The year of my birth -- 1950 -- brought a number of changes to the Jack and Adelaide Kennedy family, though I was none the wiser.
One change was the still new farm equipment sales and service business that Grandpa had begun a few year before. Grandpa must have been friends with Glenn Hope Sr., who farmed northeast of Iowa City, with both serving in WWI and on the local draft board in WWII. Hope was well-known as chairman of the Johnson County Supervisors in the 1940s. At any rate, they went into business together and created Capitol Implement Company right after the war (my assumption as to the timing).
A second big event was my arrival on the scene, which brought mom and dad to Iowa City. My brother Mike remembers learning that our grandfather bought out Hope in 1950, coinciding with dad's return from Freeport as a married man with a pregnant wife. That led to my birth at Mercy Hospital (and my 76th birthday is tomorrow, not coincidentally).
Mom always told me that I was the first baby that Dr. Charles (Chuck) Eicher delivered, perhaps as a resident at Mercy. He graduated with his M.D. degree from UI in 1951.
But, according to my birth certificate, which I am looking at right now, the attending physician was Stephen A. Ware, M.D. Ware was a long-time Iowa City doctor who served as City Health Officer, whatever that entailed. He likely would have been a strong voice adocating for local children to receive the polio vaccine, a vaccine I am grateful to have received.
You would think she would have remembered the doctor who was there for her first child. Dr. Eicher did love delivering babies and I am pretty sure he delivered John and Barb's other eight children. During his career, he delivered 2,683 children in Iowa City. I was not one of them, though it took examining my physical birth certificate to realize that my mother had fudged the facts a bit and that I have lived a long time under a false impression. Who studies their birth certificate?
Dr. Eicher was our family physician for many years, so Barb is forgiven, not to mention the fog of giving birth eight times.
On the "certificate of live birth," we find that dad's listed occupation was manager of a bulk oil plant (meaning he delivered gas, I assume, for his father). He was 22 and he and Barbara Fern's street address was listed as "Iowa Apt. #29." That doesn't seem like a complete address to me, but that's what is on the document.
That birth certificate is stored in a fire-resistent box in our home office, and that box contains lots of other valuable information.
For instance, I find that my godmother was Dorothy Kennedy, my aunt, and my godfather was Ray Hoffman. The baptism was performed by Father P.J. O'Reilly (that name seems like a cliche) on July 30, 1950, at St. Patrick's Catholic Church.
"Ray" appears many times in dad's 1938 diary and I assume refers to that same godfather Ray Hoffman, a long-time friend of my dad who had attended the same country school. The Hoffman farm was adjacent to the Schnare farms (later the Kennedy farms), just to the west.
I feel like I should remember Ray Hoffman more clearly, but those brain cells are not connecting very well, apparently.
Anyway, 1950 was quite a year for the Kennedys, with mom and dad renting a house on Summit Street (not one of the giant, expensive ones). Dad began working for Grandpa, abandoning his advertising degree, while mom traded college dreams for raising a large family.
In other 1950 news, McCarthyism was just starting, and the Korean War had begun in June. The "Peanuts" comic strip premiered, and Harry Truman was president.
Those things don't match my birth, of course, but it's nice to have a little context.
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