents who were young and on a tight budget.

In the late ‘50’s he moved to West Palm Beach Florida to work with transplanted Chicago insurance legend John D Macarthur (and uncle to James Macarthur of Hawaii 5-0 fame.) Unfortunately, my great grandfather’s temper and principled nature caused a falling out with Macarthur which resulted in him leaving the insurance business. Calling in his early engineering training, in his late 60’s he became the manager of retirement homes, a job he continued with until he died at 84 years of age.

My great grandfather Pabst is buried at the Golden Gate National Veterans Cemetery in San Bruno California near his hero Admiral Chester Nimitz.